Interloper at Glencoe Page 8

  “Aye, Gòrdan, he is that. And looking at you I begin to wonder if that might make him a better man!”

  He clamped his mouth closed as his face reddened, then turned and walked away.

  Beth slipped the bloodied dirk into her bodice and turned to Nick. “Let me see.” He turned so she could poke the wound in his back. It was small, for the blade had only been two inches or so, and appeared to have cut into the muscle at the top of Nick’s shoulder. “Can you lift your arm?”

  He tried it, but it wouldn’t move far.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Pretty bad.” His fingers flexed, and he could bend his elbow, so she was glad for that. But blood was streaming down the back of his sark, turning the yellow linen brown.

  “Come along, then. We’ll leave the cart here and return the garron to my uncle. You’re finished working for some days, I think.”

  Nick groaned, but didn’t argue. He went to the little horse and one-handed began to unhitch it from the cart. The creature shook its neck, then nodded vigorously as if to agree it was time to go. As Nick worked, he glanced away at Gòrdan walking away across the field, pointed with his chin, and said, “What did he call me?”

  Beth also looked in the direction Gòrdan had taken. “Stranger. Outlander.”

  “Ah. Well, true enough.”

  She nodded, but kept her gaze to the ground and didn’t tell him that Gòrdan had also referred to her friendship with Nick as “savagery.”

  Chapter 5

  That night Nick lay on the lumpy straw mattress by the fire, shirtless and a little colder for it because Beth had taken his to clean and repair. He tried not to feel the cold, or the pounding ache in his shoulder, and concentrated instead on the hopeful news which had come earlier that evening. Word was the clan leaders had been released from their pledge to James, and the MacIain, accompanied by his gillie, would set off to Fort William in Inverlochy in the morning to sign the oath.

  Glad as he was to hear it, he was sure puzzled by it. If the laird signed the oath, then how come in six weeks there would be soldiers all over the glen, killing people because he hadn’t? Even if the MacIain didn’t make it to the garrison on time, could the king be so dumb as to order such an attack as punishment for the laird being late? The thought boggled Nick’s twenty-first-century mind, and he had to seriously consider the possibility history had changed. Hope blossomed. Yes, that must be it. His presence had changed the past, and he’d convinced the MacIain he must sign the oath. His heart lightened to know there would be no massacre after all, and he sighed with satisfaction.

  The pain in his shoulder thudded, and he tried to move it, stretch it so it wouldn’t be so stiff and the ache so ferocious. In the front of his shoulder was a dark purple spot under the skin just above his collar bone, and he figured the knife had come within a hair of poking out the other side. Nobody here thought the cut needed stitches, which might be lucky for him, as filthy as everything was here, but he figured if he were at home and had access to an emergency room he might be in line for some surgery to repair this muscle. He couldn’t lift his arm at all now, and it hurt like a sonofabitch. Lying on his back and staring into the rafters, he cursed the name of that old Redcoat William Campbell and hoped he would run into the guy. Just then it was his dearest wish to obtain a dirk and cut Campbell’s throat.

  He laid his good arm over his face and sighed. No, his dearest wish was to simply be home. Man, he wished he were at home! With a sigh, he said it aloud, then glanced toward the beds and hoped nobody had heard. There was no stirring there, only snoring. He rolled to his side, reached across and laid his fingers over the wound in his back, then as he dropped off to sleep he murmured again, “God, I wish I were home.”

  He dreamed. It was that weird faerie guy, the one with the tunic that barely covered his ass, staring at him from darkness. Not moving, not talking, but only staring. Nick tried to talk to him, but no sound would come from his throat. The questions he had about Beth, the massacre, and what was going on went unasked and unanswered. And from the look on the guy’s face, Nick guessed any utterance from him would have been unwelcome in any case. Soon the image faded, and there was only darkness again.

  The next morning the ache woke him. It was dull and constant now, rather than the thudding of the day before. Sun warmed his face, and a familiar scent of bed linens brought to mind memories of home. As he gained consciousness, longing filled his gut and he kept his eyes closed to relish this dream.

  But then he awoke fully, and the sunshine was still there. He opened his eyes and his heart leapt to find himself in his own bed, his own apartment, with the early morning sun slanting through the window and his clock radio showing the time as half an hour before his alarm would go off.

  He sat up and laughed. A dream! It had been a dream! His head fell back with relief, and his shoulder shrieked pain.

  “Ahhhhowwww...” His heart began to thud, and his mind raced to figure out what was going on. He was home, but wounded and filthy. He smelled of sweat, peat smoke, and earth. The fight with Gòrdan had happened. Had all of it happened? Had he been gone all those weeks? What day was today?

  He slipped from the bed and went to the desk in the next room to boot his computer. The date was April 11; the day after he’d gone to bed what seemed an eternity ago. It was as if he’d only slept through the night. He turned to look around the room. His desk, his books, his bench press and guitar. All his stuff he’d missed these past weeks. Laughter rose, and he quite forgot the pain in his shoulder. He was home. Home. He laughed out loud for joy.

  Then he remembered it was Monday. He was supposed to be at work in an hour and a half. So strange to suddenly be held to clock time after more than a month of watching the sun cross the sky and estimating the day. He turned in place again, struggling for his bearings. What first? Shower. Definitely shower. He went to start the water, and stepped into the tub and under the spray before it was warm. Any water that wasn’t nearly freezing seemed warm today. He moaned with a pleasure almost as fine as sex as it streamed over him, and ran his fingers into his hair to wet it. Shampoo. Oh, yes, shampoo! He snatched the bottle from the window sill overhead, dumped more than he needed onto his hair, and began to scrub. Never had coming clean felt so delicious, not even coming back from a camping trip when he had been a boy scout. He lathered and rinsed, then lathered again, and then stood under the water, scrubbing with soap until his fingers pruned up.

  Dressing was an exercise of memory, trying to work out how he used to do it. He drew on his underwear, but they felt odd. Like they didn’t fit right. A tug here and there, and they still didn’t feel right. He reached in to adjust himself, but no matter which way he settled it felt wrong. Finally he just gave each leg and the waistband a tug and left it at that. He pulled on his work pants and his belt revealed he’d lost an entire notch around the waist. However, his shirt was tight at the shoulders. That blasted knife wound wasn’t helping at all, and he figured it was still swollen. He hoped it wouldn’t open and start bleeding today. There were only two white shirts for work, and one of those was already in the wash.

  Breakfast was frozen waffles and more syrup than he really wanted, for it had been a month since he’d eaten anything approaching sweet.

  Then, careful to think through his former routine, he gathered his briefcase, jacket, and car keys, then headed out the door, locked it, and paused to remember which way to go to his parking space. He tossed his keys and caught them, and hoped he would remember how to drive. This was Los Angeles. Traffic was even less forgiving than that King William guy, and just as likely to kill.

  At the shop, the heady smell of engine grease and hand cleaner made him nearly dizzy with joy at being home. This job had never been more than refuge from the backsliding economy of recent years, but today the shop smells and echoes of metal on metal in the work bays brought a comfort of familiarity. He let himself into his office.

  That morning was spent refreshing his memory. He went th
rough the drawers on his desk, paged through his calendar to remember what had been going on in his life before he’d been snatched away to the past, dealt with the morning’s busywork, and filled out two work orders, one for a straightforward engine mount repair and one for “a funny noise while accelerating.” Injectors, more than likely, but Nick kept his opinion to himself and one of the guys would say for sure what it was. Then he wandered out onto the floor to have a look at the mechanics at their work. He loitered just outside his office door with his hands shoved into his pockets. The pain in his shoulder eased some when he rested them there.

  The shop wasn’t large, not like the dealerships down the street with rows of work bays and state of the art diagnostic equipment, but it had been around a long time and was busy enough to require a manager. Himself. The owner was an old guy who kept an office upstairs, but he rarely came around to occupy it. One of the three mechanics had worked there for over twenty years, but the other two were much younger.

  The newest guy, Wayne, was younger than Nick, and had been at the shop for nearly as long as himself, but over those three years had developed a bad habit of coming to work stoned. Anymore, it was a fifty-fifty proposition as to whether Wayne would get anything done in a given day. Today he was standing under a car on a lift, having at it with an impact wrench. The deafening rattling overpowered the engine noise from Nick’s sister’s car being worked on in the next bay.

  Nick needed to call Wayne into the office and fire him. He didn’t relish the prospect, but there had been warnings, and as much as Nick hated to boot the guy, it was beginning to piss him off that the warnings hadn’t been heeded. There was pressure from the owner to weed out this deadwood, for the economy was still struggling, and carrying Wayne was hurting everyone. At a pause in the wrench noise, he yelled, “Hey, Wayne!”

  The mechanic lowered the tool at the end of its hose, and turned to look in Nick’s direction. He didn’t appear to have shaved that morning, nor run a comb through his hair. Grooming standards were pretty lax in this shop, and though Nick disliked the sloppiness he generally let it go so long as the work got done properly and the hair was under enough control that it wouldn’t be caught in machinery. The other two guys peeked over Darlene’s car hood at Nick, then ducked back under it and pretended they didn’t know what was about to happen. Wayne said, “Yeah?” His tone was distracted and impatient. Rude. He wasn’t helping himself.

  “Come into my office for a moment.” Without waiting for a reply, Nick returned to his desk and waited.

  Wayne came in, wiping his hands on a greasy shop towel, and stopped just inside the door. “Yeah?” He was a large-boned guy, tending to fat but never quite there. There was a thick scab on one of his knuckles, and he poked at it some before stuffing the rag into a back pocket of his coveralls.

  Nick gestured with his good hand to the rickety aluminum tube office chair before his desk. “Have a seat.”

  Wayne sat, appearing deeply uncomfortable, which may have been the chair but probably wasn’t. His eyes were hooded in a sullen look, and Nick figured Wayne knew what was coming.

  But then Nick thought maybe not. An idea struck, and he wondered if he could nudge Wayne in a way that would make a difference. Remembering how he’d felt to be called “gillie,” he said, “You’re a better mechanic than I am, Wayne.”

  The other guy’s jaw dropped open. He blinked, and said, “Uh... could be.” A corner of his mouth lifted in a nervous smile, but then fell again.

  “No. You are.” He relaxed into his desk chair, putting a sense of informality to his talk. No agenda, just guys shooting the breeze. “I mean, I’m competent. I know the basic stuff, and I know how to run this shop and keep it afloat, but I don’t have the experience under a hood you do. I’m just a dot-com reject with a talent for engines. You’ve been at this a long time.”

  Wayne hesitated, suspicious, then said, “Ten years.”

  “And three of them here. You had a few jobs before you came here, aye? I mean, right?”

  “Right.”

  “How many of them fired you for smoking dope?”

  The reply was too quick. Too defensive. “None.” Wayne raised his chin and shifted in his seat. “I’ve told you that before. I don’t do that stuff.”

  Nick chose to ignore the lie, for reiterating his belief that Wayne was a user would be pointless. Instead he said, “Good. I’m pleased to hear you don’t smoke dope, or do any of that other stuff.”

  Wayne’s face worked itself into a priceless arrangement of bland innocence, which betrayed his guilt as plainly as if he’d handed over a signed confession.

  Nick continued, “However, since you don’t indulge in mind-altering substances, I’m now at a loss to explain why your work has been so unsatisfactory of late. And by lately I mean the past three years. You’ve had many warnings about the pot, and I can see where you might be confused as to why you received those warnings, since you never smoke dope. It must have puzzled you very deeply.”

  Now very suspicious, but unable to fathom what was going on, Wayne only nodded. Slowly.

  “So you need to understand, Wayne, that we assumed you were coming to work stoned, because of the work that hasn’t been done, or took too long to do. And the repair jobs that came back to the shop because they’d been done improperly. It’s the only way I can explain the incompetence of a guy who should be—and is—a better mechanic than I am. When a customer brings his car back to this shop with its new alternator and even I can see the thing is aligned wrong and that is why it’s throwing belts and killing batteries, I don’t know what to make of that. ’Cause I know you know better than that. And I know you don’t want anyone to think you’re no better a mechanic than just a kid tinkering on his hot rod and still learning his way around an engine. I mean, you do know your way around an engine, don’t you? You’re not an amateur?”

  Wayne’s voice was soft now, and had caught up with the gravity of the situation. “No, I’m not.”

  “And you want to take pride in your work.”

  The mechanic nodded.

  “And you wish to continue supporting your wife and young daughter, and make them proud of you. Your girl is in kindergarten now, isn’t she?”

  Another nod.

  “You figure she tells the other kids at school about how much her daddy knows about car engines?”

  Now Wayne shrugged.

  “I’ll bet she does,” said Nick. “Kids like to brag on their daddies. I’ll bet your daughter tells all the other kids how you know everything there is to know about cars.”

  Wayne’s lips pressed together, and Nick didn’t know whether he was angry or about to cry. Hopefully the latter, and Nick waited to let him think about it.

  Finally Nick took a deep breath and let Wayne off the hook. “Well, in any case, I think you know your job. Better than I do, anyway. I also think that you should find a way to make certain you stop forgetting all that stuff you know about cars. Whatever it takes to stay competent, Wayne. Your choice.”

  The mechanic sighed, and nodded.

  “And,” said Nick, his voice suddenly hard, “the next time I call you in here to discuss this, I will fire you. Believe that.”

  Another nod.

  “Take a short break, Wayne. Get yourself some coffee and relax for a minute. Then get back to your bay.”

  “Yes, sir.” Wayne rose from his seat and hurried from the office.

  Nick watched him go, and wondered if he’d done any good. For the rest of the day he watched from the corner of his eye and found Wayne more energetic than usual. He hoped it would last.

  As soon as he could get away in the evening, he went to the emergency room at St. Joseph’s for his wound. He waited for a couple of hours to be seen, and even then the physician told him there wasn’t much they could do. He was no longer bleeding, the skin had scabbed over, x-rays showed nothing broken, and he would eventually heal. He was handed a prescription for pain medication he knew would only nauseate him, s
o he threw it in a garbage can outside on his way back to his car. The ache wasn’t so bad, and he’d lived with it so far; he’d take a couple of aspirin and let it go.

  Leaving the hospital, he thought he would go home, but instead found himself on the freeway headed toward Van Nuys. It was fairly late when he knocked on the door of his parents’ house, and he hoped he wasn’t disturbing them.

  Darlene answered, and when she saw him on the front porch her mouth actually dropped open. “Who are you, and what have you done with my big brother?”

  “Cute.” He stepped inside, and she closed the door.

  “You can’t possibly be Nick Mouliné. He never comes here voluntarily; he always has to be dragged, kicking and screaming. Is there a mother ship? Where’s your transport pod?”

  “Yeah, well...” Nick plundered his brain for a denial, but there was none. It was true. “Well, maybe I should come here more often.”

  The parents were in the living room, watching TV, and Nick couldn’t help hearing the note of surprise, and even discomfort, at his appearance. They seemed to think something was wrong and were waiting to hear bad news. But he let himself down as casually as possible into an empty chair and asked how things were going.

  Once he realized Nick had not come with bad news, Dad returned his attention to the show that was on and didn’t say much after that. Mom, on the other hand, gladly ran down some of the news for him. But it was plain she was waiting for a shoe to drop. It made Nick wish he could tell them what had happened to him and why it suddenly mattered to him so much to visit with them. He drank in the sight of them, Dad kicked back in his leather recliner and Mom at the end of the sofa with her primly crossed ankles and Starbucks coffee mug, for he’d spent the past weeks thinking he’d never see them again. Of course they hadn’t changed, for only a day had passed here. But it felt like forever since he’d last seen them, as if traveling three centuries had made them exactly that dim in his memory. He found himself thankful they were even alive. They hadn’t been when he was living in the past. More than once the words of explanation rose in his throat, but he stopped them before they could come out. He tried to imagine himself saying out loud that he’d traveled through time by faerie magic, and there was no way to word that without sounding as if he’d lost his mind. His family already didn’t know how to take him; he didn’t want to estrange them entirely.