That Perfect Rock

We loved to throw rocks. Anything was a target when we were seven. Stop signs, trees, rocks. It was all there for us.

We were experts in the business of finding throwing rock. Those rocks with that set of ridges and dimples that felt against the tender skin of your palm. That cold, bumpy friction that made you wonder if for all those millions of years, the rock had been forming just for you. Just for that one throw. Just for that one rush of absolute righteousness when your rock plunked against that target.

We had a park in our neighborhood. The open field, basketball courts, and playground alongside the street hid what the park was really about. It was the skin that masked its essence. It made the forest behind our secret, our sanctuary. Among oak trees and blackberry bushes, squirrels and blue jays, small creeks and dirt paths (each trampled upon just as much as the other), we were alone and wild with something as old as the rocks we’d find.

There had been many good rocks, but there was one day when my find was perfect. True, it looked just like any other rock, but when I found it in the creek when I bent down to grab a penny, my fingers slid around something unique. Unlike my pens, video-game controllers, bike handles, the rock felt different. It felt right. The size of a few acorns and lighter than a baseball, I knew as I was walking through the creek that this gray missile of mine could hit anything.

So, when that duck emerged from behind those blackberry bushes, I saw it as any stop sign, tree, or rock. But it moved. It was a target, but different, something new and strange that held variables that the immobile did not. And so when I raised my arm (I could have been throwing a spear), and snapped my torso and my arm crossed across my body, across my lungs, my heart, the duck’s squawk surprised me. I saw the rock bounce off of its right wing. Its feathers shuttered, pulsed, jolted and all excitement was gone.

It ran away, leaving me alone in the creek with the water trying to push me downstream. I was motionless. I could still hear the squawk. It ringed in my head like a hymn. I could still see the feathers contracting in pain. Never had another target ran away after I’d hit it. Never had the plunk of the rock been followed by a squawk. Never had I felt like my target had thrown its own rock at me and hit me straight in the chest, right where if I had had my own wings, they would have been folded.

My hand hung down by my side, rockless and open, wishing that it had never felt such a perfect rock.