Love Your Enemies

People are disappearing.
Stone people.

A Secret Society has been building rock people
on the Rockton Mountain for the last few years,
and my car, Gilda,
insisted that I find names for them as well.
The first was Sam,
a small rock man
who appeared in the woods along route 153.

Sam, the first Rockton Mountain rock man

The Gouger,
a huge creature with long, branchy arms,
emerged next
from a newly exposed pile of rocks
along route 322.
(Why "Gouger?" 
My father-in-law,
Walt Shaffner,
told chilling stories of the Side Hill Gouge
who roamed the mountain at night.
One leg was shorter than the other,
a necessity for walking on the side hills.
If you felt pain in your side while hiking,
it was from the Gouger's bony fingers.
To escape,
turn around and run right past him.
He won't follow you;
clockwise Gougers can't run counter-clockwise,
and vice versa.)

Gouger

The rock drama continued:
Mr. Brown appeared on the hillside near Brown's Springs.

A road worker dressed Sam in a reflective vest
and gave him a red flag.

Fox sat quietly on a big shady boulder.

Gouger donned a Santa hat in December.

Walt stood scratching his head in a secluded spot.

Sam, lonely, gained a wife and child.
Someone dressed the family in Steeler scarves during playoffs.

Frick counted passing trucks
on a hillside overlooking a curve.

I talked to these stone friends regularly
as I went by.
They made me smile.
They sometimes reminded me
to pray for people with hard hearts.

Last fall I rounded the curve
and looked up to greet the Gouger.
Gone.
Over the past months
I had seen a number of people
posing for pictures with Gouger
and assumed
that the most recent one had been drunk
and knocked him down by accident.
Pity.

Three weeks ago
I was coming home from school
when I noticed Fox was gone. 
The skid marks on the road indicated
that someone had made a hasty decision to stop
and not one stone was left upon another.
This was no accident.

A week later,
Sam's whole family was destroyed.
Somehow, the destruction of a child,
even a stone child,
was harder to take.
My first thought
was of a bumper sticker I had seen:
"Mean People Suck."
This cardboard sign,
"Love your enemies,"
added a few days later,
was kinder.

The remains of Sam's family

Today felt like spring
and "Hope springs eternal."
I hope no one destroys the others,
but rocks are eternal even if rock people aren't.
Maybe the Secret Society will rebuild in the spring.