Episode 8: “The Bell”

The bell was mounted on the outside of the old fire station, high up on the brick above the main door. It was a large bell, dark with weathering, with a striker mechanism visible on one side. The fire station wasn’t a fire station anymore. It was something else now, offices or storage, with a painted-over sign above the door and a buzzer entry system that hadn’t been there originally.

Dale stood on the sidewalk and looked up at it.

Sally stood next to him. This was the first time in a while she had been next to him instead of slightly behind.

“It’s still in the system,” Dale said.

Sally looked at the bell.

“Decommissioned bells stay connected,” Dale said. “They don’t remove them because the removal cost exceeds the maintenance cost. So they leave them integrated but dormant.”

“Dormant,” Sally said.

“On standby,” Dale said. “The circuit is live. It just doesn’t get signals anymore.”

Sally looked at the striker mechanism. There was a wire running from it down the brick and disappearing into a metal conduit that ran along the mortar line and into the building.

“The wire’s still there,” Sally said.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Dale said.

Sally looked at the wire. It had been painted over at some point, the same color as the brick, but the paint had cracked along the edges and you could see the original wire color underneath. It had been there a long time.

Dale looked at the striker mechanism more carefully. It was a simple arm with a weight at the end, designed to swing against the bell when released. It wasn’t moving. It hadn’t moved in a long time. There was a small bird nest built into the bracket where the arm connected to the housing.

Dale saw the nest.

He didn’t say anything about it for a moment.

“The striker’s in rest position,” he said. “That’s correct for standby. If it were active you’d see tension in the arm.”

Sally looked at the nest. It was old and compacted, the kind that had been rained on many times and dried out again. No birds. Just the shape of where they had been.

“Something built in it,” Sally said.

“The mechanism creates a sheltered bracket,” Dale said. “That’s a known secondary use. It doesn’t affect function.”

Sally looked at the nest for a while.

Dale looked back at the bell itself. It was a good size, bigger than it looked from a distance. The metal had gone dark and uneven with weathering, lighter in some places where rain hit it directly, darker in the sheltered curve underneath.

“The tone would be lower than it was originally,” Dale said. “Metal changes over time. The structure inside shifts. A bell this old rings different than it did when it was installed.”

“Has anyone rung it,” Sally said.

“Not for a long time,” Dale said.

They both looked at it.

The bell didn’t move. The striker arm didn’t move. The wire ran down the brick and into the conduit and into the building where whatever was connected to it had long since been disconnected or forgotten or replaced with something else.

“It would still work,” Dale said. “If the signal came through. The mechanism is sound.”

Sally looked at the nest in the striker bracket. She looked at the painted-over wire. She looked at the dark uneven surface of the bell and the lighter places where the rain came straight down.

She didn’t say what she was thinking.

“Good bell,” Dale said.

He started walking.

Sally looked up at the bell for another moment. Then she followed him.