I need comment: do these first words make the reader want to read more?
Cast the First Stone
I took a walk along the historic coast of California. The sky was blue, a warm offshore breeze smelled of sea salt… a good day for strolling along the seashore. I stopped to watch the people below. A mother with child played tag with the surf. Some people were sleeping; some of them would remain sleeping forever. Further out where the waves start braking, two men on surfboards made ready to stand, and challenge the sea…one would be taken, one would be left. Death was everywhere. They didn’t understand this.
On the highway above the path cars loaded with college student waved as they sped by. They seemed happy. They were young, a time when life is free, and there is no ending in sight. Some, maybe all of them were dead, but they didn’t know it. From somewhere over the top of the ridge, on the other side of the road the sound of church bells summed those who gave their fear of death, and hope of life, to those who greeted them with a smile, the proclaimed teachers of God’s word, the ticklers of ears with empty promises of salvation from death, and life in the unseen heavens... Their hands were soft, and smooth as their voices, these ear ticklers. They did not have to work in the fields, the steel mills, or do the thousand other tasks normal men had to do daily. They talked of gathering more sheep before the end, and how the donations of the sheep would save many from death, and how God would reward their sacrifice of coin.
Near the end of the path I stopped and picked up a broken sea shell. The inside was smooth, and gave off different colors as you turned it. Whatever it was, had once been a living creature, and had died. I put it in my pocket. I don’t know why I wanted to keep it. The little wooden shack at the top of the path gave off the welcome smell of fried sea foods. Pete’s Fish N Chips. It was a friendly place…un-painted, weathered white by the sea air. As far any anybody knew, Pet’s Fish N Chips had always been there. Pete, or who had built the little fish shack was forgotten to time. Maybe there never was a Pete. The old timers who gather in front of the old shack to exchange tall tales, claim to have heard a story about an old Portuguese fishermen, who in eighteen eighty six was overtaken by a storm out of the north west, and his little fishing boat was broken to pieces on these very shores. They say maybe it was he who had built the shack from the wood from his battered boat. The south side of the shack was covered with hundreds of fish hooks. Somehow it became a custom with those who fished from the beach, to leave a hook on the weathered wood for King Neptune, if they were to be reward with fish. I started reading the names under the hooks, but the music coming from inside the smoke filled shack drew me away. I knew the voices singing, Voices from the past, Peter, Paul, and Mary. “Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing. Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago. Gone to graveyards everyone, oh when will they every learn, oh when will they ever learn…” The ear ticklers always bless the young men going off to forgotten wars; “God is with you. You serve for God, and country.” The ear ticklers are excused from this great service. It is only those who have not yet lived who are giving the honor of sitting down to lunch with darkness…for that is what is on the menu. Those did come home…turned their backs to the ear ticklers, and God. Something of who they were was lost on the battle fields with friends, and foe. All that was left for them was an answer, but first they had to find the question. “Where had all the soldiers gone, gone to graveyards everyone…”