Charley's practical joke was usually good for a laugh when a city feller made a rest stop; but it also aroused heavenly concern and began-- The Battle of the Bells By Jerome Bixby [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy September 1954 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It would happen maybe once or twice a week--never much more. Because things had to be just right. For example, it had to be daytime for it to work. At night, nobody was likely to notice the chain hanging down with the handle on the end of it. And naturally the victims had to be city folk. Had to be used to just reaching up and grabbing and pulling without a thought. Because when you stop to think about it, a chain like that in a place like that is about the most unlikely thing in the world. But it worked--it worked often enough to bring grins to the faces of any men who were around at the time, and enough to make the town women sometimes a little cool toward Charley Mason when they went in to buy things at his store. Because it was strictly a man's joke, and he was the man. * * * * * Owensville is a small town in western Pennsylvania. It sits low in one end of a green-sided valley, just a few frame houses and stores strung along a main street ... and that main street is on the one and only road that leads through the valley: a road that all the maps show to be a convenient and dependable connection between the Penn Turnpike and several other major routes, should you be heading south. So a lot of people drive through Owensville every week--upwards of two hundred or so. And there's always one or two of them in the mood to spend a little time in a restroom--the last Howard Johnson's is twenty miles back along the Turnpike, and the road down into the valley is a bumpy one besides, and you know what that does to your innards. So they come driving around the bend under the trees and their car wheels thump across the old wooden bridge across Miller's Creek--and once in a while one of them would pull off the road into the yard beside Charley Mason's General Store because they'd spot his crescent-doored outhouse standing there. Charley always kept it painted up so it'd be easier to see--clean white with a red roof--and over the door he'd lettered, big enough to see from the bridge, PUBLIC RESTROOM. Then somebody'd get out of the car and go in, and a few minutes later the chain that came up through the roof would yank down as whoever was inside reached up and pulled the handle. And then the big old cowbell on the roof--the biggest and noisiest Charley'd been able to find--would dance around in the mounting he'd made out of an angle-iron, and go _Blongle, blongle, blok!_