Julian was nearly late to practice, having to run from the dorm, down the Hill, and across Parker’s Piece, the meadow that stretched between the Hill and the River. Ms. Yates, a thin, incredibly energetic woman who seemed to be made of tense wire, was a former college rowing coach and she really knew her business, and that started with expecting everyone at practice on time. Practice was the usual mix of running laps around the meadow, and then, for the novices like Julian, spending time in the training barge, a long, low boat with seats and oars that allowed the novices to learn how to handle oars without capsizing a crew shell. Real rowers like Ryan spent their time in the shells, four of them plus a fifth, smaller coxswain. Julian had watched with fascination one of the coxswains, a short girl with a Scottish accent and longish dark hair, sitting backwards in the bow of the shell, wearing a headset microphone and calling out the strokes to the rowers. Julian calling couldn’t imagine being able to do it himself, but he enjoyed watching the shells skim across the water.
On the way back from practice, he found himself talking to Ryan excitedly about what had happened that afternoon. Ryan was impressed. “You mean it’s going to be in the library, up on second, where the awards and trophy cases are? That’s cool.”
~
From that afternoon, Julian’s life took on a different character at St. Eligius. Ryan certainly had plenty of friends, including Hieu Nguyen, a senior on the team, but he and Julian began to hang around together. Julian appreciated Ryan’s acceptance and support, but it became more than that. Ryan discovered that when Julian applied himself, he was really good at school, good enough to help Ryan when he struggled, especially in AP History. Julian found Ryan’s sense of humor really funny, a buoy to his own rather cynical nature. They took to spending time together in the evenings. Julian even sat with Ryan at lunch sometimes, though he couldn’t always participate in the conversations about sports. And what is more, Julian found that helping Ryan stimulated his own interest in his classes. While he did not particularly enjoy his Algebra II class with Mr. Wiley, he admitted to himself that Mr. Wiley taught well, making his students wrestle with thinking mathematically, rather than just memorize formulas. For the first time he found that chemistry was interesting, and his European History and English II classes were especially engaging. The style most teachers used at St. Eligius’ was different than at the public school Julian had attended. Not that he didn’t have some good teachers there, but the classes were so much smaller here, it allowed the teachers to challenge the kids in ways Julian wasn’t used to. He had found it disconcerting, even scary, but now he began to cautiously welcome the opportunity to respond to open-ended questions from Dr. Baker, his history teacher, and from Ms. Paulette.
One day, a week after Julian’s meeting with the Headmaster, Dr. Stephens made an announcement at Wednesday assembly that immediately caught Julian’s attention. On the mornings with Morning Prayer service, there were usually no announcements. On Wednesdays, however, Dr. Stephens led the assembly instead of Chaplain Sayer, and he usually called on teachers and students who wished to make announcements. In chapel and assembly, the students sat in the pews of the chapel, each pew assigned to an advisory group of six students and one advisor. Today Dr. Stephens began with an announcement that most students didn’t really take much interest in, but which make Julian jerk to attention.
“I am pleased to announce that beginning today, an old heirloom of St. Eligius comes home. Back in 1921, to celebrate the founding of the library, Dr. Ernest Drake, a history master and great-grandfather of our own 10th-grader, Julian Drake, presented a clock to the school. The clock was engraved with a plate announcing the occasion, and was placed in the stacks on the second floor of the library, where its chimes could be heard–faintly–downstairs as well. Some of you may recall that St. Eligius was a seventh-century metal smith and master of the King’s mint in Paris, who was renowned for his generosity to the poor. He went on to become a priest, and eventually a saint, in fact the patron saint of smiths, craftsman, and clockmakers. Undoubtedly that is the reason for the nature of Dr. Drake’s gift to the school. Unfortunately, when Dr. Drake left the school, the clock went with him. Until today. Last week, Julian brought that clock back to our campus, and it once again resides in Kleinert Library, for everyone’s pleasure and edification.”
While Julian knew that he was unknown to many students, he felt the eyes of his teachers, and a few students, on him, and he tried to ignore them. The rest of assembly seemed to stretch out forever, and Julian could barely restrain himself long enough to acknowledge the congratulations of Mr. Halpern, his advisor, before he joined the throng leaving the chapel. Glancing at his silenced cell phone, he was relieved to see that he still had ten minutes before second bell, and he made his way down the walk outside the chapel, up the stairs, and in the main doors of Bishop Bowes Hall. Kleinert Library occupied part of the first two floors of the building, with the first floor holding study tables and fiction and the second stacks of academic research books. Julian climbed the stairs to the second floor, pulled open the door, and entered the stacks. The second floor did not have any study areas, and the stacks stretched along each side of the room, overlooking two symmetrical balconies down to the first floor. The only area bare of shelves was a recessed alcove beside the door, which contained glass cases with school trophies and other memorabilia. It also contained open shelves with a copy of each year’s yearbook, dating back decades, and, Julian saw, the clock.
Occupying a middle shelf, it looked cleaner but otherwise unchanged. He could hear the rhythm of its ticking, which seemed quiet, barely audible in the large space of the library. In front of the clock was a small plaque that read:
Gift of Dr. Ernest Drake, History Master, 1921
and his great-grandson, Julian Drake, class of 2013
Standing before the clock, once again Julian felt it. Change and anxiety and stress just seemed to vanish, absorbed by a sense of calm, enduring, being. He felt baffled by it but comforted too. Not that it took away problems, but it was as if in the clock’s presence, he knew the problems were just not that important and that he could deal with them.
At that moment Ryan walked through the doorway. “Hey, Julian, is it there?
Without turning away from the clock, Julian said quietly, “Tell me if you notice it too. Remember what I was telling you before, about how it made me feel? Well, it’s working here too. Can you . . . can you feel anything? Or am I totally crazy?”
Ryan hesitated, and then said, “I can feel, well, peaceful I guess, like everything’s OK. But it is, isn’t it? Is that so strange?”
“But everything’s not always OK. Maybe I feel it more intensely because of what’s been happening with me lately. But somehow, I think this clock exudes a sense of peace, of having a place, maybe of being connected.”
“Exudes? What’s that mean? You’re killin’ me with the weird words.”
“You know, put out or flow from inside something.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. It kinda reminds me of Parker’s Piece.” In response to Julian’s blank stare, Ryan added, “You know, that field, the meadow on the way down to the river.”
Julian nodded, thinking of the beautiful meadow that sloped down to the river. “I don’t know what this means, but Dr. Stephens was really interested in the clock, and he said he was going to ask Ms. Sayer to check out its history. I wonder if this is why, and it’s not just because of the historical connection. How could a clock do that? I mean the feeling’s real, or it seems real, but how could it do that?”
“I dunno. But Julian, you shouldn’t worry about it. Just count your blessings, ya know?”
“Maybe you’re right. But it’s so strange. Good, but strange. I’ve read about magical objects in a lot of books and, at least in books, you know if something is evil, it feels malevolent.”
In response to Ryan’s blank stare, Julian went on, “Uh, it feels like it has evil intent. This just feels peaceful and reassuring. It doesn’t seem like it’s bad, just magic somehow.”
“Whatever it is, I know we need to get to class if we don’t want to be hangin’ with Mr. Perry later.”
“Jeesh, you’re right,” Julian said, glancing at the clock for the time. “We’d better go.” Walking out down the steps, the two boys didn’t say anything more, each mulling his thoughts. Any further conversation would have to wait until practice that afternoon.
For Julian, the fact that Ryan also felt something in the presence of the clock was a milestone. He wasn’t crazy; there was something about the clock. . . . Something good which others could feel as well. Maybe it would make life better at St. Eligius. Maybe that’s why his great-grandfather had donated the clock, to make life better at the school. But that raised obvious questions: Where had Ernest Drake gotten a clock that did this? And how did the clock work? These were questions never far from Julian’s mind in the coming weeks. But they were not questions easy to answer.
~
Weeks passed, and Julian’s curiosity about the clock did not abate. He continued to do better in school, and he began to feel more at home. In his more cynical moments, he thought it was just because of the clock. He did stop by and look at it, at least briefly, on most days. But deep down he also knew that it was because he now had a friend, and because he was beginning to acknowledge that the adults, at least some of them, did care about him. Though he didn’t see Dr. Stephens much, he knew he took an interest. And he remembered that Dr. Stephens had said that he would ask Ms. Sayer to investigate the history of the clock. Julian wanted to go to one or the other of them and try to find out more, but he felt too shy, despite his desire to understand the clock. Yet even though he had not gone to either of them, he felt a connection to the school, and he knew it was because of the people.
Julian found himself once again overcoming his shyness with others around the time of the December meeting of the school’s Board of Governors. Walking down to practice on a Thursday afternoon the week before Winter Break, he trailed behind most of the team across Parker’s Piece. Julian was thinking about how beautiful the meadow really was, even on this brisk, early winter day. He and the rest of the team crossed it, and ran around it, nearly everyday, but did they really see it?
It was a big meadow; Julian had only the fuzziest idea that it must be twenty or so acres. It began at the foot of the Hill and stretched a good distance to the River. Surrounding it in a ring on all sides were enormous live oak trees whose branches grew wildly outwards and gradually drooped to the ground, so that you could easily sit on or climb into them. At the northern end, opposite the main campus, the trees grew here and there in a final band that opened onto the beach, where the crew barn and dock stood. A path led around the perimeter (used frequently for running by the team), and another led from the foot of the Hill down to the trees by the water. Benches perched periodically along the paths, most donated by graduating classes, and off the paths meadow grass and wild flowers grew, though at this time of year the flowers were gone and the grass was brown. Stopping at one of the benches, Julian could see, through the trees, the majestic sweep of the river, shallow but very wide, stretching across to the far shore a mile or more away. Turning his head, he could see the stately buildings of the campus looking down on him and on the river. The river beckoned from below. Though he didn’t exactly relish running and rowing, he did like being on and near the water. The river was always there, always the same, and yet always changing. Its moods varied dramatically, with the wind and weather, but it was always the river, always making sounds that were, even when violent, soothing. It’s like the clock, Julian thought to himself. Or the clock is like it.
“Julian! Get moving! You don’t want to be late!”
Ms. Yates’ voice floated up to him from much further down the path to the river, and he realized he’d been stopped for too long. Just as he began to walk again, he heard footsteps approaching rapidly from behind, and he glanced back up the path. He saw Ryan and Hieu jogging down the path. They slowed when they drew even with Julian, and Julian did his best to keep up.
Grinning, Hieu said, “Good job, Julian. I know you’re still figuring this out, but you’re getting there.” Julian vaguely remembered that Hieu, a student from Vietnam, was known for his tech skills and for being outgoing. He certainly seemed friendly enough.
“Thanks,” said Julian. “I got kind of caught up in just looking at the river.”
Ryan said, “It does get to you, doesn’t it? It’s fabulous. I’ve been rowing for years, but I still don’t get tired of the water.”
Ryan paused and they jogged in silence for a while.
Hieu spoke up: “Have you considered doing anything with the team outside of practice? I know you don’t get to go to races yet, but you know we do some community service, and the team would love to have you along.”
Julian considered this. Outside of the occasional time when his mom or dad had decided the family should deliver food to a homeless shelter or nursing home, he had never really volunteered at anything.
“What kind of stuff do we do?”
“Well, it varies, but the next thing is actually tomorrow evening. The Board meets, and we’ve volunteered to serve and clean up dinner. It’s to give the dining hall staff a break. It’s not hard, and it’s actually fun, and the food is great.”
“What’s the Board?”
Ryan put in, “It’s the group who govern the school. They all have other jobs, but they volunteer to oversee the school. They hire Dr. Stephens to run the school, but he meets with them every two months to discuss budgets and plans and stuff. It’s probably pretty boring, but they have a big dinner, and Ms. Yates signed us up to help out.”
“Well . . .” Julian temporized.
Ryan snorted. “Don’t tell me you have plans! Most of us have used up our weekend leaves by this point. Believe me, this beats a trip to the Mart.”
“Well, OK. What time do I have to show up? And where?”
Hieu responded, “Just come to the dining hall at 5. We’ll get out of practice early for it, and from the dining hall we’ll head over. They’re not supposed to talk about official school business in front of us, so we have to wait until they’re ready to have dinner with the peons.”
“All right, sounds interesting. I’ll come.”
“Cool. You’ll have fun. Now, we better speed up and get to practice.”
They were gradually overtaking the rest of the team. Julian could see Ms. Yates’ tall form ahead, and he resigned himself to running faster across the rest of Parker’s Piece.
~
If Julian had been dreading his community service, he quickly found his attitude changing as the evening went by. Meeting in the dining hall, ten members of the crew team, including Ryan, Hieu, and the dark-haired coxswain, filed into the kitchen under Hieu’s direction. Julian had never seen a kitchen so big before, marveled at the huge dishwasher, mixer, fryers and other kitchen equipment and also found himself gasping a little at how hot it was in the room. He didn’t have long to suffer, though, as Chef Parslow quickly instructed the students to help themselves from a table laden with the advance party of the dining hall’s entries for the evening. Julian noticed that the ten of them could have made a fair picture in an admissions brochure, as they were a slice of student life at St. Eligius: America black and white, Vietnam, China, Ghana, Spain and Scotland were all represented. They all tucked in with the same will. Grinning, the chef promised them something better after their work was done and nodded to them, as if to say that the wait would be worth it. Once they had eaten enough to work for a while without complaint, Chef Parslow had each of them take command of a laden cart, and then he led them out the big double back doors of the kitchen, on their way to the board room. Parslow was a jolly, kind man, and he seemed to be pleased with the prospect of the evening ahead. Though he didn’t normally work in the evenings, tonight was special, and he was personally taking care of the board dinner.
After a few minutes of careful steering, they arrived at the basement of Bishop Bowes Hall and took turns riding the elevator to the top floor where the boardroom lay. When his turn came to enter the room, Julian gasped again. The room was clearly one of the oldest parts of the campus, with dark, wood-paneled walls elaborately carved, an impressively vaulted ceiling with massive wooden buttresses, and a set of dark tables arranged in a large square, open in the middle. Dr. Stephen’s assistant, Mrs. Hampstead, was busy removing paperwork from the afternoon’s meeting, while members of the dining hall staff, clearly glad to see the boys arriving to take their places, were putting the finishing touches on the table settings. Julian paused momentarily, as somehow he knew that, even though he had not known his great-grandfather, this room had been important to him, or at least that events important to him had happened here. When he paused, the girl behind him didn’t notice at first and bumped into him.
“Sorry” she said in a lilting voice, the stress falling on the second syllable, her accent telling Julian she was the coxswain from Scotland.
Turning around, Julian said “No, it’s my fault. Uh, I, I was just startled. I, um, my great-grandfather, he used to teach here and when I walked in, I just got this strong sense that he had been in this room, that it was important to him.”
Embarrassed at this flow of words that had escaped him, Julian, glanced down and then up again, truly noticing her for the first time. She was definitely slight of build, a little shorter than Julian, with dark brown, wavy hair to her shoulders and dark eyes. Julian looked away again.
“That’s allright,” she said, pronouncing it “awereet.” “So you must be Julian Drake, then? That Dr. Stephens talked about in assembly that time? I’m Tess, Tess Darlay. Pleased to meet ya.”
Now doubly embarrassed that he had forgotten his manners, Julian looked at her directly and shook her outstretched hand.
“You’re the coxswain, right? I”ve seen you out with the team.”
“Yeah. I’m really the second string, but I get out a bit. I have the right build for it: tiny.” She grinned.
After a pause, Julian said “You must think I’m nuts. I’m sorry. It’s just, it was a strong feeling.”
“Nah. I get premonitions and suchlike all the time. No worries.” Tess paused and smiled. “But we ought to join the others, I think we’re supposed to be helping.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Of course.” Turning, he moved on into the room, trying not to feel like an idiot.
The students’ immediate task was to prepare for dinner, as the board members were due to arrive soon from the tour of the campus that had followed their afternoon meeting. While Mr. Parslow busied himself with setting up what they had brought in the small service kitchen, the students were to fill water glasses, put out butter, and do anything else that needed doing. Once they had everything ready, they stood at the back of the room, awaiting the guests. At that point they had the chance to see the dessert choices, the most prominent being a magnificent chocolate bread pudding that Chef Parslow was very proud of. Julian found himself grinning at Ryan and––a little more shyly––at Tess about the dessert.
Just before six o’clock, the door opened and the various board members began filing in, talking amongst themselves. They took seats around the table, seeming to sort themselves out casually, with Dr. Stephens in the middle of one side of the square, the one face Julian knew out of twenty strangers. At first Julian was very nervous about his tasks. He had to take drink orders and bring water or tea or soda (Mr. Parslow served wine) and then one of two kinds of salad and then the choices of entrées. Back and forth from the small kitchen to the table, avoiding running into the other students serving as waiters, trying not to spill anything, trying to be attentive without being intrusive, it was all very demanding. In between trips, in whispered converation, he learned that Tess was from Edinburgh, that she was a sophomore in her second year at St. Eligius, and that she hoped to go to “uni,” as she called it, here in the states. As the diners finished the main course and began to contemplate dessert, Julian felt more comfortable and began to study the people around the table. A few board members seemed to dominate the conversation along each side of the square. Dr. Stephens seemed deferential and polite, as did many of the others, but a few members got louder as they talked about their own days as students or about their businesses and careers. From what Julian could tell, the board contained many different kinds of people, businessmen, professors, and one or two who were headmasters of other schools.
During dessert, Julian could not help but overhear a somewhat hushed conversation between two men at the table next to his. One, a short, brown-haired, nervous looking man, seemed to be discreetly shushing his companion, who was talking more and more loudly. The talker was the kind of person Julian had sometimes seen at his parents’ dinner parties: perfectly dressed and with unruffled hair, he seemed very smooth and somehow did not fit in a school. For some reason Julian could not identify, when he looked at the man he felt a sense of hidden menace.
“Well, why not sell it?” the smooth man asked, hardly trying to keep his voice down. “We have got to start thinking strategically at this school! If we want the school to be here in ten years, that is. I’m tired of hearing about the heritage of the school and the land’s role in the school’s history.”
“Well, it has been there a long time,” the nervous man offered. “To sell it would alter the campus pretty fundamentally.”
“Yes, and also bring the school millions of needed dollars. If the school isn’t willing to embrace the future”–and here the man seemed to glance meaningfully at Dr. Stephens, though no one else at the table noticed –“then it won’t have one, and owning a big field won’t do it much good.”
Julian listened in spite of himself, straining to hear when he returned to the rear of the room with empty dessert plates. He saw that others were now joining the conversation. A woman on the other side of the nervous man interjected: “But Mr. Stryker, I still don’t see how selling Parker’s Piece has anything to do with embracing the future. Isn’t the question just one of financial expediency, of whether it is good for the school or not?”
A pit instantly appeared in Julian’s stomach. He glanced around to catch Ryan’s eye, but Ryan was in the kitchen. He did see Tess nearby, and walking over to her, he asked quietly if she knew who Mr. Stryker was.
“Dunno,” Tess whispered. “He wasn’t here the last time I did this, in October.”
Julian nodded his thanks and turned his attention back to the conversation. The group must have exchanged a few more points, and the nervous man seemed intent on changing the subject. Before the conversation moved on, though, Julian did hear Mr. Stryker say: “What all of you have got to understand is that the school’s future, our school’s future”–and here he paused for emphasis and a brief smile– “depends not on any one decision we or the Headmaster makes, but on a willingness to think differently. The world is changing. Business is the model successful schools emulate. Go to any education conference and you will hear that. We have to embrace that future; we have to begin to think in new ways, to consider things not considered before.” Here he paused again, looking round at the three or four board members who were clearly listening to him. “That is, if we want the school and the students to survive and prosper.”
Julian saw all four of them nod, and he could not fight off the coldness gripping his stomach. How could anyone think of selling Parker’s Piece? Had they been students here? Hadn’t they seen the view this afternoon? He felt cursed. Just when he was beginning to feel at home, some connection, they wanted to sell off part of the campus?
The world seemed to whirl around him and in his distraction, he caught sight of Dr. Stephens, calmly speaking to other board members at another table. Did he know? Julian wondered. Did he support this idea? Surely not. But if he didn’t, could he stop it?
As Julian stood there, aghast, Ryan and Hieu came over. “Hey, man,” Ryan whispered. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Julian looked at them and shook his head. “Later,” he whispered back. “Let’s finish clearing so we can get out of here.”
“There’s still dessert for us!” Ryan said. “I want some of that bread pudding!”
“I’m not hungry.”
Ryan looked at him as if he had suddenly grown horns and a tail.
“Well, OK. We’re almost done. And they’re leaving.” Ryan pointed to the board members who were getting up from their chairs. “ Just finish with the clearing and you can get going. But I want to know what’s going on.”
Julian nodded, and then went through the rest of what needed to be done mechanically. He just couldn’t believe what he had heard, and he wanted to get as far from the room as he could.
Copyright 2021, Alfred Reeves Wissen