The Old Brass Clock by Arthur Davis

The Old Brass Clock by Arthur Davis

There is a tall stone wall miles long that dates back to the Civil War near our small Virginia home. I must have passed it a hundred times. That misty March night was different. The beginning of many ends. The wail of angry sirens and flashing red lights pierced the night.

& & &

The police cut me out of the burning wreckage. There was nothing they could do for Diane, or my precious Jonathan strapped in the back safety seat. My baby and his mother took the full impact of the crash. Their side of our car slammed into the stone wall at a speed within the posted limits.

My right shoulder was shattered. Three ribs were broken. A herniated disc. There were multiple lacerations and a severe concussion. I woke in the hospital to a curse of my own making. It found me and possessed me and will rot the life out of me. I kept clicking away at the morphine drip plunger locked in my fist. It didn’t make me forget.

I expected the police to show up at my bedside with the results of my blood alcohol test. As the heavyset man I was before the accident and having had big a meal before we left to go to a friend’s party, the test results were within reason. Only God knows why. I now walk with a slight limp and live in a house that has become a deathtrap of memories and regret.

After my release came excruciating hours of rehabilitation followed by hours of unsuccessfully trying to resist drinking. I haven’t healed well these last three months, and unless heavily drugged, endure frequent bursts of ringing pain

I sleep on our tired living room couch and go upstairs to our bedroom only when necessary and never into Jonathan’s room. Death lives upstairs and stalks me into the night.

Strangers in our small Vermont town nod sympathetically. Friends try to console me. Everyone tells me that “time will heal me.” I muster a smile and they feel they have helped.

I drank the afternoon before the accident. Vodka. I think Diane knew but loved me too much to say anything. Maybe she was just too tired of reminding me of the possible consequences of my weakness.

Maybe she didn’t love me anymore.

I can’t recall a time when I last loved myself.

& & &

Fortified with a double dose of pain killers, I ventured out to the flea market for the first time since the crash. A local attraction that brings folks from counties around every Saturday. Diane loved the place. It’s a curiosity to me.

There are hand-sewn clothing, toys, crafts, fresh pies and cakes, and canned fruits. Home goods and antiques from a century past, or at least that’s what the vendors want you to believe. Still, it is a familiar place in which to hide, or lose myself. I am that desperate for distraction.

A warm June day, I don’t remember it ever being this crowded. I move from booth to booth, listening. Feigning interest. A heavyset woman behind a long table hovered over her goods spread in a scatter of indifference. A paunch sixty something with a full round face and dull brown eyes and a smile that I imagine took a lifetime to construct. Her name is Sally, or so says the label pinned to her flannel shirt.

A small brass clock the size of an apple rested in her hand. “Does it work?” I asked, if only to hear my own voice. Another painful remembrance, as days can pass and I will have nothing to say and no one to talk to.

“Hasn’t missed a beat since my grandfather made it,” she said and moved on to a more attentive buyer.

She held it out to him, going through the details of when and how it was made and that there were only three like it. The device had the markings of a homemade craft. Edges were uneven. Rougher than expected. The brass casing was scuffed and scratched. It looked old. It looked like I felt.

“Forty dollars, if you’re interested,” the woman said, handing it to me.

It was warm to the touch and nearly weightless. It was obviously old and still functioned, and while the oversized black second hand clicked off each second louder than expected, Diane would have called it “a steal.”

& & &

I got home hours later after stopping. Bare essentials. Most of what remained on my shopping list had been there for weeks. I prepared a nondescript dinner and took another dose of meds. The same food every day over and over. It had no taste and was little more than filling.

This was a long day for me. My sides hurt from breathing heavily. The herniated disc never let up. My senses were far from functional. I should never have driven.

The old brass clock was ticking away on the far edge of my kitchen table. I sat back, chewed and watched the black, second hand tongue clicking round and round. Warning me that the last second was going to be much like the current second and foreboding of the next, and all future seconds.

That Diane would have thought it “charming” was a strange comfort. Tears welled up. I carelessly wiped them from my cheek. The clock shared a distant patch of plastic tablecloth with a collection of pills for pain, for healing, for relaxing, for inflammation, and for what else I’ve already forgotten. This past week I was positive I’d missed one or two that were essential, in my doctor’s words.

He was wrong. Nothing is essential, or would be for my remaining forty or fifty years. My digestion, no longer able to process alcohol, didn’t stop me from drinking. I was a clever alcoholic. Most alcoholics are clever. At least we think we are because we think that we can get away with our secret and no one will notice. Not even our bodies.

I pushed my plate away. I couldn’t stomach another bite. It was almost seven and I had no idea how I was going to survive the rest of my life.

The phone rang. It was Diane’s father.

“I saw you at the flea market.”

I didn’t respond. I hadn’t the energy or interest. I knew what was coming.

“If I were a younger man without a family I would have walked over and beat you to death with a lead pipe. Your drunk driving took the life of my daughter and only grandchild.”

“I wasn’t drunk.”

He garbled what I imagined was a long, poisonous curse and the line went dead. He was calling more often in recent weeks. Rage and outrage feeding on itself. Growing. I never once hung up on him. I took every curse. Every threat. Someone had to say it. And I needed to hear it.

I got up and wandered through our home, no longer noticing the things Diane and I liked, cherished from loving friends and relatives, and quickly went back into my more recent thoughts of taking my own life. Some people consider suicide in a flash of distress or disappointment. To me it was a more reasoned option.

I stood in silence, staring out the living room window toward the small pond and the stretch of pine and spruce that was the landscape of much of the state we both loved. We sailed often and spent weekends exploring the hundreds of lakes that dotted the state.

“Look at the smile on that child,” Diane once said of Jonathan strapped in a safety vest nearly as large as he was. He loved sailing. His small blue eyes lit up whenever he realized we were going sailing. A precious child’s utter delight is a thing to behold. To cherish. Because no one knows how long it will last.

I almost smiled, remembering the small wooden toy sailboat I built him. A primitive vessel that amused Diane because it was clumsy and floated off-center and was meant for Jonathan when he was a little older.

That’s when I first heard the ticking.

& & &

I walked back into the kitchen. The old brass clock was ticking, louder now than before. I walked around the kitchen table and stared down at it.

“What?” I said, noticing the second hand was moving faster. I was that distressed and distracted and almost managed to laugh. “No way,” I said and shook my head as if I had been found a fool.

I watched the second hand, convinced something was different. I measured it against the wall clock Diane had bought when we first moved in as newlyweds over six years ago. The small black hand on the wall clock was running five seconds slower than the one on the brass clock.

I tracked it over the next few minutes. Five to six seconds a minute slower. “That sly Sally never said it took good time. That’s why I got it so cheaply,” I said, relieved that my mind hadn’t crossed a line.

I tossed the rest of my cold dinner, cleaned up, and made myself a cup of coffee, though not as good as Diane made. I was never going to get coffee that good again. I switched off the light, then flipped it back on again. I went back to the kitchen table to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind.

The wall clock was now ten seconds slower. I set down my coffee and reached out to the far edge of the kitchen table and picked up the brass clock. It was heavy. Resistant in my hand. I didn’t remember it that way.

Your time is almost up.

That’s what Peter, Sally’s father had garbled over and over before he hung up.

“Your time is almost up.”

& & &

I took a piss. The image in the bathroom mirror was alien. Unshaven and unkempt. A pasty blanched face without emotion or life, or hope. And I smelled.

The couch and living room were littered with clothing, bathroom items, shoes. Clothing that should have been laundered if I ever had that much energy or interest.

I turned on the television, then as quickly switched it off. Then back on. The eleven o’clock news was half over. I rushed back to the kitchen, my right hip hurting more than ever. The brass clock had raced past midnight. The wall clock read eleven fifteen. Exactly.

I poured myself a shot of bourbon and collapsed into the chair. I watched with fascination as the brass clock raced on. Ticking louder and louder. By midnight I had taken a fourth gulp of bourbon. I needed to piss again but was too mesmerized to move.

& & &

When I woke, it was dark. I was cold. The clicking noise from my kitchen was a shrill, threatening whine. Everything hurt. I had used up my meds for the day, and more. I struggled to get up. The wall clock registered seven thirty in the morning. The brass clock had passed noon and ticking so loudly it was screaming. But there were no keys or buttons on the back. The entire back of the clock was scratched and there was a small dent at the top. Nothing else.

I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t noticed much lately. When you’re trying to make it from hour to hour and day to day without ripping your heart from your chest, you don’t notice much, I guess, because you just don’t care.

I tried to pick it up, but it was too heavy. But it hardly had weight when I first held it. I remembered that and Sally’s fat face, flushed with pimples and rolls of fat that clung to her neck, she knew. She knew.

I fell back into the chair and took a long, biting swig. The only thing worse than being an alcoholic was an alcoholic who drank in the morning.

“A goddam dream,” I said. “Sure. Why not? If I sit here long enough…” I started to say, staring at the kitchen door leading to the back yard. I got up and tried it. Get outside. Fresh air.

The doorknob was frozen. I tried with both hands. It wouldn’t give. My right shoulder screamed in pain. I wasn’t listening. I kicked at the door and tried again. I staggered to the front door. That was frozen shut too. I grasped at the two living room windows. I always left them open a crack. They were shut. Neither budged.

“What’s the fuck’s going on?”

I grabbed a small wooden chair and slammed it against a hallway window.

I spotted a bird on the limb of a large oak outside. Diane and I had carved our initials in it, surrounded by a terrible excuse for a heart. We laughed about how badly we had drawn the initials and heart. But we loved each other dearly. We were devoted and as one, and Jonathan completed the family. We weren’t perfect, but we knew we were blessed. We had even discussed having a second child.

The phone rang. I stumbled to the kitchen. “Help. I need help. I’m trapped. I’m David Livingstone at 877 Hollow Woods Drive. Call the police. I need help.”

“That’s the blue house with the green bordered shutters that my daughter painted? That’s the one you’re talking about?”

I stared at the receiver. “What are you doing?” I screamed.

“Just wanted to see how your day was going. Staying in touch. I didn’t want too much time to pass before we spoke again.”

“I’ll get you for this.”

“You know, I never thought you were particularly bright, and not good enough for my baby. But I didn’t want to stand in the way of her happiness so, if you recall, the home you’re living in was my wedding gift to you both. My home. I built it from the ground up after clearing away a half acre of birch. I built it with my hands and sweat and was happy to live there and happier to gift it to my daughter.”

Your home?

“Well, I have to go.”

“This is my home,” I heard myself scream.

“Without Diane it’s my home again and, if you haven’t figured it out, it only answers to me.”

“You planted the clock too? That was you and that bitch.”

“Been following you around for weeks. I knew you would return to the flea market. One of my baby’s favorite places. Sally has been waiting too. You know, the fat woman you looked at like she was something you scraped off the bottom of your boots.”

“Bastard,” I slurred.

“You’re drunk already. I can hear it.”

“It was a fucking accident. An accident,” I raged. “I passed the Breathalyzer test. I was never arrested.”

“I wondered how you managed that, but now I don’t much care. In a few hours the oxygen in my home will run out. A life for a life, or a life for two angels. Still, better than nothing.”

“You can’t do this,” I screamed before the line went dead.

I dialed the police without getting a dial tone. Nothing. I tried our other phone. Nothing.

All the lights went out.

I raced back to the kitchen and reached for the bottle, tripped and fell against the corner of the refrigerator. Pain exploded in the center of my back. “Oh, shit,” I gasped and fell to my side.

There was a fire in my right leg, hip to toe. It took a minute, but I was finally able to prop myself up against the kitchen table. I tried to get up, but the pain wouldn’t have it.

I was drunk. When did I take a drink? I couldn’t recall. Pain meds and bourbon were an ugly mix. Peter had called. His house was going to kill me. Slowly I would use up the oxygen and suffocate. I knew Peter for what he was. A man capable of crossing any line. A man who was living only for revenge.

Peter was mentioned in the Bible. He was one of the twelve apostles. He had something to do with heaven. Peter taught that followers of Jesus Christ should cease from sin. How perfect. Peter knew from the beginning that his daughter had married a sinner. Who else do I know named Peter?

Peter had an old parrot named Carl. Carl and I got along from the start. I could see that Peter wasn’t happy about that. Diane laughed. “You two make a great couple.” Diane assured me that her father would “come around once he saw how happy I am,” she said.

He never did. Now I understand why. He saw me for the threat I was to his daughter long before I saw it in myself.

“Okay. We’re okay,” I insisted over and over.

& & &

When I struck the table, the bottle of bourbon crashed onto the floor. I sat there, my ass soaked in Tennessee’s finest. The clock was out of reach on the far side of the kitchen table. I needed to reach up, grab it, start the fireplace, and throw it in. I couldn’t think how else to save myself.

“Fucking fat lady,” I said and realized if I pulled on the tablecloth, I could bring the clock close enough to grab and strangle it to death. Beat it to death. Drown it to death. Hammer it to death until all that remained was a pile of lifeless brass waste.

I fought through the old pain and the new pain. Something was broken or badly damaged from the fall. I needed to call an ambulance, but killing the clock was first, then I remembered the phones weren’t working. More of Peter’s handiwork. I reached up and grabbed the edge of the filthy tablecloth. That movement fired the pain in my back. I was that badly injured.

I tried to relax and took a few deep breaths and looked up. The tablecloth hadn’t moved. The clock had.

A narrow crease of brass was visible over the edge of the table and was inching itself off further. My arm fell away. My hand landed lifelessly on the bourbon-soaked floor. I didn’t understand. I had been drunk many times and worked my way through the haze. Not here. Not now. This was beyond my capacity. There was an evil here. The fat lady was in on it. They knew the clock was alive and carrying out Peter’s wishes.

& & &

I could see it clearly now. It was tilting over the edge, exposing more and more of the bottom of the clock.

I needed a drink. Any drink. I tried to bend over. There were puddles of bourbon everywhere. Who cared that the sour mash was now fused with the filth of a floor that hadn’t seen a wet mop in months. I needed a drink now more than life itself.

Finally, more of the clock was over the edge of the table, then on it, and it was falling. It fell and fell and fell, until it grew larger and larger, until it struck the side of my head, crashing on the floor next to my knees. I reached and grabbed it, but it wouldn’t move. I tried again. Nothing.

That’s when I started getting dizzy. A trickle of blood dripping down the side of my face and shoulder and soaking into my pants. I must have been hit hard enough to open a gash in my head.

The trickle turned into a steady, pulsating flow. That made more sense. Even drunk I knew what was happening. I was thirsty and finally had something to celebrate. I mustered a smile. A good wound. A solid wound. A wound I could depend upon to do my work for me.

Bourbon and blood and now the piss I could no longer contain soaked me through. But before I passed out, I wanted to thank Peter for making all this possible. He did what I hadn’t the courage to do on my own.

I had to thank him for that. But just not today.

Today, all that remained on my list was to finally, and with consuming relief, die.

* * * *THE END * * * *
Copyright Arthur Davis 2025