Dinner on Sunday nights was usually poorly attended, and this was especially true on the night when the students were due back from a break. The dining hall itself was a long room that filled the ground floor of the student center, one end covered with windows that looked out past the oak tree on the Hill down to Parker’s Piece. With drink machines at the end where the entrance to the kitchen and serving line was, a salad and pasta bar in the middle, and tables filling the rest of the space, it was a pretty crowded room, except on Sunday nights. So many kids returned to campus after dinner that the dining hall staff did something simple, and Julian ended up having spaghetti from the pasta bar that was available every night. He didn’t think much of the stuffed mushroom or the chicken-fried steak that were the other options. He ate his spaghetti by himself, after declining an offer from one of the teachers on duty to sit with him.
Finishing his meager dinner, Julian left the dining hall by the doors facing the Hill to return to dorm. He stopped for a moment to look down, down past the spreading branches of the enormous old oak tree to the expanse of Parker’s Piece. From this distance, the paths that bisected the meadow made it almost look like farmland seen from an airplane. Beyond that, the river, visible between gaps in the trees below Parker’s Piece, glinted silver in the light of the setting sun.
Julian let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and then turned towards Mansfield. The dorm had three stairwells, one at each end and one in the middle. Walking up the middle flight, he ran into Mr. Watt. Watt was a ninth grade science teacher and a dorm master, which meant that he lived in an apartment at the end of a hallway on dorm. He had perpetually tousled brown hair, a full beard, and usually a smile. Though Julian did not have him as a teacher, he liked Mr. Watt because he was kind of crazy. He seemed to think nothing of joking around and acting strangely in public, and he had a reputation among the kids as being kooky but fun. Julian was glad Mr. Watt was one of the dorm parents on his hall; he had heard that Mr. Hall, the soccer coach who lived at one end of Second, was really a jerk and did things like make the kids on his hall take out his trash when it began to smell.
“Hey Julian! Did you have a nice break?” Mr. Watt asked in his enthusiastic way.
Hesitating, Julian replied, “Yeah, I guess so.” He wasn’t about to go into the fact that his father had told him that he was remarrying, nor did he feel like discussing the clock with a teacher, even one as friendly as Mr. Watt.
“Julian, buck up, kid. You really have to give the place a chance.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Mr. Watt.”
“Well, I can tell you don’t see it yet, but hang in there, and if I can ever help, you just let me know, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now, it’s almost time for Routine to start; you better head upstairs.”
“Okay. See ya, Mr. Watt.”
Julian continued on up the stairs, and then down the hall towards his room. With the nightly routine beginning soon, students were drifting onto hall, dragging book bags and duffels. Steam and the sound of falling water came from the hall bathroom, and music blared from open doors as Julian walked by. As Julian walked down the hall, he thought about how strange it was for a school in the middle of nowhere in Virginia to have so many different types of students. He couldn’t remember the exact details, but he knew from his own experience that there were students at St. Eligius from many different countries as well as a lot of states. It was normal to hear different accents and different kinds of music on any dorm hall. The nightly routine depended on how kids were doing academically. Sunday nights always had a study hall for everyone in their room as a way to get organized for the week. But the other weeknights offered some choice. Students might be in an assigned study hall in a classroom, if their grades warranted that, but if kids used their time well and were doing well, they had some choice as to how they spent the evening. The art and music rooms, the maker lab, the library, the weight room, and their own rooms on dorm were all options. The teachers on duty each evening circulated between these places.
Entering his room, Julian saw that John was back, lounging on his bunk, dressed in a close-fitting workout shirt and loose pants. Though John was also a sophomore, and also a white kid from the suburbs––in John’s case the affluent West End of Richmond––there the similarities between him and Julian ended. John was nice enough, but he was one of those kids who were at boarding school not because of declining grades and divorced parents, but because of parents whose careers were too busy for a mischievous teenager prone to partying and fun more than taking his future in business seriously. John was open about it and reveled in the gifts that his parents gave him as compensation for the lack of their attention. John did not seem to mind St. Eligius, as he had figured out how to make life at school work for him. He did enough work to get by and went home on weekends whenever he could, to a normally empty and unsupervised house and car. John and Julian got along OK, but they were not really friends. John was very outgoing, social, and abrupt, and Julian had been very quiet since arriving at school.
“Hey, Ju”––Julian inwardly winced at the uninvited nickname––“What the hell is that?” John said as Julian walked in. So like John, this direct outburst, and Julian immediately knew he meant the clock. Julian also knew he didn’t necessarily mean to be offensive, but Julian still found it hard to take.
“It’s a clock . . . it belonged to my great-grandfather.”
“Why’d ya bring it here?”
“I don’t know . . . my dad was going to give it away and I didn’t want him to.”
“Weird.” John said. “It looks so old.”
At that Sean, the prefect on duty, walked by, on his way to the duty office at the end of the hall.
“Time for Sunday study hall, guys! Turn in your cell phones! Music off, laptops out! Let’s go!” Sean was gone again as quickly as he had appeared. Julian turned to take his cell phone to the duty office.
“Take mine, will ya?” said John. Julian grabbed John’s phone off his bureau and left the room, walking past two dorm rooms to the duty office, itself a converted dorm room. He slipped the two phones into their slots (each bearing its owner’s name) in the rack by the door and returned to the room. Just as he walked in the door, Julian froze. He had forgotten that that clock would strike the hours and half-hours. Listening, Julian heard the quiet whir of the gears and then the first tone as the clock began tolling eight times to mark the hour and the beginning of study hall. John looked up, startled, and said,
“I’m not going to listen to that all through study hall!”
“Just give it a chance. It kinda grows on you.”
“Well, all right,” John said, giving him an odd look. “But I’m not seeing it.”
The boys settled down at their desks, opening up laptops to check their homework on the school website, beginning to work. It was hard to settle in after a long weekend. Julian didn’t have much routine homework, but he did have an English essay to work on, and he began digging through All Quiet on the Western Front to look for supporting evidence for his thesis. It was a good, if depressing, book, and at least at times Julian found himself identifying a little bit with the disillusionment of the World War I protagonist. Tonight, however, he could not focus. He found he was dreading the approaching half hour.
Sure enough, as 8:30 came, the clock whirred again, and a two-note tone struck to mark the half hour. “Shut that thing up, will you?” John said irritably.
“It’s done, that’s all it does.” But John glared at him. Julian began to feel a pit in his stomach. He couldn’t explain it, but he did not want to stop the clock. In the sound of its regular ticking, his normal worries vanished. Unfortunately, now they were replaced with concern about the clock itself. But it felt good to care about something. Where he normally would have been apathetic and let John have his way, this time it was different. He did not want to give ground.
As the clock began to strike nine, Sean walked by. Hearing the chiming of the clock, he walked in, to hear John and Julian arguing over the noise. Sean, his forehead below his red hair wrinkling with frown lines, was quick to make it clear how he viewed things:
“Whose is that? It makes too much noise during Study Hall.”
“See?” said John. “You can’t leave it running with all that racket.”
“It’s mine, Sean,” Julian said.
“I’ll have to get Mr. Harris,” Sean said.
Inwardly, Julian groaned. All the students knew Mr. Harris as really strict; he enforced the rules, whether they made sense or not. When Mr. Harris appeared, his bald head was tinged with pink, showing his annoyance at having to intervene in a situation in the middle of study hall. Responding to Mr. Harris’ question about the clock, Julian tried to keep the plaintiveness out of his voice.
“It . . . it belonged to my great-grandfather, and, uh . . . it means a lot to me.”
“Sorry, Julian. It can’t be in here if it’s going to make that much noise during study hall, and I will have to write it up for Mr. Perry.” Julian knew what that meant. Mr. Perry was the Dean of Students, responsible for discipline at St. Eligius. Being written up for Mr. Perry inevitably meant demerits or worse. Mr. Perry, Julian knew, tried to be fair, but he was also pretty strict.
“Can’t I just silence the chime? If I don’t wind that part, it won’t make the noise.”
“It will still make that stupid ticking sound,” interjected John, and Julian knew he was right.
From the doorway, Ryan’s voice cut into the argument: “Can’t he keep it, Mr. Harris? It’s kinda cool. Doncha think it adds to the room? I mean, everything else here is standard issue, this is different. Can’t he keep it if it’s quiet?” Ryan, though he was not the prefect on duty that night, had the privilege to move around the hall and to assist the teacher on duty, though Mr. Harris was so active there was usually little for the prefects to do when he was around.
“No!” yelled John.
“Sorry, Julian,” said Mr. Harris, ignoring John’s outburst. “I’ve got to keep the peace. It’s got to go, at least for tonight. You can discuss it with Mr. Perry tomorrow, but for tonight, it’s mine. If you want, you can carry it to the duty office so it doesn’t get damaged.”
Without speaking, Julian opened the glass door of the clock and slowly reached in to the swinging pendulum, grasping it and stopping its regular motion. For that brief moment he felt hope. He wondered again why the clock was reassuring, why it seemed to comfort him. Closing the door, he saw Ryan’s face reflected in the glass, and he saw sympathy there. Sighing, he got up and carefully carried the clock down the hall, drawing stares from some of the boys as he passed their rooms. He left it on the desk, not really hearing Mr. Harris’ reassurances that it would be safe. He knew that the rest of study hall would be like it used to be: boring and pointless, and he returned to his room for the second half, finding the silence eerie.
At 10:00 Sean called “Study Hall’s over!” and the assigned students began dragging out vacuums to clean up the hall as post-study hall chaos erupted. Remembering the look on Ryan’s face, Julian decided to seek him out. Finding Ryan’s room, Julian saw that neither he nor his roommate Sean were there. They were on hall, checking to make sure the kids were taking the trash out and cleaning as they were supposed to. Julian hesitated in the doorway, looking at the posters of sports teams on the walls. He realized that Ryan was more normal than he was. Julian knew that Ryan, with his easygoing personality, was a kid who fit in wherever he was. Why would he be interested in Julian and his problems? But before he could flee, Ryan himself walked up.
“What’s up, Julian?” he said. Julian took the plunge.
“I just wanted to say thanks for sticking up for me with Harris.”
“Hey, no problem. John can be kinda bossy, and you know how Harris is. If there is a rule, he’ll stick to it, and the big rule at night is no disturbing study hall. But that clock is kinda cool.”
“Well, it’s weird. I know it was strange to bring it here, but it really affects me somehow.”
“How?”
“Well . . . it’s the way it makes me feel. The first time I wound it, when I found it this morning. . . . When the clock started ticking, it changed everything. I dunno, it’s like everything I’ve been worrying about didn’t matter. I felt . . . relieved, I guess. That’s why I wanted to bring it back. My parents divorced a year ago, and my dad’s getting remarried, and . . .” To Julian’s immense surprise, it all came pouring out. How he no longer felt that he belonged anywhere, how it seemed that there was no place for him, not at home, not here. “But for a few seconds, when I started the clock, that feeling went away, I felt like I was at home, like I had a place . . .” Julian paused. “You probably think I’m really whacked, but anyway, that’s how it makes me feel. That’s why I brought it back. Maybe it’s because it belonged to my great-grandfather, but it affects me for some reason. It’s the only piece of home I have left.” Ryan listened to this patiently, with apparent interest. When Julian had finished, he just said,
“It’s okay, ya know. You don’t have to be ashamed of it. You’ve gone through a lot, and you haven’t really adjusted here yet. If the clock makes you feel better, what’s wrong with that? I just wish Harris was a little more flexible. But don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to Mr. Perry for you. Maybe he’ll let you keep it.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Julian agreed, but he didn’t really believe it. He did appreciate Ryan’s sympathy, though. “Hey, thanks.”
“No problem, man. And hey, Julian, you have to give the Saint a chance. It’s not that bad. After two years, this place feels like home to me.”
“Yeah, you’re right I guess. I’ll try. Well, see you tomorrow.” Julian returned to his room, feeling a little better, but dreading what tomorrow would bring.
~
St. Eligius held three classes each day, which ran for 85 minutes each. Students had a total of six classes, three meeting one day, three the next. In between the morning classes was chapel Mondays and Fridays, assembly on Wednesday, and just a break on Tuesday and Thursday. After second class was lunch and then the final class of the day, followed by a help period. The next morning after chapel, Julian got what he was expecting, a summons to the Dean’s Office. Mr. Perry was waiting for him, and on his desk was the clock, still and silent. Mr. Perry was a tall, broad-shouldered African-American, a crisp, neat person, with closely trimmed hair and perfect clothes. He was clearly retired military—a captain, in fact, with his diploma from West Point on one office wall. What hope did Julian have of explaining to him how the clock made him feel? And even if he did, how would it make any difference?
The conversation went as he expected, but Mr. Perry was quite supportive and did give him a choice: either keep the clock but not run it, so it was silent, or collect the clock from Mr. Perry at Thanksgiving Break to take home. The good news was that Julian would receive no demerits. In Mr. Perry’s view, it was just a misunderstanding, not any kind of willful disobedience: “Ryan Williams put in a good word for you. He is a good prefect, and I trust his judgment.” But at that moment, Dr. Stephens, the Headmaster, opened the door, walked in, and sat down. Dr. Stephens was altogether different from the Dean of Students. His graying hair topped a pink face wrinkled by smile lines, and something about his clothes–the brown and gray hues, the suggestion of wrinkles–conveyed that the Headmaster was a man of books, of scholarship, a teacher first and foremost.
“Hello, Mr. Perry. Hello, Julian. How are you?” Dr. Stephens’ voice was kind, and he seemed genuinely inquisitive. “I heard a little about this incident from Mr. Harris at breakfast, and I am curious to know more. Please tell me what Ryan had to say about this.” The students generally liked Dr. Stephens. He had a doctorate in history, and lots of books in his office, and sometimes he had a funny, academic way of talking, but he was never intimidating, and the seniors talked about how good his one class—Senior Seminar—was. He took an interest in each student, knowing each one by name, but so far Julian had rebuffed that interest.
Mr. Perry responded, “Well, sir, Ryan just said that Julian has been going through a hard time. His parents have divorced in the last year, his dad is remarrying and just moved, and the clock belonged to Julian’s great-grandfather, and is the last thing he has left from his old home. Julian confirmed all of that.”
Julian found him self nodding as he listened, and he looked at the Headmaster doubtfully, feeling himself exposed. Mr. Perry continued,
“Ryan asked that Julian be allowed to keep the clock in his room, which Julian has also requested. However, that really is not possible due to the noise it makes, even if the chime is not wound.”
“May I hear it?” asked Dr. Stephens in his unfailingly polite manner.
“Of course,” said Mr. Perry. “Julian, would you like to do the honors?” Julian nodded, got up, and walked over to the desk where the clock sat. He opened the door, hesitated a moment, and pushed the pendulum to set the clock moving. The ticking began.
“It won’t chime for a while, and that’s how you’d hear the real noise it makes.”
“May I?” asked Dr. Stephens, and when Julian nodded, he put his index finger below the minute hand and gently moved the hand up to the twelve. Reaching eleven o’clock, the clock began to strike, each toll seeming to reach out to Julian with its reassurance. The Headmaster listened intently, all the while watching Julian’s face.
“Remarkable,” he said. He paused for a long moment, and then addressed them in turn. “Mr. Perry, please have Mr. Grinnell move the clock to my office. Julian, I don’t have time to discuss this further right now, but I would appreciate it if you could come by my office immediately after last bell. I would like to talk with you further about this.”
“Certainly, sir” said Mr. Perry. Though he may have wondered at the Headmaster’s request, he also trusted Dr. Stephens and inherently respected authority.
“Uh, OK, Dr. Stephens,” said Julian. Dr. Stephens smiled.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I’d just like to hear more about your clock.” Relieved but puzzled, Julian filed out, grabbed his book bag, and headed off to class.
~
3:30 came very slowly that day, with English (Ms. Paulette) and math (Mr. Wiley) still to get through. English saw the class in a discussion of the turn European literature took with World War I and how All Quiet on the Western Front fit into that protest against the old order of things that had led the continent to destruction. Ms. Paulette, a woman of piercing intelligence, dark, shoulder-length hair flecked with grey, and an obvious passion for her subject, did manage to keep Julian engaged. But he loved history, and this was a topic that brought history into the literature. Math—Algebra II––was part of their unit on quadratics, and despite Mr. Wiley’s efforts, it did not hold Julian’s attention. Mr. Wiley also loved his subject, and he seemed to understand how much it intimidated many students. He was great at giving confidence, his youthful face and shaggy brown hair putting students at ease. But today there was just too much competition for Julian’s attention.
At last the day reached the free time between classes and athletics. Before he changed his clothes and headed down to the river for crew, before even getting a snack, he headed for the administration building that housed the Headmaster’s office. Like most buildings on the campus, the administration building was colonial, with red brick and white trim. Julian had not entered the building since his admissions interview months before, and he approached it with trepidation. What could Dr. Stephens possibly want of him? Why was the clock in his office? Swallowing his misgivings, he entered the building, passed through the admissions waiting area, and found himself telling the Headmaster’s assistant, Mrs. Hampstead, that he was here to see Dr. Stephens. She told him to wait on the coach outside the office, and Julian did so, though he had hardly sat down when Dr. Stephens himself came out of the double doors of his office and asked him to come in.
If Dr. Stephens was not scary, his office certainly was. A large, imposing desk sat to one side of the darkly paneled room, in front of two huge windows. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled to their brims, covered two other walls of the room, while the last wall contained portraits of past Headmasters as well as Dr. Stephens’ academic degrees. The desk, Julian noticed, was amazingly neat, occupied only by an old-fashioned green-shaded bankers lamp, a laptop, a few pieces of paper—and the clock.
“Come in, Julian, come in. May I offer you something to drink?”
Still reeling at being in the Headmaster’s office, Julian declined, he hoped politely. “Sir,” he went on, “If I am not in trouble, why am I here?”
“You get right to the point, don’t you?”
“To be honest, I’m a little scared.”
“I suppose that’s understandable, but really, you don’t have to be. Have a seat and I will tell all, or, at least, all I know. Julian, I am very interested in your clock. I would like to hear from you in your own words what you know about it.”
Thinking this was strange, but wanting to be helpful, Julian sat down in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, while Dr. Stephens took the other. Julian said,
“Well, it’s been in my house at home–the house we’re moving from anyway–ever since I can remember. I played around with it some when I was younger. I remember my dad showing me how to wind it, and I always liked it. My dad told me it came from my great-grandfather, who died before I was born. I don’t know much else, except that when I got home for Long Weekend, my dad was going to get rid of it. I couldn’t believe it; it made me angry.”
“Why, if I may ask? It’s just an old clock, and you, like most of your peers, use your cell phone and computer to tell time, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do, but, I dunno . . . there’s something about it. When I came across it in the den, I wound it and set it going, and there’s just something about it. It gives me a feeling, like, like I’m at home, even though I wasn’t. It made me feel like everything that bothered me, my folks splitting up, going off to school, my dad getting remarried, having to move, all that didn’t matter, that despite having everything taken away from me, I still have a place.”
“Have you looked at it closely?”
“Yeah. Well, at least, I cleaned it up some, got the dust off.”
“Did you look at the bottom?”
“No. I never have. Why?”
“Let’s take a look, shall we? You go ahead.”
Julian turned to the clock on the desk and carefully laid it on its back. The pendulum jangled slightly as Julian set the clock down, and then he gasped as he saw what was on the bottom. A tarnished brass plate, its writing a little difficult to read due to the dirt covering it and the old-fashioned script, said:
Ernest L. Drake, D. Phil.,
St. Eligius School for Boys,
Presents this on the Founding of Kleinert Library,
as a Guide to Headmasters Present and Future.
A.D. 1920
“This, this came from here, from St. Eligius!?”
“It not only came from here, Julian, your great-grandfather gave it as a gift to the school, back when the school was a boys school, right when it was founded.”
“In 1920? A.D. means Anno Domini, right, “in the year of Our Lord”?
“Very good, Julian. We’ve taught you something, then, or you are a reader.”
Julian grinned quickly at this complement, and said, “I had no idea it came from here; I thought it was just his, like at home or something. If he gave it to the school, how did we get it? And why would a clock be a guide to headmasters? That’s weird.”
Dr. Stephens looked at Stephen before answering. “It is odd, isn’t it? As to how your family came to have it when your great-grandfather gave it to the school, well, obviously he took it with him when he left. It’s a little unclear, as the records are incomplete from those days, when the school was just beginning, but I believe that your grandfather left the school unhappy, and may even have been forced out. That would explain why he took the clock with him. As to why he describes the clock as a guide to headmasters, I have no idea. But as the current Headmaster, I would like to find out.”
Dr. Stephens paused to look around the room at the bookshelves. “Before I became a headmaster I was a history master, and history is still a great love of mine, though I don’t teach or write very much anymore. Your grandfather was a history master too, did you know that? Well, a hobby of mine is the history of St. Eligius, and in the archives in the library I have found references to a clock like this one, presented to the school when the library was built. I have also found some indications that there was a division on the faculty at that time and that your great-grandfather left when that division became ugly. So, when Mr. Harris told me this morning that Julian Drake, whom I know to be the great-grandson of a revered history master at the school, one who gave the school a clock that vanished long ago, has an old clock in his dorm room, and insists on having it run during study hall, I took notice.”
“Julian, I agree with Mr. Perry that the clock can’t remain in your dorm room. It may be a bit loud, but it’s also too valuable. With your permission, I would like to return this clock to its rightful place in Kleinert Library. I think the school should have this as a part of its history, and that way you can see it and hear it whenever you like.”
“You’re asking my permission? Well, of course, that’s fine. That’s much better than I hoped for. It will get to keep running, and I’ll be able to see it anytime.”
“Perhaps it will make the library a place you want to be and those grades will improve, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s all, Julian. I am going to continue, if I have time, to research this clock of yours. I may ask Ms. Sayer to look into for me. But in the meantime, St. Eligius is honored to have it back, and we will restore it to its place of honor in the second floor overlook. Now, it’s about time you head to crew, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I need to change first. Thank you, sir.”
Julian let himself out, and found himself feeling excited for the first time since going away to school. He was excited about the clock, about Dr. Stephen’s interest and his discoveries, and he was excited to tell Ryan about it all. He was a little uncertain about Ms. Sayer, the chaplain, being involved, but she seemed nice enough, and Ryan had spoken highly of her.
Slipping his book bag over his shoulder, Julian left the Admin building and began the run across the quad to Mansfield dorm, for the first time feeling some sense of connection to the place.
Copyright 2021, Alfred Reeves Wissen