Clocks

*** "I'm a clock-a rock-a, rockin' wit-da-rest." ***

It's been in our family for about 40 years. As children, we'd tear down our steps, banking left for the final four, and jump to ground level--stopping just in front of the clock, it ringing and rattling, like a growl. I'm not sure what the consequences would have been had a landing been "within" the clock, but I'm sure nobody would've been whistlin' dixie over shattered glass, a cut child, and a wounded grandfather clock.

It's a nice clock, maybe German and maybe 100 years old. That's what Brett the Clock Repairman said.

I was surprised the other night waking up to noise, a sick-clock noise, and a poor-for-sleeping smell. It was a sick-clock smell, I soon learned. I collected myself in the half-light of dawn, not quite scrambling to get out of bed but eager, wondering why my clock sounded sick and my house smelled.

Smoke, I saw it as soon as I landed at the bottom of the stairwell and turned left, one foot in the kitchen. Smoke from the clock, the sick clock. It's a big clock, a seven-feet-tall rectangle the size of a case of longneck beer bottles if you hugged it. I like the clock, but I can't say I've ever hugged it.

Where there's smoke you must stick your head in to find out why there is smoke. So I did that, the dong and chime wheezing all the while, probably from the smoke.

Why is my grandfather clock on fire?

It won't extinguish even though I'm sure it doesn't like water dumped all over it. I'll take it outside, to the backyard, hurl it out the door to rest there, sick from smoking and finally unable to injure others.

Now is my chance to hug the clock, hold time in my hands.

I can't though, not easily. It's big, not so much heavy but cumbersome. Wrestle it, to the floor. See why it's on fire. Fix the fire.

It's a heater, like a furnace. It has burners in it, the clock has natural gas burners, just like the massive furnace in my childhood basement with the blue flames I used to stare at, and hold slivers of wood to the flame.

My grandfather clock is a furnace of sorts, burners and everything.

Water doesn't help, it just keeps burning. Get it off the floor, drag it--drag it like a roll of carpet, heavy like a big tube of sand, but it will move. It has to move. A burning clock belongs outdoors.

I made the kitchen, made it to the kitchen. Two men, Somali men, my roommates I guess, pop from around the corner, looking at me, plain looks on their faces as to say, "Nothing unusual going on here." I nod to the back door.

They look at me, plain looks on their faces.

"Open the door!"

Door open, they walk, out the door. The door closes.

That's not helpful.

I put the big clock down, fire and smoke too. I have to open the door. I hear fire trucks. Not for me, it's just a furnace clock on fire, nobody knows but me--and my roommates.

We made it. Outside . . . clock, smoke, fire, and I, outside.

The fire trucks are here, they stopped, for me.

They can deal with the clock, right here in the grass. The clock is in the grass, right here.

Neighbors, all eyes up. Smoke, fire.

The roof is on fire?

Confusion, the confusion, it never stops. A fire impossible to put out.