Lenz and Green on the walk
his phobic fear of timepieces stems from his stepfather, an Amtrak train conductor with deeply unresolved issues which he used to make Lenz wind his pocketwatch and polish his fob daily […] or else he’d lay into the pint-sized Randy with a rolled-up copy of Track and Flange, a slick and wicked-heavy coffee-table-sized trade periodical.
Context
Lenz hands Green an origin story for his phobia, and it's a stepfather — the predatory/ersatz-paternal pole. An Amtrak conductor "with deeply unresolved issues" who drilled the small boy on winding his watch and polishing his fob to the second, and beat him with a heavy trade magazine when it wasn't perfect. Whether or not the story is true (Lenz lies as a reflex), the shape he chooses for his own damage is a stepfather's timepiece-tyranny — abuse administered as discipline, the not-quite-father who punishes the child into a lifelong tic. A texture data-point on the theme's predatory pole, filtered through an unreliable narrator.