"What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?"
“What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?”
A short story written in my teens
By Selina De Luca
I opened my eyes. What was the point of keeping them closed, if I couldn’t sleep? Mom always said that if I pretended to sleep, soon I’d really fall asleep, but it never worked. I looked across the room at the wall to see what time it was. The wall grinned back at me like a sheet of ice, clean and blank. No clock.
That’s right, I reminded myself, we haven’t unpacked it yet.
We’d just moved in to the new house the other day, and nothing was unpacked yet. Just the bed I was lying in and the dresser, empty and bare, along the equally-empty-and-bare wall.
The dresser had been my grandfather’s, and his initials were carved into it: B.W., for Bradley Walters. Those were my initials too, but they didn’t stand for Brad Walters, they stood for Brandon Wolf. The B.W. took a little away from the loneliness of the dresser, and the dresser took a little away from the loneliness of the room. I knew I should have unpacked something to put on that dresser. It looked like it needed something to cover its nakedness.
After a while, I felt my eyelids beginning to droop. I was being pulled into the deep abyss of sweet sleep. I vaguely wondered what time it was. I could feel my heartbeat, softly thumping, sounding like the ticking of a clock. Tick, tick, tick…
I opened my eyes again. The grandfather clock downstairs was chiming…it could tell me what time it was. I closed my eyes and strained my ears, listening…
One. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine. ten. eleven. twelve. thirteen.
My eyes snapped alert. Thirteen! Thirteen? Had I counted right? Maybe I was just tired…I swung my legs around and stood up. The air was chill, despite the furnace which I could hear banging in the radiator, and I shivered in my striped pyjamas. I tiptoed out of my room, my bare feet like ice on the floor.
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When I got to the top of the stairs, I was surprised to see light coming from down below. I even thought I could hear a voice, a rough voice humming, or singing. I crept down, and sure enough, there was my grandfather, sitting at the piano, humming—sounded like “Good King Wenceslas”—but he was not playing.
“Hmm hmm, hmm hmm, hmm hmm, hm—is that my little wolf cub?” he asked suddenly, abruptly turning toward me. He always asked me that, every time I came near him, and I would always growl in reply, unless there was a full moon smiling in the sky, in which case I would run to the window, throw up the sash, and emit a howl loud enough to wake the dead.
Tonight, however, I said nothing. I was too caught in the strangeness of the moment. There was something strange about it…something terribly strange…but I could not figure out what it was. It was not that he was blind and had noticed me, because that was normal. Perturbed a little my this sense of peculiarity, I nevertheless approached the piano, and said,
“Yeah, it’s me, Grandad.”
“Well” he said, facing the piano, “there’s a full moon tonight. Why ain’t ye howling?”
I couldn’t. And was it just me, or was his face thinner and older and paler than I remembered it being? Almost a year ago, the doctor had informed Mom and I that Grandad’s days were numbered.
“His days are numbered,” he had said. Yet many full moons had come and gone, and Grandad still hadn’t “kicked the bucket.”
While I was looking at him, Grandad lifted his hands and put them to the piano. I stared aghast, for though I perceived with my very own eyes that he was playing the keys, I heard nothing.
“Grandad,” I whispered, “am I deaf?”
“Can ye hear me voice?” he asked. I nodded.
“But…”
“Then ye ain’t deaf, ain’t ye?”
He smiled a little, then started playing again. I still could not hear the piano. I was about to ask him if he could hear it, when he began to sing, softly,
“Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Ste—”
He paused, leaning forward and squinting at the sheet of music propped up before him.
“Uh,—phen…”
I, too, looked at the music, and did not have the heart to tell Grandad that it was not Good King Wenceslas, but a page from Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
“What brought ye down here, anyway, in yer little pinstripe suit, little Wolf?” he asked, without stopping his hands or turning his head. He always said that, and it was a mystery to me how he always seemed to know I was wearing my striped PJ’s…although he had once said “you in yer pinstripe suit” when I was wearing pyjamas with no stripes, so at least it wasn’t like his blindness was a lie or anything.
“I wanted to know what time it was,” I told him.
“Yeah?” he said. “And what time is it, Mr. Wolf?”
“I don’t know…”
“What time do ye think it is?”
“Well…late…I don’t know…the grandfather clock chimed…well, I thought I counted thirteen.”
“Thirteen, eh?” he said. “Hmm…”
He continued silently moving his hands along the keys, and said nothing about the grandfather clock, like he always would.
“Grandfather?” he would say. “What Grandfather? Me, I’m the only Grandfather ‘round here!”
“Do you know what time it is?” I asked him. He stopped playing, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out his pocket watch, a beautiful golden watch with a chain I had always…well, not coveted…I guess, greatly admired. He opened it, and looked at it.
“Hmm…” he said. I leaned over to see, but before I could, he snapped it shut.
“You and yer Grandfather Clock,” he said. “This here’s me Grandson Clock.”
“Your what?”
“Here,” he said, and, taking my hand, he put the watch into it. I stared. “It’s yours, now.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Oh…gosh, I…well, thanks, I guess, uh…”
But he was already playing his Good King Wenceslas again. His knobbly fingers pressed down on the chords and his foot moved up and down on the pedal, but to me the only sounds were his breathing (he wasn’t singing just then) and the pocket watch ticking.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...
“Grandad,” I said then, after staring at the silent piano keys for what seemed like an eternity, “how come I can’t hear the piano?”
Somehow, I just had this uncanny notion that he would be able to tell me. He once again stopped playing and turned to face me. He put a steady hand on my shoulder, and despite his blindness I could have sword he was looking directly into my eyes. Our eyes were the very same colour, mine and his, only his were much older and wiser looking, and very blank, most of the time. Mine, on the other hand, were clear and young and bright—but the same bluish gray.
“Brandon,” my grandfather said, slowly and deliberately, “if you let the toughies get to you, and spend too much time brooding on them, then you won’t find the time to stop and enjoy the music.”
Before I could say, “what?” he was once again silently playing that Christmas song. I watched him play, imagining I could hear the familiar twang of the old piano.
“Better get to bed, then, little Wolf,” he said after flipping the music sheet over to the other side and playing further (though the back side was as blank as my bedroom wall.) “It’s awful late…I mean, thirteen o’clock, that’s later than it’s ever been before!”
I was getting tired.
“Alright,” I said, “goodnight, Grandad.”
“Goodnight, Wolf cub. And don’t ever forget what yer old Grandad told you about listenin’ to the music!”
I said “I won’t”, but I confess I had no idea what he meant. When I got to my room, I barely had time to set the pocket watch gently down on my dresser-top before I had to collapse on my bed in exhaustion, and in almost no time I was peacefully snoring away.
When I woke up the next morning, the night’s events came back to me in a rush…as well as the memory of Grandad’s death before we had moved, and the empty new house, with no Grandfather Clock or piano unpacked quite yet. In fact, it had taken me hours to convince Mom to not get rid of those two things—they had been Grandad’s, and Mom couldn’t bear to see them without him to be with them.
So it had been a dream, then, I thought, my inner voice sounding somewhat disappointed. Yet it hadn’t seemed very…dreamlike…
I slipped out of bed and went to the window. All the snow lay ‘round about, deep and crisp and even, and it sparkled in the early sunlight. Ignoring the cold, I cranked open the window and leaned out. The cold air hit me with a sense of freshness, and I smiled. Far, far away, I thought I could hear…music.
Music. I was sure I wasn’t imagining it, though it was terribly faint. I could hear a song, a song of hope, of gladness, of bittersweet joy. It filled me with a feeling of peace, and I felt like this moment would never end.
But it was pretty cold, so I finally ducked in and cranked the window shut. I sighed contentedly, and turned around to face the music.
Oh, what an odd expression, I thought, and my eyes fell upon an object on my dresser…my heart skipped a beat as I reached over and picked it up. The sunlight glinted off of it, and I held in to my ear.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...
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