"Grandfather the Clock" © 2005 by Lee Adam Herold

From childhood, I can recall happy memories of Grandfather bouncing me upon his knee, sneaking me the odd shiny copper penny, and calling me pleasant names like “Tiger” and “Sport”. He was a kind man, Grandfather, a peculiarity among our kin which he wore like a fine suit at a pauper’s feast. I do not know whether I loved him because of it, but it certainly made him a curiosity to me. I was therefore concerned when he, after being caught in a sudden downpour one chill April evening whilst unable to find his key to the kitchen door (Grandmother would not open it just to have him “track all over the linoleum”), developed a nagging cough. It was around this time that Mother had one of her “spells”, and declared that I, for no particular reason, should be confined to the basement for an indeterminate period, fed only by whatever crumbs might find their way to fall through the kitchen floorboards.

The day of my release, we all attended Grandfather’s funeral. The casket remained closed on account, said Grandmother, of Grandfather’s unsightly tangle of nostril hair, the attempted trimming of which had quite confounded her best pair of sewing scissors.

Some months later Mother, being prone to migraines (which were another matter entire from her aforementioned “spells”), took ill and sent me to stay indefinitely with Grandmother. Though Grandfather was gone, there now stood in Grandmother’s hall a handsome Grandfather clock, which I had never seen there before. It was tall and straight, of polished wood and spotless glass and gleaming brass, quite out of place amongst the cobwebby corners, the dreary decor and frayed furnishings and collected clutter which comprised the residence around it. I pointed out the irony of its arrival in Grandfather’s stead to Grandmother, who dismissed my observation with a string of curses, a burst of flatulence, and an anatomically improbable suggestion (which, being a curious and red-blooded lad, I’d previously attempted in private anyway). She shooed me away from the clock and into the musty hall closet where I was to sleep, threatening to take back the faded and stained housedress she’d pulled from the laundry hamper for my use as either a pillow or a blanket. (Grandmother was a slight woman, and this single housedress could not fill both roles simultaneously. Once in the closet, I used it to smother a spider, then stuffed it into the wall between the drafty slats exposed behind crumbling plaster.)

I was awakened at three in the morning to the sound of the clock chiming mournfully, followed by a rattling noise that sounded disturbingly like an old man’s hacking cough. Then Grandmother was in the hall, harshly admonishing the clock that if it didn’t start behaving in a more clock-like manner, there would be no raisins in its breakfast oatmeal, after which she went back to bed. The clock seemed to creakily grumble something, then dutifully resumed its monotonous ticking.

Fortunately, the old house was suffused with dry rot, and went up like a tinderbox. I spent the walk home absently hoping that Mother’s migraine had sufficiently subsided.