“So … are those special rocks?” James asked after we had been talking a while.
Trudy laughed. I smiled and looked down at my hands that were holding five rocks roughly half the size of a baseball each.
It’s a funny thing about the soccer fields, I explained. The rocks just come up out of the ground. It’s been that way ever since I’ve been here. One season the fields will be smooth with no sign of anything, and then comes summer, and the dirt dries up, and fissures open as the sun bakes down from the sky, and the rocks start appearing on the ground as if they’ve been boiling up from a simmering soup.
We stood there talking a while, James, Trudy and I, and then the dog got antsy. So we said good night to James, and began walking up the street.
“You want one of the rocks?” I asked, holding out my hand as I turned back to James.
“No thanks,” he chuckled.
I was relieved. They were special rocks, after all.