"This one's from Arizona, " he muses fondly. His agate eyes stare fixedly through the ceiling as he recalls the National Rock and Gem Collection.
Fool's gold, glinting through a sandy sediment, Chunks of mica glistening like space-age metal. Pyrite, sodalite, chunks of topaz streaked internally by strands of embedded platinum. Purple crystals jutting like skyscrapers from an amythest city which he holds in the palm of his hand. Smooth jasper plaques resembling plastic that had been hand painted with undulating strips of creme and earthy red. Shiny black plates, freckled with the pink and tan circles of fossilized shells. The rockhounds nod politely but curtly to each other as they prospect for the lodestone of their dreams, for a name not yet part of their collections, or for the special rock that pulls them to its center with its color or opacity.
He's named his dogs for rocks - Obsidian and Cinnabar, the black and red chows as solidly built and stubborn as boulders; his wife finds this an endearing quirk. The dogs resemble their names; dog and rock have merged.
He's stored many rocks in boxes in the back of his car; he might meet someone with the proper home for them. He carries boxes of rocks, rather than champagne or cheese, to parties; when invited to dinner, he offers these for inspection and watches the crowd peck, his craggy, gray-tan face as unreactive as weathered fieldstone.
"You were going to get rid of these?", a sculptor asks. "I have a diamond-cutting saw, can
slice them and use them in my work" The rockhound scrutinizes the diamond saw; a saw which cuts jagged is cruel to rocks, wastes of a beautiful material. The sculptor and his saw pass the exam, and several more rocks find a warm loving home. The rockhound smiles slowly; the erosions around his mouth and eyes deepen into fathomless crevices.
"These big quartz ones would look great in my garden," another murmers. The rockhound shakes his head slowly, in time to the beat of eons....No rocks for you, ma'am; these are indoor
rocks, they mustn't be exposed to wind and rain, he wants his rocks on a warm self in winter. His refusal is as soft as sand sifting against sand, his resolve as indestructible as any single grain.
"Rocks that need a clean, well heated shelf? Haven't these rocks been outside, in the ground, for millenia?" But temperature can affect the chemical composition of some rocks; he murmers something about shifting carbon atoms, then lets his words fade like a dying echo as he resumes his usual stolidity. The partiers come and go and he watches, as cliffs and sideline pebbles have always watched the frantic scurrying on temporary paths; he listens to the squawking of people in flight and to the steady dripping of his own thoughts, saturated with the salt of a million years, from some inner stalactite.
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What stories could the cliff tell, if it were given voice?
