I wasn't around the day it stopped ringing. By the time I got back for summer break, Dorothy had kids and grandkids visiting, helping with meals, anchoring ladders in the back yard weed clumps so they could fix up shingles on the side of the house. Already people were bustling to fill the emptiness, patching and mending, like nothing had changed. It looked like that same old garden of my childhood, the same screen door and the crabapple tree strewn with its year-round Christmas lights; the lilac and honeysuckle that paid little heed to property boundaries. But in the middle of the weeds, the gong stood silent.
The garden was not unaccustomed to silence. On many a summer's night in high school I had peered down on it cautiously from the garage roof that adjoined my bedroom window, praying for that silence, melting into it as I descended from the roof, scaling the fence that divided our lot from the Petersons' and finally hopping down to freedom. The purring car that waited for me up the street was too far away to invade the silence; and both gong and garden kept my secret, quivering gently, obeying the night's stillness. Hours later when I returned, mind full of escapades and belly full of snack food, the garden greeted me with familiar silence. It hardly felt like silence at all, a pausing point merely, because I knew the garden would awaken when day came; and when the evening sun slanted to gild the screen door, Pete's gong would sound its evening call. I slithered in through my window frame, leaving the crabapple Christmas lights to keep watch over the night.
I came home that summer to a different sort of silence. The quiet had never lasted through the day like this. Usually, each night at eight o' clock the garden was bathed with the sound of the gong. Eight steady strokes. The first was likely to catch a person off guard, erupting from the concealed garden like a deep, rumbling voice gone slightly tinny. The untrained ear might have mistaken it for the nearby Sacred Heart church bell, from the way it resonated. But it was just old Pete in his flannel work shirt. Every evening just before the hour, the screen door squeaked as he came forth from the house. It took him a few moments to shuffle to the middle of the yard in preparation for the striking. He pulled back the weighted rope, rocking his body along with it, suspending rope in air for a moment before he let it strike grandly against the big hollow cylinder. The gong itself wasn't much of a spectacle--a hunk of metal, painted and peeling, strung up in the middle of a weed patch--but its tone disguised the shabbiness. There was just enough time between the strokes for you to wonder when the next would come, and to scan around for the source of the sound; not enough time, though, to take a full breath or do much of anything but stop and listen. Eight strokes hit like heartbeats, reminding the garden it was alive; reminding me, next door, of night's approach and my unfinished homework. I wasn't sure why eight o' clock was so special. Our neighborhood had no reason to take note of it—really, I thought no one but me much noticed the gong. I myself had discovered the ritual only by accident, glancing down at the Petersons' yard one night to see Pete's arm movements in sync with the sound. I understood how other people might have taken the ring to be some unremarkable church bell. But since I knew where the sound came from, it seemed an exotic sort of ring, a mysterious ritual. After that, whenever I was home at the right time of night, I scrambled to my window to see, feeling like I knew some grand sort of secret.
The night that Pete didn't ring the bell, though, he had the whole neighborhood calling. Our neighbor Lu rang to see if we knew anything. Was Pete ok? Should somebody go over? Turns out he and Dorothy had family over, so he neglected the gong for a night. I smiled to realize that so many people counted on the ritual. It seemed it was their way to check up on Pete, as much an "I'm here, I'm alive!" as a measure of time. I wasn't too worried about all the fuss. Pete always emerged to ring that gong.
In time, I traded that old window view for the courtyard vista of my college dorm room. I filed memories of summer escapades and neighborhood rituals for parties and times when home seemed too far away.
When I came back for the summer, Pete was really gone. The lilacs were here to greet me this time, but no Pete. My mom told me that he'd died a couple weeks earlier, and that Dorothy seemed to be coping. All I could think about was his eight o'clock ritual, his gong that I watched instead of evening news. The gong that I eventually told friends about—we'd huddle to watch, trying not to look obvious. It was something you just had to show visitors, like the kitchen remodel and the new begonias. But the gong without Pete doesn't give much to brag about--now it's just a dented piece of history, rusting away next door.