stir like a pool of water feeling the ripple of a fallen stone.
Next to the car is a building made of cherry red tiles flanking two different sets of doors. Proudly displayed on the building’s face are the words:
Sines 5 & 10
If one were to enter the building, one might mistake the entrance across the threshold as looking back in time at an old walk-in photograph. A soda fountain adorns a serving counter on one side of the shop, offering menus for breakfast and lunch. Only one or two individuals run the station, but the legacy of a hundred years of business in the town serves the food. History and delight season each dish.
Behind the soda fountain are lines of aisles selling toys and other various items. Plastic army men lie encased in their packaging, preparing to ship off to war. Model airplanes line the aisles, pre-assembled or in pieces. Toys of all shapes and sizes sell for a low price, which the 1950’s register at the counter near the front processes easily. Children walk around in wonder—a feeling not produced by a screen, but by the spectacle of toys which fit into their hands. The amazing things one can build are the foundations of joy in life.
It’s believed portions of life exist outside of time. As Harlan and Cynthia pass the shop, with the register area lined with different types of candy for sale, the spun milkshakes boasting unparalleled taste, and a smiling, bearded man dipping a shiny silver spoon into a vivacious vanilla sundae, their glance could be eternal. The love in the town adapts and evolves, because love never means to die. Such is the abundance of Quakertown.
The traffic moves again. Harlan and Cynthia break their gaze. Cynthia goes back to reading, and Harlan drives on. Time moves once more, tailgating them down the quaint street.
2
Driving further away from Quakertown, commercialism recedes as a wave from the shoreline. Shops disappear, and turn into homes. Each stone set in the earth designs itself as a childhood memory. More agriculture unfurls, with dollars nothing more than sheets of paper in the pocket of a coat. Residents prefer walking the paths. Stability is in the air as much as oxygen. The signals firing in worlds such as politics are dismissible with the click of a power button. The residents are not shortsighted; on the contrary, the most intellectual people on the face of the planet might inhabit the small borough of Coopersburg.
To a child looking from the intersection of Spinnerstown Pike and Golden Harrow road, the world ends at the intersection of Spinnerstown and Cornerstone Road. Home is the scope of their existence; they have no concept of stores, or of malevolent people. Where do convicted felons like to shop? Such questions aren’t fit for the mind of a child. Perhaps when they grow older, the horrors of the world will arrive from the road, towards the maturing mind of a young man, via the Cornerstone curve. Most likely, the child will grow up, and realize how true horrors are homemade.
Alex McGregor has known one world. He’s lived in the same house for all of his 13 years; he’s never flown. School has been the farthest he’s gone into the rest of the world, besides the Internet. If Alex had been born in 1976 instead of 1996, his atrocious handwriting would have rendered the book of his life illegible. He has some extra weight to him, and appears bright. He’s a hazel haired, light blue-eyed spec on the face of the earth. His soul is far beyond his years. A tint mars his gaze, a blemish his smile does not show, and his heart refuses to nurture.
Alex sits in his living room, watching the characters bounce across the screen of his television. His father, Michael, has a great-paying job in sales. His mother, Lauren, has devoted her life to raising him. His parents often speak of their luck, but those are simply words to Alex. Alex and his generation know the sensation of owning, but lack the knowledge of earning.
When he was 11 months old, Alex had been playing on a chair in the living room. Lauren had been in the kitchen, talking on the phone to her brother, who she loved enough to see only on holidays. Alex had padded across the carpeted floor with innocent speed. The entire house had seemed expansive, with its modest red tiling gracing the outside and wooden walls covered with a white, pink-splashed paint inside. He had been racing towards a chair he wanted to climb, and with as much might as he could muster, his tiny hands had gripped the seat, and he’d stood.
Laruen checked on her son whilst she talked on the phone. Her green eyes captured the color and the vibrancy of the trees outside her home on her morning walk. She had a glow about her at that time, a resonating soul. The spiritual call it an aura. Lauren’s hair, shoulder length and curly brown, had seemed to thrive on energy in its fibers; the phone pressed to her ear, her slender frame standing underneath the outline of the kitchen doorway, she watched Alex. Her heart caught every noise, and absorbed every glance.
Even in happiness, people make mistakes. Heaven may be real, but the closest Lauren McGregor has ever felt to perfection were those minutes on that day. In her conversing with her brother, her eyes had indeed strayed from Alex, a night watchman dozing.
Jim, her brother, had sent the family a gift; it sat only a few feet away from the chair Alex climbed. It had been a set of subtle wooden blocks, meant for teaching children with their hands.
Upon his triumph of climbing the chair, Alex let his grip on the wooden seat release. As Alex fell from his standing position, he arched backwards. Alex hit the floor, whiplashing his still-developing head. The corner of a block found the child behind the right ear, its point sharply piercing the soft skin.
Lauren heard her son cry out, and had walked across the wooden floor of the kitchen. She passed the table, only slightly worried at Alex’s outburst disrupting her conversation. Children cry all of the time, for they do not know the value of their tears.
Reaching the living room, Lauren’s motherly inspecting of her little bundle of joy commenced:
No blood? Check.
No vomit? Check.
Tears? Yes.
Chair in close proximity? Check.
Child sitting on the floor? Yes.
Conclusion: Alex had tried climbing the chair, fallen backwards, and hit the floor unexpectedly.
Lauren comforted Alex, and his crying soon subsided. She went back to talking to Jim. Alex did not try to climb that chair again. The formerly constant babbling stopped. He still trundled around, but with a different gait. The tint in his gaze was born on that day. He doesn’t remember it. Lauren and Michael have never forgotten it. The road of life can turn from a Route 309 existence into a Cornerstone Road existence in seconds. For the McGregors, Alex’s fall would be an angular shift as unforgiving as a sinkhole in the middle of the German Autobahn’s passing lane.
A couple hours later, Lauren noticed that Alex had become extremely quiet. She walked back in the living room, past the open area of the house, which holds Michael’s home office, and evaluated her son once more. She saw something in her child’s eyes that day, in the paleness of his skin. It was a feeling she’d felt in her own past, dancing around the edges of her existence. Then, in front of her eyes, Alex vomited.
Lauren called Michael at work. She told him of the vomiting, of the feeling gnawing at her stomach. When Death is close, he does not recognize hunches or whispers. Death has no master among people, for he can only be controlled by Father Time. Life cannot exist without an end. Michael told Lauren, from his desk, swamped with papers, that Alex probably had a slight cold. Lauren asked if she should take him to a hospital. Michael relented, deciding to trust his wife instead of fight.
The first hospital’s CAT scan machine was broken. An ambulance took Lauren and Alex to Philadelphia. Alex grew paler.
