Timepiece

by Richard Paul Evans

  “I worked with Marley and Sons Glaziers as Mr. Marley’s assistant. When Mr. Marley took ill, I was given leave. He passed on shortly afterward. Then I went to work at Walker’s stationery shop on Main Street. I typed invoices and recorded receipts. The shop closed on account of the death of Mr. Walker.”

  “This is not a good omen, Miss Chandler. Do all your employers release you through such somber means?”

  “I prefer to think that they would rather die than release me.”

  David smiled at her quick reply. “So it would seem. How much did the position pay?”

  She swallowed nervously. “I require twelve dollars a week.”

  David looked back down at her letters. “You were only two weeks at your last employment.” He paused, inviting response.

  She hesitated. “I could not meet my supervisor’s expectations.”

  David was surprised by her honesty. “Exactly what was it that you found so challenging?”

  “I would rather not say.”

  “I appreciate your hesitation, Miss Chandler, but if I am to hire you in good faith, it is quite essential that I know your limitations.”

  “Yes,” she relented. She turned from her interrogator and took a deep breath. “Sitting on his lap.”

  David cocked his head.

  MaryAnne blushed. “Sitting on his lap,” she repeated. “My supervisor wanted me to sit on his lap.”

  “Oh,” David replied. “You will find none of that in this office.” He hurriedly changed the subject. “How is it that you came to live in Salt Lake City? It is not a place you accidentally arrive at.”

  “My father came from England in the hope of capitalizing on what was left of the gold rush. When we arrived at Ellis island, he heard that California was either panned out or the big finds were controlled by large interests, but that there had recently been a large silver strike in Salt Lake City. So my father brought his family out to settle. I was only seven years old at the time.”

  “Your father came to mine?”

  “No. To sell goods to the miners. He said it is easier to pan gold from a purse than a river.”

  “A wise man, your father. I have never seen so many fools work so hard for easy money and end up with so little of it. How did he fare in the business?”

  “Unfortunately, my father was not of good health. He died shortly after our arrival in the valley. The West is not an easy place for a man used to the comfortable life of nobility.”

  “Your father was a nobleman?”

  “My father was the second son of a baron.”

  David studied her carefully, resting his chin on his hands. “And that makes you . . .”

  “It makes me nothing, as I am an American.”

  David nodded. “It is just as well,” he said. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “A title is much too troublesome and high-minded.”

  MaryAnne glared back, certain that she or, at the very least, her ancestors had been offended. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I believe Your Grace was saying,” David said, adopting an exaggerated British accent. “My Most Reverend, Most Noble, Right Honorable, Venerable, Duke, Duchess, Squire, Lord, Lady, Baron, Baroness, Viscount, Marquess, Earl.” He breathed out in feigned exasperation. “It is a business in itself and all too tiresome.”

  “You mock me!”

  David waved a hand. “No. No. I am merely amused by the show.”

  MaryAnne sat back, her arms folded defensively across her chest. “America has its castes.”

  “True. But in America they are for sale.”

  MaryAnne glowered, then suddenly stood up, brushing down her skirt as she rose. “I think I shall go now, Mr. Parkin.”

  Her response surprised him and the smile left David’s face.

  “I have offended you.”

  “Not in the least,” she replied, raising her chin indignantly.

  “No, I have. I am sorry. Please don’t go.”

  She said nothing.

  “I apologize, Miss Chandler. I did not mean to be offensive. Attribute my rudeness to my crass upbringing as an American. Surely you cannot begrudge me of that.”

  “Pity you, perhaps.”

  “Touché,” David said, grinning.

  She retrieved her coat from the pole and put it on. David walked over to the doorway. “MaryAnne, I should like to work together. I will pay you eighteen dollars a week. If you choose to accept, you may begin immediately.”

  MaryAnne lifted her chin proudly, retaining an air of indignation. “I will see you Monday morning at five minutes to eight, Mr. Parkin.”

  David grinned. “It will be a pleasure, Miss Chandler.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  David

  “My new secretary manifests a peculiar confederation of English ritual and American sensibility. I enjoy her company, though she seems of a rather serious nature and I wish she were not so formal.”

  David Parkin’s Diary. April 29, 1908

  An hour after the close of the business week, Gibbs, the company’s head clerk, lumbered up the stairway sporting a tumbler in each chubby fist. When he reached David’s office, he was breathing heavily. He set the glasses on the desk and announced, “I brought you some port.”

  David was standing behind his desk thumbing through a leather-bound manual. He brought the volume to his desk and sat down.

  “Ah, you are well trained, Gibbs. Or at least opportunistic. Thank you.” He bowed back over the book.

  Gibbs took a chair in front of the desk and claimed one of the drinks as his own. “The Salisbury mine is now in possession of a new ore crusher and our account runneth over.”

  “Well done, Gibbs. It is a strong year.”

  “They have all been strong years.” Gibbs looked around the room. “Your girl is gone?”

  “MaryAnne? Yes, she has left for the day.”

  “You have not said much of her.”

  David continued reading, acknowledging the observation with only a nod.

  “Is she capable?”

  David looked up from his register. “She is wonderful. In fact, I am growing quite fond of her.”

  Gibbs pushed back in his chair. “Fond? Why so?”

  David closed the book. “She is a curiosity to me. She has the work ethic of a farm wife and the refinement of the well-bred.” He took a drink. “Only better, for it is not an acquired grace, but a natural refinement.”

  “Refinement?” Gibbs laughed. “Wasted on the likes of you.”

  David grinned. “No doubt.” He set down his tumbler. “Still, they use the pig to find truffle.”

  “A fitting analogy, I might say.”

  “You might not,” David countered.

  Gibbs laughed. “Her apparel is common enough.”

  “Mark me. She is a poor woman with nobility hidden beneath rags.”

  “And you a rich man with the common touch. How incongruous.”

  “How perfect.”

  “How so?”

  David leaned back in his chair. “Two oddities make a normality. It works in mathematics, as in life.”

  “You are still just talking about a secretary?” Gibbs asked sardonically.

  David studied his associate’s expression with consternation.

  “I have said more than I ought and you have clearly heard more than I have said.” He lifted his glass to the light. “Is there much talk among the typists?”

  “Some. They like a scandal and if they cannot find one, they invent one.”

  “Then I suppose I am doing them a service of sorts.” He leaned back over his register. “Still, I wish she were not so formal.”

  Just then, the first of the mantel clocks struck the seventh hour, immediately followed by a chorus of bells, gongs, and chimes, all counting out the hour in a different voice. Gibbs, accustomed to the hourly pandemonium, waited for it to settle before continuing. “I think you are asking for trouble, David. Love and business do not mix well.”

  “Gi
bbs, you surprise me. What do you know of love?”

  The man licked the rim of his glass, then set it down on the desk. “Only that it is the worm that conceals the hook.”

  “You are cynical.”

  “And you are not?”

  David frowned. “I should be.”

  Gibbs nodded knowingly. He had grown up with David in the California mining town of Grass Valley and knew of what David spoke. David’s mother had abandoned him as a child and stolen from him as an adult.

  Rosalyn “Rose” King, a music hall singer of mediocre ability, had married David’s father, Jesse Parkin, believing he would someday strike the mother lode. Ten years later the two had managed to produce only a son and a miserly shaft mine called the Eureka.

  The year David turned six, Rose abandoned the Midas dream and left everything, including David, behind. It wasn’t until the lonely and celebrationless Christmas day of that year that David accepted that his mother wasn’t coming back.

  Thirteen years to the month of her departure, the Eureka lived up to its name. It was to be one of the largest gold strikes in California history.

  Jesse ceded the mine to his son’s care, built a sixteen-hundred-acre ranch in Santa Rosa, and settled about the life of a Western Gentleman. Not two years later, Jesse was thrown from a horse and died instantly of a broken neck.

  Gibbs accompanied David as he buried his father in the foothills of Mount Saint Helena. David mourned greatly.

  The following spring, David received a letter from a mother he no longer knew. Rose had come West to Salt Lake City and learning of her husband’s fortune and recent demise, inquired into the will. Learning that David was the sole heir and not yet married, she invited him to come and live with her, with the urgent request that he send money ahead.

  Against Gibbs’s advice, David sold the mine. In a day when the average annual income was scarcely more than a thousand dollars, the Eureka fetched two million.

  David wired twenty-five thousand dollars to his mother and purchased, sight unseen, an elaborate Salt Lake City mansion for them to reside in.

  By the time he and Gibbs arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in spring of 1897, his mother had taken the money and moved to Chicago with a man she had met only three weeks previously, leaving only a penned regret that forever lies pressed between the pages of David’s journal.

  As powerful as David had become financially, in matters of the heart he was vulnerable and Gibbs brooded over him, protecting him from those who sought financial gain through romantic liaison. This role gave Gibbs no pleasure, however, for he knew his friend’s loneliness. Despite David’s unhappy experience, he desired the companionship marriage brings, but was not sure how to proceed, viewing women much as the novice card player who understands the rules, but not how the game is really played.

  David finished his drink, then set it down in front of him as his friend studied him sadly. Gibbs gathered the empty glasses and stood to leave. “Still, she is quite pretty.”

  After a moment, David looked up. “Yes. Quite.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lawrence

  “The first mechanical clock was invented in the year A.D. 979 in Kaifeng, China. Commissioned by the boy emperor for the purpose of astrological fortunetelling, the clock took eight years to construct and weighed more than two tons. Though of monstrous dimensions, the device was remarkably efficient, striking a gong every fourteen minutes and twenty-four seconds, nearly identical to our modern-day standard, at the same time turning massive rings designed to replicate the celestial movements of the three luminaries: the sun, the moon, and selected stars, all of which were crucial to Chinese astrological divination.

  “When the Tartars invaded China in 1108, they plundered the capital city and after disassembling the massive clock, carted it back to their own lands. Unable to put the precision piece back together, they melted it down for swords.”

  Note in David Parkin’s Diary

  MaryAnne knocked gently at David’s door, then opened it enough to peer in. “Mr. Parkin, you have a visitor.”

  David glanced up. “Who is it?”

  “He would not give his name. He says he is a close friend.”

  “I am not expecting anyone. What does he look like?”

  “He is an older gentleman . . .”

  David shrugged.

  “. . . and he is a Negro.”

  “A Negro? I do not want to see any Negroes.”

  “I am sorry, sir. He said he was a close friend.”

  Just then, the man appeared behind MaryAnne. He was a large man, dressed as a soldier in a navy cotton shirt and tan pants with a leather bullet belt clasped to a silver cavalry buckle. He smiled at David. “David, you givin’ this nice lady a bad time.”

  David grinned. “I could not resist. Come in, Lawrence.”

  Surprised, MaryAnne stepped back and pulled open the door for him to enter.

  “Sorry, ma’am. It’s David’s sense of humor.”

  “Or lack of,” she replied.

  Lawrence laughed jovially. “I like you, ma’am. Who is this lady, David?”

  “Lawrence, meet Miss MaryAnne Chandler. She is my new secretary. Miss Chandler, this is Lawrence. He is the godfather to most of the clocks you see in this room.”

  “It is a pleasure meeting you, sir.”

  Lawrence bowed. “It’s my pleasure, ma’am.”

  “Gentlemen, if I may be excused.”

  David nodded and MaryAnne stepped away, shutting the door behind her.

  “Where’s Miss Karen?” Lawrence asked.

  “It has been a while since you have been around. Her mother took ill and she went back to Georgia.”

  “She was a nice gal.”

  “Yes. She did not think much of Negroes, though.”

  “Her upbringin’,” Lawrence said in her defense.

  “You are kinder than you ought to be,” David said, reclining in his chair. “What have you brought to show me?”

  Lawrence lifted a gold pocket watch by its bob and handed it to David, who examined it carefully, then held it out at arm’s length. “Look at that,” he said beneath his breath.

  “It’s a fine piece. Maybe the finest I seen. French made. Never even been engraved. Belonged to a Mr. Nathaniel Kearns.”

  “Gold plate?”

  “Solid.”

  “How much does Kearns want for it?”

  “Mr. Kearns don’t want nothin’. He’s dead. The auctioneers askin’ seventy-five dollars.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “Sixty-seven dollars, I’d say.”

  “I will purchase it,” David decided. “For sixty-seven.” He stood up. “Would you care for something to drink?” He pulled a crystal decanter from a cabinet against the west wall.

  “Shore I would.”

  David poured Lawrence a shot glass of rum. Lawrence took the glass, then leaned back while David walked back to his chair.

  “How long this MaryAnne worked for you?”

  “About six weeks.” The corners of his mouth rose in a vague smile. “She is rather special.”

  “I can see that,” he said. “Called me ‘suh’.”

  David nodded, then glanced over to the door to be certain it was closed. “I have a question for you, Lawrence.”

  Lawrence looked up intently over his glass.

  “What do you think of me marrying?”

  “You, David?”

  “What would you say to that?”

  “Now why you askin’ me? I ain’t ever been married.”

  “I value your opinion. You are a good judge of character.”

  Lawrence fidgeted uncomfortably.

  “Come now, Lawrence. Speak freely.”

  Lawrence frowned. “It’s my way of thinkin’ that some folk shouldn’ get themselves married.”

  David grinned. “Some folk? Folk like me?”

  “I’m jus’ sayin’ someone shouldn’ take a perfectly good life and go marryin’ it. Seen it happen
my whole life, someone has the good life. Plenty to eat. Plenty of time to jus’ do nuthin’, then a woman comes ‘long and ruins it all.”

  David began to laugh. “Lawrence, you have a clarity of thought I envy.”

  “There someone you be thinkin’ ‘bout?”

  “Yes. But I think she would be rather astonished to know of my intentions.”

  Lawrence glanced back toward the door and smiled knowingly.

  “You do have a clarity of thought, my friend,” David said.

  Lawrence stood up. “Well, I best be off so you can be ‘bout your business.” His face stretched into a bright smile. “Whatever that business may be.”

  David grinned. “Thank you for bringing the timepiece by, Lawrence. I will come by this afternoon with the payment.”

  Lawrence stopped at the door. “Ain’t no woman goin’ to like all those clocks ‘round her house.”

  “The right one will.”

  Lawrence opened the door and looked out at MaryAnne, who glanced up and smiled at him. He turned back toward David, who was examining his new timepiece. “You have an eye for finer things.”

  “So do you, Lawrence. So do you.”

  Lawrence was a novelty in his neighborhood and the children of his street would wait patiently for his daily, slow-paced pilgrimage to the Brigham Street market, then scatter like birds at his appearance. No child could visit the area without hearing the boast from the indigenous children, “We got a Negro in our neighborhood.”

  His home was a ramshackle hut built behind a large brick cannery, and all in the neighborhood knew of its existence, despite the fact that it was well secluded and Lawrence was as inconspicuous as his skin allowed him to be.

  Lawrence’s last name was Flake, taken from the slave owners who had purchased his mother in eastern Louisiana in 1834. He had seen war twice, once in the South, and once in Cuba, and had grown old in the military, his black hair dusted silver with age.

  He was tall, six foot, and broad-shouldered, and though he had a thick, powerful neck, his head hung slightly forward, a manifestation of a life of deference. His skin was patched and uneven from exposure to the elements, but his eyes were clear and quiet and said all that society would not allow spoken.