Bellmaker v. Bhikkhuni

The rain continues. The Bellmaker stands beneath the tree, the Bhikkhu's stinking robe over his head.

Then the rain stops.

The Bellmaker drags the body of the Bhikkhu to the pyre. He covers him with the robe. He walks to the creek. Then west, downstream. Every thirty paces or so he crouches and checks the soil at the bank. He pauses just east of the small tributary, spots something and kneels. Reaching out, he presses his thumb into a stripe of blueish clay running along the edge of the gulch. He pinches off a piece the size of an acorn and rolls it between his fingers. He smells it, tastes it, and determines it excellent clay for a mold.

He looks up.

The Bhikkhuni arrives from the road. She, unlike the Bhikkhu, has a robe of single cut. It's red. Her head is shaved. She carries a walking stick and an alms bowl. She affects a stern, purposeful look as she walks toward the Bellmaker.

He tells of her his discovery. She kneels and touches the clay. It's moist and frigid. He explains his intentions.

The two dig with their fingers until their fingers are numb. They collect the clay in the alms bowl. When the alms bowl overflows, the Bellmaker collects the clay in his shirt, lifting it to form a papoose.

They take the clay to the table. There, as the Bhikkhuni examines the guns, the Bellmaker draws a design on the bottom of the List of the Dead. Then, taking the deck of cards from his coat pocket, begins listing instructions. An instruction for each card, starting with clubs, in ascending order, alphabetically, to spades. Finished, he lays the cards on the table. He heaps the clay in the bowl, drapes the bowl with - after running to collect it - a damp rag torn from the Bhikkhu's robe.

While he runs the Bhikkhuni sees the diagram: a small bell, five inches in height.

Why this, she asks as he drapes the damp rag over the clay.

The Bellmaker doesn't know. It seems like the only thing he knew to do, at a time when the need to do something is strong.

They chose their guns and take the field, standing ten paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.

Bellmaker v. Bhikkhu

The snow turns to a light rain.

After the Bellhop's body is dragged to the the great pile of ash of the pyre the Bellmaker wipes his calloused hands off on the sides of his trousers. The smell doesn't bother him now. He returns to the oak, waits, then turns up his collar and walks to wander along the edge of the creek to the south.

The Bhikkhu - tall, bald, wearing a red robe - walks from the road.

His robe is red but variegated, in patches. As if several smaller robes had been rent, many and uneven, and these pieces spaced at an equal distance from each other, the gaps between those pieces taken with cloth from others in the array of robes, as if layered, in dizzying fashion, to create from several smaller robes of singular cloth one large robe of many cloths, some old, some new, some weathered, and so on, forming a greater whole.

The Bellmaker, sitting atop the Archer's small cairn, hears footsteps behind him and turns. He greets the Bhikkhu with a nod. The Bhikkhu smiles, cheerful. He stands nearby. They discuss the weather and the creek, and death by water.

As they return to the oak for the guns it strikes the Bellmaker (noiselessly) that for a man confronted with a pile of dead, and a pyre of the dead, and the close prospect of death, the Bhikkhu - now blithely humming the tune from the third act of a musical - seems disturbingly undisturbed. This, to the Bellmaker, is disturbing. The thought that the Bellmaker is more disturbed by the undisturbed Bhikkhu than the dead is also, the Bellmaker reflects momentarily, disturbing in its own right. But this doesn't take him from the source of his greatest disturbance.

They select their guns and take the field, standing ten paces apart. The Bhikkhu bows.

Did you see the dead by the fence? asks the Bellmaker.

The Bhikkhu says he has.

I don't know if you saw the crows?

The Bhikkhu says he has.

And the pyre? That's where the bodies are burning.

The Bhikkhu's seen this too.

And that doesn't bother you?

The Bhikkhu laughs. Bellmaker, if all is burning, he says, it make sense that the bodies are burning too.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.

Bellhop v. Bellmaker

The Bellhop and the Bellmaker play cards on the table under the oak. The pistols lay on the dirt nearby. A light snow falls.

The Bellmaker explains: It was the moment when he turned to him and said, 'You'll make bells; I'll paint icons.' that I knew. That was it. I was twenty-six.

The Bellhop smiles. He brushes back his hair. Then takes a pensive look at his hand. He thinks to knock, but decided to wait. He discards. The Bellmaker takes his discard into his hand, rearranges his cards, and knocks on two. The Bellmaker wins seven points.

I should have knocked, says the Bellhop.

In the distance the pyre billows flame and smoke. Great smoke and steam from the wood and corpses. White ash dances upward, mingles with the snow, and falls. The wind blows steadily from the west.

The north fence, once lined with old timber, is decimated, nearly gone. Uprooted. Torn up from the earth in places, the driven stakes. The fire rages.

After several more hands the Bellmaker wins the game. Their score is marked at the bottom of the List of the Dead.

They choose their guns - the Bellhop rubbing off the knicks of the kitsune statuette as best he can, so that, by casual glance, they don't show - and take to the field, standing ten paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.