Joshua Gates was never much for people.  He preferred the symbiotic relationship between the raw chunks of lumber and the craftsman modifying them into something beautiful.  He enjoyed the give and take of the effort put in and the beauty the wood revealed.  The wood never got petty or jealous.  It never allowed a finished product to escape without hours of meticulous measurements, cuts, drilling, fitting, sanding, refitting, re-sanding.  In one of his previous lives-not the metaphysical, “I was Joan of Arc”type of life, you see Joshua had grown to call the various stages of growth as previous lives-the furniture maker’s son liked to think that people ended up like wood blanks in the work shop.  The good ones that grew straight and true were destined to be made into something greater than themselves.  Some bits used here as a table leg, others used there as a desk top, but all were used for something beneficial.  As for the crooked, knotty-pun intended-bits?  Well, some of them had some use in the furniture society but most were used as fodder for the wood stove or simply left on the forest floor neglected until time saw fit to recycle them into the next generation of lumber.  But as I said, that was a previous life and the reality eventually hit that people are not bits of wood.  Joshua learned early in life that human beings come armed with a powerful tool that mother nature did not empower trees with, for better or worse.  Gates ended one of his lives, or I could say had it ended for him, when he discovered the power of deceit.
    Young Mr. Gates was in the fall of his childhood, that tender place where the boys and girls want to be called men and women while grandmothers still refer to them as their babies.  Franklin Gates would soon be celebrating twenty-five loyal years of service to the local textile mill.  There was talk for some months before, that the big shots from the head office were taking covert tours of the plan.  When anyone asked, they were assured the tours were only security evaluations.  Nothing to worry about.  Eight days before the company was going to reward the furniture maker’s years of service with a clock he could have easily made in less than a day the doors were locked.  One week later the building was gone and the first prefab house was placed six days after that with five more on the way.  Four months after the factory closed Mr. Gates was three months behind on the mortgage payment.  Two, father and son, survived on barely enough for one.  In order to save his house Franklin had to sell his beloved 1965 Ford F-150 for just enough to keep the bank at bay and to feed his child(who had grown accustomed to bread sandwiches and Ramen noodles.)
    The Gates weren’t the only family to fall upon hard times when the mill closed its doors.  Nearly half of the town lost at least one if not two or more sources of income after the buy out.  Sam McGinley worked beside Franklin for nearly ten years.  Luckily for them his wife Martha took a job at the mega mart in the next town just weeks before closing.  No family was hit quite as hard as the Gates however.  While most could rely on income from either the mega mart or the foundry, a few miles away, the furniture maker and his son were alone.  In fact it was the only time in his life that young Joshua Gates ever wondered about his mother.  It seemed that the town also realized for the first time that father and son had only each other for support and offered to lend them a collective hand by having pot luck dinners.  Mr. Gates, seeing their charity through the veil of kindness attended several such dinners.  However, it was only after the one time he sent Joshua by himself, wanting nothing else than to make sure his son did not go hungry.  Because he was never one for social situations, especially those involving idle conversation, Joshua simply walked in the door, laid down the plate of beef on the table, and offered his apologies that he couldn’t stay.  The next morning the hostess sent her daughter to the Gates house with all of the leftovers, including the plate of steaks that were untouched save for one small bite taken by an overzealous youngster.        Franklin made sure from then on that he and Joshua would go together with the finest food the furniture maker’s modest culinary skills could conjure.  Both father and son would have rather spent the uncomfortable hours at the neighbors houses in the wood shop honing their skills but neither could deny their ever hungry stomachs.    Feeling it would be in bad taste to not have a community supper in his home Mr. Gates invited the neighborhood to a Fourth of July Barbeque.  All the usual suspects were there and Franklin even invited a few strangers who happened by to come inside for food and drink.  Joshua hated having so many people crowded in the house, poking around, invading his space.  As soon as he could find a moment after he had eaten the furniture maker’s son made his way through the kitchen, across the backyard, and into the sanctuary of the shed.    Jonathan had just put the finishing touches on a bamboo fly rod he and his father started a few months back when his privacy was once again invaded.  The double doors on the first floor of the work shop swung open and the small space was immediately filled with the odor of a German beer hall in October.  Two men followed his father through the doors.
    “I wondered where you got too.  Give us a hand with some seats for everyone.  They’ve decided to stay and watch the fireworks from the backyard.”    Joshua was happy to see his father happy, and even happier when he realized that he wasn’t the one responsible for the odor of barley and hops that wafted into the shop, but now the strangers were advancing closer to his final place of refuge.  He was about to put down his work and lend a reluctant hand when the man who came in last asked him about it.
    “Say boy, that’s some good lookin’ rod,” slurred the strange man.  Sam McGinley followed with a question of his own.    
    “Yeah, what is that?  A Fenwick?”  Before Franklin of Joshua could correct him the stranger, still slurring, got out,
    “That musta been some expensive pole Frank.  Must’ve boughten in before the plant closed down, ehh.”
    Joshua knew his father well enough to know that the man made him cringe inside when he called him Frank, and again when he mentioned the plant.  Ever watchful of his emotions the furniture maker cooly replied,
    “Actually, Bob Joshua and I started ‘er from scratch two months back.  Well, I got him started and he did it all on his own.  Pretty good first try, huh.”
    Normally when his father complimented his work he was thrilled, but not this time.  To him it felt cheapened to have his father use his craftsmanship to coddle the musings of a drunk stranger.  Like most drunks who think they’re right the man did not let it go at that.  The man ripped the bamboo rod out of the boy’s hand and, almost yelling, said,
    “No way that little runt...”  Franklin had enough and in a rare show of strength grabbed the man in his calloused hands forcing him to drop his sons carefully crafted fishing equipment and turned the man out of the shed and to the gate in the fence surrounding the house.    
    “I think it’s time you got home Bob.”  
    The furniture maker’s outburst of protective anger came and went like a flash of heat lightning on the darkest of nights.  The tone in his voice when he told the man to leave seemed almost concerned, like the way you tell someone else’s child that they had better get home so they don’t miss supper.  As the man stumbled down the street grasping his arms in pain Franklin turned to find most of his guests facing him in a mix of confusion and fright.  After assuring them it was nothing he excused himself to find seating for them while they enjoyed the fireworks.    When he got back to the shop, that was really more of a converted barn, the furniture maker found his son leading the remaining volunteers through a maze of chairs, tables, desks, benches, and all sorts of wooden odds and ends that had sat dormant for years.  Mr. Gates explained that wood working had been a hobby of his for years but he never knew what to do with the finished works.  He got his answer when the neighbors awaiting a seat saw Franklin Gates idea of lawn furniture.  Instead of the flimsy metal and nylon mesh they were expecting, the neighbors were treated to ornate, sturdy, and surprisingly comfortable works of art.  So impressed with his work were most that if not for the booming of the first round of pyrotechnics they would have spent the evening admiring the furniture maker’s attention to detail.    And so it goes that Franklin found freedom from foreboding financial failure on Independence Day.  Gate’s Furniture was born.  He sold ten outdoor lounge chairs, two side-by-sides, a swing, two kitchen sets, and a bunk bed that first night.  Not one person paid what they offered.  The not-so-business-savvy furniture maker wouldn’t accept it.  Most paid less than half what they offered which was less than the cost of the wood that went into their chosen items.        Deciding that every business needs a proper sign, not to mention inventory,  Franklin Gates took the money he made that first night and bought wood and supplies for his new venture.  Making it difficult was the fact that he had no transportation, and never wanting to impose, the furniture maker used Joshua’s old Radio Flyer to make the three two-mile round trips to the lumber yard.    Joshua watched his father labor over the sign for hours.  He seemed more concentrated on the sign than anything else that Joshua watched him construct.  There was a queer smile on the furniture makers face that his son seemed to remember from a long gone past life.  Franklin made two painstakingly identical signs.  One for the front gate and another to hang over the double barn doors.  After much discussion with himself the furniture maker decided his business should be called Gates Furniture and Other Fine Wood Working.  The word “Gates” was made from raw logs cut to form the letters just like so many New England summer camps.  The rest was written in immaculate calligraphy under the name; which Joshua was certain only came out with the help of divine intervention having had read his fathers handwriting.    
    All that night the furniture maker and his son busied themselves creating a showroom out of the chaotic stacks of furniture.  Hours of labor and inspiration from prefabricated Swedish furniture magazines ended with a rather respectable store front.  Sacrificing his well tended lawn Franklin Gates even painted precisely measured parking spaces in front of the house.    When all that could be done was done the partners-the Furniture Maker made sure his son knew he would be paid for everything he sold-retired to the kitchen to finish off the Fourth of July sauerkraut.  The Furniture Maker offered his son a beer to celebrate their new endeavor.  They both decided against it.
    The first few days were slow.  Mostly neighbors stopping in to wish them well.  The following weeks and months saw a steady increase in paying customers.  When Joshua started his ninth year of school all he could think about was getting home to lend a hand at Gates Furniture and Other Fine Wood Working.  His math teacher actually sat behind a large oak desk, he helped his father build years ago.        Norman Rockwell could not have imagined a more old fashioned American scene to capture in his oils: father and son in matching denim overalls working side by side, saw dust covering their tussled hair.  Joshua even overcame his shyness, as he did a good deal of the sales man duties.  In shop class he was a god(mostly because anyone in his group was assured an A.)  It’s fair to say that people who once acted kind out of pity were now genuinely happy to know the Furniture Maker and his son.    The prosperity of Gates Furniture did not change everything for the best.  Within two years the waiting list was so long that Franklin decided to take on two apprentices to get caught up with the waiting list.  The youngest, Riley, claimed to be a skilled craftsman looking for a summer job between semesters and the tech school just outside of the city.  He may have been able to fix a transmission but when Franklin asked him to get some more biscuits for a wardrobe he was working on, Riley made for the kitchen.  The Furniture Maker, having known the struggle and humiliation of unemployment, kept the 23-year-old until classes started.  The other apprentice did know his way around the wood ship.  He also found his way around the cash register.  It turned out that the man was recently paroled from the state prison.  It was his good work in the prison shop that got him released early.  Never one to over react Franklin Gates dismissed the man with a kindly warning.  
    “If I see you around town again,” he told the man, “you’ll wish you were still showering with murderers and rapists.”  
    Franklin never raised his voice or gave up his cool demeanor.  He was, however, wielding a very threatening red-hot wood burning pen.  The man took off so fast he could have run across water.    The iron bond between father and son could not go unchanged either.  In the years that passed since opening, Joshua learned once again to make friends and had grown quite close to them.  The demands at the shop didn’t afford him the luxury of doing much with friends outside of school.  Through junior year the Furniture Maker’s son only went to two football haves and one dance.  Even after the incident with the two apprentices Franklin allowed, even urged his son to live a normal 17-year-olds life.    
    “I think the dust and fumes have gone to your head,” he told his son.    “When I was your age, I couldn’t wait to go terrorize the town,” which was probably because the Furniture Maker was dodging bullets in Vietnam when he was 17.
    Though the invitation was there, the teenager in Joshua chose to live in his self-made prison of being the dutiful son.    Something new was growing in young Gates.  Something that frightened him.  It scared him that it felt good.  The young furniture maker was harboring a deep resentment for the Furniture Maker.  Joshua resented Franklin for being so kind.  He resented him for being proud.  The Furniture Maker’s son resented the Furniture Maker’s success.  The son resented the father’s undying, never wavering love.  Deep within Joshua burned a fire.  Each day working with his father was a dry pine log thrown on the hot coals.  Sparking, burning bright, hot and fast.  While Joshua lay in bed waiting for sleep, he thought: Tomorrow, Tomorrow I tell him what’s burning inside me.  Tomorrow.  But tomorrow never came.  When he woke, it was always today and he was left with the smouldering coals of yesterday.  Joshua eventually got used to the suppressed feeling, so much so that he nearly forgot them.        For Joshua’s 18th birthday the furniture maker took him to a baseball game and a dinner in a cliche steak house.  Neither of them realized that it was the first thing they had done together that didn’t involve woodworking.  They mostly talked shop during the two-hour drive to the ball park.  Clients, vendors, accounts receivable/payable; not exactly casual father-son chit-chat.  On the walk from the truck to the ticket booth the conversation finally turned to baseball.
    “We got a pretty good team this year.” started the father.    
    “Yeah, maybe we’ll finally beat the Sox in the world series.” said the son taking his turn in the discussion.  
    The father took his turn, “Hope so.”  
    Both struggling with what came next Joshua broke the painful silence.    
    “Gym teacher says I should try out for the baseball team.”  Franklin wasn’t sure how to react because his son never talked about much that happened outside of the work shop.    
    “Oh yeah,” was the best he could come up with.    
    “Told him I’m more comfortable spinning bats than swinging ‘em.”    
    The forced laugh from Mr. Gates’s diaphragm was the last sound either directed at the other until well past half way on the ride home.  Franklin Gates spent the entire game and meal trying to recall when he taught Joshua to throw a ball or swing a bat.  It was about half way home when he decided that he hadn’t.
    “You know I’m proud of you, right?”
    “Huh?”  Joshua heard, he was unsure what to say.
    “I know I haven’t been the best father.  You had to do most of your growing up by yourself.  I’ve treated you like more of an employee than a son the last few years.”
    Franklin knew what he said wasn’t entirely true but he hoped the admission would help heal his relationship with his son.  Joshua was still a teenager and reacted as such.  Someone began stoking the fire inside of him just enough that the coals glowed a fierce orange.
    “What are you talking about, you’ve always been there for me.  I’ve always been clothed, fed.  Always had shelter.  Even when you lost your job you made sure I never went hungry, even though I know you went days sometimes with nothing to eat.  You’re a good father.”
    “Those are things aren’t fatherly jobs.  A father teaches his son how to throw a perfect spiral.  He teaches you how to shave and talk to girls.  You had to learn the important stuff about being a man on your own.  I’m sorry son.”    
    For the first time in his life the furniture maker’s son saw his father cry as a single tear spilled out of his right eye.  Part of Joshua wanted to comfort the unfamiliar looking man sitting beside him but a storm was building in the 18-year-old.  The time had come for the young man to crassly sabotage his bond with his father.    
    “You know what, you’re right,” Joshua’s normally alkaline throat had a difficult time getting the acid tone of his words to pass the threshold to the tongue and past the teeth.  The Furniture Maker sat silent.    
    “You never did a goddamn thing to make me into a man.  You were always too busy making sure that no one saw you as a charity case.  My first sex talk was with the thieving pedophile you hired.  I got made fun of for years because you never thought to make sure I was having a normal childhood.  So you’re just going to sit there and say nothing because you know I’m right and heaven forbid you show even the slightest sign of being wrong or weak.”    
    Like a storm rolling across the Nevada desert the thunder and lightning made themselves present just before the rain as Joshua began to cry silently, too proud to let his father see.  As they sped along the dark highway with only the occasional street light to betray their twisted faces they sat in deafening silence.  Father and son both knew there was no going back.  It’s an appropriate coincidence that their relationship was slain the day that Joshua was officially recognized as a man.
    The sun rose the next day for the rest of the world but in the Gates house the dark cloud of the previous night hung in the air like a million vampire bats waiting for an intruder to swarm.  The Furniture Maker prepared breakfast as usual but this morning he started his work early as if smoothing a desk tip might somehow smooth the gap between he and his son.    In school Joshua thought for the first time what he was to do after graduating high school.  It was always assumed he would continue working in the shop.  He knew that was no longer an option.  Even in they some how worked things out Joshua knew, he could never again work so closely with the man he tore apart the night before.    Joshua decided he would move with a friend to Vermont and look for work.  He had enough money saved to support himself for a few months while he searched for a job.  With graduation just around the corner the dominos were in place.  The Furniture Maker’s son would be on his own.  He couldn’t decide if he should focus on the fright or the excitement so he chose a middle road and felt excitedly frightened.        While Joshua was concerning himself with things to come, Franklin was replaying things that had once been.  The Furniture Maker spent more of his time in the work shop in reverie than filling orders.  He would wander aimlessly around the show room until he came across a piece of Joshua’s handiwork and stood running his rough fingers over it, feeling every intricate detail.  Joshua had become a ghost and the Furniture Maker thought he could somehow feel him in his work.  For the first time since his son came along Franklin Gates was alone and no amount of sweat and elbow grease could take his mind off the fact.  The poor Furniture Maker, who was looking decades older than he did a month ago, had no idea how truly alone he would soon be.  Joshua left for Vermont a week after graduation.  Joshua left for Vermont a week after telling his father he was leaving.
    Joshua didn’t have to live on his savings for long.  He responded to an ad by a lumber mill in the paper looking for an able-bodied laborer.  The foreman took one look at Joshua’s calloused hands and offered him the job.  Being more than a half an hour away from his friend’s university, Joshua used most of his savings to pay a years rent in an apartment nearer the mill and bought an old truck to get to and from work.    In the years to come, young Gates moved his way up the ladder and made enough to buy a house(with an old barn in the back yard that he turned into a respectable work shop.)  It was exactly five years to the day as a matter of fact, after he moved away, when he finished restoring the old house and barn.    It was five years to the day for the Furniture Maker’s son, but not for the Furniture Maker.  It seems that he could only fight his respiratory problems for four years, three hundred and sixty-four days.  The letter informing him of his fathers death was brief and had no post mark.        Gates anticipated a tsunami of guilt to engulf him.  It didn’t come.  He was shocked that he was not shocked by the news.  Instead, he felt like someone mourning the death of a favorite celebrity.  The grief was there but try as he might it would never overwhelm him.  Joshua’s heart had become as calloused as his hands.
    The late Furniture Maker’s son was surprised to find so few mourners at the funeral.  Only the McGinleys and rod snatching Bob stood beside the coffin.  A brief stab of pain surged in Joshua as he got closer to the casket.  He thought how much better the box could have looked if he had built it.  The box that held the earthly remains of what used to be the Furniture Maker, Mr. Franklin Gates.  The surviving furniture maker never really thought about death in the eternal sense but when he did he always pictured the cliche image of a rain-soaked sea of black surrounding the coffin with a robed priest leading archaic chants and incantations over the body.  The scene was quite the opposite.  It was a beautiful clear day that many lives ago Joshua would have used to build a cabin or catch minnows in the stream that played behind his childhood home.  The puddle of mourners didn’t have a team uniform of black.  In fact, Mrs. McGinley was dressed quite vibrantly.  There was a priest but he appeared to be more like a steward directing airline passenger’s attention to the front and side exits than a holy man guiding a soul into the afterlife.        The priest informed Joshua that since he was the only next of kin and Franklin Gates made no will that everything would go to him.  Joshua sat outside of his fathers home for nearly two hours trying to decide if he should go in.  He did not.  The house would sit undisturbed for many years.    Joshua returned to his uneventful life in Vermont.  It would remain uneventful for just under ten years.  Little changed in that time.  He became known for his skill in a wood shop and continued working his way up the ladder to mill foreman.  It wasn’t until a week after his thirty-third year that much would change for the furniture maker.
    In his fifteen years at the mill the only injuries were minor cuts, bruises, and of course, innumerable splinters.  The streak ended when an inept crane operator, strangely named Riley, dropped a log on an unbalanced stack of uncut five-thousand pound logs.  The damage was minor except for the crushed cranium of the man the heap fell on and subsequently rolled over.  It bothered Joshua because it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for an inquiry from a new employee that distracted him from directing the operator.  Joshua became particularly upset when he learned the identity of the deceased.  If Joshua believed in any sort of god he would, no doubt, have been asking how he/she/it could allow such a thing to happen.  Joshua would have been upset if anyone died on his watch, but this man had a particularly sad story surrounding his demise.    The man, Matthew was his name, came to Joshua a month before looking for a job.  He informed Matthew that they didn’t need anyone at the moment.  It could have ended at that but the man persisted.
    “Please, just a few hours a week.  I’ve gone everywhere and everyone says the same thing.  I need this job.”  Matthew seemed on the verge of tears.  Not being a pushover, Joshua assured the man that he didn’t need anyone new at the moment.
    “Please mister, I have a baby to raise.  My wife and I moved here from the city when we found out she was pregnant because we wanted our child to be raised in a safe environment.  The doctors assured us that the procedure was the safest thing for both of them.  I guess the umbilical chord was choking my son so they had to cut Sarah open.  My Sarah died from an infection a week after my son was born!”    Joshua thought Matthew’s tears were very convincing but the story was so fantastic that it was surely fake.  He took the man’s information and told him he would see what he could do.  Matthew left with a shower of “thank yous,” and “bless yous.”  That night the story happened to be in the newspaper.  Joshua called him offering a full-time position with benefits.  You can see how anyone in Joshua’s position would question faith.
    Joshua used the tragedy as a chance to become the father he never had.  After filling out the paper work and passing the proper background checks the furniture maker’s son became a father to forty-seven day old Anthony Matthew Gates.  Fatherhood came naturally to Joshua.  He learned quickly the subtleties between a hungry cry and a “changin’ time” cry.  Joshua took great pride in building his son’s crib.  In fact, it led him to spend more and more time in his work shop constructing things that his son could one day use.  With Anthony at his side Joshua gradually became a Furniture Maker, and the boy was soon able to stand at his side mimicking his fluid movements as he guided metal through wood at his will.  Anyone who chose to look could most always find the Furniture Maker and the Furniture Maker’s son covered in sawdust working on a piece of wooden art that would ultimately go unused.
    When Anthony was entering his eleventh year, Joshua decided to retire from the lumberyard so he could spend more time with his ever growing son.  To help assure they never went without, the Furniture Maker decided to open his very own furniture store.  Knowing that every business must have a proper sign Joshua set off to purchase the plywood and paint for such a project.  As it happened his truck, though usually reliable, was in the garage having a new radiator installed, so the Furniture Maker used Anthony’s old Radio Flyer to collect the supplies, and with his Anthony watching, Gates and Son was officially born.  Joshua put all of his concentration into the simple sign but he couldn’t help but reveal a bit of a satisfied grin.  Like a thief in the night a memory crept into the Furniture Makers conscious mind.  He remembered his father as he was working the sign for Gates Furniture and Other Fine Wood Work.  He remembered the grin on his father’s face.  He remembered that he saw it most of his life.  Every time Franklin Gates built something for or with him he saw that same smile flash across his face.  It dawned on the Furniture Maker that he was grinning the very same grin.  He grinned it when he built Anthony’s crib.  He grinned it every time he was working with his son.  It terrified Joshua.  It terrified him when he thought how he acted toward the man he now remembered he loved.  It terrified him to know that he had become that man, raising a son who would eventually become him.  Joshua vowed to himself he would never allow Anthony to feel like he was without a father.    Tomorrow.  Tomorrow he would make sure his son knew how much he loved him.  He would show him how to shave, throw a football, talk to girls.  Tomorrow he would make sure his son had a father.  But tomorrow never came.  He always woke up in today with yesterday reminding him what he has to do tomorrow.     Six thousand, five hundred nineteen days after the Furniture Maker brought his son home, he was alone.  No solace could be found in the work shop.
    Joshua entered his father’s house for the first time in thirty-three years, five weeks after his birthday(though he forgot it.)  He wasn’t sure what brought him there but he couldn’t stand to be in his won house alone.  He needed a home and his fathers is the only home he had left.  The furniture maker wandered around for hours, letting his rough fingers run over the wood, remembering his father in every intricate detail and subtle angle.    The wave of guilt that eluded Joshua at his fathers funeral finally struck and swallowed him up.  It rushed him through the kitchen, out the back door and dumped him at the double doors in the front of his father’s old workshop.  He stood in the threshold looking up at the disheveled sign his father labored over so contentedly.  Most of the writing had worn off and nearly all of the logs that spelled out “Gates” had fallen to the ground to rot or be devoured by termites.  He stood in the threshold not sure if he could go through.  Curiosity and another small wave of guilt nudged him through.    Joshua was eleven years old again.  He knew exactly where everything would be, and what to do with it.  He immediately set to work on a coffee table.  He decided the top should be a mirror.  He always meant to make one but never got around to it.  The Furniture Maker’s son worked through the night.  No plans were necessary.  He made hundreds of them in his many years as either a Furniture Maker or a Furniture Maker’s son.  Just as dawn was breaking and birds called folk to wake up Joshua was putting the finishing touches on yet another masterpiece.    The last seam was cleverly pulled tight and all that was left to do was to place the rectangular mirror in its place.    As he looked at the glass, he found himself looking at a stranger.  The man looking back at him was much older than Joshua remembered being.  Surely he would not have let his hair and beard get so unruly.  The wrinkles around his mouth and eyes were so deep he swore they went the whole way to the back of his head.  The Furniture Maker’s son was once again a lonely, haggard old Furniture Maker.    After being thrown back into reality Joshua remembered that something was out of place downstairs.  He thought he saw a large object standing in a dark corner before he was flashed back to happier times.  Joshua’s body creaked louder than the old stairs on his descent, as if all of his years hit him at once.  He reached the light switch by the doors feeling older than he ever felt before.    The lights always took a while to kick to life and they were especially reluctant to illuminate the scene after years of neglect.  The dim light of dawn allowed him to maneuver his way to the dark corner where he thought he saw the foreign object.  Reaching out he ran the old mans hand, that he was sure was not his own, over the smooth surface of the large object for a moment just before the lights flooded the room.    He thought back to his fathers, the late Furniture Maker, Mr. Franklin Gates’ funeral as he fell to his knees weeping.  Joshua remembered that the only thing that bothered him at the funeral was the shoddy craftsmanship of the coffin.  The Furniture Maker’s son’s tears made craters in the saw dust on the floor as he knelt facing the finest Walnut coffin he had ever seen.    His body was found the next day by some neighbors who were curious about the lights on in the old barn.  The Furniture Maker’s son was buried next to the Furniture Maker in the casket the Furniture Maker made for himself.  
    There were few in attendance.  
    The sun was shining.