Clock Without Hands Read Online Free

with wondering blue eyes. "All the same it's a fact that you look peaked these days. Liver is excellent for the blood. You ought to eat crisp fried calf liver and beef liver smothered in onion sauce. It's both delicious and a natural cure. And sunlight is a blood moderator. I bet there's nothing wrong with you that sensible living and a spell of Milan summer won't cure." The Judge lifted his glass. "And this is the best tonic—stimulates the appetite and relaxes the nerves. J.T., you are just tense and intimidated."
    "Judge Clane."
    Grown Boy had entered the room and stood there waiting. He was the nephew of Verily, the colored woman who worked for the Judge, and he was a tall fat boy of sixteen who did not have his share of sense. He wore a light blue suit that was too tight for him and pointed tight shoes that made him walk in a gingerly crippled way. He had a cold and, although a handkerchief showed in his breast pocket, he wiped his running nose with the back of his hand.
    "It's Sunday," he said.
    The Judge reached in his pocket and gave him a coin.
    As Grown Boy limped eagerly toward the fountain, he called back in a sweet slow voice, "Much obliged, Judge Clane."
    The Judge was looking at Malone with quick sad glances but when the pharmacist turned back to him he avoided his eyes and began to massage his cane again.
    "Every hour—each living soul comes closer to death—but how often do we think of it? We sit here having our whiskey and smoking our cigars and with each hour we approach our final end. Grown Boy eats his cone without ever wondering about anything. Here I sit, a ruin of an old man, and death has skirmished with me and the skirmish has ended in a stalemate. I am a stricken field on death's old battleground. For seventeen years since the death of my son, I have waited. Oh, Death, where is thy victory now? The victory was won that Christmas afternoon when my son took his own life."
    "I have often thought of him," Malone said. "And grieved for you."
    "And why—why did he do it? A son of such beauty and such promise—not yet twenty-five and graduated
magna cum laude
at the University. He had already taken his law degree and a great career could have been open to him. And with a beautiful young wife and a baby already on the way. He was well-to-do—even rich—that was the zenith of my fortunes. For a graduation present I gave him Sereno for which I had paid forty thousand dollars the year before—almost a thousand acres of the best peach land. He was the son of a rich man, fortune's darling, blessed in all ways, at the threshold of a great career. That boy could have been President—he could have been anything he wanted. Why should he die?"
    Malone said cautiously, "Maybe it was a fit of melancholia."
    "The night he was born I saw a remarkable falling star. It was a bright night and the star made an arc in the January sky. Miss Missy had been eight hours in labor and I had been groveling before the foot of her bed, praying and crying. Then Doc Tatum collared me and jerked me to the door saying, 'Get out of here you obstreperous old blunderbuss—get drunk in the pantry or go out in the yard.' And when I went out in the yard and looked at the sky, I saw the arc of that falling star and it was just then that Johnny, my son, was born."
    "No doubt it was prophetic," Malone said.
    "Later on I bustled into the kitchen—it was four o'clock—and fried Doc a brace of quail and cooked grits. I was always a great hand at frying quail." The Judge paused and then said timidly, "J.T., do you know something uncanny?"
    Malone watched the sorrow on the Judge's face and did not answer.
    "That Christmas we had quail for dinner instead of the usual turkey. Johnny, my son, had gone hunting the Sunday before. Ah, the patterns of life—both big and small."
    To comfort the Judge, Malone said: "Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Johnny was cleaning his gun."
    "It wasn't his gun. It was my pistol."
    "I was hunting at Sereno that