Uncle Jabe told me about it during one of those rare intervals when he grew reminiscent. Usually at such times he had a way of looking toward the past as though the future was a shadowed, uninteresting thing to be endured when it arrived.
I began to realize that after all Uncle Jabe had the forward look. We were walking up Troublesome Creek, picking our way carefully over the frozen stones on the left bank. Suddenly a school bell rang silver clear on the frosty air.
Uncle Jabe stopped, lifted the ear-flaps of his woolen cap, and listened. When the mellow peals had echoed and died among the hilltops, we moved on and he told me about the bell.
“I’ve been a-livin’ all shet up in these hills nigh on to seventy years,” he said. “I’ve lived hard and porely at times but the good Lord has purty nigh give me every lastin’ thang I needed, ’ceptin’ one thang.
“We got us a road in hyar four years ago, though I ain’t shore now whether it’s a blessin’ or a damnation. We got us a chanct to give our young ’uns a grain o’ education.
“But every time I hyar that bell a-clangin’ down Troublesome Valley I can’t help a-thankin’ what might o’ been, but jist ain’t. Still, I’m a-mind it’s a-comin’. Shorely one o’ these days when the good Lord makes up his mind, and gits good and ready.
“Then I comes to thank, too, that the Lord has done made up his mind, but the people on the outside that can brang the Good Word in haint made up theirs.
“About seven years ago we started us a church up on Left Hand Fork. We all jist throwed in and started workin’. Dug us a foundation and laid it good and strong as would last out the days o’ any of us on this green airth.
“And we bought us a bell, a big, gongy one that could be heered clar up and down the valley. A church-house without a bell would be like a preacher with the quinsy.
“Hit was a bell you’d find hard to turn down on Sunday mornin’. And when you heered it, somehow it was sort o’ the voice o’ the Lord callin’ you down to the church-house, spite o’ the weather or that coon hunt you’d planned on right big like.
“We had us a preacher that had fotched hissef on. We thought a whole heap o’ him. We’d been usin’ the Mill Creek school till our church got through buildin’.
“Well, all of a sudden-like, our preacher got called away, and that good foundation jist stayed thar without anything to hold up except the puore air that don’t need no support.
“The bell stayed thar and got all rusty. I would liked to ’ve pulled down on that rope jist oncet. It got around that the school down at the Forks could use a bell and we give it to them and they fotched it along.
“That bell rings every day.
“When I’m in hyarin’ distance I thanks to myself that one o’ these purty days we’ll have us another preacher, build us a church-house and have another bell as clar and sweetenin’ as the one we had afore.
“But I don’t know when. I reckon one o’ these days agin I lay these old bones down fur the last time and take my peace.
“One o’ these purty days.”