I find it, weakly ticking, at the edge of the yard. It’s the cheap, round kind a day laborer, whose wife left him long ago, uses to wake himself up in the morning. The casing is light green plastic, a fact which causes the ticking to resonate fully, as if it were emanating from the sound box of a guitar or a cave. It is the sort of clock that in ringing might waddle across a dusty dresser and fall into a drawer of luminous socks. The sort that might escape, given half a chance.
    I assume it has fallen from some window and rolled, or crawled on its hands, to this spot. Except for a grass stain and a little mud, it’s in perfect condition. I consider also the Lassie variation: having been left in a motel by friendly vacationers, it is struggling cross country toward home. But how far, five hundred, perhaps a thousand miles? I look in awe up and down the road, across the beanfields.
    Frankly, I don’t want to get involved. Picking it up, I throw it like a Softball as far away as possible. It hovers for a moment at the peak of its parabola like a heartbeat over a ballpark. Then it falls with a pathetic little thump.
    Now, back at the house, reading the paper, I begin to feel bad. I imagine it ringing all alone in a ditch like a bum having a nightmare. Worse yet, the pathetic running down. The evening edition scattering behind me, I run down the road, hands in the air at ten and two. Already, I see, it has moved halfway back to the house, spinning on its face in advancing circles. Here you are, I say, plucking it from the weeds like a sputtering child from a green lake.