Smooth River Stones

This land was my father’s before me, and his father’s before him. So long have we tended to this earth that it has become part of us; we are the dirt and the clay, and one day we all return to the dust from which we are made. In the place where I live we do not measure time in days or months, but by the seasons which either grant us life or death. Time to us is the rains which will give us a good harvest and the droughts that force hardships upon us. My life is tied to this earth. I have no fear of man or the affairs of politics. The only fear I feel is toward Mother Nature; in her joy our crops grow and flourish, and in her sorrow they wither and die.

In recent days the earth has been shaken by tremors that make our mantels fall and our walls to crack like terracotta. Every night they grow stronger, and I fear that my roof will fall upon my head. I run out and pray that my house will not crumble. Some nights I sleep under the stars to be awakened by the dew settling on the ground. Entire villages in the east have already been demolished by this shaking. Every day I see families walking down the dirt road that runs by my house to their kin in other villages. They drag behind them what little possessions they could salvage.

The earth has grown increasingly violent these last few weeks, but the road by my house has been empty. But soon it will be the planting season, and I must lead my ox ahead of the plow and till my fields as I normally do. As the sun gently rises over the horizon I begin to till my field, and the earth is still damp under my feet. Soon after starting my task my plow turns over a smooth river stone were no river has ever flowed. Never in my life or my father’s life has there been a stone in our field. It was slate gray and about as round as my palm, smooth as if it had spent many years in a river bed. Heedless, I take the stone and toss it to the road, and continue on behind my ox.

Soon the sun is above my head, and flies congregate about my beast of burden. I stop to gather some water from my well, and when I look up there is a priest in a black wide brimmed hat stopping in the road to pick up the stone I had thrown away that morning. He turns it over in his hand, the other holding a word rosary and a weathered bible.

He looks to me and says, “Where did this stone come from, farmer?”

“From my field, father, I turned it over as I was preparing my field this morning.”

“I come from a church in the east which has fallen crumbled into dust,” he says. “I am traveling to another in a village west of here. The night before my church left me I was met by an angel of the Lord and she spoke unto me: ‘Travel west and do not sleep until you find home of a man marked by a smooth river stone. Stay the night, and in the morning deliver unto him a message.’

“That night the earth shook and our walls trembled, cracked, and fell upon us, but I was left unharmed. In the morning I took the only these two possessions, to deliver a message of the Lord to a poor farmer. I have not slept in three days, so I ask you; may I stay a night in your home?”

I look at him and answer, “Every night the earth shakes here too, and I fear that my walls will fall upon my head. I would let you stay in my home, but I would not be safe for either of us.”

He looked upon me with knowing eyes and said, “It is by faith that we all live, and it is by faith we must all act. I was sent here by the Lord, and the Lord will protect us.”

Without any further argument, I led him into my home and made him a pallet upon the floor, and fed him with what food I could spare. He old priest spoke very little, and soon night fell upon us and he lay down and slept soundly. I made my bed and lay awake for a long time fearing that soon the house would begin shaking. In time I too succumbed to sleep and dream peaceful dreams once again.

In the morning I awake before the sun has risen, and the old priest had already left on his way. By my bedside weighed down by the river stone is a handwritten note. I pick up both the stone and the paper. It read: Take these stones and build a bed from them, for the Lord has blessed you. The tremors of the earth will neither make your walls crack nor fall, but with these gifts you must also tend to your fellow man.

I wonder for a moment how I can build a bed with a single stone, and why the note said “stones.” I leave the stone and the note by my bed before returning to the task of tilling my field that I had started the previous day. In the faint blue lighting of the day birds were rousing themselves, but I was alone in my field. There was no trace of where the priest had gone, not makes of shoes in the dirt.

I began work with the words of the note still present in my thoughts, and I hardly had one row had been finished before I had gathered ten stones. After finishing three rows there was a small pile by the side of my house. As the sun rose more stones surfaced above the red earth. Each one was smooth and round and fit neatly into my palm. By the end of the day there were enough stones that I could make a bed from the stones. The rest of the day I spent mixing a mortar of sand and dirt and water, and building a bed to the smooth river stones.

That night I slept soundly again, and in the morning I once again returned to my field and found no stones amongst the lumps of earth. Over the weeks the tremors rose in frequency and then faded away, but my house was now built upon stone. The entire event of the priest quickly faded from my memory along with the words he gave to me. I quickly became busied by the work of the upcoming season, planting the seed and tending to the supple stalks.

My neighbors came to me seeking help in rebuilding their homes, but I was too fixed upon tending to my crops to help them. For a time they spoke superstitiously of me and how my home still stood, but as they too got into the work of their fields that too faded into memory. In time my crops flourished and their homes were rebuilt, and the year passed without time.

In the following year when it was time for the rainy season the clouds held their water like greedy men. Our lands and our people soon grew thirsty, and prayed for rain. The earth quickly became dry and cracked, and the roads sent up clouds of dust with every step. People everywhere were growing tired of the persistent heat and dryness, and their wells soon were only filled with muddy sludge. My own well dried up, and I have had to walk five hours to the nearest river which is now only a trickle to find water.

When I led my ox out to begin tilling my field it would soon grow tired and foam at his mouth. It was very slow work. The sun was two hands width in the sky when my ox laid down in the middle of a row, refusing to work anymore. I whipped it twice, but it was too exhausted to acknowledge the chastisement. It was then that I noticed a woman on the road wearing a mourner’s veil. She stopped in the road by my field and motioned for me to approach her.

“Do you have any water to spare? My son is off to war, and my husband recently died of a fever,” she said. “I am traveling west to live with my mother, and it has been some time since I was able to drink any water.”

I gesture to my field, “See my land? There is a drought here and my field is dry and cracked. I haven’t even the water to spare for my own ox. My well is dry, and if this continues I will have to slaughter my animals so I will not starve as well.”

“I had a dream last night, and in it a man like you took a stone and squeezed it like a lemon. From it water came like perspiration and it filled my hands and made his lands green again,” she said.

I say to her, “Where am I to get such a stone as this? I have not seen a stone in this field in a year.”

She points, “Isn’t that a smooth river stone behind your plow animal?”

I look and three paces behind my ox is another river stone. I did not remember seeing it there before, but I was probably just preoccupied with my exhausted animal. I walk over to it and pick it up. It is the same size, shape and color as all the stones from the previous years.

I bring the stone to her and do as she described, I squeeze it over her hands like I would a lemon. The muscles in my arms strain for a moment before small droplets appear on the surface of the stone. Soon they grow large and weighty and slide down the side of the stone into her expecting hands. She raised her hands like a chalice to her lips and drank deeply.

“In my dream the man took the stone and threw it into his well, and as the stone fell it turned into water. I feel that this must be my message to you, or that this is what you are meant to do.” The widow said.

“But this stone provides water, what if it is not like in your dream and this is all the stone can do? How can one stone possibly fill my entire well?”

The woman began walking away, but she called one more thing from the road as she left, “Sometimes we just have to act by faith, and let our charity be a reward.”

With this she left, leaving me and my ox with the smooth river stone. I knelt down by my ox and squeezed the water into one of my hands and let it drink of that for a moment before I walked behind my house to my dry well. After a moment of indecision I let it slip out of my hand into the darkness below. I heard a slight splash, not loud, but it definitely held the sound of water. It was enough to revive my hope.

The water was enough for the ox to continue working for a little longer, enough to churn up over four score of the smooth river stones. Each one I diligently took behind my house to my well and dropped it in to be met with a deeper and more resounding splash. I took one of the stones into my house and filled several clay jugs before taking it to my well. The next day when I finished tilling my field I could look down into my well and see the glistening water.

I continued as I always did, tending to my field and sowing my seed. My crops were nourished by the water that filled my well. It was as the widowed woman had dreamed, my lands were once again green. My crops were many times greater than my neighbors whose where meek and thin in comparison. I even had enough to take to the market and sell, and for once my winter larder was full.

Once again the neighbor’s gossiped about me in their jealousy. They looked at me with envy when I went to town, and told lies behind my back. They shunned me when I went to the market, but they all bought my crops when theirs failed. The villagers all said I had become cold and heartless as stone, but that was just the meaningless talk of spiteful town folk. I quickly tired of this and ceased venturing into town, and they grew tired of it too eventually.

Another year passed without time, the fall festivals were not enough of a lure this year for me to venture into town for them. The winter was hard and cold but I lasted through the winter without difficulty. In the spring the rains returned and filled the land with the smell of damp earth. The people all rejoiced and the problems and conflicts of the previous year were forgotten in the rush to prepare for the planting season.

I too returned to my fields with the previous year almost forgotten. I tilled the soft earth, and planted my seed. Soon it rose up strong and steady. I knew that this crop would be even more impressive than the previous year’s. But within weeks all the farms were afflicted with a plague. Before the plants could grow and bud, they were covered in a creeping white mold which blackened their once green leaves. As soon as I saw the white form appear on my stalks they began to droop and sink into the ground.