Short Story - The Man Who Rolled Rocks

by Christina Carson

“What a crappy day. I think I’m going to go nuts if I stay at that job much longer.” 

Abby hadn’t given Jenny time to sit down before she started in on her pet frustration. The Downtown Bar and Grill was a favored meeting place and many a Friday night found them letting its quiet piano music and the friendly crowd ease the week away. Jen, notorious for her lateness, plopped in the seat across from Abby and sighed as she pushed her coat off her shoulders and onto the back of her chair. Freed from it, and purposely holding her line of vision above where she might encounter Abby’s face, she waved a waiter to the table. Then she folded her arms and leaned forward with the posture of a Mother Superior awaiting a confession but said nothing. Her sigh bespoke annoyance.

In their college days, these two women rarely crossed paths. Jenny moved in a group, the sort whose get-togethers had the sound of clucking hens. Abby,however, was an outlier. Not that she asked for that orientation, but like the last loon on a winter lake, loneness was foremost in shaping her life. Yet somehow their polarity seemed their strength, even if wearing at times. “That’s a hellavu start to our end-of-the-week happy hour. What’s got in your craw?” Jenny asked.

It was 5:00 Friday evening. The noise in the Downtown Bar and Grill was merely a burble at that early hour. The ritual end-of-the-week unwinding the pub was known for hosting would heat up closer to 7:00.

“I’m sitting in my cubicle today, cubicles, which aren’t even high enough to offer even a smidge of privacy, just coral you in a designated spot.” Think about it, Eve, it’s like a cell, a stall or a pigeonhole. Well, I was sitting in my cubicle at the bank, keeping the numbers in the correct columns – receivables, payables, assets and liabilities as my eyelids seemingly increased in weight. Just then, a wailing siren screamed past the building making the next moment a fraction different from the last. I swear, every head in that room lifted and stared in the direction of that sound as if paying silent tribute to it for its momentary reprieve. That’s my life, Jen, pathetic, empty, pointless, meaningless. Do you ever feel like that down on the waterfront?”

“The harbor’s a bit different scene from a bank, Abby. There’s a certain mystique to international shipping. Besides, administrative work there isn't so bad and there are some damned fine-looking men from foreign shores who traipse through that office.”

“I guess you just answered my question, Jen. A little flirting, a lot of typing, that’s all you expect from life?”

“It’s not all that bad…”

“Let me stop you there. Is ‘not all that bad’ enough for you? That’s my question, I guess. What were you hoping for when we graduated and went out into the world?”

“I think I was hoping that I’d never have to spend another night studying. I wasn't the greatest student. Not the educational bright light you were. So, I think I was hoping for something that wouldn't tax me, something I could walk out of each night and have the rest of the time to myself.”

“To do what?”

“Watch TV. Go to the pub. Occasionally date. And I keep hoping to find Mr. Right. I don’t know, maybe I don’t have any big dreams or need much in the way of meaning.” The derisive way she said the word, meaning, would have annoyed Abbey if there hadn’t been so many other irritations preceding it.

“Could you do thirty more years of that? What then?”

Jen sighed loud enough to make her exasperation with Abby evident and gave her attention to the festival -like atmosphere of this quaint pub. A burst of laughter came from one corner. At the center of the room, a table of ladies, who had arrived earlier and were now finished their meal, watched as a huge birthday cake with burning candles headed their way. It caught the eye of most of the patrons. Two waiters sang an operatic version of Happy Birthday that silenced the entire room for a moment. Everyone cheered the singers and the birthday girl, after which the crowd quieted into talk and eating.

Jen looked at Abby. “What’s the matter with this? It’s fun here. The energy is pleasant, though it might be better if I had a happier date.” She eyed Abby dolefully.

“But, Jen, this is called vicarious living, sort of what leeches do—live off someone else’s blood; or parasites like mistletoe that live off other plants’ resources? We’re just jetsam on their sunny beaches.”

“Maybe you’re jetsam, Abby, but me, I’m under the beach umbrella looking for some fun.”

A silence settled between them which the arrival of their food made less onerous. Jen started eyeing a guy two tables over, flirting in between forkfuls of fettuccine alfredo. Abby merely examined her food, her fork rearranging it on her plate rather than bringing it to her mouth.

By the time Jenny had finished her plate, the fellow she was encouraging stopped by and invited them both over to his table, which already hosted a few of his friends. Abby had barely eaten her supper and indicated to Jenny that she wasn’t interested in the invitation. There was something niggling at her, something she needed to pursue and understand.

The fellow encouraged Abby to come, but Jen butted in and said, “Leave her be. She’s in one of her philosophical moods. Trust me she could dampen the joie de vie of Mardi Gras when she gets like this.”

This time Abby didn’t take Jen’s rough message as a slight. For one blessed second, she realized she was as tired of her complaining as Jen was.

Abby raised her eyebrows, shoulders shrugged, her hands palm up as if to say, guilty as charged. She pushed her chair back, folded her napkin and left it on the table as she told Jen she’d get the check in penance. As the fellow was directing Jen toward his table, he looked back at Abby and mouthed, “Maybe another time?” She shrugged, smiled encouragingly and turned to go.

Walking out into a perfect spring evening, Abby decided to stroll home. The surrounding cherry blossoms and plate-sized rhododendron flowers managed to hold her earlier dismal mood at bay. The soothing scent of cedar from the silent forests surrounding downtown Vancouver made the rest of the walk home rather pleasant.

As she climbed the stairs to her attic apartment, a view west toward the ocean emerged over the rooftops and included the tail end of a flaming orange sunset. Rather than go inside, she sat on the landing and let the night close in around her. What was it that she was missing? She had a nice place to live, good friends, fine health and a beautiful city. Was she making life too complicated as Jen had often suggested? That wasn’t it, she was sure. Nor was a date, a drink or an evening out the answer. Not hers anyway. But it was damned sure time to find out what was.

The early light of Saturday morning found Abby on Third Beach. It was her favorite contemplation spot, and today, she had much to contemplate. At that hour, the beach belonged to her and the gulls. She sat on a damp log, an escapee from a logger’s boom somewhere up the coast, enjoying the unpeopled landscape, when a stocky man, probably in his 50s, carrying a length of 2-inch diameter iron pipe and a seven-foot-long iron bar, walked onto the beach. She heard herself hiss out, “Damn it.” She feared any distraction could weaken her resolve. Her discomfort at feeling this vulnerable made quitting an easy choice.

The intruder, which was how she fashioned him, strode resolutely to a spot overhung by tall shade trees, remnants of the vast wilderness that long ago met the ocean nose-to nose. There he stopped, pulled his suspenders aside and removed his outer shirt leaving him in a long-underwear-type top. He tugged his suspenders back up and pushed his sleeves to his elbows. He tucked his thermos and lunch bucket behind some driftwood, covered them with his shirt and stretched himself, first side to side, then tall. With that, like a man starting a day’s work, he picked up his pipe and bar and walked over to the closest large rock. She wasn't sure where these rocks came from—off the jetty or in with the tide—but they were always showing up on this beach and were much too big to pick up. Between the pipe and the lever, this man began to roll the rock back to a place in the jetty. She watched amazed. The rock was almost four feet in diameter and, yet he moved it. The work was so strenuous that he was soon soaked with sweat. His unusual activity kept her fixated such that the arrival of the first couple of the day around 9:00 went by without her customary irritated response. He gave them no notice either. He was busy with his third rock. They too watched for a bit, curious, but soon lost interest and lay in the sun. Abby didn’t move. This man’s endeavor intrigued her. Nothing she could come up with could explain why he was there involved in that activity. When he broke for lunch, she walked over to where he sat eating a sandwich and drinking his coffee.

“May I talk with you while you eat?” she inquired. He nodded, and she went on. She crossed her legs and sank down into a Buddha-like pose in the sand. “This is incredibly tough work. What possesses you to do this?

He smiled patiently as if he had answered that same question often. “Hit a bad patch some time back and ended up on the dole. I've never felt right about taking something for nothing, so I decided to tidy up the beach and shore up the jetty each day in return.”

“Every day?”

He nodded his head.

“Is it interesting to you? I mean do you get tired of doing it sometimes?”

He looked at her as one might look at a child who had just asked a question beyond their scope to understand. “Do you mean do I like it? Does it satisfy me?

She sputtered back, “Yes, I … I guess that’s what I mean?”

“Why wouldn't it?”

His question stopped her dead. Struggling, she replied, “Well I just thought it might get boring, doing this daily.”

“Something so mundane and without much of a point? Is that the rest of your thought?” he asked.

Abby’s certainties appeared to slip away. The student philosopher had unexpectedly met a graduate of the school of life. “That’s how I've been feeling of late about my work. So, I guess I assumed most people feel like I do.”

He didn't reply, so she trudged on, her thoughts tumbling out with no regard for their embarrassing nature. “Yesterday, I complained to my friend I felt bored and empty, and yet couldn't imagine life was meant to feel that way. The answer feels bigger than just changing jobs. And now listening to you, I get a sense that a job may have little to do with it.” She stopped abruptly, sensing her confession had denuded her in front of someone she not only didn't know, but to whom she would never have imagined baring her soul. Like the red line on a thermometer, her faced flushed to the top of her cheeks. Allowing what she’d stuffed down for so long to escape, left her with a frightening sense of hollowness, like she might collapse inward.

The stranger poured another cup of coffee, secured the top back on his thermos and stared at the sand in front of his boots. Then he raised his eyes to look at her pointedly. “You’re right. It isn't specific jobs that give life meaning, much as people think. In fact, interesting work can often hide the fact that your life is yet barren. Whatever you do, however you live, what matters is if you feel at ease within yourself, trued up. It’s not about your life providing meaning or fulfilling you. It’s about being in touch with the inner resources we’re born with—curiosity, playfulness, an inclination toward joy. Such awareness results in deep contentment. I am content when I roll rocks, as well as when I leave to go home and live out the rest of my day. It wasn’t always that way for me. But it is now. He paused; looked at her intently. “What stops you from living contentedly?”

She had no answer for him, nor did he appear to want one. He put his used wax paper back in his lunch bucket, dripped out the last drops of black coffee from his thermos onto the sand, folded his shirt back over them both, rose, stretched again and walked over to the last rock on the beach.

The area was crowded now. A few people stopped to watch him, some offered encouragement, some, veiled ridicule. What she saw now was what she’d missed earlier. Thinking it was sheer grit that got him through his day, the contentment he conveyed had alluded her. She still didn’t understand, however, how he could face that commitment every day. Did contentment really offset no seeming glamor or excitement, prestige or recognition?

A week later, she stopped in at the Downtown Bar & Grill. It was show tunes night and the pianist was top-drawer. She had taken to spending most of her time off-work, alone. Her friends didn't seem to notice. Perhaps she had become more annoying than she’d realized. She had continued working on the old man’s question: What stopped her from being content? She looked first at her work. All week long she argued for her position. When she asked, what stops me from feeling content at work, an angry, resentful reply poured out of her, “The fact that it is useless, boring, non-creative, uninspiring and unchallenging,” she said aloud. “Where is contentment to be found in that?” But that effort took her nowhere.

After the waiter took her order, she sat quietly allowing a tiny crack to open in her great wall of defenses. She sipped her chardonnay and let her mind dart away with the abandon of a dog off lease. As if the rock-roller was coaching her from afar, she distinctly heard, Work is not the problem. What you bring to it is. As if arguing with an unseen dinner guest, she blurted out, “What do I bring?”. She clapped her hand over her mouth and shrunk down in her seat, casting about to see if she’d been noticed. Her anonymity intact, she cautiously gave reign to her mind again and grabbed hard to that one thought: What do I bring?

The right question is antecedent to wisdom. Abby was to learn that in the next five seconds of her life. The truth bubbled up like air through water causing her to huff out a breath as it emerged. “I bring resentment to my work; nothing else but that.” This quiet, breathy reply stunned her. She grilled herself further. “Have I always lived from resentment?” That was equally unpleasant to hear answered by her phantom guru. “Really?” she whispered. She sat slightly hunched, her expression one of incredulity, in part due to her revelation and in part to how many years it took to surface.

When she looked up, she blanched, startled by the presence of the fellow from last week’s encounter, now standing opposite her at her table. He made a gesture, an apologetic hunch of his shoulders. “Sorry to disturb you.” He awaited her response.

Her major concern was having looked like an idiot. She wasn’t sure if she’d made hand gestures in response to her audible monologue. Chagrined by that possibility, her only response was a shake of her head followed by a snicker.

“You’ve caught me in an embarrassing moment. I was trying to recall if, along with talking aloud to myself, I was also gesturing. She looked up at him shaking her head and chuckling again. “Gawd,” she said.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, the conversation was somewhat animated, but without gestures. I think you’re off the hook.” Their shared laughter produced common ground giving them both the opportunity to escape from the awkwardness.

“I’m usually not quite so entertaining, she offered, “but I had just undergone a staggering awakening. I’m still a bit stunned.” Realizing she’d not yet asked him to sit down, she nodded toward the chair.

The young man sat down, grateful to feel less on display. Almost eager to get by the usual self-consciousness that plagued all his first meetings, he picked up the conversation. “It probably looks like I live here, but for sure they’re much better cooks than I am. Anybody can open a bottle of beer, but cooking, well….” Calmer, he slowed down and stopped to consider for a moment. “Were I to be as honest as you, this environment bores me. I much prefer exploring ideas. Absorbing conversation always trumps food or drink for me, but so far, no one I know has yet created such an establishment with that purpose in mind. You see, my father was a professor of philosophy. We did the male stuff, swapping stories and watching sports together. But unlike my school friends, he and I also talked about what he called the big questions. While he was still around, our dinner table was an exciting place for me as a kid.”

“While he was still around…?”

“He left us, walked out one day. I was fourteen, if I remember right, and no one ever told me why. Not having someone to talk with was the least of my worries then. I was quite lost.”

They both remained quiet. Their own thoughts holding them isolated. He had yet to order food or drink, corroborating his earlier statement.

“By the way, I’m Peter, Peter Sontag,” he said as he broke the lull.

Realizing she too had not introduced herself, she extended her hand and said, “Abby Brooks.”

Peter smiled and relaxed a bit further. “If you would, I’d like to hear what you were thinking about that so miffed your friend last week, and, if it is any of my business, I’d like to hear what stunned you.”

She stared at him, wanting to be sure he was sincere. Though her revelation wasn’t particularly flattering, his quiet attentiveness convinced her to go on.

“My life for some time now has felt empty, pointless. I wanted to know why. I assumed my job was the culprit, but I wasn't sure. Then I met this man down on Third Beach. He was doing the most peculiar thing. He was rolling rocks; clearing off the beach by relocating those huge rocks that keep ending up there. I couldn't imagine how anyone could do that on a regular basis, so I asked him if that work satisfied him; gave his life meaning.”

“Third Beach?”

“Yes.”

Peter seemed distracted for a moment. Then he asked, “What did he say?”

“He said contentment was what we needed, not meaning. Then he asked me a question I couldn't answer: What keeps you from being content with your work? Just as you arrived at the table, it came to me. Nothing comes with its own meaning. We bring the meaning and that creates our experience of it. To my job, I bring only resentment. It isn’t there of its own accord, I bring it. So simple yet so profound. Think about it. The man rolling rocks, whose work I tagged as meaningless and boring, caused this stubborn lady to wake up.”

Abby was elated with her find, but she was unprepared for the emotional chaos that engulfed Peter. She watched his face kaleidoscopically shift from one sentiment to the next, unable to come up with an explanation. Nor did it feel appropriate to ask, for she barely knew this man. Instead she suggested, “Why don’t you meet me at Third Beach tomorrow morning about 7:00 AM. I’ll introduce you, and maybe you’ll have a question for him too.”

He stared off into space. She remained quiet, scanning him. Then he swallowed hard and looked at her squarely. “I’ll do that,” he said. “Tomorrow at 7:00, Third Beach.” He then rose and left, just as her entrée arrived. Her record for keeping men around wasn’t getting any better, but she looked forward to seeing him in the morning.

Saturday morning arrived with clear blue sky emerging from the pink and mauve of sunrise. She sat once again on the driftwood she’d occupied the Saturday before. She was early. It wasn’t seven yet. But this was the first morning in years she was excited about getting out of bed. When seven o’clock came, so did the man who rolled rocks, but no Peter. The old man nodded at her and then went about his pre-work ritual. Eight o’clock came and went. No Peter. Then at eight-thirty, the old man, traversing to his next rock, looked toward the walkway and stared for a few moments. She followed his lead inquisitively, turned and saw Peter standing on the knoll. His focus was out over the water as if to avoid what lay between. Finally, he made his way down the short hill toward the beach. He approached her and sat down without a word. Her quick glance revealed a man nervous, tentative. She smiled at him and nodded, welcoming but not intrusive. They sat in silence. When lunch time arrived for the man who rolled rocks, she said, “Let’s go over to him. I want to tell him what I've learned.”

She walked the short distance with Peter trailing behind. The old man saw them coming but continued unwrapping his sandwich and pouring some coffee. She squatted down to be at his eye level.

“I got the answer,” she blurted out guileless as a school kid tickled with her test score. “There is no inherent meaning, only what we bring. I've brought resentment. I've brought anger. I've brought pity, even. But I didn’t bring contentment.” Realizing even more profoundly what she owed him, she choked up a bit. Her thank you rasped out.

He said quietly, “Now you understand.”

It was only then his gaze shifted to the man standing behind her. He asked of him, “Now, do you understand as well?”

No answer followed that question, and she rose and turned to see what was happening with Peter. He stood steadfast, his face tense. Rather than the self-assured man of last week, he was now a man summoning courage. Finally, he replied. “I do… yes, finally I do.”

The old man folded his used wax paper and once again put it in his lunch bucket, drained the last drops of coffee from his thermos, and packed them both under his shirt. He rose and stuck his hand out to Peter who stepped forward and took it in both of his. They stared at each other, their eyes meeting across more than the space that separated them. With an almost imperceptible nod, Peter released the man’s hand and dropped his to his sides.

She wasn't sure what she was witnessing. Peter watched the man leave and then dropped his head, not with the finality of endings, but in the deliberation of a man still deep in thought. It did not feel right to speak or move. So, Abby stood still caught in the awkwardness of sharing an obvious intimacy with basically a stranger.

Finally, Peter turned to her and indicated he wanted to walk. They began to walk the periphery of Stanley Park and walked a mile more out its exit through the West End before he stopped and turned to her.

“Thanks for your thoughtfulness. I need to sort some stuff out, and your company is making that easier. Do you mind walking with me as far as it takes to get to the place where I can perhaps explain?”

Being a walker in the face of personal dilemmas, it was easy for her to tag along. She smiled at him and said, “If we get to Seattle before you’re ready, promise you’ll feed me?”

That brought a chuckle from him. He stopped, turned to her and winked. It proved a long and comforting walk for them both. They didn’t get all that far south, but they did skirt English Bay and crossed the inlet on the Burrard Bridge, then hugged the Bay’s south shore walking long enough that an early evening meal was now in order. They looped back around until they had Granville Island in sight with its quaint shops and eateries. “You hungry?” he asked. She nodded, famished.

When they finished their meal, Peter shared an all too familiar story. It was one about parents who believe they have failed themselves and their families through some misdeed, when their actual failure lay in their misguided belief that their wrongdoing would cost them the love of those who meant the most to them. Thus, those left behind had only whatever they made up about why they’d been abandoned. Children take it the most personally, and Peter had been no exception.

“Can I ask you a question, Peter?” He nodded. “How did today change that history for you?”

Peter sighed heavily. “That was my father on the beach.”

Abby sat stunned.

Peter continued. “I saw him once before on Third Beach. That’s why your mention of it caught me off guard and why it took me so long to show up. But I was still too…too hurt to approach him. I guess the time was finally right when I met you. My father was a brilliant philosopher. But he was also a hardened gambler. It was a lie he lived, and when he couldn’t drop the addiction, he tried philosophically to justify it. Strangely, it was his failing as a philosopher that brought him to ground rather than the financial disaster that followed. Nothing he could conger could justify a habit like that. He used to advise us: ‘When you bring all of yourself to your life, wade into it up to the bottom of your nose, then life knows you’re for real, not merely an on-looker or a passer-by. What it offers then is Reality. Not the stories we create in our minds about it, but membership in the actual moment we’re in. The moment, he said, restores us to the unpretentiousness we knew as a child, that contentment and sense of belonging.’

“He was so sure he understood life, but when he couldn’t work his addiction in with his theory, couldn’t make it part of any truth he’d found, he felt disgraced as a philosopher and a man.” Peter turned reflective, then continued. “I see that now. And becoming the man who rolls rocks apparently was his hair-shirt. But unexpectedly in the process, he found the truth he’d sought all along. Whatever it was, he saw the fallacy in his theory.”

“Why do you think he never returned to explain all this, especially to you?”

“I can only speculate. Being a professor was a most esteemed position for a man of his humble origins. When he came to realize that rolling rocks was as powerful a place to learn as academia, he may not have wanted to confuse or influence me.”

“He told me he rolled rocks to repay his acceptance of the dole,” Abby said.

“I think it started out that way, but ironically, the balance sheet shifted in his favor. He became an even deeper thinker. That’s what I sense happened.”

“Do you resent him for how he chose to deal with his problems?”

Peter was quiet for a while. “Some part of me wanted to, but I just couldn’t make it stick. As you discovered, the meaning is ours to assign. But it’s only now that I realize how much a fool I would be, if I made this mean something deprecating about him. Please understand, I may not have seen that so clearly had I met him alone today. But instead I met you first, and the part you played in this, your sensitivity and simple honesty, made all the difference.”

Abby was unaccustomed to being extolled for any of her personal qualities. The wonder of what was happening in her life did not go unnoticed this time.

“Do we meet by chance,” she asked, “or do we meet by design?” She looked at Peter, who was leaning against a tree they’d stopped under to watch a tanker out in the harbor dock itself for the night. She had pondered that question more than once in her life but had never reached any conclusions. Experiences like this, however, their unique timing, their capricious results had her weighing in more on the side of the arcane than the commonplace. When Peter didn’t reply, she offered, “Tales of wonder – that’s what I’ve called them for years.” Peter smiled down on her, a gracious curve that softened his face.

As they walked back toward Third Beach, midnight was behind them, the moon falling toward the sea. It signaled a new day in many ways. The cool, damp sand of Third Beach suggested they walk barefoot, the tide having just receded. As their eyes grew accustomed to this dark corner of the park, they noticed two large rocks had settled just their side of the tide line. Peter looked at the rocks and then canted his head toward Abby with a side-long glance. Sensing the question, he was likely entertaining, she looked back at the rocks, chuckling. “Don’t ask me,” she finally said. “But I do love a good mystery.” 

For more short stories, check out the right –hand columnon this site for a listing.