Carol of the Silent Bells




     This morning, as I walked through the streets, admiring the window displays on Christmas eve, I met the strangest man ever to live here. I should rather more properly say appeared here, since I’d never seen him before and he disappeared the next day with no trace of having ever visited, let alone lived all his life in town, as he’d confessed. It’s a very small town in rural West Virginia, well out of the way of any major highway or interstate. It’s the kind of town where everybody knows everybody else. Or, at the very least, has certainly heard of everyone else. This would have been especially true of Dr. Irving Koap. He’d have been hard to miss by anyone, although I’ve lived here most of my life and just, as I say, made his acquaintance today.
     It was snowing slightly, enough to make walking outdoors pleasant, but with no wind to give it access to your face. The sky was overcast, covered  in marbled clouds, but it wasn’t dark, like the ominous bleakness that the last three days of cold rain pronounced upon us. I don’t much leave my own house these days, except to run errands and do a little shopping. I have lived alone these past twenty years, and now share a place with two cats. At fifty-six, and retired, I live a small life. I don’t have much. No vehicle, no mortgage, no credit cards, very little stuff. My personal bric-a-brak consists in some art from friends, a few toys I’ve collected, a smattering of porcelain rabbits that belonged to my mother, and lots of books. I have family here, whom I rarely see, and one or two friends. I’m rather a hermit. It took me a while to get used to this sort of life, but once I found the peace in it, I knew I could live no other way. I won’t say I don’t get lonely. I do feel alone, even abandoned at times. Depressed, as well. But this hell is impermanent. It passes. I don’t require much to get by.
     Though I don’t stay up late anymore, I’m not a morning person. I wake, hoist my creaking joints out of bed, tend to the cats, then make coffee. I check my email, most of which is spam, have a look round Face Book to what my far-off friends are up to, check news and weather. Sometimes I make breakfast, but most often I’m not hungry till around noon -- and sometimes not even then. I spend most of  the day in a t-shirt and/or sweater, and, in cold weather, wearing flannel pajama pants. I shave about once a week. I am not a healthy man these days. I live in constant pain from a herniated disc for which, apparently, there is no cure or respite. I have terrible panic attacks. I suffer from agoraphobia, and have -- off and on -- since childhood. Lately, sciatica has been added to the mix. It’s getting more difficult for me to get about. I take a daily regimen of far too many pills. I smoke and drink too much, I know, but let that be, I beg you. Quite often, I will make a second pot of coffee before showering, getting dressed, then heading out into the “real” world to see what all that particular fuss is about. It usually amount to nothing more than more traffic than usual, or a long line at the Dollar Store where I purchase cat food and litter.
     Some days I do not venture out into the town, although I live right on its doorstep, so to speak. My small apartment is smack dab in the middle of town. I can see most of it through my kitchen window, which needs cleaning by the way. The cats love to sit on the windowsill and dream of catching birds. Sometimes, they just seemed to be people watching. I used to do that, decades ago. Now, I’m rarely interested. The harried, hurried lives of others is in direct opposition to my own stagnant day.
     This particular morning, however, I got a “wild hair” as they say around these parts, had only two cups of coffee -- the horror! -- and braved the front door early. The city crew had put up the Christmas decorations and they were in full bloom. The shops, mostly consignment and antique/folk art storefronts, were also decked out in their finest, as was the corner deli, which has the best coffee in town. It was all very pretty, I’d thought, looking out my kitchen window. But when I actually got on the sidewalk and peered around, I changed my mind. Not pretty. Beautiful. Like a pretty girl. Hey, I’m old, but not above looking and lamenting a past long lost to me. I wondered as I wandered, looking in the windows. So many curious and unique things! I supposed I should do my usual meager Christmas shopping, although I dreaded the annual exchange of gifts at my brother’s house. I had little to give, and could no longer afford to purchase gifts, even small ones, for everyone present. Even there, where I used to feel at home the most, I felt like an outsider. An odd bystander. The uncle in the way. A burden. Hell, I was enough of a burden to myself -- I didn’t need to become one for anybody else.
     So there I was, gazing into one of my favorite windows, no matter the season: Hughes Jewelry, an old family owned business passed down through the generations. The current owner was a friend of mine, and one of the last certified horologists anywhere. It’s a lost art in this superficial digital age. Most people don’t even own clocks now, and when they want to know the time, they look at their damned iPhones. I wear an analog watch. My house is  full of clocks. They are all cheap, but one, which was a gift from my father -- an old wind-up chiming mantle clock that was over one hundred years old. I am not a child of the digital age. I permit only analog clocks in my home. Yes, I have a cell phone: it’s nothing fancy. It rings. Not often, but maybe twice a week. That’s enough for me. But Steve’s window, out of all of them, was always the best in town. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, clocks, Faberge eggs, all arrayed to catch -- not your eye, really -- but your imagination. To go inside was to be in clock heaven. Steve still repaired clocks -- real clocks, not the fake ones -- and his handiwork covered the walls. God, I loved the place! The chiming of the quarter hour…who remembers that now? Maybe this will all soon be another remembrance from better days past. But I have to believe, for my own sanity, for my own sake of the beauty and ingenuity of the human mind and hand, that this is forever. Real time being told, not merely casually glanced at. It’s got to outlive me, or this town, and one of my lingering loves, dies. The Holy should always remain. ticking with intricate gears and brass mechanisms. These are the numinous machines; all else is plastic and pathetic and unreal.
     On this occasion, I did not go inside. I probably would have done, just to say “hullo,” and stare for hours at the hours, mesmerized, but it was just at that point that I was jostled.
    “Oh, Hullo. Sorry, Michael. Wasn’t watching where I was going, then, was I?” He chuckled as he patted me on the shoulder. I smiled back, wondering who in the hell this guy was, and how he knew my name. He was of average height and weight. He might have been indistinguishable from any other citizen, except for the top hat. Never seen that before. I, myself, wore a black bowler, and had know some fedora’s, but a top hat? White cotton curls eked from under the brim. He sported  a white mustache and goatee. And he wore a tie. Ties were not so usual in this town, except, when duty called, by professional folk. It was a casual town. Even our bankers went about their business with dress shirts, unbuttoned at the top. Often with blue jeans.
     “No problem,” I said, looking him up and down, while a dusting of snow accumulated on his top hat. “I’m sorry. I hate to be so direct, but…well, no I don’t. I’m honest about it. I don’t know you. Or don’t remember you.”
     He laughed. “Don’t remember me? Oh, dear. How awkward.”
     “I swear I don’t. Although, I admit my memory is not what it used to be. Did we go to school somewhere together?”
     “Did we…” He looked at me in disbelief. “Michael Titus. Man now, but I knew you as a lad! We were best friends. I knew your parents. Many a meal I’ve had sat at your mother’s table. I will never forget that meatloaf.”
     “I still don’t…” I began.
     “Oh, pish tosh.” He said. “It’s me! Irving. Irving Koap. Now Dr. Irving Koap.”
     “Again, I’m sorry. I don’t know that name. Did you just move here?” I was trying to be as charitable as I could.
     “Oh dear.” He put a palm against my forehead. For some reason, I didn’t flinch. “No fever. That’s good. Michael. Mikey. I’ve live here all my life.”
     Well, I reckon you can imagine my surprise at hearing this. I mean, I’d lived here most of my life, with a few years away in Huntington and Charleston. But I moved back here from Huntington sixteen years ago. I remembered this town when it was full of working people. I remembered the soda fountain at Staats. The Toggery Shop. Morrison’s. The Spencer Department Store. Hecks. The Coney Island. The Green Lantern. DeGruyter’s Jewelry. The old, beautiful courthouse, before it was torn town and an insane square box put up in its place. The State Hospital -- the longest continuous brick structure on the east coast. Phillip’s. Bobby’s Gas Station. Tanner’s Crossroads. Aldo’s. The hippie co-op. G. C. Murphy’s. My best pals, Clay, David, Jerry, Charlie and Mark. I could not deconstruct this old man’s face to fit any of them. He was lost in the ever-changing foam of time. Was I losing my mind, or was this odd fellow having a huge joke at my expense?
     He must have guessed what I was thinking. “I know it must be hard, Mikey,” he said. “Come with me. I live right here in town, same as you. I’ll show you.”
     The worst, and best, thing you could say about me is that I’m intensely curious. At my best, fearless. I felt no terror from this man, whoever he might be, angel or demon -- although I believed in neither. But I had to know. He winked at me, turned and walked down the street. I followed. Somehow, I knew that he knew I was right behind him.
     It was the shortest, and longest walk I ever took. It was the longest, because my mind whirled like the gears in Steve Hughes’ shop, as I pondered how this man did not appear in the sweet, resonant faces of my childhood buddies; it was the shortest because his own apartment was indeed in town, not far from my own, on street level, in a converted shop front. There was a single door, a chair posted outside. He would later tell me that he often sat there and people watched, same as my cats. He opened the door -- it was not locked (he later explained that he never locked his door, as there was no reason to) -- and bid me enter.
     His apartment was small and simple, like mine. A living room with two chairs and a tattered loveseat, bathroom, bedroom, tiny kitchen. As a matter of fact, my own place seemed a mansion compared to his. He nodded to a chair. I sat. He went into the kitchen to make coffee, which I reckoned was just about all he could do in there. He had no refrigerator. No toaster. No microwave. Just a coffee maker and a few canisters. I saw one Mason jar. But there was a sink, at least. He drew water from the faucet, scooped some coffee from the Mason jar, filled the coffee maker, the returned and took the chair opposite me.
     “You still do not remember you, do you?”
     “I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve been trying.”
     “You’ve been trying too hard. You always did,” he said with a sigh. “Oh. Sorry about your health problems, by the way. I have my own. Don’t we all, at our age?”
     “Yeah. But that’s now. Who are you?”
     “Hah,” he said. “Coffee’s ready. Wasn’t that quick?” I thought so. He brought two cups in, no cream nor sugar. “I know you take yours black, as do I.”
     “You haven’t answered my question,” I said, as I took a sip of the liquid life. It was perfect.
     “No. No, I haven’t.” He seemed lost in thought. “I don’t think you’ll believe my explanation. I believe you might think I’m lying to you. But I swear I’m not. I would never.”
     “I know all the doctors in this town,” I said. “But I don’t know the name Koap. And I’ve never had a friend name Irving. I’m not that far gone. Not yet.” I sipped coffee. “So, unless I’ve gone insane, you must understand my skepticism.”
     “Oh, I do. Most certainly I do, Mikey.” he said. “You must try to understand. I do not live in linear time.”
     “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
     “You understand the concept?”
     “Of course. I’ve always been a scientist of sorts. In my own bizarre way.”
     “My life,” he explained, “is non-linear. I wanted to tell you as a boy, but then you wouldn’t have grasped the concept. You hadn’t even begun to read science fiction then. You were so fond of mystery stories, faerie tales, Doc Savage.”
     “So?”
     He sighed, put his coffee cup on the table between us. “You were a haunted, hunted boy. At one point you thought you were cursed.”
    “I only told my mother that!” I cried.
    “No. You told us all. Remember the barn on Simmons Street?”
    “Yes,”  I replied, with some hesitation.
     “You weren’t supposed to go there, but you did. With her.”
     “Clay? Only Clay knew about that!” I stood up, startled, spilling my coffee. Koap didn’t seem to notice the mess I’d made.
     “Oh, sit down, Mikey. I know all your adventures.” I sat, slowly sinking back into the chair. I waited, trembling.
     “Clay, her eating dirt in front of your house. You and David in so many contests, in an attempt to prove something meaningless. David and you, deeply in love with each other. How his older brother’s tormented you, but you bore it out of love for David. Your heart breaking when he moved away. Then you and Jerry crossing that rattling bridge to their farm. Two tiny Tarzan’s swinging on grape vines. Running from the bull on the Carper’s land. Jerry’s ‘lab’ in his grandparent’s house, the time he saved you by pulling the plug from the electric razor you’d taken apart after you’d stuck a screwdriver in its exposed guts. You spending night’s at Charlie’s house -- how you love that house and how you loved him -- never having the slightest idea he’d kill himself when he grew up oh jesus, you and Mark and Byron playing Vikings on the hillside where the hospital would later be built, where the Three Trees stood, and there you bowed  down for the first and last time, and then worshipping Big Lou in the basement and Major Matt Mason in the bedroom and then later you’d fall in love with his sister, because you’d never recognized female beauty before, and just to hold her hand was almost more than you could bear and in your own backyard that one glorious day, when she lay beneath the apple tree and the fragrant white blossoms fell about her golden hair, you were forever lost, a hopeless boy in a world that was passing you by and after that you never believed in angels again oh christ you’d do anything to just hold her in your arms you stupid bastard just to hug that girl and breathe in the honey scent of her hair”
     “Shut up! Shut your goddamned mouth. I’ve heard enough, you sonofabitch! Who, or what the hell are you?” I stood with clenched fists, my face blanched with these truths.
     “Sit. Sit, Mikey. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get so carried away with the truth. It was never my intention to harm you.”
     “Yeah. Just bring up dear memories and cut me with them. You might as well have just done my autopsy, you shit, while I’m still alive!” I was furious. If I could find it in my nature, I’d kill this man.
     “You still don’t get it.”
     “What is there to get, except the hell away from you?” I cried.
     “I’m so sorry. I’ve gone about this the wrong way. I always do. Don’t you know? I was all those you knew and loved. I told you I do not exist in linear time, as do you, and all whom you know. I was Clay, Davey, Charlie, Jerry, Mark, Jill -- and all the rest. I was drawn to you because you seemed so lost, so alone, so sad. You needed me. I needed you.
We had to be together, in all the incarnations. Remember when you father said “Mike has only one friend at a time?” I did. “He was right. He opened the door for me to fill all the faces the many hearts and souls you’ve loved so dearly over the years. Do you see it now?”
     “You were all of them.” I said, crumpling into the chair again. “Why?” I asked. “Why the long deception?”
     Koap rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t really know. You needed the same thing I did. A grand childhood. And then after, love. What else is there for any of us?”
     I pondered this. Thinking back, looking back with my heart engaged in the process, it seemed plausible. Even probable. But it also frightened me. I felt manipulated to some extent. There was one thing I had to know before I left this man and walked home.
     “Were you also Molly?” I asked, my voice breaking.
     “No.” said Koap. “I couldn’t be. She was different.”
    “How so?”
    “All the others helped create your life. She saved yours. That’s beyond me. You were beyond me at that point. In your youth, a lad or lass wasn’t such a trouble. A new life is something I couldn’t even manage. You were on your own with her.”
    “But it’s true then about the others?”
    “Yes. But you must understand this: I were never playing a role. I was that lad, that lass. Heart and soul. Not a game. It was our brittle but magic life. And I, for one, give thanks for each and every moment.”
     I stopped pacing in Koap’s apartment. I’d just become aware I was doing so. It was time for me to leave.
     “If I come back tomorrow, will you still be here? Will you be known to the people of Spencer? I mean, if I asked around, since you‘ve been here all your life.”
     “Known to some, unknown to others. Different names.” he said. “Reckon it depends who you ask about. Ask about Koap, you’ll get nothing. Don’t open up a can of worms, Mikey. Each in their time.” He smiled. I couldn’t tell if that was a happy or sad visage.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that’s just the way it was.
     “Will I see you again?” I asked.
     “It’s likely,” said Koap. “I’ve always lived here. Can‘t guarantee anything, y‘know.”
     I said my farewells and walked back to my own apartment. It was late now. I’d been out longer than I’d thought. It was dark and the shops were closed. I really wished Christmas meant more to me, like it did when I was younger. But I just couldn’t bring it back. There was much I wish I could bring back. But so do we all wish we could grant to this world.
     I turned my key in the lock of my own apartment door, and was greeted by two vocal cats, and hearing Doak saying, “Can’t guarantee anything, y’know.” He was right. There was no guarantee. No promise. You were left with all you had gained. For me, it was two sweet cats, a reminder of Christmas pasts, and the loves I carry with me to this day. I’m old and broken now, but what the hell. Take the hand of a girl. It’s soft. It warms your heart,  even if it’s far away. Merry Christmas.
     As for me, even though tomorrow is Christmas day, I’m going back to look at the clocks, because they don’t just tell time, they sing it, in ways you’ll only understand when you are my age. I’m not old, except in body In my true heart, I’m a little boy, and all I want for Christmas is to begin again.
    A tree, a train, a friend, a girl.