The Clock Winder

8

“This is a story about an outlaw,” Elizabeth said. “I got it from the library.”

“Let me see the cover,” said Mr. Cunningham.

She held it up for him — a pulpy book too lightweight for its size, with a picture of a speeding horseman looking over his shoulder. Mr. Cunningham nodded and let his head fall back onto his pillow.

He was growing smaller day by day, Elizabeth thought. He reminded her of a fear she used to have: that once grown, free to do what she chose, she might dwindle back into childhood again. Life might be a triangle, with adulthood as its apex; or worse yet, a cycle of seasons, with childhood recurring over and over like that cold rainy period in February. Mr. Cunningham’s hands were as small and curled as a four-year-old’s. His formless smile, directed at the ceiling, had no more purpose than a baby’s. He was in bed nearly all the time now. He lay propped on his back exactly as she had placed him, his arms resting passively at his sides. “I do like westerns,” he said. His S’s whistled; his teeth were gnashed helplessly in a glass on his nightstand.

“Chapter one, then,” Elizabeth said.

“Couldn’t you just tell it to me?”

“It’s better if we read it.”

“I’m not up to that.”

She flattened the book open and frowned at him, considering. They were doing battle together against old age, which he saw as a distinct individual out to get him. They read books or played checkers, pinning his thoughts to the present moment, hoping to dig a groove too deep for his mind to escape from. His attention span grew shorter every day, but Elizabeth pretended not to notice. “Isn’t it depressing?” people asked when they heard of her job. They were thinking of physical details — the toothlessness, the constant, faltering trips to the bathroom. But all that depressed Elizabeth was that he knew what he was coming to. He could feel the skipped rhythms of his brain. He raged over memory lapses, even the small ones other people might take for granted. “The man who built this house was named Beacham,” he would say. “Joe Beacham. Was it Joe? Was it John? Oh, a common name, I have it right here. Was it John? Don’t help me. What’s the matter with me? What’s happening here?” When he awoke in a wet bed, he suffered silent, fierce embarrassment and turned his face to the wall while she changed his sheets. He viewed his body as an acquaintance who had gone over to the enemy. Why had she supposed that people’s interiors aged with the rest of them? She had often wished, when things went wrong, that she were old and wise and settled, preferably in some nice nursing home. Well, not any longer. She sighed and creased the book’s binding with her fingernail.

“We can read tomorrow,” Mr. Cunningham said. “Today, just sum things up.”

“If that’s what you want,” said Elizabeth.

She turned to the first page and scanned it. “It seems to be about someone named Bartlett. He starts out getting chased by a posse. He’s riding through this gulch.”

“What’s he wanted for?” Mr. Cunningham asked.

“Well, let’s see. They say, ‘In the course of his career as a gunman.…’ Probably one of those guys that hires out. Now he’s coming to a shanty, there’s a woman hanging out the wash. Her hair is the color of a sunset.”

“Red, they mean,” Mr. Cunningham said dreamily.

“Who knows? Maybe purple.” Elizabeth snorted, and then caught herself. All these westerns were getting on her nerves. “He asks her for a dipper of water from the well. Then when the posse comes up she hides him away, she tells them she hasn’t seen a soul. She brings him beef stew and a canteen, and he sits there eating and admiring her.”

“This talk about water is making me thirsty,” Mr. Cunningham said.

She laid the book on its face and poured him water from an earthenware pitcher. “Can you sit up?” she asked him. “I just don’t know.”

She helped him, raising his head in the crook of her arm while he took small, noisy gulps. His head was strangely light, like a gourd that was drying out. When he had finished he slid down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Even that much movement had been an effort for him. Resettling himself among the sheets, he gasped out the beginnings of defeated protests. “I can’t get—” “It don’t seem—” Elizabeth smoothed her denim skirt and sat back down. She was conscious of the easy way her joints bent and the straightness of her back fitting into the chair. Wouldn’t he think of it as a mockery — even such a simple act as her sitting down in a Boston rocker? But it didn’t seem to occur to him. He stared at the ceiling, flicking his eyes rapidly across it like a man checking faces in a crowd. Sometimes it seemed to her there was a crowd, packing the room until she felt out of place — dead people, living people, long ago stages of living people, all gathered at once into a single moment. She waited for him to call out some name she had never heard of, but he was still with her. “Go on,” he told her. “Get to the good part.”

“Okay.” She turned pages, several at a time. “He’s boarding with this woman, taking care of her livestock and such. He goes into town for provisions. Now he’s—” she skimmed the paragraphs. “He’s in the saloon, getting challenged by a tough guy.”

“What about?”

“They don’t make it clear.”

“People in those days were so cranky,” Mr. Cunningham said.

“They have this fistfight.” “Where, out in the street?” “Right in the saloon.”

“Oh, good.”

“Bottles smashing,” said Elizabeth. “Mirrors breaking. Chairs going through the windows.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, in the end he knocks the other guy out,” Elizabeth said. “Then he has about a page and a half of bad mood, wondering why people will never allow him to go straight and lead a peaceful life. Let’s see. But they don’t know he’s thinking that, they offer him a sheriff’s badge.”

“I don’t want the responsibility,” said Mr. Cunningham.

Elizabeth glanced over at him and turned another page. “He has to be argued into it, there’s quite a stretch of arguing. Then—”

“I couldn’t be expected to take on that kind of burden,” Mr. Cunningham said.

“Well, it would be quite a job. But this is only a story. We’re reading a story now.”

“Oh yes. I knew that.”

“Where was I? They want him to be sheriff.”

“It’s too much. It’s too much. It’s too much.”

“I’ll just lower the shades,” said Elizabeth. She set the book down and went over to the window. Mr. Cunningham rolled his head from side to side. “It’s time to sleep,” Elizabeth told him.

“I’m too little.”

Elizabeth stayed at the window, looking down into the front yard. Heat waves shimmered up from the pavement, and the grass had an ashy, flat, washed-out look. She was glad to be here in the dimness. She pulled the paper shade, darkening the room even more, and then looked back at Mr. Cunningham. His eyes were blinking shut. He kept his face set toward her. In the night, Mrs. Stimson said, he sometimes woke and called her name—“Elizabeth? Where’d you get to?”—turning her into another ghost, one more among the crowd whose old-fashioned faces and summer dresses filled this room. “He just dotes on you,” Mrs. Stimson said, and Elizabeth had smiled, but underneath she was worried: Wasn’t he sinking awfully fast? Just since she had come here? Maybe, having found her to lean on, he had stopped making an effort. Maybe she was the worst thing in the world for him. When she read aloud so patiently, and pulled his mind back to the checkers, and fought so hard against his invisible, grinning, white-haired enemy in the corner, it was all because of that worry. She was fighting for herself as well — for her picture of herself as someone who was being of use, and who would never cause an old man harm.

She watched him drop off like this a dozen times a day, maybe more. He swam in again and out again. Mrs. Stimson would say, “Oh, bless his heart, he’s sound asleep,” but there was nothing sound about that sleep. He seemed to have gone somewhere else, but always with a backward glance; returning, he glanced backward too, and mentioned recent experiences that he had never had.

His eyes were flinching beneath the lids. His mouth was open. Short breaths fluttered the hollows of his cheeks. The fingers of one hand clutched and loosened on a tuft in the bedspread.

Now was her time for just sitting. She had sat more this summer than in all the rest of her life put together, and when she bothered to think about it she wondered why she didn’t mind. Day after day she rocked in her chair, staring into space, while the flattened old man on the bed stirred and muttered in his sleep. Sometimes her eyes seemed hooked in space; to focus them took real effort, so that she would be conscious of a pulling sensation when Mr. Cunningham woke again. Her mind was unfocused as well. She thought about nothing, nothing at all. She was not always conscious of the passage of time. It would have been possible to start a woodcarving, or to read some book of her own, but whenever she considered it she forgot to do anything about it. She would think of her whittling knives, which she had brought here on her first day of work along with two blocks of wood. She would picture the set of motions necessary to rise and fetch them, and then the wood itself: how the first slash along the grain would leave a gleaming white strip behind it. But from there her thoughts blurred and vanished, and when the old man awoke he would find her rocking steadily with her empty hands locked in her lap. It was as if she were asleep herself, or in that space on the edge of sleep where people make plans for some action but only dream they have carried it out.

The doorbell rang. Elizabeth rocked on. The doorbell rang again, and she gathered her muscles together to rise from the chair. “Coming,” she called. Then she glanced at Mr. Cunningham, but he only frowned slightly and stirred in his sleep.

The front door was open, so that as she came down the stairs she could see who stood behind the screen. But it took her several seconds, even so, to realize who it was. He was too much out of context. She had to assemble him piece by piece — first that stooped, hesitant posture, then the frayed jeans, finally the tangle of black hair and the smudged glasses. She stopped dead still in the hallway. “Matthew,” she said.

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

Then, when she didn’t open the door, he said, “It’s August. Here I am.”

“I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Is it all right if I come in?”

“I guess so.”

He opened the screen door, but she led him no farther inside the house. If he had tried to kiss her she would have dodged him, but when he didn’t there was another awkwardness — how to stand, what to do with her hands, how to pretend that there was nothing new about the cold, blank space between them. “Did you have any trouble finding me?” she asked.

“Your mother gave me directions.”

“How’d you find her?”

“Asked in town.”

He shifted his weight and put his hands in his pockets. “None of it was easy,” he said. “Not even locating Ellington. I was wondering if you hoped I would just get lost and never make it.”

“I wrote you not to come.”

“Only the once. You didn’t say why. I can’t leave things up in the air like this, Elizabeth.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth. “How’s your family?

“Fine. How’s yours.”

“Oh, fine.”

“Is there somewhere we could sit and talk?” Matthew asked.

She scratched her head. Then Mr. Cunningham rescued her. Her name creaked down the stairs: “Elizabeth? Elizabeth?”

“I have to go,” she said. “He worries if I’m not there.”

“Could I come with you?”

“Maybe you could just meet me somewhere after work.”

“I’d rather stay,” Matthew said. “I took a summer and seven hours getting here, I’m not going to lose track of you again.”

“Well, for goodness sake. Do you think I would just run off?”

Apparently he did. He only waited, blank-faced, until she said, “Oh, all right,” and turned to lead him up the stairs.

Mr. Cunningham lay motionless in his bed. He was nothing but shades of white — white hair and white pajamas, pale skin, white sheets — so pure and stark that Elizabeth felt happy to see him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

“I called and called.”

“Here I am. Come in, Matthew. This is Mr. Cunningham.”

“How do, Mr. Cunningham,” the old man said.

“No, this is Matthew Emerson. You’re Mr. Cunningham.”

“Well, I knew that.” He raised his chin, sharply. “I thought you were pointing out another Cunningham. The name’s not all that singular.”

“You’re right,” Elizabeth said.

“I’m glad to meet you,” Matthew said.

Mr. Cunningham frowned at him. “Are you any kin?”

“Kin? To whom? No.”

“To me.”

“No.”

“Do I look like a man that would forget his own name?”

“No, you don’t,” said Matthew.

“I keep in pretty good touch, for my age. I’ll be eighty-seven in November.”

“That’s amazing.”

Mr. Cunningham turned his face away, irritably, as if something in Matthew’s reply had disappointed him. “I’d like more water,” he told Elizabeth.

“All right.”

“Believe you salted that egg too much.”

She poured the water and helped him raise his head to drink it. When he was finished she wiped a dribble off his chin. “I’ll just raise the shade now,” she told him.

“What’s it down for?”

“You were asleep.”

“You thought I was asleep.”

She rolled the shade up. Sunlight poured into the room. When she turned back, Matthew had settled himself on the cane chair at the foot of the bed and was watching her. She had forgotten how open his face looked when he was staring at something steadily. Other people, returning from the past, could make her wonder what she had seen in them; with Matthew, she knew what she had seen. It was still there, even if it didn’t reach out to her any more. He studied her gently, from a distance, puzzling over something in his mind but not troubling her with questions. All he said was, “I never expected to see you in this kind of job.”

“This here is a very good nurse,” Mr. Cunningham said.

“Yes, but—”

“When I’m well we’re going on a trip together. Get Abigail to arrange that, will you?” he said to Elizabeth. “Maybe Luray Caverns.”

“All right,” she said. There was no telling who Abigail was. She bent close to his ear, so that a wisp of his silvery hair feathered her lips. “Mr. Cunningham,” she whispered, careful of his dignity. “Would you like to go to the—”

“Later, later,” he said, with his eyes on Matthew. “I can hold out. I have a guest. Hand me my teeth.”

She passed him the glass. He dabbled in the water a minute with shaky fingers, but he didn’t take the teeth out. Maybe he thought he did; he rearranged his lips and gave her back the glass. “Now then,” he said. “Just imagine, a relation I didn’t even know about. How’s your family, boy?”

“Mr. Cunningham,” said Matthew, “I’m not—”

“Family all right?”

“Yes, fine,” Matthew said.

“Parents okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

Mr. Cunningham looked at him a minute, and then he gave a cross little laugh. “You ain’t exactly colorful, are you?” he said. “Are you shy? What grade you in, anyhow?”

Matthew threw a quick glance at Elizabeth — asking for help, maybe, or wondering how soon he could get out of this.

“Matthew is a grownup, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

“Is that so. Why? How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” said Matthew.

“That all you are? Call that grown up? The real growing up is between twenty and thirty. That’s what I meant. I knew you weren’t no child.” He hugged himself suddenly, as if he were cold. “How’s that pretty aunt of yours doing?” he asked.

“Uh, fine.”

“She should take better care of herself,” Mr. Cunningham said.

“I’ll tell her that.”

“Summer or no summer. Those skimpy little bathing suits are ruining the nation’s health. You can get pneumonia in August, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Matthew said.

“Quick summer pneumonia, they call it. Now who did I—? Yes. Took my little brother when he was two. Not a thing they knew could save him. How old would he be today, I wonder? What was his name?”

He was about to start fretting over his memory again, Elizabeth thought. She leaned forward, but before she could change the subject he shook his head. “It don’t matter anyway,” he said. “He’d be an old man. What’s the difference? I want a piece of whole-wheat toast, Elizabeth.”

She had been hoping he would go on forever, wearing Matthew down till he left without saying what he had come for. So she tried not answering (he might forget) but Mr. Cunningham gave her a sharp look from beneath his pleated lids. “Toast,” he said.

“Buttered?”

“Dry, just dry. I want things back to simple.”

She nodded and left, and Matthew followed just as she had known he would. “You could stay here, if you like,” she told him.

He didn’t bothering answering that.

. . .

In the kitchen he said, “Where are your blue jeans?”

“Mr. Cunningham doesn’t like women in pants,” she told him. She heaved a cat off the breadbox.

“You look so different.”

She concentrated on making toast, plugging the toaster in and emptying its crumb tray and carefully rolling the cellophane bag after she had taken out a slice of bread. Matthew sat down in a kitchen chair. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked him.

“Everything about you has changed. I don’t understand it. There’s something muffled about you.”

“Oh well, I’m taking care of a very old man,” she said.

“Elizabeth.”

She jammed the toaster lever down.

“Look, this is such a waste,” Matthew said. “What are you doing in this hot little house?”

“I like being here,” Elizabeth said. “I like Mr. Cunningham. I’m going to miss him when I leave for school.”

“For school. You’re not coming back with me, then.”

“No,” said Elizabeth.

“Well, I knew that when I came, I guess. But I thought — and I never expected to see you like this.”

“Like what?”

“You’re so changed.”

“You said that,” Elizabeth told him.

He was quiet a moment, looking down at his hands. “Well, I didn’t want to fight about it,” he said finally.

“Who’s fighting?”

“I came to get things straightened out. I didn’t know what to think, way off in Baltimore. You weren’t much help. You don’t say what you feel, you never say what you feel.” He looked up, sending her one sudden spark of anger. “Why is it that sometimes the things I like most about you make me dislike you?”

“Oh, well, don’t let it bother you,” Elizabeth said. “Other people have told me that.”

What she liked best about him was that slow, careful way of doing things — tracing the rim of a plate, now, stilling his hand when she laid the toast down. He had treated people just as carefully. He had never crowded her in any way. Watching her once in an argument with his mother, he had held back from protecting either one of them, although she had seen him lean forward slightly and start to speak before he caught himself. She could remember that moment clearly, along with the sudden ache of love that had made her stop in mid-sentence to turn to him, open-mouthed. Now the only feeling she had was tiredness. She sat down in the chair opposite him and set her hands on the table.

“I know I should have written again,” she said.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t on purpose. I just seemed to be going through some laziness of mind.”

“Try now, then,” Matthew said. “Tell me why you left.”

She didn’t look at him. She waited till the words had formed themselves, and then she said, “That day with Timothy—” Then she raised her eyes, and she saw the fear that jumped into his face. What she had planned to tell him, relieving herself of a burden, was going to weigh him down. She changed directions, without seeming to. “That day after Timothy died,” she said, “I stopped feeling comfortable there. I felt just bruised, as if I’d made a mess of things.” She kept her eyes on his, to see if he understood. “Everything I’d been happy about before,” she said, “seemed silly and pathetic.”

“Do you mean me?”

“Well, yes.”

“Did you stop loving me?”

“Yes.”

“And you aren’t the type who’d just say that. Just as some kind of sacrifice to make up for, for anything that might have happened.”

“No, I’m not,” Elizabeth said.

Matthew sat back.

“I should have said it in that letter, I know,” she said. “Only I was trying to do it roundabout, and ended up making a bigger mess than ever.”

“Don’t you think you could change?” Matthew said.

“I know I won’t,” she said. “It’s permanent. I’m sorry.”

Then she was just anxious to have him go, to get the last little dangling threads tucked away. She watched him gather himself together too slowly, rise too slowly, scratch his head. There were things she wanted to ask him — Would he drive all the way back now? Was he angry? Was he all right? Even when she didn’t love him, he could still cause a stab of worry and concern. But questions would prolong his going; she didn’t want that. “I’ll see you to the door,” she said, and she walked very fast out to the hallway.

“I can find my way.”

“No, I want to.”

When they reached the screen door she went out first and held it wide open for him. He stopped on the braided mat to shake her hand. He held it formally, as if they were just meeting, but she couldn’t see his expression because the light was reflected off his glasses. They shone like liquid, the plastic rims pinkish and dulled with fingerprints. “Well,” he said, “I hope school goes all right.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you really going to school?”

“Well, of course.”

“I can picture you not ever getting out of here,” he said, and he gave her another long, stunned look so that she was suddenly conscious of her wrinkled denim skirt and the prison pallor of her skin. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Do you think so?”

“Maybe.”

“And if you ever change your mind,” he said, “or see things in a new light—”

“Okay.”

“I won’t have married anyone else.”

She smiled, and nodded, and waved him down the walk, but she could picture him married to someone else as clearly as if it had already happened. She saw his life as a piece of strong twine, with his mother and his brothers and sisters knotting their tangled threads into every twist of it and his wife another thread, linked to him and to all his family by long, frayed ropes.

Elizabeth never did go back to school. By September Mr. Cunningham was much worse, and he cried when he heard she was leaving and clung to her hands. She stayed on. She failed him more every day in their battle against the enemy. Then a year and a half later he died, on a weekend so that she wasn’t even with him. The last thing he asked, Mrs. Stimson said, was where Elizabeth was.

But she heard no more from Matthew. He never wrote her again.