Free Hometown by Marsha Qualey

twenty feet to the top?” asked Border.
    “If that.”
    “There’s a plaque on it that tells…” said Liz, and she took the light from her brother. “Here.”
    Border leaned to read.
    Glacial Erratic
    The boulder before you is probably one of the oldest objects you’ll ever touch. Geologists have dated rocks of this type at 3.6 billion years. At that time pressures deep within the earth changed the boulder from granite into gneiss. This process occurred in an area that is now the Minnesota River Valley, ninety miles northwest of this spot. Less than half a million years ago, a lobe of an ancient glacier plucked this boulder from the surrounding bedrock, then transported and deposited it at a site just north of the preserve. It was uncovered during the construction of the interstate highway. This glacial erratic measures 20 x 17 x feet and weighs about 125 tons.
    “Hey,” said Border, “that’s me. It’s talking about me.”
    Jacob laughed, but Liz said, “I don’t get it. Because you’re big?”
    “Now who’s dense?” said her brother. He pointed to the plaque. “Like the rock, Border was picked up and dumped in Red Cedar. He doesn’t belong here.”
    “Do you really feel that way?” asked Liz.
    “I feel,” said Border, looking up and running his hands along the rock, “that maybe I can do this.” He started climbing.
    He’d climbed rocks often enough in the hills outside Albuquerque, though never at night. Still, climbing was mostly touch and balance and strength. He could hear Jacob behind him, breathing hard and grumbling.
    Border reached the top, breathless, hands cold and scraped.
    “Hello,” said Liz cheerfully. “That took a while.”
    Her brother swung a leg over the top, pulled himself up.
    “How did you get up here ahead of us?” said Border.
    “There’s an easy way up the back. It’s practically a path. If you guys had waited, I would have told you. But no, you moron males had to charge ahead.”
    Jacob rubbed his hands and swore at Liz. Border grinned. “I wish my sister were here. I bet you two would be friends.”
    “Do you like your sister?” Liz asked.
    “More or less. Depends on her hair color.” He looked around. Not much to see but a starry sky and dark patches where the trees were.
    “What do we do now?” said Jacob.
    “Enjoy it,” said Liz.
    “How do we get down?” he wondered.
    “Relax, would you?”
    “Slide on our butts, probably,” said Border. “Liz can lead the way.”
    Liz lifted her arm and pointed. “If I led you that way, we’d come to a creek.” She shifted slightly. “That way to New Mexico and,” she moved again, “that way to Kuwait.”
    “Weird, isn’t it?” said Border. “To think that while we’re sitting here with nothing to do but get cold, there’s a war going on.”
    “No one’s looking at stars in Iraq,” said Liz.
    “Probably it’s already day there,” said Jacob.
    “Then they’re looking at bomb damage,” said Border.
    “There’s no way,” Jacob said, “that you would not go crazy. I mean, if where you lived was being bombed. Killed or crazy—some options.”
    “The noise must be incredible,” said Border. “The sound of the missiles coming down, then exploding. One after another—you’d hear them and wait for one, maybe the next one, to hit you.”
    “Like I said, you’d go crazy.”
    “Pooch certainly would,” said Liz. “She can’t handle a thunderstorm. First crack and she’s under the table whining.”
    “I don’t want to whine,” said Jacob, “but is anyone else cold?”
    “Sure,” said Liz. “It’s winter.”
    “I’m sort of cold,” said Border. “I suppose it would be smart to go.”
    No one moved. They sat, looking and listening, seeing only stars and hearing nothing more than a soft wind through bare tree branches.
    “If you were in a war,” Border asked, “would you bother to save your pet? Do people leave pets behind to go to a bomb shelter?”
    “Don’t know,”