They collect every pebble they can find. Larger rocks, too, flinted with flecks of mica. Clayton thrusts his hands into the earth and digs out jagged pieces of quartz and smoother stones the color of the moon. They pull out the edge of their T-shirts and form a makeshift basket with the cloth to collect their bounty. Then, rock by rock, they make a perimeter around a pit that Clayton has shoveled several inches deep. What they have created now looks almost prehistoric. Like a small Stonehenge they’ve constructed with their two hands.
Crouched in one of the corners, Clayton grins with satisfaction. “If we ever make a fire, we’ll have to create something to pull back the tarp to let the smoke out. But still—” he laughs. “Hell, we’re pretty damn awesome.”
Buddy wishes he could show someone else what they’ve made. After all, it’s pretty astonishing they’ve managed to create something with four walls and a roof out of just salvaged materials they’d found.
“So do you think we can ever invite people to come out here?” Buddy is clearly the naïf between them. “I mean, it’s a shame to waste it just on ourselves.”
“Who else would you even want to bring here?”
Buddy shrugs. But secretly he knows exactly who he’d like to bring. Images of Katie Golden flash through his mind. With her perfect blonde ponytail, shapely physique, and her sharp tongue thatsomehow excites him. How many times has he fantasized about her in the solitude of his bedroom, that image of her high on her lifeguard tower, haughty as ever, looking down on him like a queen.
“Nobody … I just thought maybe one day we might …”
Clayton is already shutting him down. “Let’s go get those beers,” he smirks.
Buddy lets go of the idea of tasting Katie’s lips for the first time, and instead allows his mind to drift to the idea of the alcohol. He feels older in Clayton’s company and revels in their clandestine activities. With their fort finally actualized, he sees them no longer as boys. He believes that after all their hard work over the past few weeks, they can now call themselves men.
CHAPTER 58
THE LAST WEEK OF SUMMER WAS UPON THEM, AND EVERYTHINGwas pregnant with the “lasts,” as Grace liked to say. The “last” barbecue, the “last” trip to the beach, the “last” week to sleep in late.
The weather had suddenly lifted too. The oppressive heat of early July and August had given way to the first whiff of autumn in the air. “Smells like school is coming.” Grace raised her chin and sniffed the breeze. Behind her, B?o and Molly waited for her to unlock the station wagon’s back door so they could pile in and take up Tom’s invitation to show B?o all the different clocks and watches at the store.
“Oh, Mom, don’t be so corny,” Molly had said with a giggle. “You can’t smell school.”
There was a time not too long ago, perhaps even last year, that Molly would have indulged her and humored her playfulness. But with each day that passed, her youngest daughter was moving closer to being an adult and further away from being her baby. Just the other afternoon, Molly stood in the kitchen wearing a daisy-printed smocked top and green Danskin shorts. Her legs looked like they had grown two more inches over the break, and the shorts now barely covered her bottom.
“Those shorts won’t be fitting you next summer,” Grace appraised, in awe of how fast Molly was growing. “We should drop them off at the church thrift store before school starts.”
Molly had agreed but hadn’t pondered her mother’s observation more than a minute before she was asking if she could bring B?o to the Golden Hours. “I’d like to show him all the grandfather clocks Daddy has in his collection. Maybe even show him how to wind the clocks.”
Grace had agreed, thinking it would be a lovely expedition for B?o. Sister Mary Alice had mentioned that Anh and the other Vietnamese adults had started an ESL class at the local library. The visit to the store was a good way to keep the boy busy.
So today, Grace was making good on her promise, picking B?o up early from the motherhouse so he could eat lunch with Molly before they ventured over to the store.
The Golden Hours had always been a magical place for the children when they were younger. They loved how there were so many clocks of assorted measure, how certain dials had the image of the sun and the moon while others had more delicate borders with tiny rosebuds or arabesques.
They also delighted in the sound of the varying chimes every hour and learned quickly how their father had created a system to ensure that the small, interior space didn’t become a cacophony of competing sounds as each hour passed. Tom silenced some of the clocks on one week and released the chimes on others, so every one of them was subject to rotation, liberating its unique melody from its inner chamber.
“We’re here,” Grace hollered to the back as the three of them entered the store’s interior.
Tom stepped out from behind the curtain and smiled.
“Dad, can I show B?o how to crank the clocks?”
“Of course, honey.”
It was hard to mask his pleasure at her request. Winding the clocks had been a ritual Tom had delighted in as a child himself, one that he had happily passed down to Katie and Molly. It had also been the first task he’d given Jack when he came to work at the store, before he started to introduce the more complicated repairs that he wasn’t sure at that time Jack would ever be able to do.
He watched Molly go toward the corner to retrieve the stool the children always used to reach the crown of the clock, he felt he was finally able to see the big picture of what his father had always hoped the store would be.
“It’s a legacy I’m passing down,” his father said. “One day you’ll understand that the only thing in the world you wish you had more of isn’t money. It’s time.
“None of us will know how much time we actually have on this earth,” he added. “But I can assure you, son, your work here will make you appreciate how each minute pushes into the next and how quickly it moves, more than anyone else who does a different kind of job.”
His father had affectionately squeezed his arm when he said it, and Tom now felt his late father’s words soak into him. He didn’t expect either of his daughters to want to take over the store after he was gone, but Tom hoped that if they had a sense of appreciating how quickly one’s life sped forth, he still would have imparted something of value to them. And that was a legacy in itself.
Molly called out to B?o to follow her.
