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# S2E02: Less Silence, More Yes
- URL: https://www.porchlandia.com/s2e02-less-silence-more-yes/
- Published: 2026-09-10T15:00:09.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-12T11:56:52.000Z
- Description: “But for five months, Byron had watched this house make room for Brad’s volume, Glorp’s collisions, Clement’s silences, and every other voice that came through the door. Tonight, he had decided to find out whether it could make room for his.”
- Author: Brent Brooks
- Tags: main-canon

Main Canon · Season 2 · Episode 2 

### Less Silence, More Yes 

S2E02 · Audio Drama 

Settle in. Press play when you're ready. 

[▶ Listen on the porch ](https://cdn.porchlandia.com/stories/main-canon/s2/S2E02-Porchlandia-Less-Silence-More-Yes.mp3?ref=porchlandia.com) 

Episode Song · Porchlandia Radio 

### Stay Through the Turn 

S2E02 · Porchlandia Radio [▶ Listen on the porch ](https://cdn.porchlandia.com/audio/canon/s2/S2E02-Stay-Through-The-Turn.mp3?ref=porchlandia.com) 

The line at the bottom of the chalkboard had survived three services.

*Gift from above: 99%*

Above it, Marty had added smaller predictions and crossed them away as the days fulfilled or disappointed him. A late delivery. A broken teacup. Rain that missed the porch by half a mile. The roof line remained untouched.

Glorp stood before it with his paws behind his back.

"He gives everything else a deadline," he said. "Chutney by supper. Tears before the last dish. Rain before four-seventeen. But the gift gets no time at all."

Marty slept beneath his scarf on the leather chaise.

Brad passed with a tub of silverware. "Maybe the roof is running late."

Glorp turned. "That is the first useful thing you've said as porcelain retrieval captain."

"Dishwasher," Senty called from the kitchen.

"I was negotiating a title."

"The title lost."

The last customers were a possum couple who had settled, after some discussion, which of them was carrying the one. They left their tip in exact coins, climbed the stairs, and stepped aside for Byron.

He came down in a long brown coat and a vest that made him look as though a library had sent him to collect an old debt. His scarf defied the season. His hair had reached separate conclusions about the evening.

In the five months since Smoke & Soul opened, Byron McTavish had become a regular. At the mini golf opening and the hearing that saved the restaurant, he had spoken in rolling verse to anyone who would stand still. Those were public occasions. At his own table, he had let his hands speak for him.

The restaurant mattered too much to risk discovering that its welcome had limits. But for five months, Byron had watched this house make room for Brad's volume, Glorp's collisions, Clement's silences, and every other voice that came through the door. Tonight, he had decided to find out whether it could make room for his.

On slow nights, Clement let Brad take a few tables for training while he ran the dining room from the tea station. Byron's two-top had become one of Brad's.

Brad knew the system. Two fingers laid across the menu meant trout. One tap beside the drinks meant agua fresca. A slow circle over the desserts meant *surprise me, within reason.* Brad had learned every signal without admitting he had learned any of them.

Tonight Byron sat at his usual table and kept both hands folded.

Brad arrived with his pencil ready.

The finger did not rise.

Byron drew a breath.

"In a goblet of radius modest but fair,  
with circumference handled by breathable air,  
bring me citrus in suspension, bright but not brash,  
where the lime makes treaty with sweetness and splash."

Brad waited.

Byron waited back.

"Water?"

Byron closed his eyes.

"Water is honest, but water is plain.  
I seek not the cloud, but the orchard after rain."

"Tea?"

"Tea is a temple in leaf-woven dress,  
but tonight I require less silence, more yes."

Brad lowered the pencil.

"Buddy. You point at the agua fresca every time you come in."

Byron's hands tightened together.

"A finger may settle the matter of thirst.  
Tonight, if you'll bear it, the language comes first."

Brad's grip eased on the pencil.

"Agua fresca?" he asked.

"Agua fresca."

Brad wrote it down. "We got there."

"The destination without the procession  
is hunger deprived of its rightful confession."

"I can feel that trying to irritate me."

At the bar, Glorp stopped counting napkins.

"Do it again."

"No," Brad said.

Byron turned toward Glorp.

"In the vessel where citrus and clarity meet,  
let the measure be neither excessive nor sweet,  
but aligned with the thirst that has risen in rhyme,  
and delivered before the collapse of the time."

Glorp came closer.

"The chaos is too clean."

"What does that even mean?" Brad asked.

Glorp moved closer to Byron's table. "It goes everywhere. But nothing gets hurt."

Byron's expression softened. "Ah. You hear the hinge."

"Do you know where the sentence is going before you start?"

"Not always."

Brad returned with the drink and set it down. "Citrus in breathable air."

Byron took a careful sip.

"A passable peace between sugar and stone."

The lead broke inside Brad's pencil.

---

Senty heard the exchange from the kitchen while he spread fennel butter over a fillet of trout.

At the tea station, Clement had stopped folding towels.

Neither bear mentioned it.

Brad returned to the table with a fresh pencil. "Food."

Byron opened the menu. He read one page, then the next, then returned to the first. Brad shifted his weight.

"Anytime tonight."

Byron closed the menu.

"Bring me the thing that remembers the sea,  
but not in its arrogance, only its plea.  
Bring me the bread that has listened to flame,  
and the green thing that knows but refuses a name."

Brad looked toward the kitchen.

"Clement."

Clement crossed from the tea station with a towel over one arm.

"He is doing it," Brad said.

Byron lifted his chin.

"I seek not a dish, but a passage of care,  
with smoke in the hem and a kindness laid bare."

Clement nodded.

Byron waited for more.

Clement took the menu. "I'll bring something."

"And that is the whole of the rite?"

"For now."

Byron sat back. Brad followed Clement toward the kitchen.

"He wants to be understood," Clement told Senty.

Senty set the trout aside. "What did you promise him?"

"Something."

"Generous."

"I thought so."

Glorp took the chair across from Byron without asking.

"When I speak, I don't know where the sentence is going until it crashes through a fence. Yours runs just as fast, but it arrives wearing boots."

Byron placed one palm on the table.

"The meter is not cage nor chain,  
but weather channeled through the grain."

"So the weather gets to stay?"

"The weather is the reason for the poem."

Byron studied him for a moment. "Your mind is a bright room with many open cupboards."

Glorp went still.

"You make it sound beautiful."

"It is."

---

Brent had been listening from the piano bench. When Brad disappeared into the dish pit, he crossed to Byron's table.

"I'm going to play a little. Anything you'd like to hear?"

Byron straightened and placed one hand over his heart.

"Give me the blue of a midnight horn,  
where Coltrane speaks low to the newly born.  
Give me the smoke of a Mingus stair,  
the monkish angle of sideways prayer.  
Let Ella bend moonlight over the glass,  
let Miles leave silence where lesser men pass."

Brent nodded. He had heard a mood. Byron had given him directions.

"Beautiful. What song?"

Byron stared at him.

Glorp covered his mouth with both paws.

From the dish pit, Brad whispered, "He asked the thing."

"What song?" Byron repeated.

"I can improvise around the feeling. I only wondered whether you had a particular tune in mind."

Byron looked down at his drink. "A particular tune."

"I didn't mean to offend the entire history of jazz."

"No offense has been taken." Byron gave him a small, wounded smile. "It has merely been catalogued."

"Put me down as a witness," Glorp said.

"Put me down as busy," Brad called.

Brent returned to the piano and found something slow and blue. Byron listened, one thumb moving against the side of his glass whenever the melody came near what he had asked for.

At the pass, Senty watched Byron's thumb move against the glass. Brent was searching for a mood. Byron had given him a path through five musicians, and Senty had heard every turn.

Then he reached for the whitefish.

He smoked a small fillet just long enough to leave the sea in it. He spooned fennel cream beneath it, charred a triangle of flatbread, and brushed the bread with lemon oil. Parsley, celery leaf, caper, and apple became the green thing that refused its name. He added roasted leek butter, a scatter of pickled mustard seeds, and one grilled grape.

Clement looked at the finished plate.

"Ah," he said.

"Exactly."

Senty carried it to Byron's table and set it down.

"Sir, I believe what you ordered was not fish."

Byron looked from Senty to the plate.

"It was a shoreline after regret, bread that survived flame without bragging, and something green that preferred to remain private."

Byron's hands came to rest on either side of the plate.

"You heard the order."

"I heard the hunger."

Byron answered quietly.

"In kitchens below where the porch-beams lean,  
I asked for the sea and the nameless green,  
and here comes a bear with a plate like a rhyme,  
who has measured the ache without asking the time."

Senty pulled out the chair across from him. "May I?"

"By all means, if means may be plural."

Senty sat.

"The fish remembers the sea because I smoked it lightly. The bread listened to flame because I let the char stay uneven. The green thing is parsley, celery leaf, caper, and apple, but I would not tell it until after the first bite."

Byron bent closer to the plate. "You have given the dish a private life."

"All good dishes have one."

"My dishwater has a private life," Brad said.

Senty did not turn. "Your dishwater has a problem."

Byron took a bite.

For once, he had nothing ready to say.

Senty waited while he tasted the smoke, the apple, the salt, and finally the grape.

Byron opened his eyes.

"Bear."

"Yes."

"This is obnoxiously accurate."

"That is my preferred form of praise."

Brad approached with the pitcher. "Refill?"

Byron inspected his glass.

"The current diameter of thirst has thinned,  
but the citrus moon is collapsing within.  
Restore, if you will, by a modest degree,  
the radius needed for lyricity."

"No," Brad said.

Senty glanced at him.

"He wants half a refill," Brad said. "He can say half a refill."

Byron met Brad's eyes.

"Half a refill."

Brad frowned. "Oh, now you can say it."

"I contain multitudes. Some are inconvenient."

Brad poured. "Your multitudes can tip twenty percent."

The laugh escaped Byron before meter could catch it.

He put a hand to his chest. Glorp stared at him.

"Do that again."

Byron shook his head, still laughing.

Brad set down the pitcher. "Was that free verse?"

"Good night is not yet upon us, child of cupboards."

"Close enough."

Byron ate. Brent played. Brad found reasons to pass the table twice more, neither of them connected to his section. By the time the plate was clean, Byron sat back with his hands open on the table.

Brent finished a phrase and let the last chord fade.

Byron looked toward the piano. "Play what you were playing before."

Brent glanced over. "That one?"

"Yes. That one."

Brad stopped with a stack of plates. "That was almost a normal request."

Byron lifted one finger. "Do not mistake mercy for surrender."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Brent began the phrase again. Byron listened without trying to name it.

As Byron rose, Glorp picked up the empty glass.

"Come back tomorrow."

Byron adjusted his scarf. "Do you expect greater understanding?"

Glorp shook his head. "No. But could I be your waiter next time? I want to learn how you make the words land."

Glorp looked toward the tea station.

Clement considered him. "You may assist Brad."

"He carries the water," Brad said.

Glorp nodded. "I will begin with water."

Byron smiled. "Tomorrow, then."

---

He stopped beside the chaise on his way out.

Marty remained tucked beneath the old green scarf, his popcorn untouched. The chalkboard stood beside him with the day's predictions crossed through and the roof line still waiting at the bottom.

Byron bowed to the sleeping ferret.

"Accountant of chances, adjuster of air,  
who prices the possible out of his chair,  
tell me the number you hung on tonight:  
what odds did you give that they'd hear me aright?"

Marty did not open his eyes.

One paw emerged from beneath the scarf and tipped the chalkboard back a few degrees. Lamplight reached a narrow strip of slate below the roof prediction.

In Marty's small, careful hand:

*The poet, in his own tongue: EVEN.*

The paw disappeared.

Byron read the line again.

Glorp held the empty glass as though it contained a lesson. Brad had resumed polishing another, though his mouth was moving around the words *half a refill.* Brent worried the earlier phrase at the piano, still searching for the request inside it. Clement stood in the kitchen doorway, watchful and faintly amused.

Senty met Byron's eyes. Nothing in his face asked Byron to translate.

He rested two fingers against the edge of the board.

"Well," he said, in no meter at all. "It landed heads."

Marty pulled the scarf beneath his chin and slept.

The line above Byron's remained untouched.

*Gift from above: 99%*