Clock Without Hands (12 page)

His heart, suddenly light and volatile as a boy's, had expected Jester. But when, still struggling with his belt, he reached the kitchen no one was there. He could just hear Verily doing her Monday morning cleaning in the front part of the house. A little cheated (he could have stayed longer in the bathroom) he looked at the sky which now had the blaze of full morning, the blue unbroken by a cloud, and he smelled from the open window the fresh, faint smell of summer flowers. The old Judge regretted the fact that the routine of breakfast and bowels was over because there was nothing to do now but wait for the
Milan Courier.

Since waiting is as tedious in old age as it is in childhood, he found his kitchen spectacles (he had spectacles in the library, the bedroom, aside from his pair at the courthouse) and began to read the
Ladies' Home Journal.
Not to read, really, but to look at the pictures. There, for instance, was a marvelous picture of a chocolate cake, and on the following page a mouth-watering picture of a coconut pie made with condensed milk. Picture after picture the Judge scrutinized wistfully. Then, as though ashamed for his greed, he reminded himself of the truth that, quite aside from the pictures, the
Ladies' Home Journal
was a very superior magazine. (Far, far superior to that dreadful
Saturday Evening Post
whose good-for-nothing editors had never read the story he had once sent them.) There were serious articles about pregnancy and childbirth which he enjoyed, also sound essays on child rearing which the Judge knew were sound because of his own experience. Also articles on marriage and divorce which might well have benefited him as a magistrate if his mind had not been occupied by the plans of a great statesman. Finally, in the
Ladies' Home Journal
there were little extra lines, blocked and inserted in the stories—sayings of Emerson, of Lin Yutang, and the great sages of the world. Several months ago he had read in these bylines the words: "How can the dead be truly dead when they are still walking in my heart?" It was from an old Indian legend and the Judge could not forget it. He had seen in his mind's eye a barefooted, bronzed Indian walking silently in the forest and heard the silent sound of a canoe. He never cried about his wife's death, never even cried about the diet any more. When his nervous system and tear ducts made him cry, he thought of his brother Beau, and Beau was like a lightning rod that could ground and safely conduct his tears. Beau was two years older than he was and had died when he was eighteen years old. As a young boy, Fox Clane had worshiped his brother, yea, worshiped the ground he walked on. Beau acted, could recite, was the president of the Milan Players Club. Beau could have been anything. Then one night he had come in with a sore throat. The next morning he was delirious. It was an infected throat, and Beau was muttering, "I am dying, Egypt, dying, ebbs the crimson lifetide fast." Then he began to sing, "I feel, I feel, I feel like the morning star; I feel, I feel, I feel like the morning star. Shoo, fly, don't bother me; shoo, fly, don't bother me." At the end Beau had begun to laugh although it wasn't laughter. The young Fox had shuddered so violently that his mother had sent him to the back room. It was a bare bleak room that was a sickroom playroom where the children had their measles, mumps and childhood diseases, and where they were free to roughhouse when they were well. The Judge remembered an old forgotten rocking horse, and a sixteen-year-old boy had put his arms around the wooden horse and cried—and even as an eighty-five-year-old man he could cry whenever he wanted to, just thinking about that early sorrow. The Indian walking silently in the forest and the silent sound of the canoe. "How can the dead be truly dead when they are still walking in my heart?"

Jester came clattering down the stairs. He opened the icebox and poured himself some orange juice. At the same time Verily came to the kitchen and began to prepare Jester's breakfast.

"I want three eggs this morning," Jester said. "Hey, Grandfather."

"Are you all right today, Son?"

"Natch."

The Judge did not mention the crying in the night and neither did Jester. The Judge even restrained himself from asking where Jester had been the night before. But when Jester's breakfast was served, his will broke and he took a golden brown piece of toast, added more butter and spread it with blackberry jam. The forbidden extra toast broke his will even further so that he asked, "Where were you last night?" well knowing as he spoke he shouldn't have asked the question.

"Whether you realize it or not, I'm a grown man now," Jester said in a voice that squeaked a little, "and there's such a thing called sex." The Judge, who was prudish about such topics, was relieved when Verily poured him a cup of coffee. He drank silently, not knowing what to say.

"Grandfather, have you ever read the
Kinsey Report?
"

The old Judge had read the book with salacious pleasure, first substituting for the jacket the dust cover of
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
"It's just tomfoolery and filth."

"It's a scientific survey."

"Science, my foot. I have been an observer of human sin and nature for close on to ninety years, and I never saw anything like that."

"Maybe you ought to put on your glasses."

"How dare you sass me, John Jester Clane."

"Close to ninety years old," the Judge repeated, for now he was a little coquettish about his advancing age, "I've observed human sin as a magistrate and human nature as a man with natural curiosity."

"A bold invaluable scientific survey," said Jester, quoting from a review.

"Pornographic filth."

"A scientific survey of the sexual activities in the human male."

"The book of an impotent, dirty old man," said the old Judge who had relished the book as he marveled behind the covers of
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
which he had never read but kept in his law office library for show.

"It proves that boys my age have sexual affairs, boys even younger, but at my age it's a necessity—if they're passionate I mean." Jester had read the book in the lending library and it had shocked him. He had read the report a second time and worried terribly. He was afraid, so terribly afraid, that he was not normal and the fear corkscrewed within him. No matter how many times he circled Reba's house, he had never felt the normal sexual urge and his heart quaked with fear for himself, as more than anything else he yearned to be exactly like everyone else. He had read the words "jewel-eyed harlot" which had a beautiful sound that tingled his senses; but the eyes of the woman he had seen leaving Reba's place that spring afternoon were not "jewel-eyed" but only dull and baggy, and yearning to lust and be normal he could only see the gooey lipstick and the vacant smile. And the orange-haired lady he had slept with last night was not a bit "jewel-eyed." Secretly Jester thought sex was a fake, but this morning, now that he had become a man, he felt cocksure and free.

"That's all very well," the Judge said, "but in my youth we went to church and attended B.Y.P.U. meetings and had a raring good time. We went courting and dancing. Believe it or not, Son, in those days I was one of the best dancers in Flowering Branch, limber as a willow and the very soul of grace. The waltz was fashionable those days. We danced to 'Tales of the Vienna Woods,' 'The Merry Widow,' 'Tales of Hoffman'..." The old, fat Judge broke off to wave his hands in waltz time and sang in a monotone he imagined was the tune...

"Lovely night, oh, lo-o-vely night."

"You're not a bit introverted," Jester said when his grandfather had put down his waving hands and stopped that croaking singing.

The Judge, who had felt this as a criticism, said, "Son, everybody has a right to sing. Every mortal has the right to sing.

Lovely night, oh, lo-o-vely night."

That was all the beautiful tune he could remember. "I danced like a willow and sang like an angel."

"Possibly."

"No possibly about it. In my youth I was as light and radiant as you and your father until the layers of corpulence began to hold me down, but I danced and sang and had a raring good time. I never moped around reading dirty books on the sly."

"That's what I say. You're not a born introvert." Jester added, "Anyway I didn't read the
Kinsey Report
on the sly."

"I had it banned at the public library."

"Why?"

"Because I am not only the leading citizen in Milan but the most responsible one. I am responsible that innocent eyes are not offended nor the calm heart troubled by such a book."

"The more I listen to you the more I wonder if you came from Mars."

"Mars?" The old Judge was bewildered and Jester let it go.

"If you were more introverted you could understand me better."

"Why are you so hipped on that word?"

Jester, who had read the word and never spoken it, deeply regretted he had not used it the night before.

"Lovely night, oh, lov-ely night."

Not being introverted, his grandfather had never wondered if he himself was normal or not. It had never entered his singing and dancing mind if he was normal or queer.

If it turned out he was homosexual like men in the
Kinsey Report
, Jester had vowed that he would kill himself. No, his grandfather was utterly not an introvert, and Jester dearly wished he had used the word the night before. Extrovert, that was the opposite word ... while he was an introvert. And Sherman? Anyhow, he would use both words.

"I could have written that book myself."

"You?"

"Why certainly. The truth is, Jester, I could have been a great, great writer if I had put my mind to it."

"You?"

"Don't sit there saying, 'You? You?' like an imbecile, Son. All you have to have to be a great writer is application, imagination, and a gift for language."

"You have imagination all right, Grandfather."

The Judge was thinking of
Gone With the Wind
which he could have written easily. He wouldn't have let Bonnie die and he would have changed Rhett Butler; he would have written a better book. He could have written
Forever Amber
with his left foot ... a much better book, more refined.
Vanity Fair
he could have written too; why, he saw through that Becky as slick as a whistle. He could have written Tolstoy, for although he had not actually read the books, he had seen them in the picture shows. And Shakespeare? He had read Shakespeare at law school and even seen
Hamlet
in Atlanta. An English cast, speaking with English accents, naturally. It was the first year of their marriage and Miss Missy had worn her pearls and her first wedding rings. After three performances of the Atlanta Shakespeare Festival, Miss Missy had enjoyed it so much and was so impressed that she picked up an English accent which lasted a month after they had come home to Milan. But could he have made up "To be or not to be"? Sometimes when he considered the question he thought so, and sometimes he thought not; for after all, even a genius can't do everything and Shakespeare had never been a congressman.

"There have been learned arguments about the authorship of Shakespeare. It was argued that an illiterate strolling player could never have written poetry like that. Some say it was Ben Jonson who wrote the plays. I know durn well I could have written 'Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will drink with mine.' I'm sure I could have done that."

"Oh, you can do wonders and eat rotten cucumbers," Jester muttered.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

"...and if Ben Jonson wrote 'Drink to me only with thine eyes' and wrote Shakespeare too, then..." After a great leap of the imagination, the Judge pondered.

"You mean you are comparing yourself to Shakespeare?"

"Well, maybe not the Bard himself, but after all Ben Jonson was a mortal too." Immortality, that was what the Judge was concerned with. It was inconceivable to him that he would actually die. He would live to a hundred years if he kept to his diet and controlled himself ... deeply he regretted the extra toast. He didn't want to limit his time for just a hundred years, wasn't there a South American Indian in the newspaper who lived to be a hundred and fifty ... and would a hundred and fifty years be enough? No. It was immortality he wanted. Immortality like Shakespeare, and if "push came to shovel," even like Ben Jonson. In any case he wanted no ashes and dust for Fox Clane.

"I always knew you were the biggest egotist in the round world, but in my wildest dreams it never occurred to me you could compare yourself to Shakespeare or Ben Jonson."

"I was not comparing myself to the Bard himself; in fact, I have the proper humility. Anyway, I never set out to be a writer and you can't be everything."

Jester, who had been cruelly hurt the night before, was cruel to his grandfather, deliberately ignoring the fact that he was old. "Yes, the more I hear you, the more I wonder if you come from Mars." Jester got up from the table, his breakfast almost untouched.

The Judge followed his grandson. "Mars," he repeated, "you mean you think I'm off on another planet?" His voice was suddenly high, almost shrill. "Well, let me tell you this, John Jester Clane, I'm not off on another planet, I'm right here on this earth where I belong and want to be. I'm rooted in the very center of the earth. I may not be immortal yet, but you wait and see, my name will be synonymous with George Washington or Abraham Lincoln ... more beloved than Lincoln's, for I am the one who will redress the wrongs in my country."