Warrior and the Wanderer

Warrior and the Wanderer

Elizabeth Holcombe

Copyright © 2014 Elizabeth Holcombe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Chapter One: On The Rocks

Brimstone, Nevada; Friday, 13 June 2014:

“T
here’s always someone waiting to take your place.” Ian MacLean stared into the cracked mirror.

He stood in the men’s toilet of Last Chance Gas, alone, hung over, and trying to grasp a sliver of hope for a life wasted by one colossal daft choice. “You bit the hand that fed you, and this is what you get for it…nothing.”

He hunched down over the sink and glared at his reflection. The bar of florescent light overhead buzzed, giving a sickly green unforgiving hue to Ian’s face.

He raked his fingers through waves of dark-brown hair that had plastered to his scalp with oil, dirt, and sweat. The locks stuck up from his head in a multitude of spikes, each having its own direction. His hair looked as if it had been styled by Beelzebub himself.

He rubbed a palm down his cheek to the dark stubble over his chin. His skin was tanned and roughened by desert sun and wind outside of this urine-scented sanctuary.

He shook his head. His rise from singing for coins on the streets of Edinburgh to international fame had taken twenty-five of his forty years to accomplish. And it only took a few minutes for him to turn his back on all of it. Now months’ later, wandering through life was no longer acceptable.

He fumbled a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his leather jacket, and with them a lacy red thong. He couldn’t remember who the owner was, didn’t care. It was too long ago. He hung the thong over the broken handle of a condom dispenser beside the sink.

Ian continued to stare at himself in the mirror. Was there any point in moving along? His wealth consisted of a twenty in his wallet. His car was his only possession, and some L.A. repo men were looking to take it from him.

“You didn’t think you would get away unscathed, did you?”

He wrenched away from the hideous apparition in the mirror and

lost his balance on the piss-slick floor. He fell hard on his ass, his sunglasses sitting at a crooked angle on his nose. He looked down the length of his legs covered in dusty, black denim to his boots. He gripped the bottom of a towel dispenser and pulled himself upright. The dispenser groaned and cracked in the block wall. Before it could fully give way Ian grabbed what was left of the handle of the condom dispenser with his other fist and pulled himself to his feet.

“Time to see what I can salvage for my future…if it’s possible to salvage something from nothing.” But that was where he had started once long ago, from nothing.

He set his shades evenly on his nose and slammed the door open and stepped out into the atomic flare of Nevada sunlight.

His boots crunched over the white, dusty gravel as he walked steadily to the rectangle of shade made by an aluminum canopy over a bank of four pumps and his antique, no,
vintage
, 1971 silver Corvette. He had always liked old things that had a history before he owned them.

From behind the tinted glass of his sunglasses, Ian noticed the gas station looked vintage as well. A relic from the fifties. The white, streamlined look of the station and the ramp of white canopy that jutted out from it looked more mid-century than twenty-first century. The entire structure was rimmed in a faded stripe of red at the roofline. He stopped dead in the gravel sending up a small dust cloud.

Beneath the twirling sign,
Last Chance Gas
, the gas prices were posted with plastic numbers on the white pole:
Regular .35, Mid-Grade .37, High-Test .40

Ian, instinctively glanced at the ground for the fallen three’s. The price of petrol hadn’t been that low since well before he was born.

Movement in the shadow of the canopy over the pumps caught his attention. He looked at a figure, stooped, comically so, like a bad imitation of Quasimodo, shuffling toward him. It stopped on the verge of shadow and sunlight, staying in shadow.

Ian walked toward the figure, fumbling his wallet from the back pocket of his black jeans. He had not taken them off since Tuesday and this was Friday, his fortieth birthday, Friday the thirteenth.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked, finally freeing the wallet. He stopped, the toes of his boots inches from the shadow. He looked down at the wallet, gaped open to reveal a lone twenty.

The figure said nothing.

Ian looked down from his lofty height of six foot two, at Quasimodo who stared up at him from under a shock of yellow hair. His eyes were as pale as his hair.

“Well, mate? What’s it going to be?” Ian asked.

“
Den er Dem!
” the figure croaked. What was he speaking? It sounded like Swedish or something Scandinavian.

“Sorry?” he asked. “What was that?”

“You are him.” Then the man stood up, fully, until he was eye to eye with Ian. Bloody hell, a fan out here in the middle of nowhere.

“Yeah, well, I was
him
now I’m just a guy trying to pay for petrol. How much do I owe you?” Ian asked again.

“Don’t know,” the man said. His mouth was the only thing that moved on his lanky frame. “Haven’t pumped a drop.”

“Why not?”

“You didn’t specify the octane.” The man stared at Ian as if he were nothing more important than a desert creature eking out a dry, desperate existence in the heat.

“The best petrol on your menu.” Ian wanted out of this place, wanted to feel the rush of air on his face, wanted to bloody think.

The man grinned as if all of life’s mysteries were hidden within his pale eyes and sun-roughened skin.

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Sorry?” Ian asked.

“You’re English.”

“I’m Scottish, I mean I was. I have American citizenship.” What did that matter?

The man looked at the gravel. Kicked a few pieces with the toe of his work boot. “That shouldn’t matter.”

“You’re right. Would you like me to pump the petrol?”

“I will take care of everything.” The man looked at Ian and broke out into a grin of broken and stained teeth. Too much chewing tobacco, Ian guessed, and too much alone out here in the one place that cast a shadow, where time seemed irrelevant and speaking in riddles was apparently an art form.

“What will it be?” the man asked. “What octane strikes your fancy?

“The best,” Ian replied weary of repeating himself. He rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead, now slicked with a new sheen of sweat. “Only twenty dollars worth.”

“Twenty dollars of the best.” The man walked past three pumps:
Regular, Mid-Grade, High-Test.
He stopped at a pump painted the same faded red as the stripe that circled the roofline of the canopy. He removed the nozzle.

“Isn’t that the diesel?” Ian asked, pointing to the unmarked red pump.

“Depends,” the man said. He used one finger to pry open the door to the Corvette’s fuel tank. “Where you going?”

Ian sighed. “Does that bloody matter?”

The man smiled and nodded. “
Den er Dem.
” You are him.

“Aye, aye, whatever.” Ian said. “Just give me the petrol.”

“As you wish,” the attendant said with a grin and inserted the nozzle into Ian’s car.

A sudden gust of hot dry air mingled with the stinging scent of the fuel swirled around Ian. The wind built upon itself, pushing specks of sand up from the ground into his eyes. He quickly swiped the grains away. Then the wind was gone. A dust devil. He had seen a lot of them in the desert.

“Done,” the man said, a note of triumph ringing over his lips.

Ian pulled out the twenty. “This should cover it.” The red pump had no dial for price, only for gallons. He thrust the money out at the man. The sooner he saw Last Chance Gas vanishing in his rear view mirror, all the better.

The man curled his long fingers around the bill. “I’ll get your change.”

“There shouldn’t be any—just keep it.” Ian opened the door and dropped into the seat. He could not help but see the man out of the corner of his eye, standing there, watching him. He turned the key in the ignition.

In that split-second before the engine roared to life, Ian heard the man speak to him. He spoke the language Ian’s mother had used. His mother had been raised on one of the Western Isles of Scotland, Mull. It was a language so bloody out of place in the Nevada desert. Ian swore the man said in the Gaelic, “
Tapadh leibh.
”

And as the engine roared in his ears, louder than he ever heard before, Ian heard himself reply, “
Tapadh leibh.
” Success be with you.

He stomped the gas pedal and left Last Chance Gas in a hail of dust and gravel.

He glanced in the rear view mirror. The attendant was already a speck under the awning’s shadow.

“Crazy bastard,” Ian scoffed.

He smashed the pedal without mercy. His head snapped back, the wind rushed in a hurricane’s velocity through the open window on the driver’s side. He eyed the speedometer. Seventy-five, eighty-five, ninety-five, one hundred and five, and rising.

Ian suddenly pictured the next day’s headline in the
Los Angeles Times
:
Ian MacLean Identified in Mangled Wreckage of Bloody Nice Automobile.

That was not the route back to fame he really wanted. He had considered it, but only considered it. All he wanted at that moment was to get away from his old life.

He stared at the onrush of asphalt. The dotted centerline blurred to one saffron stripe as he raced west toward the northern part of California, away from the southern part where no one loved him anymore, where he had everything and lost everything in a smattering of months. The stripe in the middle of the road was like an arrow leading him to his new destiny.

“Lead me there!” he laughed into the windshield, pounding the steering wheel with his open palms.

He was in control of this automobile and soon he would command his destiny again.

He looked at the speedometer. The orange needle lay flat on the peg at 120 mph, the vintage Corvette’s limit.

Ian tapped the brake.

Nothing. His mind suddenly brought forth the image of the lanky, straw-haired attendant pumping petrol from the red pump into his Corvette.

He tapped the brake again, harder. Zip.
Nada.
Zilch.

“Oh, bugger me,” he breathed.

There was no changing one’s mind on Hell’s highway. He stomped the brake this time. No response. If anything he felt as if the car was going faster. He stomped the brake again and again, with both feet and wrenched the emergency brake handle up at the same time.

He stared out of the windshield at the onrush of landscape. The sun, a white-yellow ball perched molten over the mountain range was his unwanted guiding beacon. It appeared to rest on the road, dissolving the asphalt until it ran like a midnight river. The arid, rock-strewn landscape was no more than an ochre blur as Ian tried to swerve the Corvette off of the road, to use the gravel to slow him down. No dice. The steering wheel was locked into one position: dead ahead.

Pictures of his life suddenly flashed before him on the windshield, like some private screening room where the only soundtrack was the howl of wind rushing in through the open window, smacking the side of his face with one dusty blow after another.

He saw his life in reverse: driving into Nevada, leaving behind his debt-ridden scrap of a life in L.A.; Ian trying to preserve his fame in a dank Vegas hotel; Ian melting down on the worldwide music awards broadcast telling his band he didn’t need them; Ian and band signing one hell of a good recording contract; the unknown Ian MacLean and band playing in a smoky pub in Edinburgh; Ian standing on the streets of Edinburgh singing for coins the tourists tossed into his scuffed guitar case; his mother telling him good-bye before she died leaving him an orphan.