Talia rises before the sun. She never uses an alarm clock—the one beside her bed doesn’t work anyways, perpetually stuck at 12:00 pm. Rather, routine is her alarm: get up, tend to her lovelies, get back. It took some time to adjust, but the prospect of working under that brutal desert sun soon became enough to wake her every morning before dawn.
Unraveling from the jumble of frayed linens, Talia leaps from the bed like some professional gymnast. Arms raised to the ceiling, she inhales deeply. Fingertips to toes, she exhales leisurely. She repeats the motion once, twice, and a final third time before massaging the last cricks out from along her spine.
Crow’s feet betray her youthful spirit. On her way to the kitchen, she skips down the hallway, copycatting the children hanging on the wall. When she first moved in, Talia contemplated taking the picture down—they’re not her kids after all—but the carefree glint in their eyes was too contagious.
After a quick breakfast of crackers and coffee beans, she makes for the foyer with its ghastly green wallpaper and slips into a cracked leather jacket. A pair of aviator goggles dangle around her neck. Reflected in the mirror, her hair is a tangle of copper wire—a wild mess she abandoned trying to tame long ago—and her smile a packet of yellowing Chiclets.
“Jeez-Louise! Look at yerself, you old crone. Just the sight of ya would make the Pope cuss!”
Laughing at the sound of her own voice, Talia slings the dented water canister over her shoulder and saunters outside.
Darkness blankets the barren landscape. The crickets have chirped their last lullaby, but the cicadas have yet to begin their screeching sonnet. The town greets her in a perfectly symmetrical embrace. Rows of cottage-style homes complete with clotheslines and little red wagons seem to have been assembled in the same manner one opens a pop-up card. There is a quaint, familial quality to the place. The only notable difference with the idyllic suburbs displayed in old American Dream brochures is the lack of freshly mowed grass.
Talia kicks up dust as she struts down the main drag. Pebbles crunch under her boots. There are no street signs to point the way, but she’s memorized every twist and turn of this place—not that there’s much place to memorize.
“Hiya, Bert!” she calls, saluting her neighbour with a friendly wave.
Bert, with his perfect posture, hovers over a barbecue, tongs held in firm fingers. He seems pleased to see her, his smile immovable as always.
Talia pretends to sniff the morning air. “A little early for burgers, don’t ya think? Better watch your cholesterol.”
Bert doesn’t reply, but continues to smile as Talia moves on.
Up ahead, little Charlotte is already awake, hosting a tea party for her Chatty Kathy doll. Chester sits to the left, silently begging for a biscuit. Talia averts from the main drag to pat the unyielding dog on the head.
“You’re gettin’ nothing.” She chuckles, then adds, “Dummy.”
As she rounds the next bend, Talia begins to hum a tune. She doesn’t care for silence. With no working radio, she’s in constant battle with the hush.
And with hunger.
Her stomach growls. Good thing she left her rations back home. She already feels naughty for nibbling the corner of a fourth cracker, more than her morning allotment.
To distract herself, Talia glances shamelessly through every window she passes. Everyone is awake and fully dressed. Never any late sleepers in this town! The men read the same outdated newspaper in their favourite recliners, while their wives work various kitchen appliances and their charming smiles.
Talia soon spots Margaret lounging on a sun-scorched lawn chair, sipping what she knows to be the same glass of iced tea from yesterday.
“Ahoy, Margaret!” she hollers. “How are you feeling today? Why, that’s a damned shame. What’s that now? Nonsense, Marge! You don’t look a day over twenty-nine. Why just yesterday I caught Mr. Henderson makin’ eyes at ya from across the road.”
The red-and-white striped straw in her friend’s iced tea dances in the pre-dawn breeze.
“On my honour,” Talia says. “Now, you’ll have to forgive me, but I must be on my way. Work to do. Make sure to behave.”
She cackles with laughter.
Before long, Talia reaches the outskirts of town. The wasteland is a bordering ring of sand, boulders, and dead vegetation, all spilling past the limits of her vision. Up ahead, she spies the cactus with the crown of wilted flowers, its lower-most limb conveniently pointing the way. Veering left, she hefts the water canister higher onto her shoulder; the leather strap digs into her skin.
At some point during the night, the desert’s hot breath swept away yesterday’s footprints, leaving a blank canvas for her boots to stamp today’s date in the sand. The slimmest sliver of yellow crests the horizon. Talia picks up her pace; it won’t be long before the heat becomes unbearable.
Filling the dead air with the sound of her voice, she manages to count to one-thousand-and-four Mississippi before approaching the boulder resembling a young Bobby Kennedy. Two downturned pockmarks stare back sympathetically. It flashes her an awkward grin with its rocky mouth-slit.
Talia bows, flourishing her hands in jest. “Your Majesty.”
She skirts around the would-be President, swerving right where sand gives way to crusted dirt. In the distance, illuminated by the ever-rising sun is the drop-off. Overcome with excitement, she begins to jog. Her goggles, hanging loose around her neck, bounce against her chest. Then, like the baseball players of old, she slides into home plate, tumbling purposefully over the edge and landing on her feet just four meters below.
“Good morning, my lovelies.”
Talia sets down the water canister, thankful to be free of the weight, and drops to her knees. She sighs with relief. Despite the heat and ever-worsening odds, her garden endures. It’s nothing like the one her mom cared for when Talia was young; hers is simply a patch of fertile earth, a speck of dark brown soil in an orange-hued sea of sand and dust. A panel of judges would refrain from using the word extravagant, but she supposes she’d win the blue ribbon..
She leans in close. Held firm by sticks and twine, a fragile stem yawns in the early hour. A small green bulb dangles underneath a shimmering leaf. Soon, if all goes well, it will grow into a tomato, red and juicy in its ripened age. Still no sign of the cucumbers, but she can’t expect miracles. Just the mere existence of fertile soil in such a desolate climate is defiance enough.
“And how are we feeling today?”
It might be her imagination, but Talia swears the tomato plant flexes in response.
Beaming, she removes the apparatus she designed to block out the scorching afternoon sun and sets it to the side. With slow, delicate arcs, she empties the canister of rainwater, light glinting off the thin stream trickling from the spout. Temptation kicks in. How marvelous it would be to stick her head underneath and lap up the canister’s contents. But she quickly scolds herself for having such selfish thoughts. The last time it rained was two weeks ago and, judging by her meteorological knowledge, it might not rain for two more. She’s already rationed what she needs to survive. This water is not for her.
Once completed, she sits cross-legged, a serenade on her split lips, and watches with reverence as the soil sops up the moisture. With enough care, this garden will become her Eden—a paradise of sustainability. If she feeds it with love, it’ll feed her back.
Talia closes her eyes; she can already taste the juiciness of the tomatoes and the crunch of cucumbers. Was it luck that brought her down the aisle of seed packets when everyone else was raiding for cans and other non-perishables?
No. Noluck. “Smarts!” she declares.
Hands perched on knees, she inhales deeply, the air reeking of death and destruction. It didn’t always. Not before the world turned hot. Such a shame. Such a waste of life.
Talia touches the tip of an index finger to the baby tomato. Amazing what beauty one can create when the world isn’t blowing itself up.
Within half an hour, her forehead is slick with perspiration. She looks up; the sun hangs heavy in the sky like a blinding Christmas bulb. Time to head back. She reassembles the shade device, all the while praying that her tomato plant can make it another day out in this oven.
“Stay strong, my lovelies.”
With a hop and heave, she pulls herself over the lip of the drop-off and heads back to Bobby Kennedy. The water canister, now empty, doesn’t dig into her shoulder.
By the time she makes it back to the edge of town, Talia is drenched. She can smell the salt and adjusts her goggles so they’re snug on the bridge of her nose, preventing the sting of sweat in her eyes.
Margaret is exactly where Talia left her—sitting in a lawn chair, iced tea untouched.
“Ahoy!” Talia calls. “Marge, you beautiful devil. How is it that you’re not even breaking a sweat? You should pose for magazines!”
Margaret does not respond. Her ruby lips remain compressed in a perfect heart shape. She looks like she belongs on display in a storefront window, which in another time, she might have.
Or at least others like her.
As she moves further into town, the outlying tower bathes her in shadow. The coolness is a small reprieve. Through the lenses of her goggles, she looks up. The bomb—nestled safely in its metallic girdle at the top of the tower—is wide enough to blot out the sun. Other towns such as this were once used for nuclear testing; Talia came upon one in her travels, but cinder and ash wereall that remained.
The dry air begins to irritate her nostrils and her footfalls grow sluggish. Talia stops singing, the effort zapping whatever strength is left.
After ten minutes, she rounds the final bend to find Bert still standing by his grill.
“How long does it take to cook burgers?” Talia manages to ask. “You know I like mine well done, not charred to a crisp!”
Bert doesn’t laugh, but his plastic smile signals he’s in on the joke.
Back inside her home, the wait for tomorrow begins. The air still weighs heavy with heat, but being out from under the sun renews her energy.
Talia moves into the parlour. It’s a museum of various props: a china cabinet, magazines, and a dog dish. There used to be a telephone, its innards empty of wires, but she destroyed it long ago. Loneliness set in like a fever during those earliest days in town. She kept picking up the handset to talk—or just to listen to someone else talk—but the silence only reaffirmed that Talia was truly alone.
The only cure to such poisonous thoughts, she discovered, was sound.
She turns on the radio. It’s a sham as well and emits no sound, but having the plastic knob pointing to “on” settles her mind. Drown out the silence. Fill it with noise.
Talia’s favourite song plays at the back of her mind, her imagination an antenna capable of picking up radio waves. Eyes closed, she grabs air with her thumb and index finger, and turns up the volume. A euphoric crescendo of sound presses against the walls of the parlour. She sways to the melody, flicking her goggles onto the divan. Soon she’s twirling about the room, arms locked, dancing with a partner. What begins as a whisper turns into a hearty bellow. She sings of trees and roses, too. Of blue skies and bright days ahead.
As she spins past the window, she imagines the entire town overrun by her garden. No more sand. No more dust.
A wonderful world.
Nathaniel Whelan is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He has been connected to the Carleton community for over a decade, first as a BA and MA student, and now as a member of staff. He currently works in communications at Carleton, and also as a part-time contract instructor at Algonquin College.
He has published a number of short stories with various literary magazines, including The Literary Hatchet, The Dread Machine, Sundial Magazine, Blood and Bourbon, and Mystery Tribune. In 2020, he won the Jerry Jazz Short Fiction Contest for my story “A Failed Artist’s Paradise.”
