IV
"Ever been up the clock tower?"
Doolan had a new idea. He’d hardly mentioned the old factory for weeks and I think he got a bigger scare than I did, mainly because he can’t run as fast when you have to get away. I knew he didn’t want to go back and I was sure I didn’t.
"The one downtown? No one goes up there except pigeons. Forget it Doolan, pigeons make me sick, like rats. That’s what they are, flying rats."
I remembered going home the night I snatched the bottle from the old wino. My parents asked what I’d been doing and I said "nothin’ ," and then went to my room. I took out my lucky coin, looked at the black eagle and then turned it over. It looked different. Another letter seemed to be scratched next to the S. I put a little spit on it rubbed it hard with my thumb, and it came up more clearly: S-W. The letters were etched in swirls, with little curls at the tips. I rubbed it some more, but the rest of the side was still encrusted with dirt, perhaps ground into old varnish. I gave up and put it down. Lucky coin or not, I wasn’t going to any clock tower.
"You ought to see the size of the clock from up there," Doolan said self-assuredly. "Huge -- as big as you. Maybe bigger. And the bell, you see that movie ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame?’ "
"That had lots of bells. The town clock only has one."
True. The belfry was housed in a tower that rose above the center of the county courthouse, a handsome 1800s Victorian brownstone that stood solemnly at the town square. A tower rising from the building’s center opened where the bell was suspended, and above it an ivory clock face impaneled in ornate wooden frames peered out in each of four directions, telling all the town what time of day or night it was. The clock and bell, like long-acquainted workmates, marked each hour with gongs which could be heard all over the town, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I had never remembered them taking an hour off. They told teen-agers when they had to be home, commuters when their bus was due, storekeepers when it was time to open or close. The clock and bell had become as much a part of the town as the name itself, keeping order, setting a pace, always being there. They were everybody’s pocket watch.
"You’ve been up there, Doolan? How’d you get up there? Do they let people go up there?"
"It’s easy. You just go right up."
"Where? Wait. I’m not going."
"Don’t have to. I’m going today, maybe tomorrow. "
We were on the school ground and it was recess.
"Well, maybe I’ll have a look at the bell, but that’s all. When you going?"
The school bell rang and recess was ending.
"Think I’ll go up today after school, just to have a look. Real fast. We’ll just get a look at the bell."
"There’s lots of pigeons, right?" I asked. I could feel the shadow of the nun behind me.
"What pigeons?" she wanted to know. I told her "oh nothing" and made something up about pigeons in the old school building that was once G.G.Green’s mansion. She just glared and we filed back into class.
The afternoon dragged, but not slowly enough because I was a bit nervous about going up to the bell tower. But finally class let out as the courthouse clock rang three gongs, and Doolan met me on the front steps. We walked fast because I wanted to get this thing over with even though I was curious about what this bell was going to look like. We stopped at the newsstand on the way and lingered a bit, searching our pockets for the 25 cents we needed to get a Pepsi and a pack of Tasty-Kakes.
Downtown was busy because the high school was letting out, and Doolan and I wove our way through the teen-agers crowding the street and made our way to the granite steps of the courthouse.
"Just follow me," Doolan ordered as we opened the heavy oak doors. "Don’t say nothing."
With little direct sunlight filtering to the main hallway, it was shadowy and gloomy. The place smelled musty, from the aging stacks of tax records, deeds and maps stored on shelves in the offices we passed on our way to a stairwell at the back of the hallway. No one paid any notice as we moved along and then disappeared up the wooden steps. We went up two flights and at the top turned and headed back toward the front of the building. It was even darker on the top floor, where somber courtrooms were empty and the offices seemed unoccupied.
Doolan stopped and tugged at what looked like a closet door and it creaked open to pure darkness. He motioned me silently to come in and closed the door behind us. I froze as I heard Doolan make his way up a few squeaky steps and slide a wooden dead bolt. Then, as he pushed the overhead door open, light streamed in.
"Quick, come on up," Doolan said in a hushed voice. "Quick!"
The base of the belfry was covered with a thick blanket of pigeon droppings, but the few birds that had been roosting there took flight as we arrived. I peered through the arched openings around the bell at the traffic, pedestrians and tarred tops of the buildings below as the wind whistled softly through the perch. At the rear of the belfry, a narrow staircase, encrusted with pigeon goop, rose to a trap door leading to the clock tower above.
As I looked more closely, fingering my lucky coin as I concentrated, I could see a steel shaft running from a hole in the floorboards above to a box at the top of the bell. Doolan was standing on the base of the belfry opening when I called over to him.
"Doolan, yo, what’s that steel rod above the bell?"
He turned and looked up to where I was pointing. Doolan was a little crazy, but pretty smart about electrical and mechanical things. He stared for 10, maybe 15 seconds, his eyes following the line of the shaft to the boards above the bell.
"Yeah, I know. That’s the trigger, I’ll bet. Look, when the clock strikes a new hour, the gears turn that shaft and that’s when the bell ..."
GONG!
The earsplitting sound vibrated through me and nearly knocked me off my feet. I quickly regained my balance, and it was a good thing because I was able to get to Doolan, who had lost his balance and was almost knocked out of the belfry by the mighty sound. His arms waved as he teetered on the edge of the stone base.
GONG!
Damn, it must be 4 o’clock. Two more of these deafening clangs to go. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but they were occupied yanking Doolan’s shirt so I could get him out of the archway. He finally flopped back in, landing on his rear in the pigeon dung. I hoped no one below saw us clambering about or we’d get arrested. I started to yell "Let’s go," but couldn’t hear my voice and wondered if the bell had made me deaf.
GONG!
If the third ring didn’t kill my hearing, the fourth would, I was sure. Doolan was now safely back on the pigeon-shit floor, holding his hands over his ears. I followed suit just in time for the fourth GONG! and was already thinking up excuses to give my parents when at dinner that night they would ask what’s wrong with my hearing.
I looked down through the arches and saw the traffic moving, but couldn’t hear it. Doolan moved his lips but there was only silence. Then he pointed to the trap door and led the way down . At the bottom the first set of steps he opened the hallway door a crack and looked left and right before motioning to follow. We walked briskly through the courthouse, keeping our eyes straight ahead. It was easy to ignore anyone’s questions, if they were asked at all, because neither of us could hear a thing.
We were finally back on the street, walking silently, ears still ringing. By the time we got to the newsstand the ring had turned to a low hum. At the railroad tracks, I heard Doolan’s voice over the faint hum.
"Pigeon crap, all over my butt," he said. "Can you hear OK?"
"Still got buzzing in my ears," I answered. "Wipe that stuff off on the grass on your way home."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. See you in school."
"Hey, want to go back and see the clock next time?"
"You kidding? After that? You’re nuts."
I took an extra walk around the block on my way home, hoping the hum would die down so I’d seem OK at dinner. I reached into my pocket for my lucky coin. I needed it now, but it wasn’t there. A jolt went through me as I realized I’d lost my eagle coin. Where did it go, I wondered as I walked. Finally, the answer struck: I must have gotten spooked and dropped it when the first bell sounded. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to the bell tower, but now I knew I’d have to go back if I was to find my lucky coin.
Doolan didn’t show up for school the next day, or the next, or the day after that. It was just as well because it took about that long for all of my ear humming to go away and there was no way I was going back to the tower while there was any humming at all.
A weekend passed, but the new week would start easily because Monday would be a half day, thanks to a teachers’ meeting. Doolan turned up on the school grounds just before the morning bell rang. He said he hadn’t had much of a problem with humming in his ears, he just heard bells every so often and it was starting to bug him. The school day went fast and I waited for Doolan outside.
"Think we can get back into the tower today?" I asked.
Doolan looked surprised.
"Today? I still hear that bonging and I was just going to go home and watch TV or something."
"I got to go back," I said. "I left something behind and I’ve got to get it."
"What?"
"Oh, some money. I must’ve dropped it when the bell rang the last time."
Doolan looked puzzled and shuffled from one foot to the other.
"I think I hate those pigeons as much as you do. Thanks for pulling me down from that ledge last time." He hesitated for a moment. "Look, we’ll go up to the clock tower this time, have a look around, and then get out before it rings, OK?"
We walked the long way around to the courthouse for no particular reason, and as we crossed the railroad bridge the town clock struck one. The Doolan picked up his pace. I think he didn’t want to be up there when the bell rang again, and I could agree with him there. We didn’t talk much along the way, and while we walked I tried to recall where I may have dropped my lucky coin. Soon enough, we had arrived, and walked briskly up the front steps. Once inside, we followed the same path that took us to the bell tower a few days earlier.
Pigeons fluttered away as Doolan heaved the overhead door to the belfry back. After we climbed to the base, Doolan reached into his pocket and produced a couple of old gum wrappers and a rag of an old tissue, which he began tearing into smaller shreds.
"Here," he said as he began stuffing paper in his ear. "Just in case."
He handed me a little ball of paper and I took his advice.
I tried to place myself exactly where I stood a few days earlier when the bell’s peal caused me such a fright a dropped my coin. I pawed the thick pigeon goo on the floor with one sneaker, then another, looking carefully for the little round disc.
"Yo, hurry it up," said Doolan. "What’s so important about that stupid penny or whatever it is?"
I wondered myself as I kept pawing. Why WAS it so important? No matter, I just knew I had to get my eagle coin back. I moved to one side, then another, and still nothing. I found a twig and started poking through the pigeon droppings, working it closer to the arched openings. Finally I felt a tic. I bent down and there it was, covered with pigeon crap. I pulled the ball of tissue from one ear and cleaned it off, then held on tight. I smiled. Such relief; I had found my lucky coin.
"Want to go now?" I asked Doolan.
"What do you mean? What about the clock? You got to see it, all the gears and all. It’s cool. C’mon. Hey, what you laughing at?"
Strings of chewing gum wrapper dangled from each of Doolan’s ears and I couldn’t control myself. Still heaving with laughter, I told him to lead the way.
He tiptoed his way up the creaky steps to the trap door above his head and pushed it open. Then Doolan deftly climbed to the platform above and, with the strips of paper still drooping from his ears, turned and offered me a hand. I have to admit, the sight was equal to the billing Doolan had given it.
Light streamed through the opaque, ivory colored clock faces, each of which had the diameter of a tall man. The space had a dry, dusty smell and the floors, to my relief, were clear of pigeon droppings but dirty and dotted with splotches of oil that had dripped from the clockworks in the center of the tower chamber. From the clinking machinery, iron shafts protruded spider-like to the ornate black hands on the clock faces, moving them by the tiniest increments forward, second by second.
A few strange-looking tools and cans various solvents and oils lined a makeshift wooden work bench along one of the walls. I plucked a can of machine oil from the shelf, thinking the contents might help to clean the grime from my lucky coin, then took a rag lying nearby and dripped some oil on it. I worked the cloth over the coin, polishing it and buffing it on my shirt, and soon it took on a new sheen. A thin black line appeared along the circular border and the dull gray metal around the black eagle wings took on a silvery look. I turned the coin over. Now two more letters, E and I, appeared in a graceful pattern after the S-W that I had noticed before. S-W-E-I. Staring, I wondered what those four letters could mean.
My concentration was broken by a sound from below, the measured sound of footsteps. As a door creaked, I looked over to Doolan, whose widened eyes signaled that he had heard the same thing, right through his makeshift earplugs. He pulled the paper scraps from his ears and tossed them in a ball on the floor. There were a couple of more steps, then the entry door to the belfry below slammed shut.
Doolan motioned me over with a wave of his hand and whispered, "Hide, hide!"
Our only chance of getting out of sight was to hide behind a dark curtain that was draped from the tool bench. We crept behind it and scrunched down so we could fit, then pulled the curtain closed. Only a few seconds passed before we heard more steps, this time of someone ascending the stairs leading to the clock tower. My heart pounded and my back ached from stooping in that tiny space. The trap door creaked open, then slammed shut. Someone was in our midst.
For a few seconds, there wasn’t a sound except for wheezing breathing. I heard footsteps shuffle toward the far side of the chamber, a pause, and then steps toward our hiding place. Doolan nudged me with his elbow as his head reeled slightly with his mouth gaping, as if he was about to sneeze. Without thinking, I pinched the end of his nose between my thumb and finger, transforming his sneeze to a wince and a heave of his shoulders. The footsteps stopped. Our visitor, I feared, knew someone was here. An eternity of 10 seconds, maybe 15, passed before we heard another sound.
"Pigeons," said the voice.
The footsteps came closer, and finally stopped at the workbench. The toes of leather work boots protruded under the curtain, barely touching my sneaker.
There was a rustling sound on the bench above our heads, then a sudden woosh! of the curtain being swept open just to the side of us. A big hand jutted in and swept the dusty air, missing my head by inches. By now, I was shaking.
"Where is it?" said the gravely voice, and again, "Where IS it?"
The hand withdrew and whipped the curtain closed, nearly tearing it from the bench. There was more rattling on the bench above, and then a couple of footsteps. I heard a clinking sound, then the sound of a ratchet. I wanted to peek out of the curtain and see what he was doing, but didn’t dare.
The ratchet sound slowed and finally stopped and the footsteps came close to the bench. The big hand appeared behind the curtain once again, this time gripping a metal key almost as long as a baseball bat. The biggest key I had ever seen dropped on the floor beside me and the feet shuffled toward the trap door, which opened and slammed shut. The footsteps became quieter as our visitor creaked his way down the stairs, through the belfry and finally out.
We waited a long time before crawling from behind the curtain. Once out, we stretched our legs. Neither Doolan nor I spoke a word. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my lucky coin.
I stepped over to the clockworks, looking for the place where the key had been inserted. I became mesmerized by movement of the gears, watching the cogs bite, grip, then ease out of their clenches with other gears turning in the maze of machinery. I set my lucky coin on the top of the housing as my eyes followed the gear works to the iron shaft and then to the clock face. Something didn’t seem right.
"Doolan, look at the clock. Look, it’s wrong. This is just the afternoon, but the clock, look, it says two minutes after ten. All of them, look, two after ten, two after ten, two after ten, two after ten. It’s wrong."
Doolan looked up and studied a clock face for a moment.
"No, nincompoop. You’re seeing it backwards. It’s like a mirror. On the outside it says two minutes to two. Like a mir...
"Yo! We got to get out of here! The clock’s going to gong while we’re up here. Let’s go, NOW!" Doolan sounded desperate. He brushed by me as he ran toward the trap door, knocking my arm toward the edge of the gearbox where I had set my lucky coin. I heard a plink, and another plink-plink. I peered into the works and my coin was swallowed up in the gearbox, nowhere to be seen.
"NOW!" Doolan ordered, holding the trap door open. "I can’t stand to hear that bell again."
I looked into the gearbox one more time, but knew the coin was gone. I turned and followed Doolan down, taking one last look at the clock. The big hand had moved a notch: One minute to two.Doolan flipped open the trap door and hustled down the stair way to the belfry, and I was a step or two behind. The hatch to the belfry swung open, then shut and we made our way down the next flight of steps. Doolan pushed on the door to the top courthouse floor, and it didn’t budge.
"No, we can’t be locked in! No." he said.
In our panic, we both leaned on the door and it seemed welded shut. Doolan struck a match and spotted the deadbolt. He unlatched it and we were free.
We walked quickly through the courthouse hallways without looking sideways, and picked up our gait as we made our way toward the front door. Just as we walked out, the clock struck two with a pair of gongs.
Still unsure whether anyone had seen us, we hotfooted it to the first corner, turned onto a side street and headed back toward the school.
As our pace slowed down Doolan told me to stop so he could show me what he had found. He pulled a piece of paper from inside of his shirt. The paper, which seemed to have been torn from an old notebook, was brown and water stained, and some of the ink had run. The letters formed words I couldn’t understand.
"What do you think it says? Where’d you find it?" I asked.
"On the workbench. It looked like just an old piece of paper so I grabbed it. Thought I might need it to roll up and stuff into my ears but I didn’t have time."
I was barely interested.
"I lost my coin, my lucky coin," I said. "It fell in the clock machine when we were going out. Just shined it up too."
Doolan seemed to take some pity and handed me the old piece of paper.
"I’ll bet this is some kind of antique, probably worth more than that old coin, whatever it was," he said. "Here, take it."
I held it up to the light. None of the words made sense, and they seemed long and run together. Someday I’d get someone to help me figure out what it says, but not now. I stuffed the paper in my shirt and told Doolan thanks, but I couldn’t see how it would make up for my lost lucky coin.
Doolan fished in his pocket for some change and told me he had enough money for a couple of Pepsis. We detoured to the newsstand and slowly sipped our sodas, choosing our words carefully so no one who came in would know where we had just been. Once they were drained we meandered back across the railroad tracks, looking up and down the rails to see of the bright light of an engine was visible. There was no train, but the signal beyond the station beamed two amber lights, not the usual three.
Back at the school, we sat on the steps and looked at the paper Doolan had found, but it made no more sense than it had before. I began to fold it but the brittle paper started to break, so I tucked it flat inside my shirt. A finally told Doolan I had to get home or my mother would wonder where I had been. Doolan said so long and headed slowly across the schoolyard.
Just as I had expected, my mother asked where I had been. School closed at noon and it’s now three o’clock, she said, pointing to her watch.
"Nowhere," I said. "Just messin’ around."
Just then, the town clock struck twice.
"Funny, " Mom said. "I only heard two rings."
