I live in a small town such that even my doctor conforms to the small town ethos. His office is in a converted Episcopal church. Where the narthex was there is now a simple entryway. Where the pews were is a small half-wall separating waiting patients from the office area with its computers and filing cabinets. I imagine the sacristy is now the examination room and that seems fitting.
Only one doctor is peering down throats in this practice; his dog barks and trails him around the office, toenails clicking on the hardwood floors. The sunlight slants nicely through the stained glass windows, and the phone buzzes and Glenn Frye plays on the stereo, and I wonder why all Doctors aren’t doing this type of healing. It is a good place packed full of sincere intentions and quiet thoughts.
There was this one time I visited Dr. Steve to receive the results of my bloodwork. We were both pleased with what we saw as we sat at his desk carefully studying lipids, white cells, and genes that go back in time. That day the oracle declared my entrails fit for the future and it felt like no small thing. I asked too many questions. Steve answered them all, and we laughed about getting old. Steve said I reminded him of another patient, a friend. He also wanted me to get a colonoscopy. Handing me the reports he said, “See you in six months. Now go up front and tell Vivian to schedule the colonoscopy and also tell her: five rings.”
“Five rings?”
“She’ll understand.”
Up front I go, thinking about colons and friends. Vivian is Steve’s wife. I tell her about the colonoscopy, and she smiles and nods. She tells me of the patient they had, the one I am reminiscent of; he had colon cancer, it turns out. He died. She looks sad as she thinks on him and here in a converted church I understand a little bit more about death and pasts calling out.
“Oh,” I said. “Steve said I should tell you five rings.”
“Five!” She answers. “That’s a good one!”
Vivian comes out from behind the little half wall and leads me to the front of the church, where I see a rope dangling down from a hole in the ceiling.
“Go ahead and ring the bell!” She tells me. “Five pulls!”
The little boy, still in me, with a love of noise and insistent declaration is pleased.
“How often do you do this?” I ask her.
“We do it every time there’s good news. Also, sometimes when there’s not such good news. The bells help with sad news too.”
I think about their friend with the colon cancer tolling this same bell as I raise an arm and grab the braided rope. You cannot feel lousy ringing a bell hanging in an honest-to-god belfry. The image of a giant mastodon shambles unbidden into my mind’s eye as I reach up to hold the tasseled tail. The church, with its steeple and long trailing back, has just the right Pleistocene shape to it, standing in this old forest. I am in the belly of a forest-dwelling Leviathan, and he is in me, I think.
The mouth, the door I’m at, stares at big trees, ripe for grazing. I am a ponderous heavy-limbed thing with wrap-around tusks. Did the man with colon cancer get consumed by the immense Mammut too? I give a strong pull; the call goes out to the other half-eaten ones here in the hills, down by the market, standing by the river. I YET LIVE peals out on the second pull, my massive head raised toward the west and the evening sky. My fellow pilgrim, now passed on with cancer, pulls the third and I can see Vivian is smiling. Steve is standing nearby with his arms crossed, understanding too. On the fourth pull, the shaggy brute shakes his head, and together we stomp a ground-shattering foot. The earth seems not a thing I am standing on, but something I could easily carry on my back. The fifth pull echoes out into the gloaming, and then, quiet.
That is it: five rings. The front door is open. Vivian, Steve and I all share a secret now: the great beast is never defeated, it is consumed and later will consume us in its own time. The hills in front call the notes back to me as I walk carefully out to my car. My huge padded feet pick their way across the lot lest this great being damages something on the way home.