Timepiece (12 page)

“MaryAnne!”

“I cannot leave her, David.”

“You must!”

She shook her head.

David felt himself growing angry with her stubbornness. “This is madness, MaryAnne. Why can you not leave her?”

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with pain. She whispered, “What if I never got to say good-bye?”

David gazed back into MaryAnne's deep, fatigued eyes. “Will it come to that?”

She set the bowl down and leaned into him, looking down at her little girl. “It mustn't. It mustn't.”

“Is this life, to grasp joy only to fear its escape?

The price of happiness is the risk of losing it.”

David Parkin's Diary. April 3, 1912

It was a Wednesday morning that MaryAnne woke to the sound of laughter. Andrea was sitting up in her bed laughing at the mockingbird that pecked at the windowsill.

Doubting her senses, MaryAnne rose slowly and moved over to the child. She touched Andrea's forehead.

“Andrea. Are you well?”

The little girl beamed up at her mother. “Did you see the bird?” Her eyes, though still heavy from a month of sickness, were bright and color had returned to the previously ashen skin.

MaryAnne called for David, who, fearing the worst, quickly entered the room with Catherine following behind him. He was surprised to see the child sitting upright.

“I can't believe it.”

Catherine clapped. “Oh, MaryAnne!”

“David, she is well! Andrea is well!”

David walked over to the bed.

“Hi, Papa. Did you see the bird?”

David looked to the window. “He has flown away. Did he say anything to you?”

“Birds don't talk.”

“I forgot,” he said whimsically.

He kissed her on the forehead, then turned back to MaryAnne and took her in his arms. “You did it, Mary. By sheer will, or love, you won.”

The next day, before the clocks of the Parkin home had proclaimed the tenth hour, Lawrence limped up the cobblestone drive to the mansion, his broad-rimmed felt hat bent against the morning sun. In one hand swung a book.

Catherine stood on the porch polishing the paned windows in curt, rectangular
swipes. She turned around when she saw Lawrence's reflection.

“Good morning, Mr. Flake.”

Lawrence tipped his hat. “Mornin', Miss Catherine. Is David or Miss MaryAnne ‘bout?”

Just then MaryAnne, who had seen him approach, stepped outside. “Lawrence, welcome.”

“Miss MaryAnne!” Lawrence's expression betrayed his surprise at how emaciated she had become.

MaryAnne blushed. “I'm sorry, I must look frightful.”

“No, ma'am,” Lawrence replied quickly, “you look as pretty as you always done.”

MaryAnne smiled at the kind fib. “It's been a hard time, Lawrence.”

“I know, ma'am. And you been a rock.” Lawrence lowered his hat, relegating it to the same hand which held the book. He
scratched his head. “I was thinkin' that maybe with the fever gone I could see Andrea. I brought her a book, thought maybe I could read to her.”

“Of course you may. She would love that. Please come in.” MaryAnne led him up to the nursery and announced the visitor to Andrea, who happily bounced up in bed, shedding the tied quilt that covered her legs.

“Hi, Lawrence!”

“How you feelin', missy?” Lawrence asked, stepping into the dusky room.

“You can come in. I'm not sick!”

“Your mama told me you feelin' much better.”

MaryAnne smiled at the exchange, then excusing herself, shut the door behind them. Lawrence sat down on the edge of the small bed next to her and displayed the book. “I came to read you a story.”

“What's it about?”

“It's ‘bout a rabbit.”

“I know a story about a rabbit that got into a farmer's garden.”

“Well, this, missy, is a story ‘bout a rabbit made of velveteen. You know what velveteen is?”

She shook her head.

“Velveteen is somethin' real soft, like this blanket here. Feels good against your face.” As he said this, he gently stroked her cheek with his forefinger. Andrea grinned accusingly.

“Your finger's not soft.”

He held up his hands in easy surrender. “These hands done too much work to be soft.”

She looked at the aged, scarred hands. “Lawrence, will I turn brown when I get old?”

Lawrence broke out in laughter. “No, missy, you won't be turnin' brown.” He rubbed her head. “We best get us some more light if we gonna read.” He drew
back the curtains so that a beam of sunlight fell across the bed and climbed the opposite wall. He began the story, carefully holding the book so that Andrea could see its brightly illustrated pages. She was captivated by the tale and spoke only once: when he had committed the unpardonable crime of turning the page before she was done looking at the picture. A half hour later he announced the story's end and lay the book in his lap.

“That boy had what I had,” Andrea said. “Scarlyfever.”

“And you got better jus' like him.”

She nodded. “I like that rabbit. Can we read it again?”

“I told your mama that I wouldn't be too long. Don't want to disturb your nap time.”

The child frowned.

“I'll leave the book so you can look at the pictures,” he said, holding the book out to her.

Andrea smiled as she accepted the offering. “I'm glad you turned brown, Lawrence.”

“Why's that, missy?”

“Because I'll always know it's you.”

Lawrence pulled the blanket up over her shoulders as she nestled up against his knee. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, then pulled the curtains tight as the room fell back into a silent infirmary.

As he left the home he noticed that someone had removed the red placard from the front porch.

“The most consequential of life's episodes often begin with the simplest of events.”

David Parkin's Diary. October 15, 1913

Lawrence thought the widows peculiar about death. He learned of Maud Cannon's passing through another widow, who gossiped
cavalierly about the small turnout at Maud's wake.

A few days later, there was a knock at Lawrence's door. A man, dressed in a brown-striped suit and carrying a leather valise, stood outside his shack. He was a pale man with oiled, combed-back hair and pocked skin. His left eye twitched nervously.

“Mr. Flake?”

“Yessuh.”

“Mr. Lawrence Flake?”

Lawrence nodded.

He stared at the black man. “Do you have identification papers?”

“I know who I am,” Lawrence said defiantly.

The lawyer rubbed his chin. “Yes.” He set down his case, reached into his pocket and produced a small package. An aged jeweler's box with a vermilion crushed-velvet veneer. He handed Lawrence the box.

“Needs repairin'?”

“No. It belongs to you. Our client, the late Maud Cannon, specified in her will that this was to be endowed to you.”

“You her nephew?”

“I am the executor of the will,” he replied indignantly. “She wanted you to have this jewelry. Now, if you will please sign this paper, I will go.”

Lawrence glanced up from the gift. He took the pen and signed the document, wherein the man disappeared as promised. Lawrence stepped back inside, extracted the watch from its case, and held it up to the light, smiling at the exquisite rose-gold timepiece. “Thank you, Miss Maud,” he said aloud. He set the watch back in its case and went back to his paper.

At first David thought the gunshot was the coughing backfire of his Pierce Arrow. He had concluded the day's business early and as Lawrence had recently received consignment
of the estate of a former steel tycoon known for his eccentricities and remarkable antiques, David thought to stop by to examine the former magnate's possessions.

He pulled his car up the dirt drive alongside the east brick wall of the cannery, parking beneath a large painted advertisement expounding the virtues of Schoals shoe black. The car coughed twice before the discharge of a firearm echoed loudly in the back lot, followed by a faint cry. It sounded as if it had come from Lawrence's shack.

Apprehensively, David sprinted around to the back of the building. He found the door to Lawrence's shack wide open. He cautiously peered inside. On the wood-planked floor a small man with a thick reddish beard lay on his back in a pool of dark liquid. The smell of whiskey reeked over the sharp stench of ignited gun powder.

On the wooden tabletop lay a Winchester
rifle. Lawrence sat on the floor in the corner of the room, his eyes vacuous, as if waiting for something he was powerless to stop. He was moaning softly. “Oh Lordy, oh Lordy.”

“Lawrence, what has happened here?”

Lawrence stared straight ahead.

“Lawrence?”

Lawrence slowly looked up. He extended a clenched fist, then opened it to expose the delicate rose-gold wristwatch. The widow's gift.

“Man I ain't never see before pushed his way into my home screamin' no nigger gonna take his watch. Called me a thief, voodoo-witch doctor. Sez I put a spell on the widow to make her give it to me.”

David looked down at the dead man.

“He was stinkin' drunk. Started a-shovin' me with his gun. I sez, ‘You take the watch, I ain't never asked for no watch.' Made him crazier. Sez, ‘You think
this watch is yours to give, nigger? Think I need some nigger tell me what's rightfully mine?' Started into cryin', sez his aunt loves a nigger more than her own flesh. Tha's when he lifted his gun. I been in war. I know the look in a man's eyes when he's gonna kill.”

Lawrence closed his hand around the timepiece. His face was hard, yet fearful, creased in deep flesh canyons. “Ain't no watch he wanted.”

Just then, there was a sharp, metallic click behind them—the bolt action of a carbine. The door opened and a thin man with red cheeks and small puffy eyes stepped into the room. He wore a navy blue, double-breasted police uniform with gold buttons and a black velvet collar and a bell-shaped hat with a diminutive leather rim. He held a rifle chest-high and his eyes darted nervously between David, Lawrence, and the dead man.