Barret Summers walked through the crowded Independence Hall with his hands in his pockets and head down. The noon heat made the three-piece suit more regrettable as he stepped around a family all wearing their America 250 shirts, hats, and flag patterned fanny packs. Barret found a chair in a small hallway and studied his brightly tabbed Pocket Constitution.
Outside the Centennial bell tolled with a vibration that rang through Barret’s chest. The wall next to him clicked. A panel hissed with stale cold air and dust leaked into the hallway with a faint hint of old parchment. Flames flickered to life in wall sconces, casting dancing shadows across the wood-paneled room. In the center, a large brass box reflected not the room, but a series of men moving around it. Barret stepped into the room and the hushed echoes of men debating filled his mind until they became one old man’s voice. “All that has passed in these halls is recorded here.”
Barret lifted the lid to reveal a rotating brass tube with protruding silver pins. The first pin hit a tab of the interior brass comb. A pair of voices filled the room.
“Well, Doctor,” a woman said, “what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic,” a man said. “If you can keep it.” *
Barret stared at the rotating tube as the next pin struck the comb and another set of voices filled the room. All voices captured with famous lines that Barret had studied or heard rumored during his climb to senatorship. He thought of the red tab in his Pocket Constitution, four scribbled letters. R or M?
The voices shifted. They’d lost their classic English accents and fell into the mixture of voices now recognized as dialects in American English. Farmers, soldiers, and everyday people spoke to state and country. The echoes of past and present merged like wind through an open door. Barret tried to step away from the brass box, yet he couldn’t pull his hands from the cool metal. Finally a voice he recognized from the more recent past rose above the others.
“Our history is not a story of perfection. It’s a story of imperfect people working toward great ideals. This flawed nation is also a really good nation, and the principles we hold are the hope of all mankind.” **
The fight he’d had with another senator just before canceling his fourth of July plans resurfaced. They’d been debating about whether modern America was a republic anymore, or the monarchy it had sought to leave behind. A heat flushed through Barret’s body before it sagged where it stood.
Barret closed the lid to the music box and let his hand rest on the inscription. May America stand and grow as it always will for the next 250, 500, and 1000 years. The dust that had filled the air collected in a thickening layer on the brass box. There would be no taking this device out. Barret pulled out his Pocket Constitution and removed the single red marker in the array of yellow and green sticky tabs. He set the tab onto the brass box and stood in the cold and heavy silence.
The Centennial Bell tolled. The flames in the room faded to dull embers on the wicks. Barret turned to take in the shadows of the room, but was blinded by the sunlight from a nearby window. He hesitated before stepping out of the mysterious room. There was so much here, but it was nothing but the past. Barret stepped into the quiet hallway to find it still empty. When he turned back, the wall was whole again. Barret pulled out his phone and sent a text to his wife.
Let’s go to the lake. Work finished early.
References:
**www.americanheritage.org