Rock-Throwing

Did I ever tell you, I once lived just a stone’s throw away from a family that all died of mysterious head injuries? Now, before you let your imagination run wild, let me assure you it wasn’t me. I may be many things, absent-minded, a little too fond of coffee, occasionally loud at the wrong times, but I am not in the business of lobbing rocks at neighbors.

Still, it made for one of those strange small-town stories. Everyone whispered about it, like the time Earl Johnson’s goat got into the post office and ate two letters and a stack of government forms. Nobody wanted to say it out loud, but everybody knew something wasn’t right.

Now, I lived just close enough to this family to hear the odd clatter on a roof, or the thunk of something against a shed wall. At first, I figured it was squirrels, or maybe kids tossing baseballs where they shouldn’t.

But then, the rumors started. “Mysterious head injuries,” they’d say, lowering their voices and raising their eyebrows like they were auditioning for a soap opera.

One morning, I asked my neighbor Ed, who knew everything before it was anybody’s business, “What’s this about the head injuries?”

Ed puffed on his pipe like he was conjuring wisdom, “Well,” he said, “either someone’s got terrible aim or the universe doesn’t like that family much.”

That was Ed’s way of being helpful, never clear, always quotable.

Now, common sense told me there was probably an ordinary explanation. Roof tiles falling loose, tree limbs breaking off in the wind, maybe even the occasional clumsy ladder accident.

Life has a way of throwing things at your head when you least expect it. But the town loved a good mystery, and this one was ripe for exaggeration. By the time the story reached Main Street, you’d think the family was getting chased by a Bigfoot wielding a slingshot.

It didn’t help that their house sat in that eerie in-between state, not quite falling apart or holding together. The screen door never shut properly, and the paint peeled as if it were shedding secrets. If a place could whisper, that house would’ve been mumbling all day.

The thing is, I never knew that family well. They kept to themselves, waved politely, but never stopped to chat. Sometimes that’s all it takes to become a legend in a small town: keep your distance and let the rest of us fill in the blanks with our own wild guesses.

After the last funeral, the house stood empty. Weeds crept up the walkway, shingles fell one by one, and the place began looking more like a cautionary tale than a home.

Kids dared each other to run up to the porch at night, like it was ghost-infested. I never did.

I don’t need to test my bravery against shadows and cobwebs. I already know what fear feels like. I’ve tried public speaking without my notes.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that family’s story was less about mystery and more about misfortune. Life has a way of stacking troubles like bricks until the wall topples over.

Maybe they just got a bad deal, one head bump after another. If that’s the case, well, I can only hope they’ve found peace where nothing more injurious than a feather ever falls.

And as for me? I moved a few years later, and every time I tell this story, people lean in closer, waiting for the twist, expecting I’ll confess something.

“Did you throw the stones?” they’ll ask with a grin.

I laugh and shake my head. I wouldn’t waste good rocks on something like that. Rocks are for skipping on water, building fire pits, and weighing the corners of a tarp in the wind, not for throwing at people.

Living a stone’s throw away from that family taught me something. Life will throw enough at your head all on its own.

And the best you can do is duck when you can, laugh when it misses, and be grateful for the days when the only thing falling is sunlight through the trees.