White Rocks

Along the path between my grandparent's house and Aunt Steffie's and Uncle Chet's house were white-painted stones. I knew they weren't naturally this color, because if I looked closely, I could see the thin streaks, like straight fingerprint lines, from where the paintbrush pushed the paint along the face of the rock.

When I asked my Aunt Steffie why they were painted, she told me it was so that my Uncle Chet could see them, so he didn't trip when he made his way down the hill.

"His eyesight ain't that good anymore," she said.

I always seemed to look at these rocks when I walked or ran by. They sat at the far corner of the neighbor's yard, at the base of an old, rustic style fence: posts and cross-members made out of the trunks of young pine trees, debarked but uncut. The fence itself, I thought, save for the cross pieces, looked almost natural enough to blend in.

Sometimes I walked down the hill pretending I was my Uncle Chet, acting out a scenario in which the whiteness of the round rocks stood out enough to save me. Down the hill I stepped carefully, hunched over and cautious. I squinted my eyes to replicate bad vision. I plodded along, head and shoulders swinging back and forth as I exaggerated each haggard step until the bottom of the hill.

"Oh...oh," I pronounced to myself upon spotting the rocks, like parts of the moon, darker in spots, protruding from the dirt. "Better walk around them."

Walking to the side, my decrepit legs stirred clear of the danger. The white rocks worked!