The clock made the train journey on the empty seat beside Julian, and apart from his continuing worry that the frequent jostlings of the train would damage the old clock, the ride was uneventful. He had unhooked the pendulum from the works, and wrapped the clock and pendulum in bubble wrap, placing them in one of the moving boxes he found lying around the house.
As the train pulled into the Richmond station, Julian realized that, as delayed as the train was by its frequent stops to make way for freight trains, he might miss his ride back to campus. The Student Life Office arranged for vans to meet the various trains and airplanes returning students from breaks. From the station it would be a good hour’s drive out into the country to St. Eligius. The next train into Richmond that was likely to contain students wasn’t due for two hours, and Julian didn’t like the idea of sitting in the station with his precious parcel for that long.
Jostled by the flow of people exiting the train, Julian struggled with his bag and the box. Once out of the train, he paused to get his bearings in the station, and then he walked hurriedly to the doors leading to the street. As he came out of the station into the breeze of the October day, he saw the taillights of a St. Eligius van just turning the corner at the end of the block, leaving the station to return to campus. The van should have waited for him. They should have had his name as being on this train. But then he remembered that his original travel plans that he had turned into the student life office had him returning later in the day. This morning he and his dad had decided on taking the earlier train, and now here he was, stuck.
Julian stood for a while, watching the spot where the van had vanished, and then he slowly turned around, resigned to finding a place to sit and wait for the next van. Even if he called the school, they would not send a van just for him. He reentered the station, and sat down, fretting over the delay. He didn’t understand why, exactly, but he felt a desperate urge to get the clock to school. He felt every second of delay as something intolerable. Maybe it was because the break had been so unsatisfactory. He had gotten away from school, but the time spent at home had not been fun. Thinking about it brought a return of his anxieties over his family: the divorce, his father’s remarriage, the move. Or it brought a sense of boredom. If all he was going to do was read and surf the internet, well, he could do that at school. The one bright spot was the clock. But thinking about that only brought him back to his desire to return to school. He laughed to himself at that thought. He had been so desperate to get away, and now he was desperate to return. Would he ever be happy anywhere?
After twenty minutes or so of this fruitless thought, Julian saw a fellow St. Eligius student walking across the lobby towards the doors, tall, black-haired, lean, with mocha skin. It was Ryan Williams. He must have arrived on the same train, and then stopped to get something to eat before leaving the station. Ryan was a junior and a prefect, as well as a leading rower, and he lived on the same floor of Mansfield dorm as Julian, down the hall and around the corner. Julian had not sought out any friends at school. He got along with his roommate, John, but John was in his second year at St. Eligius, and had his own set of friends. The other students were generally very friendly, but when Julian kept to himself, they left him alone. Just now, though, Julian didn’t want to keep to himself. Knowing that Ryan had his own car, Julian braced himself and approached him.
“Ryan! It’s Julian Drake, 302.”
“Oh, hi Julian. You don’t have to remind me of your name and room, you know. I am one of your dorm prefects! Is the van here yet?”
“Yes, well, actually, I missed it. I was supposed to be on the next train, so they didn’t wait for me.”
“Do you want a ride?”
“Well, if it’s not a problem, that would be great.”
“It’s not a problem. Let’s go find my car.”
Ryan was one of those kids whose parents saw nothing wrong with their son having a fast car when he turned sixteen and got his license. Walking into the parking lot beside the station, Ryan led the way to a new blue Ford Mustang.
“Wow,” Julian said, with feeling.
“It’s not a GT; it only has a six, but still, it’s pretty cool.”
Julian stood awkwardly with the box and his bag, unsure of where to put them. Ryan opened the trunk with his remote, and as Julian reached to load his things, he asked what was in the box.
Suddenly aware of how strange it would seem that he was bringing an antique clock back to school with him, Julian replied haltingly:
“It’s . . . it’s a, well, look.”
Julian opened the flaps of the box and drew aside the bubble wrap, revealing the clock perched incongruously amidst the clear plastic.
“Cool!” said Ryan. “Where’d ya get it?”
“From home. My Dad is moving, and he was going to throw it out. It belonged to my great-grandfather, and I just couldn’t leave it. So I brought it with me.”
Julian repacked the box, Ryan slammed the trunk lid, and they got into the car. As he turned the key and the engine rumbled to life, Ryan said,
“It’s kinda strange that your Dad wanted to get rid of that clock. It seems like a pretty nice thing.”
Seeing Julian’s frown, and sensing that he might be touching on a sore subject, Ryan went on:
“Are you going to keep it in your room?”
“Yes.”
“I hope it doesn’t make too much noise. The school might not let you have it if it bothers other students.”
“I know, but I guess I was hoping that they wouldn’t notice.”
“Maybe they won’t.” Ryan then seemed to make an effort to change the subject:
“We must have come in on the same train. You’re from D.C., right?”
“Bethesda, outside D.C. in Maryland,” said Julian. “But my Dad is moving next week, to Vienna, in northern Virginia.”
“I’m from New Jersey,” replied Ryan. “My parents won’t let me drive all the way home except at the end of term, but I convinced them to let me come this far.”
The rest of the ride back they talked about the schools they had come from. Julian learned that, like him, Ryan came from a large high school, and his parents had sent him away to school because he wasn’t working up to his potential and seemed lost in his school at home. Julian also learned that Ryan liked St. Eligius:
“The place grows on you, ya know? I didn’t really like it when I got there, but it feels like home now. Some of the teachers are really cool, like Dr. Gregory, and they really care, and help you when you need it. I think a lot of them could be college professors. They’re so smart and so into what they teach. I liked some of my teachers at my old school, but the classes were so big, they didn’t really have time.”
“My school was like that too. I used to be a pretty good student, but I guess I just want to be under the radar. It kind of freaks me out about Eligius, that you can’t really do that.”
“Yeah. You can’t. But they’re not out to get you. They just want you to learn. Like Ms. Sayer. When I first met her, I thought, ‘Ugh, a chaplain, this will be lame. But I’m taking her class this year—you have to take it as a junior or senior––and it’s really cool. She doesn’t tell you what to think, but she makes you think about all sorts of cool stuff. I like it. Sometimes I feel like my head will explode, but I like it.”
“Uh, well, maybe I need to give it more of a chance.”
“Give it time. Even dorm. I like being on dorm. It’s like college life, I bet.”
So Ryan was another who liked the school. Julian found himself wishing he felt the same way. But he felt nothing. Maybe having the clock would help. Again, he laughed at himself. As if it were some kind of talisman that was going to protect him and make his life happy!
“Gregory teaches science?” Julian asked.
“Yeah. He teaches biology and physics, but he’s got a Ph.D. in oceanography, and he did research in Antarctica, so he has lots of cool stories about being stuck in the ice.”
Julian’s thoughts about how interesting that might be were swept away by the car turning into the campus of St. Eligius. They had been out in the country for a while now, having passed over bridges of several rivers that flowed through the Tidewater region of the state, and gone through several small towns that didn’t have much besides a gas station, a few restaurants, and antique stores. Even the county seat of Wiltshire County, Wilton, didn’t have much in it besides the courthouse and Sheriff’s office. Now they were three miles past Wilton, and were turning into a drive that went between a cornfield and immaculate playing fields: field hockey, baseball, soccer, and lacrosse. At the top of the drive were flagpoles with the U.S., Virginia, and Episcopal Church flags, and a neatly lettered sign that said “St. Eligius Episcopal School. Founded A.D. 1921”
Lined with trees, the drive gently wound its way between the fields, finally passing the gymnasium on the right. Julian turned right after the gym and followed the drive around to the parking lot, passing along the way the fine arts building and the chapel and ending at the lot in front of the admissions and administration building.
As they got out of the car, Ryan pocketed the keys slowly. Julian knew that he would have to turn them in to the Dorm Master when they got to their floor. While there were a few day students from the surrounding area, most students were boarders, and they were not allowed to use their cars, if they had them, without permission. They walked across campus with their burdens, making their way between the chapel and art building and out into the main quad. Two large academic buildings dominated the quad: Bunson Hall, home of math, science, and theology, on the right, and Bishop Bowes Hall, home of English, history, language and the library, on the left. The two buildings were twins, Bunson being modelled on Bishop when it was added to the campus in the 1970s. Both buildings were four story, red brick classroom buildings, crowned with slate roofs and dormer windows. The classrooms behind those dormers were a little cramped, but Julian did like the old-fashioned feel they gave the rooms. Bishop Bowes, and the Headmaster’s house situated in the middle of the quad, dated back to the early 20th century when the school was founded. Beyond Bunson was the girls dormitory, Mcguire Hall, while on the other end of Bowes was Mansfield Hall, the boys dorm. Between these buildings was the student center and dining hall, and an expanse of grass that stretched away to the top of a hill (“the Hill”). At the edge of the quad, an enormous oak tree looked down the hill to the river, a half-mile away in the distance. Below the Hill, filling the space between the main campus and the river, was the beautiful expanse of Parker’s Piece, a tree-lined meadow crossed by walking paths between areas of grass and wildflowers.
Walking past the corner of Bishop Bowes, the two boys passed the Headmaster’s House on the right and headed on to Mansfield Dorm. Walking in the main doors, they stopped in the Duty Office––empty until 7:30–– to sign in and check the schedule for the evening. When they had climbed the stairs and reached 302, Julian thanked Ryan for the ride, and Ryan continued on down the hall with a friendly “See ya later, Julian. Let me know when you get the clock working. I’d like to see it.”
Julian put down the box and his bag in the hall and fished for his room key. The hallways in the dorm were cinderblock, painted white with blue accents, and each room had a sign beside it with the names of the boarders and where they were from. John was from Fredericksburg, just south of Washington. He wasn’t back yet; it was 6:00 now, and boarders had until 7:30 to be back from break in order to be ready for the evening routine at 8:00. Finding his key, Julian unlocked the door and pushed it open, dragging his stuff behind him. The room was adequate for two boys, providing each with a bunk and a wardrobe, in addition to built in desks, dressers, and a sink on the wall to the right as he entered the room. A single large window dominated the far wall, and the other two were masked by posters and the bunk beds. Once in the room Julian threw his bag on his bunk (the upper one) and opened the box. Shaking the clock free from the bubble wrap, he set it on his desk. Then he dug through a drawer, found a clean sock, and wetting it at the sink, he began carefully to clean the dust from the clock. Once he had most of the dust off, he re-hung the pendulum and reached for the clock key. He frowned to see that his hand trembled slightly as he fit the key into the hole in the clock face to wind it. It didn’t really need winding. That done, he returned the key to the bottom of the clock, set the pendulum swinging, closed the glass door, and sat back in his desk chair and watched the pendulum trace its steady rhythm.
As he watched, Julian realized that he was hoping the feeling he had gotten the first time he wound the clock would return. To his surprise, he found that it did. That same sense of regular, reliable motion, of supporting steadiness, of an immutable presence unaffected by change or chaos washed over him. Julian felt that as long as whatever this was that he had discovered was there, he could handle the rest of what happened to him. Some part of him thought this was crazy, but part of him also knew it was real.
He knew that John would soon come back, and that the evening routine would soon begin–and he would have to explain the clock. Right at that moment, though, all that didn’t bother Julian. He had found something that made him feel at home.
Copyright 2021, Alfred Reeves Wissen