Say good day, Mama, to the last of the cowboys.

                   SAY GOOD DAY, MAMA, TO THE LAST OF THE COWBOYS

AUSTIN, TEXAS: 29th October 2026

The boy stirred in his bed. He raised himself up a little. Only the night light provided a trace of illumination. He thought of switching on the faux Tiffany lamp but decided against it. He lifted a triangle of curtain from the window next to his bed and could see the dark shadows of the live oaks and the cedar elms. Strange how the night was so dark but they were darker yet, silhouettes printed on to it. There was little breeze but something was scratching the window.

He turned back to the dark room and felt the change. It was no longer empty. There was a charge within it. Somewhere in the middle, some distance from the bed, the air had become active. A small maelstrom it seemed, commensurate with the size of the room, was playing out its contained imagery. It was the hat he saw first, old-fashioned yet recognisable to anybody familiar with farms and smithies and open spaces the length and breadth of the land.

The face materialised to fit under the slouch hat, for that is what it was known as. A rough and ragged face, marked and blotched not just by age but by many perhaps random encounters with his fellows. A hard man but not completely bereft of kindness.

“Who are you?” whispered the boy almost hoping his question went unanswered.

“I am Simon Girty from that Dark and Bloody frontier near two centuries past”.

“What wish you from me, Mr Girty?”

“I am come with a message. By reputation I am the most vile and evil man that ever lived in this blighted land, But mark this. For history is about reputation and that is given to the victors. The defeated may be patronised, may be ignored, but mainly they are vilified. Yes I killed men yes, aggressors who threatened my people. What man did not in those times of the Revolution as those victorious men called it. I was to them the half-breed, ugly words. For I was half white and half Seneca. And I chose the British side believing them to be a little better for those people I owed allegiance to. I recall the bold words of Thomas Jefferson that all men are created equal, and I recall also that he owned slaves and could be careless of their welfare. Remember this, boy, that history is told by the winners, and perhaps men such as I also held virtue.”

And he faded. The boy who had during this speech taken hold of a pencil chewed on Girty’s words just as he chewed on the pencil.

30TH OCTOBER 2026

The boy lay in the bed just as in the night last gone. The scratching at the window grew more intense. And the maelstrom returned, hat first. But this was a different hat, a dirty and stained stovepipe. Hats, the boy had always loved hats like the ten gallon that lay on a chair near the bed. All Texas boys love hats. They see themselves as cowboys. Singing and playing cowboys for him, and in the corner was a guitar.

Then other things came to his mind, things about the apparition for he was more prepared than he had been yester night. Now that the body was attaching itself to the stovepipe hat, he could see, and he realised that the same had applied to Girty. that this was not a living body but a corpse near stripped of the flesh which once hid the white bones.

“And who are you?” he asked more boldly “For you are not Simon Girty who came hither on the yester”.

“No I am not Simon though I know him. I am Quanah Parker from the last days of the Comanche”.

“Why you are a century apart from him yet you know him”

“I took over the unmarked grave he had inhabited, the grave of a black man hanged for an assault on a white woman for which he was wholly innocent as most of his kind were. He lay buried in yon forest of live oaks that reach to your window, the branches that scratch”.

“But Simon Girty was active hundreds of miles from here in William Penn’s state…”

“Distance signifies nothing for the dead. That unmarked grave marks a temporary home for those of us that wish to send messages to those living nearby. In this case you.”

“And the poor black man”

“He willingly welcomes us for he too knows how reputation is carved from the most unreliable testimonies”

The boy decided it was time to lay aside the intricacies of this hidden and unmarked (but most remarkable) of graves.”

“Tell me your tale, Quanah Parker?”

“Like Simon Girty I am mixed. My father was Comanche and my mother white. Her family and others were stealing lands we shared with other tribes and putting fences around them so that not just the Comanche but also the Lipan Apache, and the Kiowa and the Tonkawa were rendered homeless. We, like Simon before us, only killed the men, the aggressors with their guns. My mother-to-be was taken away and my people cared for her. Later more of the Anglos rode into the heart of our wandering tribe, Texas Rangers they called themselves, and dragged my poor mother back to what they called her people of whom she had forgotten everything. She was married, most joyously, to my father and all this was taken from her. We tried to bring her back and failed. She was a broken woman. It is said she never spoke again.”

“And your message?”

“That people belong to tribes. And that the ways of one tribe are what work for that tribe which is a matter of history and diet and preference and many other things too. And it is not for invaders to label something as good and civilised and something else as bad and barbarian. This is just preference and it is not worth a single human life”

31st OCTOBER 2026 (Halloween)

And the boy was where he was on previous nights, any night at that time, but now fully prepared for whatever this night might throw at him. This of all nights. Every half year it was said the dead return. Regularly, on the 31st October and the 30th April- Halloween and Walpurgisnacht. Their methods, their appurtenances, their communications, all seem highly personal which is not unreasonable since that is how they functioned when “alive”. Are life and death perchance temporary barriers created for some unknown purpose? May consciousness be the preserve not only of the “living”? Is it in fact communication that is brought to an end? For three hundred and sixty three days every year.

Such were the boy’s musings that he failed at first to notice that night’s visitors contained in a similarly small (and quite tidy) maelstrom. Visitors, for here came two. And most exotic and strange. they were. They were man and woman, and the woman entwined herself around the man. At first it was if they had not noticed the boy.

“And who are you?” he said a little testily, for he had become rather too used to being the centre of attention.

“We are Dr John and Marie Laveaux and we have been reviled as heathen sorcerers putting spells on people in order that they do what we want of them, perverting them from the true faith. All sorts of nonsense with chicken bones. Our voodoo, as they call it, is wicked sin to them. To us it is a bridge we have built to make connection with the Yoruba lands we came from, from where we were sold by greedy chieftains to white folk who would abuse them on plantations of sugar and tobacco and cotton. But our beliefs are our religion if you wish to use that word, and as true and as vital and as kind to us as Christianity and Islam may be to those who would achieve forcible dominion over us. And that is our message to you, dear child, that beliefs are sacred to those who believe them, and those beliefs that spread kindness to others, as most do in proper hands, should be respected by all who encounter them”

1st NOVEMBER 2026 All Saints’ Day

The boy’s father spoke at length on the telephone to one of his teachers. He spoke of his concern at his son’s writings. The boy meant well he said but he spoke of things he could not possibly understand. He was a fine writer, certainly for his age, but could cause offence to those less willing to allow a young boy such scope in his musings.

Perhaps, the father added, the teacher might choose essay subjects with more care. Some seemed to encourage boys and girls to wander too far down speculative and controversial byways.

2ND NOVEMBER 2026 All Souls’ Day

The boy’s mother rang the bar in downtown Austin where she worked as a bookkeeper. She spoke to the boss, a man she had known for years. He had always taken an interest in her son. Indeed, it might not be far from the truth to say he acted as a father figure to the boy. He had personally known the old cowboy musos the son loved so much; Tommy Duncan and Leon McAuliffe and Tommy Allsup were all gone. But there was one left.

What was the problem really, the bar boss asked. Well she said all these weird imaginings he writes of for starters. They’re not just Halloween pranks. Some of the things he has these fellows say. Most of them I believe myself, but others might be offended. And then to compound it all he made something up about a father he’s never known, just me and his sister all his livelong life. I worry he’s going a bit... Well you know. He’ll be a proper writer for sure one of these days, and he knows so much already, but what’s really going on his mind? And this has got nothing to do with his teachers. They certainly never set essays like that. More make believe. So I don’t know what he could do, but the boy idolises him. Then her boss told her the man was standing right beside him, and he’d be over with her just as soon as she wanted.

“Oh what a lovely man he is”, said the mother.

                                               **********************

“You’re a wonderful writer, son. You’re on the side of the angels for sure but maybe you need just a little more love. Love is the most wonderful seasoning the world knows. You could call it salt or Tabasco sauce for the soul. May your best memories always be of those you have loved.”

And the man took up his guitar and sang “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” and then made to leave.

The boy was lost for words. There were tears in his eyes. The song, the love he felt coming from the man. Eventually he found words but for his mother in the next room.

“Say good-day, Mama, to the last of the cowboys.”

“Mr Nelson”, he heard her say “I’m can’t begin to thank you for what you’ve done, just coming over like that”

“My pleasure”, he said “And, woman, you just call me Willie, each and every time we meet. You understand.”

There was a chuckle in his voice as he said those words

“I will”, she promised. “You could have been the best father figure of all for him.” Willie Nelson shook his head.

“But look ye here” he said. If you ever reckon he needs a great-grandfather figure just you call me.

And he walked out of the door into the Texas evening sunshine.