I write history the way some people read horoscopes. What is history, after all, but prophecy in reverse? The following story is true both root and branch. Like O. Henry’s leaf painter (and at P.’s request), I have camouflaged in its undergrowth of strange names and places a vine of living history more or less as P. recounted it to me on Christmas Sunday 1988.
The first Christmas it was down to just the three of us, Dad was in no spirit to decorate. Instead, he drove J. and me over to Pony, an obscure dot on a crooked line between Butte and Bozeman where the river came down from Hollowtop Mountain. Gramps left Pony for Grange in the 1920’s, a dozen years before the gold ran dry. When Dad was old enough to pound a nail, Gramps began dragging him and his little brother to the old homestead to exorcise the evils of ‘theirism’ and to see firsthand what happens to a soul after losing its footing. So there it was. Our first of a dozen Christmases to come in Pony, Montana. Looking back, I didn’t need a truckful of lumber and the coldest winter on record to teach me what I now know about most things in life, including whatever theirism might have been. I brought enough of my own foolishness for that.
Christmas week 1964 reached thirty-five below sans windchill, a redundant technicality that would not factor into Montana’s weather forecast for another decade. The pickup heater being the warmest refuge beyond the two-foot radius of Gramp’s fireplace, J. and I tagged along for the heat when Dad made the supply run to Shiffler’s. As he sorted fresh produce, the precise box of nails, and the odd ball of string, J. mined a sketchpad from an avalanche of shelving, and I beelined it to my usual table where kids too small to wield a hammer could find a cornucopia of rag and bone, mostly junk mingled with never-popular comic books and vintage baseball cards. The banner behind the table promised ‘Salvation,’ but only because, as sometimes happened in the sixties, its ‘Army’ suffix had been hastily overpainted in protest. On our last trip, I unearthed from Salvation’s pile an unexploded grenade that, when I brought it home, my mom let me throw into the lake behind our house. My current brush with Salvation brought me … us … our lonely, happy trio … a curious relic: gold-rimmed, white-faced, a single number 12 at its pinnacle, and no visible means of coaxing it to life. The opposite of new–nothing in Salvation was ever new–the old wristwatch, like the entire ghost town around it, possessed an otherworldliness rendered even stranger by three tiny clocks where the 3, 6, and 9 numerals should have been. Heavy for its size, the first time I strapped the thing to my wrist, it gave off a kind of electric hum and the sensation that if I didn’t quickly return it to its box, it would electrocute me.
“It’s not a snake, P.,” came a wrinkly voice just beyond my shoulder. “it’s a magic clock.”
Perry Shiffler was a bent-over C-shape of a man not much taller than me and twice as old as my dad. He walked with a kind of double limp that must have radiated to the usually chronic wince now brimming with a secret he couldn’t wait to share.
“It’s from Switzerland where they make watches that run forever. Long as you never take it off your wrist, it will keep perfect time until the end of days.
“But how–?”
“Winds itself. Motion. Gravity. Spinning wheels. It truly is magic. When you move, it moves. Take it off and time stops. Fella brought it in last week on account he didn’t want to live no longer. Figured someone else ought to know the time after he was gone.
“It’s heavy.”
“That’s the elves inside. Probably bigger than your watch too?”
“I don’t have a watch. I have to wait for J.”
“Oh yeah. That silly Bible rule. Did your daddy ever read you about all the misery in the world on account of it?”
He hadn’t
“There was Abraham nearly killing his kin until the angel swapped out Isaac for a goat. And Isaac’s own twins who kicked and shoved to see which one popped first out of their momma. Esau won that round only so Jacob could swap him his kingdom for a bowl of potatoes. And here’s the most miserable bit. After Jacob grows up and falls in love with his beautiful Rachel, Esau whispers into her father’s ear and in the morning Jacob wakes up married to her tender-eyed big sister. Cried all day long on account of her daddy had to swap brides at the last minute. All cuz the wrong brother popped out first. Makes no sense your daddy’s rule.
“Tell him that.”
“I just might. Meantime tell him this. A hundred years ago, a little man rode his pony up Hollowtop Canyon and when the beast kicked up a stone of pure gold, ‘Eureka,’ he says to hisself. Like the Greek.
“He knows the story. Tells it everytime we pass the big ‘Welcome to Pony’ sign”
“What he don’t know is that Perry Shiffler, Pony’s little brother—my granddad—worked the river for three years before Pony ever rode that horse of his up a canyon. Took out every ounce of gold and never told a soul.
“Tell you what. Put that old numberless snake back on the table. You want to marry Rachel before Christmas?”
Hunh?
“Rachel. It’s a code, see. My granddad talked about his gold in a special code he made up. It’s how he kep’ his secret. You want that fancy watch for Christmas you can’t say it straight out. You gotta say that P. wants to marry Rachel and J. wants to marry her older sister that won’t stop bawlin’.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. Just remember what Rachel’s daddy did in the middle of the night and you’ll know what to do.”
“I already forgot. What did he do, again?
“What they all did in the Bible. Swapped one sister for the other. Get my drift?
And then he winked at me twice.
“I think so.”
Only I didn’t. But Perry was already double-limping back to where Dad was waiting with his stuff at the till. Too embarrassed to watch, I turned back to Salvation and replaced the watch next to a sold brass placard that read:
‘The Life You Change May Be Your Own.’
The next day, Dad announced that with Mom gone, it was time we started in on some new family traditions.
“For starters, it’s too cold out there to cut a tree so, when Santa comes down the chimney and doesn’t find a place to put anything, he’ll come straight to your bed looking for something like this.”
He then held up two gray stockings like he had just won them in a raffle.
“They belonged to Gramps and they’ve just been sitting here so we put them to work. See what they catch. I’ve tied this little string at the top so can hang it on your footposts when you go to bed.”
That night, as I listened for Santa to come into the room, I couldn’t stop my stomach churning over how hard it must have been for Perry to keep his secret all those years. After Dad came and went, I still wasn’t sure I could go through with it. But what about those wars in the Bible? All all that horse-trading? And the unfairness. If Dad could make a new start, why couldn’t I?
In the morning, when J. first pulled the watch out of his elongated gray stocking, the triple shock swept from father to sons like the news of a gold strike.
- J.: No way! It’s that Swiss watch from Salvation. Dad! How did you know? Thank you so so much!! Look, P., You don’t even have to wind it.
- P.: Wait. That’s was in your stocking? But the ru–
- Dad: Eyes locked straight on mine. “Whatever it was you did,” they were bellowing, “Do. Not. Say. A. Word.”
- J.: What’s going on?
And then it all poured out.
“I’m so sorry, you guys. But I married the wrong sister? Do you hear me? I married the wrong sister.”
Then I ran to the toilet to be sick.
On our way out of town, as we drove past Shiffler’s and the makeshift ‘Thank You For Visiting Pony–Come Back Soon,’ sign, Dad asked,
“Did I ever you tell you how Pony got its name?”
“Only ever time we come and go,” groaned J.
“Can I tell It this time? Perry told me how it really happened.”
“Long as you don’t go on about marrying your sister or whatever made you so sick yesterday,” teased J.
From that day to this, my beloved brother, who has not taken that silly watch from his wrist for even a minute, still does not know which sister he nearly married. I hope he lives forever.
