by A.T. Boyle
The flapping saloon doors closed, opened, closed. Came to rest.
Listen.
Misha extended both arms in greeting. Here for a last supper?
True that the light was falling, but she hadn’t meant to bully.
Welcome Misha said, trying to sound warmer. How odd it was to hear her voice in company after all this time.
When no answer came she finger-combed strands of hair across her eyes to mask how useless the impulse to focus was now.
Listen.
Two aggressive steps approached. Misha smiled at the memory of the hay-effect floor tiles, their pattern perhaps scrubbed back to nothing, mopping them her daily habit. This visitor today may be the restaurant’s last.
Listen.
The High Chaparral theme tune struck up, expansive orchestral strings and timpany of horses’ hooves galloping home. Misha swivelled to understand where the sound was coming from. It’s true that this TV programme was on a loop, but her ancient video machine worked only intermittently. At the beck and call of her wind generator, she knew there was no energy available today. Or maybe she was hearing an ice cream van speeding across the sands of the Irish Desert, carrying a welcome and refreshing surprise?
Or an arcade fruit machine?
A retro ringtone from this stranger’s pocket?
Images, dialogue, lawlessness, scenes and characters from the past flooded Misha’s mind, the mayhem of fabrication making a more comforting present.
Boots too large for their wearer caused the seventh tile from the door to speak.
One TV episode had survived, its video case cracked but still just about doing the job. Had the visitor come to watch, like it used to be? If so, Billy Blue would be waiting, patient as usual. He’d be propped against that tree, broken arrow piercing his thigh. But shouldn’t they be getting him home? Bring the doctor, quick? Interchanging headshots will add tension. But look, his life’s seeping away! Except, Billy’s looking fairly cheerful sporting that joke arrow like the one Django had as a child, a half-circle of plastic that grips the thigh convincing only when accompanied by groans. It was stuffed in his backpack the day they met, and two arrows with rubber suckers on the end. That holiday photo glued to the mirror behind the bar, those words ‘Menu Today’ on his freshly-chalked blackboard, and the skill to land a sucker with sufficient force to make one of the saloon door flap, as though a dear friend who was taken had returned. Long time ago in a less wild West. Misha hadn’t seen those arrows in a while. She blushed, embarrassed about taking insufficient care.
Listen.
Blushing would make her appear vulnerable.
Listen, listen hard for your life.
What life?
Silence.
‘You the waitress round here?’ The visitor might well have used the word Sheriff. Her voice was forceful, shocking.
Misha replied as pleasantly and calmly as she could, her voice still seeming alien when usually she talked to herself or the sound of the TV screen: If you reverse a bit you’ll be able to read it, see what’s on offer these days, given how things Her voice trailed off and the woman made no answer. But she did take two steps back without hesitation, revealing a worrying level of confidence.
Focus.
Misha recalled how diners used to rock from boot tip to heel, tip to heel on that seventh tile from the door. It used to represent a small section of the printed hay floor. Maybe it still did.
Silence.
Acorns: not as high in fat as many nuts… The official warnings had began slowly then rained down.
Tip, heel, tip. Heel tip.
Misha hadn’t mopped the floor today. She knew there was sanity in regularity and order. Acorns provide 2,000 calories per pound or 4,409 calories per kilo. The day she and Django had decided to replace their small British fridge, lagging behind the restaurant’s popularity, they’d carried it through the restaurant, the back alley being too narrow. Determined not to let it down until they were outside, a metal corner had scarred that floor tile where the visitor was rocking in her too-large boots. The bunched up lino was a fulcrum. Heavily fortified with vitamins and minerals, acorns usefully combine complex carbohydrates.
Misha forced her vocal cords to remember how to ask what she used to ask daily. See anything you fancy on our chalkboard?
‘Our?’ The stranger’s tone was circumspect. ‘Have any actual food, do you? Or it’s just pictures of acorns and some words to fill my belly?’
Despite the menacing undertones, Misha had no desire to crush it.
‘Who are you? Exactly, I mean?’
Misha responded with her own question. I mean, I’m guessing you’re new, round here? It sounded like a chat-up line and she blushed again.
Misha spread the uncut fringe across her eyes. Acorns from the two white oaks in the park with rounded leaf lobes contain less tannic acid than those from the fifteen red oaks with pointed leaf lobes near the boundary fence.
Morales and his sage counsel came to mind, the way he kept an eye on his thrusting young renegades. Rogue elements in the White cavalry instigated a fair few tussles in the land of The High Chaparral too, and accident-prone naive Billy Blue created some plot twists. Misha couldn’t help being brought up on Westerns, and she would defend these relatively progressive scenarios from the 1970s. Trusty Mexicans had married into Big John’s clan, but rogue Gringos appeared now and then. In other words, Misha said out loud without realising, there are a few bad apples everywhere, although Big John is pretty untouchable to the director.
‘Eh?’ said the woman.
Collect nuts of a buttery-beige shade. Do not eat if the shell is cracked due to risk of insect invasion or mould. Misha flicked the hair from her eyes. Death can be too, I’ve seen it.
She said loudly enough for the visitor to hear every word: I mean, it can be about choices. That’s what we used to say round these parts. Had she just used a Wild West twang? She blushed again and couldn’t stop the thought of the people with blue eyes who were rounded up first. We attack no soldiers, we steal no guns, but who among White Eyes is going to believe us? The wise Apache chief speaks his usual sense though the screen at the back of the restaurant and Misha couldn’t help but wince at the treachery that had passed through this place.
Listen. She had learnt how to do that. But her mind escaped again.
They’d got the script lines off by heart of course, all four seasons that came to define their closed-in world. Do not collect if the outer casings of nuts are green! (When foraging, Misha had fallen into the habit of sniffing the shells for acidity). Django and their friends Nadia and Evelyn (the sisters with blue eyes), Anjo and the Baroness (with green), the brown-eyed regulars (who’d become less regular), and Nigel their own Manolito with eyes the shade of ripe acorns who everyone doted on when it came to the line: Amigo, I must have a drink. My throat is carrying half the desert.
Misha would run her fingertips across the surface of a nut to check for cracks. The tackiness of unripe shells gives them away. She’d sometimes got that wrong, was ill for days. The solution for Mano had become everyone’s solution: whisky not polluted water served from their saloon bar.
The woman, this only visitor, moved closer. The image of their starved American larder made Misha hope she would receive an answer the question she thought she had just asked. (Are you very hungry?)
No answer. No question either?
As for the yellow eyes, Morales could always recognise a poet of trick and spin when he saw one rampaging through his designated Apache territory. Anyone can kill an animal. It takes strength to kill a friend.
‘Was there someone else used to run this joint?’ the woman asked, still sounding like the new character in the homestead. ‘Or it’s just you?’
Misha had no idea how to respond. Giving too much away was a learnt danger. This is how it was: restaurant workers and our regulars would sit, stand, joggle the children on their shoulders, tire ourselves out until a single episode remained – that arrow through Billy’s thigh. You know the one? Have you seen it? Word got round and it was the main reason for coming. ‘My throat is carrying half the desert. ‘
‘I crossed the desert,’ the visitor said, her boots rocking on the raised lino. ‘And that board back there, hand-writing and all, it’s totally out of date, right?’
Misha rubbed her eyes. With little idea of how the restaurant must look now, what was left of Django’s chalked calligraphy? The decor must be totally grim. And she didn’t even have to soap to offer, the strong odours rippling off this visitor’s skin and clothes turning the air unfamiliar. Desert? Was it desert all the way? Misha asked, Arizona in the 1870s her backdrop. Once the milk and fruit juice, the beer had run out it was whisky or unsafe water. To survive one must stay safe. My throat is carrying half the desert. The final report of the Local Survival Council clanged for attention: Conclusion: Acorns are a nutritious food. If properly leached to remove the bitter tannic acid they are recommended for human consumption. There are many interesting recipes. SEE SEPARATE DOCUMENT.
Misha laughed, acknowledging that she was half the time drunk, half the time thirsty. She felt thirsty now, so perhaps she wasn’t drunk. Was the visitor laughing too? A stifled laugh, but, something. Crabby cacti bearing scars, missing branches because the polstyrene artist was on holiday. A precious singular cactus rotating in the NBC studio shots still still able to convince Misha of its authenticity. And right now the scent of flowers — fresh, home-grown, despite there being no garden to speak of at Victoria’s desert ranch. Victoria the seductress at an always open door, ready when the men are done adventuring and Big John is here to command the roost. Tenacity in straitened circumstances. But something wasn’t right in being trapped, in always serving.
The thought of Billy’s lips she had never kissed made her sad. But she’d found the best alternative in Django. Every plate and glass was broken in the restaurant they’d built, but she still had the five precious napkins, their surfaces glassy and perfect like the skin on Django’s ears.
If this visitor wanted food Misha would place it on a napkin. It was a commitment to reducing her stock to three, but she was willing.
‘What’s your name?’ the woman asked.
Misha shrugged, and with swift, cupped, uncompetitive hands she replied: Waitress? Last Person? Owner? Lover? Woman? There’s little value in any except the last.
‘The Sun’s…’ the other voice bent away, sweeping back more quickly to Misha’s face, as though fearful Misha would not be there. ‘You invited me to supper? Before?’
Misha shifted her gaze from what she imagined to be a pair of weary shoulders. The shy light would soon begin in its diving and dipping phase. Tomorrow always began darker; the scientists used to call it quietening.
Listen.
Misha fiddled in her pocket to find her favourite acorn. Brittle and ready to pop, it felt comforting to roll it between her fingers. She remembered how the daylight streamed through every window the day Django wandered in. On the menu were twenty varieties of tea and a few ways to roast and serve a coffee bean. That was pretty much it. Oh and a cake she baked every day, split into thin slices for customers to savour it more. Look, I’m sorry. Please, sit. Here’s a good place, over there. We can eat together if you, watch TV. There’s an episode left — The High Chaparral. The wind always appears when the Sun leaves. Do you know it? Where Billy Blue is bleeding from a joke arrow?
Misha heard the visitor’s boots retreat without persuasion to the lounge chairs at the back. ‘Not had a TV dinner in years. Whatever you got… go for it!’
This jolt of certainty was unsettling, but like Victoria Misha made her familiar way to the kitchen. Only whisky, she called over to the woman, but let’s see what else we can find.
In the kitchen a single meal was prepared. Misha’s own last supper. What reason was there not to share now?
She split the tiny parts of the meal as fairly as she could between the two still folded napkins. To use up a little time she fussed over the kitchen surfaces. Eventually pushing the door with her foot, she made her way wordlessly to the TV area. Sensing that the visitor was already sitting, Misha extended one napkin and the visitor took it gently.
The two women sat side-by-side holding their flimsy napkins. No longer able to see the richness of colours, Misha found the Turkish cushions as itchy as usual. She’d kept them for sentimental reasons, holiday memories, in memory of Django really. Their fire wagons will roar, but who will ask questions of a dead man?
Even this visitor, clearly new to The High Chapparal, in no time at all was reciting the dialogue. Misha noticed her quick instinct, the way she caught on to the stock phrases and added twists of her own. Both soon tipsy from the drink and company, the vaulting strings, brass and timpany quickened their heartbeats as a storm of horses galloped towards the final credits. How it used to be.
The screen went fuzzy in the middle of the gallop, dust churned up by the tumult of hooves freezing the transmission. The visitor swivelled in Misha’s direction. Seeing that her eyes were closed, she checked at her wrist.
Listen.
Having always found it difficult to listen, the visitor closed her eyes.
Movement of wind, plastic held down but lifting in gusts like a stringed kite. Windowless frames of a restaurant which could give no more welcome than they were already giving. A bird flying in through would not have been an annoyance. There was no bird.
No animals. No cars. People.
A thought came: That there is no peace in loneliness.
But this traveller had not survived on self-pity.
She opened her eyes and looked again at Misha, whose name she didn’t know. Not for sure. She held the woman’s hand. Its skin was wan next to hers. To feel flesh again, despite the creeping coldness.
Eventually the traveller stood up. She lit a few disorderly remnants of candles and savoured the warm honesty of beeswax. She caught a scent of tomato ketchup from the napkin crumpled in her palm, s drop or two of whisky in their metal drinking containers, he after-perfume of studiously roasted acorns. A meal carefully prepared tasted delicious for that.
She saw how the dead woman’s hip bones gave shape to her long frame. It had been a quarter ration of supper. She noticed the woman’s shoes. They might fit her own feet better.
She retraced her steps to the saloon doors at the front, their flapping edges a reminder of arrival. The weighted base of her boots caused the seventh lino square to creak, but she didn’t know that story so it wasn’t of any consequence.
The candles would burn themselves out.
A pause to allow ancient memories to take shape. The hand-drawn map from her mother that made it possible to find the pretty park with acorns scattered across its floor, shells that crunched pleasingly under her boots because the season was perfect. She imagined him busy in the kitchen, jars sporting labels written in his artistic hand. Acorn spread maybe, and oak nut oil, some frozen ready meals of stuffed pancakes and acorn delicacies. On the kitchen table a cake topped with delicate icing recently tasted. Always be resourceful, like the woman who had served her today. Welcome anytime. Words that reach her ears still, that exact voice of his.
She swivelled and turned, this time noticing the raised floor tile activated by her brother’s boots. When stepping across the woman lounging peacefully in front of a TV monitor she wondered again at the size of her feet. Her best boots had been stolen the night before leaving to find this place urged on by their mother who, who… The traveller admired how well the kitchen had been maintained, its double aluminium sink scratched clean with criss-crossed lines, a few food smears marking the drainer but that was it.
It had been a strange pleasure to eat in front of the TV, in spite of her childhood resentment of TV dinners, their parents’ way to avoid speaking. The atmosphere she had found here was welcoming, if melancholic.
She must always leave. Dangerous to stay. But something stopped her from leaving. Not yet, not quite yet.
She went into the kitchen, now dark. Checked the back door, which led to a narrow alley. Came back inside and dropped the heavy bar into its hooks. Did the same with the door between restaurant and kitchen.
A floral curtain near the sink. Behind it a small cot. She squirrelled in. Between fretful dozing a plan of sorts arrived. First thing, she would deal respectfully with the woman’s body. She fancied updating the menu board. She would dial down the acorn-centric and make her mark somehow, for whether anyone came this way or not. Glass from those broken outhouses might be re-introduced to the grand window frames.
She wrapped herself tightly in the sheet and blanket that smelt of the woman Django had loved last. She felt tentatively safe. At least safer.
Wordless terrain covered on foot or through gallops comically accelerated by the turn of a dial in an edit suite, and here he is, her Django, family, for all the world like Billy Blue. This time unimpeded by a silly arrow.
Walking for weeks, led by a pair of boots returned to his family after the owner was taken. The compelling message of acorn cases splitting dry and ready to forage. Crossing a park that hangs on valiantly to that shade they called green. Under a sky whose blue is still perceptibly blue. A little further and a hand-painted sign will shout its welcome: Howdy! Soon enough she will lean into the decorated wood of the saloon doors that open to her. Arriving hungry and hopeful she might even be fed.
____
Borrowed boots that found their way back on the feet of a sister.
The day had come when some lines drawn in dirt as they dragged Django off — moments before a deeper darkness descended — rendered a perceptible path to this wilderness place, bringing one woman to the heart of another’s heart.
And the woman who had been found had listened, and so she had known, and so she had not yearned in vain for the solace of a long return, of sorts.
About the author
A.T. Boyle writes fiction and memoir, makes visual art, and runs Artificial Silk.
Her first audio story entered into a BBC Radio 4 competition reached the shortlist, and this story ‘Listen’ is adapted from the original idea. Her first prose fiction story entered into an international competition was shortlisted then turned into a dual language Turkish and English tale printed in a special edition book in Cumbria.
Alison launched exObjects to celebrate the lives of her parents who lived in Preston in the county of Lancashire, England. She invited people from across the world to contribute their imaginative reflections on loss and joy to the Artificial Silk web magazine.
Read the obituary of Terry Boyle
Read the obituary of Jean Boyle
The first book of full-length exObjects memoir stories was published in December 2024. By connecting people, places and objects, Artificial Silk finds ways to understand the past in the present and re-envisage our futures.
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To read the other 5 commissions in Writing that Sings click here
