Clock Without Hands

by Carson McCullers

  "How?" the Judge asked.

  "Eating them party sandwiches on them trays," Verily said stubbornly.

  Although the Judge was very sensitive to his own dignity, he was not so sensitive to the dignity of others. Sherman stifled his sudden rages in the Judge's presence and took them out on Gus, the new yardman, Verily, and most of all on Jester. But although the actual rage fits were smothered, the anger remained, and indeed increased. For one thing he hated reading Dickens, there were so many orphans in Dickens, and Sherman loathed books about orphans, feeling in them a reflection on himself. So when the Judge sobbed aloud over orphans, chimney sweeps, stepfathers, and all such horrors, Sherman read in a cold, inflexible voice, and glanced with cool superiority when the old fool acted up. The Judge, obtuse to the feelings of others, noticed none of this and was as pleased as pie. Laughing, drinking, sobbing at Dickens, writing whole mailsacks of letters, and never an instant bored. Sherman continued to be a jewel, a treasure, and no word could be said against him in the house. Meanwhile, in Sherman's dour but quailing heart things went steadily from bad to worse so that by the middle of autumn his feelings for the Judge were those of veiled but ever present hate.

  But in spite of the soft, clean, bossy job; in spite of the fun of riling that soppy, chicken-outing Jester Clane, that autumn was the most miserable one in Sherman's entire life. Day after day he waited, his very livingness suspended in the blank vacuum of suspense. Day after day he waited for the letter, and day after day, week after week, there was no answer. Then by chance one day he met a musician friend of Zippo Mullins' who actually knew Marian Anderson, owned a signed photograph of her and everything, and from this hideous stranger he learned the truth: Madame Anderson was not his mother. Not only was she wedded to her career and too busy studying to have had the time for love affairs with princes, let alone borning him and leaving him so peculiarly in a church pew, she had never once been to Milan and could not possibly have touched his life in any way. So the hope that had lifted and made so luminous his searching heart was shattered. Forevermore? He thought so at that time. That evening he took down his records of German lieder sung by Marian Anderson and stomped on them, stomping with such despair and fury that not a groove of the records remained unshattered. Then, as the hope and the music could not be altogether silenced, he threw himself with his muddy shoes on the fine rayon bedspread and scraped his body on it as he wailed aloud.

  Next morning he could not go to work as his fit had left him exhausted and hoarse. But at noon when the Judge sent him a covered tray of fresh vegetable soup with piping hot cornsticks and a lemony dessert, he was sufficiently recovered to eat the food slowly, languidly ... glad with the feeling-sick feeling and eating the cornsticks with his little finger delicately crooked. He stayed home a week and somebody else's cooking and the rest restored him. But his smooth, round face hardened and, although he did not think consciously about that cheating creep of a Madame Anderson after a while, he yearned to rob as he had been robbed.

  The first of that fall was the happiest time Jester had ever known. At first lifted by the wings of song, his passion now had quieted to friendship. Sherman was in his home every day, and the security of constant presence alters passion which is fed by jeopardy and the dread of change, of loss. Sherman was at his house every day and there was no reason to believe it would not go on forever. True, Sherman went out of his way to insult him, which wounded Jester. But as the weeks passed he had learned not to let the wounding remarks be felt too deeply or too long; indeed, he was learning to defend himself. Hard as it was for Jester to make up jazzy hurtful remarks, he was learning to do it. Furthermore he was learning to understand Sherman, and understanding which conflicts with the ruthless violence of passion leads to both pity and love. Nevertheless, when Sherman was away that week, Jester was a little bit relieved; he did not have to be on his P's and Q's every instant and could relax without the fear of having to defend his pride at any moment. Another element of their relationship was Jester's dim awareness that he was the chosen one; that he was the one that Sherman used to lash out against when he wanted to lash out against the world. For Jester knew dimly that fury is unleashed more freely against those you are most close to ... so close that there is the trust that anger and ugliness will be forgiven. Jester, himself, would be angry only with his grandfather as a child ... his fits of head-banging temper were directed only toward his grandfather—not Verily, Paul, or anybody else—for he knew that his grandfather would forgive and love. So while Sherman's wounding remarks were certainly no blessing, he sensed in them a kind of trust for which he was grateful. He had bought the score of Tristan, and when Sherman was away it was a relief to practice it without fear of belittling wisecracks. However, when his grandfather roamed the house like a lost soul and almost couldn't eat, Jester was concerned. "I just don't see what you see in Sherman Pew."

  "That boy's a jewel, a veritable treasure," the Judge said placidly. His voice changed when he added, "Besides, it's not a short time I've known the boy and I feel responsible for him."

  "Responsible how?"

  "It's because of me that the boy is an orphan."

  "I don't dig it," Jester protested. "Don't talk in riddles."

  "It's too sorry a business to be discussed, especially between you and me."

  Jester answered, "Anything I despise is for somebody to tell just half a story, work up a person's interest and then don't go on."

  "Well, forget it," his grandfather said. He added with a glib addendum that Jester knew was only a sort of camouflage to the truth, "After all, he was the colored caddy who saved my life when I was flailing and drowning in the golf pond."

  "That's just a detail and not the real truth."

  "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," the Judge said in a maddening voice.

  Deprived of the joys and the busyness of Sherman, the Judge wanted to rope in Jester, who was too busy with his own life and school to be roped in. Jester would not read immortal poetry, or play poker, and even the correspondence did not interest Jester a hoot. So the sadness and tedium returned to the Judge. After the manifold interests and activities of those months, solitaire bored him and he had read every speck of all the issues of the Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's.

  "Tell me," Jester said suddenly, "since you imply you know so much about Sherman Pew, did you ever know his mother?"

  "Unfortunately, I did."

  "Why don't you tell Sherman who she is. Naturally he wants to know."

  "That is a pure case where ignorance is bliss."

  "One time you say knowledge is power and another time you say ignorance is bliss. Which side are you on? Anyway I don't believe a particle in any of those old saws."

  Absentmindedly Jester was tearing up the spongy rubber ball the Judge used to exercise his left hand. "Some people think it's the act of a weakling ... to commit suicide ... and other people think it takes a lot of guts to do it. I still wonder why my father did it. And an all-around athlete, graduated with all honors from the University of Georgia, why did he do it?"

  "It was just a fleeting depression," the Judge said, copying J. T. Malone's words of consolation.

  "It doesn't seem an all-around athlete thing to do."

  While his grandfather carefully laid out the cards for a game of solitaire, Jester wandered to the piano. He began to play Tristan, his eyes half closed and his body swaying. He had already inscribed the score:

  For my dear friend Sherman Pew

  Ever faithfully,

  John Jester Clane

  The music gave Jester goose pimples, it was so violent yet shimmering.

  Nothing pleased Jester more than giving a fine present to Sherman, whom he loved. On the third day of Sherman's absence Jester picked some mums and autumn leaves from his garden and bore them proudly to the lane. He put the flowers in an iced-tea pitcher. He hovered over Sherman as though he was dying, which annoyed Sherman.

  Sherman lay languidly on the bed and when Je
ster was arranging the flowers he said in a sassy, languid voice: "Have you ever stopped to consider how much your face resembles a baby's behind?"

  Jester was too shocked to take it in, let alone reply.

  "Innocent, dopey, the very living image of a baby's behind."

  "I'm not innocent," Jester protested.

  "You certainly are. It shows in your dopey face."

  Jester, like all young things, was a great one for gilding the lily. Hidden in his bouquet of flowers was a jar of caviar which he had bought from the A & P that morning; now with the violence and insolence of this new attack he did not know what to do with the hidden caviar which Sherman claimed to eat by the ton-fulls. Since his flowers had been set so peculiarly at nought ... not a word of thanks or even an appreciative look ... Jester did wonder what to do with the hidden caviar, for he could not stand to be humiliated further. He hid the caviar in his hip pocket. So he had to sit gingerly in a sideways position. Sherman, with pretty flowers in the room which he appreciated but didn't bother to thank Jester for or mention, well fed with somebody else's cooking, and rested, felt well enough to tease Jester. (Little did he know that he had already teased himself out of a jar of genuine caviar which he would have displayed in the most conspicuous shelf in the frigidaire for many months before serving it to his most distinguished guests.)

  "You look like you have tertiary syphilis," Sherman said as a starter.

  "Like what?"

  "When you sit wonkensided like that it's a sure sign of syphilis."

  "I'm just sitting on a jar."

  Sherman did not ask why he was sitting on a jar and naturally Jester did not volunteer. Sherman only wisecracked: "Sitting on a jar ... a slop jar?"

  "Don't be so crude."

  "People in France sit like that a lot of times on account of they have syphilis."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because in my brief stint in the service I was in France."

  Jester suspected this was one of Sherman's lies but said nothing.

  "When I was in France I fell in love with this French girl. No syphilis or anything like that. Just this beautiful, lily-white French virgin."

  Jester changed his position because it's hard to sit long on a jar of caviar. He was always shocked by dirty stories and even the word "virgin" gave him a little thrill; but shocked or no he was fascinated so he let Sherman go on and he listened.

  "We were engaged, this lily-white French girl and I. And I knocked her up. Then, like a woman, she wanted to marry me and the wedding was going to take place in this ancient old church called Notre Dame."

  "A cathedral," Jester corrected.

  "Well, church ... cathedral ... or however you call it, that's where we were going to be married. There were loads of invited guests. French people have families like carloads. I stood outside the church and watched them coming in. I didn't let anybody see me. I just wanted to see the show. This beautiful old cathedral and those French people dressed to kill. Everybody was chick."

  "You pronounce the word 'sheik,'" Jester said.

  "Well, they were sheik and chick too. These carloads of relatives all waiting for me to come in."

  "Why didn't you go in?" Jester asked.

  "Oh, you innocent dope. Don't you know I had no intention of marrying that lily-white French virgin? I just stayed there the whole afternoon watching these dressed up French people who were waiting for me to marry the lily-white French virgin. She was my 'feancee' you understand, and come night they realized I was not going to be there. My 'feancee' fainted. The old mother had a heart attack. The old father committed suicide right there in the church."

  "Sherman Pew, you're the biggest liar who ever walked in shoe leather," Jester said.

  Sherman, who had been carried away with his story, said nothing.

  "Why do you lie?" Jester asked.

  "It's not exactly lying, but sometimes I think up situations that could very well be true and tell 'em to baby-ass dopes like you. A lot of my life I've had to make up stories because the real, actual was either too dull or too hard to take."

  "Well, if you pretend to be my friend, why try to make me be a sucker?"

  'You're what the original Barnum described. Barnum and Bailey Circus, in case you don't remember. 'A sucker is born every minute on this earth.'" He could not bear to think of Marian Anderson. And he wanted Jester to stay but he did not know how to ask him. Sherman had on his best blue rayon pajamas with white piping, so he was glad to get out of bed to show them off. "Would you like a little Lord Calvert's bottled in bond?"

  But whiskey and best pajamas were far away from Jester. He was shocked by the dirty story, but he was touched by Sherman's explanation of why he lied. "Don't you know that I'm one friend you don't have to lie to?"

  But gloom and rage had settled in Sherman. "What makes you think you're a friend?"

  Jester had to ignore this and he only said, "I'm going home."

  "Don't you want to see the fine food Zippo's Aunt Carrie sent to me?" Sherman walked to the kitchen and opened the icebox door. The frigidaire had a faintly sour smell. Sherman admired Aunt Carrie's fancy food. "It's a tomato aspic molded ring with cottage cheese in the middle."

  Jester looked dubiously at the food and said, "Do you lie to Aunt Carrie, Cinderella Mullins, and Zippo Mullins?"

  "No," Sherman said simply. "They got my number."

  "I've got your number too, and I do wish you wouldn't lie to me."

  "Why?"

  "I hate stating obvious facts and the fact why I don't like you to lie to me is too obvious for me to state."

  Jester squatted by the side of the bed and Sherman lay in his best pajamas, propped with pillows and pretending to be at ease.

  "Have you ever heard the saying that truth is stranger than fiction?"

  "Of course I've heard it."

  "When Mr. Stevens did that thing to me it was a few days before Halloween and it was my eleventh birthday. Mrs. Stevens had given me this wonderful birthday party. Many invited guests attended, some wearing party clothes and other people Halloween outfits. It was my first birthday party and was I thrilled. There were guests in witches' costumes and in pirates' outfits as well as party best clothes they wore to Sunday School. I started the party wearing my first brand new pair of navy blue long trousers and a new white shirt. The state paid my board, but that didn't include birthday parties nor brand new birthday clothes. When the invited guests brought presents, I minded what Mrs. Stevens said, didn't snatch at the presents but said 'Thank you' and opened them very slowly. Mrs. Stevens always said I had beautiful manners and I truly had beautiful manners on that birthday party. We played all kinds of games." Sherman's voice trailed off and finally he said, "It's a funny thing."

  "What's funny?"

  "From the time the party began until in the evening after it was over I don't remember hardly a single thing. For it was the evening of the fine party that Mr. Stevens boogered me."

  In a swift unconscious gesture Jester half raised his right hand as though warding off a blow.

  "Even after it was done and over and the real Halloween had already gone, I remembered only snitches and snatches of my b-bi-birthday p-party."

  "I wish you wouldn't talk about it."

  Sherman waited until his stammer was under control, then went on fluently: "We played all kinds of games, then refreshments were served. Ice cream and white iced cake with eleven pink candles. I blew out the candles and cut the birthday cake as Mrs. Stevens said for me to do. But I didn't eat a bite on account of I wished so much to have beautiful manners. Then after the refreshments we played running and hollering games. I had put on a sheet like a ghost and a pirate hat. When Mr. Stevens called out behind the coal house I ran to him quickly, my ghost sheet flying. When he caught me I thought he was just playing and I was laughing fit to kill. I was still laughing fit to kill when I realized he wasn't playing. Then I was too surprised to know what to do but I quit laughing."

  Sherman lay on the pillow
as if he were suddenly tired. "However, I have a charmed life," he continued with a tone of zest that Jester found hard to believe at first. "From then on I never had it so good. Nobody ever had it so good. Mrs. Mullins adopted me ... not a real adoption, the state still paid for me, but she took me to her bosom. I knew she wasn't my mother, but she loved me. She would beat Zippo and spank Cinderella with a hairbrush, but she never laid a hand on me. So you see I almost had a mother. And a family too. Aunt Carrie, Mrs. Mullins' sister, taught me singing."

  "Where is Zippo's mother?" Jester asked.

  "Died," Sherman said bitterly. "Passed on to glory. That's what broke up the home. When Zippo's father remarried, neither Zippo or I liked her a bit so we moved out and I've been Zippo's house guest ever since. But I did have a mother for a little while," Sherman said, "I did have a mother even though that cheating creep of a Marian Anderson is not my mother."

  "Why do you call her a cheating creep?"

  "Because I prefer to. I've ripped all thought away from her. And stomped on all her records." Sherman's voice broke.

  Jester, who was still squatting by the bed, steadied himself and suddenly kissed Sherman on the cheek.

  Sherman rared back in the bed, put his feet down for balance and slapped Jester, using his whole arm.

  Jester was not surprised although he had never been slapped before. "I only did that," he said, "because I felt sorry for you."

  "Save your peanuts for the zoo."

  "I don't see why we can't be serious and sincere," Jester said.

  Sherman, who was half out of the bed, slapped him again on the other cheek so hard that Jester sat down on the floor. Sherman's voice was strangled with rage. "I thought you were a friend and you turn out like Mr. Stevens."

  The slap and his own emotions stunned Jester, but quickly he got up, his hands clenched, and biffed Sherman straight in the jaw, which surprised Sherman so that he fell on the bed. Sherman muttered, "Sock a fellow when he's down."