Thomas walked in a lackadaisical manner down the Main Street of the sleepy Kansas town. He wasn’t supposed to be here, you know? He was supposed to be in his first year at M.I.T. He had worked his whole life, as long as he could remember, to go to M.I.T. His dad had gone there, so had his mom, and even his uncle. Thomas was supposed to be there now. He had applied, been accepted, and was about ready to pack his bag when the worst had happened.
Since this past June everything had changed for Thomas. Instead of being at M.I.T. he was now in a town of only about 10,000 people, give or take a few hundred people depending on whether or not the college was in session. He was now a Freshman at Sayers College in Windsor, KS. It was not even a tech school, it was a liberal arts college, one that no one had ever heard of. God knows Thomas had never heard of it before two months ago. God knows… God. God! That’s another thing that was bugging Thomas.
He had enrolled in whichever classes his academic advisor had told him to take for his first semester. It’s not like there were a lot of choices anyway, this college only had one major. One. Liberal Arts. What did that even mean? He remembered attending a college graduation for one of his cousins when he was about twelve years old. It was at a large university in Oklahoma. He remembered listening to the names being called to receive their diplomas and the man at the microphone stated the majors they were graduating with. About one-fifth of them had majored in “liberal arts.” When he had asked his mom, “What does that mean?” she had replied, “That's what they call it when people go to college for four years and aimlessly take classes.” Well, “liberal arts” was all that this college had to offer as a major. Surely it meant something more than what his mom had said.
Well, maybe he would figure it out as he went along. It certainly wasn’t aimless. In fact, the first two years at Sayers had no electives at all, all the courses he took were required. You couldn’t be aimless if you wanted to, you were aimed. But at what? He decided to take 15 hours this semester and so he was enrolled by his advisor into a Literature class, a History class, a Biology class, a Latin class (so weird…Latin?), and a Philosophy class. Latin was strange. Why read a dead language that was spoken by a people who are no more? How could that help humanity advance forward? But while he thought that was strange, and perhaps a bit worthless, it was at least not infuriating. His philosophy class, on the other hand, was a different story.
He was supposed to be learning about computer programming and robotics right now but now he was listening to some bald headed, goatee toting, middle-aged professor, who had more than once already said there were “good reasons to believe in God.” God. God! Please. Thomas had been raised by parents who never filled his head with fairy tales like that. Thomas’ parents were always real with him. “God,” his Dad had said, “was just the grown up version of Santa Claus. A story people tell themselves to make them feel better about the harsh fact of reality that we all die eventually.” That was something Thomas knew for sure. He knew it brutally well now. His mom and dad had died this summer in a car crash. One moment they were there, the next they were gone. Forever gone. They were no more. Where was God then?
When it had happened his uncle Brian came to be with him. After the funeral he had taken Thomas home to Windsor, KS to be with him. Thomas had gotten into M.I.T. and his parents were going to pay for it, he had not gotten any scholarships because his dad had said there was no need, they had lots of money. Well, all that money would be Thomas’ now but because of the stipulations of his parents will he couldn’t touch it until he was 21. It was too late to try to get a scholarship to M.I.T. The town he was now living in had a college and Thomas didn’t want to wait until 21 to get started on his education. Maybe he could go to M.I.T. next year on a scholarship, but at least he could do something now. His uncle Brian had friends at the college and they pulled some strings and got him in on a 50% scholarship. Brian and his wife, whom he married about two years ago, offered to pay for the rest of his tuition for at least the first year.
Uncle Brian was about nine years younger than his dad had been and that meant that he was only about 11 years older than Thomas was himself. Brian had gone to M.I.T. and had received a degree in mechanical engineering. Brian started a consulting business and worked contractually with various companies on engineering projects all over the world. He traveled a lot for his job but he didn’t have to live anywhere in particular to do it. So why here in Windsor?
Windsor was where Samantha was from originally and after she graduated (from the University of Michigan a year later than Brian graduated M.I.T.) she moved back. Shortly after college he had met Samantha and everything began to change for him. He loved her immediately and pursued her intensely but, while she liked Brian she had always intentionally kept him in what Brian had called “the friend zone.” Thomas wasn’t sure how he had finally worn her down but he definitely noticed the effect that she had had on him over the years. Brian still loved tech and was enthusiastic about his work, but he started getting interested in other things too. Brian now loved poetry and always quoted some guy named Milton. He now read lots of really old books and had even taken a Latin class at the college just because he wanted to. The most pointed change in Brian though, and what had irritated his dad to no end, was the fact that Brian had “gone religious.” That is what his dad had called it.
God. Yes, uncle Brian had talked some to Thomas about him too. Thomas tried to be nice about it but he had to tell his uncle that he didn’t believe in God, not one bit. He was a man of science and reason and there were no good reasons to believe in the existence of God (despite what his philosophy professor asserted). Thomas wasn’t going to let the death of his parents be used as some sort of emotional manipulation point to make him go all soft in the head (like uncle Brian’s wife had apparently done to him). She was nice though, he had to admit it. She didn’t ask to have an 18 year old in her home, especially not at the same time they were expecting their first baby in just a few months. But she never seemed upset about Thomas being there, not once.
All of these thoughts, and quite a bit of bottled up pain, were bouncing off the inside of Thomas’ skull and chest cavity, as he meandered down main street after his last class of the day. It was a pretty, although fairly old, downtown area. It had all the rustic charm a rural community could offer. The stores on Main Street were mostly little “ma and pa” type businesses. There was a floral shop, there was a family owned Mexican restaurant, the town City Hall and police department, a thrift shop with used clothes, electronics, etc., and what was probably the world's last video rental store. People in this town loved that video rental store, the college students did too, and you could also get ice cream there. Thomas thought that maybe he would get some ice cream today.
As he was making his way south down the sidewalk, next to the red-bricked road, he was passing by an antique store on his left. He had just been trying to decide whether to get plain vanilla or if he should branch out a bit to chocolate and peanut butter when he heard something. What he heard is very hard to describe. It was like music… or singing… he couldn’t decide if it was more like a voice or more like an instrument. If it was a voice, well, it was not like a voice he had ever heard but, then, he would have to say the same if it was an instrument. Despite his utter confusion of the exact nature of what he was hearing one thing was not in question. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.
Now Thomas was not what one might call a man refined of taste. He could not tell you the difference between Bach or Mozart nor the difference between a concerto or a sonata. But it didn’t matter. Anyone who had heard what Thomas heard, refined in taste or not, would have been equally arrested by the sound. It struck him as though he were dead where he stood, he could barely breathe, all he knew in that moment was that he would give anything for the music to never stop.
After a few moments, perhaps years, Thomas found it in himself to move again. Not away, of course, only a fool would move away, but toward. He found himself opening the door to this quaint little antique store. The music was faint and distant but no less debilitatingly beautiful on that account. It was coming somewhere from the back of the shop. Thomas slowly began to step lightly through the store. He was careful not to make noise or to bump into anything in this mine-field they called a store. He feared that if he did make a noise it might somehow make the music cease and he couldn’t bear the thought of that.
As he slowly picked his way toward the back of the shop he began to take in the kind of things that were in this store. What he saw surprised him very much. He had been in several antique stores before and they usually had old wooden rocking chairs, glass mason jars, some old paintings, cabinets, old toys and dolls, brass bed frames, and more of the like. This store was different. It had a full suit of armor, for one. That was kind of cool, no denying it. There were plenty of old books (this town and its love affair with old books!). He also saw a collection of old guns and they were marked according to different wars (Civil War, World War I, World War II, Viet Nam, etc.). There was a vast collection of coins, some of them were as old as the first century A.D. and were cast with the profile of Roman Emperors. He vaguely felt a new draw towards that part of history, there was something about seeing a real artifact of that time. It was a fascinating shop but none of it accounted for the music.
As he continued toward the back the music was gaining volume. It was, in fact, coming from a back room of the shop. The room had a sign that said, “Employees Only.” ‘Employees?’ Thomas thought, ‘what employees?’ There seemed to be no one but himself in the shop. Indeed, as the music’s volume increased as he drew nearer, Thomas felt almost as if there might be no one else in the whole world but him. The intensity of the beauty of the song, yes not just music but a song, was so undiluted it must be that only one person, he himself, was personally drinking in every last vibration and strain it was projecting. It had to be a song just for him, penetrating joint and marrow, and resonating deep inside his…well, soul. Not that he had one, no one did, but what other idea could capture what he felt? Before he knew it he had opened the door of the back room and was inside it.
There was a little desk, with a little purple lamp upon it. A book lay open on the desk, Thomas didn’t recognize the text. It was not English, it wasn’t even Latin, the characters were odd but there was a section underlined and it looked like this: πᾶν ὃ δίδωσίν μοι ὁ πατὴρ πρὸς ἐμὲ ἥξει, καὶ τὸν ἐρχόμενον πρός με οὐ μὴ ἐκβάλω ἔξω.
The music was piercing now. Not shrill, mind you, but piercing in the way that only beauty can pierce. Thomas felt like the very fibers of his being were in danger of fraying and that he might be unbodied at any moment. It was like having a fatal attraction to watch a nuclear blast at the point of impact and yet there was no fear, there was only desire. It was coming from the drawer of the desk and he opened it.
No sooner had he opened, no sooner had he seen where the music came from, then it stopped. There could be no mistake about it, this object in the drawer was the source of the music. There could also be no mistake about it, there was no way to make sense of such an item producing any kind of sound at all. It was not the kind of thing from which music, indeed sound of any kind, was supposed to come. It was, as far as Thomas could tell, a letter opener.
It was, without a doubt, a beautifully crafted and unique letter opener, but it was a letter opener. It was made of wood, handle and blade alike. But it was polished and quite sharp in appearance. The handle had rivets in it and appeared almost to have been turned on a lathe but the blade was fairly flat though it bulged in the middle while thinning away from the center on both sides until reaching the vanishing point of each edge. It was a deep stained oak kind of color but the handle had two metal rings wrapped around it, one yellow and the other green. He noticed that each ring had a kind of triangular arrow notched in it and that the one on the green ring, which was closest to the bottom of the handle, was pointed down toward the base of the handle and the yellow ring’s arrow pointed toward the blade. Below the green ring were what Thomas would have called runes, they looked kind of like things he had seen in his copy of The Lord of the Rings (pretty much the only fiction book that Thomas read), whereas the markings above the yellow ring, closer to the blade, were apparently more like the markings in the book that was lying open on the desk.
Thomas was so entranced while studying the letter opener that he didn’t realize someone was standing behind him in the doorway until the man spoke. “What do you think you are doing back here?” Said the man. “I…uh…I…well…” was Thomas’ initial reply. What could he say? The honest answer now seemed like pure madness. What shall he say to this man? ‘Your letter opener was singing to me sir.’ That would surely go over well.
“I’m sorry.” He finally managed to say. “I shouldn’t have come back here, I…um, was looking for the bathroom.” He lied.
“Well, there is no public bathroom in the store and that doesn’t explain why you are holding that!” the man justly retorted.
“No. Well, no, it doesn’t.” Stammered Thomas. He finally looked at the man directly, he had had a hard time tearing his eyes away from the letter opener. The man was very old, easily 90 or so. He didn’t look unkind, really, but he did have a look that strongly suggested he thought Thomas had erred and had also failed to tell the truth. Thomas decided to take a different tack. “I realize that I am out of line being back here. I am sorry. But, I wonder, would you mind telling me what this is?”
The man looked at the letter opener. He opened his mouth and then shut it again. He hesitated and looked as if he was about to give an answer of some sort when another voice rang out from behind him, “That, young man, is my salvation.” The voice was old and feminine and…British, thought Thomas.
“I’m sorry, your what?” He hesitated and then added, “Your what, ma’am?”
“My salvation.” she replied yet once more. “Why are you here?” She queried? She had a look on her face that Thomas struggled to make sense of. It was not surprise, nor fear, it was more like… reverence? “Why are you here? Why are you holding that?” She furthered.
‘To heck with it. Why not just say it. I’ll sound crazy but so be it.’ He thought. “It sang to me.”
The man cocked his head and looked at Thomas, about like Thomas would have expected, “It what?” He said.
But the woman’s reaction was altogether different. She simply said, “Take it. It’s yours.”
Thanks. I'm hooked!