Beep and the City of Bowlan 

by Tut Linen ‘26

No one knows how or why Beep showed up to Bowlan that hot Wednesday afternoon in the summer of ‘76. My friends and I boasted to anyone and everyone that we were the first to notice him shuffling innocently under the Skyview Theater marquee. 

We couldn’t make out his facial features, but his body language and unkempt clothing seemed off. He somehow hunched to the left and forward while his right arm lay limp by his side. His feet dragged uneasily as if he would collapse at any second. Two large ears flopped out from underneath his long, thin hair, and his head stuck forward from his neck like it was trying to roll away. He had our undivided attention. Main Street was silent, after all, it was the middle of the work week. The only men not in the mines at this hour were either in the cemetery or not really men at all. 

I was doing what I usually did during those dragging summers of my childhood, running around our downtown with the only tolerable kids my age: Ronny, Tommy, and Cash. Well, it felt like a downtown, in reality, Bowlan was two and a half streets of family-owned shops and dying businesses. The real business of Bowlan was coal. It was everywhere: in the air, on our skin, raining from above. Black fifty years ago and black fifty years from now. The mines were a rite of passage. At eighteen, all males of Bowlan had two options, and only one was real. Either move away or suit up and head to the mountain. I think I knew where I was headed but it wasn’t real yet, it was a subtle itch blocked out by ignorance. The summers moved too slowly to think about the future.

My name is Roy Woods and my friends and I were the Shiners, a name bestowed on us by Tommy’s grandma, who was convinced our eyes had a devilish glow when we were all together. We were a tight-knit foursome and liked to think we ran the streets. Cops or robbers, cowboys or Indians, we gave that town more action than it had ever seen during those summer days. 

Anyway, Beep's sudden appearance turned our attention away from my best friend, Ronny Boggs, and his brand-new Stretch Armstrong, a gift for making the seventh-grade football team. A gift I was envious of, but it would have cost me two birthdays and a Christmas, so testing the stretchiness of Ronny’s would have to suffice. That’s typically how it went. Ronny had us over for dinner. Ronny’s dad built him a treehouse, or, more realistically, threw money at someone to build one. Ronny rightfully got to make the rules, but as my unofficial official best friend, that left me with some serious pull in the Shiners, at least with Tommy and Cash, who we joked had only recently learned to tie their own shoes. 

“We have to talk to that guy,” Ronny said, still staring over at the shuffling figure. “No way, I’m staying over here, I said with a front of stubbornness. But they were already crossing the street. Ronny’s Stretch Armstrong didn’t make the trip and I made a point to rescue him later and add him to my collection of Ronny-throwaways. 

I caught up to the rest of the Shiners and Ronny and I led the pack right up to this man. We stayed on the street and watched silently as he kept on shuffling right past us, looking down and then up but never acknowledging us. Ronny gave me a confused look and I matched him. He then kicked one of the many cans that littered Main Street at him, not maliciously, just a warning shot that scattered some innocent squirells behind him. During the workday, this was our turf and people should have known that. The man stopped and we stepped over the curb to block his path.

“Who are you?” Ronny demanded. 

“My names Roy and we’re the Shiners. What’s your name?” I followed quickly to de-escalate any possible situation that might come from such an accusing question. That seemed to snap him out of whatever deep thought he was pondering because he finally stopped moving toward us. He wouldn’t look up and began muttering my name over and over again under his breath and half laughing half gurgling. There was a certain unnerving glimmer in his eye that stiffened my lower back, but I would never show that in front of the Shiners. That was enough for Cash and he took Tommy’s arm and started pulling him back across the street. 

“Jesus Christ, he’s a freak,” Ronny smirked and looked at me. I met his eye for a second then looked down and chuckled in reluctant agreeance. As we turned to join our friends, the man made a noise that earned him his name. Simply put, it was a beep; short and intense like the alarm clocks ringing out from my parents' room every morning long before dawn, but also not to get our attention. We glanced back, but Beep gave us no regard and kept on shuffling down Main rhythmically repeating my name softly as he went. 

Those next few weeks were full of excitement. Our daily Shiner meetings that usually only consisted of playing cards at our headquarters (Ronny’s treehouse) had never seen these levels of discussion. We wanted to know who this person was, why he was here, how he got here, and pretty much everything we could find out. If the sun was shining and we weren’t at our headquarters, we were tracking Beep down. Soon enough, he was being referred to as Beep and Beep only. He was our obsession of the summer. No hypothesis was out of bounds: alien, vampire, Tommy was even convinced he was raised by the wolves in the woods north of Bowlan.

During one of our closed door, top-secret meetings, we were interrupted. Birds squawked and little feet pitter pattered above our heads on the creaky treehouse roof. Roy got up and stuck his head out the window for a second before pulling it back in quickly with a big smile on his face. Tommy and I practically fell over ourselves trying to sneak a peak of whatever it was. Cash was distracted by a particularly difficult game of Solitaire. To my surprise, it was Beep. He was shuffling towards us with his head down and cocked. 

“Five bucks if I hit ‘em in the head,” Ronny demanded as he reached for the precious jar of marbles we had collected during the infamous fifth-grade marble craze. I knocked his hand away and he recoiled slightly with a confused look. 

“No way, let’s just see what he wants,” I snapped, already on the defensive because of the size of the bet and I really did want to see what Beep was doing at our headquarters. Tommy and Cash nodded in agreement and I turned towards the ladder. Ronny slipped past me and we followed him down. 

Beep kept on trekking, looking like he was going straight for the woods past Ronny’s house. 

“Told you he came from the woods,” Tommy whispered, his eyes never leaving Beep. Once he was about 20 feet or so from us, he stopped. His head stayed down but his eyes looked up and an open mouth smile came across his face. We stood motionless. My right hand found my pocket and slowly gripped the pocketknife my dad had gotten me for my tenth birthday. Beep then turned and kept on shuffling, this time while repeating my name through that wide smile of his. He crossed Ronny’s field slowly and entered the treeline. The only sound besides our beating hearts was the fluttering of wings as a flock of birds flew after him and

disappeared into the forest canopy. I remember someone muttering something about dinner and street lights and we all sort of wandered off into our respective directions. That night was a particularly silent dinner so I decided to tell my parents about Beep. I told them what he looked like and even got up to imitate his mannerisms. I thought they might share the Shiner’s enthusiasm about this mystery man. My mom dropped her fork and demanded I sit down and explain what I was talking about. My dad’s chewing slowed, his sunken eyes never leaving his overcooked steak. 

“George, are you hearing this?!” She grabbed my dad's arm like someone had died. This was typical of my mom. Bowlan wasn’t her first choice of hometown, and she leaped at the few moments of excitement this town had to offer. I didn’t know this for sure, but when I was younger I used to sneak into her room and play with her scrapbook. It had pictures of her all over the world: New York City, Chicago, and even California. But that’s love, or at least what she would tell me when her eyeliner started to run. My dad was born and raised in Bowlan, a town with limited options when it comes to women. I guess that’s why he fell so quickly for my mom, the shy environmental studies student who chose to study Bowlan as her senior project. It was called “The Economic Impact of Coal and Coal-Fired Power Generation in West Virginia”- A Study by Janice Flowers; she used to flip through that thick binder with me when I was learning to read. I liked the way all the fancy words sounded coming out of her mouth. It seems unnatural now, seeing her use her intelligence. She never could make it to the end, though. My parents married that spring and not long after, I popped out. 

Back at the dinner table, there were no such smiles, except from me, of course. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand that parental fear that apparently creeps into you no matter what you

say as a teenager. My dad kept looking at his meal. He eventually raised an eyebrow and scratched behind his ear, revealing a smudge of black on his finger. 

“Roy, son, you will not talk to this Beeep guy anymore,” He said with a sigh and wiped his finger gingerly on a napkin. Well, he said most of the sentence. When he got to Beep’s name it oozed out almost like a question. My mom gave me a quick sort of smile like the ones meant for the newest, most unproven member of the book club and left the table quickly. I heard the phone clacking away in the kitchen, followed by silence, and finally, “Hey, Eugene. Have you talked to Cash at all today?” Mrs. Meyers was my mom’s favorite out of all the Shiners. She was really the only option for a friend. Tommy’s grandma was a nice lady but she couldn’t keep a conversation without muttering on about something incoherent. And Ronny’s mom, well I wasn’t quite sure back then, but my mom was jealous, I know that now. Mr. Boggs took her to all the places my mom wanted to go but couldn’t. His mines kept running when they went out of town. They kept running on the backs of Bowlan’s fathers, my father. 

The next day we left the treehouse after a quick meeting and spread out around downtown, keeping each other updated on walkie-talkies that Ronny gladly provided. We were on the hunt for Beep. The interaction with Beep had peaked our curiosity. If we did find him, well, then we weren’t quite sure, but I was confident we could come up with something to crack him. 

I was on South Street patrol and we weren’t a half hour in before I started to get bored. Rocks banging off a dumpster over and over can only keep a young boy entertained for a little. There was so much more to do. I wondered how the dads of Bowlan didn’t get bored excavating endless mounds of earth over and over. Radio chatter was limited and distracted, our only updates being the occasional thought that came to Tommy’s head. Then I saw him. He was doing

the traditional Beep shuffle and moving slowly out of the alley that connected South Street to Main. There were things moving with him, not behind or in front, but with him. I alerted the Shiners and moved in closer. The things with him were animals. They ran in between his legs and flew around him. He had birds, squirrels, bunnies, and even some rodent-looking things. They moved as one and finally stopped as one outside Fowler’s Pharmacy. We couldn’t believe it. It was like something out of a cartoon. 

The few mothers and not-of-age sons that were walking downtown stopped as well. Soon, Beep had a little crowd. It was a hesitant crowd, though, and people stood and stared from a distance. The animals were unbothered, and so was Beep. He looked up and down as the animals ran between his legs and crawled over his body. No one in Bowlan had ever seen anything like it. 

Over the next few weeks, Beep became the talk of the town, well, the new gossip of the town, that is. The Shiners were proud. We had a claim to fame. Any conversation we overheard, we overtook and spilled knowledge about this mysterious traveler. Most of the time we got overwhelmed and spread rumors or one of our many headquarter hypotheses, but the people of Bowlan didn’t care, they ate it up. Beep was a celebrity now. 

The eerily quiet downtown became the place to be. Book clubs were held on restaurant patios. They would justify the move by saying they needed to enjoy the summer outside, but they just wanted to catch a glimpse of Beep. My mom told me that’s all they talked about at the meetings anyway. Our inactive union, the United Miners Association, even started meeting again. My dad was the president a long time ago. My mom once showed me a picture of him with all his old buddies smiling proudly with a big badge on his chest. On the nights he was in a talking/slurring mood he would tell me about all the change they made. Now, it was more of a

drinking club, but at least they were doing it together instead of silently in front of the tv. I heard laughter and tabs cracking and cans crushing, instead of the occasional throat-clearing grunt and more tabs cracking. 

Around this time we started seeing a lot more of Ronny’s dad, Mayor Boggs. He wasn’t the real mayor, it was just an “honorary” title the dads of Bowlan had given him because of his perfect smile and man of the people front. He and Ronny would slowly cruise by in his mint Cadillac and stare down Beep and all the people around the town. My father never waved back, none of the miners did. Whenever his Cadillac turned the corner, I noticed more and more talks about the mines and hours and wages and always something about rights. 

At our next Shiner meeting, Ronny must have been feeling a little more devilish than usual because he decided that Beep needed to be tested. 

“I’ve got an idea,” he said with a smirk and reached for a brown paper bag that had been sitting behind him. After that, he explained his plan to give Beep a little scare. Ronny had tied together about 20 M-80 firecrackers by the wicks and wanted us to light them off at Beep's feet that night. I didn’t like it and said so, but Cash and Tommy’s eyes were glowing and my words made no impact. The plan was set. I had no choice but to go with them. 

That night, like always now, Bowlan was popping. It was Saturday and the fathers drank while the mothers pretended to discuss whatever book their most respected member, Mrs. Boggs, had chosen for them. Beep was down the street from the hubbub and his animals sat around him as he did his typical activity, nothing. Tonight, however, Mr. Boggs was also downtown. He and Sheriff Nolan were standing a little farther up the street surveying the night. I sat on a bench outside Moes Diner and waited anxiously for the plan to take shape. I knew Cash and Tommy were in some nearby alley debating over which one would execute Ronny’s orders.

Ronny was the first to show his face. I was expecting Cash or Tommy, this wasn’t really a Ronny type of job. He peered out from a nearby alley t and kept turning back towards the dark frantically, obviously in some argument. It happened very quickly, he sprinted out while holding the spark down by his side away from the onlooking spectators. I could barely register what was happening before the machine gun shots and flashes of white, blinding light. Sheriff Nolan jumped and reached for his hip while the fathers looked around confused. There were a few shouts from the mothers but soon enough all attention had turned to Beep. His animals were gone and he was curled up on the ground shaking. Sheriff Nolan and Mr. Boggs took off down the street towards Beep and everyone soon followed. There was already a large crowd around him when I got there. I quickly used my size to move through the little gaps that were there and made my way to the front lines. 

“Everyone get back. Let me handle this,” Sheriff Nolan’s voice rang out above the murmuring. 

Beep was face down and violently shaking and making that gurgling sound like the first day we spotted him. When Sheriff Nolan touched his shoulder, he reeled back but stayed facing the ground. He flipped him over and his eyes were squeezed tightly behind a face of pure agony. I didn’t think Beep could comprehend emotion, but this was true pain. Underneath him lay one of his squirrels. It wasn’t bloody or squished like the squirrels I’ve seen on my street but it must have taken a direct hit because its head was blown clean off. Its blackened and lifeless body prompted a slight groan from the crowd. Sheriff then yelled at everyone to back up and the crowd dispersed slowly and without a fight. I moved away but watched from a distance. 

The only two people remaining were Mr. Boggs and the Sheriff. They seemed to be in some sort of argument and then Mr. Boggs put his hand on the Sheriff’s shoulder and said

something slowly and deliberately. That was it and the Sheriff walked away. Beep was still rocking on the ground. Soon his squad car pulled up and he picked up Beep and threw him in the back. When the car passed me, Beep stared into my eyes and mouthed my name just once before disappearing around the corner. 

My parents slowly lost interest in Beep. My dad’s voice turned to glances and I begged him to bail Beep out but all I got was “Sorry, Roy its just not in the cards.” or some other similarly distanced throw-away bullshit response. One night, after my pleading finally got under his skin, he gave Mr. Boggs a call. I sat in the hall and eavesdropped, dying for some sort of good news. Through all of the “yes, sirs” and “I understand, sirs” I felt in my chest that there would be no good news. When my dad got off the phone, he told me Mr. Boggs had tried everything and there was nothing left to do. Apparently, Beep was unresponsive and had no documents or family in the area. He was a mystery. It wasn’t fair. My head pounded and my cheeks felt hot as I called a Shiner meeting for the first thing the next morning. 

I raced up the ladder and the treehouse got silent. The Shiners were already there. I demanded that we get Beep out somehow. Ronny disagreed. 

“That freak should’ve been locked up a long time ago. We can’t have more than one retard in Bowlan,” Ronny said while pointing down to Cash, his eyes never leaving mine. Tommy snickered and he and Cash looked down refusing to pick a side. Their silence was enough of a decision. I begged Ronny to tell the Sheriff it was him who lit off the firecrackers, him who caused the disturbance. He wouldn’t hear any of it. I couldn’t understand why Ronny was acting this way and left the treehouse with red eyes of frustration. I started hearing less and less of Beep and seeing less and less of the Shiners. I had no reason to go anywhere anymore either and spent the rest of the summer by myself. The

downtown slowly went back to normal. Mothers met behind closed doors and fathers drank the nights away on their couches. 

Beep was a distraction to Bowlan, more specifically he was a distraction to the order, Mr. Boggs’ order. Beep was an anomaly, but also a temporary one. In a timeless town like Bowlan, temporary is the same as meaningless. Even I started to forget Beep, his glimmering eyes faded a little more every time I entered the mines. 

Now I’m in my eighth year out of high school and have followed in my father’s footsteps. My days are long and the mornings come quickly. Ronny runs the mines with the same efficiency as Mr. Boggs and we work the same long, cold hours. 

Yesterday, on my way to work, I ran over a squirrel. The sun wasn’t up yet, and I was tired and a little hungover. I didn’t actually see the little guy run out in front of me. I did see his lifeless body in my mirror. Usually, I probably would have kept on driving but something pulled me out of that car and dragged me to his lifeless body. My tire split him open and his body heat and life steamed in the cool West Virginia morning. I’m not an emotional guy at all but something locked up in my throat right there and I didn’t care at all about making it to work or anything except that squirrel My mind rushed back to the memories I tried to leave in my childhood. I wanted to get in my car and leave and not look back, but my hand refused to turn the keys. I hit my head on the wheel and punched my leg. I didn’t know what else to do. I was so mad at myself for letting Beep’s Bowlan fade away, along with my innocence and happiness. People talked about growing up and things changing. They were right. My emotion turned to something else and my hand twisted the keys into the ignition. I sped to work with my mind set on asking the guys to go downtown that night and grab a drink.