The Time Maker

The Time Maker ~ Cassidy McGinty

He was like a surgeon in many ways. A man with a quick mind that could memorize parts and pieces the naked eye couldn’t see quite right. His hands were steady and soft bearing an untouched pink where blisters and calluses should have emerged. He was a delicate craftsman, an artist of sorts, working into the night on occasion for hours at hand, back bent, neck crooked as he repaired the most tedious damage by the light of a dimming fifty watt bulb. He had control over your life. He was the Time Maker.

His shop appeared when it was needed. Tucked away into an alley with a faded, once green awning shading the window, Hoffman’s Clock Repair presented itself to various passer bys who may have just dropped their wrist watch into a nearby fountain, or perhaps just finished cleaning out their Great Aunt Penelope’s attic discovering an antique coo-coo clock. In any case, there it sat, and inside of it also sat Mr. Hoffman, who hated that name. Mr. Hoffman was his father’s name. His name was Valentine John Hoffman III, but to everyone he insisted on being called Al.

Al was oddly short for a man, though there were many odd things about him. His nose was too long, and at the age of forty-three his hair was almost entirely gray and he had yet to marry. He always wore a pair of circular, wire rimmed glasses that increased the size of his eyes from cloudy blue marbles to unusually large golf balls. He also had a habit of taking apart and rebuilding clocks for seemingly no reason at all. The few customers he had a month thought him quite odd and may have even mentioned him at the dinner table to their families when the monotonous ritual of conversation fell in their laps. It was a mystery commonly troubled over for no more than fifty-seven seconds before it was replaced by more important things like whether or not little Philip had finished his math homework, or how often the neighbors watered their blueberries to make them grow so plump and sweet.

It was on an evening in April when the spring rains were waging war against the barren cobble stone streets, that Al sat next to the second story window, dismantling one of his favorite clocks. It was an 1885 Walnut cased Shelf clock that he had named “America”.  His mother had, after all, loved the clock and she had always dreamed of going to America. The clock had a paper Roman dial with Nickel plated dial pan, pendulum and alarm disc, each piece original and hand crafted. The glass case that guarded the clocks most vulnerable parts was patterned in silver with an image of a large flower planted in a hanging pot above an elegant porch. Al, even as a child, had always admired the swirl of the banister and the realistic appeal of the plants around it. He had wondered whether there was a person in the world with such a view from their bedroom window. He could spend all his time from such a perch.

Al laughed at the thought. The idea of being able to spend time was as ridiculous as being able to make it. But he did do that. He took peoples’ time, repaired it, and then handed it back to them. And they pretended they needed it. He made them more time to focus on time, to live by time, to measure in time. And Al thought of how much people would hate time if they knew what it really was.

But there, in his Oak work chair, beside the window with the rain making tears on the foggy pane, and the soft glow of the street lamp below being swallowed by the mist of the night, Al took apart the clock. He started with the glass. The most breakable parts were always first. That’s how it had been with his mother. Slowly, her body had become weaker and weaker until one day it simply broke. He placed the delicate glass on a red velvet covering and folded the fabric over the intricate silver design. From then on his mother had to lay in bed all day, and their neighbor, Mrs. Hare made them casseroles and came to the house to clean once a week.

Al removed the face and gently set it aside on his work bench. He remembered when his mother was sick he would sit and read to her. But after many days he began to notice something different, like he couldn’t recognize the thin, wiry woman sleeping in front of him as his mother. At this point Al used his fine tools to unscrew the securities which held the inner workings of the clock in place. They were beautiful, the golden gears, perfectly matched with one another to perform a smooth function. His mother’s hands had been smooth and she had smelled like soap and the kitchen after a meal had been cooked in it. Something had gone wrong with one of the gears inside her. Something had gotten caught in them. They had tarnished and dulled until one was finally so askew that her heart stopped ticking all together.

His father had wanted a casket for her. He was Catholic and still thought his wife was beautiful. Al read about morticians. He read how they cleaned out the insides, and put things back together if necessary. Al worked a rag over each gear and spring until it shined. His fingers were nimble and fast as each part found its place once more in the working of the clock. He put the face back on, and reattached the pendulum, dial pan, minute and hour hands, and the alarm disk. His mother had looked beautiful. Her long black hair had been brushed and braided. Her lips looked full and red and there was even a blush in her cheeks.

He wet a small rag and cleaned the glass. The priest had thrown water on his mother’s casket and walked around with a small, smoking pot. It made the room smell spicy and the scent burned his nostrils. Al clicked the glass into place and wiped the clock off one last time with a soft towel, admiring the pattern in the wood. There were no trees in the graveyard. He had been disappointed because trees meant shade, and with the sun cooking the grass and drying the dirt until it was crumbly and not easy to pack, Al could have used some shade.

When he couldn’t see his mother’s gray casket anymore, and the blue overalled men had walked away with their shovels, his father took him home. The next morning his father woke him and told him to get dressed.

“It’s time to learn about clocks, Valentine,” he said. And that was when he began thinking about time.

Who made time, and who got to say how much time each person had? What was time exactly? And his father had selfishly brushed the questions away like a set of ripped rags on his work bench. But Al had learned the answers anyway.

He gazed at ‘America’ with a blank sadness, his eyes focused on it but his mind was elsewhere. His mother had offered him a sentence that had confused him up until that very day.

“It’s my time,” she whispered to him, her chocolate, almond eyes filled with tears. Al had asked what was wrong with her time. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just run out.”

 He had wanted to give her some of his time. He had wanted to make her more time but she said that it was impossible. So Al had let her sleep and the next morning she didn’t wake up.

So now he makes time and he gives it to those who want it, and there are always those who want it. And with each clock that he fixes he always offers his customer a piece of advice.

“You’re better off without time. It just runs out.”