The Watch

A short story by Cameron Scott | Storyletter Original

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Roger used to always say that his father didn’t work long hours, but that he was only home for a few. Even when he did see his father, the man rarely had anything to say. One morning, Roger was eating breakfast when his father entered the kitchen and stopped in the doorway, looking as if he had forgotten who Roger was. His father smiled briefly before moving to grab a coffee mug from the cupboard.

“How are you son?” he said. Roger forced down his spoonful of cereal.

“Good,” Roger said. Silence descended upon them, and he noticed his father fiddling with his left shirtsleeve, rearranging it upon his wrist so that the cuff rested perfectly against his skin. “And you? You’re alright?”    

“Yes, yes. I’m good,” he said. “Keeping busy, letting time escape me. You know?”

“No,” Roger said. “Can’t say that I do.”

Silence consumed the room once more. His father opened his mouth to speak, but re-considered, choosing instead to drink his coffee in slow, quiet sips. Roger tried to remember a time that he had a fulfilling conversation with his father, but no such memory came to mind. He had so much to say, but was afraid to speak the words. His father finished drinking the coffee and, again, re-arranged the cuff of his sleeve. As his father went to put his mug in the sink, Roger realized this was going to be his best opportunity.

“So,” Roger said. “Mom and I were talking about my high-school graduation present. She thought it might be nice that I get a watch, because both you and grandad got watches for your graduations, and it could be a nice family–”

“Don’t be stupid,” he quipped. “What would you need a watch for?” 

“Well, I could tell the time–”

“Plenty of things can do that. Time is everywhere. Check your phone, your computer, hell, look at the position of the bloody sun and work it out. You don’t need one.”

“Alright.”

“And as for a graduation gift, I would have thought a college education was enough. You don’t need anything else, do you?” It wasn’t a question that he wanted Roger to answer, but he did anyway.

“No, sir,” Roger said. 

“Good,” he said, unbuttoning his cuff and rearranging it on his wrist. Roger saw a glimpse of his father’s watch for the first time. It was only a glimpse, but it seemed to burn itself into his memory. His father’s wrist was bright red, as the strap was tied too tight, and he saw a thin vein of broken glass across the dial. He could almost read the time, but his father flicked his wrist, trying to shake the sleeve into position before he re-buttoned it and covered the watch completely.

“Besides,” his father continued. “You’ll be twenty-one in a few years, and you’ll get your own money, and you can buy as many damn watches as you want.” He stormed out of the room, leaving Roger staring into his bowl where each left-over cheerio seemed like small empty faces of old watches. He studied them all in a daze, trying to decipher the specks floating atop the yellowed milk.

That night, Roger woke to yelling. He searched in the darkness for the small alarm clock he hid in the draw next to his bed. It was thirty-eight minutes past two. With bleary eyes, he got to his feet and crept down the hallway to his parents’ room like he did when he was a child. He didn’t have to reach their room to hear their shouts, but he continued to their door and peered inside. 

“My obsession?” his father shouted. “Whose idea was it to give him a bloody watch, huh? Some sick joke?”

“It was no joke, Daniel,” she shouted back.

“So you want to give it to him?”

“No, I don’t want to give him yours, I want to get him a new one, a nice one, maybe that way he’ll never want that crappy old thing.”

“This belonged to my father,” he said.

“And look what happened to him?” she said. “Look what’s happening to you!”

“If I keep busy, I’m fine.”

“There’s a reason why you shouldn’t know the time, Daniel. It’s not healthy, and if you won’t get rid of it, I will.”

“You tried that, remember? You can’t break what’s already broken, Jane. All you did was crack the dial–the time hasn’t changed. And now I can’t get it to sit right.” He shook his wrist again and rubbed the watch against his skin, trying to shift it. 

“I don’t care anymore, but I won’t sit back and let you give that thing to our son. We’re getting him a new watch,” she said. “One that works.”

Roger flattened himself against the wall and held his breath as his mother stormed out of the room and straight past him down the hall. She never looked back. 

He peered around the doorway again to see his father sitting at his desk, staring at the watch. Minutes passed in loud thumping ticks as the desk clock kept its time. Roger thought his father had fallen asleep, but his eyes were most certainly open. The second hand on the desk clock continued to move, and Roger watched his father. At forty-three minutes past two, his father heaved a great sigh. It was so sudden and forced that Roger flinched, making a noise against the door frame. 

His father looked up at the doorway, his tired eyes locking with Roger’s own, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared. Without knowing what else to do, Roger ran back down the hall to his room and jumped into bed. He pulled the covers over his head like he did when he was little and tried desperately to forget what he had seen.

Two mornings later, when Roger woke up at seventeen minutes past nine, he went to the kitchen to find a small box resting on the table. There was no one around to present it to him; it was just sitting on the table, alone. Underneath the box, he found a letter. It was written on his father’s paper, and he recognised the ink of his father’s pen.  On its cover it read, in small, slanted letters: Roger Edwards II. He opened the letter and read the inscription.

For your graduation.

From Jane and Daniel Edwards.

Wind it daily.

They were the nicest things he had ever read from his father. He opened the box with trembling hands, only to find the bright, sparkling face of a brand-new Rolex staring back at him. Roman numerals marked the segments of time, and the hands were elegant pieces of fine gold that stepped their way around the watch with a beat so quiet that his ear was nearly touching the glass before he could hear it. He took the watch out of the box and felt the weight in his hand. He unbuckled the chain and enclosed his wrist within its heavy frame. He walked to the clock on the oven and checked that the time was correct, thirty-three minutes past eight. 

It was perfect. 

He hated it. 

He was just about to take it off when his father entered the kitchen and sat down. 

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning,” Roger said.

“I see you found the watch.” His father unfolded the newspaper that lay in the centre of the table. He spread its pages wide, hiding his face. 

“Yes, I did.” Roger held his arm up, trying to catch his attention. “It’s great, I love it.”

“Your mother picked it out,” he said, turning a page. 

“Oh,” Roger said. He saw his father’s watch peeking out from under his shirtsleeve as he held the newspaper. Before he could stop himself, he asked: “Why do you wear a broken watch?”

“Who told you I wore a broken watch?” he asked.

“I heard you and mom arguing about it the other night.” The seconds of silence felt like hours before his father cleared his throat to answer him.

“It’s not broken,” he said. “It just doesn’t tell the current time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What else do watches do?”

“That’s a good question.”

He could tell that this was a useless conversation, but still, Roger persisted:

“So why wear it? Why not get a watch that works?”

His father heaved a sigh and put the paper down on the table. At first he seemed angry, but Roger didn’t retreat. They waited for the other to speak but neither did. Then, he watched as his father stretched his arm forward, forcing his sleeve to slide back to reveal a second watch strapped next to the first. The second watch was almost identical to the one Roger was just gifted. When his father spoke again, his voice was softer, kinder.

“I have a watch that works,” he said. “I wear two.”

“Why?”

“This watch was my father’s. It meant something to him,” he said, tracing his finger across the crack in the glass.

“But why not get it fixed?” Roger said. “Why wear two?”

“You can’t fix it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t change the time. You can. But you can’t fix it, because it’s not broken.”

“I don’t–”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“But what does it do?”

“Look, don’t you have somewhere to be?” his father asked, his tone snapping to its original stiffness.

“It’s summer break,” Roger said. “Remember? I just graduated.”

“Right. Well some of us have to work.” Without looking up, he folded his newspaper and left the room. Roger heard him walking across the foyer, then the front door creaked open and slammed shut behind him. 

He wondered for a moment what his father had meant about the watch. He had never seen him looking at anything the way he looked at it. Roger regarded his own watch, checking and rechecking the time to see if his opinion on the piece changed. It didn’t. He wanted his father’s watch, he wanted to know what it did, if it didn’t tell time.

It was thirty-five minutes past nine.

On the day that Roger went to Harvard, his father shook his hand and said: “Good luck.” It was the second nicest thing he had ever heard, right after the words written for his graduation gift. He moved into a room in his dorm by himself. He had no reason to complain, he preferred to be on his own, he found it easier to think on his own. 

He decided to study mechanical engineering; he was fascinated with the mechanics of things, how to pull something apart and put it back together again. He wanted to know how to fix those things when they broke. 

One night, he received a phone call at twenty-eight minutes past ten. His Uncle Henry, on his father’s side, was on the other end of the line. Roger had never spoken to his uncle over the phone. He saw the image of his father sitting at his bedroom desk holding his breath, staring into space. He knew that it wasn’t going to be good.

“Roger?”

“Yes.” 

“It’s about your mother.” Before Roger had time to respond, he continued: “She died sometime in the night a few days ago.”

“What?”

“The funeral’s tomorrow. You should be there,” he said. Roger struggled to find words to say. “Roger?”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. I’ll be there.” His uncle Henry proceeded to give him the details of the funeral and when he hung up, Roger had to run to catch the evening train. The last one left at five minutes past eleven. It was half past ten.

Roger arrived at the funeral six minutes early. He had tried to make sure that he wasn’t late but he didn’t want to be too early. He loved his mother, but hated his family, and as the event so clearly inferred, his mother wasn’t going to be there, but his family was. When he arrived, he was bombarded with looks of judgement. He ignored them and walked directly to the front row to seat himself next to his father. 

“Hi,” Roger said as he sat down, his father didn’t respond, his sight was fixed on both of his watches. He went to say something to him, to try and get a reaction, but his uncle sat down next to him with a heavy thump. 

“Cutting it fine aren’t you, Roger?” his uncle said.

“I–”

“It’s customary for the immediate family to arrive at least an hour before,” he said in a hushed tone. “I would have thought that at your mother’s funeral, you would have been on time.”

“Coming earlier wouldn’t change the fact that she’s dead,” Roger said. His uncle received his words in disgust, but Roger didn’t regret saying them. He knew that his mother had known he loved her; he used to tell her that every day.

The funeral began and Roger noticed that his father only had eyes for his watches. He was so consumed by their faces that he didn’t realize it was time for him to say the eulogy. Uncle Henry gave him a swift jab in the ribs, telling him to instruct his father to speak. When he did, his father looked up at the empty podium in a daze. Releasing an elongated breath, he walked to the podium and spoke.

“If I had known how little time we had left together, I would have done it differently. I would have told her that I loved her. I would have told her that she was right about everything, and that she was beautiful all the time.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Even when she cried she was beautiful. I would have told her everything that I loved about her, every time I thought about them because that still wouldn’t have been enough.” He paused again. Roger saw his gaze shift to his left wrist, and slowly Roger and the entire reception watched his father cry. “If I had her wear it,” he sobbed, “then I would have known how much time we had left. I would have known when she was leaving–” 

“Alright, Daniel, that’s enough,” Uncle Henry said, appearing by his side.

“What–”

“It was beautiful,” Uncle Henry said. “Take a seat.” He pointed back to the front row of seats where the rest of the family sat with their backs straight and their lips taught. His father obliged in an unsteady walk where he sat back down next to Roger. “She will be missed,” Henry finished, before he nodded to the priest. Before long the priests’ holy words poured out onto the reception.

Everyone listened except for Roger whose ears could only hear the soft crying breaths coming from his father’s lips as he rubbed the broken watch back and forth against his wrist. 

He didn’t say a word to his father, as he couldn’t find the words to say. It was the first time he had realised that his father had loved her. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he put his hand on his father’s arm, just above where the two watches lay. His father hesitated, but after a few moments, he rested his hand on top of Roger’s, before he broke down completely into loud heaving sobs. 

Roger didn’t give a eulogy because his father had said everything he thought was necessary. As he was leaving the church grounds to catch the four o’clock train, he heard his father’s voice from behind him. 

“Son.”

Roger turned to face him. His father slumped in the doorway of the church.

“Yes?”

“You can come home,” he said. “In the summer, I mean. Your room is still there, just as you left it. Your mother made sure of that. So if you have nothing to do– ”

“Yeah,” Roger said. “Sure. I’ll come back home for the summer.”

“Good,” he said. “Good.” With nothing further to say, he wandered away, back to the cemetery. 

Roger did return in the summer, but when he did, he came home to a broken man. His father hadn’t come to greet him when he arrived. He found him sitting in the library in an old armchair by the window, hunched over his left arm. He was sick, and he seemed unbelievably frail as if he had aged twenty years in the last few months.

He had begun to only wear the broken watch, and when Roger approached him to say hello, he saw for the first time that it read: forty-three minutes past two. 

“Hi,” Roger said. His father flinched in his chair, only just noticing that he was there. 

“Roger!” he said, his eyes wide. “You’re home!”

“How are you, Father?”

“Fine, fine,” he said. “Have you seen your room? It’s exactly as you left it. Your mother told me not to change a thing. Not to move anything or clean it up. Nothing. It’s exactly how you left it.”

“No, I haven’t had a chance yet. I’ll go do that now.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Go, quickly, do it now. You’ll see, it’s exactly how you left it. Just like she told me to.”

The house felt deserted as he walked towards his room. His shoes smacked against the wooden floors in the hallway, and he saw that there was a thick layer of dust on all the furniture. Roger’s room was exactly as he had left it, just like his father had said. He dumped his luggage in the corner of the room and left for the kitchen. 

He opened the fridge and all the cupboards, only to find an old can of beans, a mouldy loaf of bread and two tomatoes. He realized why his father looked so frail, he wasn’t eating. He walked back to the library where he found him in the same position. His eyes lit up with the same excitement at the sight of him.

“I’m just going to the store,” Roger said. “I’m going to get some food for dinner.”

“You’re leaving so soon?” his father asked.

“I’m just getting some food, I’ll be back, alright?”

“Alright,” he said, unconvinced.

“What’s the time?”

“Forty-three minutes past two,” he said, reading his broken watch.

“Okay, so I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Got it,” he said, and turned back to his watch. Roger wondered for a moment what his father was doing. He ran to his car and sped to the store, as if the watch was actually counting.

He realized that his father had quit his job. Roger brushed this off as a part of the grieving process; he pretended that he would go back to work once he was ready. But it was more than that.

His father didn’t do much at all. Roger would bring him his meals to make sure that he ate, and he would occasionally find him reading or wandering the house. But mostly, he sat in his armchair and watched his broken watch. 

Roger cleaned the house, sorting through old pieces of furniture that they no longer needed, and preparing others for storage. The house was two big for his father alone. Maybe they would be able to find a smaller one close by. He didn’t mention this to his father, he needed to wait for the right moment. 

One morning, he was in the kitchen sorting through drawers of silverware when he opened one that was supposed to be filled with platters, only to find it filled with watches instead. Their faces stared at Roger with no eyes, and their hands moved in discord with one another, so that a minute lasted for a whole minute and a half. 

Roger shut the drawer with a bang. 

He took longer making lunch that day, as he saw the drawer in his peripheral vision and kept imagining that he heard the watches ticking inside. When he finished making the food, it was already thirty-four minutes past two. He went to the study, carrying the lunch on a tray, but his father wasn’t there. He wandered the house looking for him, until he found him sitting at his desk, his wrist right next to the desk clocks’ face. He was waiting for their times to match. 

“I have your lunch,” Roger said. His father ignored him, his eyes fixed on the hands of the working clock. “It’s a little bigger than usual, because you didn’t eat much breakfast.” His father still ignored him; instead, he took a deep breath. The cold memory of the last time he had seen his father sit at his desk like this sprang to his mind so vividly, that he, too, stopped and stared, watching his father watch the time. With a sigh, Roger put the tray on his desk.

“What’s the time?” he asked.

“Forty-three minutes past two.”

“I made you lunch. Eat it.” His father nodded mournfully and Roger turned to leave. Then, he remembered the kitchen drawer.

“Why do you have a drawer full of watches in the kitchen?”

“Who told you I have a drawer full of watches in the kitchen?”

“I saw it.”

“They’re not right. None of them are right. I need to know the exact time, down to the second. I need to know–”

“Why? Why do you need to know the time?”

“You can’t understand.”

“Then explain!”

“No. I don’t want you to understand.”

Roger stormed away, leaving his father alone with his lunch and the ticking desk clock.

That night Roger found himself unable to sleep. He lay motionless in his bed staring at the ceiling, wondering how he was ever going to understand his father and his bizarre obsession. At thirteen minutes past one, he decided to go for a walk and clear his head. He wandered down the sidewalk and forced himself to think about other things. He started doing math problems in his head, basic trigonometry that was easy to solve until he worked his way up to more complex algebra that were like the ones he had completed in his final exam. 

When his mind was clear, and his legs began to wear, he wandered home. When he walked in the door, he noticed the kitchen light was on. He followed the light and found his father standing in the centre of the kitchen, watching the small clock on the oven. Roger stood in the doorway without saying a word. He watched as his father took the same deep breath and waited for time to pass. After a long minute, he released it, and walked back out of the kitchen. Roger flattened himself against the wall, trying not to be seen. 

His father walked right by him and said: “Goodnight.” Roger watched his father walk up the stairs towards his bedroom, as he tried to solve the most complex problem happening right before his eyes. 

Days morphed into one another and Roger continued to look after his father. He thought about not making his meals just to see if he noticed but he knew that he wouldn’t. The only thing that his father seemed to notice was the time. 

Roger realized that if his father depended on the time, and if he broke the clocks, this might force his father to break his dependence upon them. He could finally start to heal. 

Roger began by taking out all the batteries in the watches he found in the kitchen drawer. He stacked them up in a pile on the counter. Afterwards, he served his father lunch, and when Roger knew he was watching the clock on his bedroom desk, he smashed them to pieces using an old hammer he found in the basement. He disposed of the broken batteries in a single large bag before he returned all the watches back to the drawer where their faces were frozen, their expressions mocking his father’s mania. 

He closed the drawer and stalked throughout the house, breaking every instrument of time that crossed his path. He broke the cuckoo clock in the study, the small oven clock in the kitchen and the desk clock in his father’s bedroom. He hid his alarm clock, his computer, and mobile phone. He tore the hands off of the third-generation grandfather clock in the foyer and stomped on the metronome that rested upon the grand piano’s lid. Anything that resembled a clock, or made a ticking sound was destroyed, while his father sat in his usual pose, watching his broken watch, completely unaware. 

He came to the final watch: his own. Roger stared at it, hammer in his right hand ready to make it join its fellow broken companions. But he couldn’t. 

He saw his mother when he looked upon its face, remembered how she had argued with his father to buy him the piece, because she saw the opportunity for him to be a part of the family tradition. He couldn’t break it. Not this one. He hid the hammer underneath the kitchen sink and put on a jacket that concealed his secret while he made his father dinner. When he handed the plate over to him, he couldn’t help himself, he asked his father what the time was. His father looked at his wrist and answered dutifully: “It’s forty-three minutes past two.”

That night, Roger woke to his father shaking him. His eyes were wide and his teeth were bared in an unnatural grimace as he rattled Roger like a mystery-box. 

“What did you do to them?” he hissed. “What have you done?”

“Stop it!” Roger shouted and his father obliged, instead placing his hands on either side of him and staring deep into his eyes. Roger grabbed at his blankets, trying desperately to pull them over his head but his father kept them pinned in their place. 

“What’s the time!?”

“I don’t know,” Roger said. “I was trying to help. I only wanted to help–you need help.”

“Do you know what it’s like? Knowing what I know? Knowing what time it’s going to happen, but not knowing what day? I wait and wait. But nothing happens, so I survive another day, but then time keeps ticking forward. Tick, tick, tick! And then I have to wait again!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Time, Roger! I found out my time. The time. The time that I’m going to die. You don’t believe me, how could you? I used to be able to forget about it. I worked. I worked and worked but nothing changed, the time didn’t change. And yet time was constantly changing. You see? I can’t do it anymore. I cannot do it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Roger said as he stretched across and switched on his lamp. When it burst to life, he saw the whites of his father’s eyes, his pupils shrank against the brightness, making his gaze seem even more insane. He was staring at the lamp. No, it wasn’t the lamp; it was Roger’s wrist. He had seen Roger’s working watch. 

“Listen,” started Roger, “it’s for the best–” his father leapt towards him, grappling at Roger’s wrist, as Roger twisted and turned away from him. 

“Enough!” Roger shouted. With all his strength, he pushed his father off of his chest. He flew for less than a second, but it was as if time had stopped. He flew upwards, away from Roger, away from the working watch, until he began to fall back towards the ground where he hit his head on the bedside table, landing on the ground with a thud. 

Roger stared at his unmoving father. He swung the sheets off and hopped down to the floor, shaking his father like he, himself, had been shaken only minutes earlier. He didn’t move. Roger then saw what time was on his wrist: it was forty-three minutes past two. 

Roger didn’t go to the funeral. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the house. Uncle Henry came around in the late afternoon on the day of the service, explaining how it was customary for the immediate family of the deceased to attend the funeral. Roger said he was sorry. Uncle Henry said that he was sorry, too, that his father had died. Sorry that Roger had to witness it. 

“Yes,” Roger said. “It was tragic.” 

“Quite tragic,” Uncle Henry said. Silence fell upon them in the empty foyer of the old house. Roger had finished cleaning, selling what he thought he could sell and throwing away the rest. He didn’t want the memories, didn’t need the furniture. His uncle pulled an envelope from his inside coat-pocket; it read Roger Edwards II in elegant cursive upon its cover.

“It should be no surprise to you,” Uncle Henry said, “that you are your father’s heir. After the house, its contents and his share of the family fortune, this is the last piece you’re left to inherit.” Roger stared at the envelope. It protruded in the centre, telling him immediately what it was. 

“I don’t want it,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” his uncle said, opening the envelope and spilling its contents into the palm of his hand. The watch slid out like a whisper and stared at Roger. “This watch belonged to your father, and his father before him. It’s an heirloom, a family tradition. Each father passes it on to his eldest son. It would have been my honour to receive such a gift.” 

“But it’s broken,” Roger said.

“Yet they wore it anyway. It’s customary that you accept items that are bequeathed to you, Roger. You’re not going to disappoint me again now, are you?” Roger took the watch out of his uncle’s hands and wrapped it around his naked wrist. He had taken off his working watch on the night of his father’s death, vowing to never look at a clock again.

As Roger sealed the clasp shut, the cool leather against his skin seemed to melt into his body, taking hold. He didn’t know how, but he recognized that he would never be able to take it off again. 

Uncle Henry looked satisfied. He looked from the watch back up at Roger and, with exaggerated curiosity, he asked: “Excuse me, Sir, can you tell me the time?” Roger told his uncle the exact time, his time, the time he was going to die.

“It’s six minutes past nine.”

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The Watch is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental, or made with the utmost respect.

2023 Storyletter XPress Publishing LLC, Digital Substack Edition.

Story by Cameron Scott. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Winston Malone and Cameron Scott.

Edited for digital publication by Winston Malone.

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