The Pocket Watch
Chris began to question the wisdom of the trip back home, almost from the day he ran away, angry as hell at his dad.
The air in the house was a tinder box that day, waiting for one spark, and Chris was that spark. To avoid the inevitable conflagration, he ran, without thinking. All he carried was the pocket watch his mother had just given him, for his fourteenth birthday. It had belonged to her father.
Many a cold night that pocket watch was the only friend Chris had.
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| sketch by Elaine |
For thirty years, it was his close companion. So, even now, sitting on the flight to Topeka, he rubbed the patina, feeling for his grandfather’s initials, long since rubbed away.
On that fateful day, the day Chris ran, he saw his mother at the top of the stairs and felt remorse at how the hateful words he and his father spat must have scarred her.
It was a quarrel so fierce that it slammed shut the first chapter of his life, erasing everything good, leaving his life nothing but a few crumpled sheets of paper that no amount of smoothing could fix.
At first, he fed on self-righteousness, fleeing from back alley to box car; anywhere a disenfranchised youth could go unnoticed.
He wasn’t always alone, though. Men in tall black hats had swooped down like vultures, grabbing farm after farm in their talons. The broken families were forced westward by choking black clods of dust.
Sometimes Chris joined them on the road … trudging slowly toward California, the Land of Milk and Honey.
Chris became just one more foot soldier of famine. No one asked questions about why he was alone or where he hailed from, but over the course of his three years on the road, he told enough lies to fill up Hell, and then some.
He did his share of stealing, too, mostly the stuff of survival. Freshly baked bread tempting him from an open windowsill. A basket of sour green apples untended in an old orchard.
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| watercolor by Elaine |
Or hailed by the shirt that smelled of sunshine and Fels-Naptha hanging on the line. A warm egg from a hen’s nest, which he sucked right out of the shell, one night when a chicken coop offered the only shelter.
Once he even robbed a dead man of his coat and shoes which he packed with newspaper so they’d fit. To these unknown philanthropists, Chris owed his life.
At night by a campfire or while rumbling down the rails in a boxcar, he’d fall into fits of sleep, riddled with dreams that struck like nails in a coffin. He’d awaken, sweaty and breathless, to his father’s fiery words, “You’re no son of mine!” He’d clutch the pocket watch for comfort: it was the closest thing to his mother.
Somehow Chris made his way from Kansas to the Land of Milk and Honey, only the honey had been poisoned by pesticide and the milk had curdled.
There were few jobs for the many. Sometimes he toiled in an orchard for a few pennies a week, sometimes in a mill.
The effort of survival stifled his bad dreams, at the same time nearly severing hope.
When despair was at its worst, just the faintest whiff of lavender … his mother … salvation.
And so, the years ticked by, so many sweeps of the hour hand.
And so, Life improved. It took honest work and no small measure of luck, but Chris slowly prospered. He never wrote to his father, though he tried to dozens of times. What could he say? I’m sorry? But he wasn’t ready.
Then one day, Angie, his wife of twenty three years, unable to bear her husband’s remorse any longer, thrust the phone book at him.
“What’s this for?”
“Chris, I know how angry you were back then, but that was thirty years ago.” He turned away.
“We only get one father and one mother in this lifetime.”
She paused, tears filling her voice, “I’ve already lost mine…”
“I’m not sure if they are … even still alive,” he said pulling Angie to him.
“But I do know,” she whispered.
“What .. wh..?” Chris stuttered.
“All it took was a few hours in the library,” she explained. “Your mother and father are still alive!” Again, she placed his hand on the phone. “This is their number.”
Heart pounding, uncertain what words he’d say, Chris dialed the number.
An elderly woman answered, but it wasn’t his mother. The woman, Janet somebody, explained. “I’m house sitting for Grace. She’s at the hospital with her husband. She’s hardly left Patrick’s bedside since the surgery. It’s his heart, you know? Who did you say you are?”
***
Chris’ reverie ended when he heard the steward. “We will be cruising at an altitude of thirty thousand feet today. The skies are clear, and the temperature in Topeka is eighty degrees. Enjoy your flight.”
Chris pullled the worn watch from his breast pocket, thinking, “Just three hours, then I’ll be home, again.” He squeezed Angie’s hand, as she slept, her head on his shoulder.
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| home again, watercolor by Elaine |
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