Under the seven cedar trees, an old bench was spending its existence. It`s metallic curved edges were telling about the long years, what people call "time". That so-called "time" had taken the color from the edges of that bench, but given back so much more. Time takes. Time gives. Whether the time was, is or will be?
Suddenly the red-yellow-colored leaves were falling on the bench. One could say, that the autumn is a time, when they have the freedom to fall. But they didn`t fall from the trees, that were blessed with the summer that passed. Oh no.
A young teenage boy gathered the leaves for his mother`s sculptures, putting them on the lonely old bench. The boy had blue gloves, a red hat and yellow rubber boots. Every other 14-year-old boy would`ve been embarrassed wearing those boots, but not him. Not Joshua. These were new boots, if measured with time. But young Joshua measured them with his heart.
"Josh!" the quiet father`s voice was carried to him from the distance.
"Where are you, it`s time to go, son!"
"The time. Why does the time always tell dad what to do?" Joshua thought, looking at the carefully gathered leaves on the bench. He enjoyed immensely this last day with his dad. He even loved those stupid girly-yellow boots, that dad had bought him today. He loved those boots, like he loved his father.
Suddenly!
He noticed some weird words, scribbled on the bench. They were carved just under the pile of those leaves:
"There`s no time," Joshua whispered them, as the words revealed when he swept away the leaves.
Something flashed under the bench. He squatted, letting the leaves in his hand fall, when he saw it.
A watch! A pocket-watch under the bench, with golden shining edges and a golden chain and engravings that Josh didn`t understand. He looked around, but there was no one who looked like an owner of the watch.
Josh stretched his arm and grabbed the watch.
"Joshua!" dad`s voice sounded again.
"Coming, dad…"
The boy went to his dad with a watch and with a few perfectly autumn leaves. Joshua found him by the car.
"Here you are," dad was warm and rejoiced. "What do you have there…?"
"I don`t know, a watch." He raised his hand. "The bench gave it to me."
"The bench? And who sat on that bench?" asked Joshua's father.
"Maybe someone who didn`t have any time," Josh said with a smiley sarcasm.
The father looked at the old watch.
"3:02 p.m." the father said, and continued: "Doesn`t even tell the right time. Maybe it really doesn`t belong to anyone."
His thick dark brows were wearing a look of concern or tiredness.
"Come on," he said to his son. "It`s already 1 minute to 5. Mom`s waiting."
Josh sat into the car, investigating a new or an old watch – he hadn`t decided yet.
"Let`s adjust it to the right time?" dad said.
"No," Josh answered, not turning his gaze from the watch and added: "Then it feels like you don`t have to go on the ship yet."
The man looked at him with his warm, filled with timeless love eyes, smiling to hide the sorrow. He breathed deeply in and out and started the car.
"Let`s go eat something," his father Andrew said and they started moving towards the evening.
Josh was very angry. Not because it meant a portion of whatever he wanted to eat, or because dad was leaving to another job opening on a ship for half a year. But to Josh it meant time.
Young Joshua respected his father, who was an honorable and hard-working man, just and kind.
"Can`t you stay?" Josh asked.
"We`ve talked about this. I work at the sea, so you could live on the land. I got this great job offering yesterday. 18.11 to be exact," he sounded proud.
"Where are you going?"
"To Estonia."
"Are there any leaves there? Mom could go too. And me," Josh said but knew it wasn`t possible. There was no time for that – he had to be in school.
"Maybe there is," Andrew didn`t answer the second part of the question.
"What about the watches?"
"That`s another story," dad laughed. "I`ve heard the people that live there reach a very old age, so they don`t need watches and hasting like we do."
They made it to the coffee shop, that was called "The Coffee Shop."
Josh took the table under the window, where the orange maple tree was sitting with them, outside on the lawn.
"I`ll have a coffee and…" Andrew said to the waitress who stood by their table with a notebook.
"We don`t have coffee," said the old waitress with a monotone voice and blond hair.
"This place is called… alright," said Josh`s father and smiled.
"Two sodas then, please. And can you cook us something? Something like… food?" Andrew said.
"We have food."
"Thank God," Josh`s dad said.
"But it takes time," the waitress admitted, without raising a note in her voice and left.
"The time is the only thing we have today…" Joshua's father said.
Josh nodded and said quietly to his dad: "Maybe tomorrow we could thrash some wooden house together and name it "The Time"."
They both laughed and Josh swept the watch down from the corner of the table. He jumped from fear of breaking the new-found old watch.
As he reached his hand to take the watch, he suddenly felt the coldness roaming all over the cafeteria. Everything became quiet. Joshua tried to move. His bones were cracking with the deepness of the freezing deathlike hollow. His hand had hazy contours and felt dead, as if there was no life in it. The illusion of surroundings being real was absent.
