1 The Bell and the Falls MY name is Mary Ann Alice Mary Ann Alice McCrank I was named after the bell in the steeple of St Martin’s Church in Martindale They got the bell and named it back in 1885 They named it Mary Ann Alice That was almost forty-one years ago Seems like a long time But my mother says it’s not a long time My mother Fuzzy McCrank is forty-one years old too She says if I say forty-one years is a long time one more time she won’t finish the dress she’s making me for the next big covered-bridge dance at Low if there is one I love that bell in St Martin’s steeple The sound of it When my father Frank McCrank pulls the rope on Sundays and special days or weddings or funerals you can hear the pretty sound of the bell all up and down the Gatineau River down to Low and up to Venosta and all along the tumbling farms And everybody hears it but not very many people know I’m named after it and what it’s saying when it rings Mary Ann Alice Mary Ann Alice I’m quite poetic I don’t mind saying My teacher Patchy Drizzle says I’ve the soul of a poet He wrote that on a story I handed in to him last spring I asked him would he not say that in front of the others because they’d tease me and he said he wouldn’t I told my mother though About having a poetic soul
She had a sad look on her for a minute and then it went away and she said Well the soul of a poet or not get yer pail and get out there There’s poetic cows to be milked and they’re waitin on ya I told my father My father too is poetic My father when he feels poetic he brings out his bugle and he walks down the river to the Paugan Falls you have to go for about two little valleys to get there and he plays his bugle to the thundering water there and you can hardly hear him the thunder of the water is so thunderous But it’s quiet up here at our farm You don’t really hear the roar of the falls But it’s there You don’t hear it but you do The way you listen to your heart at night in bed If you want to hear your heart you can But if you don’t well then just go on ahead and go to sleep and forget about it But the pretty church bell from St Martin’s you can hear Mary Ann Alice Mary Ann Alice Sometimes it’s carefree and happy like on Easter Sunday or for weddings and sometimes sad and muffled when somebody dies And something else you hear these days Something not so easy to understand It’s the rumors Everybody’s talking about something frightening and exciting Somebody’s going to build a dam Right here And the falls will disappear Can you imagine it It doesn’t seem believable How could it be possible That falls like the Paugan Falls would
