POLING: Ringing the bell of yesterday's tomorrow
A TALE
They were boys, third-grade bullies, living in the bodies of young men. They trampled over the fairgrounds, knocking hats off of old men, belittling children, leering at young mothers, intimidating other young men who were alone with their dates.
They were loud, brash, monied, young, fully developed physically, with a few pretty young ladies in tow. These boys grew up with everything money could buy. They’d had their troubles paid off like the purchase of any toy from an expensive store’s catalog.
They grew up seeing grown men cower, tremble, bow, scrape and plead, broken before their rich fathers, and now that these boys were young men, they expected no less from the world, which they believed belonged to them by divine right.
They were born on third base, as the saying goes, but thought they’d hit a triple.
Their carnival trouble-making was on the sly. They made enough trouble to have what they considered fun, but they kept it low key enough to keep the carnies from yelling “Hey, Rube!” which is a carnival’s clarion call for trouble.
The boys’ antics didn’t go unnoticed by the carnies. They’d likely seen similar boys in countless towns across America. Try stopping them from bullying the crowd or co-workers, and they’d get their fathers involved, or the police would leave upon seeing who it was, or the boys would come back and bring real trouble with them.
They let the boys have their fun. It was easier that way.
The carny working the Bell of Strength grew more nervous seeing the boys headed his way. He’d been nervous for hours because of the old man sitting quietly on the ground with his back against a tent pole, staring at the hammer used to ring the bell. The old man was dirty with days of road, without benefit of a bath. His beard was gray and shabby like his hair.
When the old man first sat down, the carny thought about calling a couple other workers to get rid of the guy, but the old man looked tired. He wasn’t bumming change or bothering anyone. The old man hadn’t said a word. The carny let him be, but the old man had stared too long at the hammer. The stare had worked on the carny’s nerves. Business was slow. No one had hit the bell. No one stayed around to give it a second try. The carny felt the old man was bad luck. Now, the bully boys were coming his way.
The old man didn’t see the boys coming. He was contemplating the hammer and the bell, remembering yesterdays: Swinging a hammer, the clang of steel on steel, driving spikes into wood ties on the railroad, for hours, for days on end.
He recalled a four-hour, deadlocked arm-wrestling match. He and his opponent twitching mere fractions of an inch, back and forth, in a Chattanooga dive, ending when the sun rose and his opponent’s free fist punched him in the face. The old man’s nose had been busted but he walked out of the dive, with the wager cash in his pocket, while his opponent who was also left with a busted nose and fewer dollars in his pocket, was carried out by management.
Carrying bricks in a sack, flung over his back, to whatever spot the foreman told him to go. The burn of rope on his bare hands hauling cargo onto a ship. The knee-crippling work of picking bushels of apples from trees, up and down a ladder. The back-breaking tug of a well-rooted stump. The finger-destroying pull of cotton in the field. The weariness of the road. The inexorable push of old age and time and sickness and the elements.
He remembered it all while staring at the bell wondering if it would answer him. The old man’s arm suddenly gave out from under him with a sharp sting. He collapsed on his side. Looking up, he saw one of the boys, the one who had kicked his arm out from under him, laughing above him.
“You old drunk, why don’t you go take a bath?” the boy said. “You’re a nasty thing to look at, laying there.”
Another young man, who was not with the boys, walked over to help the old man, but he was pushed aside and down to the ground by two of the boys.
“Join your girlfriend down there,” one boy said to the young man, referring to the old man as the “girlfriend.” The girls laughed.
“Try your strength! Try your strength! One dollar is all you need fellas to try your strength,” the carny yelled, trying to defuse a potentially bad situation. “Hit the bell and win your girl a prize!”
The boys went to the bell, leaving the old man and the young man to rise to their feet unbothered, forgotten, discarded by the boys, as a child with too many toys will do with a bauble after a moment of play.
The boys tugged at the hammer to see who would go first. They took their turns, ribbing each other when each one failed to ring the bell. They each laid another dollar down and failed to ring the bell again.
“It’s rigged,” one boy said, turning to the carny. “This guy’s cheating us.”
“I haven’t touched nothing. Y’all been standing right here,” the carny said, backing away a foot as other carnies walked slowly toward the Bell of Strength.
“You did something. You’d better give us our money back. There’s no way none of us hit that bell.”
“That’s right,” another boy said, moving toward the carny. The other carnies moved closer.
“He didn’t cheat you,” the old man said.
The boys and the carnies stopped.
“Who’re you talking to, you piece of crap,” one of the boys said to the old man standing behind them.
“He didn’t cheat you,” the old man said again. “I’ve watched all night. He didn’t cheat you. You girls are just too weak.”
“You want another kick? Well, we can give you plenty of kicks and have a few kicks ourselves.”
“Why don’t you try it?” one boy said to the old man. “Thinks he’s Clint Eastwood or something. You hit the bell.”
“Yeah, you try it. This could be pretty funny, watching him have a heart attack trying to lift the hammer.”
The carny handed the old man the hammer. Neither the hammer nor the old man fell to the ground.
The old man gripped it low on the handle, two-handed, and raised it over his head. The hammer fell with a blur. The old man put his back into it, striking the plunger, sending the weight up, up in a blur.
The bell answered the old man with a sharp “ting.”
The old man spun on his heels and faced the boys. He did not release the hammer. He stared straight into the gap-mouthed faces of the boys and girls.
“Now,” the old man said, “who wants to try?”
One of the girls gave the old man a disgusted look, saying to the boys, “Come on, I want some cotton candy.”
The old man didn’t move. He held onto the hammer. The boys didn’t move for about half a minute, then like third-grade bullies, the boys shuffled away, commenting not too loudly about how they’d see the old man around and how the old man only proved the game was a cheat. The boys talked the usual coward talk of the bully who’s been beaten, but they wouldn’t be ruled by doubt for long because their fathers had the bank rolls which would soon give them strength and make them brave again.
“Here’s your prize, buddy,” the carny said, extending a stuffed, pink bear to the old man.
“I already got my prize,” the old man said, passing the carny the hammer. “Besides I didn’t even pay you a dollar.”
“Hey, that’s right,” the carny said. “You owe me a dollar.”
“Come take it,” the old man said, laughing, as he shuffled away.
Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.
