Between Wrecks by George Singleton Read Free Book Online Page B

equines of Hollywood. “Do not throw rocks in the river. Keep them in a pile. They shall be bought in time by those concerned with decorative landscaping, for walls and paths and flower beds.”
    That’s what my grandfather came back from the field to tell everybody. Maybe they grew enough corn for moonshine, I don’t know. My own father told me this story when I complained mightily from the age of seven on for having to work for Carolina Rocks, whether lugging, sorting, piling, or using the backhoe later. The mule’s name wasn’t Sisyphus, I doubt, but that’s what I came to call it when I thought it necessary to explain the situation to my common law wife, Abby. I said, “If it weren’t for Sisyphus, you and I would still be trying to find a crop that likes plenty of rain but no real soil to take root. We’d be experimenting every year with tobacco, rice, coffee, and cranberry farming.”
    Abby stared at me a good minute. She said, “What? I wasn’t listening. Did you say we can’t have children?”
    I said, “A good mule told my grandfather to quit trying to farm, and to sell off both river rocks and field stone. That’s how come we do what we do. Or at least what my grandfather and dad did what they did.” This little speech occurred on the day I turned thirty-three, the day I became the same age as Jesus, the day I finally decided to go back to college. Up until this point Abby and I had lived in the Looper family house. My dad had been dead eleven years, my mom twenty. I said, “Anyway, I think the Caterpillar down on the banks is rusted up enough now for both of us to admit we’re not going to continue with the business once we sell off the remaining stock.”
    When I took over Carolina Rocks we already had about two hundred tons of beautiful black one- to three-inch skippers dug out of the river stockpiled. I probably scooped out another few hundred tons over the next eight years. But with land developers razing both sides of the border for gated mountain golf course communities, in need of something other than mulch, there was no way I could keep up. A ton of rocks isn’t the size of half a French car. Sooner or later, too, I predicted, the geniuses at the EPA would figure out that haphazardly digging out riverbeds and shorelines wouldn’t be beneficial downstream. Off in other corners of our land we had giant piles of round rocks, pebbles, chunks, flagstones, and chips used for walkways, driveways, walls, and artificial spring houses. Until my thirty-third birthday, when I would make that final decision to enroll in a low-residency master’s program in Southern culture studies, I would sell off what rocks we had quarried, graded, and—according to my mood—either divided into color, shape, or size.
    I never really felt that the Loopers’ ways of going about the river rock and field stone business incorporated what our competitors might’ve known in regards to supply and demand, or using time wisely.
    â€œCan we go back to trying our chosen field?” Abby asked. She wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a Moonpie T-shirt. Both of us wore paper birthday cones on our heads. “Please say that we can send out our resumes to TV stations around the country. Hell, I’d give the news in Mississippi if it got my foot in the door.”
    She pronounced it “Mishishippi.” She wasn’t drunk. One of our professors should’ve taken her aside right about Journalism 101 and told her to find a new field of study, or concentrate in print media. I didn’t have it in me to tell Abby that my grandfather’s mule enunciated better than she did. When she wasn’t helping out with the Carolina Rocks bookkeeping chores, she drove down to Greenville and led aerobics classes. I never saw her conducting a class in person, but I imagined her saying “Shtep, shtep, shtep,” over and