A Conversation with Thaddeus

Thaddeus sat quiet and still, watching the gnarled oaks drape their rusty-gold canopy over the cool earth. Thaddeus hadn't spoken for a nice long while. If I didn't know better, I would have assumed he had dozed off. But I did know better. If you spend time with Thaddeus, you grow accustomed to awkward silences that stretch so long you sometimes forget what exactly you were talking about before the quiet, back in all the noise when everything was so damn urgent. More than once I've forgotten ...