The Amish Clockmaker (14 page)

“All three of us were thrown from the wagon when it crashed. My parents landed on grass and just ended up with some cuts and bruises. But the wagon fell on me so I didn't fare as well. Oh, and the poor horse had to be put down.”

“Your parents got you to a hospital?” Miriam whispered in a shaky voice.

“Some cars came along pretty soon after, so there were people around to help. They managed to get me to the emergency room, where the doctors sewed up my face and did what they could with my leg—though for a while there, it looked like I might lose it. I ended up staying for two weeks, and then they sent me home.”

Clayton looked down at the useless limb, once so normal and now just a painful souvenir of his journey on a faulty wagon with a bad axle.

“And that's the story,” he said. “Sorry you asked?”

Miriam shook her head, dabbing at glistening tears at the corner of her eyes. “Thank you for telling me.”

He nodded, unable to resist turning his face to meet her eyes. When he did, he saw that she was gazing right back at him, taking in the scar at his brow and then reaching up once more to touch it softly with her delicate fingers.

“It looks like it still hurts,” she said. “Does it?”

He took in a breath, unsure how to answer. Yes, the injury
did
still hurt, but not so much in the physical sense. It hurt inside. It hurt to know that his life had been so inextricably altered in the snap of a single axle. It hurt that no woman could ever love a broken man like him—not even Miriam. She might be different from the other girls in the district, but she was beautiful, far too beautiful for the likes of him. No question, someday she would end up winning the affection of a handsome, able-bodied Amish suitor, one who could offer her everything that Clayton could not.

Even now, five years after that particular conversation, he could still feel the pain of that realization. Standing at the window in the back room, gazing out at her as he continued to wait for the customers to leave, he had to admit that she'd only grown more beautiful with time. And though no one had snatched her up for marriage just yet, it would no doubt happen soon.

Suddenly, almost as if she could sense Clayton staring at her through the
glass of the clock shop, Miriam looked up from her odd reverie. Startled, he backed clumsily away from the window, hoping to duck out of sight—and ended up nearly toppling over a small boy who was standing right behind him.

Clayton grabbed for the shelving unit to keep from toppling onto the child, nearly knocking over an antique anniversary clock and its glass dome. As he struggled to steady himself, the gasping, wide-eyed boy took a step backward, tripped over a trash can, and fell onto his bottom.

A quick mix of embarrassment and anger roiled up from within Clayton as the child gaped at him from the floor, taking in his scarred brow and comically awkward movements. It was a look Clayton had seen plenty of times, whenever he was out in town among strangers or in the shop with new customers. He had once heard an
Englisch
teen joke to another that he shuffled around like Frankenstein's monster—and from the look in this kid's eyes, he was thinking the very same thing.

After a momentary pause, Clayton extended his hand to help the boy to his feet. “You're not supposed to be back here,” he said, nervousness making him sound perturbed.

The child reached for the curtain behind him as he got to his feet but grabbed only at air.

“You need to go back to your parents.” Clayton took a few lurching steps forward and reached for the curtain to pull it aside for him.

The boy apparently assumed Clayton was instead grasping for him, and he let out a wail as he lunged for the curtain and nearly pulled it off its rungs. He swept past it and emerged on the other side, out of Clayton's view.

“Theodore!” From the other side of the swaying fabric, Clayton heard one of the women call out the boy's name. “What's wrong with you? What were you doing back there?”

“There's a weird man in that room! He tried to grab me!”

Clayton felt a blade of shame slice through him, a familiar cut.

“What on earth are you talking about?” the male voice demanded.

“There's a weird man back there!” the boy said again, less fearful, more insistent this time.

“He's my son,”
Daed
said. “He's not weird; but he was just injured as a child. That's all. Clayton, come on out.”

That's all
. Instead of doing as his father asked, Clayton backed up against the wall, away from the curtain, and tipped his head back on the window glass.

“Oh,” the woman replied, pity replacing her earlier concern. “That's too bad.”

“He tried to grab me!” the boy said again.

One of the other children, a girl, whined that she wanted to go back to the hotel.

“I'm sure he did not try to grab you, son,”
Daed
replied. “Clayton!”

Seconds of silence.

Clayton finally limped toward the curtain, pulled it aside, and stood in the doorway facing six sets of
Englisch
eyes. “The child startled me,” he said. “He fell. I was only trying to help him to his feet. He shouldn't have been back here.”

“Clayton,”
Daed
said, frowning slightly.

More seconds of awkward silence.

“No. He's right. Theodore shouldn't have been back there,” the younger woman finally said, gentle and sincere but with finality in her tone. They would be leaving without buying anything, Clayton was sure of that. “Well, then,” she continued. “Thanks for showing us your clocks. They're very lovely.”

“I was only trying to help the boy to his feet,” Clayton repeated.

“Of course you were. Thanks.” The man moved toward the front door and the others followed him. The family stepped outside.

Clayton and his father watched through the glass as the car doors were opened and shut and the people drove away.

“He shouldn't have been in the back room. I didn't see that boy. I nearly fell over him and brought down a clock,” Clayton said defensively.

Daed
took a minute to respond. “It's all right. They weren't going to buy anything, son. I think they were just looking. Why don't you go on up to the barn and start on the chores.”

When Clayton hesitated, his father smiled gently at him. “Don't worry about it. Just keep in mind what I'm always telling you. That even though something is true, you don't need to say it. You were right that he shouldn't have been back there, but you didn't have to speak so harshly. You didn't have to say it at all.”

From his position in the doorway, Clayton was half in the shop and half in the back room. He turned his head to view the pasture on the other side of the window. Miriam was no longer in sight.

His father was at the curtain now, standing right beside him. “Did you hear me?”

“
Ya
. I heard you.” Clayton made no move to leave the shop.

Daed
was silent for several seconds. “Go on, then. Get the chores done so that you can get me back to the house before the sun goes down. Don't forget that Joan and Maisie and their families are coming over for supper tonight.”

At the sound of his sisters' names, Clayton turned to face his father. He knew what this was about, but he didn't want any part of it.

“Why do you insist on talking about this stuff
?”
Clayton asked, his heart heavy.

“We have to plan for the inevitable. You'll need some help around here when I'm gone, son.”

“I can handle things.”

His father shook his head. “The shop and the animals and the house are too much for one person.”

“I have
Mamm
.”

“You'll need more than just her. And you know her asthma makes it hard for her to help with the barn chores.”

Clayton wanted to reply that he most certainly did not need more help than just
Mamm
. But he knew his
daed
had been thinking about this for a while, ever since his diagnosis of heart failure. Now it seemed he'd come up with a solution, one that involved the whole family. One that Clayton didn't want to hear.

“Do we
have
to do this?” he murmured, already picturing the peaceful silence of the evening being shattered by the chaos and noise of Maisie's and Joan's combined brood of eleven children.

But
Daed
had started to walk away and hadn't heard him.

Clayton limped to the back door of the shop, reached for his straw hat on the peg, and stepped outside into the chilly March afternoon.

E
LEVEN

C
layton hobbled up the dirt path from shop to homestead with his hands in his pockets, pondering how to convince
Daed
he didn't need Maisie or Joan at the shop once the man's weak heart finally stopped beating. It wasn't that Clayton didn't get along with his older sisters—he got along fine with all six of them—but he just didn't like the ceaseless chatter when they were around, the constant fixing and straightening, the hovering over him as though he were still a wounded child, and the endless interfering, no matter how well-intentioned.

He didn't want that kind of attention once
Daed
was gone. It would be hard enough getting used to working alone in the shop without Maisie and Joan smothering him with far too much consideration. Clayton had been working in his father's shop since he was a child.
Daed
had taught him everything he knew about making clocks, and while they didn't say much to each other during the hours they were there, he had always felt a keen sense of camaraderie with his father no sister could replace. Nor could
Mamm
.

He was willing to concede he might need help with the barn chores, but not in the shop—and especially not Maisie, with her overpowering ways and need to correct everything he did. That was
not
going to happen. Maisie was tolerable only in small doses.

As Clayton trudged up the hill, he decided he would calmly listen to
whatever plan
Daed
had come up with. He would give the appearance of thoughtfully considering it. He'd thank his father for thinking ahead. He'd thank his sisters for coming out for supper. But when the day came when
Daed
was gone, the shop would be
his
to run. He would do so alone, and if it turned out to be too much for him,
he
would be the one to decide who could come in and share the workload with him.

There was only one problem with that plan, and the thought of it made him sigh. If he manned the shop by himself, he would have no choice but to take down the curtain. It had been his idea to begin with, placed there so that when out-of-towners came he could stay out of sight and save them the distress of having to look at him—not to mention save himself from having to put up with their questions and stares.

As he pictured yanking the old quilt off its rings, Clayton knew that if he chose to work alone, he could no longer hide from others. He'd just have to make more of an attempt to be pleasant and cordial when someone he didn't know came into the shop or when little kids didn't stay where they were supposed to or when curiosity got the best of people and they simply had to know why he shuffled around like that. And yes, maybe he would need some help in the shop on Saturdays, especially during the busier summer months. Perhaps one of his quieter nephews, one of the ones just out of eighth grade, such as Maisie's Titus or Joan's Obed, would like to learn the clockmaking trade, or at least to earn a few dollars helping to wait on customers.

Clayton entered the barn feeling good about his plan of action. He didn't like thinking about life without
Daed
in it, but for the first time since his father's diagnosis, Clayton felt that he had a handle on what would befall the family in the foreseeable future.

He breathed in the earthy scents of hay and animals, relishing the quiet solitude. After feeding the pair of pigs they were raising for butchering in the fall and shoveling out the chicken coop, Clayton grabbed two lead ropes and walked out to the small pasture between the houses where Miriam had been earlier. Their horses, two Standardbreds Clayton's mother had long ago named Winnie and Snowflake, needed to be brought in from the field out behind the house. He looked up at the Beiler home as he attached the lead rope to Winnie's nose halter, and then he just as quickly turned his head away when he realized he had done so.