The Stone

I vaulted over the porch stairs, echoes of shouting chasing me through the crooked screen door behind me. The faded green paint flaked off as it slammed against the frame. Not stopping to listen for an instruction that might countermand my father’s angry “Just get out!” I sprinted across the backyard and into the forest that sat at the back of our property. 

Golden sunlight filtered through the green canopy above, casting pools of June heat on the soft grass below. Once I stopped running, the woods were filled only with the blessed quiet of birdsong, insects buzzing, and the occasional snap of a broken twig under my tattered sneakers. I wandered aimlessly; I was in no rush. My parents wouldn’t stop until dinnertime was long past, and my absence wouldn’t be noted until even later. I did not think about it. I did a lot of not thinking about it. 

Eventually I ended up where I always did: The Stone. The Stone was something I found last summer when I was pretending to be a space pirate. (I don’t play pretend anymore, not after Logan told the whole fourth grade that I asked him to play “weird dress up.”) But I still liked coming to The Stone. It was a huge pillar of grey rock almost ten feet tall that looked kinda like a sundial in a small clearing. There was moss on the top and a few ferns that grew at the base. Its shadow told me the time. The big maple tree was dinnertime, the scraggly looking pine was noon, and the old log meant I was going to get yelled at for staying out late. I tried to climb all the way to the top once, but the moss was slippery. 

I sat down in the shadow for a few minutes and did some more not thinking about anything. I felt a little cold, so I moved into the sun and impulsively hugged The Stone.  

It was warm, the sun had heated the rough stone that scratched my cheek and palms, but the warmth was soaking into me through my Ninja Turtles t-shirt. It felt like The Stone was hugging me back. The warmth enveloped me. Surrounded only by nature, utterly alone, I squeezed it. I sniffed, holding back tears because boys don’t cry, but I couldn’t stop them all and that only made more slide down my cheek before staining The Stone darker gray.  

When I went home that evening, the shadow was barely visible in the purple light, pointing well past the old log. I snuck back into the house as a cacophony of crickets buzzed, covering my entrance. I was very hungry but didn’t wake my parents as I crawled into bed. 

The Stone awoke, except that wasn’t right because it wasn’t asleep before; it simply was not there. Well, it was there but not… aware? Why was it aware? It could remember existing in the clearing before now, settling into its tilted posture as the last of the great ice melted, trees growing and falling and growing and falling and hot and cold and hot and cold and wet and dry and wind and– 

Why, what changed? Why was it aware now? It isn’t typical for a stone to be aware (as far as it knew), but despite eons of evidence to the contrary, it was now. The stone felt (how odd, for rock to feel!) the familiar moss slowly digging into its upper slope, ever searching for water with its roots. Water! The Stone felt water; two small damp lines down near the dirt that covered the majority of its bulk. The Stone remembered the boy. He had been here earlier; he had been here several times in fact, but this time was different somehow. The Stone pondered this for a long time. 

I spent a lot of time at The Stone that summer. I think Mom and Dad were secretly relieved that I wasn’t around much to watch them fight. By the time school started back up I was going almost every day. I never cried again, but I would talk to it about anything  that came to my mind, from superheroes to food, from my friends to my parents. I told The Stone everything. It was nice to have something that listened to you, even if it was just pretend. 

As it turned out, The Stone became a common setting for important (and not-so-important) parts of my life. It was where I had my first solo camping trip at twelve, when I killed my first and only animal (gray squirrel, with a wrist rocket slingshot). I buried her and the slingshot under The Stone. I went there to be alone after Susie Gretch pantsed me in middle school gym class. There, I tried drinking for the first time and vomited warm beer all over its rough surface. School acquaintances became my best friends at The Stone during another camping trip. It was where I ran to nurse a black eye my father gave me at sixteen. I lost my virginity there with Susie Gretch. My senior year, I stayed there at the base of The Stone, curled up under an Army surplus canvas for three days when my parents told me they were divorcing. Throughout all that, I continued to talk to The Stone (I always meant to give it a cooler name, but nothing ever stuck). I never told anyone else that I did this, not even my eventual wife. It became a diary of sorts; secrets and feelings could be given to it and locked away forever. 

After high school, I left for four years in the Army, then another four at college as far away as possible. I got a job, married the love of my life and almost forgot entirely about The Stone for another five years until a midnight phone call dragged me back to the town I swore I would never see again. 

For years, The Stone waited. Snow would come and melt away, flowers would bloom and wither, but the boy was absent. The Stone’s awareness was fading, shifting and fleeting without him, and for the first time it wondered about the outside world and where the boy could be in it. 

After Mom passed, the house and property were left to me. I didn’t know what to do with it, to be honest. After entirely too much waffling and moping, I decided to fix up the house so I could sell it. But then the economy tanked, and we both lost our jobs, so we moved in. My wife got a decent job in town, and my job became fixing the house full-time. After four years, the house was in very good shape. I’d torn out and replaced almost everything except the walls, and we decided to stay. 

The Stone wishes it could stretch its non-existent limbs as it awakens again. It had been not asleep for a long time but now the boy has returned to it. He’s different, aged, wider, slower now. He doesn’t say anything this time though. This time he’s dressed in black clothing, just as soaked by the rainstorm as The Stone itself. He clutches a trifold of glossy paper. The Stone feels his small body press against it as it shakes gently and rhythmically. The boy stays for a very short time to The Stone, but it’s dark when other people come swinging bright lights and shouting to lead the boy away again. 

He visits regularly again and The Stone feels… contentment… if it is possible for a rock to be content. Much faster than a tree, The Stone watches the boy as he ages. He brings others sometimes, smaller than him, that like to climb The Stone or run in circles around it while making very loud noises, and another that likes to sit close to him in the quiet, but most times he comes alone. He moves slower now. Even The Stone can tell. He comes less often, but still regularly, and every time The Stone listens with the patience of one who has endured eons. 

The walk has gotten harder. I remember flying over the stones when I was a boy, but now I lumber by with my cane, pausing to rest on almost each one. Even so, the path is so familiar I could travel it blindfolded, except for my knee’s tendency to give out without warning. I sit and listen to the birds while I catch my breath. The woods have changed so much since I was young, in all the small ways that you never notice until it’s already happened. The Stone’s shadow points to scraggly pine, though now it towers forty feet above me, broad branches reaching into the clearing. I sit on the green grass against The Stone, joints popping and clicking as an omen of a very difficult attempt to stand in my future.  

Exhausted, I lean into The Stone, letting it warm my back as I tell it the latest gossip. My grandkids are doing well in school, the neighbor keeps letting his dog run into my yard, Susie Gretch’s funeral was last week (I didn’t go). The sun moves slowly to the horizon and drags the shadow towards the old log half rotten away by now. I turn to The Stone, pressing my bearded cheek against it, and say, “Thank you for listening, old friend.” Clutching my jacket a little tighter against the settling cold, I close my eyes to rest for a moment. 

It is time. The Stone knows this but not how it knows it. It will remain of course; rock does not simply vanish after all, but it knows awareness will fade with the boy. Sadness is a new feeling for The Stone, but it is not only sad. There is also joy as it considers this small segment of its existence. The boy grew like the trees do, spread seeds, bent with the wind, lost branches, and was now aging beyond the limits of his body.  

The boy let out one shuddering breath then fell totally still against its base. The Stone felt it. The sadness welled up within The Stone from its buried, heavy base to the moss-covered point. The sadness could not get out, because how can a stone cry or scream or rage against fate? Then something odd happened. Something was sinking into it. A force–a presence was pushing into The Stone. A familiar weight, the same one that had hugged it, climbed it, urinated on it, talked to it, and slept against it. The boy joined The Stone. It enveloped him with the warmth of a hug long overdue and said Hello.