It is the middle of the afternoon, about three o’ clock. Two students are walking along a wooded path. It is a twisted path, leading this way and that, and is a popular place for people from the nearby college to spend hours ruminating over the mysteries of school, life, and the universe. The two students walk side by side and the woman on the left is shorter than the other. That one wears a pair of pink sweat pants and a yellow t-shirt. The taller woman has dark chestnut hair, long and tied back over her gray shirt and matching shorts.
“Hey Julie,” says Robin in the sweat pants.
“Yea,” says Julie in the shorts, then adds, “what?”
“What do you suppose that man over there is doing?” She points to the pond sixty feet away under the far-reaching limbs of the poplar trees. Their branches are ripe with a year’s worth of foliage, drooping low and ready to burst before the arrival of the autumn season. Leaves are reluctantly dying all around, settling on the surface of the water.
“He appears to be fishing,” says Julie. Robin and Julie slowly walk by the pond, both of them looking at the man sitting on the fallen tree on the far end of the pond. His shoes are absent and the sleeves of his shirt are also notably missing. It is difficult to see his face as he is looking downward toward the water with great intensity.
“He looks to be in thrall. Are people mesmerized by fishing?”
“It’s possible.”
They approach the man and eventually stop, lightly catching their breath so as to not appear to need to breathe.
Julie is the first to regain her voice, and asks, “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know. Watching a man catch fish?” says Robin.
Julie looks at Robin and shakes her head. “Well, he’s not catching fish. He’s just sitting there.”
“So we’re watching a man sit, then,” says Julie.
“In a manner of speaking, but look at his hands. They are sorrowful hands.”
“He does seem despondent. Perhaps he intends to jump in.”
“Because his lover left him. Yes, I see it in the slump of his shoulders. He needs human sympathy. A sign that he is a member of the human comedy.”
Julie smiles and says, “Yes. Let’s inquire.”
They approach the young man sitting on a fallen tree alongside the pond.
“Excuse me, sir?” says Robin. The man turns to look at the two women standing behind him.
“Yea?” he says.
“May we ask, what are you doing?”
The young man looks forward again, then lowers his eyes to his pole. He turns back and lifts his fishing pole higher
“What’s it look like?” he says. They shrug.
“Contemplating suicide?”
“Grieving?”
He looks at them, turns back to the water, and points.
“I lost my shoes.”
Robin chuckles. “Goodness, we thought you were despondent over the loss of a woman.”
“I’m alright with that,” he says. “I just don’t see why she had to go and throw my shoes into the water.”