{"id":1138,"date":"2011-06-04T03:48:27","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T03:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2017-10-28T03:37:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-28T03:37:46","slug":"old-bells-young-mountains-by-eric-bosse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/old-bells-young-mountains-by-eric-bosse\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Bells, Young Mountains by Eric Bosse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n

Old Bells, Young Mountains<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

by Eric Bosse<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

She felt a little drunk from the constant motion of sleeping in the car, but when he asked her to drive she slapped her cheeks and adjusted the rearview mirror. Sunlight glinted off the RV at the next pump back. She crossed herself, twisted the key, and merged onto the highway. He reclined his seat then rose on his elbows to watch the truck stop sink into the prairie. \u201cYou know what\u2019s wrong with this country?\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTell me,\u201d she said. Drizzle became rain. She flicked the wipers on high.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot enough churches.\u201d He pulled his wool cap over his face.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought you were an atheist,\u201d she said. \u201cPresumably you disagree with everyone who goes to church, and on fairly significant grounds, right?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He nudged the cap from his mouth. \u201cCorrect.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The road began to slope. She passed a Coke truck and a Mayflower moving van.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo, come on,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy do you want more churches?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He removed the cap and used it as a pillow. \u201cI don\u2019t. I want more bells. In Italy, you can\u2019t go five minutes without hearing at least one bell. Or ten. Or twenty.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The car dipped into a ravine. Antelope ate grass by the gravel shoulder. Rain flowed into grooves along the road and spilled into gullies. Not far off, she imagined, a stream washed through a gulch and eroded a snake fossil embedded a million years before the first bell ever rang. She switched on the radio, and the speakers hissed like wind through a broken whistle.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Seattle,\u201d he said, \u201cno bells, just hippy wind chimes.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlus,\u201d she said, \u201cin Seattle, the gelato sucks.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They crested a hill. Mountain peaks bent northward in the distance. \u201cLadies and gentlemen,\u201d she said, \u201cI give you the Rockies\u2014weighing in at two hundred million years old, the youngest mountain range in the hemisphere.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He sat up to see over the dashboard. \u201cI mean, how many wind chimes does it take to match the decibels of the smallest church bell in the smallest village in Europe? Fifty? Five hundred? And think of all those people kneeling and bowing their heads.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSeven hundred miles to go,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe what they believe. I don\u2019t even want to believe it, but I feel its absence.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After a while, he fell asleep. She put a hand on his leg and whispered a prayer for a good Italian restaurant within sight of the next gas stop. Then she apologized for this and took it back. Too specific, and too selfish. Every now and then, a moan spooled through the thrum of the engine. Eventually, the clouds parted.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

###<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eric Bosse<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eric Bosse\u2019s work has been published by<\/span>The Sun, Mississippi Review, Zoetrope, Exquisite Corpse, The Collagist, Wigleaf, Night Train,<\/span><\/em>and several other journals. He lives in Oklahoma with his wife and children, and teaches at the University of Oklahoma. His short story collection,<\/span>Magnificent Mistakes,<\/span><\/em>will be published by Ravenna Press in 2011. He blogs at<\/span>Everything is Beautiful, and Nothing Hurts<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She felt a little drunk from the constant motion of sleeping in the car, but when he asked her to drive she slapped her cheeks and adjusted the rearview mirror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3601,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/3601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}