The Corner of 5th and Center Aaron White Aaron White is a Citrus College alumni. He was the editor in chief of Litrus Magazine for the Fall 2006 semester. On the corner of 5th and Center a boy sat with a hat in front of him, plucking guitar strings that had been strung before he’d been born. He came from nowhere, but was determined to go somewhere. His eyes bore a defiance that boldly declared: I will be somebody someday—just you wait and see.

The most striking thing about him was his guitar, though. Looking at it one could see it was far too much guitar for his purposes. It was a dark mahogany and sometimes in the light it seemed to shimmer. He wouldn’t sell it, nor tell anyone where he got it. If pressed, he’d tell you a story that usually involved the devil or an unbelievably beautiful woman, and you would never be sure if he was serious.

If you asked him what primal urge it was that drew him and his borrowed guitar out to that street corner week after week he wouldn’t be able to tell you. It certainly wasn’t the money, the meager coins that rarely managed to fill his hat. He didn’t need to worry about money, he still had tuition money he could spend on rent and food.

He was young—too young to even understand the songs of loss and regret that he crooned in his slightly out-of-tune voice. He tried to hide his boyishness under the world-weary look of long unkempt hair and greasy tattered clothes, but no one was fooled. He was betrayed by that generic youthful fire in his eyes that had yet to be dimmed by time and disappointment.

It was there on the corner of 5th and Center that he first saw her. He was sitting there on his uncomfortable wooden stool, clumsily pouring his soul out from his fingertips onto guitar strings. She passed right by, surrounded by chattering girlfriends—she was by comparison either demure or serene—and he swore, or maybe hoped, that the electricity in her eyes was aimed at him. That night, laying alone in his trashy apartment, he dreamed only of her. From that night on all his dreams—waking and sleeping—were held captive by those electric eyes that had grazed over him. He couldn’t concentrate anymore at his job, so he quit. Love was like a cancer splitting his heart. If I had been there, I would have told that boy that those feelings were not new, they were what kept our ancestors warm before the discovery of fire. He wouldn’t have listened. To him it was all new and fresh, he probably thought he had discovered it.

He dedicated himself to his instrument. He wrote songs, all of them failing horribly to adequately express this profound, life-altering feeling he had discovered.

Soon he was back out on his corner and after a few days he saw that same beautiful female approach. Her beauty had not diminished in the short time since he had last seen her, and he was ready this time. He began to play. His fingers deftly plucked those guitar strings like elegant spider legs, crafting a delicate and ethereal web in the air and casting it towards her. An invisible string of sound floated glimmering through the air and pulled her inexplicably towards him. Brief, meaningless words were exchanged as they stood trapped in each others eyes.

That night, they went together, and the boy put down his guitar and played a new instrument, strange and beautiful.

Instead of cool wood and sharp string his hands strummed a warmer thing—skin and hair, flesh and blood. He was clumsy but guided by something that had awakened deep inside of him. They went together that night, on the corner of 5th and Center.

In a relatively short time, the guitar ended up neglected and gathering dust in their closet. They boy and the girl had more important things to worry about, mundane things like rent and food and utilities. Sure, paying bills wasn’t the stuff of dreamers, but the two still felt like they were dreaming all the time.

And that is about the point where I came in to the story. The boy and the girl now had a family.

I wish I could tell you it all was like a dream, but it wasn’t. It was good, though. Dad worked a lot, and I never saw him enough. Mom had to work a lot too, and sometimes I heard her crying. I never asked her why. I played and explored like any good kid, and one day I found a strange shaped case in the closet. It was covered in dust and cobwebs, and it smelled ancient. To my child’s eyes, that guitar case was like a treasure chest. It took all of my young strength to pull it out of the closet. I kept sneezing because of the dust, but I knew that I had to be quick, because Mom would have yelled at me if she had seen the mess I was making.

I opened the case, and the guitar was lying there. It was beautiful. My hands reached forward, reverently and cautiously, and brushed the strings.

The noise it made was wonderful. I put the guitar back, and never took it out again. A while later I asked my dad about it, and he just smiled softly and said it was an old toy of his. Mom frowned and asked nobody why they never got around to selling it, they could get good money for it. Better it go to some good use than taking up precious space in a closet.

To tell the truth, Dad never told me if he even played the guitar. Now I’m grown up and have found a girl of my own. On the warm summer mornings we like to go and sit in the grass, our backs leaning against our favorite tree. We like to pretend that these are the last trees left in the world, and we are their guardians.

Sometimes I tell her stories, like this one.

I put my hand on her belly and feel the vibrant life there, and I sit and dream of all the stories to come.