The Grandfather Clock Read Online Free Page A

face winced, and I could tell
he thought I was talking about him.
    “ No,” I jumped in. “I want
what you have, only different. You have built something. You are
out there every day working with your hands, with people, making
things. That’s something. And it supports what is important to
you.”
    “ It takes work,” he
said.
    “ Do you know what I
do?”
    “ You run customer service
for a bank.”
    “ Wrong. My job isn’t to
train people to help customers. My job is to train people to help
the bank. A successful outcome is one that makes the bank money.
Credit card holders who pay their bill in full every month? They
are a bank’s nightmare.”
    “ Fair enough,” he said.
“You only have yourself to blame. Back to my original question.
What do you want? Not everyone gets a chance to start over. Don’t
squander this opportunity.”
     
    I took a detour past my old high
school on the way back to the hotel. I’m not the least sentimental
about high school. I was eager to get far away when I graduated.
Not because I’d had a bad experience. I had a good time. I just
wanted something different. I wanted to be out of the city. There
was something about the South that seemed foreign, yet welcoming.
Everything was familiar and different at the same time.
    Tustin High was a working class high
school. Aside from baseball, the athletic program was pathetic. I
played some organized volleyball and worked in a family-owned
hardware store. I spent a lot of time on the beach, taking a short
bus ride. The year I turned 17, I went from 5’11” to 6’3” and was
no longer intimidated by the beach volleyball games. I could lay
down a decent spike, and block well enough, but I was a finesse
player. I had a knack for knowing where the ball was going and
making a playable dig. I had a regular partner named Pick. He was a
Vietnamese high jumper. He was cocky, and got under the other
teams’ skin even when we weren’t winning. I was probably a better
player at 18 than in my late twenties. Then I started playing a lot
with Sam. We got good, but when I started dating Christie, I had
less time for it.
    I spent almost all of my last year in
Tustin out at the beaches. My dad was close to retirement and my
parents were spending more time in Santa Fe. My grandmother still
lived a half-mile away and would hear nothing of relocating. I
think that my mother felt guilty for moving to Santa Fe full-time
before my grandmother passed away. But once I was out of the house,
their life in Santa Fe was fresh and new, and many of their Tustin
friends had already left the area.
    The street names were all coming back.
Santa Clara, Holt, Lucero, Pacific. The school looked the same,
except for a couple dozen temporary classrooms that filled a
parking lot. I noticed some graffiti that might not have been there
10 or 12 years before. I pulled the van on to the 55 freeway to the
beach. I headed south toward Balboa. I recognized many of the beach
cottages along the main boulevard. Not a lot had changed. I parked
my giant van in a metered space on the street and walked down a
brick street to Joey’s, a pizza bar that I used to hang out in. It
was a slow Monday. I had been by the place a few times over the
years when I was visiting, including the previous year for my
grandmother’s funeral. I had seen a girl working there that I knew
vaguely from growing up.
    Erica was working the bar when I
walked in.
    “ Mike Chance! What brings
you to town?” she greeted me without hesitation.
    “ Just visiting my
brother,” I said, not about to get into it.
    “ Nice. They were in here a
couple months ago. Twin babies, so cute!”
    “ Yeah. They have their
hands full,” I said and ordered a beer.
    “ Food?”
    “ I ate. Just thought I’d
stop in. I don’t really know anybody out here anymore.”
    “ Lucky. Danny McCoy was in
here last night. Guy still thinks he’s god’s gift,” she said.
“Beer’s on me.”
    “ You don’t have
to.”
    “ Really,