Waiting for Bells

By Brett Ramseyer

Waiting for Bells grows from the rows of a Michigan classroom. Teachers tire of the expression that the real world starts once students matriculate or that those who cannot, teach. Instead, school halls teem with tales of tragedy, talent, love, loss, depression, desire, betrayal and hope for both students and staff. Those real life themes tug a thread through the first and title short of this 16 story collection of fiction.

There are five sections to this book including: Teaching, Prep School, Bachelors, Study Abroad & Graduates. Teaching touches raw nerves of a profession that sees an all time high of teachers leaving schools permanently and few young filling that void. Prep School braves the minefields of adolescent love and loss. Bachelors puts a foot in the past and a tentative step in the future to straddle a precarious present of “friendship.” Study Abroad leaves the country forever changing those who return and Graduates toss their mortar boards too high to catch them again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329868052

Book preview

Waiting for Bells

Waiting for Bells

by Brett Ramseyer

About the Author

Brett Ramseyer teaches English Language Arts and history in Hart, Michigan where he and his wife raise their three children.

In 2013 the committee for the Norman Mailer Teacher Award for creative non-fiction named Ramseyer a national semifinalist.  WAITING FOR BELLS is his third book and first collection of short stories.  His novel COME NOT TO US published in 2014.

Also by Brett Ramseyer

- With Honors: Creation

- Come Not To Us

All available at lulu.com

Copyright © 2016 Brett Ramseyer.  All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-329-86805-2

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights.  Purchase only authorized editions.

This book is a work of short fiction.  The names, characters, places, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.

The Bridge is the only non-fiction piece of this collection.  Brett Ramseyer delivered this eulogy for his late mother, Joan Ramseyer, on November 2, 2015 in Shelby, Michigan for family and friends at her memorial service.

Cover Design by Brett Ramseyer

Cover Drawing by Georgia Curtis

Read more or drop a comment at https://bramseyer.wordpress.com/

for Joan

These works of fiction grow from the rows of a classroom.

Teaching:

Waiting for Bells

The bathroom paper towel smeared the mark off the board.  It started blue and moved to black in a line.  He pressed harder working for white, an unblemished surface shining like new. 

I won’t have to watch any student fuck this up again.

Such a terrible sentence to end a career, but there it was, out in the air swirling aloft in the heat of mid-June.  The grime of adolescence hung about the walls and etched into the desks.  Custodians left drifts of dust in every corner, mechanical pencils on the seats, bits of paper fluttered down to the tiles where the orgy of ripping a school year’s worth of notes from their spirals matched only the curls of pre-test pencil shavings.  No one picked up after himself.  No one remembered what she had written on those notes stuffed feverishly and with finality into the waste paper bins that overflowed with these early blooms of summer.

They couldn’t even recycle.  Could they?

To say that Carl was bitter was to claim that trees were tall, grass was green and skies were gray, but they did not start off tall, always stay green or start every day gray.  They just seemed to end that way. 

Carl’s colleagues packed up their own rooms, pushing desks to the middle, papering the shelves, bagging computers.  Some counted abused text books, covers half ripped off, pages drawn with dicks calling Romeo a fag with grizzled balls dangling about his chin.  Other books were swollen, once water logged and now dry, twice their original size.  Their pages grew more brittle and bindings unsewing themselves.

Carl made his way down the hall the last time, his own few binders under his arm.  He looked in the doors of each classroom.  Some stood empty with music emanating from unmanned computers.  In some he caught a glimpse of once frantic teachers slacking their pace as the impatient students had already left the building the day before.  A languid summer stretched out before them deliciously verdant with possibility.  Carolyn, the art teacher allowed herself to daydream.  She sat motionless for a moment.  Her fingers hung lightly over a box of sponges that her mind was setting free on the floor of the ocean to live out their days soaking up surf.  What could be was surfeit enough for a tired mind and Carl too had stopped mindfully staring into Carolyn’s daze. 

Like a shift in barometric pressure she felt him, a low that slunk in bringing winds from the east.  Her arms felt suddenly heavy and fell off the sides of the half-filled box.  She looked up and met his gaze, her eyebrows pushing down against her upraised lashes.  She opened her mouth to speak.  Her chest rose with the inhalation poised to say something to the man forced out, but Carl shook his head slowly, his lips together.  A second more and he turned away.  Carolyn’s condolences leaked out her nose in a rush of silence.  Her shoulders fell, helpless to help him just as she had been yesterday at the staff luncheon.  Carl, I couldn’t... came out in a whisper that only the sponges could absorb. 

***

At home the fire pit glowed into the night.  Red hungry coals ate up Carl’s directions.  They devoured his questions, grew and waved excited tongues at his discussion topics.  They could not wait for more and he fed them a sheet at a time, such eager students. 

Each lesson plan was different, a drama mapped out, but continually improvised.   The dates stretched back for decades:  American Lit. 5/19/88, U.S. History 12/3/09, Freshmen English 9/26/96, World History 3/8/11.  Like stages of grief each lay on the coals.  In the first seconds, unchanged then golden blossoms turned brown until a pistil of flame shot from the center.  In an instant more the petals of his work curled up black and broke off.  Some of the words were still visible on these chunks of ash as they floated aloft above the rising current of the campfire.  Their edges still glowed hot until a gust of wind caught them and their carbon crumbled in its stiffening breath. 

A life’s work released into the smoke.  A page at a time the scenes of his play disappeared forever.  Early heat of the season brought the deer flies, his only guests to this pitiful party, but they unwelcome, buzzed behind his ears until landing on his neck to crawl up into his hair.  One by one Carl pinned them under a finger until he brought up his thumb to roll them like something extracted from his nose until their exoskeletons popped.  Then he would flick them away and watch them auger in dead spirals to the fire like pencil shavings. 

***

To call it reminiscence sounds fond.  To call him Mr. Bellen was to be a student at Horton’s Bay High in the last twenty-four years. 

In 1988 Mr. Carl Bellen barely survived his first year out of Central Michigan University.  His ties and short-sleeved button down shirts were the only things separating him from the students.  He shared their zits, their wiry frames and the rare need to shave his face, which he did more on principle than necessity every three days. 

He brought a nerd-chic air with him that drew smart girls to his classroom early in the morning because they deemed him safe.  They could hide from the profanity of the hallway or avoid the jocks congregating outside the bathrooms and benches where the cool kids hung out.  Carl was uncomfortable with their presence.  Girls like that, well girls in general, never gathered near him in high school four short years earlier and he had no charming banter to fill the silence, but he need not really worry.  They traveled in flocks and usually provided their own calls to one another in pairs or trios. 

They anointed him Bells in quiet amongst themselves, but soon their code slipped out in his presence.  His room simply staged the girls in a holding pattern where they waited for the morning bells to prod them onto their assigned classrooms.  This coupled with Bellen stood as transparent as pig latin, but sufficed to confuse those they wished to exclude when too many ears might hear where they would be.  After all these girls understood their power was limited through exclusion so they thought it wise to create a little of their own.

Carl would busy himself with his final class preparation and nod a perfunctory good morning when the girls would arrive.  Most mornings the girls would forget his existence as he seemed not to be listening and their chatter often pushed bounds that should not be crossed with adults, but at twenty-two he did not yet register as an authority figure unless they had a question.

Bells? said Regina Robertson one morning in Carl’s second semester.  Her friends’ heads snapped around to look at her.  Their eyes were wide, necks oscillating back and forth between Mr. Bellen and Regina in disbelief that she would utter their code directly to the man.

Yes, Regina. said Carl not looking up from the study of his lesson plan.

Her friends bumped her with their shoulders and gritted their teeth at her mistake and she moved to smooth it over.  Um, I mean Mr. Bellen.

You’ve been calling me Bells for weeks.  I see no disrespect in that.  What can I help you with?

Help with what?

I don’t know.  You asked me, said Carl. 

Regina had forgotten what she was about to ask, but bells tolled for first hour and the nickname suited Carl.  He adopted it on the spot and started the next school year with an option for the class to call him Mr. Bellen or for the daring, Bells.

***

Students do not readily recognize good teachers, but experience good lessons in the same way every time.  They look at the clock with a minute remaining in the hour.  Oh my God!  Class went by so fast.

Carl loved that last sentence.  It summoned goose bumps on his arms, made him an inch taller.  It hardened his armor for the 6th hour literature class that did not read, did not discuss, did not write.  In fact these future county convicts would soon be guilty of uttering and publishing, but nothing akin to arts and letters.

The plan lay out in his mind the same as 5th hour just five minutes before.  He warmed them up, primed them with the same jokes.  Oh my God!  This class is taking forever, mumbled someone.  Only 45 minutes till the final bell.  This class was the measure of Carl. 

Observations had not gone well.  Fallon Felton (he had a lot of silent names in Carl’s head) called Carl a Silly asshole, with his eyes deep in their corners trying to see Principal Allen’s reaction. 

Future Felon looked back to Carl a smirk tugging up the side of his mouth like a hook and line snaring a big mouth bass.  The class froze in delight and several intoning Ooooooh.

Mr.Felton, to the hall.

What?

You know what.  Take your foul mouth outside.  Carl’s eyes also peaked at Principal Allen.  He typed notes on his laptop without looking down. 

I said, ‘really a castle?’ What’s foul about that? lied Felonious Flunk

You should have said rook.

What?

Rhymes with crook, your future occupation.  Then they can hold you in the castle keep.  Hold down that tile till I come back.  Carl turned around and flipped the door shut with his wrist.  It swung gracefully closed until the latch clicked in the catch without the door hitting the jamb.  Twenty-four years of handling punks can make a man pretty solid at shutting doors.

When Carl focused back on the room the tension of students swelled to a crescendo crested into the froth of excited chatter wondering how much trouble Failin’ Felon would be in with the principal in the room. 

As it turned out the administrative trouble for Failin’ was none because Mr. Allen was too busy calling Carl to his office the next day to lecture him on the importance of fostering a trusting relationship with kids.  You belittled him in front of his peers.  He’ll never trust you again.  I’m making note of this in your observation. Under rapport with students I’m marking you - Ineffective.

Principal Mark Allen was an administrator with a low IQ, a neck like a bulldog, a bark like a pit bull.  As far as Carl could see Allen was full of bullshit, but had a curious propensity to sticking around.  He’d squeezed through high school because his teachers Took the time to know me and forge a relationship despite his suspect grades.  Carl guessed it was more due to Allen’s skills as a fullback on the state championship football team he captained that he never missed an opportunity to mention or that his father was the county probate judge that held far more sway than any ‘relationship’.  Allen wore block color sweater vests with ties and preached the dogma of real world application. Somehow beyond Carl’s comprehension, he administered for the last five years as the head of Horton’s Bay High.  When are these kids going to need the quadratic equation?  Never.  That’s when.  I’m 37 years old and I don’t need it.  Teach them to balance a check book or check a bank balance.  Don’t read Macbeth that’s boring and irrelevant.  Who needs to read of some Irish dead guy.  It would be better to pull the operation manual out of the glove box of my Buick and teach them how to understand that.  Mechanics make good money.  Make it relevant.  Let’s be vehicles for change teachers.  Goddammit your test scores are five percent worse than last year.  Give these kids some shit they can use.  To Allen this was inspiration, some Knute Rockney half-time horse shit for morons.   Or the Board will want to see some changes in this staff.  He loved the threat as a motivator, but he like all leaders who have no business being in charge did not understand that fear does not create thinking.  Job insecurity does not produce positive results nor better teachers.  It only breeds uncertainty that leaves some out on the whim of statistics and grudges. 

Scottish. said Carl at one of Allen’s first monthly ass chewings known as a staff meeting.

What’s that Mr. Bellen?

Macbeth is a play about a Scottish dead man.

"It doesn’t matter.  My point is - teach kids knowledge they need to know.  Obviously I don’t need to know Macbeth from McDonald’s, but I’m better off knowing how much fat is in a Big Mac.  Teach kids how to read the nutrition labels in a fast food restaurant.

Well if we need some bolstering in the health and fitness curriculum I can probably think of some literature, but I’d rather dabble in the higher order thinking of Bloom’s pyramid than the food pyramid.

I don’t follow.

Some say lead, follow or get out the way.  Macbeth killed the Scottish king in his lust for power.  He tried to blame it on others and when that didn’t work he killed anyone in his path.  He became so arrogant that he couldn’t see the troops amassing against him as a real threat and lost his head.  It feels like a great story to discuss tyrannical ambition or Hamlet even.  A brother kills the king to usurp his throne and bed his wife.  Then a son is left alone to brood and plot a revenge in misery.  I don’t find that boring or irrelevant.  Hell it’s got to be more interesting than the amount of sodium in a french fry.  I don’t want to teach kids to know.  I want to teach them to think for themselves.

Is that in the standards?

I sure as hell hope so or we’re all screwed.

Half of Carl’s colleagues nodded their heads and the other half looked nervous at the open challenge of authority.  Carl glanced across the tables of the library and caught Carolyn’s eye.  Carl gave her the quarter smile she was learning to love and she mouthed the words Be careful silently to him from across the room.    

***

After school, only when the children had safely vacated the premises, did Carl occasionally allow himself a visit to Carolyn’s classroom, but only if he had school business to discuss.  He would often wait until four.  By then most of the staff was gone too.  Sometimes he missed Carolyn, but it seemed she hung around more lately, so many brushes to clean board stock to cut and the like.

Her early thirties were kind to her face, it spoke not a day over 25.  Only her hands admitted her age.  The wrinkles on her knuckles and gaunt speckless pads of her hands spoke more heartache.  Her blue eyes reached out to Carl in a sheepish adoration of his reputation, the great teacher.  She heard her students talk of many classes, yet Mr. Bellen’s took up half the day.  She sensed his creativity in their complaints, accolades, frustrations and successes.  Must we too stab Caesar in the capital?  I loved it when Jay Gatsby was a guest on The View.  Why do we have to write so many essays.  85% on the Civil Rights Test.  I know.   It was my best grade on a test from Bells this year. Piqued, she wished for more.  She’d noticed him the first day of teacher’s meetings, wire rimmed glasses in his hand staring with concentration at the superintendent’s morning welcome.  Carolyn liked the cut of his chin and shape of his eyes that his newly removed glasses no longer distorted.  She too became so intent watching him that she missed her introduction by the building principal and did not stand to wave red faced at this still foreign staff until a math teacher elbowed her back to reality.  

Within a few months she asked the principal if she could observe the veteran staff during her planning period.  He applauded her initiative as a lover of learning, but she only wanted to see Mr. Bellen’s class.

The students talk about you all the time, she said when she asked to observe.

Nothing good I hope, said Carl.

Oh lots of good.  They say you’re tough, but fair.  You don’t play favorites.  Wendy Kelly claims you’ve taught her the most of any teacher she’s ever had.

Is that why she whines every time she gets out her writing journal?

They think a lot of you Mr. Bellen.  I was wondering if I could observe you Tuesday next week during my prep.

That’s fine.  What hour?

Fourth.

See you there.

He’d been at the head of the class 19 years at that time.  To say being in front of a class or observed caused nervousness any more was a lie, but Carl looked ahead