The Warning

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

                Shannon looked up from the rock she was trying to pry loose from the hard-packed ground.

                “Why not?”

                Laurie took a moment to phrase her response.  “Cause you’ll make a big hole and someone could trip.” 

                Shannon smiled.

                “Perfect.”  She went back to her digging.

                The rock was approximately three feet across in all directions, and two feet deep.  It was a relatively smooth one, and up until Shannon had started digging it had lain flat in the ground, its top parallel to the ground.  It had always been one of Laurie’s favorites to hop from.  She would try to jump from it to the next nearest rock without letting even a smidgen of earth touch her feet.  It was the largest visible rock in the yard.

                “Why start with that one, Shannon?” Laurie whined.  Really, she would miss it.

                “Don’t you ever wonder what’s under it?”

                “No!”  Shannon had unearthed more than half of the rock by now and Laurie was starting to feel a little hysterical.

                “Shannon, wait just a sec, okay.  Please?  Please?”

                Shannon paused once more and Laurie felt a small surge of hope.  Maybe should could talk her out of it after all.

                “Shannie, it’s just that I really like that rock, you know.  And it’s so close to the house; I mean, couldn’t you pick one out by the fence where no one would see it.  It’s going to be so ugly!”  Shannon stood and placed her dirty hands on Laurie’s shoulders.

                “Laurie, it’s… just… one…. rock.”  She said the words very slowly, like she was talking to a person that wasn’t completely ”there.”  “Once I’m done, you can put it back for all I care.”  She bent down and quickly finished the job.  With Laurie watching unhappily, Shannon wedged her fingers under the rock, braced herself, and hefted it out of the ground.  She rocked it back and forth a couple of times, her arms taut from its weight, and, finally, hurled it as far across the yard as she could.  She turned to look back at Laurie who seemed on the verge of tears and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

                “It’s okay.  It’s all over.”  She guided Laurie back into the house and the two spent the next few hours playing games.  Laurie could almost forget it ever happened.

A week after Shannon unearthed that first rock, she went back and took a closer look at the hole she had created.  She found, much to her surprise, that there were another two rocks whose edges met in the exact center of the hole.  She, of course, couldn’t resist the challenge of digging them up too. 

Three years later, what had started as a spur-of-the-moment whim, had turned into an obsession for Shannon.  The ground around the house was nothing but a series of deeper and deeper holes, for she found, as soon as she dug up one rock, many more were exposed beneath the surface of the old one.  The rocks were often bigger and bigger as well.  At one point, the holes and rocks were getting so big that she had to buy heavy machinery to do most of the work.  In fact, at that point, she found that she was not alone in her fascination with rock digging; she found an entire like-minded crew of people to help her. 

                Shannon and her team felt a real sense of purpose through their endeavors.  The thrill of going deeper and deeper was intoxicating and Shannon doubted she’d ever stop.  Sometimes they found real little treasures as they dug.  Beautiful rocks.  Skeletons of many small creatures.  At one point, they even started to find seashells.  It was all so worth it.

                Of course, Shannon did have to get rid of the house at one point, about five years after that first day.  There was just so much ground under it.   And Laurie was long gone before that happened.  Every once in a while she missed Laurie with an intensity she didn’t understand.  But Laurie had been completely incapable of understanding what she was doing.  In the early days, Shannon had tried explaining what she was doing many times, but Laurie had just never been able to grasp it.

                “Look at all the things we’re finding!” she had shouted the day Laurie had moved out.

                “Yes, but that’s not why you’re digging, is it Shannon.” Laurie had replied sadly, and shook her head as she walked away.

                “Well at least I had the ambition to do something,” Shannon had yelled after Laurie’s retreating back.  “All you ever wanted to do was sit around and look at the dumb scenery!  You’re so ignorant!”  She got postcards from Laurie from then on, and they were always predictably boring.

                All those years later, however, she would still hear Laurie’s voice in her head every once in a while.

                “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

                Well, you’re not me, Shannon would answer the memory, so you’ve gotta do what you do, and I’ve gotta do what I do.  And it was true.