Clock Without Hands (22 page)

"I would hate that too," said Sherman casually.

The Judge was remembering his stroke, and his thoughts were stark and clear. Although he minimized his illness to others as a "little seizure" or "slight case of polio," he was truthful to himself; it was a stroke and he had nearly died. He remembered the shock of falling. His right hand felt the paralyzed one and there was no feeling, just a weighty clamminess without motion or sensation. The left leg was just as weighty and without feeling, so in the hysteria of those long hours he had believed that half of his body was mysteriously dead. Unable to wake Jester, he had cried to Miss Missy, to his dead father, his brother Beau—not to join them, but for solace in his distress. He was found in the early morning and sent to the City Hospital where he began to live again. Day by day his paralyzed limbs awakened, but shock had dulled him, and cutting off liquor and tobacco added to his misery. Unable to walk or even raise his left hand, he busied himself by working crossword puzzles, reading mysteries, and playing solitaire. There was nothing to look forward to but meals, and the hospital food also bored him although he ate every bite that was put on his tray. Then suddenly the idea of the Confederate money came to his mind. It just came; it happened like the song a child might sing that was suddenly made up. And one idea brought the next idea, so that he was thinking, creating, dreaming. It was October and a sweet chill fell upon the town in the early morning and at twilight. The sunlight was pure and clear as honey after the heat and glare of the Milan summer. The energy of thought brought further thoughts. The Judge explained to the dietitian how to make decent coffee, hospital or no, and soon he was able to lumber from the bed to the dresser and from there to the chair with the help of a nurse. His poker cronies came and they played poker, but the energy of his new life came from his thinking, his dream. He sheltered his ideas lovingly, telling them to no one. What would Poke Tatum or Bennie Weems know about the dreams of a great statesman? When he went home he could walk, use his left hand a little, and carry on almost as before. His dream remained dormant, for whom could he tell it to, and old age and shock had made his handwriting deteriorate.

"I would probably never have thought of those ideas if it hadn't been for that stroke that paralyzed me so that I was half dead in the City Hospital for close on to two months."

Sherman rooted in his nostrils with a Kleenex but said nothing.

"And paradoxically, if I hadn't gone through the shadow of death I might never have seen the light. Don't you understand why these ideas are precious beyond reason to me?"

Sherman looked at the Kleenex and put it slowly back in his pocket. Then he began to gaslight the Judge, cupping his chin in his right hand and looking into the pure blue eyes with his own creepy stare.

"Don't you see why it is important for you to write these letters I'm going to dictate?"

Sherman still did not answer, and his silence irritated the old Judge.

"Aren't you going to write these letters?"

"I told you 'no' once and I'm telling you 'no' again. You want me to tattoo 'no' on my chest?"

"At first you were such an amenable amanuensis," the Judge observed aloud. "But now you're about as enthusiastic as a gravestone."

"Yeah," said Sherman.

"You are so contrary and secretive," the Judge complained. "So secretive you wouldn't give me the time of day if you were just in front of the town clock."

"I don't blah-blah everything I know. I keep things to myself."

"You young folks are secretive—downright devious to the mature mind."

Sherman was thinking of the realities and dreams he had guarded. He had said nothing about what Mr. Stevens had done until he had stuttered so much that his words seemed to make no sense. He had told no one about his search for his mother, no one about his dreams about Marian Anderson. No one, nobody knew his secret world.

"I don't 'blah-blah' my ideas. You are the only person I've discussed them with," said the Judge, "except in a glancing way with my grandson."

Secretly Sherman thought Jester was a smart cookie, although he would never have admitted it. "What is his opinion?"

"He too is so self-centered and secretive he wouldn't give anyone the time of day even if he was just in front of the town clock. I had expected something better of you."

Sherman was weighing his soft, bossy job against the letters he was asked to write. "I will write other letters for you. Letters of acceptance, invitations, and so forth."

"Those are insignificant," said the Judge, who never went anywhere. "A mere bagatelle."

"I will write other letters."

"No other letters interest me."

"If you are so hipped on the subject you can write the letters yourself," Sherman said, well knowing the condition of the Judge's handwriting.

"Sherman," the old man pleaded, "I have treated you as a son, and sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

Often the Judge quoted this line to Jester, but with absolutely no effect. When the boy was small he had plugged his ears with his fingers, and when he was older he had cut up in one way or another to show his grandfather he didn't care. But Sherman was deeply affected; his gray-blue eyes fixed wonderingly on the blue eyes opposite him. Three times he had been called "Son," and now the old Judge was speaking to him as though he was his own son. Never having had parents, Sherman had never heard the line that is the standard reproach of parents. Never had he sought his father, and now, as always, he kept the conjured image at a distance: blue-eyed Southerner, one among all the blue-eyed South. The Judge had blue eyes and so had Mr. Malone. And so, as far as that goes, had Mr. Breedlove at the bank, and Mr. Taylor, and there were dozens of blue-eyed men in Milan he could think of offhand, hundreds in the county nearby, thousands in the South. Yet the Judge was the only white man who had singled out Sherman for kindness. And Sherman, being suspicious of kindness, wondered: Why had the Judge given him a watch with foreign words, engraved with his name, when he had hauled him out of that golf pond years ago? Why he had hired him for the cush job with the fancy eating arrangements haunted Sherman, although he kept his suspicions at arm's length.

Troubled, he could only skip to other troubles, so he said: "I wrote Zippo's love letters. He can write, of course, but his letters don't have much zip, they never sent Vivian Clay. Then I wrote 'The dawn of love steals over me' and 'I will love thee in the sunset of our passion as much as I do now.' The letters were long on words like 'dawn' or 'sunset' and pretty colors. I would sprinkle in 'I adore thee' often, and soon Vivian was not only sent but rolling in the aisles."

"Then why won't you write my letters about the South?"

"Because the idea is queer and would turn back the clock."

"I don't mind being called queer or reactionary either."

"I just wrote myself out of a fine apartment, because after the love letters, Vivian herself popped the question and Zippo accepted very gladly. That means I will have to find another apartment; I wrote the very planks out of the floor."

"You'll just have to find another apartment."

"It's hard."

"I don't think I could endure moving. Although my grandson and I racket around this big old house like two peas in a shoebox."

The Judge, when he thought of his ornate Victorian house with the colored windows and the stiff old furniture, sighed. It was a sigh of pride, although the people in Milan often referred to the house as "The Judge's White Elephant."

"I think I would rather be moved to the Milan Cemetery than have to move to another house." The Judge considered what he had said and took it back quickly, vehemently: "Pshaw, I didn't mean that, Son." He touched wood carefully. "What a foolish thing for a foolish old man to say. I was just thinking that I would find it mighty hard to live elsewhere on account of the memories."

The Judge's voice was wavering, and Sherman said in a hard voice, "Don't bawl about it. Nobody makin
you
move."

"I dare say I'm sentimental about this house. A few people can't appreciate the architecture. But I love it, Miss Missy liked it, and my son Johnny was brought up in this house. My grandson, too. There are nights when I just lie in the bed and remember. Do you sometimes lie in the bed and remember?"

"Naw."

"I remember things that actually happened and things that might have happened. I remember stories my mother told me about the War Between the States. I remember the years when I was a student at law school, and my youth, and my marriage to Miss Missy. Funny things. Sad things. I remember them all. In fact I remember the far-off past better than I recall yesterday."

"I've heard that old people are like that. And I guess I heard right."

"Not everyone can remember exactly and clear as a picture show."

"Blah-blah," said Sherman under his breath. But although he spoke toward the deaf ear, the old Judge heard and his feelings were hurt.

"I may be garrulous about the past, but to me it is just as real as the
Milan Courier.
And more interesting because it happened to me, or my relatives and friends. I know everything that has happened in the town of Milan since long before the day you were born."

"Do you know about how I was born?"

The Judge hesitated, tempted to deny his knowledge; but since he found it difficult to lie, he said nothing.

"Did you know my mother? Did you know my father? Do you know where they are?"

But the old man, lost in the meditations of the past, refused to answer. "You may think me an old man who tells everything, but as a jurist I keep my council and on some subjects I am as silent as a tomb."

So Sherman pleaded and pleaded, but the old Judge prepared a cigar and smoked in silence.

"I have every right to know."

As the Judge still smoked on in silence, Sherman again began to gaslight. They sat like mortal enemies.

After a long time, the Judge said, "Why what's the matter with you, Sherman? You look almost sinister."

"I feel sinister."

"Well, stop looking at me in that peculiar way."

Sherman kept right on gaslighting. "Furthermore," he said, "I've got a good mind to give you quit notice. And how would you like that?"

And on these words, in the middle of the afternoon, he stomped away, pleased that he had punished the Judge and brushing aside the thought that he also punished himself.

ALTHOUGH
the Judge seldom spoke about his son, he was with him often in his dreams. Only in the dream, that phoenix of remembrance and desire, could his memory live. And when he woke up he was always cross as two sticks.

As he lived very much in the here and now except for pleasant daydreams just before he went to sleep, the Judge seldom brooded over the past in which, as a judge, he had almost unlimited power ... even the power of life and death. His decisions always were preceded by long cogitations; he never considered a death sentence without the aid of prayer. Not that he was religious, but it somehow siphoned the responsibility away from Fox Clane and dribbled it to God. Even so, he had sometimes made mistakes. He had sentenced a twenty-year-old Nigra to death for rape, and after his death another Nigra confessed to the crime. But how was he, as a judge, to be responsible? The jury after due consideration had found him guilty and had not recommended mercy; his decision just followed the law and the customs of the state. How could he know when the boy kept saying, "I never done it," that he was saying the God's truth? It was a mistake that might have put many a conscientious magistrate under the sod; but although the Judge regretted it deeply, he kept reminding himself that the boy had been tried by twelve good men and true and that he, himself, was only an instrument of the law. So, no matter how grave the miscarriage was, he could not pine forever.

The Nigra Jones was in another category. He had murdered a white man and his defense was self-defense. The witness of the murder was the white man's wife, Mrs. Ossie Little. It had come about in this way: Jones and Ossie Little were sharecroppers on the Gentry farm, close to Sereno. Ossie Little was twenty years older than his wife, a part-time preacher who was able to make his Holy Roller congregation talk in strange tongues when the spirit came upon them. Otherwise he was a shambling, no-good tenant who let the farm rot. Trouble started as soon as he married a child-bride wife whose folks came up from around Jessup where their farm was in a ruined dust bowl area. They were traveling through Georgia in an old jalopy on the way to hope and California when they met up with Preacher Little and forced their daughter, Joy, to marry him. It was a simple, unsavory story of the depression years and nothing good could reasonably be expected, and surely nothing good came of any part of the sorry affair. The twelve-year-old child-bride had character seldom met with in one so young. The Judge remembered her as a pretty little thing, at first playing dolls with a cigar box of doll's clothes, then having a little baby of her own to bear and care for when she was not yet thirteen. Then trouble, having started, compounded as trouble always does. First, it was rumored that young Mrs. Little was seeing more of the colored tenant on the adjacent farm than was right and proper. Then Bill Gentry, provoked by Little's laziness, threatened to turn him off the farm and hand over his share to Jones.