The Ruby Itch

I stared into the cave, trying to calm my excited breath. If I was right, I had found the largest deposit of rubies that had ever been found in my state. In my country.

I had been hiking through my local park as usual. Even before I became a rockhound, I always walked along the river edge because the sound of the water was calming, and the large meandering body of water kept me from getting lost. I was delighted to learn that the best place to find rocks was in riverbeds.

About a mile in, the river splits into smaller streams. There were nearly twenty of them, and I combed a new one every few weeks. That day, I had arrived in the late afternoon, despite knowing that it wasn’t a great idea to hike in the dark. I needed to get my daily excursion in.

I stepped into the stream where the bank was flat. As I sloshed through the water, it soaked my boots. I had done a terrible job of waterproofing them. A boulder sat in the middle of the stream, as if a giant had plucked it and placed it there to stop the flow of water. It had charcoal stripes interspersed with light gray ones; my guess was that it was gneiss. Its rounded opening was nine feet tall at the highest point. It looked like a large mouth, eager to swallow me up. I entered it anyway.

From the clutches of dull metamorphic rock, thousands of red stones glittered in the dying light of the sunset. I took off my safety glasses and rubbed them. When I put them back on, the gems still glowed. I hadn’t seen a haze due to the smudged glass; they were emitting light. The rubies were as shiny as polished gems. The sun died away completely, and I could still see them in the deepening shadows. They looked like a galaxy of stars.

I clicked on my headlamp. I adjusted my grip on the rock hammer. I was going to need more than this tiny thing, but it would be good enough to start.

I had made a life altering discovery. The life altering discovery. Hit the jackpot. As a budding rockhound, I didn’t think I would find something this remarkable after only a few months of indulging in the hobby.

For the past six months, diving into rockhounding is what saved me from my gambling addiction. Taking a chance on what I might find on my walks wasn’t quite as thrilling, but it got pretty close. It numbed the itching on the inside of my elbow. The one that led me to the casino to scratch. My sponsor had encouraged me to try new hobbies to see if anything would stick. I wanted to be better, but sweating in the hot sun wasn’t my idea of fun. I did try it though. Only because he asked.

Then I found my first agate. Seeing light pass through the transparent rock, I knew I was hooked. As a rockhound, I could travel miles every single expedition, which at first left me too tired to relapse. But I got stronger. Then, I fell in love with my neighborhood. I started to see even the dusty, abandoned lots as opportunities to explore. And now, the hobby would make me rich.

I had been a lowly gas station owner for the entirety of my adult life, nearly 35 years in that cramped store. It felt even more cramped since I lived in the two room space built on top of it. I depended on the chance of drivers strolling down the two-laned highway. I depended on people that had the time to slow down and take in the picturesque sea the highway lined. Given the new, direct highway that had been built five years ago, this number had dwindled significantly. So significantly that an eviction notice burned a hole in the back corner in my top drawer. This discovery would save us.

“For each betrayal by tomorrow’s sunset, you may have one stone.”

I jolted at the deep disembodied voice. It seemed to both whisper into my ear and bounce off all the cave walls. I checked around for an owner, but found nothing. Neither human nor beast materialized from the darkness. Everything was unnaturally still. The water stopped lapping at my feet. It was frozen like a sheet of glass.

When I called out, there was no response. So I hacked into the cave wall. The cave filled with the metallic ting of my hammer against stone. For all the hammering, I saw that I hadn’t made a single dent. It was as effective as an inflatable hammer against a brick wall. I dropped my hand. My shoulders slumped.

The voice laughed. I shivered as the sound rattled into my ear and through my bones.

“For each betrayal by tomorrow’s sunset, you may have one stone,” the voice repeated.

It seemed too good to be true. How would it even know if I betrayed someone? How bad did the betrayal need to be? Who or what was speaking to me? And how could I trust it? I had a slew of questions, but it didn’t matter. The voice did not speak again.

It seemed ridiculous. But my pick had done nothing to these walls. Something powerful was here. I decided to take my chances. “By tomorrow’s sunset” meant I had a little less than a day.

My son Matthew carried the most recent shipment of snacks into the store. Two boxes of Cheetos balanced in his arms as he struggled to look around them to see his way to the back. His unbuttoned baseball jersey flapped wildly. He nearly fell when it caught on a rack and yanked him backward.

I stifled a chuckle. I was proud, and grateful, of his hard work. When his mother and I divorced, he dropped out of school to help me keep this convenience store afloat as I finally got help. He agreed that his mother was too impatient. Disloyal.

We had been making a pretty good living until that new highway arrived. It had taken a lot of work, but, together, we’d raised the money for Matthew’s tuition. He was in the middle of packing to move back to southern California. He studied marketing and film. I never understood his films; they were too artsy for me. I was more of an action kind of guy. But I owed it to him, all the support needed to return to school. I thought of the gemstones I’d seen last night. I could easily pay for all his expenses for the next five years. For the rest of his life.

“Have you paid my tuition yet?” Matthew asked. He dropped the boxes on the ground. “ It’s due tomorrow. This is already cutting it way closer than I would like.”

It didn't make sense that Matthew trusted me with his money, but I loved him for it. He once told me he wanted to give me the opportunity every day to choose myself against my addiction.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.” He crossed his arms and huffed. “Where is the card again?” I said. He sighed and slapped it onto the counter before returning to restocking. Often I wondered who was the true parent in our relationship. I scurried from the register to the back room, where an old PC sat. The inside of my elbow itched when I sat down.

While the browser loaded, it hit me. This was my chance. I just wouldn’t pay his tuition. Sure he’d be mad. He would have to wait another year to go back to school. But by then we would be rich. We could afford to finance his own films.

I couldn’t leave too soon or he would get suspicious. So I fiddled with the browser. I found myself on an old gambling site. I always checked it when I was online. The itch would start, and I would sit in the suffering. It felt good not to scratch it. Affirming.

“Finished?” He called out from the front. I jumped in my seat like the weasel I was.

“Not quite!”

“Send me the confirmation, please.”

“Will do.” I needed him to get out of here. Out of the store and out of my hair. “What are you getting up to tonight?”

“Freddie is planning a midnight picnic in the cove. I’ll be out until late.”

“Any other friends joining?”

Matthew’s silence said enough. Perfect. He would be out all night. I smiled. “Have fun.” I wiggled my eyebrows.

He didn’t leave for another two hours. He primped and prodded at his hair until it stood perfectly.

“All that work as if you won’t be sweating it out within the hour,” I said. Matthew blushed and continued to fuss with his hair. Only when he was out the door was I able to fully breathe.

I ran to the back room and went to the site. I looked at it a little longer. I fingered the raised writing on the card that spelled out Matthew’s name. For each betrayal by tomorrow’s sunset, you may have one stone. Would gambling with Matthew’s money count as another betrayal? I could just play one game, and then I would get a gem worth fifty times the amount of money I could ever win on that site.

I scratched the itch on the inside of my arm.

I was still sitting at the computer when he returned at five in the morning.

“Dad?” I looked up at him. His hair was askew, just as I knew it would be.

“Hey, I see you and Freddie had a good time!” I giggled, and knocked over my third can of beer. Froth flew through the air and splattered on the floor. There had only been a bit left at the bottom, but it still made a pool beneath my feet. It looked as if I had peed.

“Aw man. Can you pass me a towel?”

“I can’t fucking believe this.” Matthew grabbed my arm and dragged me off the stool. The card I had been using fell right into the beer puddle. I reached for the money, and pulled against Matthew’s weight. I fell sideways, unable to keep myself stable.

“Just give me a towel so I can clean up the mess.”

“The beer is the least of your problems right now!” Matthew yanked me back. My stomach was not happy with the wobbling. It emptied itself all over the puddle.

Matthew had gotten me the rag. A bucket and a mop, too. While I cleaned up my vomit, he knocked about upstairs. On the tenth thump, I yelled out. “Stop all that racket!” He ignored me.

When I made it to his room, it wasn’t the chaos I expected. I knew he had done a great deal of packing to move, but I didn’t think he was this close to completion. He slapped tape on top of the last box. He labeled it in black marker, then stacked it on another.

“Will you let me explain?”

“What is there to explain? My eyes work.”

“Just stop and listen.” I held his shoulders. He obliged and looked at me. His eyes were blank. He looked through me, not at me. I tried anyway.

“Okay, so it will sound crazy, but today, when I was walking along the river–”

“Leaving me to do all the work at the store on my own. What’s new?” I stopped. He had never complained about working here before.

“You don’t like working at the store?” He laughed.

“You don’t even like working at the store. That’s why you spend all your time out doing your stupid rock hobby.”

I was horrified. “That stupid hobby fixed my life.”

“And yet I still am suffering from it. You can never do what you’re supposed to do.”

“That’s why we’re such a great team. I have the vision and you help me do the work. You’re the hard worker I need.”

“I’m the only worker.” He shook his head and returned to moving boxes. He had made a nice stack near the door.

“I was trying to save the convenience store!” I said. “I was trying to save us! Can’t you see that?”

“Save us? What is there to save?” He gestured around us. “This isn’t a place to stay. Sometimes you just need to move on!”

“You think you’re better than where you’ve worked all these years?”

“I was a means to an end Dad.” He stopped stacking boxes and looked at me. He found my eyes and stared deeply. “Don’t you want more than this? Don’t you feel stagnant?”

“No, I feel content. I have my job, my hobby, and my son. What else do I need?”

Matthew shook his head. “Wrong. You have a failing business, and you don’t have me. Not anymore.”

I knew who he was calling before I heard the voice. The soft soothing voice that had never bothered to use that kindness with me. He put in his airpods, then took the first box downstairs. When my pleading didn’t move him, I went to my room.

As I laid in bed, I wondered when he had started talking to her. It had to have been three months ago, when he first got the idea to go back to school. He had been plotting to break things between us long before I met that voice in the cave. He had abandoned me before I had abandoned him.

I don’t know when she came and got him. He wasn’t there when I got up in the morning. The worst hangover I'd ever had thrummed through my head. As I picked my way back to the cave, I realized I never got to tell him the truth. About the rubies.

I tried to push the previous night from my mind. I thought about how I would spend all the money I would make. I wondered if Matthew would still let me help him. My singular footsteps tramped through dirt and grass before splashing into the river.

I was finally alone. All alone.

Three large rubies were pulled from the cave walls by invisible hands. They were placed into my open palm. The long oblong shapes were heavy; I could feel how much they would earn.

“Three?”

“You are surprisingly good at betrayal,” the voice said. It laughed.

I held each one up to the light of my headlamp. The itch started at the inside of my elbow again.