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 pry bar 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
grand dad have a nice walk?"
"Yes," the boy answered, opening the
refrigerator. "You can call Agent Goodwin
tomorrow. Gramps finally showed me where it
is."
******************************
Editor's note: "Sundown at Coffin Rock" is a
work of fiction. Any similarity to actual
events or to actual people, living or dead,
REMAINS TO BE SEEN.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P-R-E-V-I-O-U-S - P-A-G-E
N-E-X-T - P-A-G-E
To the sequel:
"Sunrise At Coffin Rock"
