By the time I finished reading, the two iron replicated arms of my timepiece were creeping towards the Roman numeral twelve on the clock face. The symbols nestled in my mind next to the spread out confusion that recently invaded my unoccupied territory. The fragmented montage of words squatted in position, ready for the attack. I could not, at that time, understand the full force of the cannons or conceive the bullets sting, but somehow I knew that once the troops broke the barrier there would be no thwarting them. The words in that letter, like the article in the paper, had crossed some kind of cranial threshold. Before I could deduce their meaning, I was bracing for the impact.

    I had no idea who Mr. Ethan Crowe was. Alex had never mentioned anyone by that first or last name. He had never talked about a CL Laboratories. I would've remembered such an odd name. Alex wasn't in medicine; he was no scientist. He was a salesman for pity's sake, and not a very good one at that. He had various affiliations with some of the hardest "sells" in the industry, peddling everything from replacement windows to vacuum cleaners and had little patience with indecisive or discriminating customers. A control freak of sorts, he frightened most of his potential clientele away with his aggressive approach. The few buyers he had were obligated to him in one form or another, his wife included. I was one of the unlucky few who witnessed the full brunt of his fury when things didn't turn out the way he expected.

    He had always been stern with the children. There was no margin for error. I tolerated this because of my own practice of leniency with the little learners. They were, after all, only kids in training. I assumed the scales would balance out with a pound of my gentle technique to counter the pressing weight of his heavy fist. It would have lasted this way for years, had he not crossed the border of our daughter's innocence, so to speak. The boundary line being drawn across the waistband of her size eight jeans.

    As if that was not trauma enough for the both of us. Now it seemed that something equally gruesome threatened any sense of the normality which I had worked so hard to promote from within the walls of our humble abode. It had been a mere six months, but my feet were beginning to sense a firm ground beneath them. An egg's crate full of hands were clutching in unison our flag, prepared to mount it on Iwo jima's hilltop. The battle was over, so who was this enemy pulling on the grip of our victory pole? I had rescued the prisoners of war; how could I feel up to my knees in sand?

    I retrieved the letter and headed to the phone on my bedside table. The school bus would be unloading it's cargo soon and I didn't want the kids to distract me from my mission. I was going to solve this enigma before they came tumbling in the side door. Fighting against the constraints of time, I dialed the number displayed on the letterhead and pressed my ear into the handset, crushing the shell-like auricle in my shoulders vice. The receiver pitched four tympanic rings into my audio tube. The sound wafted past the canal and encircled the bony labyrinth within where long hairs of a spiral organ where tickled; vibrating like the reeds of a harmonica. When the ringing ceased, the high-frequency tympani was replaced with the low impulse waves of a calm, male voice.

            "Good Morning. CL Laboratories, this is Kirt Seaver."
 
   I sat in silence enjoying the smoothness of his throat tones; attributing the deep notes to handsome square glasses of top shelf Scotch on-the-rocks being poured past the smooth chords of his voice box. The brassy hued fluid acting as a high-note anesthetic on the fibrous bundles while weakening the miniature tarps of the banded sound producers. 

           "How may I route your call, please?" He billowed at the pause. When he spoke this time I detected the remnants of an Irish accent. It was hidden in the "R" and "L" sounds which he briefly rolled. I could tell that his tongue was working hard to avoid extended contact with the roof of his mouth. With exasperation, Kirt Seaver released his tight hold of American dialect allowing his mouth muscle full connection with his hard palate; beseeching the empty earpiece, "Hellllllo, is anyone therrrrrre?"