Speaker 1: Us was to be hers the town clock. The clock
Speaker 1: tower stood at the center of the town square, a
Speaker 1: stone structure with a pointed roof and four faces, one
Speaker 1: in each direction, so that no matter where you stood
Speaker 1: in the town, you could look up and see the time.
Speaker 1: The clock was old, older than anyone currently alive could remember,
Speaker 1: and it had been wound by hand every Thursday morning
Speaker 1: for as long as anyone could remember, first by Horatio's father,
Speaker 1: and then by Horatio himself, who had taken over the
Speaker 1: task at the age of twenty three and had been
Speaker 1: climbing the spiral stairs every Thursday for forty one years.
Speaker 1: The stairs were narrow and made of stone, and they
Speaker 1: turned in a tight circle as they rose through the
Speaker 1: interior of the tower. There were one hundred and twelve steps.
Speaker 1: Horatio knew this because he had counted them once many
Speaker 1: years ago, when he was young and had the breath
Speaker 1: for such things. Now he did not count. He climbed slowly,
Speaker 1: one hand on the iron railing, the other on the
Speaker 1: curved wall, his footsteps making a soft rhythmic sound on
Speaker 1: the stone. The stairs were always cool, even in summer,
Speaker 1: because the tower was thick walled, and the sun never
Speaker 1: reached the interior in winter. They were cold, and Horatio
Speaker 1: wore gloves and a scarf and a hat that his
Speaker 1: daughter had knitted for him, gray wool with a small
Speaker 1: tassel on top. At the top of the stairs there
Speaker 1: was a door. It was wooden and heavy, and it
Speaker 1: opened into the clock room, where the mechanism lived. The
Speaker 1: mechanism was a marvel of gears and springs and pendulums,
Speaker 1: all made of brass and steel, all moving in a slow,
Speaker 1: precise dance that had been going on without interruption for
Speaker 1: longer than the town had existed. The gears turned, the
Speaker 1: pendulum swung, the escapement dicked a steady, even beat that
Speaker 1: was the heartbeat of the town, the rhythm by which
Speaker 1: everything else was measured. Horatio wound the clock by turning
Speaker 1: a large crank that was attached to the main spring.
Speaker 1: It took forty seven turns, and each turn required a firm,
Speaker 1: steady pressure that used his arms and his shoulders and
Speaker 1: the muscles of his back. He had tried to count
Speaker 1: the turns exactly, but the crank I got away of
Speaker 1: slipping if he rushed, and so he went slowly, feeling
Speaker 1: the spring tighten with each revolution. Feeling the resistance build
Speaker 1: feeling the mechanism, storing his effort, his strength, his time,
Speaker 1: converting it into motion, and then into the slow, measured
Speaker 1: sweep of the clock hands. While he wound, he looked
Speaker 1: out the windows. The clock room had four small windows,
Speaker 1: one in each direction, and from them you could see
Speaker 1: the whole town. To the north, the park with its
Speaker 1: oak trees and its benches, and its fountain that had
Speaker 1: been dry for three years. To the east, the school,
Speaker 1: a brick building with a flagpole and a playground where
Speaker 1: children ran in circles during recess. To the south, the canal,
Speaker 1: narrow and slow moving, with its row of willow trees
Speaker 1: that trailed their branches in the water like fingers. To
Speaker 1: the west, the hill where the old cemetery sat among
Speaker 1: the pines, quiet and green and very far away. Horatio
Speaker 1: looked at all of this every Thursday, and every Thursday
Speaker 1: he noticed something new. A tree had grown taller, a
Speaker 1: house had been painted a different color, a new car
Speaker 1: was parked in front of the hardware store. The town
Speaker 1: changed in small ways, so slowly that it was almost
Speaker 1: invisible from the ground, but from the clock tower, from
Speaker 1: the top of the spiral stairs, the changes accumulated like snow,
Speaker 1: layer by layer, until the town was different and no
Speaker 1: one had noticed. He finished winding. The mainspring was tight,
Speaker 1: and the mechanism hummed with a quiet energy, as if
Speaker 1: it were pleased to be wound, as if it had
Speaker 1: been waiting for this, as if the act of being
Speaker 1: wound were a kind of care, a kind of attention,
Speaker 1: a kind of love. Horatio checked the hands. They were correct.
Speaker 1: The clock was keeping time as it always did, as
Speaker 1: it always had, steady and shore, marking the hours and
Speaker 1: the minutes and the seconds, dividing the day into pieces
Speaker 1: that the town could hold and use and understand. He
Speaker 1: stood in the clock room for a moment, listening to
Speaker 1: the tick. It was a sound he knew better than
Speaker 1: any other sound in the world. It was the sound
Speaker 1: of time itself, not the abstract philosophical kind, but the real,
Speaker 1: physical kind, the kind that moved the hands and rang
Speaker 1: the bells, and marked the difference between morning and afternoon,
Speaker 1: between to day and tomorrow, between the moment before and
Speaker 1: the moment after. He had spent so many hours in
Speaker 1: this room listening to this sound that it had become
Speaker 1: part of him, a rhythm inside his own body. A
Speaker 1: second heart beat, slower and steadier than the first. He
Speaker 1: went back down the stairs, one hundred and twelve steps.
Speaker 1: He did not count them, but he felt each one
Speaker 1: the way you feel the days of a long life,
Speaker 1: not as separate events, but as a continuous descent, a
Speaker 1: gradual lowering, a slow return to the ground. At the bottom,
Speaker 1: he stepped out into the town square. The clock face
Speaker 1: above him showed the time, and he looked up at
Speaker 1: it and saw that it was exactly what he expected,
Speaker 1: because he had just round it, because it was his clock,
Speaker 1: because he kept it true. The people in the square
Speaker 1: went about their business. A woman pushed a stroller, two
Speaker 1: men stood talking by the bench. A child ran across
Speaker 1: the grass, chasing a ball that had gotten away from him.
Speaker 1: No one looked up at the clock. No one needed to.
Speaker 1: They trusted it. They had always trusted it because it
Speaker 1: had always been there, because it had always been right.
Speaker 1: Because Horatio climbed the stairs every Thursday and turned the
Speaker 1: crank and kept it running, kept it true, kept the
Speaker 1: town on time. Horatio walked home. His house was three
Speaker 1: blocks from the square, a small stone cottage with a
Speaker 1: garden in front and a chimney that smoked in winter.
Speaker 1: He opened the gate, walked up the path, and went inside.
Speaker 1: His daughter was there, sitting at the kitchen table reading
Speaker 1: a letter. She looked up and said, did you wind it?
Speaker 1: I did, Horatio said, forty seven turns forty seven. She smiled.
Speaker 1: He smiled. He took off his hat, the gray one
Speaker 1: with the tassel, and hung it on the hook by
Speaker 1: the door. He sat down in his chair by the window,
Speaker 1: the one with the worn cushion and the arm rest
Speaker 1: that was smooth from years of his hand. Resting there,
Speaker 1: he looked out at the garden, at the roses that
Speaker 1: his wife had planted before she died, still blooming, still red,
Speaker 1: still reaching toward the light, with a persistence that he
Speaker 1: found both beautiful and heart breaking. The clock struck noon.
Speaker 1: He heard it from here, a deep, resonant chime that
Speaker 1: rolled across the town like a wave, touching every house,
Speaker 1: every street, every person who was awake and listening. It
Speaker 1: struck twelve times, once for each hour, and then it
Speaker 1: was silent, and the town settled back into its quiet,
Speaker 1: ordinary life, measured and marked and held by the clock
Speaker 1: that Horatio wound every Thursday, forty seven turns one hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve steps, a lifetime of care, a heartbeat of
Speaker 1: the world. He closed his eyes, the chair held him,
Speaker 1: the house was warm. The clock ticked on, steady and sure,
Speaker 1: counting the seconds until next Thursday, when he would climb
Speaker 1: the stairs again and wind the spring, and look out
Speaker 1: the windows and see the town changing in its slow,
Speaker 1: invisible way, and he would be there to witness it
Speaker 1: as he always had, as he all always would, as
Speaker 1: long as the stairs held and the crank turned and
Speaker 1: the clock kept time.