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Gershom checked his pocket watch and stepped off the Greyhound right behind the Jap and the Negro woman. Sarah would’ve been nervous, but as for him, well, he had nothing against colored folks so long as they didn’t steal things, and the few Nips he’d met seemed nice enough. Old Emi Hatsu been running the post office for going on most ten years now and spoke passable English, even if he did smell like a Sarnia fish market. Gershom was even the first to see Hatsu’s grandson, a cute little thing with slanty eyes, yellow skin, and big fat cheeks.
This was his second bus trip, the first being near ten years ago, when Jacob and Esther were having problems. Took the bus all the way to Calgary to convince his youngest to stick it out, but didn’t do no good. After years of Pastor Bechtel pestering him, he finally rang up Jacob again. The conversation lasted maybe five minutes.
Mel, his oldest, bought him this trip for his seventy-fifth birthday, so he couldn’t rightly refuse. Besides, even though he lived just shy of fifteen miles from Stratford—twenty-two kilometers if you used that fool metric system Trudeau switched them to years ago—where they held the Shakespeare festival, he’d never seen a play done by anyone other than Sunday schoolers. This one was in Chicago, and he’d never been to the States either. But mostly he figured it might be his last chance to patch things up with Jacob.
He headed for a desk that said Shuttle to Hotels. A taxi would more than likely be twenty dollars, twenty-five if you figured in the exchange rate. Highway robbery. Paying his five dollars US, he walked out to the curb to wait for the shuttle. Four taxis pulled up, all driven by towel-heads. He shooed them off, and a minute later the shuttle showed up, a green van with an electric sign saying it was going downtown. The folding door opened and he peeked inside. The driver was a woman, but at least she was white. He climbed in and set his bag on the seat beside him.
After a few minutes of staring out the window, he decided Chicago didn’t look much different than Toronto or Kitchener, and since he wasn’t fussy on big cities anyhow, he settled for studying the free map he got at the depot. When they got to the hotel, the door opened, and the driver held her hand out. He reached into his pocket, selected a US quarter, and pressed it in her palm.
She looked at it. “Gee, Grandpa, thanks so much.”
“Oh, fine.” What an ungrateful woman. After all, wasn’t she already getting paid? He didn’t have to tip her at all. Still, he pressed three more quarters into her hand. “Better?”
“Have a good day.” She withdrew her hand. “Don’t spend too much.”
Grabbing his bag, he stepped out, the door automatically closed behind him, and the shuttle took off. That’s what he hated about big cities more than anything else. People were just plain rude. And greedy.
Passing through the revolving glass door, he headed for the check-in desk, where a boy with an earring in each ear greeted him. A couple of his grandsons looked like that, and they weren’t queers, so this boy probably wasn’t either. Just the same, Gershom didn’t look him in the eye.
“This is your room key,” the boy said, handing him something that looked like a credit card. “Just slide it through the slot on the door. When the light turns green, you’re good to go. Need help with your bag?”
“I’m fine.” He only had the one. Besides, he’d probably have to tip someone again.
“You’re on the third floor.” The boy pointed toward the elevator across the room. “If you need anything, just dial zero.”
He’d been on his backside for hours and needed to stretch, so he decided to take the stairs. Three floors was nothing. Maybe he didn’t farm a hundred acres any more, but he kept busy and was in good shape, so when he reached his floor, he wasn’t even out of breath. A small room to his right had an icemaker and a soda pop machine, but what he really wanted was a beer.
The room had a huge bed. Sarah and him never had a bed that big. It was wasteful. The remote on the nightstand looked like his at home. The kids bought him a new set four years ago when his old one gave up the ghost, so he knew how to use it. He hit the button, the idiot box came on, and he saw at least a hundred channels, including some playing adult films. He wasn’t some backwards farm boy. He knew what those were.
When the video store opened about thirty years ago, he’d gone with Mel to have a look-see. As his oldest walked around the aisles, Gershom entered a room in the back that said You Must be at Least 18 to Enter. He was pretty sure what he’d find there. After all, he’d seen girly mags before, but curiosity got the better of him. What he found wasn’t just films of boys and gals having intercourse. There was men with women, women with women, and buggering everywhere. A couple of the covers even showed a heap of naked people doing things all together. The TV menu said adult films were ten dollars. He could think of a lot better things to do with ten bucks than watch a roomful of people rutting around like pigs.
Turning off the TV, he opened the nightstand drawer and found tourist information and a Gideon’s Bible. The Gideons weren’t Mennonite, but at least they were Christians. Then again, Catholics claimed to be Christians too, but it was hard to tell with the way they worshipped saints and all. Oh, well. God would sort it all out eventually. Closing the drawer, he opened his pocket watch. Seven o’clock, the same as the digital clock on the nightstand. This timepiece hadn’t lost a single minute since he inherited it from his father.
Jacob’s play didn’t start until nine, so he had plenty of time for supper. Sausage and sauerkraut and a beer would be just the ticket. Mel told him American beer was weak, like soda pop, so he hoped to find one that sold Canadian or German if it wasn’t too expensive. If so, then it would probably have to be Budweiser, the only American beer Mel said was worth drinking.
In his billfold was thirty-two American dollars and sixty Canadian, but he wasn’t sure if they’d take Canadian here, so he had to budget his money. Mel said he could get cash out of one of them ATM machines, but he didn’t trust them. It wasn’t a problem anyways. He’d always been frugal.
He went back down to the lobby. A bus load of coloreds were walking in. Didn’t know he’d be staying in one of Chicago’s bad neighborhoods. Mel should have warned him about that. Didn’t exactly make him nervous, but he was the only white in the room, except the boy behind the counter, so he hurried for the exit, glad he took the bus instead of his car.
He bought a Ford Taurus four-banger automatic from a used car dealer in Cambridge a few years back. Gutless wonder, but he Jewed the huckster down to about $9000, a good deal nowadays. The first car he owned was a rusty 1948 Ford pickup with a 239 V8 flathead and three-speed transmission, column shift. Didn’t go too fast and went through gas like an Indian goes through whiskey, but it hauled hogs just fine, and in a pinch, if the Farmall was down, had enough low-gear to tow the hay wagon. Yep. He’d always been partial to Fords and figured if he’d drove his new one here, it would be up on concrete blocks with an empty boot and the wheels stole by now.
He passed dozens of shops. A bar with neon signs advertising craft beers, a tobacco store, kitchen supplies, electronics, movies. Mostly it was clothing stores selling stuff at ridiculous prices. He’d always bought used clothes at the thrift store in Kitchener. Couple years ago, he got a good Sunday suit for only fifteen dollars. Looked just fine and didn’t cost him a fortune.
A music shop had an accordion in the window. When he was a kid, his father used to drag out his old Contello every night after supper. Gershom missed that. His folks always had the radio tuned to a local German station that played mostly polkas, and he still liked to watch Lawrence Welk reruns. The stuff on the radio kids listened to nowadays, far as he was concerned, was just noise.
He stopped at a bar with a sign saying it served $1.00 drafts at happy hour. That sounded good. He went inside. A long narrow brick-walled room with an empty raised-up stage at the back. Along the left side stretched a bar with bottles lining the wall. A woman behind the bar, with blond hair tucked behind her ears, was leaning on her elbows and talking to one of the customers.
He took a seat at the table by the front window. On the wall beside him was a couple of pictures, one of a man in a leather outfit like Brando wore in The Wild One and the other was an autographed picture of Rock Hudson. Above them, a speaker played what he figured was dance music, although nobody was dancing. There were maybe half-a-dozen men sitting at the bar, another dozen-or-so at the various tables. He didn’t see any women except for the bartender. She flipped the little drawbridge and walked over to him.
“Hi, hon.” She set a napkin on the table and handed him a menu. “What’ll it be?”
She was pretty near the ugliest woman he’d ever seen, thick fingers and long red nails, wearing way too much makeup. It even looked like she might be sporting a five o’clock shadow. Maybe it was the light, then again, maybe not. Whenever Sarah’s face got that way, one of the church ladies would come over and shave her.
“What you got on tap?” he asked.
“Miller, Miller Light, Bud, and Bud Light.”
“Anything German?”
“I dunno, but we have Guinness in a bottle for three dollars until eight.”
“That’ll be fine.” What the hell. He was on holiday, might as well enjoy it, but still. “Do you have a senior discount?”
“Not usually.” She winked at him with eyelashes too long and thick to be real. “But for you, I’ll make an exception. So what are you eating, hon?”
He scanned the menu. No sausage. “I’ll have the ‘big meat’ burger, no cheese, and a salad.”
“You got it, sweetie.” She winked again and headed back toward the bar.
Guinness was an Irish ale, and since Micks love to drink, it was good and strong. Charlie O’Connor at the granary used to be able to drink him under the table on rye, before they both got married of course. The old Paddy was probably dead now from liver disease, unless he got married again. That’s the way the Irish were. Keep them drinking and they were the nicest fellas you’d ever want to meet, but get them hitched and they got sober and miserable.
Two men across the room were sitting close to each other, hands clasped together on the tabletop. Gershom understood. Life got bad for people sometimes and they needed a friend. He had to admit there were times he’d wished he had a shoulder to cry on, especially after his father died. Somehow, all the words from Pastor Bechtel about it being God’s plan, although he was certain they were true, left him feeling less than comforted.
And then the two men kissed.
He wasn’t ignorant. He knew some guys were like that. Poor fellas. There was something wrong with them, but hating them didn’t make no sense. Be like hating Tate back home because he was born with the lazy eye. Made you uncomfortable to be around him since you were never quite sure if he was looking at you or something else, but you can’t blame someone for being born defective. Like a five legged calf. Didn’t work quite right and didn’t serve no purpose, but it happened.
It was the kissing part that bothered him. Just wasn’t right. Pastor Bechtel said being queer could be fixed with prayer. Gershom didn’t know much about that, and he didn’t know if it worked, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. Still, probably better than the old days when fellas had to lie about it. Lying was a sin too, so all things considered, probably better to commit one sin and be a faggot than to compound that sin by adding another.
The bartender returned and set a beer and supper on the table. Gershom took a huge gulp, then grabbed a fork and poked at his salad. As the sugar diabetes slowly took away Sarah’s eyesight, he’d gotten in the habit of checking food before he ate it. One time, he stabbed into a leaf of lettuce, lifted it up to his mouth, and saw a worm. Just a little fella, inching along, completely unaware he was about to be gobbled up. He didn’t know what to do. Eat the worm and pretend like nothing was wrong or put it down and hurt Sarah’s feelings? Like a lightning bolt from heaven, inspiration struck. He accidentally dropped the leaf on the floor. It was the last time he ate something without inspecting it first.
For the first time in years, he was ready to eat a decent meal, not Kraft Dinner or them frozen microwave suppers he got at the grocery, when somebody walked up to him.
“Oh my God,” Jacob said. “Is that really you? Oh my God… Hi, Pop.”
His youngest looked older, less hair, a bit of a paunch starting, and, well, a lot like himself at that age. Amazing how that happens. You spend most of your life looking like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, but the minute you turn fifty, if your dad looked like Strother Martin, you wake up one morning and look in the mirror and have to fight the urge to say, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
“Hello, boy.” Gershom motioned toward an empty chair. “How’d you find me?”
“Stopped in a few minutes ago to say hello to some friends,” Jacob said, sitting down across from him. “And then suddenly you were here at the table. Crazy, huh?”
“I was hungry.” Gershom bit into his burger.
“I can’t believe you actually decided to come. Mel said you were, but I told him I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.” Jacob glanced around the room, then looked back at him and laughed. “You have no idea where you are, though, do you?”
“Chicago.” Gershom jabbed a thumb due east. “And the theatre is just down the road a piece. I’m not stupid.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jacob said. “I mean here.”
“A bar. Believe it or not, I been in a few in my day.”
“Not like this one.”
“What’s so different about…” Across the room, the two men kissed again.
“It’s OK, pop.” Jacob smiled and patted the back of Gershom’s hand. “People here pretty much mind their own business.”
“So do I. Their problem, not mine. Just here to have some supper.”
“Hey, stranger.” The bartender returned, leaning over to kiss Jacob on the cheek. “So who’s your friend, honey?”
“Hey, Daryl.” Jacob got up and gave the bartender a hug and then returned to his seat. “I’d like you to meet my father, Gershom, but be careful. He’s grumpy.”
“Nice to meet you.” Daryl held out her hand. Gershom nodded but didn’t extend his own. Daryl shrugged. “Well, grumpy or not, you should know that you raised a fine son, and a great little actor. As a matter of fact, if he was still single—”
“You got hitched again?” Gershom immediately regretted asking the question.
Jacob nodded. “Five years now.”
Daryl jabbed a thumb toward the bar. “Gotta get back to work. Nice meeting you, Gershom.”
His head itched. Way back in grammar school, there was this kid name Zeke. Came from the filthiest family he’d ever seen, and usually had lice, so he always smelled like kerosene. Thought it was funny to take hairs from his head and drop them on other kids. Whether you got lice or not didn’t much matter. Just the thought of them made you itchy. That’s the way he felt now, like something was eating away at his head. Then he put all the pieces together.
“I never told you why Esther and I broke up, Pop.” Jacob patted Gershom’s hand. “That wasn’t fair to you and Mom.”
“Fine. So now I know. You got it off your chest.” He picked up his beer and took a huge swallow, then checked his pocket watch. “Shouldn’t you be going? Play starts soon.”
“You’re ashamed,” Jacob said.
“Didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. I can see it.”
“See what you like. I didn’t say nothing.”
“Yes, you did.” Jacob wiped a tear off his cheek with the back of his sleeve. “You know, Pop, I’ve been wanting to tell you for years, but I’ve never had the balls to do it. And now that you know, well, I don’t know what I was thinking. This is stupid. You’re never going to change, and I don’t need your approval.”
“Good, cause you’re not gonna get it.”
“You know what, Pop?” Jacob stood up, knocking over his chair. He stormed toward the exit, yanked the door open, then turned around. “Just go back to your small town and your sad little church and forget about your big disappointment. Better yet, maybe if you pray hard enough, God will forgive you for being such a bastard.”
The door slammed closed, and for a few moments the bar was dead silent. Gershom went back to his supper. Daryl returned, quietly picked up the chair, and set a fresh napkin on the table.
“Another beer, Gershom?”
“Please.” What the hell. He’d just learned that his son was queer for sure, and that was going to take some getting used to.
“He didn’t mean any of that,” Daryl said, picking up the old napkin and wiping the table with a rag she pulled out of her apron. “He’s always bitchy before a performance. Nerves.”
By the time he finished his meal, he’d had three beers and was feeling pretty good. He got up, dropped a two dollar tip on the table, and stepped outside. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way. The first time he almost got drunk was when he was twelve. Behind the barn that summer was a huge pile of rotting greens dripping this brown juice. He snuck out there early in the morning, canning jar in hand, collected some, figuring he’d drink it after his folks went to bed. His brother talked him out of it, and it was a good thing because it probably would have killed him. But there were times after that, especially when he was younger, that he hadn’t passed on the fruit of the vine. He knew what it felt like, so he could tell he was a little snockered.
Back out on the sidewalk, he turned right and glanced at his pocket watch. Jacob’s play was going to start in about half an hour. After the way he treated him back there, it was even more important he go now. Maybe he’d get the chance to apologize afterwards. He reckoned it was no more than a quarter-hour walk.
The street was mostly empty. Another reason he’d always hated big cities was because there was just so damned many people, but now he felt alone. He thought he heard footsteps behind him a couple of times and looked over his shoulder, saw nothing, still felt like someone was there, so he picked up his pace.
“Stop right there, old man,” a voice came from behind.
“What?” he stopped.
“Don’t turn around. I got a gun.” It was a male voice, but young by the sound of it. The accent sounded familiar, like the way colored kids talked nowadays on TV. Called themselves gangsters or something like that, but they weren’t. Gangsters were organized. Turned crime into almost a business like Al Capone. No, this wasn’t no gangster. Just a snot-nosed brat too big for his britches, thinking the way to get ahead in the world was to take something that didn’t belong to him, and he’d be damned if he was going to let this little punk do that.
“If you got a gun, you better show it to me.” Gershom turned around, pulled out his pocket watch slowly and quietly, letting the gold chain out through his clenched fist so it swung like a pendulum. The kid was holding a knife, not a gun.
“Give me your wallet,” the kid said.
“No.”
This boy probably came from an unwedded mother who had kids by three different men, none that paid child support, went to an inner-city school where teachers didn’t teach, just considered it a good day if they didn’t get killed, and passed kids from grade to grade just to get them out of there. Wasn’t their fault their lives were so rough. Whatever it was, though, he refused to give in. He twirled the pocket watch on its chain.
“Give me your wallet or I’ll plant a cap in your ass.” Gershom had never heard that expression before, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what it meant. With a speed that amazed even him, he swung the pocket watch. It connected with a loud thunk.
“Mother fucker!” The kid fell to the pavement, hand over his left eye.
Gershom kicked him in the balls.
The kid reached for the knife he’d dropped. Gershom kicked him in the face, knocking off his hood. He didn’t look any older than fifteen. Blood flowed down his cheek and through his fingers.
And he was white.
Gershom picked up the knife. Being probably sixty years older, he knew this kid should be able to take him. For that matter, probably would when he got up. He looked around the street. No phone booths, and he didn’t have one of them cellphones.
“You are not supposed…” Gershom kicked him in the stomach, “…to be white!”
Gershom waited for him to catch his breath. “Now, get up.”
“I can’t. You busted my head. I can’t fucking see.”
“Get up or I’ll kick you again.”
The kid groaned and got unsteady to his feet.
“Fucking old man, I’m going to—”
“You’re not going to do nothing but skedaddle, you little whelp.” Gershom pointed the knife at him. “And I’m gonna keep your toy, here.”
The kid stood, one hand covering his eye, swaying.
“Scoot, boy, or I’ll take out your good eye with this toad-sticker of yours.”
As Gershom watched him hobbling away, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around to see a familiar-looking woman. It took him a moment. Daryl from the bar.
“Hey, stranger,” she said.
Gershom said nothing, just stared.
“Are you alright, honey?”
He closed the butterfly knife. He’d seen these after the war, back in ’73, as part of the Canadian peace-keeping force. Some Charlie came at him with one and stabbed him in the shoulder. Gershom had blown his yellow-faced head off. At the inquiry, the uppity-ups decided it was self-defense.
“What are you doing with that thing?” Daryl asked.
“I almost got mugged.”
“Oh my God. Are you OK?”
She stepped closer and reached for his shoulders. Let me have a look—”
“Get your hands off me you faggot!”
He pushed her. She stumbled and fell to the ground.
“I was just trying to—”
“I don’t need your damn help.” He dropped the knife.
What he should do now was say he was sorry and help her back up. That would be the right thing to do, but he didn’t want to. He felt the urge to kick her too.
“What’s wrong with you?” Daryl said.
He left her there, kneeling on the pavement, and walked back to the hotel. The next morning he got back on the bus. It dropped him off at the New Hamburg station and he walked home.
He slipped the key in the lock. When he was younger, he never locked the doors. But the world had gotten crazy and now the neighbors were always reminding him to do it, so he usually did. He opened the door and closed it, was about to turn the deadbolt, then decided not to.
He went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge, sat at the kitchen table and finished it, then walked into Sarah’s bedroom. Sitting in the old rocking chair with a quilt wrapped around her, she lifted her head and pointed in his direction.
“Is that you, Gershom?”
“Who else would it be?”
To her, the walls were still green, and the wood floors were still white. He’d repainted a couple of years back and refinished the floor. The new wall color was awful. The old green was so much better. This summer, he was going to put it back the way it was. No idea what came over him in the first place.
He sat on the bed.
“What time is it?” Sarah asked.
He opened his pocket watch. The crystal was cracked.
“Sun’s coming up,” he said. “Probably near six-thirty.”
“And did you and Jacob have a time?”
“Yeah.” He thought about it for a few seconds. “We had a time.”
“And did you miss me?”
“I miss everything.”
He looked at the watch again. The hands weren’t moving, and he thought maybe if he stared at them hard enough, they might start to move backwards. Still, at least they weren’t going forward, and that was something.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Daniel R. Snyder is a writer with dozens of essays and stories published in magazines and journals. He plays the accordion quite well, and the piano and guitar quite badly, which is fine because he never wanted to be a Rock Star. All he’s ever wanted is for people to read his work. He and his wife currently live in South Carolina. To read more of his writing, please visit danielrsnyder.com.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Tick Tock”:
In his short story, “Tick Tock,” author Daniel Snyder’s well-constructed character of Gershom struggles to live in a past he was comfortable with, not in a changing world that makes him uncomfortable.
The author uses the universal theme of a constantly changing world to remind us that we’re all like Gershom in some ways. As the world around us changes, we must reevaluate our views and attitudes, and if we don’t, we may leave behind regrets and wounds that never heal. What we found interesting in this story is that despite his determination to remain entrenched in the past, Gershon never fully succeeds.
It’s a solid character-driven story with a strong, resonant ending—exactly what we look for.