by Joshua Siegal

Fran made feldspar her daily query.  Having read that the mineral sometimes emits an invisible light, and that it both fractures and cleaves, she had come to regard it as the perfect stone to adorn the pendant she was crafting for her own eightieth birthday.  Each morning, she fastened her favorite grey bonnet to her head, and, with creaking elbows, wrapped apron strings around her waist.  She tied them in front, deliberately weaving a careful bow.  Into her apron went her geologist’s tools, really dental picks she’d found at a garage sale.  She scoured them lovingly each evening before bed and left them on a kitchen towel for herself to find gleaming fresh each morning.  A plastic water bottle went next into her apron.  It was neon-pink, and Fran considered it very hip.  It was followed by a cellphone that she only answered, never dialed, and then a pocket geologist’s field book.

Fran stepped out on the porch of her dilapidated home and looked at the sky.  It was a glorious day for rock-hunting; lumbering cumulus clouds volleyed the sunlight and threw the terrain into relief.  Fran stepped down her walk, studiously placing one slip-on workboot after the other.  At the street, she looked both ways, then crossed over to the house opposite her own, an abandoned wreck with charred-up boards over the windows, not unlike many of the former dwellings on her block.  Fran steadied herself against the still-proud porch rail of the building and lowered herself down into a painful hunch.  She brought out her picks and scraped at the scrabble of loose rocks and broken bricks.  A glint winked at her.  From under a half-buried chunk of lumber, she unearthed a piece of rose quartz.  Something for another project, maybe.  She tucked it into her apron pocket.  But wait: was quartz a kind of feldspar?  She couldn’t remember.  Perhaps they were related, as many rocks seemed to be.  To retrieve her field manual from the folds of her apron she’d have to stand up.  Fran grasped the porch rail, and pushed the ground with her boots.  There were the clouds, batting away the sun.  She held a piece of the rail in her hand, she could see it – then a flash, a pain she didn’t feel.

Fran woke in an amber sort of darkness.  Evening on the block.  She wiped her nose; damn her allergies.  She most wanted the familiar dry waft of her air conditioning unit.

“Hello!  Are you alright?”  Eyes peered down at her.  They were set in a handsome young face.

Fran was surprised to realize that she was horizontal, resting in the shape of a fissure along a rotted old stairway.

“Don’t try to move; I’ll call for help,” said the voice, overly loud.

“Don’t worry,” Fran creaked.  The young man pulled out his cellphone and started dialing.  After reporting her condition to the paramedics, he leaned over, and with deft fingers, searched her apron.  He pulled out the quartz.

“Neat,” he said.

He dropped the rock into his pocket and strode away.

Damn poachers, thought Fran.  No professional courtesy.  A geologist’s honor was all that separated scientists from claim-jumpers and slant drillers.  She would have to be more careful the next time.