Fugue # 53

Gene lets the silence surround them, like the day’s heat. He lays back.

- D’you know what?
- No, what?
- Mom and Dad have a pretty good life. Dad stays busy with work, and Mom, too. She’s always doing something - enough that she says she doesn’t have time to think.
- Unlike you...

Paul pulls a straw from the haystack, holds it absently, rolls it between his fingers, puts it in his mouth. Gene watches Paul, turns away and exhales.

- Unlike me. Who lays next to this one haystack, in the middle of this field of haystacks. In the middle of all these other fields of haystacks. Miles and miles of fields and haystacks. Do you see?

He gestures across the landscape, raises his eyebrows, then lowers them into a half-scowl and continues.

- I’m pretty insignificant. And here I am. Thinking about that. Thinking, because I have nothing else to do.
- But everybody’s like that. Everybody feels that way. I do.
- Do Mom and Dad?
- Maybe. I don’t know what they feel or think. And neither do you.
- Yeah? Let me tell you: They don’t think. If they did, you’d know. Something would show, or change.