Waiting For The End

CAST OF CHARACTERS:
FAULDER…………………………………………………..an 84 year old American man
JACQUE………………………………………………………..an 87 year old Frenchman

TIME: Evening"Spring of 1948
SETTING: A country field filled with flowers, shrubbery, and trees

ACT ONE: SCENE 1

(At SUNSET we see FAULDER, mid eighties, sitting in a          
field against a tree, trying to take his boots off. He pulls at     
them, panting. He gives up, tries again. After a few   
moments JACQUE walks up, his hands behind his back.)       

FAULDER
(Sighing heavily.) Everything is hopeless. Nothing can be done when it has ended.

JACQUE
(Advancing with slow, tired-some strides.) I’m with you on that realization. All my life I’ve tried do my best, and tell myself to be honest, responsible, that that will make you a great man. But yet I resume the struggle (ponders on his struggles.) Alas, life has given me opportunity, and with it, I am content.

FAULDER
(Gazes up at the clouds.) When I think about it… all these years… where I have been (shrugs.) I have become nothing but bones, wasted on restless adventures and effortless quests…

JACQUE
And what of life? (Bends down to sit, crossing his legs.)

FAULDER
(Saddened.) It is all too much for one man… live it alone or try with failure. One’s heart is his own, as any breath that he breathes.

JACQUE
We were respectable, then. Watching the world take its turn at life as we sat and watched, waiting for our own taste at life. Now we sit and wait for our turn to end (smiles meditatively.)

FAULDER
(Finally removes his boots as well as his coat and hat.) Sometimes I feel it is all the same. That everything is a never ending cycle. Funny how life works…(begins to pick the flowers around him.) (Silence. Jacque is in deep thought.)

JACQUE
(Responds moments later in a soft spoken voice.) There are men in this world who blame their boots for the faults of their own feet. Never admitting the reflection of their mistakes. We are two different men who lived in a different world, but equal in the mind of responsibility…

FAULDER
(Laughs heartily.) I used to curse the day I was born. Always feeling like a no good-for- nothing. I decided to make my own fate and joined the army when I was but 14. Then and there I thought I had seen the world (Tone of voice becomes more melancholy.) You have never lived until you see the sun depart from the sky…

(BOTH exhale deeply. The sun is slowly setting. A soft breeze begins to blow, and FAULDER reaches for his coat.)


ACT ONE: SCENE 2

JACQUE
(Jacque turns to Faulder. He begins to get up slowly.) Let’s go!

FAULDER
We can’t. I haven’t been waiting for a whole lifetime to get up and walk away from it. I’ve seen men try and fail, giving up on ambitions that could make any man sane.

JACQUE
(Pauses.) Are you sure this is where to be? Of all the places in the world, the palaces of Madrid, the deserts of Egypt, the outback of Australia, to the jungles of Africa, and we wait in a country field of flowers…

FAULDER
(Looks around at the surrounding flowers and touches the tree’s hardened bark caked with sap.) I am tired, but I’ve come here every day since and have waited, waited on something, waited on nothing.

JACQUE
(Laughs quietly to himself.) With challenge come angry men.
(Speaking to Faulder.) As a Frenchman we see the world through women, food, and wine, and I have lived that all. No need to not be content, for being content lies within your old age.

FAULDER
I am content; I just feel I have not lived to the full contentment it has set out for man. I have seen the fear in a man’s eye, have tasted the sweat of my brow, have loved with unfathomable love, and have had my fair share of arguments, but yet with a life full of expected living, I feel incomplete as time draws near. There is more to life than just the breathing… (Sighs as he brushes his hair from his face.)
                     
(It is now dark except for the shadow glow of the moon peeking between the tree’s branches.)

JACQUE
(Taking his coat off, he rests it against the tree behind his head for a pillow. He glances sleepily over at Faulder.) Faulder, you know there is always tomorrow…

Author's Note

Based off of Samuel Beckett's short play, "Waiting for Godot." It is of man's suppressed desire to know life once life is complete.
Let me know of writing style, structure and how it flows.