THE RUMORS seem to be true. That’s what Eloise Moss thought as she shifted her feet in the bitter wind of the Canton, Illinois town square.
First the knee. Then the blood sugar. Then the lungs. Her thoughts pivoted off the pain radiating from her ankle.
45 years. She blinkered more than thought. Should’ve taken better care.
Her thoughts went back to the stories circulating on the edge of geocities. The debris healed people. Only post-industrial debris. No one knows why.
There was that article from The Akron Beacon Journal someone scanned and put on the message board. It was about an old man who found a rubber slab in his backyard. He claimed it cured his dementia. But no one could be certain he’s telling the truth, the article said. Because maybe he’s demented.
But more articles followed. Bolts from Maine shipyards curing ovarian cancer. A metal press in Chicago Heights curing baldness. That one seemed somehow disappointing. Abandoned grain elevators which, if you stand in their center, make you young again.
She was waiting for the City Museum to open. It was open three-hours a day, four days a week. She was going to steal the old International Harvester bell. The one that rang out when the shifts changed. Before the factory closed. Before it was burned to the ground. Before the bits that were worth anything were shipped off to China for recycling.
She knew that it would cure her. She didn’t really know she was dying. She hadn’t gone to the doctor. She couldn’t afford it. And anyway, the words being uttered terrified her. They would take her out of the dream of life. She had worked so hard to stay in that dream, refusing the accumulation of compromises that turn you into not-you.
But she did know.
Mrs. Marie Acorn Timelapse, the elderly woman who ran the City Museum, shambled toward the museum door, wrapped in what looked like a dozen jackets. She was breathless and angry looking, her head pointed down, until she noticed Eloise and forced a somehow still genuine smile. To this, Eloise thought, maybe even when you aren’t-you anymore you are-you. This was both scary and reassuring.
Marie opened to the door and welcomed Eloise.
“Are you here to see the middle school drawings of George Washington crossing the Delaware?” Mrs. Timelapse asked.
Eloise almost laughed but said, instead, “sure. Why not?”
As Marie slowly turned on lights and space heaters, Eloise paced in front of crude drawings of President Washington, pausing at one where the artist had drawn what looked like some sort of octopus-monster hovering above the slave-owner’s head.
Mrs. Timelapse, finished with her opening rounds and having caught her breath, turned to Eloise and asked after her father.
“He’s fine. The pacemaker is working great and he’s back at work.”
“Where’s he working now?”
“Mostly the hardware and automotive departments at the Wal-Mart.”
“I fucking hate that place,” Marie barked.
Eloise looked surprised, not at Marie’s attitude, but at her language.
“I know why you’re here.”
Eloise blanked.
“I’ll give it to you. But you have to share it. And keep it a secret. They will be coming for it soon.”
Eloise stammered. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Timelapse disappeared into the back of the Museum and returned lugging a huge metal bell, dumping it with a clang at Eloise’s feet.
“Wait here,” she said, “I need to give you something else. My niece has been collecting these from the brownfield.”
Marie opened a crate filled with bricks from the old factory.
“You’ll need these too,” she said. “Your cousin, the one with anemia, these will cure him. And that Black kid that lives down the street from you, Eric, this will cure him too.”
“Did this shit cure you?” Eloise had dropped the pretense of respecting elders.
“No. But it kept me alive even after I died.”
“What will happen when I take it?”
“I’ll die again. You have to be willing to die too. You have to keep this from them. You have to stop them from taking it. They’ll have all of us die if they get their hands on this shit.”
Marie spat when she swore. For some reason Eloise liked that.
“Oh,” Mrs. Timelapse seemed to recall something, “don’t share this with any of the assholes who work at the prison. They can’t be trusted. Besides, they’re all racists.”
Eloise nodded.
“I’ll need help carrying all of it,” Eloise said.
ELOISE’S COUSIN Billy finally pulled up to the curb. The snow had been falling for fifteen minutes. The little hairs on Eloise’s lip had started to freeze. It had been two hours since she called him. The crate, filled with the bricks and the shift bell, had a good inch of snow on its lid.
Billy was always surprised at fucked up shit. Which is why people called him WTF Billy or Billy WTF. The shit that he reacted to was usually, as noted, fucked up. But it was hardly ever surprising.
“Help me get this shit in your truck,” Eloise commanded.
After they situated the crate in the truck bed, Eloise opened it and grabbed one of the bricks. Seeing it out of the corner of his eye, Billy literally barked, “what the fuck, you got me moving old bricks? What the fuck for?”
“Hold this brick.”
Billy continued to look surprised.
“Just fucking hold it already.”
As Billy took the brick Eloise lit a cigarette and breathed in the cold smoke. And then she could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t tired anymore.
Billy was always one of two things. Surprised or tired. And, now, he was neither.
THE SUN was setting and it was freezing in her apartment. Eloise and Billy had put the crate, minus the brick that Billy took for himself, and a second brick he promised to deliver to Eric Little, in the middle of her living room. She stood and stared at it in the half-light until the cold forced her to seek out the thermostat. She couldn’t afford it but she turned the heat up past 65 anyway. Then she plopped down on the floor in front of the crate, and opened it.
She slowly lifted the bell out by the handle and held it in her lap. She could feel it. Her circulation returned. She wasn’t freezing to death anymore. She was always freezing to death. Even in the swampy Midwestern summers. The pain in her toes and fingers was gone. Her focus returned. She was sharp. Like she used to be.
For a few minutes she was almost happy. And then she thought about Marie. The sun had set. There was nearly total darkness in the apartment.
It was then that Eloise said a little oath to herself.
She would die before she let them take the bell away from her town.
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