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Every website should have this posted on it. Wish i had written it. The first time i read this was in Dillons Blue Press years ago and recently read part 2, thank God for the sunrise. I hope this will remain fiction, but i doubt it
[QUOTE]SUNRISE AT COFFIN ROCK
by Raymond K. Paden
Thomas sat alone upon the cold stone, shivering slightly in the chilly pre-dawn air of this April morning. The flashlight was turned off, resting beside him on the bare granite of Coffin Rock, and involuntarily he strained his eyes in the gray non-light of the false dawn, trying to make out the shapes of the trees, and the mountains across the river. Below, he could hear the chuckling of the water as it crossed the polished stones. How many times had he fished there, his grandfather beside him?
He tried to shrug away the memories, but why else had he come here except to remember? Perhaps to escape the inevitable confrontation with his mother. She would have to be told sooner or later, but Thomas infinitely preferred later.
"Mom, I
Sundown at Coffin Rock
by Raymond K. Paden
The old man walked slowly through the dry, fallen leaves of
autumn, his practiced eye automatically choosing the bare and
stony places in the trail for his feet. There was scarcely a
sound as he passed, though his left knee was stiff with scar
tissue. He grunted occasionally as the tight sinews pulled. Damn
chainsaw, he thought.
Behind him, the boy shuffled along, trying to imitate his
grandfather, but unable to mimic the silent motion that the old
man had learned during countless winter days upon this wooded
mountain in pursuit of game. He's fifteen years old, the old man
thought. Plenty old enough to be learning. But that was another
time, another America. His mind drifted, and he saw himself, a
fifteen-year-old boy following in the footsteps of his own
grandfather, clutching a twelve gauge in his trembling hands as
they tracked a wounded whitetail.
The leg was hurting worse now, and he slowed his pace a bit.
Plenty of time. It should have been my own son here with me now,
the old man thought sadly. But Jason had no interest, no
understanding. He cared for nothing but pounding on the keys of
that damned computer terminal. He knew nothing about the
woods, or where food came from...or freedom. And
that's my fault, isn't it?
The old man stopped and held up his hand, motioning for the boy to
look. In the small clearing ahead, the deer stood motionless,
watching them. It was a scraggly buck, underfed and sickly, but
the boy's eyes lit up with excitement. It had been many years
since they had seen even a single whitetail here on the mountain.
After the hunting had stopped, the population had exploded. The
deer had eaten the mountain almost bare until erosion had become
a serious problem in some places. That following winter, three
starving does had wandered into the old man's yard, trying to eat
the bark off of his pecan trees, and he had wished the "animal
rights" fanatics could have been there then. It was against the
law, but old man knew a higher law, and he took an axe into the
yard and killed the starving beasts. They did not have
the strength to run.
The buck finally turned and loped away, and they continued down
the trail to the river. When they came to the "Big Oak," the old
man turned and pushed through the heavy brush beside the
trail and the boy followed, wordlessly. The old man knew that
Thomas was curious about their leaving the trail, but the boy had
learned to move silently (well, almost) and that meant no
talking. When they came to "Coffin Rock," the old man sat down
upon it and motioned for the boy to join him.
"You see this rock, shaped like a casket?" the old man asked. "Yes
sir." The old man smiled. The boy was respectful and polite. He
loved the outdoors, too. Everything a man could ask in a grandson
...or a son.
"I want you to remember this place, and what I'm about to tell you.
A lot of it isn't going to make any sense to you, but it's important
and one day you'll understand it well enough. The old man paused. Now
that he was here, he didn't really know where to start.
"Before you were born," he began at last, "this country was
different. I've told you about hunting, about how everybody who
obeyed the law could own guns. A man could speak out, anywhere,
without worrying about whether he'd get back home or not. School
was different, too. A man could send his kids to a church school,
or a private school, or even teach them at home. But even in the
public schools, they didn't spend all their time trying to
brainwash you like they do at yours now." The old man
paused, and was silent for many minutes. The boy was
still, watching a chipmunk scavenging beside a fallen
tree below them.
"Things don't ever happen all at once, boy. They just sort of
sneak up on you. Sure, we knew guns were important; we just
didn't think it would ever happen in America. But we had to do
something about crime, they said. It was a crisis. Everything
was a crisis! It was a drug crisis, or a terrorism crisis,
or street crime, or gang crime. Even a 'health care'
crisis was an excuse to take away a little more of our
rights." The old man turned to look at his grandson.
"They ever let you read a thing called the Constitution down there at
your school?" The boy solemnly shook his head. "Well, the Fourth
Amendment's still in there. It says there won't be any unreasonable
searches and seizures. It says you're safe in your own home." The old
man shrugged. "That had to go. It was a crisis! They could kick your
door open any time, day or night, and come in with guns blazing if they
thought you had drugs ...or later, guns. Oh, at first it was just
registration -- to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals! But that
didn't work, of course, and then later when they wanted to take 'em they
knew where to look. They banned 'assault rifles', and then 'sniper
rifles', and 'Saturday night specials.' Everything you saw on the TV or
in the movies was against us. God knows the news people were! And the
schools were teaching our kids that nobody needed guns anymore. We tried
to take a stand, but we felt like the whole face of our country had
changed and we were left outside."
"Me and a friend of mine, when we saw what was happening, we came
and built a secret place up here on the mountain. A place where
we could put our guns until we needed them. We figured some day
Americans would remember what it was like to be free, and what
kind of price we had to pay for that freedom. So we hid our
guns instead of losing them."
"One fellow I knew disagreed. He said we ought to use our guns now
and stand up to the government. Said that the colonists had
fought for their freedom when the British tried to disarm them at
Lexington and Concord. Well, he and a lot of others died in what
your history books call the 'Tax Revolt of 1998,' but son, it
wasn't the revolt that caused the repeal of the Second Amendment
like your history book says. The Second Amendment was already gone
long before they ever repealed it. The rest of us thought we were
doing the right thing by waiting. I hope to God we were right."
"You see, Thomas. It isn't government that makes a man free. In the end,
governments always do just the opposite. They gobble up freedom like
hungry pigs. You have to have laws to keep the worst in men under
control, but at the same time the people have to have guns, too, in
order to keep the government itself under control. In our country, the
people were supposed to be the final authority of the law, but that was
a long time ago. Once the guns were gone, there was no reason for those
who run the government to give a damn about laws and constitutional
rights and such. They just did what they pleased and anyone who spoke
out...well, I'm getting ahead of myself."
"It took a long time to collect up all the millions of firearms
that were in private hands. The government created a whole new
agency to see to it. There were rewards for turning your friends
in, too. Drug dealers and murderers were set free after two
or three years in prison, but possession of a gun would
get you mandatory life behind bars with no parole.
"I don't know how they found out about me, probably knew I'd been
a hunter all those years, or maybe somebody turned me in. They
picked me up on suspicion and took me down to the federal
building."
"Son, those guys did everything they could think of to
me. Kept me locked up in this little room for hours, no food, no
water. They kept coming in, asking me where the guns were. 'What
guns?' I said. Whenever I'd doze off, they'd come crashing in,
yelling and hollering. I got to where I didn't know which end was
up. I'd say I wanted my lawyer and they'd laugh. 'Lawyers are for
criminals', they said. 'You'll get a lawyer after we get the
guns.' What's so funny is, I know they thought they were doing
the right thing. They were fighting crime!"
"When I got home I found Ruth sitting in the middle of the living
room floor, crying her eyes out. The house was a shambles. While I
was down there, they'd come out and took our house apart. Didn't
need a search warrant, they said. National emergency! Gun crisis!
Your grandma tried to call our preacher and they ripped the phone
off the wall. Told her that they'd go easy on me if she just told
them where I kept my guns." The old man laughed. "She told them
to go to hell." He stared into the distance for a moment as his
laughter faded.
"They wouldn't tell her about me, where I was or anything, that whole
time. She said that she'd thought I was dead. She never got over that
day, and she died the next December."
"They've been watching me ever since, off and on. I guess there's
not much for them to do anymore, now that all the guns are gone.
Plenty of time to watch one foolish old man." He paused. Beside
him, the boy stared at the stone beneath his feet.
"Anyway, I figure that, one day, America will come to her senses.
Our men will need those guns and they'll be ready. We cleaned them
and sealed them up good; they'll last for years. Maybe it won't be
in your lifetime, Thomas. Maybe one day you'll be sitting here
with your son or grandson. Tell him about me, boy. Tell him about
the way I said America used to be." The old man stood, his bad leg
shaking unsteadily beneath him.
"You see the way this stone points? You follow that line one
hundred feet down the hill and you'll find a big round
rock. It looks like it's buried solid, but one man with
a good prybar can lift it, and there's a concrete tunnel right
under there that goes back into the hill."
The old man stood, watching as the sun eased toward the ridge,
coloring the sky and the world red. Below them, the river still
splashed among the stones, as it had for a million years. It's
still going, the old man thought. There'll be someone left to
carry on for me when I'm gone. It was harder to walk back. He
felt old and purposeless now, and it would be easier, he knew, to
give in to that aching heaviness in his left lung that had begun
to trouble him more and more. Damn cigarettes, he thought. His
leg hurt, and the boy silently came up beside him and supported
him as they started down the last mile toward the house. How
quiet he walks, the old man thought. He's learned well.
It was almost dark when the boy walked in. His father looked up
from his paper. "Did you and your granddad have a nice walk?"
"Yes," the boy answered, opening the refrigerator. "You can call
Agent Goodwin tomorrow. Gramps finally showed me where it is."
by Raymond K. Paden
The old man walked slowly through the dry, fallen leaves of
autumn, his practiced eye automatically choosing the bare and
stony places in the trail for his feet. There was scarcely a
sound as he passed, though his left knee was stiff with scar
tissue. He grunted occasionally as the tight sinews pulled. Damn
chainsaw, he thought.
Behind him, the boy shuffled along, trying to imitate his
grandfather, but unable to mimic the silent motion that the old
man had learned during countless winter days upon this wooded
mountain in pursuit of game. He's fifteen years old, the old man
thought. Plenty old enough to be learning. But that was another
time, another America. His mind drifted, and he saw himself, a
fifteen-year-old boy following in the footsteps of his own
grandfather, clutching a twelve gauge in his trembling hands as
they tracked a wounded whitetail.
The leg was hurting worse now, and he slowed his pace a bit.
Plenty of time. It should have been my own son here with me now,
the old man thought sadly. But Jason had no interest, no
understanding. He cared for nothing but pounding on the keys of
that damned computer terminal. He knew nothing about the
woods, or where food came from...or freedom. And
that's my fault, isn't it?
The old man stopped and held up his hand, motioning for the boy to
look. In the small clearing ahead, the deer stood motionless,
watching them. It was a scraggly buck, underfed and sickly, but
the boy's eyes lit up with excitement. It had been many years
since they had seen even a single whitetail here on the mountain.
After the hunting had stopped, the population had exploded. The
deer had eaten the mountain almost bare until erosion had become
a serious problem in some places. That following winter, three
starving does had wandered into the old man's yard, trying to eat
the bark off of his pecan trees, and he had wished the "animal
rights" fanatics could have been there then. It was against the
law, but old man knew a higher law, and he took an axe into the
yard and killed the starving beasts. They did not have
the strength to run.
The buck finally turned and loped away, and they continued down
the trail to the river. When they came to the "Big Oak," the old
man turned and pushed through the heavy brush beside the
trail and the boy followed, wordlessly. The old man knew that
Thomas was curious about their leaving the trail, but the boy had
learned to move silently (well, almost) and that meant no
talking. When they came to "Coffin Rock," the old man sat down
upon it and motioned for the boy to join him.
"You see this rock, shaped like a casket?" the old man asked. "Yes
sir." The old man smiled. The boy was respectful and polite. He
loved the outdoors, too. Everything a man could ask in a grandson
...or a son.
"I want you to remember this place, and what I'm about to tell you.
A lot of it isn't going to make any sense to you, but it's important
and one day you'll understand it well enough. The old man paused. Now
that he was here, he didn't really know where to start.
"Before you were born," he began at last, "this country was
different. I've told you about hunting, about how everybody who
obeyed the law could own guns. A man could speak out, anywhere,
without worrying about whether he'd get back home or not. School
was different, too. A man could send his kids to a church school,
or a private school, or even teach them at home. But even in the
public schools, they didn't spend all their time trying to
brainwash you like they do at yours now." The old man
paused, and was silent for many minutes. The boy was
still, watching a chipmunk scavenging beside a fallen
tree below them.
"Things don't ever happen all at once, boy. They just sort of
sneak up on you. Sure, we knew guns were important; we just
didn't think it would ever happen in America. But we had to do
something about crime, they said. It was a crisis. Everything
was a crisis! It was a drug crisis, or a terrorism crisis,
or street crime, or gang crime. Even a 'health care'
crisis was an excuse to take away a little more of our
rights." The old man turned to look at his grandson.
"They ever let you read a thing called the Constitution down there at
your school?" The boy solemnly shook his head. "Well, the Fourth
Amendment's still in there. It says there won't be any unreasonable
searches and seizures. It says you're safe in your own home." The old
man shrugged. "That had to go. It was a crisis! They could kick your
door open any time, day or night, and come in with guns blazing if they
thought you had drugs ...or later, guns. Oh, at first it was just
registration -- to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals! But that
didn't work, of course, and then later when they wanted to take 'em they
knew where to look. They banned 'assault rifles', and then 'sniper
rifles', and 'Saturday night specials.' Everything you saw on the TV or
in the movies was against us. God knows the news people were! And the
schools were teaching our kids that nobody needed guns anymore. We tried
to take a stand, but we felt like the whole face of our country had
changed and we were left outside."
"Me and a friend of mine, when we saw what was happening, we came
and built a secret place up here on the mountain. A place where
we could put our guns until we needed them. We figured some day
Americans would remember what it was like to be free, and what
kind of price we had to pay for that freedom. So we hid our
guns instead of losing them."
"One fellow I knew disagreed. He said we ought to use our guns now
and stand up to the government. Said that the colonists had
fought for their freedom when the British tried to disarm them at
Lexington and Concord. Well, he and a lot of others died in what
your history books call the 'Tax Revolt of 1998,' but son, it
wasn't the revolt that caused the repeal of the Second Amendment
like your history book says. The Second Amendment was already gone
long before they ever repealed it. The rest of us thought we were
doing the right thing by waiting. I hope to God we were right."
"You see, Thomas. It isn't government that makes a man free. In the end,
governments always do just the opposite. They gobble up freedom like
hungry pigs. You have to have laws to keep the worst in men under
control, but at the same time the people have to have guns, too, in
order to keep the government itself under control. In our country, the
people were supposed to be the final authority of the law, but that was
a long time ago. Once the guns were gone, there was no reason for those
who run the government to give a damn about laws and constitutional
rights and such. They just did what they pleased and anyone who spoke
out...well, I'm getting ahead of myself."
"It took a long time to collect up all the millions of firearms
that were in private hands. The government created a whole new
agency to see to it. There were rewards for turning your friends
in, too. Drug dealers and murderers were set free after two
or three years in prison, but possession of a gun would
get you mandatory life behind bars with no parole.
"I don't know how they found out about me, probably knew I'd been
a hunter all those years, or maybe somebody turned me in. They
picked me up on suspicion and took me down to the federal
building."
"Son, those guys did everything they could think of to
me. Kept me locked up in this little room for hours, no food, no
water. They kept coming in, asking me where the guns were. 'What
guns?' I said. Whenever I'd doze off, they'd come crashing in,
yelling and hollering. I got to where I didn't know which end was
up. I'd say I wanted my lawyer and they'd laugh. 'Lawyers are for
criminals', they said. 'You'll get a lawyer after we get the
guns.' What's so funny is, I know they thought they were doing
the right thing. They were fighting crime!"
"When I got home I found Ruth sitting in the middle of the living
room floor, crying her eyes out. The house was a shambles. While I
was down there, they'd come out and took our house apart. Didn't
need a search warrant, they said. National emergency! Gun crisis!
Your grandma tried to call our preacher and they ripped the phone
off the wall. Told her that they'd go easy on me if she just told
them where I kept my guns." The old man laughed. "She told them
to go to hell." He stared into the distance for a moment as his
laughter faded.
"They wouldn't tell her about me, where I was or anything, that whole
time. She said that she'd thought I was dead. She never got over that
day, and she died the next December."
"They've been watching me ever since, off and on. I guess there's
not much for them to do anymore, now that all the guns are gone.
Plenty of time to watch one foolish old man." He paused. Beside
him, the boy stared at the stone beneath his feet.
"Anyway, I figure that, one day, America will come to her senses.
Our men will need those guns and they'll be ready. We cleaned them
and sealed them up good; they'll last for years. Maybe it won't be
in your lifetime, Thomas. Maybe one day you'll be sitting here
with your son or grandson. Tell him about me, boy. Tell him about
the way I said America used to be." The old man stood, his bad leg
shaking unsteadily beneath him.
"You see the way this stone points? You follow that line one
hundred feet down the hill and you'll find a big round
rock. It looks like it's buried solid, but one man with
a good prybar can lift it, and there's a concrete tunnel right
under there that goes back into the hill."
The old man stood, watching as the sun eased toward the ridge,
coloring the sky and the world red. Below them, the river still
splashed among the stones, as it had for a million years. It's
still going, the old man thought. There'll be someone left to
carry on for me when I'm gone. It was harder to walk back. He
felt old and purposeless now, and it would be easier, he knew, to
give in to that aching heaviness in his left lung that had begun
to trouble him more and more. Damn cigarettes, he thought. His
leg hurt, and the boy silently came up beside him and supported
him as they started down the last mile toward the house. How
quiet he walks, the old man thought. He's learned well.
It was almost dark when the boy walked in. His father looked up
from his paper. "Did you and your granddad have a nice walk?"
"Yes," the boy answered, opening the refrigerator. "You can call
Agent Goodwin tomorrow. Gramps finally showed me where it is."
by Raymond K. Paden
Thomas sat alone upon the cold stone, shivering slightly in the chilly pre-dawn air of this April morning. The flashlight was turned off, resting beside him on the bare granite of Coffin Rock, and involuntarily he strained his eyes in the gray non-light of the false dawn, trying to make out the shapes of the trees, and the mountains across the river. Below, he could hear the chuckling of the water as it crossed the polished stones. How many times had he fished there, his grandfather beside him?
He tried to shrug away the memories, but why else had he come here except to remember? Perhaps to escape the inevitable confrontation with his mother. She would have to be told sooner or later, but Thomas infinitely preferred later.
"Mom, I
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