Rocks 4 Sale
Every morning at 8:30, Ursula came shuffling out of her house in her red bathrobe carrying her box of rocks. The rocks were in the flimsy top half of an old doughnut box that sagged toward its front as Ursula walked across the lawn, indicating the rocks had slid forward and were close to tumbling out. Even still, Ursula always made it to the card table without losing a rock. She was good—or lucky—like that.
Once the box was on the table and Ursula was in her lawn chair, she treated herself to her first generic menthol of the day. She smoked in an unapologetic and professional way, blowing perfect, bored Os and tapping out the butt on the card table’s rusted leg when she’d had enough. Afterward, Ursula got up out of her lawn chair and shuffled to the front of the table and taped up her sign. The sign said: ROCKS 4 SALE, $4 EACH. The rocks were nothing more than pieces of ordinary gravel, the chalky kind found near the fringes of new blacktop, and all of them were more or less the size of tater tots. Sometimes, in the process of setting up shop, one of Ursula’s long breasts fell out of her robe. If one did, she just let it hang there while she finished doing whatever it was she was doing. Shame was not in Ursula’s vocabulary.
Every morning at 8:29, Brownie stood at his kitchen window, holding off on coffee and urination until he’d seen, what he had dubbed, The Ursula Rock Concert. He loved Ursula. Not her body or brains, because she didn’t have much of either, but her faith and determination. Her utter delusion. Somewhere around 9:00, after Maxwell House and the toilet, but before he started in on the bourbon, Brownie joined Ursula at the card table. He had to bring his own chair. He had to initiate conversation. Ursula never looked Brownie in the eye—not when he unfolded his chair and not when he turned to face her. This was another thing that stole Brownie’s heart: Ursula’s disinterest and independence. Her ease with detachment.
“We need rain,” Brownie said.
“Nah,” Ursula replied, staring out at their dull street, Acorn Lane. “What for?”
Brownie felt dumb even though it was Ursula’s reply that made no sense. “For the farmers,” he said. “For the grass. See here?” He pointed. “It’s nearly turned silver with thirst.”
Ursula did not consider the grass, only the house across the road, an ancient, run-down Sears Catalog Home the color of snot. “Let it, then,” she said. “Let us all burn up and shrivel. What’s the fuss about?”
Brownie thought about this, which made him also think about bourbon.
“So, we die. Then what?” Ursula shrugged. “Maybe we feed the worms and that’s it. Lights out, worm food. Or maybe we go to heaven or maybe we go to hell or maybe we float around in outer space and bang our heads on some stars.” Ursula leaned forward and gave the old doughnut box a little shake back and forth as if sifting sand. Brownie wondered if she thought this might attract a customer. “What difference does it make? Whatever happens, happens. We’re all on the train going full steam ahead. There’s no getting off.”
Brownie felt a low, slow terror at this thought, but also a deep admiration for Ursula. She was fearless. He saw her on a runaway train, floating in space, on a cloud, in the dirt, engulfed in flames, and in every instance the look on her face was the same: stony, glacial. Almost serene.
*
Acorn Lane ran through a neighborhood that had once, in the 70s and 80s, belonged to white, penny-pinching retirees. Shriners and knitters. Librarians and organists. Then in the 90s, when all the retirees died and all the houses started to lean and fade, the neighborhood shifted to people like Brownie and Ursula—sad-faced, mostly forty-somethings with a range of addictions and afflictions, some active, some dormant. Acorn Lane people were people who had long ago given up on true love and music careers. They were broken and broke and needed cheap houses over apartments, because they all had big or suspicious dogs—Great Danes and pits— that kept them from not just relapse and despair and seizures, but renting. And most of them were on disability like Brownie (his heart) and Ursula (her spine).
“You think anyone from Acorn Lane ever made anything of themselves?” Brownie asked Ursula one day. “Like with a hit song or the Lotto?”
Ursula shook her box of rocks. “What does ‘make something of yourself’ even mean? Someone writes a song and gets paid to sing it over and over and over. What? You go out on the road for the rest of your life and sit in motels trying to write another song but this one has to be better? What a trap.”
Brownie didn’t know what to say.
“The Lotto,” Ursula said. Her hair was dyed matte black like an old, spray-painted car. “What does the Lotto get you? A new refrigerator? A dishwasher? Some shoes? Some more shoes? A closet for the shoes? A closet for the closet?” A car passed and Ursula shook the box again. “All that’s happening when someone goes from this neighborhood to that neighborhood is movement. Someone on the train is getting up out of his seat and going to another train car. Maybe the cocktail car. Maybe the dining car. Maybe a car that is identical to the one he was just sitting in. The people are getting up out of their seats and sitting in other seats, but guess what?”
Brownie shook his head.
“Those assholes are still on the train.” Ursula lit up a menthol. “Choo-choo,” she said without emotion. “Chugga-chugga.”
Ursula stared blankly at the snot house. Brownie watched Ursula smoke. Ursula was a goddess. Ursula was a god—The God. Brownie thought he might cry. Brownie thought he might explode. Brownie prayed to Ursula right then and there in his head. Dear Ursula, the prayer went. Please love me. Do you love me? Please love me. Amen.
*
One day Ursula was late. Brownie was not. He was at his window at 8:29 and when Ursula didn’t appear at 8:30 or 8:31 or 8:32, Brownie broke out in a cold sweat. He got the shakes. His first thought was that Ursula was dead inside her little blue house. How would he get in? Did she leave it open? Was it locked with a deadbolt? Would he have to throw his lawn chair through her dark front window and climb over glass shards to find her on the floor and touch her neck for a pulse? Did Brownie even know how to find a pulse? Would he? Could he? Brownie was a wreck.
And then, Ursula came out. At 8:36, Ursula came shuffling out in her red robe with the flimsy box. Brownie thanked God. He thanked Ursula. He gripped the kitchen sink and watched her set up shop. He went without his coffee. He didn’t use the bathroom. He had a bourbon ahead of schedule. What would he do without Ursula if something really did happen? he wondered. At 8:52, Brownie could not control himself any longer. He went out early with his lawn chair and sat next to Ursula.
“I thought you might have taken a trip out of town,” Brownie said. “When I didn’t see you and all.” Brownie looked at Ursula and Ursula looked different. Her eyes were puffed up like she’d been thinking sad thoughts, but Brownie knew Ursula didn’t do that. “The pollen’s something else today,” he said. “Shoo-wee. I can feel it in my throat. I can feel it in my eyes.”
Ursula didn’t say anything. One of her breasts had escaped her robe. She sat in her lawn chair and let her breast do its thing in the sunlight, hanging like a pale stocking. Brownie tried not to look at it, but he did. It was made of tender skin, not weathered skin like Ursula’s face. The nipple on it was the color of ham and pointed toward the silver lawn.
“Today’s the day,” Ursula said after some time. “I can feel it.”
Brownie pretended he hadn’t been looking at her breast. He pretended he knew what Ursula meant. He looked across the street at the snot house. He couldn’t have told the police who lived there if they’d come knocking to ask.
“Today’s the day for rain?” Brownie finally said.
“Nope,” Ursula said, sitting forward to shake the box of rocks. “Not that.”
Ursula tucked in her breast and re-tied the belt of her robe. Then she lit a cigarette and blew out a perfect O. Brownie looked at Ursula’s rocks and counted them in his head. There were twenty-seven in total. Brownie wanted to know what Ursula meant—Today’s the day—but she was just like God, all-knowing and no hints. The suspense was both terrific and terrible. Brownie and Ursula sat in silence together all morning.
At lunchtime, Brownie went inside. He stood at his kitchen sink and drank a bourbon and ate some cold beans straight from a can and watched Ursula. When the limousine went by, he was on his third bourbon. The limousine was gold and dented and needed a muffler, but still: it was a real limousine right there on Acorn Lane. It drove past loud and slow going west and Ursula didn’t flinch. A minute later it was back, still moving loud and slow but now pointing east. It came to a stop in front of Ursula’s house. A rear window on the limousine went down. Brownie couldn’t see inside the car. He heard a voice call out, like a small dog barking, but he couldn’t understand what it said. Brownie watched; Ursula’s mouth didn’t move, but he saw her shake her head. Then he saw her get up and shuffle to the front of the card table where she pointed at her sign. One of her breasts fell out and she shuffled back around to her lawn chair and her breast slid back in. That was when the man emerged from the limousine. He was in a bright blue suit, the color of a good day, and he strode right up to the table and took a little bow. Brownie watched the man point a finger over the rocks, counting them it seemed, just as Brownie had. Then the man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet and pulled out a stack of bills and counted out nine or ten of them and gave them to Ursula. Following that, the man reached for the box of rocks and Ursula nodded. Brownie watched as the man walked back to the limousine with the box of rocks. When the man got to the car, he didn’t open the door. He just tipped the rocks into the limousine’s open window. Then he opened the door and climbed in and the window went back up. Then the limousine drove off, loud and slow.
Brownie felt as though he’d watched a crime occur. A kidnapping, a theft. A murder, even. He set his glass down on the edge of the sink. He went, unnerved, to his front door. By the time he made it across his silver lawn and over to Ursula’s yard, Ursula had already folded up her lawn chair and taken down the sign. The card table was flipped over on its top and Ursula was having some trouble folding in its rusted legs.
Brownie felt as though he’d watched a crime occur. A kidnapping, a theft. A murder, even. He set his glass down on the edge of the sink. He went, unnerved, to his front door. By the time he made it across his silver lawn and over to Ursula’s yard, Ursula had already folded up her lawn chair and taken down the sign. The card table was flipped over on its top and Ursula was having some trouble folding in its rusted legs.
“Did you just sell all the rocks?”
Ursula grunted as the first leg folded inward. She promptly got to work on the second. “Don’t you remember?” she said. “I told you today was the day.”
Brownie could see the wad of cash in the front pocket of Ursula’s robe. Both of her breasts were out and swaying as she got to work on the table’s third leg. “How did you know?” Brownie said. “How did you know today was the day?”
Bent over, Ursula’s hair parted in such a way to show an inch of new silver growth. It was a silver that put the grass to shame. “The train never stops,” Ursula said. “But sometimes, real quick, it passes by something you were hoping to see.”
Ursula folded the final leg inward on the table. Then, with her breasts loose and her hair loose and the rest of her red bathrobe opening up to shamelessly show all of herself, both the weathered and the tender, Ursula put the table under one arm and the sign between her front teeth and the chair under her other arm. Then she shuffled back inside her house and closed her door.
*
After that, Ursula didn’t come out anymore. The Ursula Rock Concert was cancelled. Brownie stood at his kitchen window every morning and watched and waited and wept, but Ursula didn’t come out at 8:30 or 8:31 or 2:47 or 6:55. Brownie drank and slept, drank and slept. He had dreams he was on a train. The train didn’t have windows. No one would tell him where they were going.
One day, Brownie looked out the window and saw: over at the snot-colored house something had been put on the curb. He stood there squinting until he decided it was an old lawn chair. Brownie went out of his house and crossed the street. He went over to the curb of the snot house and took the chair for himself. He brought it right into Ursula’s front yard and unfolded it so that it was facing Ursula’s front door. Then Brownie went back into his house and got his own lawn chair. He took it back to Ursula’s front lawn and unfolded it right next to the first chair. Brownie took a seat. He stared at Ursula’s front door. Up above, the sky was a pale gray that fell somewhere between the color of the old grass and Ursula’s new hair. Brownie closed his eyes. After some time, he could hear it. Choo-choo. Chugga-chugga. It was the train and he was on it and it was moving fast. Brownie opened his eyes again. He stared at Ursula’s door. He would sit there as long as it took. He’d sit there in the day and in the night. He’d sit there when it was warm and when it was cold. He’d even sit there if it rained, which that day, it finally did.