Abe
"The quiet, small country town wasn't much. Bright fields stretched out across the sunny landscape, a few docile cows, a few run down factories, lined with rust and metal.
Not much happened around there. People came and went, young folks, old folks, the town just kept going.
Sy was fourteen, a handsome brown-haired young boy, and lived out on a small farm, thirty acres, had a few family around, and not much else.
He was talking to Abe recently, a friend of the family, or something like that, they all agreed. Abe was forty seven, a little shorter than Sy, and mostly bald.
He had been taken to a factory recently, something about the way he thought, or the career he was prepared for.
Abe had been quiet and dumb, Sy thought, but reasonably normal. He was acting strange when he got back from the factory up the road.
Soft spoken as usual, but he had a hard glint noticeable in his eye. Something seemed a little off about him.
They sat there on the front porch of the farmhouse, three of them, and were curious to Abe about where he'd been.
China, Sy's cute, a little bit older, a little bit overweight, cousin saw it too.
'Well Abe, you get a job or not?'
China laughed.
He wouldn't say. Something about preparatory work, something about getting a career down the road. He mumbled and fumbled, hands in his pockets, kind of sheepish about the questions.
Everything he said seemed to be a little clipped and automatic. Even his movements were the same way, planned, and as if given permission right before they happened.
Abe was like some kind of robot. An algorithm, based on that principle, an entity like that...
Sy never spoke to Abe too much anymore, and Abe never came around quite as often, but Sy remembered Abe. Something about Abe seemed right, gone wrong.
Those factories kept putting up flyers now and then, and selecting people, too. But Sy never paid them any mind. He saw Abe go in, and he didn't want to be like that, too.
Sy knew one thing, when he thought back, that he learned from Abe around then. Keep your head low, keep to yourself, and most of all, one thing about those factories and the way they treated Abe.
Stay on the farm."
Short Stories