“So they changed it? Why would they do that?”
“Who knows? Maybe they drew it from memory,” said the old clockmaker.
Dan told him about the painting, filling him in on a key details, trying to read him for any signs of recognition, but aside from the clock there was no familiarity on his face. The old man shrugged with indifference that some anonymous artist had chosen his clock to occupy a part of a painting no different than someone might care that a Coke can turned up in the background of a sports photo.
“As to why it ended out in that painting of yours, I haven’t the foggiest,” he said. “Same for why they changed all the numbers but the five. What I can tell you is this: almost every clock we did back then were custom orders, this being one of them. Gimme a minute an’ I’ll find out who bought it.”
“Take your time,” Dan said.
The old clockmaker laughed as he turned around and opened the cabinets behind the counter. “We don’t take time, son. Time takes us.”
His old fingers ran across dozens of ledger books with a precision honed over decades and more accurate than a laser. Dan found the more he watched this old man, the more he respected him, and even though their careers were different, he recognized a true artist when he saw one. He hoped that there would be another to take his place, another son to tack onto the sign and keep the craft alive, but he suspected it was a hopeless wish. His son, if he had one, was probably off foreclosing on a house or running some dot com, wondering whether to put pops in a rest home before selling the silly business.
“There she is,” said the clockmaker as he blew dust off the ledger. The spine gave a crack as it opened it. Each turn of the yellow pages seemed to strain the book to the point of breaking.
“Here we go,” he said, putting his glasses back on. “Spring of forty-nine, right on the money.”
“Who owns it?” Dan asked.
“Can’t say who owns it now, could be halfway to Tibet. But says here it was bought by a Mister and Misses O’Donnel. Route seventy-one, outside Crawford Nebraska.” He closed the ledger. “Might want to start there.”
Dan felt his fingers begin to rattle. “No,” he said. “There’s no one there anymore.”
Echoes
THE SUN LAY just beyond the Pacific, an afterglow behind a vague fog wall, drenching the oceanside highway in a lazy, amber light. Pines and redwoods cast long shadows that reached across the highway like the fingers of a banshee. Night was coming and Dan turned his headlights on as the car hugged yet another turn on the drive home. He rolled down the window, the ocean air sobering and sharpening his thoughts.
He hadn’t thought about that clock in thirty years. On that day the sun had seemed almost like it does now. Long shadows and lazy light, and how it all fell through the loose holes and slats in the old house as his brother looked for the hidden passage into the storm cellar.
There had been dust and drawers and an old calendar that read: Firestone 1952.
And there had been the old clock and the startled bird that flew from it.
“Zip it you idiot!” David had shouted when Daniel had gasped at that bird.
“Sorry,” Daniel had said as his eyes rose to the old clock hands but they were at 4:47.
He wasn’t even certain there had ever been a clock in that old house but when he focused on his thoughts he was unable to ignore it. It was as if the clock had been drawn onto his memory by some invisible artist, repainting his past. Superimposed, like a bad effect added to a DVD on its 25th anniversary.
“Wake up little bro,” David whispered as he stood over the bottom bunk. The room was dark and the children were sleeping in their bunk beds while the moon watched over them all through the wide windows of the second floor dorm.
“Hey,” he nudged the shape in the bottom bunk again and clicked on his survival flashlight. “Wake up.”
The shape moved in the darkness until David saw the pale face of his younger brother, eyes blinking as he yawned. “What time is it?” Daniel asked.
“Late. I brought you something,” he whispered and he reached beneath the bed as Daniel stared him with a bewildered look. “Here, take a look.”
David pulled out a worn old art book. The cover had come off in small patches but the author was still clear: Max Ernst. Daniel looked at his brother with apprehension, unsure if there was some hidden trick to it, like a dog fed by the same hand that beat it. Then Daniel smiled and took the book and David winced when he saw the bandages covering his younger brother’s fingers.
“I thought you luh-law-lost it?” Daniel said, opening the heavy volume.
“I lied,” said David with a sigh. “I hid it from you.”
Daniel’s eyes drifted back to his older brother, and David could see the wrinkles on his forehead that always formed when he thought of something sad.
“I’m sorry,” David said again.
“Go to bed skitzo,” said a voice from the far end of the room.
David snapped his head in that direction like a snake ready to strike.
“Who fucking said that?” he demanded, his loud voice cutting through the silence. A challenge hinting at violence as his voice often did these days. A few bodies stirred, perhaps waking up, perhaps trying to fall asleep, or perhaps just trying to ignore another one of his confrontations.
“Don’t worry,” said Daniel, closing the book. “I’ll look at it tomorrow. It’s okay.”
David nodded but didn’t move. He wanted to say something but instead just gave a deep wheeze and scowled. He wanted to say so much, but it never came out. Somewhere between his brain and his mouth his words tangled up and he lacked the wit to unwind them. Instead, they slid back down his throat and sat in his stomach, heavy with regret.
“Thanks big bro,” said Daniel, and he reached out and turned off the light in David’s hand before rolling over and closing his eyes. “Go to sleep,” he said with a yawn.
And if Daniel had been awake he would have seen David wipe tears from his eyes and say: “I’m sorry.”
But he didn’t.
The fog parted and the headlights traced the brown and white form of the deer rushing at the car. Instinct took over and Dan slammed on the brakes, twisting the wheel to the left. The median rattled beneath the wheels and he smelled the stench of rubber as the car came to a stop halfway between the oncoming lanes.
He glanced back through the passenger window and saw the deer standing there, proud and unmoving, as if it’d just won a game of chicken. It held something in its mouth, a shape, like a brown lunch bag or a small animal. Thick strands of dark liquid dripped from it. What he had thought were white spots on its fur he now saw to be scabby mange. He slammed his fist on the horn, holding it on the second honk until the sick deer trotted away, off the road and into the foggy hills.
Linda hung up the telephone and rubbed her ear, still warm and ringing from the hour long conversation. Her mother had called to discuss her aunt’s thyroid cancer and the latest results, which were the same as the previous results, and the ones before that. It was, as the doctor had said and her mother repeated, like a cat sleeping on a fence: it could fall either way, or it could stay where it was.
Her mother’s drinking, however, had fallen off that fence headfirst and came through the phone line in a slurred voice and the occasional giggle. The combination of antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, downers and diet pills she took daily to keep her perky and functioning numbered over a dozen when Linda had last checked. The wine on top of that, which she often got into by the afternoon these days, had the effect of turning her into an intelligent zombie, a friendly husk that mashed her words together and always steered the conversation back to the latest family gossip. Linda dreaded another Thanksgiving, her mother spilling chardonnay from a glass held in a limp hand as the kids asked why grandma talked funny.
It made her sad to see her mother, who had raised her while her father was off at conventions and having affairs; her mother, who went back to get
her MBA at fifty; who she modeled her own idea of family upon; now reduced to little more than the mumbling dead. It made her mad that her father had smoked and drank his way to an early grave, leaving his wife alone in a house far too large for her needs, yet far too stubborn to consider leaving it.
“She could move in with us,” Dan had said after the cleaning crew found her mother halfway beneath the coffee table with a fractured hip and a broken brandy glass. “Maybe a little sun will do her good.”
It had been an idea Linda had never considered, and an idea her mother had rejected. “A silly idea Linda, truly. I just don’t have time for such things,” she had answered, and Linda wanted to ask her if falling down the hardwood staircase in a barbiturate haze was on her schedule, but she bit her tongue.
Yes, her father had died and Linda realized that her mother was, in her own way, following him faithfully into destruction, same as she’d done during all his lies and secrecy.
Linda opened the junk drawer, reached deep in, and felt the pack. Tommy was on the couch in the living room playing Nintendo and Jessica was upstairs. If she was quick she could step out onto the back porch and smoke before they noticed. Five minutes alone to clear her mind, that was all she wanted. She thought she deserved that.
Then she heard a whimper.
It seemed to come from all around. She recoiled her hand from the drawer on instinct, thinking perhaps a mouse had made its way in there. Then the sound came again, low and faint, in three quick bursts like Morse code in an old news reel.
It was a dog, whimpering. “Ginger?” she asked on instinct.
It had come from the hallway. No, it had come through the hallway, like a vapor bending and twisting in a current of air.
It had come, she realized, from Dan’s study.
The air inside was cold, and as she turned on the lights she looked for an open window but found none. She had heard it again, moments ago, a faint whimpering behind the door to the study. She had opened it quickly, ignoring the shock of static electricity, and she half expected to see Ginger sitting there in the study, wagging her tail.
Instead the darkness greeted her, cold and enveloping, and she felt a tremendous sadness. She thought of her father, on that hospital bed, damp with sweat, talking to no one and shouting for someone to close the door. And her mother, in that massive house that her only child had grown up in and left behind, asleep on the couch while some late night talk show gave way to informercials and, eventually, static.
“Ginger?” Linda called again, looking around the room for a shape of any sort. The painting loomed and she remembered how Ginger had scratched at the door when Dan was off at work, trying to get inside. Maybe Ginger was behind the painting, she thought, and crossed the room toward it.
She had never liked that painting. Those two children, born from a dark mind, standing and staring. Yet she felt drawn to them and she squinted and studied their bodies. The girl in the yellow dress was holding a naked, plastic doll with a pair of blue bird wings affixed to its headless torso. All across the tan plastic of the doll’s body were small, colorful tattoos of waves and blossoms and dragons, stenciled on like a painted egg.
She shuddered, sickened to be sharing the house with even a remnant of a mind that could create such a thing. It seemed to stare back at her like a murderer behind bars, restrained yet thinking only of violence. She wanted it out of the house, tonight, now. Yet she knew how important it was to Dan, so she would tolerate it, just as she had tolerated his many eccentricities; his nightmares, his nervous ticks, and that stutter that came out once or twice a year when he was frustrated. And that night at Chuck. E. Cheese’s and how he had screamed louder than the roar of the music and games.
She heard another whimper, one that came from everywhere, even inside of her. She thought of phantom limbs, and how amputees felt pain in fingers and arms they’d lost long ago. Could owners hear the phantom sounds of run away pets?
She walked around the painting, hoping to peer behind it and see the form of their dog. Yes, if she only had one wish then it would be for Ginger to return, happy, perhaps a little filthy from a weeklong adventure beyond the fence. Little miracles did happen, she told herself as the sound of that whimper faded. Wishes were granted, dogs returned home, and children smiled again at the sound of their mother’s voice. These little miracles weren’t too much to wish for.
She peered behind the painting, into the shadow it made as it leaned against the wall, but there was nothing. No dog, no sound, and no little miracle. Only emptiness and a lingering doubt that she’d heard anything at all. Sadness grew in her as she realized Ginger and all the happiness she had brought was now gone, perhaps forever. A void in the house; an empty dog bed and a water bowl sitting beside it, both waiting to be filled.
What had Dan said? We need to come to terms with the fact that she’s not coming back.
Yes, Linda thought, she did need to come to terms with this. That the dog, like her father, and perhaps soon her mother too, was among the departing or departed. She needed to come to terms with the fact that only she remained to mourn their void.
A small hand wrapped around her wrist and tugged. She didn’t so much as scream but let out a frightened chirp, like a smoke detector on its last battery. Jessica pulled on her wrist again and Linda felt fury. “Honey, don’t sneak up on me!” she scolded.
Jessica gave a numb nod in return. Her eyes were focused not at the painting, but through it as if her real target lay a mile away. Then, she blinked as if coming out of a deep thought, the same way she’d blinked upstairs when she had been doodling instead of studying. “Sorry mommy,” she said. “But this room is for daddy.”
“I know honey, I’m...” Linda hesitated, the faint suspicion that she might’ve heard Ginger whimpering now sounding absurd in her own mind. “I was cleaning,” she said instead.
“That’s okay mommy,” Jessica said, and for some reason Linda felt her daughter knew she was lying.
“Homework help?” Jessica asked, and her eyes rose to meet her mother’s. They were the eyes of a smiling child.
“Of course honey,” Linda answered, and led her daughter out of the study.
Mr. Bun
SUMMER’S LONG REACH into September finally grew weak, and for the first time since spring Linda had to wear her flannel gardening jacket to fend off the chill in the breeze. The wind had picked up last night, not long after Dan came home, and howled well into the morning. They awoke to find leaves scattered about the yard and an overturned umbrella by the old hot tub.
The front yard fared even worse. Dan had left the gate open last night, and by morning leaves were scattered around the lawn and driveway. Across the street, a fallen oak branch left a wide gash across the mansard of the Salazar’s absurd McMansion. As he swept the leaves from the driveway Dan felt a surge of satisfaction watching the Salazars shake their heads in dismay as the offending branch was dismembered and loaded into a tree shredder.
By noon the leaves sat in a large pile in the driveway and Dan retired to the study, coffee in hand, to read over proposals his students had submitted for their revised fall projects. Jessica stopped by the office, standing at the threshold and staring at the painting and when he asked her what was doing she told him she was looking for Mr. Bun.
“Have you tried the laundry hamper?” he asked.
She shook her head and meandered off to the den where Tommy and Sam were playing their Nintendos and eating popcorn. When she asked if they had seen her stuffed toy Tommy threw a piece of popcorn and called her a nasty name and Sam laughed and she left the room.
Last night she had felt something during the windstorm. Something cold had tugged at her feet beneath the sheets and clicked its tongue and she had clutched her rabbit and told it to go away and counted to one hundred and fifty and then it was gone. When she awoke Mr. Bun was by her pillow but after she ate breakfast and brushed her teeth fifty times top and bottom with her favorite Barbie Burstin’ Bubblegum flavor tooth
paste she saw Mr. Bun was gone and was replaced by a single dried leaf on her pillow. It was a deciduous leaf which she knew meant it fell off the tree about every three-quarters of the year but she didn’t know how to spell it so she couldn’t look it up in the encyclopedia.
She opened the back door and looked out into the backyard for the old rabbit, but only saw Mommy cutting pieces off those sharp bushes. Mommy had told her to finish her homework. It was important that she didn’t ‘fall behind’ the other students which she knew meant she was ‘not smart’ and had to work extra hard. If Mommy saw her playing she would get mad and speak in the Slow Voice while she helped her finish the pages. She hated the Slow Voice because she knew Mommy only used it for her and it meant the words would be small and easy to understand and not big words like hippopotamus and investigation. The Slow Voice was for stupid girls and she wasn’t stupid. No, she was special and smart and she had found the door and opened it before anyone else. That was why she had magic friends who lived in the dark.
Maybe they had taken Mr. Bun?
Yes, that was it. It was a game and they wanted to play with her. They were always playing games, counting to fifty and running between the walls right before dawn. They didn’t need to sleep but she did.
Jessica giggled and ran back into the house. Later, Linda would recall through tears that she thought she had heard Jessica at the doorway, talking to herself, but when Linda turned around the door to the house was open and empty.
Everything clicked into place when Jessica saw the pile of leaves in the driveway. They were piled next to Daddy’s car, half as high as she stood. They were maple leaves which were also deciduous and the same shape as the leaf on her bed. She knew the front yard was ‘off limits’ but maybe Daddy had swept Mr. Bun up in the leaves by accident. He had, after all, thrown out her favorite blanket last year by accident and Mommy had yelled at him. That was not a Happy Day.
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