He especially loved classroom 8, at the end of the hall. On the front door hung a greeting that proclaimedMagic begins behind this door!Long yellow wands with sparkly glue, top hats cut out of black and gold construction paper, and stars crafted from aluminum foil adorned the entranceway. Jack knew that had he been a student in classroom 8, he would have loved learning a lot more than he had back in Allentown.
Of all the things he would miss at Foxton, it would be the proximity to that classroom. He always went to greater lengths to clean it more carefully than he did all the others. It was easy to love this particular teacher from afar because it was so clear how much she loved her students and her job.
So when Billy Flodstrom, the head of the school’s grounds crew, sat him down at the end of that June and informed him that they had to let him go, Jack was devastated. He felt as though he had lost theonly remaining good thing in his life, particularly the chance to enter classroom 8 each night. He truly believed that, as the sign said, there was magic behind that door.
“With all the budget cuts in the district this year, there’s money for only one night janitor next fall,” Billy said quietly. “I’m sorry, I really am.” He stared down at his hands folded on the metal desk, avoiding eye contact with Jack, his discomfort rising off his skin like perspiration.
Jack sat calmly across from him, his back straight and his eyes focused straight ahead, a position he fell into during times of stress. This had proven to be one of the more positive remnants of the war for him.
“I’d appreciate it if, when you’re firing me, you looked me straight in the face. It’s the decent thing to do.”
Billy reluctantly lifted his eyes. “I feel very badly about this, Jack. You’ve always done a great job here.”
Jack watched as Billy fidgeted and his gaze shifted away. He had always proved unable to focus on Jack’s face for more than a second, and now his eyes traveled in the direction of the window. It was easier to fire a man who was invisible.
Jack wondered if anyone at Foxton had ever really seen him at all.
For Jack, life since coming home had been a series of challenges that offered unexpected gifts of healing. Five years after Tom had first sat down next to him at the VA hospital, Jack was now well aware the extent to which that meeting had shaped his life for the better. He often questioned whether he’d still be alive if had Tom not started a conversation with him that day.
For on that afternoon, Jack was not actually reading his copy ofRolling Stone. Instead, he had buried his face in the pages of the magazine as a shield, contemplating whether he still had the strength to go on living. He had endured several painful skin grafts after his injury,and he still struggled to come to terms with the fact that the doctors had repaired as much of his facial trauma as they could. The only thing that had gotten him out of bed once he had moved back East was his job at Foxton Elementary. But now, that had been taken from him as well.
So what Tom probably believed was merely a simple exchange between two strangers regarding the lyrics of a powerful new song had a far greater meaning for Jack. Tom’s eyes had never floated away from Jack’s face that day, even after he saw the full devastation of his injuries. They remained there as he excitedly spoke about Bruce Springsteen, rattling off several other songs he liked by the E Street Band. It was both mundane and extraordinary at the same time. Tom had treated Jack as if he were just any other guy.
CHAPTER 24
IT WAS IN THE GARDEN OUTSIDE THE VETERANS HOME THATTom opened up to Jack how the Golden Hours came to be. “Its first seeds probably began just before my dad shipped off to go fight in Europe,” he said. He shared how, on that afternoon, his mother gave his father a box with a first-rate military Bulova inside. Tucked within the case, in her perfect, scrolling script, she’d written,I’m keeping time until you return home to me.
But when his dad returned from the Second World War, Harry wasn’t the same man he’d been when he’d left. He’d seen the devastation of the killings and the bombings, not to mention the gut-wrenching photographs taken by fellow soldiers of the camps with the countless corpses of Jewish souls piled high and his own best friend senselessly killed before his very eyes. He was plagued by night terrors.
Tom explained it was his maternal grandfather, Sam, who first noticed Harry gravitating toward broken timepieces after he came home from the war. Sam saw Harry take the old Ingraham clock on the family’s mantel that had sat inactive for years and become fixated in getting the clock to start working again. Harry took it apart and spent hours learning how each piece fit into the next, spreading them all out on their dining room table and filling the surface with a myriad of small, intricate parts: the various wheels and pinions, the elegant numbered dial, and the two brass plates.
Eventually, after checking out several repair manuals from the library and countless hours of trial and error, he succeeded. “I think you’ve got a talent there, Harry,” Tom’s granddad told him.
Having himself served in France during the First World War, Sam knew how important it was to discover a vocation where Harry could drown out the ghosts of war. Those who had never served thought the hardest thing for a soldier was surviving battle. But no one ever spoke about how difficult it was to come home.
Harry’s watch collecting began as a hobby at first. He drove all over Connecticut and as far as Northampton, Massachusetts, harvesting from antique stores old clocks that no longer worked. He studied how to diagnose mechanical issues and read guides on cleaning gears and replacing pins. He bought old books on the history of clocks and educated himself on the different styles and their various details. He took courses in Manhattan on watch and clock repair, learning the trade through hard work and practice.
But it was his night classes in horology that ultimately opened up a whole new world for him. His teacher there spoke about the history of “time collection.” What began with mankind using the sky to mark the periods within a day eventually morphed into sundials, where the stretch of shadows could help calculate the hours. Harry was fascinated by the balance of daylight against darkness, how each minute ran into the next, how hours accumulated to form days. Behind a watch’s face, there was an entire universe composed of metal pins and wheels, all its components engaged in a unique dance to achieve perfect balance and movement. Harry gravitated toward this, for he yearned to put his mind at ease again, to placate what had been altered by the war.
For several months, as he tried to get his footing, Harry tinkered with all the clocks he had acquired until he got them moving again. He found the work restorative, the ability to bring life back to something that had fallen dormant. He was happy to work long into the night rather than lying in bed, unable to sleep. Or worse, to wake up from one of his nightmares.
“The hands of time must always move forward,” he had told Tom from the moment he was old enough to understand. It was the metaphor he used whenever he was faced with a challenge. It always comforted him. And in some ways, he believed it had saved him.
Tom knew it was a natural extension of the Golden Hours to offer Jack a job there. Perhaps learning the craft that had saved his father could help save another veteran, too.
CHAPTER 25
JACK ANDTOM HAVE WORKED THIS WAY FOR SEVERAL YEARSnow, incorporating a natural rhythm into what works best for them. Theirs is a synchronized band of movements, as one of them enters the space just as the other is leaving it.
Jack softens when he walks through the threshold, and Hendrix trots in beside him. Jack isn’t quite sure what it is, but there is something to the space that enables him to shed his protective armor and the weight of his memories. He immediately feels at ease as he walks deeper into the workshop. Perhaps it’s the special light coming from the evening sky outside the shop’s windows or the soft ticking of the clocks beating in unison. Maybe it’s the sense of purpose Tom has given him by introducing him to the craft. But what is certain is that, unlike his apartment, where his memories plague him when he sleeps, in this workshop, he feels unburdened. He feels free.
Hendrix follows him into the back room and flops to the ground while Jack flips the radio on, the FM dial already tuned to his and Tom’s favorite station. Music fills the air as he sits down to work, breathing in the solitude like it’s oxygen.
The lush sounds of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” rolls into the background.
When he hears the lyrics about the kaleidoscope-eyed girl, a knot tightens in his throat.
And right then and there, just as he thought he was going to lose himself in his work—with the screwdrivers all lined up and thedust cloths, tweezers, and calipers primed for his use—she returns to him.
