The chaos clock, p.15
The Chaos Clock, page 15
My best friend, Terry, told me I should have told a newspaper reporter about it. “Think of the fame!” he said, chuckling. Even he didn’t really believe me. The sight haunted me. And all that time, the watch kept nudging me, reminding me I hadn’t wound it. Hastily, I turned the stem until the gold timepiece calmed down. Nothing else bad happened after that, as long as I was careful. I felt as though eyes were spying on me all the time, and only the watch could keep them at bay.
Ten years passed before I forgot again, and I’ll never forgive myself for that one. The watch kept banging away at my ribs, even though the timepiece itself was in my waistcoat on the sidelines of the Harvard University tennis court. I ignored it because I was in the middle of a match versus a formidable opponent, Stevens, a compactly-built white man with slicked-back blond hair who ran like a greyhound. He had a backward spin that sent the ball on an arc that would veer off right before it hit my racket. For once, I had him on the run, chasing after lobs I put into the corners of the court. He had always been scornful of anyone not from his fancy school or his side of town. I was determined to show him that we were just as good sportsmen as he was, even if I was of the working classes and sponsored to the college by my church
This one match meant nothing in the broad scheme of things. No prizes or fame hung on my success or failure; I was just focused, seeing his strategy and racking up points for my side, but the watch pinged away at me like someone poking me in the shoulder. I thought gears would pop out of my ribs.
When I finally finished with the set (I lost, in case you wanted to know), I saw a young woman from the bursar’s office standing at the sidelines. She waved a handful of papers at me. Her sympathetic expression got me worried. I hurried to take the slips from her and read them.
It was bad news. I had received a dozen calls from my mother. My grandfather had had a heart attack. He had been calling for me from his hospital bed. His condition was worsening steadily.
The last one was the hardest for me to read, which I did through tears. He hadn’t made it. The watch had been trying to tell me, and I ignored it. My heart felt as if it fell right out of my body, leaving me hollow.
I was devastated. He had been my friend and guide all my life, teaching me, listening to me when no one else did, and watching me as if he knew something about me that I didn’t. And the watch had stopped because I neglected it.
“Turn it back.”
A voice murmured in my ear. It sounded like Gramps.
“I….”
“Turn it back, son. Now.”
The stud on the side of the watch popped out, and I felt that stinging sensation, like an electrical shock. It wanted me to wind it. Obediently, I went to turn the tiny dial, but it would not move forward, only backward. Curious, I twisted it.
All around me, people started running backward, like one of Edison’s motion pictures shown in reverse. I saw myself running backward out of the college gymnasium with my five teammates. We looked dapper in white flannels, our hair freshly cut and brilliantined, like the champions we knew we were. I was seeing the past. I wanted to shout at myself not to fall into the trap the white player set, but my mouth wouldn’t open.
One by one, the messages in my hands disappeared. The young woman came running to courtside. I went to meet her. The watch’s stud popped back in against the edge of the case. The young woman handed me a single slip of paper.
“It’s your mother, Nick,” the girl said, her big brown eyes wide with sympathy.
I read the note.
Your grandfather has had a bad heart attack. He is at Bellevue Hospital. He wants to see you. Please hurry. It was signed by my mother. I crushed the white page in my fist.
“You should go,” the young woman said.
“But, I….” I started to say that I had a match. Then I give myself a hard kick. I couldn’t miss the chance to talk to him one last time.
I never felt so helpless in my life, but I turned to leave the gymnasium, turning away from my friends. Tom, our leader, a darker-skinned man a good six inches taller than me, and I’m tall, grabbed my arm and gave me a weird look.
“Where are you going? The match’s gonna start in five minutes!”
“My grandfather.” I held up the message, as if that explained everything. “He had a heart attack. I gotta go.”
Tom let loose of my arm. “Sympathy, my friend.” He looked at the others. “We’ll get it done.”
I hesitated for a moment, then decided it couldn’t do any harm. “Don’t fall for Stevens’s feints. He’ll send in those spinners and you’ll miss the return volleys. He’s not much of a runner. He gets out of breath easy. You can beat him.”
“What? He can’t run? But he’s beaten us every match this season!”
“Trust me,” I said, knowing how strange it sounded. “I… I had a dream.”
They scoffed at me, but I was already running out the door.
***
The watch kept poking me in the ribs as I signed in at the hospital, four hours later, after the most harrowing train journey of my life. A nurse in a starched blue uniform dress under a long white apron directed me to the fifth-floor ward. Mom met me at the door of Room 513. Her face was drawn and smeared with tears.
“He’s very weak,” she said. “He wants to see you.”
I felt as if I was floating away from my body as I approached the bedside. The man in it didn’t even look like my grandfather. There hardly seemed to be much left of him but a lanky doll of brown parchment wrapped in a shroud of white linen. His eyes were sunk into waves of brown wrinkles, but they remained watchful. I’d never felt so helpless. My universe was breaking apart.
“Nick.” He put out a hand and felt for my waistcoat pocket and tapped the watch. “I’m sorry to do that to you. It happened too suddenly. I thought I’d have more time to explain it to you.”
“It’s all right, Gramps,” I said. His head moved from side to side a fraction of an inch.
“No, it’s not. I put a big responsibility on you because I knew you could take it. I just meant to explain before the burden fell to you.”
I felt like crying, but a sharp look from those dark eyes dried up the tears. “You’ve never been a burden, Gramps.”
“You stop that right now. I don’t have a lot of time in this body.” His wrinkled fingers felt along my arm until his hand covered the watch. “That twist back you took to get to me in time. It’s going to cost you.”
“Anything, Gramps!” I protested.
He gathered strength from somewhere, and glared at me like he was fifty again and I was a little kid. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare, boy!” I fell silent. “I’m trying to tell you the most important thing in your life. Listen to me. I don’t want you to wind back time again unless you absolutely have got to.”
I leaned forward. “Tell me what happened, Gramps,” I pleaded. “What does the watch do?”
His eyes grew bright. “It holds you in place while it turns the world back. Not just the world, the whole Universe! You see ghosts of yourself back to the point when you stop. But it’s not a miracle. No, it’s a curse. Because you pay for it. I did.” For a moment, his lips pursed tightly. “I’m gonna be paying a long time. For every minute you turn it back, you pay a year. Not now, but after you die. When your body stops working, you become part of it. I’ll become part of it, real soon now.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked.
“Because it told me. They told me.” He tapped the watch again.
I looked at the gold timepiece with horror. “There are people in there?”
“Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. This isn’t the only one in existence, God knows I’ve looked for others like me. I asked them not to talk to you yet, so you could grow up a little. I hoped I’d have more time.” He barked out a sharp, rueful laugh, which ended in a cough. “I’ll have all the time in the world, but it won’t be my own.” He grasped my wrist even more tightly. “You can wind time back, even stop it cold. Don’t use it unless you can’t help it. Some of the people who had it were greedy, used the power over and over again. Now they’re in the clock forever, or close enough not to matter. Don’t make that mistake. Don’t set a rod to your own back. Go, live your life and be a good steward.”
“But why me?” I asked. I felt even more overwhelmed.
“Because I know you won’t misuse it. They know. They tell me the same. You’ll be a good guardian.”
“You can hear them even though I’ve got the watch?”
Gramps smiled. “Once it touches you, it’s always with you. Now, go get your mother. It’s time.”
***
Gramps had been right. The moment the old man’s eyes closed I felt the buzz in the pocket watch again. My mother collapsed, wailing, over his body, but I knew he wasn’t really gone. This time I could hear the others, a whole crowd of voices, men and women, a few high-pitched children, even growls and chirrups that weren’t human at all. I knew all of a sudden that they had been there, dating back before there were clocks, before there was time. And I heard Gramps.
“Take her home,” his voice said. It sounded strange, almost tinny.
“C’mon, Mama,” I said, drawing her up with an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
She raised tear-filled eyes to me. “I’m not ready to say goodbye!”
“No one ever is,” Gramps and I said at the same time, though she only heard my voice.
She looked up, like she was seeing me for the first time. “You remind me of him,” she said.
I glanced back at the empty husk on the bed as the orderlies moved in, gently wrapping and concealing it in compassionate draperies. “I’d be proud if that was true.”
***
I couldn’t help but feel like an old-time prophet or something, carrying the responsibility of the ages around in my pocket. I listened to the voices sometimes, hearing them argue about whether or not something could, or should, be undone. But I kept the year-per-minute equation in the top of my mind all the time. By going back hours to be able to sit with my grandfather for the last time, I had accumulated at least two hundred sixty years that I’d have to be imprisoned in the watch, on the chain of someone else who maybe wasn’t like me. It did sound like a magical power, but as far as I was concerned, nothing was worth spending eternity stuck in a circle of gold, glass, and gears. I realized I already knew what forever felt like.
I got to know a lot of the personalities who were in there. One of them didn’t speak. I only felt his—its?—emotions. It had been there a really long time because it had kindly feelings toward other beings. Most of them were pretty nice and had wisdom to share, like Gramps. Some of them, I learned to tune out, because they complained all the time.
One who spoke in a high-and-mighty way kept trying to make me use the watch. It was like he wanted me to be stuck in it longer and longer. Once when I was walking back from a free concert in Central Park, I saw a motor car collide with a small, open-topped carriage in the middle of an intersection. The crash made me cringe, but I joined the throng of people who rushed into the street to pull people out of the wrecks. Other cars and carriages shrieked to a stop as their drivers hauled on the brakes to avoid the accident.
“See there, youth!” the voice exclaimed. “Turn it back and save lives! Three could perish there! And more will be drawn into the chaos!”
“It’s the first driver’s fault,” a dry voice with a nasal accent said. “That rat didn’t care where he was going. He’ll do it again. You stop him, and he’ll kill someone for sure next time.”
I ignored the escalating argument. By then, I was already beside a big, brown-skinned man in coveralls. He was trying to pull open the small carriage’s door. “C’mon, hijo, help me,” he called.
I wrapped the hem of my jacket around the frame which had twisted into sharp tines of broken metal. I nodded to the man, and we hauled it open. A very small woman with a thick black braid and long, almond-shaped eyes hung sideways in the crushed seat
“Help me,” she begged. “Please, get me out of here! My daughter! I can’t see her.”
“We’ll get her, lady,” the big man assured her.
I heard sirens behind me. Someone had summoned the police.
In what felt like a minute, we were pushed away from the wrecks. A crowd of people rushed in to gawk. The little woman and her daughter sat on the back of a horse-drawn ambulance, wrapped in blankets, being seen to by resident doctors from Bellevue Hospital. The automobile driver, a middle-aged white man with slicked-back hair was bundled into the back of a police wagon, yelling the whole time. A uniformed police officer who looked like my Uncle Darrell took a statement from me.
“Those cuts bother you?” he asked, pointing his pencil at my hands. “The doctors can bandage you up.”
I looked down, seeing for the first time that my palms were leaking blood. “I’m okay.”
“Go home, hero,” the officer said, with a wry grin. “Try not to do any more good deeds on the way, okay?”
“Got it,” I said.
I felt pretty good, even if my hands did sting. I had to listen to the argument all the way back to my dorm.
“See?” my grandfather said to the others. “He didn’t need it this time.”
The upper-class voice grumbled.
***
But there were times when I did. After my return to Cambridge, I saw a young black woman in a tight-fitting, bustled dress chasing her toddler, then heard the squeal of brakes from a truck that was barreling up the street. They weren’t going to make it. I ran toward them, but I knew it was too late. I closed my eyes so I didn’t see the truck hit them. But I heard it, the whole thing. I thought I was going to throw up. That time, I twisted the stem backward until I heard the mother calling for her child to stop and come back. I opened my eyes and jumped onto the curb in front of the little boy.
I swooped him up in my arms and handed him to the woman. No blood, no broken bones. He did kick me in the ribs.
“Thank you, thank you!” she kept saying.
“No problem,” I said. But I glanced at the watch. Two minutes gone. Two more years in the watch. I felt like I was being punished for trying to help. But I wouldn’t have done anything else. I couldn’t have.
By the time I met Ginene, I’d racked up a hundred and twenty years more. I first saw her in World History class, and found an excuse to introduce myself. I ignored the guffaws from the watch’s voices as she smiled at me. She had light brown skin and surprising green eyes, and her curves, encased in a corset that made her waist an hourglass, setting every nerve in my body tingling. Her curly black hair was swept up in a pumpkin-shaped hairdo, the most fashionable of styles of the moment. I couldn’t help but stare in admiration. Her major was Archaeology, a topic that fascinated me. She was even interested in tennis, and was the captain of the women’s team.
With some harsh lessons about the value of time, I treasured every minute we had together. We liked the same things, the same music, the same authors. Her greatest fault was that she was lax about getting to places early. I found myself waiting again and again, feeling every minute pass with dread, feeling the universe around me twisting and writhing as if it was in pain. Her lateness caused the only real argument we ever had, when I was disqualified from being in a tennis tournament because I didn’t get there on time to add my name to the roster.
“Why are you so driven by punctuality?” Ginene asked, after she watched me storm up and back in front of the shut doors of the arena. “I don’t need a lecture from you every time we go out.”
“Pull back, boy,” Gramps said in my ear. I stopped short before I almost let loose the words that were on my tongue. Instead, my breath gusted out.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t tell her about the sensations I was feeling. “I’m upset about missing this tournament. I guess I do care about time.”
“Maybe too much,” Ginene said. She smiled. “I know I’m bad. I promise I’ll do better. But you have to do better, too. You’ll be in the next one. And so will I,” she added with a mischievous smile.
I wouldn’t have bet against her.
***
“You heard about this?” Two days later, Tom, our team captain, spread out a newspaper on the table in our club room.
The rest of us, Ginene included, leaned forward in our chairs to stare. In a photograph that took up most of the front page, I saw a city set on a bright ocean front filled with stone buildings. In the middle of the street was a crevasse that seemed to swallow sunlight. The newspaper photographer had managed to catch cars and carriages hanging halfway over the black gap. The ones behind had them skidded to a halt. The crack in the ground reached to the buildings on either side, lightning bolt-shaped scars climbing up stone and brick structures. The buildings had fallen apart, littering the ground with chunks of façade bigger than a trolley car. People lay on the ground with doctors attending them. Nothing had ever struck such fear into me as viewing that photograph.
“What the hell is that?” asked Diego, one of our players.
Tom looked grave. “It’s Charlotte, North Carolina. It happened this morning. This came in over the photo-telegraph. The ground just started tearing itself apart. About eight hundred people died.”
“What caused it?” I asked, aghast. The voices started shouting in my mind, and I felt the universe closing in.
“Nobody knows,” Tom said. “This is the fourth sudden subsidence that’s happened in like two days, all of them in places that have never had earthquakes. Certainly nothing like this.”
“Charlotte is where the national college tennis championship is taking place,” Ginene said, her emerald eyes wide with horror.
