The Chime Driver

If Ice Cream Cake is your strain, this is your sign: the Chime Driver. Dusk on the last night of the summer route, sprinklers ticking on across the lawns, porch lights coming on in ones and twos, and you at five miles an hour with the window down and the chime playing.

If Ice Cream Cake is your strain

You are the last thing summer does. Everyone else is already talking about September, and you are still out at dusk with the window down, driving the route one more time at five miles an hour, because somebody should, and because the street is never better than it is right now.

You move at walking pace and you know the way by heart: which corner has the dog that runs the fence, whose porch light is on a timer and whose means someone is home, which lawns the sprinklers reach first and which hedge has been argued over since June. The map stays folded in your shirt pocket. You have not needed it in years, and you would not drive without it.

At your best you turn an ordinary evening into an occasion without asking anything of anyone. The chime starts two streets ahead of you, and people step out onto their porches before they know why. You wave at every one of them, and you remember who waved back last year. Nobody has ever seen you skip a street because it was late, or rush the last one because it was the last.

Your flaw is that you cannot end things. On the last night you go around the block one more time, then once more for the corner you think you missed, and the chime plays the old waltz again with its one missing note. You call it checking the route. Everyone else calls it not wanting to go home. The people who love you have learned to leave the porch light on. They know you will be by.

What you need is a warm evening, a full tank, one street where nobody is in a hurry, and someone on a porch who waves without wanting anything. Give you that, and summer gets a proper ending, slowly, the way it deserves.

Your hour: Dusk, when the sprinklers come on
Your place: The last cul-de-sac on the route
Your object: A brass chime with one note missing
Your tempo: Five miles an hour, window down
Your weather: The last warm evening of August
Your flaw: One more time around the block

Your people

Cindy at Midnight (Cinderella 99)Cindy leaves when the clock chimes. When yours plays, people come out onto the porch. You both know a tune can end a night.
The Night Courier (Sour Diesel)The Night Courier has never been late in his life, and you have never once been early. You trade route maps anyway; his are neater.
The Aurora Keeper (Northern Lights)The Aurora Keeper keeps a lantern lit for whoever is still on the road. You keep forty streets of porch lights in your head. Same work, different weather.

Things you say

Five miles an hour. Nobody waves at forty.
The tune’s missing a note. The street knows which one.
Leave the window down. You hear more.
The last stop is the one you remember.
Summer doesn’t end. It runs out of route.

A scene from your world

The eleventh note

The Chime Driver takes the truck out of the depot at a quarter past seven, the way she has every evening since June, except that tonight is the last night of the route and the whole valley seems to know it. The truck is cream with one blue stripe and rounded at every corner, and it hums the way old freezers hum. The brass chime box hangs on its hook by the wheel. She winds the window down before she is out of the yard.

The chime goes ahead of her, two streets at a time. It plays an old waltz, slowly, and it has played it with one note missing for eleven summers: the eleventh note, near the end, is simply not there. Nobody on the route seems to mind. If you watch the porches closely, you can see people hum the gap without noticing they are doing it.

She drives at five miles an hour with one elbow out. On Larkspur a man in a bathrobe lifts his garden hose in salute. On Oleander two neighbors who have argued over a hedge all summer stop arguing long enough to wave. A woman in hospital scrubs, home late, sits on her front step with her shoes in her lap and listens to the waltz go by. Porch lights come on in ones and twos. On means someone is home; off means they are away at the coast. The truck slows down for both.

At eight the sprinklers start, street by street, in an order she could recite with her eyes shut. They tick across the lawns, tsk, tsk, tsk, throwing slow silver arcs that catch the last pink of the sky, and the truck rolls through the drift with the window down and comes out the other side smelling of cut grass. This is the second route, the one under the first. She has driven both for years.

The last street is Primrose Court, a cul-de-sac at the top of the hill where the route runs out of road. She takes it the way she always does, one slow lap of the circle, and pulls in at the curb by the middle lawn. Every porch light on the court is on. The waltz starts again from the top.

Then the Primrose sprinklers come on, all at once, a minute early. The old brass head in the middle lawn, the one that has stuck every summer since anyone can remember, coughs, catches and begins to tick, and it ticks exactly where the missing note should be. The waltz reaches the gap and the gap is full. For the first time in eleven summers the tune comes out whole, and on every porch around the court nobody says a word.

She lets it play to the end. Then she switches the chime off, sits for a minute with the engine running and the window down, and listens to the sprinkler keep time. When she drives home she goes the long way, around the block one more time, slower than the song.

The route

The depot: A chain-link yard at the bottom of the valley where the truck sleeps between routes. The brass chime goes home with the driver every night.
The chime: A small brass music box on a hook by the wheel. It plays one old waltz, slowly, with the eleventh note missing, and everyone on the route hums the gap without knowing they do.
The route map: Forty streets in one long loop, drawn in pencil on a map folded so often it opens by itself. The driver has not needed it in years and keeps it in her shirt pocket anyway.
The eight o’clock sprinklers: Every lawn on the route is on a timer, and the timers go off street by street in the same order every evening: a second route under the first, ticking.
The porch lights: On means someone is home; off means they are away at the coast. The truck slows down for both.
Primrose Court: The cul-de-sac at the top of the hill where the route runs out of road. One slow lap of the circle, a stop at the curb by the middle lawn, and the summer is done.