My grandfather worked at a lumberyard until he owned it. He knew his way around machines and tools, saw how things fit together, understood how things worked and how they didn't. He had a large heart, one of the largest I've ever known, and he used to let us help him wind it each January. I remember my small hands turning the big brass key, how hard my brother and I had to push toward the end as the spring grew tight with a year's worth of tension.

When we wound as far as we could, he would give it a couple more turns until it was just right, and then he'd tell us to put an ear to his chest to hear the ticking. "You did that," he would say, his voice coming into us warm and round from the inside. He helped us wind our hearts for the year, too, taught us how to feel when it was right before too much. And then he would take my brother and me fishing for sunnies, or let us win at checkers, or walk with us down to Georgie's for red licorice and pinball.

At night after my grandparents went to sleep, I would put my ear against the pillow and hold my breath until I could make out the quick rhythm of my little mechanism. "You did that," I would say to myself.

I was in college wondering about the mind when I heard that my grandfather's heart wouldn't wind back up. I put my key in my car and drove way too fast to help put him, still, in the ground.

The field that remembers his name and time is far from here, far from most things, and quiet except for what would make noise on its own anyway. Each time I go, I put my ear to the grass. "Who did this?" I say. But all I hear is the great unwinding of the earth.


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