Clock Without Hands

by Carson McCullers

  "Respect colored people even more than I do white people on account of what they have gone through."

  "There's plenty of bad niggers around," Sherman said as he finished his gin drink.

  "Why do you say that to me?"

  "Just warning the pop-eyed baby."

  "I'm trying to level with you about how I feel morally about the racial question. But you don't pay any mind to me."

  His depression and rage accented by alcohol, Sherman only said in a threatening voice, "Bad niggers with police records and others without records like me."

  "Why is it so hard to be friends with you?"

  "Because I don't want friends," Sherman lied, because next to a mother, he wanted a friend the most. He admired and feared Zippo who was always insulting him, never washed a dish even when Sherman did the cooking, and treated him very much as he now treated Jester.

  "Well, I'm going to the airport. Want to come along?"

  "When I fly, I fly my own planes. None of those cheap, rented planes like you fly."

  So Jester had to leave it at that; and Sherman watched him, brooding and jealous, as he walked down the drive.

  The Judge awoke from his nap at two o'clock, washed his sleep-wrinkled face, and felt joyful and refreshed. He did not remember any tensions of the morning and as he went downstairs he was humming. Sherman, hearing the ponderous tread and the tuneless voice, made a face toward the hall door.

  "My boy," said the Judge. "Do you know why I would rather be Fox Clane than Shakespeare or Julius Caesar?"

  Sherman's lips barely moved when he said, "No."

  "Or Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln or Babe Ruth?"

  Sherman just nodded no without speaking, wondering what the tack was about now.

  "I'd rather be Fox Clane than all these great and famous people. Can't you guess why?"

  This time Sherman only looked at him.

  "Because I'm alive. And when you consider the trillions and trillions of dead people you realize what a privilege it is to be alive."

  "Some people are dead from the neck up."

  The Judge ignored this and said, "To me it is simply marvelous to be alive. Isn't it to you, Sherman?"

  "Not particularly," he said, as he wanted very much to go home and sleep off the gin.

  "Consider the dawn. The moon, the stars and heavenly firmaments," the Judge went on. "Consider shortcake and liquor."

  Sherman's cold eyes considered the universe and the comforts of daily life with disdain and he did not answer.

  "When I had that little seizure, Doc Tatum told me, frankly, if the seizure had affected the left part of the brain instead of the right, I should have been mentally and permanently afflicted." The Judge's voice had dropped with awe and horror. "Can you imagine living in such a condition?"

  Sherman could: "I knew a man who had a stroke and it left him blind and with a mind like a two-year-old baby. The county home wouldn't even accept him. Not even the asylum. I don't know what happened to him finally. Probably died."

  "Well, nothing like that happened to me. I was just left with a slight motor impairment ... just the left arm and leg, ever so slightly damaged ... but the mind intact. So I reasoned to myself: Fox Clane, ought you to cuss God, cuss the heavenly elements, cuss destiny, because of that little old impairment which didn't really bother me anyhow, or ought I to praise God, the elements, nature and destiny because I have nothing wrong with me, my mind being sound? For after all, what is a little arm, what's a leg, if the mind is sound and the spirit joyful. So I said to myself: Fox Clane, you better praise and keep on praising."

  Sherman looked at the shrunken left arm and the hand permanently clenched. He felt sorry for the old Judge and hated himself for feeling sorry.

  "I knew a little boy who had polio and had to wear heavy iron braces on both legs and use iron crutches ... crippled for life," said Sherman who had seen a picture of such a boy in the newspapers.

  The Judge was thinking that Sherman knew a whole galaxy of pitiful cases, and tears came to his eyes as he murmured, "Poor child." The Judge did not hate himself for pitying others; he did not pity himself, for by and large he was quite happy. Of course, he would love to eat forty baked Alaskas every day, but on the whole he was content. "I'd rather stick to any diet than have to start shoveling coal or picking a harp. I never could manage even my own furnace and I'm not the least bit musical."

  "Yes, some people can't carry a tune in a basket."

  The Judge ignored this, as he was always singing and the tunes seemed all right to him. "Let's proceed with the correspondence."

  "What letters do you want me to write now?"

  "A whole slew of them, to every congressman and senator I know personally and every politician who might cotton to my ideas."

  "What kind of letters do you wish me to write?"

  "In the general tenor of what I told you this morning. About the Confederate money and the general retribution of the South."

  The zip of gin had turned to dour anger. Although he was emotionally keyed up, Sherman yawned and kept on yawning just to be rude. He considered his soft, clean, bossy job and the shock of the morning's conversation. When Sherman loved, he loved, when he admired, he admired, and there was no halfway emotional state. Until now he had both loved and admired the Judge. Who else had been a congressman, a judge; who else would give him a fine, dainty job as an amanuensis and let him eat party sandwiches at the library table? So Sherman was in a quandary and his mobile features quivered as he spoke, "You mean that part even about slavery?"

  The Judge knew now that something had gone wrong. "Not slavery, Son, but restitution for slaves that the Yankees freed. Economic restitution."

  Sherman's nostrils and lips were quivering like butterflies. "I won't do it, Judge."

  The Judge had seldom been said "no" to, as his requests were usually reasonable. Now that his treasure, his jewel, had refused him, he sighed, "I don't understand you, Son."

  And Sherman, who was always pleased with any term of affection, especially since they were so seldom addressed to him, basked for a moment and almost smiled.

  "So you refuse to write this series of letters?"

  "I do," said Sherman, as the power of refusal was also sweet to him. "I won't be a party to turning the clock back almost a century."

  "The clock won't be turned back, it will be turned forward for a century, Son."

  It was the third time he had so called him and the suspicion that was always dormant in Sherman's nature stirred wordlessly, inchoate.

  "Great change always turns forward the clock. Wars particularly. If it weren't for World War I, women would still be wearing ankle-length skirts. Now young females go around dressed like carpenters in overalls, even the prettiest, most well-bred girl."

  The Judge had noticed Ellen Malone going to her father's pharmacy in overalls and he had been shocked and embarrassed on Malone's behalf.

  "Poor J. T. Malone."

  "Why do you say that?" asked Sherman who was struck by the compassion and the tone of mystery in the Judge's voice.

  "I'm afraid, my boy, that Mr. Malone is not long for this world."

  Sherman, who didn't care about Mr. Malone one way or the next and was in no mood to pretend to feelings he didn't truly feel, only said, "Gonna die? Too bad."

  "Death is worse than too bad. In fact, no one on this earth knows what death is really about."

  "Are you awfully religious?"

  "No, I'm not a bit religious. But I fear..."

  "Why have you often referred to shoveling coal and picking harps?"

  "Oh, that's just a figure of speech. If that's all I feared and if I was sent to the bad place, I would shovel coal along with the rest of the sinners, a lot of whom I would have already known beforehand. And in case I'm sent to heaven, by God I'd learn to be as musical as Blind Tom or Caruso. It's not that I fear."

  "What is it you do fear?" asked Sherman who had never thought much about death.

  "Blankness," sa
id the old man. "An infinite blankness and blackness where I'd be all by myself. Without loving or eating or nothing. Just lying in this infinite blankness and darkness."

  "I would hate that too," said Sherman casually.

  The Judge was remembering his stroke, and his thoughts were stark and clear. Although he minimized his illness to others as a "little seizure" or "slight case of polio," he was truthful to himself; it was a stroke and he had nearly died. He remembered the shock of falling. His right hand felt the paralyzed one and there was no feeling, just a weighty clamminess without motion or sensation. The left leg was just as weighty and without feeling, so in the hysteria of those long hours he had believed that half of his body was mysteriously dead. Unable to wake Jester, he had cried to Miss Missy, to his dead father, his brother Beau—not to join them, but for solace in his distress. He was found in the early morning and sent to the City Hospital where he began to live again. Day by day his paralyzed limbs awakened, but shock had dulled him, and cutting off liquor and tobacco added to his misery. Unable to walk or even raise his left hand, he busied himself by working crossword puzzles, reading mysteries, and playing solitaire. There was nothing to look forward to but meals, and the hospital food also bored him although he ate every bite that was put on his tray. Then suddenly the idea of the Confederate money came to his mind. It just came; it happened like the song a child might sing that was suddenly made up. And one idea brought the next idea, so that he was thinking, creating, dreaming. It was October and a sweet chill fell upon the town in the early morning and at twilight. The sunlight was pure and clear as honey after the heat and glare of the Milan summer. The energy of thought brought further thoughts. The Judge explained to the dietitian how to make decent coffee, hospital or no, and soon he was able to lumber from the bed to the dresser and from there to the chair with the help of a nurse. His poker cronies came and they played poker, but the energy of his new life came from his thinking, his dream. He sheltered his ideas lovingly, telling them to no one. What would Poke Tatum or Bennie Weems know about the dreams of a great statesman? When he went home he could walk, use his left hand a little, and carry on almost as before. His dream remained dormant, for whom could he tell it to, and old age and shock had made his handwriting deteriorate.

  "I would probably never have thought of those ideas if it hadn't been for that stroke that paralyzed me so that I was half dead in the City Hospital for close on to two months."

  Sherman rooted in his nostrils with a Kleenex but said nothing.

  "And paradoxically, if I hadn't gone through the shadow of death I might never have seen the light. Don't you understand why these ideas are precious beyond reason to me?"

  Sherman looked at the Kleenex and put it slowly back in his pocket. Then he began to gaslight the Judge, cupping his chin in his right hand and looking into the pure blue eyes with his own creepy stare.

  "Don't you see why it is important for you to write these letters I'm going to dictate?"

  Sherman still did not answer, and his silence irritated the old Judge.

  "Aren't you going to write these letters?"

  "I told you 'no' once and I'm telling you 'no' again. You want me to tattoo 'no' on my chest?"

  "At first you were such an amenable amanuensis," the Judge observed aloud. "But now you're about as enthusiastic as a gravestone."

  "Yeah," said Sherman.

  "You are so contrary and secretive," the Judge complained. "So secretive you wouldn't give me the time of day if you were just in front of the town clock."

  "I don't blah-blah everything I know. I keep things to myself."

  "You young folks are secretive—downright devious to the mature mind."

  Sherman was thinking of the realities and dreams he had guarded. He had said nothing about what Mr. Stevens had done until he had stuttered so much that his words seemed to make no sense. He had told no one about his search for his mother, no one about his dreams about Marian Anderson. No one, nobody knew his secret world.

  "I don't 'blah-blah' my ideas. You are the only person I've discussed them with," said the Judge, "except in a glancing way with my grandson."

  Secretly Sherman thought Jester was a smart cookie, although he would never have admitted it. "What is his opinion?"

  "He too is so self-centered and secretive he wouldn't give anyone the time of day even if he was just in front of the town clock. I had expected something better of you."

  Sherman was weighing his soft, bossy job against the letters he was asked to write. "I will write other letters for you. Letters of acceptance, invitations, and so forth."

  "Those are insignificant," said the Judge, who never went anywhere. "A mere bagatelle."

  "I will write other letters."

  "No other letters interest me."

  "If you are so hipped on the subject you can write the letters yourself," Sherman said, well knowing the condition of the Judge's handwriting.

  "Sherman," the old man pleaded, "I have treated you as a son, and sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

  Often the Judge quoted this line to Jester, but with absolutely no effect. When the boy was small he had plugged his ears with his fingers, and when he was older he had cut up in one way or another to show his grandfather he didn't care. But Sherman was deeply affected; his gray-blue eyes fixed wonderingly on the blue eyes opposite him. Three times he had been called "Son," and now the old Judge was speaking to him as though he was his own son. Never having had parents, Sherman had never heard the line that is the standard reproach of parents. Never had he sought his father, and now, as always, he kept the conjured image at a distance: blue-eyed Southerner, one among all the blue-eyed South. The Judge had blue eyes and so had Mr. Malone. And so, as far as that goes, had Mr. Breedlove at the bank, and Mr. Taylor, and there were dozens of blue-eyed men in Milan he could think of offhand, hundreds in the county nearby, thousands in the South. Yet the Judge was the only white man who had singled out Sherman for kindness. And Sherman, being suspicious of kindness, wondered: Why had the Judge given him a watch with foreign words, engraved with his name, when he had hauled him out of that golf pond years ago? Why he had hired him for the cush job with the fancy eating arrangements haunted Sherman, although he kept his suspicions at arm's length.

  Troubled, he could only skip to other troubles, so he said: "I wrote Zippo's love letters. He can write, of course, but his letters don't have much zip, they never sent Vivian Clay. Then I wrote 'The dawn of love steals over me' and 'I will love thee in the sunset of our passion as much as I do now.' The letters were long on words like 'dawn' or 'sunset' and pretty colors. I would sprinkle in 'I adore thee' often, and soon Vivian was not only sent but rolling in the aisles."

  "Then why won't you write my letters about the South?"

  "Because the idea is queer and would turn back the clock."

  "I don't mind being called queer or reactionary either."

  "I just wrote myself out of a fine apartment, because after the love letters, Vivian herself popped the question and Zippo accepted very gladly. That means I will have to find another apartment; I wrote the very planks out of the floor."

  "You'll just have to find another apartment."

  "It's hard."

  "I don't think I could endure moving. Although my grandson and I racket around this big old house like two peas in a shoebox."

  The Judge, when he thought of his ornate Victorian house with the colored windows and the stiff old furniture, sighed. It was a sigh of pride, although the people in Milan often referred to the house as "The Judge's White Elephant."

  "I think I would rather be moved to the Milan Cemetery than have to move to another house." The Judge considered what he had said and took it back quickly, vehemently: "Pshaw, I didn't mean that, Son." He touched wood carefully. "What a foolish thing for a foolish old man to say. I was just thinking that I would find it mighty hard to live elsewhere on account of the memories."

  The Judge's voice was waveri
ng, and Sherman said in a hard voice, "Don't bawl about it. Nobody makin you move."

  "I dare say I'm sentimental about this house. A few people can't appreciate the architecture. But I love it, Miss Missy liked it, and my son Johnny was brought up in this house. My grandson, too. There are nights when I just lie in the bed and remember. Do you sometimes lie in the bed and remember?"

  "Naw."

  "I remember things that actually happened and things that might have happened. I remember stories my mother told me about the War Between the States. I remember the years when I was a student at law school, and my youth, and my marriage to Miss Missy. Funny things. Sad things. I remember them all. In fact I remember the far-off past better than I recall yesterday."

  "I've heard that old people are like that. And I guess I heard right."

  "Not everyone can remember exactly and clear as a picture show."

  "Blah-blah," said Sherman under his breath. But although he spoke toward the deaf ear, the old Judge heard and his feelings were hurt.

  "I may be garrulous about the past, but to me it is just as real as the Milan Courier. And more interesting because it happened to me, or my relatives and friends. I know everything that has happened in the town of Milan since long before the day you were born."

  "Do you know about how I was born?"

  The Judge hesitated, tempted to deny his knowledge; but since he found it difficult to lie, he said nothing.

  "Did you know my mother? Did you know my father? Do you know where they are?"

  But the old man, lost in the meditations of the past, refused to answer. "You may think me an old man who tells everything, but as a jurist I keep my council and on some subjects I am as silent as a tomb."

  So Sherman pleaded and pleaded, but the old Judge prepared a cigar and smoked in silence.

  "I have every right to know."

  As the Judge still smoked on in silence, Sherman again began to gaslight. They sat like mortal enemies.

  After a long time, the Judge said, "Why what's the matter with you, Sherman? You look almost sinister."

  "I feel sinister."

  "Well, stop looking at me in that peculiar way."