The Bell I Almost Took Down

She did not say anything for a long time. It was a kitchen I had not cooked in properly since Marcella, and the clock on the stove said ten past five.

Then she said, “Thursday the third.”

I said yes.

“I’ll drive,” she said. “You will not be driving yourself to Evansville in the dark on the third of December, Loyal Zeller. I will drive you, and I will sit in that waiting room with a crossword puzzle, and I will be the one who says what is to be done when they let me back. That is how it will go.” She picked up her spoon again. “And on the afternoon they send you home I will walk out to that gate at four thirty and ring that bell myself, and you may lie in your bed and hear it from the window.”

I said, “Winnie, I said you would be signing up to bury me. I was trying to tell you I could not ask it.”

“You did not ask,” she said. “I walked out. There is a difference, and I have waited forty-eight years of marriage to learn to tell it.”

She put out her hand across the table and I took it. It was the second time that evening, and I thought I was getting used to it, and I was not.

She said, “Garth said I would be signing up. I think I signed up on Saturday at the wrench. I just did not know how to spell it.”

The Bell

I put the crescent wrench back in the drawer on Wednesday night. I have not used it since. I may use it someday to take the bell down, when I am too old to walk to the post and she is too old to answer it, and we will take it down together, and give it to Ainsley, who asked on the way out whether it was hers when we were gone.

Tomorrow, which will be today by the time you read this, I will walk to the post at twenty-five past four. I do not know what Winifred will do. I think she will be there before me. I think she will have her hand on the rope.

It will be the thousand and sixth ring. I rang the first one for Duane. I have rung every one since for the woman who sits at his sink. It took a thousand and five afternoons and a four-foot gate cut into a fence by a woman I was too careful to ask, and I will say this to Duane Stroud wherever he is, who stood beside me at that post for forty-four years and never asked me for anything: it holds.

It holds, old friend. It is a good fence. She has made it a better one.