The Bell

The word slides into my cell like a rat under the door. Possibility. I keep my eyes on the ceiling, on its geography—the hairline crack running from the light fixture to the water stain over the toilet, like a little river delta of rust and time. For eleven years, I have followed its slow progress, a millimeter at a time.

The Lawyer speaks. His words are for some other man who measures life in appeals or stays of execution. "...they made a mistake in the trial, Arthur. The judge... he gave the jury bad instructions. It's a real opening."

A fly buzzes near the single bulb, a frantic, tiny engine going nowhere. I follow its vibration, and a different sound surfaces from eleven years ago. Not a buzz. A pop. Two of them, small and flat in the wet night air. Rain on hot asphalt. Slick, sweating grip of a wooden handle. Smell of gunpowder and exhaust fumes.

"Did you hear me, Arthur?"

"Heard you," I say, the words traveling out with a breath.

A sigh, like a man trying to inflate a punctured tire. "This is it. This is the one that could get you out of the chair, put you back in the general population. Maybe even out in ten. We need you engaged."

Ten years. Ten more years of staring at that ceiling. Maybe the river delta would reach the wall by then. The numbers are just noise.

"Right," I say. The fly buzzes.

A click of a briefcase latch, rustle of paper. Scrape of a chair. "I’ll file the motion tomorrow," he says to the back of my head. "Try to have a little faith, son." Heavy clang of the door, shooting of the bolt, fading footsteps down the concrete hall.

Faith. The only thing belonging to me has nothing to do with men like him, not in motions or rulings. I close my eyes. A different kind of faith, as persistent as the water stain on the ceiling.

I lie for hours as the prison settles into its iron skin. Calls and coughs from other cells. Rhythmic clank of the night guard making his rounds, like a tick of a clock I stopped following years ago.

A quiet shuffle of soft-soled shoes comes later, mixed with a rustle of a robe. A faint ting of a bell. The floor feels hard against my knees. I lower my head. The door closes. The bolts click.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

A scrape of a chair once again, pulled away from the wall. I keep my head bowed.

"Arthur."

I raise my gaze to a stranger. A young man with an old man's eyes. Priest’s collar. A wooden cross and a tiny bell. "Where's Father Michael?"

"Your lawyer seems hopeful."

He ignores my question. Not a mistake. A choice. I study him. A stillness, an unnerving patience in those old eyes. I blink.

"He’s selling something I’m not buying."

"And what is that?"

"Tomorrow," I say. "And the day after that."

The priest nods, his gaze on mine. "You’ve been praying for an absolution, Arthur. For a way to make it right. Not with the state. With God."

Again the memory, sharper this time. The weight and taste of the one word in my mouth just before I say it. In. I press my eyelids shut.

"There is no making it right," I whisper. "There’s only living with the wrong."

He leans forward, hands clasped. "God can offer you an absolution, not a pardon." His voice has no echo like all the other sounds in this place.

"How?"

"A day of grace, bought with every day you have left. You will feel the warmth of the sun, and you will feel the chill as it is taken away forever."

He leans back in his chair. "But you need to pray for the man you were supposed to be. Not for you." He holds my gaze. Eyes like magnets pulling on metal.

I take two breaths. I nod and lower my head.

"Pray with me, son. Pray that man had said ‘no’."

I pray. The bell tings at his neck.

***

"...not even listening to me! Arthur, you promised you’d sell the car. We need the money!" The sharp voice tears through the silence.

I snap my eyes open, gawk around. Haze, no ceiling, no bars, nor river delta of rust. A floral wallpaper, faded yellow, and a woman standing with her hands on her hips. Eleanor. My Eleanor. My breath catches. Vision blurs again.

A fly buzzes before my face. My fly? No. The dull, constant ache in my lower back from the prison cot is gone. I raise a hand to my face. Smooth skin. No lines or gray stubble. My fingers sink into thick hair. A sharp chill runs across my scalp, like the barber’s razor in prison.

"The doctor’s office called again," she says. I focus my gaze on her. "The bill, Arthur. And you spending our last five dollars on beer with my brother…"

Lilacs. Her perfume. A scent lost to time makes the small kitchen tilt on its axis. I push myself up from a wooden chair, my legs steady and strong. I look at her, at the fierce, beautiful anger in her face, the swell of her stomach beneath her apron. My son.

The wallpaper behind her flickers, changing into a sweating concrete. Familiar water stain. Clang of a cell door. I reach for a glass of water on the counter. My hands shake.

"...and now this, finding out you lost the warehouse job two weeks ago and never said a word! My father was right about you. You’re not a husband who can provide."

Those words. A throb travels through my whole body, but the anger isn't with me. The shame is gone. Eleven years of stored-up love, the crushing weight of regret. I step toward her, my hands raised in surrender.

"Ellie," I say. An alien’s voice, a young man’s tenor. I cough. "I’m sorry. None of it matters. Just… none of it."

She recoils, her eyes widen. "None of it matters? The rent doesn’t matter? The baby doesn’t matter?"

"No, that’s not what I…" I reach for her, for the curve of her belly, to touch him just once, feel his movement, just once. My hand shakes. She flinches back, pulling away from my touch as if it were a snake.

"What is wrong with you? First you’re yelling, now this? What kind of trick is this, Arthur?" The air leaves my lungs in a rush, as if I've been punched. She protects her belly.

"Please, Ellie… I’ll stay. I won’t go out. I’ll stay here with you. We’ll fix it.” I take off my jacket and drop it on the chair. A choir of bells starts to ting inside my head the moment the jacket hits its back. I raise my hands to block the sound. No use. It grows louder. A rhythm. A voice. The priest.

Eleanor stares at me. Anger turns into fear, and her arms tighten over her stomach, protecting our son from her strange, unpredictable husband.

I pick the jacket back up, and the ting fades. "I have to go," I say. "Going to see about a job. On the docks." The lie tastes like tar in my mouth. I walk out the door, closing it gently behind me, and take the stairs down two at a time.

My dented blue Ford waits at the curb. The most expensive thing in my life. The key slides into the ignition. The engine turns on, settling into a low growl. I put it in gear, place my hands on the wheel. No shakes. I pull away from the curb.

The garage door is half-open, a dark mouth yawning into the afternoon. I kill the engine. Heavy silence follows, broken only by a steady ting... ting... ting from within. I get out of the car. Smell of gasoline. Taste of old oil on my tongue.

I duck under the door. Inside, shadows cling to everything. A single bare bulb flickers, casting a dirty yellow light on a half-disassembled engine block. Eleanor’s brother emerges, wiping his hands on an already-black rag. He smiles, gaze lit with desperate energy.

"Art, there you are, and you brought the car. Good. I was about to call the house." He claps me on the shoulder, pulling me deeper inside. In the far corner, another man I remember slams a wrench down on a metal table. Sound of a cell door. My teeth grind together as I grimace.

"It’s on, Art. Tonight. It’s perfect. A textile mill payroll delivery. The driver’s a drunk, the route’s always the same. We’re not hurting anybody, just taking from a guy who’s been skimming off the top for years. It’s practically justice."

He’s pacing from the workbench to the door, a tight, three-step rhythm of anxiety. I watch him, and I see it all—the whole rotten future spooling out from this one greasy room.

"Listen," he says, stopping right in front of me, grabbing my arm. "Think about it. Think about Ellie. The look on her face when you come home with a stack of bills. Enough to pay the doctor, to buy a real crib, to shut the old man’s mouth for good. This is for her, Art. So you can be the husband she needs."

Every word builds the wall of my cell. Every breath adds a year to my sentence. They place a gun on the table. A ting, as it touches the scraped surface. Sweating grip of the wooden handle. I open my clenched fist. Empty.

"No."

He blinks and pulls back. "What? What do you mean, ‘no’?"

"I mean no." The word feels light. "Don’t you see? This money... it’s finality. It’ll weigh you down until you can’t breathe. It’ll stain everything it touches… Ellie, the baby, everything. It’s not an answer. It's an ending. For their sake… walk away. Please. This road only goes one place."

His face twists. "You’re backing out? Now? You coward. I’m trying to help you provide for my sister, and you’re getting cold feet?" He shoves me. I fall against a workbench. "You’re letting her down, you son of a bitch. You’re letting us all down."

I hold his gaze. "I’m not letting her down by saying no to this." I turn to leave. Ice shoots up my spine. I keep my steps calm. Every muscle in my back tightens, waiting for a shout or a blow. I duck under the garage door and step back into the sunlight. I get back in the car. The key slides into the ignition. The engine turns over. I raise my hands to the wheel. No shake.

As I pull away from the curb, the faint ting of the bell returns, growing clearer, melodic, bright.

***

The ting fades. A whisper. "Grandpa… Grandpa, wake up."

I open my eyes, not to the preternatural clarity of the world outside my car, but to a hazy morning light filtering through lace curtains. A warm and soft bed. A small, joyful weight on my chest.

"You promised, Grandpa! The Cyclone! You promised!" a little girl's voice chirps. Another child, a boy, scrambles beside her. "And the cotton candy!"

Grandpa, name like an unfit coat. I glance around, back to their faces again, bright and expectant. There is no memory of love in my heart, but it still aches. I sit up. My joints protest with the stiff language of old age.

"All right, all right, you little monsters," I say, the words coming from a throat feeling raspy and unfamiliar. "Let an old man find his teeth." They giggle and tumble off the bed. I swing my legs over the side and stand. My muscles are weak, the body a stranger to me.

In the bathroom, I brace myself against the sink, raising my gaze to meet the image in the mirror. Not the face of a man on a death row. Not the face of the desperate young man, but the face of a man with a life I never lived. Deep laugh lines etched around kind blue eyes, like a map of the river delta of rust and time. A crown of snow-white hair.

Downstairs, the kitchen is a pond of sunlit chaos. A man who must be in his forties flips a pancake at the stove. A son. A woman I don't know pours orange juice for the kids. A daughter. Eleanor stands by the coffee pot. Her hair is silver, her face is lined like mine. Our eyes meet. Her smile, the key unlocking the weight I’ve been carrying for eleven years. It’s gone.

Smell of bacon. Sound of laughter. The sight of her, alive and old and beautiful. A lump in my throat. I walk over to my son, the baby I never held, the man I never raised. I put my arms around him, and a sob tears its way out of my chest, a dry, rattling sound of unendurable gratitude.

He stiffens. Pats my back. "Whoa, Dad. You okay?"

The whole room goes quiet. Eleanor comes over. My body remembers her touch; my mind does not. "It's just the excitement," she says. "His heart. Let's all just have a nice, calm breakfast." She smiles and hands me a warm mug. The heat seeps into my palms. I take a sip, and the taste—rich, dark, and real, not the grey, watery sap from the prison mess—is so powerful I almost choke.

A plate is set before me. I take a bite of the pancake my son made. Butter, sweet syrup, the slight char from the pan—simple and perfect flavors. The taste of a meal made in a home I never built, with a family I never had.

At the amusement park, I am a phantom observing my own heaven. My son wins a stuffed bear for his daughter. Teaches his own son how to throw a ball. My granddaughter shoves a cloud of pink cotton candy into my mouth, its sweetness melts on my tongue, a flavor from a world I had forced myself to forget.

I ride the Ferris wheel with Eleanor. At the very top, she rests her head on my shoulder. The first time in a lifetime of first times. The noise of the crowd below. A joyous roar of happiness. I swallow my tears.

My borrowed body is frail. I have to sit on a bench while the younger ones ride the coaster one last time. I am with them, but I am separate, a tourist in my own promised land.

The drive home is quiet. Night has fallen. My son is driving, my daughter beside him. The grandkids are asleep in the third row, smiles on their faces. I sit in the backseat with Eleanor, her soft, wrinkled hand in mine. I trace the wedding ring I don't remember giving her.

"You were quiet today," she says.

"Just taking it all in." The truest thing I have ever said.

A single, pure ting. A chill.

The priest's voice, echoless inside my own head.

I look at Eleanor, at her profile in the passing glow of the streetlights. I lean closer. "Ellie. I have to go now."

She turns to me and smiles, her gaze holds a lifetime I never knew. She pats my hand. "Go to sleep, my love," she says. "We're almost home."

I squeeze her hand. My eyes close, and the last thing I feel is the warmth of her skin.

The end.