The Tolling
Send not to know for whom the bell
tolls. It tolls for thee.
— John Donne
Bong.
Bradley Shelton awoke to the sound of a large brass bell reverberating in his ears rather than the annoying wahh, wahh, wahh of his electric alarm clock. He opened his eyes, put on his glasses and looked at the green LED numbers that read 4:15, which was forty-five minutes before he usually woke up in the morning.
"That must have been some nightmare I had last night," he muttered sleepily into his down pillow. "I don't have any idea what it was about, but it was disturbing enough to wake me up out of a sound sleep."
The previous day Bradley had appeared in domestic relations court with his estranged wife—now his ex-wife—to finalize the divorce settlement, an event that no doubt contributed to his fitful slumber. The young gold digger took him for a bundle, and he deeply regretted not following his lawyer's advice in demanding she sign a prenuptial agreement before the wedding.
"Oh, well, live and learn," he sighed. "There's nothing I can do about it now."
Rather than remain in bed, Bradley got up, showered, shaved, dressed and, after a quick cup of coffee and bowl of cold cereal, got into his Mercedes and headed for his office. He was behind his desk by six, just a half hour before his usual time, but two hours before the rest of the office staff was due to arrive. As the largest and wealthiest land developer in Massachusetts—if not all of New England—he put in more than his share of late-night and early-morning hours. His work weeks were routinely sixty to seventy hours in length and sometimes even longer.
Such dedication to his career left little time for a personal life. Accordingly, he tallied up four failed marriages and a number of short-lived love affairs. None of those romantic relationships yielded any children, so except for a sister and brother-in-law in Vermont, the wealthy Boston land tycoon was alone in the world.
His solitary state did not bother Bradley in the least. He lived, breathed, ate, drank and dreamed real estate deals. At the moment there were a number of multimillion dollar projects in progress: two office parks, four large warehouses, a fifteen-story medical facility and, the pièce de rèsistance, a mega shopping mall, to be built in rural central Massachusetts, that would rival Canada's West Edmonton Mall in size and grandeur.
It was the proposed mall that became Bradley's pet project. He pushed through all the permits, personally greasing the hands of several local and state politicians while doing so. Additionally, he was involved in all aspects of the design phase, right down to deciding the number of benches that would be placed in the courtyards and the number of stalls provided in the restrooms. The proposed mall became a labor of love, the crowning achievement in a career with far more than the usual number of major accomplishments.
Unfortunately, Bradley Shelton was not as young a man as he used to be, and the long hours and stressful negotiations with zoning boards, contractors, labor unions, suppliers and inspectors were beginning to take their toll on his health. He was not sleeping well, he was losing weight and his handsome face was showing signs of age.
In the two hours before his staff arrived, Bradley managed to do the work a normal person would do in five. When Elena Fernandez, his extremely competent administrative assistant, stepped out of the elevator at 7:52, her inbox was overflowing with correspondence, contracts and reports to be typed, photocopied, faxed, mailed or filed.
"You must have gone through an entire pack of Post-its," Elena laughed when she saw all the brightly colored squares of paper sticking out of the mountain of paperwork.
Her boss smiled, but there was no humor or joy in his expression.
"Are you feeling all right?" Elena asked with concern, for although Bradley drove himself mercilessly, he was always fair and generous to his employees.
"Just tired," he confessed. "I didn't get much sleep last night. My former wife is being unreasonable about the divorce settlement—no surprise there. And I'm sure the spicy Chinese food I had for dinner didn't help much."
"I've got some antacid in my desk drawer if you need it."
"I'm feeling better now, but if you have a pill to get rid of my mounting alimony payments, I'll take that," he laughed.
Just before noon, while his administrative assistant was making steady progress on the paperwork he had left in her inbox, Bradley, who was intently studying a set of revised blueprints for the mega mall's food court, was interrupted by the strident sound of a bell tolling.
"Did you hear that?" he called to Elena.
"Hear what?"
"It sounded like a bell."
"I didn't hear anything. It must have come from outside your window."
Bradley rose from his chair and looked out onto the city streets below.
Where could the sound have come from? he wondered.
When his eyes fell on the towering spire of St. Michael's Church, he breathed a sigh of relief. Someone must have accidentally rang one of the bells in the belfry.
After refilling his coffee cup, he went back to the blueprints on his drafting table.
* * *
The following day was Saturday, which meant Bradley would only be in his office from 6:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It was a rare evening in that he had a date. The woman was a corporate lawyer who, like him, was married to her career. It was the kind of liaison he liked best: a good meal in a five-star restaurant followed by a movie, a concert or a show. Then, after a late night drink, there would be an hour or so of sexual dalliance, after which Bradley would go home and hopefully be asleep by midnight.
Things on this particular Saturday, however, did not go as planned. Not long after the main course was served, Bradley again heard the reverberating bong of a large bell.
"There's that damned noise again," he declared with annoyance.
"What noise is that?" his date asked as she eyed her dinner and debated whether she should take some home in a doggie bag.
"That ringing bell. Didn't you hear it?"
"No," the lawyer replied, dismissing the matter as one of no importance. "It's probably someone's cell phone. I hear all sorts of ringtones at the office: train whistles, police car sirens, thunder, doorbells—you name it."
"You might be right," Bradley concluded.
The explanation seemed a feasible one since his own iPhone made the cha-ching sound of a cash register drawer opening when he received an incoming call. Nonetheless, the discordant sound ruined his enjoyment of the evening. To make matters worse, the overpriced meal was not to his liking, and the critically acclaimed movie proved to be a disappointment. Even the sex was less than enjoyable, and he was relieved to finally return to his brownstone at the end of the evening.
* * *
During the following week, Bradley heard the mysterious tolling bell five more times. Worried about his physical health and mental wellbeing, on Friday afternoon, he went to his doctor's office for a complete check-up.
"You say you're hearing a ringing sound in your ears," the doctor said as he quickly read his patient's chart.
"It's not really a ringing. It's more of a bong, a single note of a very large bell. A deep base tone, like a church bell or an orchestra gong."
After a thorough examination, the doctor presented his diagnosis.
"You're killing yourself, Bradley. Your blood pressure is high, your cholesterol is through the roof and you ...."
Bradley's eyes suddenly bulged, and he grabbed his chest and fell to the ground. An hour later he found himself in a hospital emergency room.
"You were lucky this time," his doctor informed him. "You're still alive."
Bong.
"There's that bell again," Bradley cried.
"It was nothing but a nurse's call button."
"You heard it, too! I was beginning to think I was going crazy."
"It's not your mind you have to worry about. You smoke. You're living under incredible stress. Your diet is unhealthy. You're not getting enough exercise. You're a walking time bomb waiting to go off. Do you have a death wish?"
"No," the patient confessed. "Quite frankly, Doctor, I've been giving serious thought to slowing down. I'd like to take things more easy, to stop and smell the roses."
"Then throw away the cigarettes, start eating low-fat foods, watch your cholesterol and join a gym because unless you make drastic changes in your lifestyle, you'll be smelling those roses from six feet under."
* * *
After being released from the hospital, Bradley spent several weeks with his sister, Sheila Fallon, in Vermont. Normally, he preferred the hustle and bustle of the city to the bucolic New England village, but it was the perfect place in which to recuperate from a heart attack.
"Here's your room," Sheila announced as she opened the door to the guest room.
Her brother looked at the Queen Anne highboy, the wing chair beside the fireplace and the four poster bed and felt as though he had taken a step into the eighteenth century.
"I'll leave you to get settled in," she said. "Dinner won't be ready until 6:30, so you have plenty of time to take a nap."
Bradley removed his suit jacket, tie, shoes and socks, and lay upon the bed, pulling the quilt up over his legs. Yet even though he was tired, he could not fall asleep. His eyes wandered around the room, examining the light fixtures, the mirror, the framed family photographs on the mantel, the hurricane lamps and the drapes.
What fascinated him most about the room's dècor were the prints hanging on the wall. Most of them depicted quaint rural settings with what looked like English country cottages surrounded by lush green lawns and colorful flowers. In all the prints, warm yellow light emanated from the windows.
Bradley got up from the bed, walked up to the prints and read the artist's signature in the corner: Thomas Kinkade. As he stared at the pictures, he experienced a pleasantly warm and inviting feeling, the urge to walk inside one of the brightly lit homes and sit beside the cozy fireplace of one of the smoking chimneys.
As he imaged what the interiors of the cottages might look like, he heard the loud peal of a bell and suddenly he knew what he wanted his legacy to be: not a mega shopping mall with hundreds of overpriced stores, expensive trendy restaurants and kid-friendly amusements, but a quiet, peaceful, utopian community where one could get off the beaten track and unwind. A Brigadoon, untouched by the problems that plagued modern society.
Immediately upon returning to work, Bradley shelved all plans to erect a mall on his thousand acres in rural Massachusetts. Instead, he put the architects and contractors to work designing and building quaint cottages, stone footbridges and even a white, steepled church.
In record time, Harmony Village was completed, and Bradley Shelton promptly retired and became the first person to move into the Thomas Kinkade-inspired housing development.
The night the wealthy land tycoon took up residence in his ivy-covered stone cottage, he sat in an overstuffed chair beside the fireplace, drinking a mug of hot cocoa.
"Now, this is the life!" he exclaimed as he looked out the bay window and perused the perfect community he had created.
He smiled as the bell began to toll ....
* * *
Sheila Fallon, appropriately dressed in a somber black pantsuit, took hold of her husband's arm as she walked away from the freshly dug mound of earth at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
"Mrs. Fallon?" a voice called.
Sheila turned to see a petite young woman whose face looked vaguely familiar.
"I don't know if you remember me," Elena Fernandez began. "We met about two years ago at your brother's fiftieth birthday party. I am—or rather was—Bradley's administrative assistant."
"Oh, yes," Sheila replied. "I remember you. My brother always spoke so highly of you."
"I wanted to offer my condolences. Mr. Shelton was a wonderful man and a good employer. I'm going to miss him."
"Thank you. His death was so unexpected, as I'm sure you agree. Still, I can take comfort in the fact that he didn't suffer at the end."
Sheila was still reeling from the shock of her brother's sudden, massive heart attack, which happened during his meeting with his wife's divorce lawyers.
"My husband and I inherited Bradley's company," she told the assistant, "and we're going to go ahead with his plans to build the mega mall. I'm only sorry my brother won't be around to see his dream completed."
As Sheila and Elena expressed their mutual grief over the passing of their brother and employer, the bell of a nearby church tolled, its echo reaching all the way to heaven where Bradley Shelton sat in his overstuffed chair beside his fireplace in his ivy-covered stone cottage.
The picture in the upper left corner is from Thomas Kinkade's Make a Wish Cottage.
Salem, I don't think anyone is going to believe Thomas Kinkade painted that picture of you!
