Antique

Even though it was well over eighty degrees outside, Crystal wore black jeans and a faux leather jacket over a red top; her lips smudged with bright red lipstick, her eyes shaded gray and black. She was nineteen, with a backpack full of her things strapped over her bony shoulders and almost no plans to speak of. She stood at the counter of the pawn shop, looking intently at the man behind the counter as he evaluated her item.

“I can give you… twenty for it,” the man finally said.

“Twenty?” Crystal said. “It’s got to be worth at least, I don’t know - two thousand.” 

The pawn shop broker peered up at her and laughed. His gruff voice was stretched low and thin like a rusted-out bassoon; his face swollen and pink from half a lifetime of Tito’s poured into cheap, chipped glass. “If that’s worth two thousand, Buddha right there’s worth a million,” he said, gesturing at the golden Buddha statue on the counter to Crystal’s left. Buddha’s right hand was held out in front of him, fingers outstretched. On his ring finger was an emerald ring. Crystal could see a handwritten price tag attached to it: $500. 

The pawn broker turned the watch around in his hands. Its brass base had been relatively well-maintained, but there was a crack in the glass at the front of the watch. Its hands were all still, yet the years had worn on since they’d last ticked forward. “Twenty dollars,” he repeated.

“But it’s an antique,” Crystal said. “It has to be worth more than that.” 

The man scowled. “Antique? Who told you that?”

Crystal felt a stone in her throat. “My father. He said it was a World War II relic.”

Of course he lied to you again, she thought. He lied to everyone else, didn’t he?

The man’s face softened. “Ah, well. Sorry, kid. This model was mass-marketed in the ‘80s. There’s probably still a million of them out there - and they probably don’t have cracks in them. A lot of ‘em probably still work, even. Engraving also dings the price,” he said, pointing out the letters on the back. Crystal had traced those letters a thousand times, memorized the feeling of the brass lines against her fingertips. “I’m being more than fair here,” he said.

Crystal nodded, holding out her hand. “Well. I guess I’ll just keep it for now.”

The pawn broker nodded, placing the watch into her outstretched hand. The metal was warm from his grip. She placed it into her pocket, tracing the engraving with her thumb. She thought of her father’s wide smile and characteristic wink behind his orange-tinted aviator sunglasses. He’d had a bad habit of telling tall tales, and Crystal had a bad habit of believing them.

Crystal tugged on the collar of her faux leather jacket. “What about this?” she asked.

“Sorry, I don’t take clothes. Don’t have much demand for ‘em.”

Crystal sighed and cursed under her breath.

“Where are you headed?” the broker asked.

“How do you know I’m trying to leave?”

He shrugged. “Young ones like you don’t stay if they have a choice. People usually come to me when they’re desperate to pay for bills and food, or they’re desperate to leave.” He nodded toward her bag. “You look to me like the latter.”

Crystal shifted the backpack on her shoulders, pulling at the straps. Her eyes flitted around the room, eyes landing on old dusty speakers, guitars, and tables of old vinyl records. “California,” she admitted.

“California’s a big place. Anywhere specific?”

She shrugged. “Why? Are you trying to leave too?”

The man smiled bitterly. “I did, once. But things didn’t work out.”

“Yeah, that’s… where I’m at. This was kind of my last-ditch effort.” She pressed her thumb against the brass of the pocket watch, tracing the outline of the engraving, the crack in the glass. “I was just hoping I could get enough for a bus ticket. Head west.” She shrugged. “But I’m short fifty bucks. Maybe I’ll… hitchhike.”

The man raised his eyebrows and turned away from her. He began labelling items on the back counter. “Well, good luck.”

***

Crystal remembered when her father had given her the watch. She’d been eight years old, riding in the passenger seat of his old Ford sedan. He drove with one hand on the wheel, smoking Camels, breathing deeply through the filter and sending plumes of smoke out the car windows. The car didn’t have any air conditioning, making the summers in his car pretty uncomfortable - but he never hesitated to buy Crystal ice-cold sodas and Slurpees, so she usually didn’t mind.

Crystal had gotten used to seeing her father in his beige car, turning up randomly in her mother’s driveway. He’d get out and lean against the car, cigarette in hand, the smoke wafting up and disappearing into the blue sky. Crystal’s mother would curse and close the blinds, refusing to speak to him. But she still encouraged Crystal to go with him - likely eager to get the girl out of the house for a while.

So her father would drive her around town, listening to the classic rock station and his “old man tapes” and “antique CD’s”, making various stops along the way. They went to junkyards, picking up lumber, scrap metal, and car parts Crystal didn’t know how to spell and barely knew how to pronounce; then they would go to pawn shops or strange men’s houses to drink beers and talk business. Her father had a way of convincing almost anyone that his scrap metal was gold, or about to be; convincing sellers to let go of their items for almost nothing.

Crystal’s father had once convinced an old widow to let go of her late husband’s old BMW for less than half its worth. That was a good day - he’d taken Crystal out for ice cream to celebrate. 

In his storage unit, he had a collection of all sorts of things: old coins, organized into clear plastic bins by year and type; tangles of speaker wire; a stack of musical instruments needing repair. Her father had a small wood workshop inside the storage unit, and it always smelled pleasantly of fresh-cut lumber. He always had some project or other in the works: repairing those broken instruments or building a custom table.

“Dad, where’d you get all this stuff?” Crystal asked.

“Oh, y’know. It just piles up over time.”

“Where’d you get this guitar?” she asked, strumming a seven-stringed guitar mounted on the wall.

Her father smiled, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, a friend sold me that one.”

“What about these?” Crystal pointed to a stack of paintings.

“Well, don’t make an old man give away all his secrets,” he said, winking behind his orange-tinted aviator glasses.

Crystal’s father would tell her he was just waiting until he found the one thing that would make him filthy rich - one reason why he was always buying lottery tickets with her Slurpees. But there was one thing he wouldn’t sell unless he absolutely had to.

“This,” he said, “was my papa’s pocket watch.” Crystal’s father held out the old brass watch, its second hand ticking along. In the light, she could see a hairline crack in the glass. “It’s an antique, from the War.”

“Which one?”

“World War II. Your great-grandpa was in the Air Force,” he said. “He was shot down by the Japanese. Broke your great-grandma’s heart, and she already had my dad and his brothers to take care of. And this,” he placed the watch into her hands, “is all they had left of him.”

“They never found him?”

“No, just the watch.”

Crystal felt the cool brass in her hands, scratched her nail gently against the hairline crack in the glass. “It’s scratched,” she said, watching the hands tick forward.

“It’s still an antique,” her father said, and winked. “My dad gave it to me, and now it’s yours. ‘Bout the only good thing he gave me,” he muttered, looking away briefly, toward his mountain of things. Then he looked back up at Crystal, an earnestness in his orange-tinted eyes. “Take good care of it.” He patted the girl’s shoulder.

Ever since then, she had kept the watch under her pillow. Whenever she missed her dad, she would take it out and trace the outlines of the engraving, which spelled out their last name: Chapman.

A few years later, the outings with her father would abruptly stop. Her mother pulled her aside one day after school, her mascara smudged. She explained to her that her father wouldn’t be coming around anymore. He was dead.

Crystal listened quietly, numb. She could barely blink. Her mother enveloped her in an enormous hug, her mother’s body shaking slightly as she tried to hold back her sobs. Crystal, still numb, sat still and awkward, trying to remember how to move her arms, trying to imagine never seeing her father again in his beige Ford sedan, one hand on the wheel, a smoldering cigarette peeking out of his pale mouth.

Eventually, Crystal would piece together what had happened. The widow’s son - the one he’d bought the BMW from - would claim that her father had scammed his mother. He’d paid her in gold bricks and had apparently overstated their value. It’s always a solid investment, her father would’ve said. She’d heard him say it before. It’s the oldest form of currency. The son, in a fit of rage, had confronted her father - and for once, he couldn’t talk his way out of it. He’d been beaten to death - left to bleed out on the floor of his storage unit, unable to call for help. Crystal imagined the scent of fresh wood and tobacco had still hung in the air as he took his last breaths, mingling with the copper stench of blood.

Starting at fifteen, Crystal began having uncontrollable outbursts of rage. She would scream at her mother over some seemingly inconsequential thing: the tap of a fork against a particular plate, or a question about how her day was. Unsure of how to deal with her, Crystal’s mother would send her to her room, where she’d stomp up each step until slamming her door. 

In her room, Crystal would tear through her things, screaming obscenities, tearing up drawings, notebooks, old clothes, anything she could get her hands on until her knuckles bled and she passed out from exhaustion. In the midst of one of these outbursts, Crystal found the old pocket watch and felt a powerful surge of anger pass through her like a firework through the center of her body. She threw the watch across her room at the wall, cracking it open with a sickly thwack. The sound shocked her to silence, and she fell to her knees, picking up the pieces. She put them back together with trembling hands, considering each piece, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. It took her hours; the house was silent and dark when she was finally finished.

She could swear she’d put it together correctly, but the crack in the glass had widened, and for the watch, time had stopped - the hands were still. She tapped it a few times, trying to restart it. But the hands refused to move.

***

Crystal stared at the Buddha statue on the pawn shop’s counter, thinking about her next move. Even if she could hitchhike several states away, and make it unharmed, what would she do once she got there? Where could she even go?

But she couldn’t stay here anymore. Anywhere but here.

“The statue’s not for sale,” the broker said offhandedly. “Just the ring.”

“Oh, I was just… thinking.”

“Well, alright.”

Crystal nodded toward the statue. “Do you believe in that stuff? Karma?”

The man turned around to face her, shrugging his broad shoulders. “I dunno. It’s nice to think that people will get what they deserve - whether it’s in this life, or the next.”

“How do you decide what someone deserves?”

“I wouldn’t presume to.”

“Then who does?”

“I’m just a pawn shop owner,” he said. “But the ancient Egyptians believed that when someone died, the gods would weigh their heart against a feather. Bad deeds make a heart grow heavier; good deeds make it lighter. If your heart was lighter than a feather - well then, you’d get to go to paradise. But if it wasn’t…” he tilted his head, pursing his lips. “Well, there was a god called the Devourer of Souls. This guy over here.” He pointed to another statue on a shelf above him: a crocodile-headed beast with lion’s mane. It roared silently on a pedestal, its eyes blank, teeth pointed and hungry. “Amit. The heavy hearts, they’d give to him.”

Crystal frowned. “That’s… interesting. I guess in a just world, the gods would have to be objective.”

“You’d have to hope they are.”

“Do you believe in a just world?”

“I believe in it. I don’t know if we’re in it, but I believe in it.”

“I guess that’s all we can do.” Crystal started turning toward the door.

“Hey, wait,” the man said. “How much did you say you needed for your bus ticket?” he asked.

Crystal turned back toward him. “Fifty dollars.”

The man pursed his lips, nodding. “I’ll help you out.” He opened the till below the counter and counted out three twenties, stretching his arm toward her in offering.

“Are you sure?” she said, bewildered. “I… this isn’t nothing.”

“Just making my heart a bit lighter,” he said with a grim smile. “I had - have… a daughter, about your age. You remind me of her - the weird questions, the fake leather jacket.” He sighed. “I could’ve done better by her.”

“You still could,” Crystal said, taking the bills gingerly from his hands.

The man nodded. “You’re right.”

“Thank you,” she said, and paused for a moment.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” the man asked. “Get out of here.” He smiled and turned back around, grabbing a few items and walking away to place them on their shelves.

Crystal slowly dug into her pocket, pulling out a small emerald ring with a price tag, placing it gingerly back onto the ring finger of the Buddha statue. Then she turned away, opening the door. A bell rang out as she walked into the heat of the sun.

As the bus took Crystal across the West, she wondered whether her father had really believed the watch was a World War II antique. Or did he just tell her that to - what? Make her value the gift more? Give it the history he wished it had? Maybe it was just impossible for him to face the truth.

She wondered if her father’s heart had been eaten by the Devourer of Souls; wondered if the fact of her loving him would make her own heart any heavier. She wondered how much good it takes to outweigh all the bad we have done, and who gets to decide what it’s worth.