ALL THAT WAS LEFT BEHIND

Let Into the Watchmaker's Mind

We slipped into the forest behind the long sting of empty shops, out of sight from the flashing lights and calling voices. Charlie swiped the tiny disposable phone from my pocket while my attention drove around, and chucked it far away in the trees. I looked at him and stared, my eyes wide and my heart beating heavily in sudden violation.

            “It won’t work in here anyways,” he explained, and trudged along.

            Breath caught in my throat, and I gravely wondered what my decision might define.

            I unstrung my marble necklace on its thin chain from my neck, let it shimmer in the dimming light, and dropped on the forest floor as I walked. I heard it bounce behind me, and roll into the dirt.

            “You understand that the police are looking for you, right? They’re all back there, waiting for me. They’ll find you whether I have a phone or not.”

            Charlie’s face didn’t flicker an ounce of regret. His tanned face didn’t flush, nor did his eyes dance with worry. “If I don’t show you this, lessons will go unlearned.”

            “What do you mean? What”-

            “Let’s exchange some stories, Sea. I feel that you don’t trust me, and while I may not be direct in the family like Lincoln is, I am still quite important to it. Tell me a story.”

            I watched him wearily, but he continued to walk as if we were strolling through a park. “I don’t know any,” I muttered.

            “Sure you do. Certainly you must wish to tell me something. Tell me.”

            I looked away at the dry brown ground, coated with a layer of rotting leaves. I counted the paces we passed, each step meant father from reality.

            My lips parted, and they cracked from being dry, parched and tired. I swallowed a mouthful of cotton balls, and tucked the muddy strands of my hair back.  There was something I wanted to say.

            “Okay then...There once,” I started in a low raspy voice, and then cleared my throat. “There once was a watchmaker. He lived in a tall tower, overlooking the small town, and watched all the people go by every day. Sometimes he’d leave that tower, to watch one particular person. The watchmaker would know things about this person, and the thing is, because he’s the watchmaker, he would be able to have some unknown control over that person. Not control really, but more of like a hold over that person.”

            “That person must have been very special for the watchmaker to be interested in him,” Charlie murmured, instantly sinking into the words to the roots where they really originated.

            “No,” I said. “No this person wasn’t special at all. Just really messed up. Now the watchmaker had a brother, and for quite a while, this person, the timekeeper, let's say, always thought that the brother was the one who ran the clocks. The timekeeper, that innocent person, always assumed that the brother was the one who knew great knowledge.”

            “But little did the timekeeper know, the watchmaker had a lot of things that the timekeeper wanted to know. The timekeeper wants to know what time is all about, right? The time keeper wants to know how to understand time.”

            I nodded. “Yes, but so do the timekeeper’s friends. So does the rest of the town.”

            “Well let me tell you something now. All his life, people chipped away at the watchmaker’s tower. Day by day, the foundation grew thinner and thinner. The people in the town were so awful, so heartless. They possessed no love, no empathy for a fellow townsman. One day, a villager crawled into the tower when the watchmaker was away, and tinkered with all the gears of the clocks. Every watch, every piece of time was messed, and the watchmaker's most prized possession was stolen. The clockwork women. Eventually, the watchmaker saw that the town grew so suddenly terrible.”