The Clock

For Johnny Hart 1931-2007

On Sunday, Charlie arrived at his clock shop just after dawn. The shop was normally closed on Sundays, and on any other day he chose. When the shop was closed, he often went driving around to yard sales, estate sales, antique fairs, pawn shops—anywhere he might discover and buy an antique clock. But today was not a day for exploring the countryside.

Charlie unlocked the grating and rolled it up like a window shade. He unlocked the door and entered to the tinkle of a bell overhanging the door on a flat spring. He locked the door behind him and went, with a rolling fat-man’s gait, over to the workbench along one of the side walls. He sat himself down on the stool, overflowing its edges. He squirmed and grunted. Someday, he thought, a bigger stool. Maybe one of those tractor seats mounted on a swiveling base. He unhooked a visor from the wall and settled the headband down onto his round, pink head, leaving its magnifying lens with a high-intensity light perched high over his forehead.

Eight dozen antique clocks lined the shelves in his shop, all dutifully wound and all ticking. The sound of each clock was subtle enough; in the aggregate they formed a percussion band that went in and out of rhythm and syncopation as slight variations of their ticking came in and out of time with each other. When business was slow, which was nearly all the time, Charlie would doze off in an overstuffed (like him) chair, soothed by the staccato murmur of his mechanical companions.

The clock on his workbench was his latest acquisition, from an estate sale down in York. It was nearly three feet tall and very heavy. He had had to help the burly deliveryman hoist it onto the bench. At some point, Charlie knew, he’d have to get help moving it to one of the display tables.

The clock was unusual in ways other than its size and heft. Charlie flipped the visor down, turned on the light. He scanned all four sides and then stood on tiptoe to scan the top: There was no maker’s mark anywhere on the gray metal case, unless it was on the bottom. He’d check that when he got help to move it.

He flipped the visor up, turned off the light, and leaned back to take in the clock as a whole. The clock’s face was something Charlie had never seen: a human-like face with eyes at 10 and 2, a mouth at 6, a nose in the middle, and human-looking hands attached to the nose. This was what had drawn him to the clock in the first place. The face, just on the sad side of impassive, pulled at something inside him. Charlie had felt this pull before. In his explorations and discoveries, some old clocks just seemed to call to him. It was as if they had chosen him, not the other way around.

And his new acquisition had pulled harder than he had ever experienced. Maybe it was the uniqueness of this clock. Maybe it was the culmination of something. Maybe—and he considered this in spite of himself—it was the culmination of the whole clock thing, with its mechanical precision, and clocks were the closest thing he would ever have to a relationship.

There seemed to be no place to wind the clock and no compartment for a battery. The previous owner said that he had never found a way to wind the clock or even to reset the time. Yet after sixteen years with previous owner, the clock was keeping perfect time, so perfect that it exactly matched the time on the only non-antique clock in the shop, which was reset each night by a radio signal from the Naval Observatory in Fort Collins, Colorado, and which Charlie used to set his dozens of antiques.

The first time he saw the clock down in York, he was startled to hear it announce the hour; apparently there was some kind of speaker behind the mouth.

Charlie leaned forward and with some effort turned the clock around. It left scratches on his workbench, joining thousands of others from years of use. Charlie was sweating. He dried his hands on his pants.

He looked at the back of the clock; it was gray and featureless, except along three edges he counted forty tiny gray screws. He reached into a drawer and withdrew a jeweler’s screwdriver. He pulled the visor down, turned on the light, and adjusted the focus. The tiny screwdriver was incongruous in fingers that looked like links of pink sausage. With practiced deftness, he started backing out the screws. First he gave a firm twist to the screw to loosen it. Then he held the handle loosely while he spun the screwdriver shaft between a fat thumb and forefinger.

He worked quickly. As each screw came out, it hung loosely in its place instead of coming out in his hand or clattering onto the bench or floor. Charlie had seen this before: the screws were probably held captive by a tiny ring on the back so that they couldn’t be lost.

With the fortieth screw loosened, Charlie rummaged in the drawer and got out a thin blade with a bone handle. The clock was sealed shut, as if it had been intended for severe conditions, maybe for outdoor use. At first he couldn’t find a seam or crack. He looked and felt with his fingers for a few minutes and then stood up, went to another drawer, and picked out a jeweler’s loupe. Yes, there it was—a faint line, one inch long.

He jumped when the clock announced the hour. The voice was not particularly pleasant; in fact, it sounded—what did it sound like? Maybe a bit mournful.

With exquisite gentleness, Charlie ran the blade along the line. He leant over his paunch to bring the loupe into focus. Each time he passed the blade along the line, he pushed a little harder. He didn’t want to mar the case. But the case seemed very hard, and each pass of the blade didn’t leave so much as a scratch. Eventually the line opened into a minuscule crack and then a longer seam. Carefully, Charlie pushed the blade along the seam, twisting the handle ever so slightly to open it up. The back yielded. It was on a long interior hinge, and he swung the door to the side. The captive screws, oddly, had slots cut into their ends, as if there was some reason to tighten them from inside the clock. A black gasket, in perfect condition, ran in a groove along all four edges of the back.

He turned his attention to the inside of the clock. Simultaneously he raised his eyebrows, wrinkled his nose (making his thin mustache dance), and gasped.

There seemed to be no works inside the clock, just a pinkish translucent gel. No gears, no batteries, no electronics, except for forty thin wires extending out of the gel to the back sides of the screw holes. Through the gel he could see indistinct masses that could be the backs of the 10, 2, 6, and hands.

Without taking his eyes off the clock, Charlie fumbled for the bone-handled blade. He poked gently at the gel, which yielded and rippled. He poked harder. Still it rippled. Then harder. He had to see what was inside.

He poked forcefully, tearing into the gel. A moist pinkish gas escaped from the tear, spraying his face, and then coming out at him in a flood as its pressure enlarged the gap. When the gas hit him, it turned into a pink liquid. Soon Charlie’s head was soaked, and the liquid dripped into his clothing. In his mind, Charlie was jumping up and backing off in horror and disgust. His body wasn’t getting the message. Within a minute, the pink stuff had totally enveloped his immobile body. 

The smell of the gas was unfamiliar but not unpleasant, a bit like fresh steak that had been marinated in orange-blossom water.

Charlie began to feel himself—well, not exactly melting, but losing substance. The feeling was unfamiliar but not unpleasant. The knife and the visor clattered to the floor. More and more of him was becoming pink and featureless.

He felt no pain, no panic, no distress. He marveled that, through all of this, he was still observing and thinking. And if he felt any emotion, it was a vague sadness.

The last thought Charlie had, as Charlie, just before the back swung shut on him and the screws started to turn, was a poem from over 45 years ago in a comic strip by Johnny Hart. He had found it a kind of funny in-joke and had committed it to memory:

Oh, clock with ten and two for eyes,

And six that speaketh prose,

Is it no wonder—that your hands—

Are fastened to your nose?[1]

[1] Reprinted by permission of John Hart Studios. Copyright 2009.