Me and Mr. Bell Read online

  For a long time, this was how things were and how I thought they would always be. Summer came and went. We started a new school year. And then one day, I met a man who changed everything.

  Chapter 3

  The first time I met Mr. Bell, I was crossing a field and he was coming down the hill. There was no one else around. It was cloudy, but the air was warm. I wasn’t walking anywhere in particular, just crossing the field and feeling the grass with my hands. Dandelions were sticking out of the grass like soldiers with bright yellow helmets. I was always amazed that where the grass was short, the dandelions were short. Where the grass was long, the dandelions were tall. I figured they had to keep up with the grass if they wanted to get any of the sunshine. The cows loved to eat them.

  Mr. Bell came charging down the hill like a bear in a wool suit that was too small for him. I knew it was him even though I had never seen him before. He was tall, big and round and had a white bushy beard. He didn’t look like a farmer; a farmer would never have such a big belly. It didn’t seem to slow him down, though. He was talking loudly and waving his arms in the air, but there was nobody beside him. He was talking to himself.

  He reached the bottom of the hill and crossed the field as if he didn’t even see it. He walked right past me without seeing me, either! I wondered if maybe he was walking in his sleep. But it was the middle of the afternoon.

  I followed him. At the end of the field was a pile of stones. I was curious to see if he would stop and go around it, climb over it or maybe walk right into it. He didn’t seem to be looking where he was going.

  He went right over the rocks without even slowing down. But as he did, a pencil fell out of his pocket. So I ran and picked it up and tried to catch up with him. He was walking fast! I called after him. “Mr. Bell!” He didn’t hear me. “Mr. Bell!” Still he didn’t hear me. So I shouted. “Mr. Bell!” Then he stopped.

  He turned around and saw me. He looked confused. He frowned and squinted at me as if he were trying to figure out what I was. I held up the pencil. “You dropped this, Sir.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out, and I thought I could feel it from twenty feet away. His face changed, like ice melting really fast. He turned from looking like a wild bear to looking like the friendliest person I had ever seen in my whole life. He came toward me, pushing the tall grass out of his way, reached out with fat fingers and took the pencil out of my hand. Then he smiled at me as if I were his best friend. His eyes twinkled under his bushy eyebrows.

  “Now, who would you be?”

  I didn’t know how to answer him, so I said, “Nobody.”

  “Nobody?” He grinned. “I never met nobody before. Are you sure you aren’t somebody?”

  “Well, my name is Eddie.”

  When I said that, his eyes opened really wide, his cheeks fell and he suddenly looked sad. I wondered what was wrong, but was afraid to ask.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Eddie.”

  He wasn’t smiling now. He looked far away, and he looked sad.

  “Eddie. Ah … my little brother was called Eddie. He died a long time ago, the poor fellow. A day doesn’t go by I don’t think of him.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “I have a brother, too.”

  He stared at me and started smiling again. “Well, shake my hand, young Eddie. I’m Alec Bell. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Sir.” I stuck out my hand, and he shook it. His hand was large, hot and sweaty. Then he nodded his head at me, winked, turned around and walked away, pushing the grass and dandelions out of his way. I stood and watched him go. I was excited now. I had just met the smartest man in the world.

  When I came in for supper and told my mother that I had met Mr. Bell, she made a face at me and told me to stop telling stories. I said that I wasn’t; I had really met him. She looked up from the stove where she was mashing potatoes. “Where?”

  “In the field above MacDougall’s.”

  She frowned into the pot. “I don’t think it was Mr. Bell, Eddie, it must have been somebody else. Mr. Bell wouldn’t be out walking in MacDougall’s field.”

  “It was him! He told me his name, and he shook my hand.”

  “He shook your hand?” My mother smiled. She liked the thought that I had shaken hands with Mr. Bell. She turned her head and stared out the window for just a second, and she looked a little dreamy. Then she scooped the potatoes into a bowl. “You’d better wash up.” She leaned closer and spoke to me as if she were telling me a secret. “Better not tell your father about that, Eddie.”

  I saw the look of confusion on her face. “Okay.”

  At school, no one believed me, and I wished I had never said anything. But I couldn’t help it, and it kind of slipped out. Our teacher, Miss Lawrence, seemed to have two faces: one with which she believed everything you said and one with which she didn’t believe anything you said. When Joey MacDougall said that he and his father saw Mr. Bell out in a boat with another man, smoking cigars and creating a cloud of fog, I let it slip that I had just met Mr. Bell in the field, and that he shook my hand.

  “Yeah, sure he did,” said Joey. “And was he standing on four legs and chewing his cud?”

  Everybody laughed.

  “I did!” I said, and looked toward Miss Lawrence, but her face had suddenly turned from belief to disbelief. After that, I went to MacDougall’s field every day for two weeks but never saw Mr. Bell. The next time I met him was down at the lake, when he snuck up on me.

  I was standing in the water up to my knees. There was no wind and the lake was flat and shiny, like a silver plate. But I knew it wasn’t really flat because the earth is round. That means that everything on the earth is round, even the lake. I had heard that at the ocean you could watch a ship sink below the horizon as it sailed away and that that showed you the roundness of the earth. Well, I wanted to know if I could see any of the roundness of the earth by looking ten miles across Bras d’Or Lake.

  So I rolled up my pants, crouched down in the water and brought my head close to the surface, which was kind of awkward. It would have been easier to walk up to my neck and look straight across the lake, but I didn’t want to get my clothes all wet. There was a small boat in the distance, and I stared at it, trying to see if it was dropping below the horizon. I was pretty sure it was. But the stones were slippery, and I thought I’d better get a stick to hold on to so I wouldn’t fall in. When I turned around, I got a fright. About ten feet behind me, Mr. Bell was crouching the same way I was and was staring out at the lake. He scared the heck out of me.

  He was squinting really hard, trying to see whatever it was I was looking at. He was so curious, he was behaving like one of my friends might behave except that none of my friends was that curious.

  “Heavens above! You’ll have to tell me, dear boy,” said Mr. Bell, “what you have been staring at so intensely.”

  I was shy about telling him. “Um … I was trying to see the roundness of the earth on the lake, Sir.”

  Mr. Bell stood right up. “I knew it! I just knew that was it!” He wore a great big smile now. “And pray, tell me, did you see it?”

  I nodded my head. “I think so, Sir.”

  “Splendid!”

  Mr. Bell walked into the water and stood beside me. “That boat way out there?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He blocked the sun with his hand and stared. “If only we had some way to measure it.”

  I wondered if he was being serious. He sure sounded serious. He sounded like he really wanted to know.

  “I saw in a math book that you can measure distances between far places if you know what the angles are between them, but I’m not sure how to do it.” I knew what angles were, but didn’t know how to measure them. I knew that he would know.

  Mr. Be
ll frowned. “Yes, well, mathematics has never been my strong point.”

  I thought he was joking. How could the smartest man in the world not be good at math? I wanted to ask him what he meant, but was afraid to. He looked at me and must have read my mind. “I always get someone else to work out the math.” He winked.

  “But….”

  “You’re wondering how someone can be good at inventing and not be good at math, are you?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well, it’s because being an inventor hasn’t got anything to do with being good at math or reading or writing or anything like that. It’s about having a good imagination. Inventing is like … daydreaming. In fact, that’s exactly what it is. Then you try to turn your daydreams into something real. And that is just plain hard work. If you put daydreams and hard work together, you get inventions, simple as that.” He looked at me and smiled, and his eyes sparkled. “But your daydreams have to be pretty good ones, and you have to work hard for a very long time. That’s the part that confounds most people. And what do you want to be when you grow up, Eddie?”

  I was surprised that Mr. Bell remembered my name. “I’ll probably be a farmer,” I said. “I can’t seem to learn to read or write very well, but my mom said I could still be a farmer.”

  Mr. Bell raised his eyebrows. “Is that right? And do you want to be a farmer?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so, if I have to.”

  Mr. Bell snorted loudly out of his nose, like a horse. “And who told you that you can’t learn to read and write?”

  “Everybody.”

  “Is that so? Well, I have the feeling that I’ve met this everybody before, and it seems to me he’s been wrong quite a few times. Have you ever heard of Helen Keller?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well, I think you should meet her the next time she comes to visit. Helen has become quite a good writer herself, even though she can’t see or hear. What do you think of that?”

  “She can’t see or hear at all?”

  “Not even the tiniest bit.”

  I tried to imagine what that was like, but it just confused me. How could someone not see and not hear? How would she communicate with anyone? It didn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t she be completely alone in the world? Mr. Bell was staring at me, waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t understand, Sir. If she is blind and deaf, how does she communicate with anyone?”

  “I’ll show you.” Mr. Bell reached out and put his hand on my face. I shut my eyes. I felt his big fat fingers touching my mouth. It was weird. “Okay. Now, say something, but don’t say it out loud.”

  I did as he told me. I felt his fingers on my mouth as I spoke the words silently.

  “You just said, ‘The world is round.’”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He took his hand away. “We learn because we want to learn, Eddie. Nothing in the world can stop us if we want it enough. The everybody you were talking to was simply wrong.”

  I was amazed, but I was also curious about something else and hoped he wouldn’t mind if I asked him. “What is it that you want the most, Mr. Bell?”

  Mr. Bell looked at me as if he were surprised at my question, then burst out laughing. “Oh, too many things to count, my dear boy. I want everything the most.” Then he stared across the lake with the most determined look on his face. “Carrying people through the air on a flying ship – just like a sailing ship on the sea – that’s one of them. And we’re close now.”

  Mr. Bell put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “Any boy smart enough to look for the roundness of the earth on the lake is smart enough to learn to read and write.” Then he winked at me and walked away. I watched him go.

  On my way home, I thought about everything he said. This time, I wasn’t in a hurry to tell anyone I had met Mr. Bell. They would just say I was making it up. And who would believe that he talked about inviting me to come to his house to meet Helen Keller? No one. I still found it hard to believe that Helen Keller could write when she couldn’t see or hear. Mr. Bell said that she had become a really good writer. How? I couldn’t get my head around it.

  Chapter 4

  One time, a calf was born blind in the barn. I remembered it. As soon as it took a breath of air, it died. My mother clicked her tongue and said that it was one of nature’s mistakes. My father stared at it with confusion and frustration. He tied a rope around its legs and used a horse to drag it out to the woods. The mother followed it out. I never knew that nature could make mistakes; I thought it was perfect. It was something I was going to ask Mr. Bell if I ever got the chance to meet him again.

  How could anyone live if they couldn’t see and couldn’t hear? It made me so curious I took a candle and went into the barn, rubbed the candle wax between my fingers until it was soft and stuck it into my ears. Then I covered my eyes with two rags and tied a belt around my head to hold them tight. Now I couldn’t hear or see. What a strange feeling it was. The first thing I noticed was that I could smell the hay better. I took a couple of steps and felt the floor beneath my feet. You could still tell a lot of things by touching and smelling. I started moving forward slowly with my hands stuck out straight, careful not to trip over anything. But I knew the barn really well, so it wasn’t the same as being deaf and blind in a strange place.

  I was thinking of going somewhere else when my foot hit something, and I fell forward and hit the floor really hard. It scared me because I couldn’t see myself falling, and it felt as if the floor had jumped up and hit me. I got to my knees and felt around. I had tripped over the broom handle. Suddenly, I felt a tug at my shoulder. Someone was beside me. It must have been my brother. “What do you want?” I said, but couldn’t hear his answer and couldn’t tell how loud I was talking. He tugged harder. “Smarten up!” I said. Then I got an idea. I reached out and felt for his face. I wanted to place my fingers over his mouth and feel what he was saying. But he slapped my arm away roughly and ripped the belt and rags from my head. It wasn’t my brother; it was my father.

  “What happened, Eddie? Who did this to you? Did your friends tie you up?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Then who tied a belt around your head?”

  “I did.”

  He stared at me, trying to understand. How could I explain to him what I was doing? I didn’t know, but figured I’d better try. “I was trying to find out what it was like to be deaf and blind, like Helen Keller.”

  I wondered if he was going to get angry. He didn’t. His face softened and so did his voice. “My son, you are going to need all the brains you’ve got. Do you hear me? Don’t make your life more difficult than it is by taking away your sight and hearing. I know who Helen Keller is, and I don’t imagine she’s anybody you’d want to be. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He looked me sternly in the eye. “Do you understand me, Eddie?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Good then. Carry the sledgehammer down to Mr. McLeary, will you?”

  “Okay.”

  “And … sweep the barn afterward, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The barn didn’t need sweeping. He just didn’t know what else to say to me. I didn’t mind. I was glad he was trusting me with an errand again, even if it was just carrying a sledgehammer down the hill. I picked up the hammer and went out of the barn.

  I once heard my mother say that Mr. McLeary was not burdened with common sense. I didn’t know what she meant by that when she said it, but eventually I figured it out. Like other men in our community, including my father, Mr. McLeary had taken to smoking a pipe because Mr. Bell smoked a pipe, so people figured it must make you smarter. Some of the older farmers already smoked a pipe, and I never heard anyone say that they were smarter.

  I watched Mr. McLeary lighting his pipe outside his house on my way to school one mornin
g but didn’t think he was doing it right. He raised his eyebrows at me the way he always did now because I was a learning cripple, but I noticed a whole pile of burnt matches on the ground by his feet. From the way he was puffing his cheeks, I was pretty sure he was blowing into his pipe instead of sucking on it. Then, later in the morning, we smelled smoke at school. Everyone ran outside and saw a dark cloud over the McLeary farm. On the way home, I saw that a whole corner of his hayfield was burnt. A handful of farmers were there, drinking tea and eating cookies that Mrs. McLeary had made for them for putting out the fire. Everyone was saying how smart Mr. McLeary had been to alert the other farmers before the fire had reached his house and how clever he had been to discover it so quickly in the first place. No one knew how the fire could have started, but Mrs. McLeary said it must have been a freak of nature. The very next day, I saw Mr. McLeary lighting his pipe at the well. As he took a deep breath, he coughed, and the pipe slipped out of his mouth. He swung at it as if he were trying to catch a ball but missed, and the pipe fell down the well. Then he saw me and raised his eyebrows again, but the look on his face was the look of a frightened cow.

  I carried the sledgehammer down the hill. Mr. McLeary was standing in his field with a tired look on his face. It had rained a lot. His fence was leaning over. His cows kept sliding into it when they came in and out of the field. I saw his sledgehammer in the mud and it had a broken handle. He must have hit the fence posts too hard trying to drive them deeper into the ground. He looked really tired when he saw the sledgehammer in my arms. He wouldn’t even look me in the face. I stared at the cow path. It was stirred into brown soup. Cows will follow the same path no matter what. Suddenly, I got an idea. “Fill it with stones,” I said. I just blurted it out because he looked so desperate and didn’t know what to do.