The Time Keepers

Chapter 60

CHAPTER 60

S OON B ?O WAS RIDING NEARLY EVERYWHERE ON HIS NEW BIKE. He had never experienced such a smooth ride, with the firm black tires rolling beneath him. He rode down to the beach club and met Molly for a game of shuffleboard. He accepted Sister Mary Alice’s invitation to have a small basket put on the handlebars, and he began doing errands for the motherhouse in exchange for pocket money, saving every nickel and dime that he earned except for the occasional pack of gum. But the best news was when Anh told him about the possibility of working a few hours each week at the Golden Hours.

“Grace says you can help wind the clocks, and maybe also help clean the tools and put them back in the drawers.” She went over and tousled B?o’s hair. “Jack said he’d be happy to show you how all the timepieces work.”

B?o’s shoulders straightened.

“I’ll work hard.”

“Yes, you will,” Anh agreed.

“And I’ll learn to fix watches, just like Dad fixed radios.”

Anh looked at B?o’s expression, joy glinted in his eyes. Her nephew never once mentioned the wounds on Jack’s face. He only saw the possibility of learning something new from a person willing to share.

B?o loved having the wind on his back, his bottom lifting off the leather seat as he perched with his weight forward, coasting down the winding hills toward the center of town. It was a thirty-minute ride to the store, but he never felt tired.

When he arrived that first afternoon, Tom had just left for home and Jack was hunched over his latest repair.

He took off his magnifying visor. Beside him, Hendrix got to his feet and trotted over to greet the newest visitor.

“Hey, welcome,” Jack said over the hum of his cassette tape. He quickly lowered the volume, Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” faded into the background “I’m glad you were up to helping us out here.”

B?o smiled and bent down to rub Hendrix’s fur. “I want to learn,” he said as his eyes scanned the workshop.

“Do you remember how to wind the clocks like Molly showed you?” Jack pointed to the doorway that led to the showroom.

“Why don’t you start in there? That’s where Tom started me off, before I learned the bigger stuff.”

“Okay,” B?o answered. “I start there.” He gave Hendrix one last pat and then stepped into the next room, where he was greeted by the sound of a dozen minute hands ticking in perfect synchronicity.

Over the next few weeks, every time he arrived at the Golden Hours, B?o tried hard to do his best work. He cleaned the tools in disinfectant and organized them with care. Sometimes when he laid things out at Tom or Jack’s workstation, he thought about his mother—how she’d always tended to every object in their family altar with such tenderness and respect. In the same way she’d brought him up to honor his ancestors, he wanted to show his reverence for the two men who now made it possible for him to work at the store.

Sometimes, as he worked alongside Jack, he sensed a small ripple in the air, like a puff of breath on his shoulder. B?o felt his father’s voice whispering how proud he was of his boy. Though it was more of a sensation than a tangible experience, B?o knew it was real. And when Jack showed him a few simple tasks like how to replace a worn leather wristband or a broken buckle, he felt one step closer to believing this new place could become his home.

But one afternoon as he rode toward the Golden Hours, two boys started heckling at him. Buddy and Clayton had just stepped into Kepler’s to get two egg sandwiches to take back to their fort, when B?o rode past them.

B?o didn’t understand what the word faggot meant when the one with the red hair shouted it at him. But he did understand the spitting and the venom with which the word was hurtled into the air.

And when the lankier of the two figures, the one with the short, cropped blond hair, had taken a small rock and thrown it in his direction, he got that too. The rock missed B?o’s ankle by inches and ricocheted off the bike’s metal fender.

“Who rides a friggin’ purple bicycle?” Clayton muttered, tearing off a piece of the roll with his front teeth and swallowing it hard, his Adam’s apple pulsating like a little toad trapped in his throat.

“A dumb gook, that’s who,” he sneered.

Clayton crumbled the wax paper from his sandwich into a tight ball and threw it at the metal waste bin, missing it by a foot.

“I bet my uncle killed a shitload of ’em when he was in ’Nam,” Buddy boasted. He kicked the curb with the toe of his sneaker. “And now they’re in our own backyard. My mom said a whole boatful of them came over and are staying up the road with some nuns.”

In the sunlight, Clayton’s eyes looked eerily transparent, as if the blue color had been drained liked pool water, leaving them nearly white. Buddy looked up at him in quiet awe. Everything about him appeared dangerous and cool: the dungarees that hung below his hips, the white T-shirt with the small tear at the hem, and the Puma sneakers. Even his Texas accent made him sound tough. As B?o pedaled faster away from them, Buddy hung on to his friend’s every word.