The Amish Clockmaker by Mindy Starns Clark

speculated on how long he could expect to live, and they had not asked. A man’s days were numbered by God alone. Still, Simon agreed to follow the doctor’s orders—for about three days, when he’d finally had enough of that and insisted on going down the hill to the clock shop.
    â€œThe doctor told me I could spend the day in an armchair,” he said when challenged by his entire family. “So what difference does it make whether I’m in that chair in the living room, staring at the walls, or in a chair in the clock shop, doing something useful with my hands? I’m going stir-crazy here.”
    They had given in, reluctantly, and then set about making it happen. Clayton managed to rig up a sort of ad hoc wheelchair, which allowed him to ferry his dad from the house to the clock shop and back again each day—no easy task with a bad leg and a long, sloping driveway. They lived in Ridgeview, Pennsylvania, on a five-acre parcel of land that held a clock shop out in front at the bottom of the hill and several other structures—house, barn, and chicken coop—farther back, at the top. Thanks to the steep angle of the gravel driveway, Clayton had to struggle to keep the chair from going downhill too fast in the mornings and use all his might to push it back up the hill in the afternoons.
    Making matters worse, it was obvious that Simon didn’t like having Clayton do all the physical work, especially when it took twice as long to do it. His father didn’t say so, but Clayton could see the frustration in the man’s eyes every time he needed something from the house and Clayton had to hobble up to the homestead behind the shop, a process that was slow and tedious. That frustration was evident tenfold when it came to the barn chores, as Clayton had to leave the store extra early each day so he could get them all done before dark.
    â€œI don’t mind,” he had said the first day he did the chores alone and also ferried his father back and forth to the shop.
    â€œI know you don’t,” Daed had replied. “But I don’t like just sitting here watching you—” he hesitated for a moment—“do what I used to do.”
    Clayton knew what his father had been about to say, that he didn’t like watching him struggle. Both of his parents had always accepted what had happened when Clayton was five and a disastrous buggy accident had left him with a scarred face and a mangled leg. They trusted that God had allowed the accident to happen, and as Clayton grew up, they had taught him to see it that way as well. The maimed little boy aged into a quiet, aloof child who couldn’t play the games the other boys could and often chose to be by himself instead. His self-imposed isolation continued once he was grown. He couldn’t chase down a loose cow, carry around a sixty-pound bag of feed, or do much at barn raisings besides sit and saw planks. It took him minutes to climb the ladder to the hayloft instead of seconds. So why even try to keep up with the other young men?
    Clayton had never attracted much attention from the women, either. Thanks to the impaired leg and the facial scar, he knew he wasn’t husband material and that he would likely never marry. He had come to accept that as his fate.
    Then again, that was when he’d pictured his future playing out much like his present, living with his parents in the house and working in the shop alongside his father for decades to come. Now that the doctor had diagnosed Daed with heart failure, however, Clayton’s vision of his own life had been rocked to its core. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing his father, but lose him he would, and probably soon. According to the doctor, Simon’s heart was slowly winding down, like a clock whose key was lost and no replacement would do.
    Raber and Son Clockmakers shop sat at the very end of the row of stores that made up Ridgeview’s main