Five days before Founders' Day, Arlo Quist told me what really happened to the clock hands. I'm Marjorie Pell, Harrow Falls' retired archivist. I'd climbed the tower expecting a thief. I found a sixty-six-year-old man on a crate, holding a rag.
"Start at the beginning," I said. "I'll write it down."
"You'd write it down anyway."
"I'd write it down better if you started at the beginning."
The beginning was a crack.
In September 2009, a month before the centennial, Arlo had been oiling the minute hand from the catwalk. He'd found a hairline fracture, two inches from the hub. Cast iron, a hundred years old, slowly giving up.
"Five feet of iron," he said. "Hanging over the square. Two thousand people coming. Kids on shoulders."
He'd reported it to the centennial committee. The committee chair took the report, nodded, and filed it under after.
Fix it after the ceremony. Don't touch the clock before the big day. Imagine the photos.
"Who was the chair?" I asked.
Arlo looked at the pendulum. "Gil."
"Gil Haverkamp?"
"He was a councilman then. Forty-one. Very excited about the cake."
So on the night of October 16, in the rain, Arlo had gone up one more time to check the crack. It had spread a full inch in a month. With a flashlight, he could see daylight through it.
He'd borrowed my windbreaker and climbed out onto the catwalk at two in the morning. He took both hands down. Both, because a clock with one hand looks broken.
"I didn't think about the other part," he said. "A clock with none looks like a mystery. I thought it would look like maintenance."
"It looked like a heist."
"I know that now."
He'd had a plan. There was a foundry in Pennsylvania, Kessler & Daughters Ironworks. They repaired old castings. He'd shipped the hands there the next Monday, in a crate, under the town's name.
"I meant to tell everyone after," he said. "After the ceremony. After people calmed down."
But people did not calm down. The police came, and the reward went up. The newspaper ran the story on the front page for six weeks. I know, because I clipped every one.
"Every day I waited, it got worse to say," Arlo said. "By Christmas it wasn't maintenance. It was a crime. And I was the criminal who'd let a whole town cry over a cake."
Then, in the spring of 2010, the foundry closed. Arlo called, and the number was disconnected. He wrote letters, and they came back.
He drove to Pennsylvania once, in 2011. He found a chain on the gate and a sign that said SOLD.
"They were just gone," he said. "Somewhere in a warehouse. Or melted."
"So you wound the clock."
"The mechanism doesn't know," he said. Then, after a moment, more quietly: "If they ever came back, I wanted them to be right."
I didn't write that part down. I didn't need to. I knew I'd remember it.
We climbed down together, all hundred and twelve steps. At the bottom, Arlo stopped with his hand on the door.
"Are you going to tell them?" he asked.
"Not yet," I said. "A confession with no hands is just a sad story. I'd like to bring the hands."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded, once. For Arlo, that is a signed contract.
That afternoon I sat in the garage with Dot, Bunny, and Arlo, in a circle of folding chairs. Each chair had a label. Arlo read his.
"1987-112," he said.
"It was a good year for chairs," I said.
"What's my number?" Bunny asked, looking at her own chair.
"You're sitting on 1987-113."
"Are they related?"
"They're a set. Please don't lean back."
I told them what I knew. Bunny cried a little and then cut the pie she'd brought. Dot made a new card for Gil Haverkamp, labeled Filed it under after. Arlo said almost nothing, which for Arlo is a speech.
"So the hands went to a foundry that went bankrupt," Dot said. "Where does stuff go when a company goes bankrupt?"
"An auction," Bunny said. "My uncle bought a pizza oven that way."
"And who covers bankruptcy auctions in small towns?" I asked.
Nobody answered. I stood up and went to the back wall, where 2010 lives.
"Local papers," I said. "The Courier traded clips with eleven papers in three states. We swapped regional stories by mail. I kept every one."
"Clips with scissors," Dot said.
"Clips with scissors."
It took four hours. Dot read the shoebox labels aloud. Bunny made coffee, which was a mistake. Arlo held the flashlight, because Dot insisted it was traditional now.
At 9:20 p.m., in shoebox 2010-088, I found it. It was a clipping from a small Pennsylvania weekly. Six inches, one column, page fourteen.
FOUNDRY ASSETS SOLD AT AUCTION
Contents of the former Kessler & Daughters Ironworks were sold Saturday in 112 lots. Bidders came from four states.
The auction was filmed and posted online by the auctioneer, Delbert Fry. "Folks like to see what they missed," Fry said.
"Posted online where?" Dot said.
I already knew. In 2010, a small-town auctioneer had exactly one place to put a video. Delbert Fry would have put it on clips.com.
I searched clips.com for "Kessler." Nothing came up. I searched for "foundry," "auction," and "Fry." Nothing.
The archive had been compressed and trimmed so many times that half the old videos had lost their titles. Some were just numbers now. Some were called "untitled (3)."
So I emailed Teddy.
I need another tape. An auction from spring 2010. The auctioneer was Delbert Fry.
I'm sorry. I know the drive sounds like a goose.
Marjorie. You have personally brought clips.com 900 new users. I would fight the goose for you.
Give me a day.
It took him two. The tape drive failed twice. On the third try, it worked.
He sent me six files, each about three minutes long. Kessler auction, lots 1-20. Lots 21-40. And so on.
I think these are the only copies left anywhere. The tape is very old. I watched them first, to make sure they played. Delbert Fry has a lot of energy.
We watched them in my kitchen. Delbert Fry had a voice like a lawnmower that had taken a public-speaking class. He sold anvils, a forklift, and nine hundred pounds of scrap brass.
Bunny fell asleep during the scrap brass. Dot took notes on every lot, in case the anvils were suspects. Arlo did not blink once.
Lots 21 to 40 were mostly pipe. Somebody bought a forge for less than my car is worth. Somebody else bought a box marked MISC and looked delighted about it.
I thought about the two kinds of clips I'd spent my life with. The ones with scissors had found the auction. Now the ones on clips.com were going to show us what was in it.
Lot 44 came up in the third video.
"Pair of clock hands," Delbert said. "Ornamental. Iron. Who'll give me twenty?"
They were leaning against a wall. They were black, with gold arrows at the ends. The minute hand had a bright patch near the hub, where somebody had welded the crack.
Arlo stood up so fast his chair fell over. Its label went skidding across the floor.
"They fixed it," he said. "They fixed it before they closed."
"Forty," Delbert said. "Sold, forty dollars, to bidder one-twelve."
The camera swung toward the buyer. It was a man in a barn coat, maybe sixty-five, holding a paddle. He was turning away. But his cap was in the shot.
It was a green cap, with white letters. The letters said VIK ORCHARDS, HARROW FALLS.
Nobody in my kitchen said anything for a full five seconds.
Then Dot said, very slowly, "That's twenty minutes from here."
Up next: On Time
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