Hell's Bells
KATE DUNHAM
The nosey bitch next door has eyed the green plaid boxers swinging from my laundry line at least six times while successfully keeping her arms buried in her flowerbed. The wind was strong and caught the thin fabric every few seconds, waving the boxers like a flag of indiscretion. I kept peeking through the mini blinds hanging from my trailer’s kitchen window to see her eyes flick up to the line. She shook her head and her lips moved; she was probably cursing me. One time, I’d caught her talking to Delores down the road from us, saying I was probably some sort of prostitute or stripper taking boxers from my customers and hanging them on the line. She’d made a Scarlet Letter reference, too; “maybe her parents should have named her Hester,” she’d said. I swear that old woman has hated me since the day I drove my 1997 Silver Bullet Airstream trailer to this RV Park in Independence, Kansas.
Permanently parking my trailer here was not the original plan. My savings dried up while I was traveling the United States and, unfortunately, I’d had to sell my dingy old truck to pay for food. If I’d purchased a real RV that came equipped with its own engine, I wouldn’t have even run into this problem. However, Silver Bullets must be pulled. And where was my puller? On a sturdy pair of cinderblocks in the Independence, Kansas junkyard. So, now, I lived in the slightly less junky junkyard in Independence, Kansas called The Corn Husk RV Park.
“Like the boxers, Mrs. McCall? You can have ‘em if you want. I’m sure Random Man number seven won’t mind.” I opened the squeaky front door and leaned outside. Mrs. McCall looked up from her browning tulip bulbs and stared at me like she had no idea what I was referring to. That woman must be killer at the poker table. She stripped her dirty gloves off and threw them to the ground in a huff.
The gnarled wooden fence separating our homes was the only thing keeping Mrs. McCall from wrapping her veiny hands around my neck.
“I wasn’t lookin’ at no boxers, Miss Lawrence. Just admirin’ the birds on such a lovely day,” she said, pushing her gray bangs back from her sweaty face. She smiled like she had a secret I didn’t know. If it was an hour later on a Wednesday and Delores had been over for tea and their weekly Wheel of Fortune date, they probably would have smirked at each other.
Man, I had a bird she could admire. My feet stayed on the rusty steps of my trailer. The sun reflected off the metal and onto my face. I could feel my cheeks heating up. They probably looked like I’d forgotten my sunscreen again.
“Alrighty then. Just makin’ sure you aren’t in need of any plaid boxers. I have a few pairs if you ever do,” I said. Her mouth formed a tight line and she turned away from me, going back to her own trailer and shutting the door too loud. She was probably going to call Delores and tell her about the deplorable twenty-five year old harlot next door.
I blew my hair out of my face and turned around to go back inside when the bells at the office chimed the hour. They had been stuck on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for at least nine months. The song didn’t even seem festive at Christmastime now. I hated that damn reindeer. I probably would’ve left him out of my reindeer games, too.
A car pulled up next to my trailer, displacing the dust surrounding it and creating a cappuccino colored cloud. The window rolled down and I saw the silhouette of a woman through the dust. Her hair was tied up into a high ponytail but still managed to easily brush the tops of her shoulders. When the dust settled, she stuck her hand out the window to wave me over to her.
“Coming to work today, Bea?” she asked as if I had a choice. The sunglasses she’d picked out today were bigger than her face and dwarfed her features. The lenses were still pretty light and I could see that she was still squinting through the sun. I didn’t know what the point of light colored sunglass lenses was, but I decided not to ask.
“Yeah, just give me a sec, Carly,” I said. Carly said nothing and went back to fiddling with the radio’s volume. It produced a fuzzy Rolling Stones song. The dial on her radio had fallen off a few months ago and now it was stuck on some classic rock station.
I turned around and went back inside to grab my uniform and nametag for work. My trailer was full of artwork, acrylic scenery spread to the well-rounded edges of cloth canvases. I was careless with my paintbrushes and left them strewn over my kitchen counter. A few of them had fallen into the sink full of used coffee cups and crumb-coated plates. I ran my fingers over the raised dollops of paint that made up an azalea bush before Carly honked her horn and I nearly flung it into the dirty sink. I put the canvas to the side and picked up my apron. The loose change inside the pockets clanked together, almost as annoying as the Christmas bells.
The restaurant Carly and I worked at sat in the center of town. Grease dripped down the windows, the air smelled like Crisco, and I always left with clogged pores, but at least I made enough there to buy groceries.
“How long is your shift today?” Carly asked as we walked in. I tied my apron around my waist and fished the few pens I had left out of the deep pockets. Regulars had already claimed their spots at the counter and taken up booths too big for just one person. The grill sizzled from behind the open window at the back of the restaurant. Charlie, the head cook, always got an early start.
“Seven hours. Charlie better make me some cheese sticks halfway through or I may collapse,” I said, picking up a guest check book and shoving it into my apron. Sweat slid down my face and round the edges of my chin. I hated opening shifts.
“That’s rough,” Carly said. She picked up a tray and began setting up a coffee platter for the old man sitting nearest the door. The last time Carly had forgotten to bring his coffee in a timely manner, he’d waved a $20 bill in her face, torn it up, and thrown it at her. She hadn’t forgotten his coffee since. The one time I’d waited on him, he’d said his eggs were undercooked and dumped them on the table in front of me. All in all, he was not a nice man.
The door to the restaurant opened and I turned to greet whoever had just come in. The clock above the kitchen window said it was 9:07, which meant it was probably Mr. Thornbrugh. He lived in my RV park and came in everyday at the same time for an extra large bowl of grits, a glass of orange juice, and three burnt bacon strips.
“Hey, Mr. Thornbrugh. We have your bacon cooking up right now, so you can take your normal booth and it’ll be out soon.”
“I’m gonna need a menu today, Beatrice. My grandson just arrived in town and doesn’t know how good Charlie’s cooking is, so he needs to browse a bit,” Mr. Thornbrugh said. I turned to the door and saw the sixty-year old man looking at me, the crow’s feet by his eyes crinkling into a smile. Behind him stood a very bored looking twenty-something. His top lip twitched into a sneer when he looked back at the greasy windows. Even through his grimace he was an attractive dude.
I handed Mr. Thornbrugh a menu and the two walked to his usual booth. His grandson wore a pair of tight fit khaki pants and a blue plaid button up with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the cuffs wrinkled and haphazard. He either didn’t care at all or was too cool to use an iron, I decided.
After a few minutes, I approached their table.
“Have we decided on something, grandson?” I asked.
Grandson looked up at me. His eyes were the color of the salt lamp my younger brother kept on his desk, a scary sort of glowing amber. I half expected him to turn into a werewolf and lunge at me.
“My name is Henry,” he said. His lips were a sickly mauve color and barely moved when he spoke. The skin flaked off of them like the layers of a buttermilk biscuit. Ever heard of Chapstick, Henry?
“Well, Henry,” I said, clicking my pen. “Have we decided on something?”
Henry looked at the menu, up to me, and back down to the menu again.
“I’ll just have a glass of orange juice. Everything looks too greasy,” he said finally. He slid the menu to the edge of the table and looked at me like he expected a response to his unwarranted comment.
“OJ: hold the grease. Got it. Mr. Thornbrugh, your grits and bacon will be out in just a sec. Sound alright?” I asked, not bothering to write down Henry’s snooty juice order.
Mr. Thornbrugh nodded and the bell by the kitchen rang. A soup bowl of steaming grits sat next to a plate of shriveled, black bacon at the window and I went to get them and two glasses of juice. I hated grits and never understood their appeal, but Mr. Thornbrugh practically lived off of them. He, from what I could see, had strong teeth, so there was no need to eat mush for every meal. Liking the flavor was beyond me; perhaps he was used to eating them now.
“Henry here is going into his last year of college, Beatrice,” Mr. Thornbrugh said. His breakfast was still steaming and the restaurant was practically empty, so a bit of conversation with the guy wouldn’t hurt much.
“Oh, really? That’s exciting,” I said, turning around to grab a few napkins for their table.
“It’ll be his sixth year. He got in some trouble, so his mom sent him to live with Grandpa for the summer. We’ll all be happy to have him in the Corn Husk. Right, Beatrice?” Mr. Thornbrugh picked up a spoon and stirred his grits. They didn’t produce a smell at all.
Henry finally looked up from his cloudy orange juice. “You live in that RV park?” he asked, almost like he was shocked.
I nodded. “I live about nine trailers down from your grandpa in a Silver Bullet.”
Mr. Thornbrugh had checked out of the conversation and checked into his breakfast, but Henry seemed to be interested in talking to me for the first time since they had arrived.
“Aren’t you a little young to live in a trailer park?” he asked. One side of his mouth curved up, like he thought he was clever. What a prick.
“I wasn’t aware there was an age limit, but thank you for letting me know there is one,” I said with my best waitress smile. The one thing I despised about waiting tables was that I always had to be friendly, or at least sound pleasant. That “customer is always right” bullshit really got on my nerves. One time, some fifty-year old woman came in and swore to me that, two months ago, we’d had biscuits and gravy on the menu. Her party of fifteen took up four tables and were buttoned up in starchy church clothes. The pearls around the woman’s neck looked fake, but I was sure she told everyone they were a family heirloom. She just seemed like that kind of person. I tried to explain that she must have our restaurant confused with another, but then she yelled so loud that Charlie made her a plate of biscuits and gravy just so she’d shut up. Then she’d turned to me and said, “I told you so. Your inability to remember things explains why you’re a waitress.”
I went to print Mr. Thornbrugh and Henry’s check and gave them a few minutes to talk alone. Henry didn’t seem to be all that interested in what his grandfather had to say, but Mr. Thornbrugh had never really cared if people were interested in what he had to say. He still said it.
“Beatrice,” he said, waving me over. His bowl was empty now.
“Yes?” I asked, setting his meager check down and wiping my hands on my apron. If you were in the restaurant long enough, your hands became greasy without having to touch anything.
“Are you working your usual shift today? Until around 4 o’clock?” he asked, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. A burnt bacon crumb had taken up home in his wiry mustache, but I waited to tell him until he was finished asking me his question.
“Yes, sir. Off at four and back to the comfort of my trailer. Why do you ask? Also, you’ve got a bit of bacon just there.” I gestured to the right side of his mustache and he wiped it quickly, the crumb disappearing.
Mr. Thornbrugh stood up and threw a crumpled $10 bill on the table to cover his tab. “Would you mind keeping Henry company? I have a few errands to run and he’d be bored out of his mind tagging along,” he said. He brushed his hands off on his greige suit pants, leaving behind a few discolored grease marks.
I did not want to keep Henry company. Henry looked like he did not want me to keep him company. He struck me as a spoiled kid who fucked around at college and ended up having to stay for more than his allotted time. While I knew there were degrees that required more than a traditional four years nowadays, Henry didn’t strike me as someone who would try for one of them. Some sort of low business degree was probably as challenging as he would go.
I stood there in uncomfortable silence, trying to think of the best way to turn him down when Mr. Thornbrugh pulled a $100 bill from his wallet and said, “I’ll make it worth your while! Just a couple of hours, I promise.”
Refuse $100? Moi? Absolutely not. Math had never been my forté, but I knew that at fifteen cents a pop, $100 could buy me quite a few packets of chicken ramen noodles and maybe even a pint of Great Value chocolate ice cream.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there at four,” I said, taking the bill from his hand and putting it in my apron. They left and the jingle bells attached to the handle clinked together. I don’t know why annoying, out of tune bells seemed to immediately precede or follow shitty moments in my life, but it was beginning to strike me as some sort of eerie premonition.
Or maybe this town was obsessed with semi-broken bells. Though that seemed a bit more likely, I still enjoyed the idea that revolved around me better.
***
The stupid fucking bells were going off in the RV park when I got home even though it was past 4 o’clock. I dropped my stuff off at my trailer before going over to Mr. Thornbrugh’s like I’d promised.
Henry and Mr. Thornbrugh were sitting on his makeshift detached porch, legs crossed in the same way. Mr. Thornbrugh had the nicest detached porch in the entire RV park. It was stained a dark, black cherry brown and polished to perfection; he had spent so much time making it. Fluffy rose bushes surrounded the three tiny stairs leading to the main deck. Mr. Thornbrugh prided himself on the beautiful roses he grew every year and pruned them himself. I often found one stuck through my door handle every Sunday morning in spring.
“Right on time!” Mr. Thornbrugh stood up from his blue and white striped lawn chair and grabbed the keys sitting on the small plexiglass table next to Henry. “I’ll be back in a while. Have fun, you two,” he said, hustling down his porch steps and down the dust road to the Husk’s communal parking lot.
I sat in the flimsy chair he’d left behind. Henry was quiet and had covered his eyes with a pair of sunglasses I probably couldn’t even afford with the $100 tip I’d gotten from his grandfather. The bells were beginning to fade. I pulled out my cracked phone to check the time: 4:23. Thirty-seven minutes until the next round of hell was supposed to begin.
“So do you all think it’s Christmastime right now or something? Why do those bells keep singing about that fucking reindeer?” Henry asked. His attempt at having a conversation, I suppose.
I picked at my fingernails, specks of glitter punctuating the worn threads of my jeans.
“I have no idea why they play that song. They used to play different stuff. It was still annoying, but at least it didn’t make me homicidal,” I said.
That got a stifled chuckle out of Mr. College Boy.
“I’ve been here for a day and I’ve already had a dream about shooting Santa Claus out of the sky this December,” he said.
“At least you only have to be here for the summer,” I said. This conversation was so uncomfortable it was going to give me a rash if it went on too much longer. When did Mr. Thornbrugh say he would be back? How long was “a while” when you were in your sixties? The air between us went still and even the birds seemed to stop chirping. The clouds looked heavy and sad, like it was going to rain later. The air always felt heavier—palpable, almost—when it was going to rain.
We sat in silence for a while until Henry looked over at me and said, “So why aren’t you in school or something? If you’d get a degree or something, you probably wouldn’t have to work at that shitty diner.”
Ah, here we go: the whole, “why don’t you just get a better job” argument. My parents had eventually given up calling and telling me what a mistake I’d made by choosing not to go to college. Even art school would have been better than nothing, they always said.
“Just not my thing, I guess.”
“Is it anyone’s thing?” Henry asked.
I looked over at him.
“Well, it seems to be yours considering you’re going into your sixth year,” I said.
“That’s not really fair of you to say. At least I tried,” he said.
This guy was not going to give up, was he?
“Doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard,” I said. I heard Henry’s breathing begin to pick up and become ragged, like he was going to lose his temper soon. “What’s your major anyway?”
Henry mumbled something and I leaned in a little closer.
“What was that? Do you mumble like that when your professors ask you questions, too? That may be why you’re going into your sixth year, bud,” I said.
“Business. I’m a business major,” Henry said.
“I knew it. That’s typically about a four-year degree plan, yeah?” I asked.
Henry’s face soured and he shifted in his chair. He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them in the opposite way. His shoe was halfway off his foot, hanging on his toes like an unanchored rock climber.
“Typically,” he said, grinding his teeth.
I loved being able to mess with someone under the age of fifty-five. “So that’s not going too well, then?” I asked.
“Jesus, fuck off already. Not everyone finishes in four years. Most people don’t, actually. At least I attempted to go at all. That’s more than you can say, trailer trash,” he said.
Oh.
Oh, he did not just call me “trailer trash.”
I tried to keep a level head but I was on my feet before I even realized what was happening.
“I don’t need lip from a spoiled business major who will probably live with his parents until he’s in his thirties drinking lukewarm Code Red Mountain Dew while he screams at thirteen year olds on Xbox Live,” I said. I wished I could’ve said that sitting down in my seat like a calm, rational adult, but all rationality went out the window when someone called me trailer trash. I stomped down the porch steps and headed back toward my trailer, the sun starting to settle behind the dark clouds.
“You’re not supposed to leave me here alone. My grandfather paid you to stay with me,” Henry said. He stood up out of his chair and finally took his sunglasses off. He clipped them at the neck of his shirt like an elderly man who had yet to upgrade to one of those silly eyewear retainers.
“You’re twenty-two years old. I think you can manage,” I said, not stopping my angry walk to look back at him. The bells began to ring again, three minutes early.
***
The clouds had opened up around 10:30 that night and hadn’t stopped for the past hour and a half. I rolled the blinds up in my bedroom and watched the raindrops race each other to the bottom of the foggy windowpane. My clunky laptop was set on the pullout bedside table droning How I Met Your Mother reruns from Netflix. The wifi slowed to a crawl every few moments and the show kept buffering, cutting jokes in half and making them significantly less funny. I appreciated the noise all the same.
Flashing green numbers on the clock by my bed told me it was 11:57PM, but the Christmas bells disagreed. They began to cut through the thunderstorm outside like a freshly sharpened kitchen knife, out of tune and out of season. I put my pillow over my head in an attempt to muffle the song but it still managed to permeate the synthetic feathers.
Then, I heard a rapid pounding at my door. Normally I’d chalk any weird banging up to a hailstorm, but this was concentrated at the door and it was hard to miss hail when you lived in a giant metal tube. I dragged myself out of bed and, fuzzy blanket wrapped around my shoulders, went to answer whoever was knocking at my door in the middle of a storm.
Standing on the tiny top step of my trailer was a drenched version of Henry, shivering and holding onto a hammer so tight that his knuckles turned white. His curly brown hair lay in soppy tentacles on his forehead and little water droplets clung to his eyelashes like spiders. I was still furious with him but he looked like a little wet dog and it was almost adorable.
“Want to come break the bells with me?”
Without missing a beat, I said, “Yes, definitely yes.”
After getting my raincoat and finding a pair of water resistant shoes, I followed Henry out into the downpour and over toward the dimly lit office. They claimed to be open twenty-four hours a day, but that was a complete lie that they put on the website to make the park seem friendlier.
Next to the office was a small, one story chapel with a bell tower. It was old and the white paint was chipping off the cheap wood. The office built it in a matter of weeks so that people who couldn’t get out of the park to attend church could still go to a service. That worked for a while, but now it was mainly used for hide and seek purposes and the occasional shotgun wedding. The roof was leaking and puddles soaked into the already warped wooden floors. They felt bulbous under my boots.
“So how are we doing this?” I asked. “I can’t help but notice all you have is a hammer and I don’t know if they teach you this in college, but if you hit them, they ring. That’s all that happens.”
Henry found the door at the back of the chapel that led to the small staircase that would take us to the bell tower. I followed as he ascended the stairs.
“Well, they’re probably anchored to some sort of wooden beam. Judging by the floors in this place, we may be able to bring the beam down with a few good swings. The wood is probably rotten,” he said. That seemed reasonable, so I kept climbing the stairs after him to follow out his plan.
There were three bells in total. They were arranged in a grapelike cluster and looked a lot older than they were, probably in part to wear and tear. Maybe they were also tired of playing the same song over and over again.
“They don’t even look metal,” I said, watching as Henry approached with hammer in hand. The poorly carved arches in the walls allowed rain to blow in and continuously pelt me like BB gun pellets.
Henry ran his fingers over the bells. “That’s because they aren’t. They’re porcelain. That makes smashing them a lot easier,” he said, raising his hammer and swinging at a bell with all the grace of a little league player at his first practice.
The porcelain cried out as the first bell was hit, pieces of it falling to the worn floor like glass teardrops. The entire bell didn’t break—that was some strong porcelain—but Henry did enough damage with one swing to ensure that bell would never sing again.
He hit it a few more times, perfectly timing each to a loud thunderclap outside. I ruined the next bell and we took turns with the third. When we were finished, all that remained were the fractured skulls of the bells, hanging onto their support beam with all the strength they had left. The clappers on each hung sadly, their porcelain shelters destroyed.
We stood as intruders in the former home of the bells, the carnage of their broken bodies surrounding us on the gnarled wooden floors. Some smaller shards had found their way in between the cracks of the planks, taking up permanent residence so nobody would ever forget the murderous act we’d committed that night. Nobody swept up here. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody had come up here in years. It’s probably why the bells were so broken.
“Is that it? No more Rudolph?” Henry asked, holding the hammer with both of his hands. His handsome face was contorted in a strange expression, almost as if he felt guilty about what we’d done.
I didn’t know how to answer. Obviously this was it. Unless the Corn Husk decided to invest in a giant pair of speakers and bell only instrumentals of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we were free from the song that had haunted us for so long. I felt conflicted. I had waited so long for that stupid song to stop playing but the Husk felt different without it, almost like I’d taken a plane to some distant place where music wasn’t allowed. I think the trees outside were singing it. I could still hear it in the back of my head.
“No more Rudolph,” I said. The wind howled outside like a wolf without its pack and it made my heart heavy. Henry held the hammer close to him like an old teddy bear and we stood in silence for a moment before finally leaving the skeletal chapel.
“So, what do you do anyway? Other than work at that diner,” Henry asked when we were walking back to his grandfather’s. The ground was soggy but the rain was beginning to let up.
“Oh, now you want to talk to the trailer trash politely?” I asked.
“Look, I’m sorry about calling you trailer trash, okay? Now what do you do around here?” he asked, agitation edging into his voice.
That sounded like a fake apology, but I decided to humor him.
“I paint a lot,” I said, sticking my hands in the pockets of my raincoat. My fingers brushed wrappers and old receipts and I made a mental note to throw them away later. I’d probably forget.
“Paint? Why didn’t you go to art school, then?” he asked, stopping in front of Mr. Thornbrugh’s trailer and sitting down on the deck. I almost warned him that it would be wet but kept my mouth shut. He knew it’d be wet. He was already soaked through from walking around in a thunderstorm anyway.
“Just didn’t feel right. I like the way I paint and I don’t want to be graded on it. Art’s not really something you can be graded on, I don’t think. Everyone is different, so who’s some stuffy old lady to tell me that I drew something wrong?” I said, looking back to the bell tower. The clouds loomed over it, like they were having a funeral. They sent their sympathies in bright flashes of lightning.
Henry sat still for a minute before getting up and turning to go inside.
“I guess that makes sense. You should at least try to sell it or something. That diner fucking sucks,” he said, reaching for the handle.
I laughed. He was right; that diner did fucking suck.
“Hey, you want to do me a favor?” I asked, shifting my feet a bit so I didn’t sink too far into the wet sod.
Henry turned around, a blank look on his face. Had he looked any other way since I’d met him? “Depends on the favor,” he said.
“You wanna give me a pair of your underwear to hang on my clothesline? I like messing with my neighbor. She thinks I’m some sort of prostitute stripper and I have yet to confirm or deny that,” I said.
He studied my face in the dark, really scrutinizing my features. His glowing eyes squinted at me and his tongue flicked out over his lips, reptilian like. He had his brief moments of attractiveness, but this was not one of them.
“That’s fuckin’ weird,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m a little fuckin’ weird. I live in an RV Park called the Corn Husk for God’s sake.”
Feeling like I was under a microscope as Henry continued to stare at me, I stayed planted in my spot until he opened his dry lips and said, “No, I don’t think we’ve reached that point in our relationship yet.”
That was not the response I expected, but I accepted it nonetheless. What was I supposed to do? Dart past him and steal a pair myself? That would mean risking accidentally picking up a pair of Mr. Thornbrugh’s underwear and that was not a risk I was willing to take.
“Alright. Well, let me know if you ever change your mind about that. I promise she’s really fun to mess with,” I said, turning to leave the soaked college boy on the handcrafted porch.
“Probably won’t change my mind on that, but you’ll be the first one I tell if I decide to give any underwear away,” he said.
As I turned my back to him, I half expected Henry to try to give me some after school special lecture about how I needed to sell my artwork and get out of Independence, but all I heard was the click of Mr. Thornbrugh’s pressurized trailer door and the squelch of my boots in the mud.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time: 2:59AM. I watched as the numbers rolled over to a round 3:00AM and waited. I could imagine the bells sitting up in their tower, their strangled gasps of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer going unheard as their clappers swung back and forth, hitting only the heavy air around them. I took in every sound around me: the wind in the poorly maintained trees, the muffled sounds of TVs through thin trailer walls, and the pattering of raindrops on my shiny tin roof.
None of the noises around me were being overshadowed by poorly timed Christmas music tonight. I watched the boxers on my laundry line as the wind caught them. If I’d had any rhythm at all, I would’ve joined them.
KATE DUNHAM
The nosey bitch next door has eyed the green plaid boxers swinging from my laundry line at least six times while successfully keeping her arms buried in her flowerbed. The wind was strong and caught the thin fabric every few seconds, waving the boxers like a flag of indiscretion. I kept peeking through the mini blinds hanging from my trailer’s kitchen window to see her eyes flick up to the line. She shook her head and her lips moved; she was probably cursing me. One time, I’d caught her talking to Delores down the road from us, saying I was probably some sort of prostitute or stripper taking boxers from my customers and hanging them on the line. She’d made a Scarlet Letter reference, too; “maybe her parents should have named her Hester,” she’d said. I swear that old woman has hated me since the day I drove my 1997 Silver Bullet Airstream trailer to this RV Park in Independence, Kansas.
Permanently parking my trailer here was not the original plan. My savings dried up while I was traveling the United States and, unfortunately, I’d had to sell my dingy old truck to pay for food. If I’d purchased a real RV that came equipped with its own engine, I wouldn’t have even run into this problem. However, Silver Bullets must be pulled. And where was my puller? On a sturdy pair of cinderblocks in the Independence, Kansas junkyard. So, now, I lived in the slightly less junky junkyard in Independence, Kansas called The Corn Husk RV Park.
“Like the boxers, Mrs. McCall? You can have ‘em if you want. I’m sure Random Man number seven won’t mind.” I opened the squeaky front door and leaned outside. Mrs. McCall looked up from her browning tulip bulbs and stared at me like she had no idea what I was referring to. That woman must be killer at the poker table. She stripped her dirty gloves off and threw them to the ground in a huff.
The gnarled wooden fence separating our homes was the only thing keeping Mrs. McCall from wrapping her veiny hands around my neck.
“I wasn’t lookin’ at no boxers, Miss Lawrence. Just admirin’ the birds on such a lovely day,” she said, pushing her gray bangs back from her sweaty face. She smiled like she had a secret I didn’t know. If it was an hour later on a Wednesday and Delores had been over for tea and their weekly Wheel of Fortune date, they probably would have smirked at each other.
Man, I had a bird she could admire. My feet stayed on the rusty steps of my trailer. The sun reflected off the metal and onto my face. I could feel my cheeks heating up. They probably looked like I’d forgotten my sunscreen again.
“Alrighty then. Just makin’ sure you aren’t in need of any plaid boxers. I have a few pairs if you ever do,” I said. Her mouth formed a tight line and she turned away from me, going back to her own trailer and shutting the door too loud. She was probably going to call Delores and tell her about the deplorable twenty-five year old harlot next door.
I blew my hair out of my face and turned around to go back inside when the bells at the office chimed the hour. They had been stuck on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for at least nine months. The song didn’t even seem festive at Christmastime now. I hated that damn reindeer. I probably would’ve left him out of my reindeer games, too.
A car pulled up next to my trailer, displacing the dust surrounding it and creating a cappuccino colored cloud. The window rolled down and I saw the silhouette of a woman through the dust. Her hair was tied up into a high ponytail but still managed to easily brush the tops of her shoulders. When the dust settled, she stuck her hand out the window to wave me over to her.
“Coming to work today, Bea?” she asked as if I had a choice. The sunglasses she’d picked out today were bigger than her face and dwarfed her features. The lenses were still pretty light and I could see that she was still squinting through the sun. I didn’t know what the point of light colored sunglass lenses was, but I decided not to ask.
“Yeah, just give me a sec, Carly,” I said. Carly said nothing and went back to fiddling with the radio’s volume. It produced a fuzzy Rolling Stones song. The dial on her radio had fallen off a few months ago and now it was stuck on some classic rock station.
I turned around and went back inside to grab my uniform and nametag for work. My trailer was full of artwork, acrylic scenery spread to the well-rounded edges of cloth canvases. I was careless with my paintbrushes and left them strewn over my kitchen counter. A few of them had fallen into the sink full of used coffee cups and crumb-coated plates. I ran my fingers over the raised dollops of paint that made up an azalea bush before Carly honked her horn and I nearly flung it into the dirty sink. I put the canvas to the side and picked up my apron. The loose change inside the pockets clanked together, almost as annoying as the Christmas bells.
The restaurant Carly and I worked at sat in the center of town. Grease dripped down the windows, the air smelled like Crisco, and I always left with clogged pores, but at least I made enough there to buy groceries.
“How long is your shift today?” Carly asked as we walked in. I tied my apron around my waist and fished the few pens I had left out of the deep pockets. Regulars had already claimed their spots at the counter and taken up booths too big for just one person. The grill sizzled from behind the open window at the back of the restaurant. Charlie, the head cook, always got an early start.
“Seven hours. Charlie better make me some cheese sticks halfway through or I may collapse,” I said, picking up a guest check book and shoving it into my apron. Sweat slid down my face and round the edges of my chin. I hated opening shifts.
“That’s rough,” Carly said. She picked up a tray and began setting up a coffee platter for the old man sitting nearest the door. The last time Carly had forgotten to bring his coffee in a timely manner, he’d waved a $20 bill in her face, torn it up, and thrown it at her. She hadn’t forgotten his coffee since. The one time I’d waited on him, he’d said his eggs were undercooked and dumped them on the table in front of me. All in all, he was not a nice man.
The door to the restaurant opened and I turned to greet whoever had just come in. The clock above the kitchen window said it was 9:07, which meant it was probably Mr. Thornbrugh. He lived in my RV park and came in everyday at the same time for an extra large bowl of grits, a glass of orange juice, and three burnt bacon strips.
“Hey, Mr. Thornbrugh. We have your bacon cooking up right now, so you can take your normal booth and it’ll be out soon.”
“I’m gonna need a menu today, Beatrice. My grandson just arrived in town and doesn’t know how good Charlie’s cooking is, so he needs to browse a bit,” Mr. Thornbrugh said. I turned to the door and saw the sixty-year old man looking at me, the crow’s feet by his eyes crinkling into a smile. Behind him stood a very bored looking twenty-something. His top lip twitched into a sneer when he looked back at the greasy windows. Even through his grimace he was an attractive dude.
I handed Mr. Thornbrugh a menu and the two walked to his usual booth. His grandson wore a pair of tight fit khaki pants and a blue plaid button up with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the cuffs wrinkled and haphazard. He either didn’t care at all or was too cool to use an iron, I decided.
After a few minutes, I approached their table.
“Have we decided on something, grandson?” I asked.
Grandson looked up at me. His eyes were the color of the salt lamp my younger brother kept on his desk, a scary sort of glowing amber. I half expected him to turn into a werewolf and lunge at me.
“My name is Henry,” he said. His lips were a sickly mauve color and barely moved when he spoke. The skin flaked off of them like the layers of a buttermilk biscuit. Ever heard of Chapstick, Henry?
“Well, Henry,” I said, clicking my pen. “Have we decided on something?”
Henry looked at the menu, up to me, and back down to the menu again.
“I’ll just have a glass of orange juice. Everything looks too greasy,” he said finally. He slid the menu to the edge of the table and looked at me like he expected a response to his unwarranted comment.
“OJ: hold the grease. Got it. Mr. Thornbrugh, your grits and bacon will be out in just a sec. Sound alright?” I asked, not bothering to write down Henry’s snooty juice order.
Mr. Thornbrugh nodded and the bell by the kitchen rang. A soup bowl of steaming grits sat next to a plate of shriveled, black bacon at the window and I went to get them and two glasses of juice. I hated grits and never understood their appeal, but Mr. Thornbrugh practically lived off of them. He, from what I could see, had strong teeth, so there was no need to eat mush for every meal. Liking the flavor was beyond me; perhaps he was used to eating them now.
“Henry here is going into his last year of college, Beatrice,” Mr. Thornbrugh said. His breakfast was still steaming and the restaurant was practically empty, so a bit of conversation with the guy wouldn’t hurt much.
“Oh, really? That’s exciting,” I said, turning around to grab a few napkins for their table.
“It’ll be his sixth year. He got in some trouble, so his mom sent him to live with Grandpa for the summer. We’ll all be happy to have him in the Corn Husk. Right, Beatrice?” Mr. Thornbrugh picked up a spoon and stirred his grits. They didn’t produce a smell at all.
Henry finally looked up from his cloudy orange juice. “You live in that RV park?” he asked, almost like he was shocked.
I nodded. “I live about nine trailers down from your grandpa in a Silver Bullet.”
Mr. Thornbrugh had checked out of the conversation and checked into his breakfast, but Henry seemed to be interested in talking to me for the first time since they had arrived.
“Aren’t you a little young to live in a trailer park?” he asked. One side of his mouth curved up, like he thought he was clever. What a prick.
“I wasn’t aware there was an age limit, but thank you for letting me know there is one,” I said with my best waitress smile. The one thing I despised about waiting tables was that I always had to be friendly, or at least sound pleasant. That “customer is always right” bullshit really got on my nerves. One time, some fifty-year old woman came in and swore to me that, two months ago, we’d had biscuits and gravy on the menu. Her party of fifteen took up four tables and were buttoned up in starchy church clothes. The pearls around the woman’s neck looked fake, but I was sure she told everyone they were a family heirloom. She just seemed like that kind of person. I tried to explain that she must have our restaurant confused with another, but then she yelled so loud that Charlie made her a plate of biscuits and gravy just so she’d shut up. Then she’d turned to me and said, “I told you so. Your inability to remember things explains why you’re a waitress.”
I went to print Mr. Thornbrugh and Henry’s check and gave them a few minutes to talk alone. Henry didn’t seem to be all that interested in what his grandfather had to say, but Mr. Thornbrugh had never really cared if people were interested in what he had to say. He still said it.
“Beatrice,” he said, waving me over. His bowl was empty now.
“Yes?” I asked, setting his meager check down and wiping my hands on my apron. If you were in the restaurant long enough, your hands became greasy without having to touch anything.
“Are you working your usual shift today? Until around 4 o’clock?” he asked, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. A burnt bacon crumb had taken up home in his wiry mustache, but I waited to tell him until he was finished asking me his question.
“Yes, sir. Off at four and back to the comfort of my trailer. Why do you ask? Also, you’ve got a bit of bacon just there.” I gestured to the right side of his mustache and he wiped it quickly, the crumb disappearing.
Mr. Thornbrugh stood up and threw a crumpled $10 bill on the table to cover his tab. “Would you mind keeping Henry company? I have a few errands to run and he’d be bored out of his mind tagging along,” he said. He brushed his hands off on his greige suit pants, leaving behind a few discolored grease marks.
I did not want to keep Henry company. Henry looked like he did not want me to keep him company. He struck me as a spoiled kid who fucked around at college and ended up having to stay for more than his allotted time. While I knew there were degrees that required more than a traditional four years nowadays, Henry didn’t strike me as someone who would try for one of them. Some sort of low business degree was probably as challenging as he would go.
I stood there in uncomfortable silence, trying to think of the best way to turn him down when Mr. Thornbrugh pulled a $100 bill from his wallet and said, “I’ll make it worth your while! Just a couple of hours, I promise.”
Refuse $100? Moi? Absolutely not. Math had never been my forté, but I knew that at fifteen cents a pop, $100 could buy me quite a few packets of chicken ramen noodles and maybe even a pint of Great Value chocolate ice cream.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there at four,” I said, taking the bill from his hand and putting it in my apron. They left and the jingle bells attached to the handle clinked together. I don’t know why annoying, out of tune bells seemed to immediately precede or follow shitty moments in my life, but it was beginning to strike me as some sort of eerie premonition.
Or maybe this town was obsessed with semi-broken bells. Though that seemed a bit more likely, I still enjoyed the idea that revolved around me better.
***
The stupid fucking bells were going off in the RV park when I got home even though it was past 4 o’clock. I dropped my stuff off at my trailer before going over to Mr. Thornbrugh’s like I’d promised.
Henry and Mr. Thornbrugh were sitting on his makeshift detached porch, legs crossed in the same way. Mr. Thornbrugh had the nicest detached porch in the entire RV park. It was stained a dark, black cherry brown and polished to perfection; he had spent so much time making it. Fluffy rose bushes surrounded the three tiny stairs leading to the main deck. Mr. Thornbrugh prided himself on the beautiful roses he grew every year and pruned them himself. I often found one stuck through my door handle every Sunday morning in spring.
“Right on time!” Mr. Thornbrugh stood up from his blue and white striped lawn chair and grabbed the keys sitting on the small plexiglass table next to Henry. “I’ll be back in a while. Have fun, you two,” he said, hustling down his porch steps and down the dust road to the Husk’s communal parking lot.
I sat in the flimsy chair he’d left behind. Henry was quiet and had covered his eyes with a pair of sunglasses I probably couldn’t even afford with the $100 tip I’d gotten from his grandfather. The bells were beginning to fade. I pulled out my cracked phone to check the time: 4:23. Thirty-seven minutes until the next round of hell was supposed to begin.
“So do you all think it’s Christmastime right now or something? Why do those bells keep singing about that fucking reindeer?” Henry asked. His attempt at having a conversation, I suppose.
I picked at my fingernails, specks of glitter punctuating the worn threads of my jeans.
“I have no idea why they play that song. They used to play different stuff. It was still annoying, but at least it didn’t make me homicidal,” I said.
That got a stifled chuckle out of Mr. College Boy.
“I’ve been here for a day and I’ve already had a dream about shooting Santa Claus out of the sky this December,” he said.
“At least you only have to be here for the summer,” I said. This conversation was so uncomfortable it was going to give me a rash if it went on too much longer. When did Mr. Thornbrugh say he would be back? How long was “a while” when you were in your sixties? The air between us went still and even the birds seemed to stop chirping. The clouds looked heavy and sad, like it was going to rain later. The air always felt heavier—palpable, almost—when it was going to rain.
We sat in silence for a while until Henry looked over at me and said, “So why aren’t you in school or something? If you’d get a degree or something, you probably wouldn’t have to work at that shitty diner.”
Ah, here we go: the whole, “why don’t you just get a better job” argument. My parents had eventually given up calling and telling me what a mistake I’d made by choosing not to go to college. Even art school would have been better than nothing, they always said.
“Just not my thing, I guess.”
“Is it anyone’s thing?” Henry asked.
I looked over at him.
“Well, it seems to be yours considering you’re going into your sixth year,” I said.
“That’s not really fair of you to say. At least I tried,” he said.
This guy was not going to give up, was he?
“Doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard,” I said. I heard Henry’s breathing begin to pick up and become ragged, like he was going to lose his temper soon. “What’s your major anyway?”
Henry mumbled something and I leaned in a little closer.
“What was that? Do you mumble like that when your professors ask you questions, too? That may be why you’re going into your sixth year, bud,” I said.
“Business. I’m a business major,” Henry said.
“I knew it. That’s typically about a four-year degree plan, yeah?” I asked.
Henry’s face soured and he shifted in his chair. He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them in the opposite way. His shoe was halfway off his foot, hanging on his toes like an unanchored rock climber.
“Typically,” he said, grinding his teeth.
I loved being able to mess with someone under the age of fifty-five. “So that’s not going too well, then?” I asked.
“Jesus, fuck off already. Not everyone finishes in four years. Most people don’t, actually. At least I attempted to go at all. That’s more than you can say, trailer trash,” he said.
Oh.
Oh, he did not just call me “trailer trash.”
I tried to keep a level head but I was on my feet before I even realized what was happening.
“I don’t need lip from a spoiled business major who will probably live with his parents until he’s in his thirties drinking lukewarm Code Red Mountain Dew while he screams at thirteen year olds on Xbox Live,” I said. I wished I could’ve said that sitting down in my seat like a calm, rational adult, but all rationality went out the window when someone called me trailer trash. I stomped down the porch steps and headed back toward my trailer, the sun starting to settle behind the dark clouds.
“You’re not supposed to leave me here alone. My grandfather paid you to stay with me,” Henry said. He stood up out of his chair and finally took his sunglasses off. He clipped them at the neck of his shirt like an elderly man who had yet to upgrade to one of those silly eyewear retainers.
“You’re twenty-two years old. I think you can manage,” I said, not stopping my angry walk to look back at him. The bells began to ring again, three minutes early.
***
The clouds had opened up around 10:30 that night and hadn’t stopped for the past hour and a half. I rolled the blinds up in my bedroom and watched the raindrops race each other to the bottom of the foggy windowpane. My clunky laptop was set on the pullout bedside table droning How I Met Your Mother reruns from Netflix. The wifi slowed to a crawl every few moments and the show kept buffering, cutting jokes in half and making them significantly less funny. I appreciated the noise all the same.
Flashing green numbers on the clock by my bed told me it was 11:57PM, but the Christmas bells disagreed. They began to cut through the thunderstorm outside like a freshly sharpened kitchen knife, out of tune and out of season. I put my pillow over my head in an attempt to muffle the song but it still managed to permeate the synthetic feathers.
Then, I heard a rapid pounding at my door. Normally I’d chalk any weird banging up to a hailstorm, but this was concentrated at the door and it was hard to miss hail when you lived in a giant metal tube. I dragged myself out of bed and, fuzzy blanket wrapped around my shoulders, went to answer whoever was knocking at my door in the middle of a storm.
Standing on the tiny top step of my trailer was a drenched version of Henry, shivering and holding onto a hammer so tight that his knuckles turned white. His curly brown hair lay in soppy tentacles on his forehead and little water droplets clung to his eyelashes like spiders. I was still furious with him but he looked like a little wet dog and it was almost adorable.
“Want to come break the bells with me?”
Without missing a beat, I said, “Yes, definitely yes.”
After getting my raincoat and finding a pair of water resistant shoes, I followed Henry out into the downpour and over toward the dimly lit office. They claimed to be open twenty-four hours a day, but that was a complete lie that they put on the website to make the park seem friendlier.
Next to the office was a small, one story chapel with a bell tower. It was old and the white paint was chipping off the cheap wood. The office built it in a matter of weeks so that people who couldn’t get out of the park to attend church could still go to a service. That worked for a while, but now it was mainly used for hide and seek purposes and the occasional shotgun wedding. The roof was leaking and puddles soaked into the already warped wooden floors. They felt bulbous under my boots.
“So how are we doing this?” I asked. “I can’t help but notice all you have is a hammer and I don’t know if they teach you this in college, but if you hit them, they ring. That’s all that happens.”
Henry found the door at the back of the chapel that led to the small staircase that would take us to the bell tower. I followed as he ascended the stairs.
“Well, they’re probably anchored to some sort of wooden beam. Judging by the floors in this place, we may be able to bring the beam down with a few good swings. The wood is probably rotten,” he said. That seemed reasonable, so I kept climbing the stairs after him to follow out his plan.
There were three bells in total. They were arranged in a grapelike cluster and looked a lot older than they were, probably in part to wear and tear. Maybe they were also tired of playing the same song over and over again.
“They don’t even look metal,” I said, watching as Henry approached with hammer in hand. The poorly carved arches in the walls allowed rain to blow in and continuously pelt me like BB gun pellets.
Henry ran his fingers over the bells. “That’s because they aren’t. They’re porcelain. That makes smashing them a lot easier,” he said, raising his hammer and swinging at a bell with all the grace of a little league player at his first practice.
The porcelain cried out as the first bell was hit, pieces of it falling to the worn floor like glass teardrops. The entire bell didn’t break—that was some strong porcelain—but Henry did enough damage with one swing to ensure that bell would never sing again.
He hit it a few more times, perfectly timing each to a loud thunderclap outside. I ruined the next bell and we took turns with the third. When we were finished, all that remained were the fractured skulls of the bells, hanging onto their support beam with all the strength they had left. The clappers on each hung sadly, their porcelain shelters destroyed.
We stood as intruders in the former home of the bells, the carnage of their broken bodies surrounding us on the gnarled wooden floors. Some smaller shards had found their way in between the cracks of the planks, taking up permanent residence so nobody would ever forget the murderous act we’d committed that night. Nobody swept up here. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody had come up here in years. It’s probably why the bells were so broken.
“Is that it? No more Rudolph?” Henry asked, holding the hammer with both of his hands. His handsome face was contorted in a strange expression, almost as if he felt guilty about what we’d done.
I didn’t know how to answer. Obviously this was it. Unless the Corn Husk decided to invest in a giant pair of speakers and bell only instrumentals of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we were free from the song that had haunted us for so long. I felt conflicted. I had waited so long for that stupid song to stop playing but the Husk felt different without it, almost like I’d taken a plane to some distant place where music wasn’t allowed. I think the trees outside were singing it. I could still hear it in the back of my head.
“No more Rudolph,” I said. The wind howled outside like a wolf without its pack and it made my heart heavy. Henry held the hammer close to him like an old teddy bear and we stood in silence for a moment before finally leaving the skeletal chapel.
“So, what do you do anyway? Other than work at that diner,” Henry asked when we were walking back to his grandfather’s. The ground was soggy but the rain was beginning to let up.
“Oh, now you want to talk to the trailer trash politely?” I asked.
“Look, I’m sorry about calling you trailer trash, okay? Now what do you do around here?” he asked, agitation edging into his voice.
That sounded like a fake apology, but I decided to humor him.
“I paint a lot,” I said, sticking my hands in the pockets of my raincoat. My fingers brushed wrappers and old receipts and I made a mental note to throw them away later. I’d probably forget.
“Paint? Why didn’t you go to art school, then?” he asked, stopping in front of Mr. Thornbrugh’s trailer and sitting down on the deck. I almost warned him that it would be wet but kept my mouth shut. He knew it’d be wet. He was already soaked through from walking around in a thunderstorm anyway.
“Just didn’t feel right. I like the way I paint and I don’t want to be graded on it. Art’s not really something you can be graded on, I don’t think. Everyone is different, so who’s some stuffy old lady to tell me that I drew something wrong?” I said, looking back to the bell tower. The clouds loomed over it, like they were having a funeral. They sent their sympathies in bright flashes of lightning.
Henry sat still for a minute before getting up and turning to go inside.
“I guess that makes sense. You should at least try to sell it or something. That diner fucking sucks,” he said, reaching for the handle.
I laughed. He was right; that diner did fucking suck.
“Hey, you want to do me a favor?” I asked, shifting my feet a bit so I didn’t sink too far into the wet sod.
Henry turned around, a blank look on his face. Had he looked any other way since I’d met him? “Depends on the favor,” he said.
“You wanna give me a pair of your underwear to hang on my clothesline? I like messing with my neighbor. She thinks I’m some sort of prostitute stripper and I have yet to confirm or deny that,” I said.
He studied my face in the dark, really scrutinizing my features. His glowing eyes squinted at me and his tongue flicked out over his lips, reptilian like. He had his brief moments of attractiveness, but this was not one of them.
“That’s fuckin’ weird,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m a little fuckin’ weird. I live in an RV Park called the Corn Husk for God’s sake.”
Feeling like I was under a microscope as Henry continued to stare at me, I stayed planted in my spot until he opened his dry lips and said, “No, I don’t think we’ve reached that point in our relationship yet.”
That was not the response I expected, but I accepted it nonetheless. What was I supposed to do? Dart past him and steal a pair myself? That would mean risking accidentally picking up a pair of Mr. Thornbrugh’s underwear and that was not a risk I was willing to take.
“Alright. Well, let me know if you ever change your mind about that. I promise she’s really fun to mess with,” I said, turning to leave the soaked college boy on the handcrafted porch.
“Probably won’t change my mind on that, but you’ll be the first one I tell if I decide to give any underwear away,” he said.
As I turned my back to him, I half expected Henry to try to give me some after school special lecture about how I needed to sell my artwork and get out of Independence, but all I heard was the click of Mr. Thornbrugh’s pressurized trailer door and the squelch of my boots in the mud.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time: 2:59AM. I watched as the numbers rolled over to a round 3:00AM and waited. I could imagine the bells sitting up in their tower, their strangled gasps of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer going unheard as their clappers swung back and forth, hitting only the heavy air around them. I took in every sound around me: the wind in the poorly maintained trees, the muffled sounds of TVs through thin trailer walls, and the pattering of raindrops on my shiny tin roof.
None of the noises around me were being overshadowed by poorly timed Christmas music tonight. I watched the boxers on my laundry line as the wind caught them. If I’d had any rhythm at all, I would’ve joined them.