Widdershins (9 page)

“I can help.”

“You should stay over,” I said.

“I’m not drunk.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Which one of you?” she asked, grinning. Mona fell asleep almost immediately, but I lay awake for a long time on my side of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t think about it often, but Mona had put it in my head and the wine wouldn’t let it go away.

Geordie.

How different would our lives have been if we
had
gotten together all those years ago?

And if we were to get together now, could we make it work?

I wasn’t ever going to find out because it wasn’t something I’d ever ask him. But I couldn’t help thinking about it now as I lay here, trying to sleep.

Hand Me Down My Fiddle

Lizzie

For all that she’d gotten in after dawn,
Lizzie still woke up in the middle of the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. She looked over at her cousin’s bed to see that Siobhan was already up. But of course her bed was made—it didn’t matter that hotels had housekeepers, Siobhan couldn’t leave her bed unmade. Her few belongings were neatly set out on her night table and one half of the dresser, her clothes folded and put away, her knapsack in the closet.

Lizzie smiled. Unlike her own clothes and knapsack, which she’d tossed onto the chair in the corner last night and were still lying there all in a heap. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep some more, but even with the blinds drawn, too much light crept in through them. Finally she gave up, had a shower and dressed, then went downstairs to see if any of the other band members were up and about.

She found Siobhan in Cindy’s, the little restaurant/cafe off the lobby. The room didn’t promise much from its looks: painted cement floor, Formica table tops and mismatched kitchen chairs, old faded photos on the walls that weren’t hung for their artistic or historic value so much as that they’d simply always been there. But the band had eaten here last night and the food was spectacular. It was, Andy had said, as though the chef decided to go slumming after getting top marks at wherever it was that she’d studied the culinary arts, opting for this out-of-the-way backwoods cafe when she could have been the toast of the town at some five-star restaurant in the city.

Siobhan was sitting at a table by the window, reading a paperback. The remains of her breakfast were on the table in front of her, a plate with a few crumbs left on it and the inevitable pot of tea.

“Hey,” Lizzie said, taking the seat opposite her.

Siobhan looked up and smiled. “Hey, yourself. How’d you sleep?”

“Deeply, though I didn’t get enough.”

“That’s what you get for playing the night bird. I have to say I was kind of surprised to find you here this morning.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the last time I saw you, you were getting in your car and driving back to the city.”

“I didn’t spend the night here?”

“You weren’t in the room at three, which is when I turned off the light.”

Lizzie buried her face in her hands. “Oh, god. I was so sure it had been a dream.”

Siobhan set down her book and took off her glasses, laying them down on top of the paperback.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

Lizzie lifted her face from her hands. “You wouldn’t believe me in a million years.”

Siobhan’s eyebrows rose. “Now you
have
to tell me.”

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Start at the beginning. Where did you go last night if you weren’t going back to the city?”

“I
was
going back. But the car broke down in the middle of nowhere and then . . .”

Lizzie went on to relate what had happened, from the arrival of the bogans through to her meeting with Walker, the tall man with the deer’s head that wasn’t a mask. She paused only when the waitress came by to take her order, finishing up before the arrival of her coffee and toast.

“Well, say something,” she said when she was done and Siobhan just sat there across the table from her.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You think I’m nuts.”

“No. I think you think all of that happened. But . . .”

“It couldn’t possibly have,” Lizzie finished for her when her cousin’s voice trailed off.

“Well, it does sound like one of Pappy’s fairy tales.”

Lizzie nodded. Their grandfather knew hundreds of them. When she and Siobhan were small, they would sit by his knee and listen to him for hours. And even later, when they’d outgrown the stories and were learning tunes from him, he’d find a way to bring stories of his wee folk—who weren’t all that “wee” most of the time—into the origins of some of the tunes he taught them.

“Could you have fallen asleep in the car?” Siobhan asked.

“And dreamed it all?”

Her cousin nodded.

“I suppose. Only how did I get back? It was
totally
dead until Grey fixed it.”

“Unless you woke up half-asleep and gave it another try, and this time it did start.”

“I suppose. But the battery was completely drained because the alternator’s shot. Even if I could have gotten it started, it would have died on me again.”

“Unless the alternator’s not the problem. Where did you leave the car?”

“At that garage he recommended.”

Lizzie sighed. She’d mechanically added sugar and cream to her coffee while they were talking and had a sip of it now. Like everything else in the cafe, it was absolutely wonderful.

“I hate feeling like this,” she added.

“If you were just dreaming,” Siobhan told her, “you’re not crazy. I’ve had tons of dreams that seemed
so
real, even after I woke up.”

Lizzie nodded. She’d had them herself. Like buying some great new album only to find when she woke that it didn’t even exist.

“I guess I need to go to the garage,” she said, “and see what’s happening with my car.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Thanks. Just let me finish this.”

“So where are the boys?” Lizzie asked later, after they’d fetched their jackets from the room.

They were walking along Sweetwater’s main street, making for the garage on the edge of the village where Lizzie had left her car last night. There were no sidewalks, but there wasn’t much traffic. Lizzie had heard that there was a good farmer’s market on the other side of the village, so maybe that was where you’d find whatever traffic congestion a place this size got.

“Probably still sleeping,” Siobhan said. “Were you here when that Liam fellow pulled out a tin whistle, or had you already gone?”

“No, I was here. He was good.”

“And he must know a thousand tunes. The three of them were still going at it when I went to bed.”

“Did Con hit on you?”

Siobhan laughed. “Hardly. He’s only got eyes for cute punky fiddlers who dress all in black.”

“I’ve got red shoes and socks on,” Lizzie told her.

“Hence the punky.”

“I thought that was my hair.”

Siobhan eyed Lizzie’s mix of bright red and black hair.

“No, that’s just fun,” she said. She waited a moment, then asked, “So you don’t fancy him even a little?”

“I’d fancy him a lot if we weren’t in the same band. But that’s a rule I won’t break again. It’s just gets too damn messy.”

“And I agree with you. Though, if it was true love, I’d throw the rule book away.”

Lizzie laughed. “I think it’s more hormonal love.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing at all,” Lizzie agreed. “Unless you’re in the same band.”

They reached the garage then, and both stopped to take it in. Lizzie’s heart sank. It looked much worse in the daylight than it had last night. All the metal signage was fighting off an intrusion of rust, the windows were almost impenetrable from their thick coating of dust, and the building was in desperate need of a paint job. There were stacks of old tires to one side of the garage bay door and machine parts heaped in unruly piles wherever you turned. The field beyond the tires was littered with junked cars. Old gas pumps, rusting and disused, stood amidst clusters of dead weeds that had pushed up through the concrete all last summer before they’d died in the fall.

“You left your car
here?”
Siobhan asked.

“Not another word,” Lizzie told her.

There was no one in the office, and considering the state of the room, Lizzie didn’t blame anybody for staying out of it. There was dust everywhere and the counter was covered with tools and old engine parts. On the wall behind the counter, a bikini-clad Miss March regarded them coyly from a wrench company’s calendar. But they could hear a radio playing country music in the bay and when they went inside, there was a man with his head under the hood of Lizzie’s car. He stepped back and smiled at them, a slightly overweight man in his fifties, wearing grease-stained bib overalls with a T-shirt that had once been white underneath it.

“How do,” he said. “This your car?”

Lizzie nodded. “Do you know what’s wrong with it?”

“Alternator’s shot—just like you said in your note.”

Lizzie gave her cousin a knowing look.

“Can you fix it?” she asked.

“Sure can, missy. I can get a new one in from Tyson for this afternoon. But if you’re not in a hurry, I could get you a used one from the junkyard—cost you maybe half the price of a new one. Trouble is, your car wouldn’t be ready until . . . let’s see. I guess late Monday morning.”

“That’s okay. We’re playing at the Custom House, and we weren’t planning to leave until then anyway.”

“You the fiddlers?”

Lizzie nodded.

“I heard tell you put on a good show. Maybe I’ll drag Joe out to see you’s tonight.”

That would make this one Tommy, Lizzie thought, if the sign outside was still up to date.

“I could put you on the guest list,” she said.

“That’s right neighbourly of you. My name’s Tommy and my partner’s Joe.”

“I’m Lizzie and this is my cousin Siobhan.”

Tommy wiped his hands on his overalls, but after giving them a critical scrutiny, he shook his head.

“Pardon my rudeness,” he said, “but I got too much grease on my hands to shake.”

“That’s okay. Thanks, Tommy. I guess we’ll see you tonight.”

He nodded, then called after them as they were about to step outside.

“What made you have your car towed here?” he asked.

“Towed?” Lizzie said.

“Well, you sure weren’t driving it, condition that alternator’s in.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’m only asking ‘cause most folks—’specially from the city—would take it to one of the other garages in town. They’ve got all them fancy computers, tell you what’s wrong and what to do.”

“This fellow named Grey recommended you,” Lizzie said. “He’s the one that, ah, got my car here.”

“You’re a friend of Grey’s?”

Lizzie shook her head. “I wouldn’t say friend. He was just nice enough to help me out last night.”

But Tommy didn’t seem to hear her.

“You being a friend of Grey’s,” he said, “I’ll have your car ready for you this afternoon—no charge.”

“But—”

“I
won’t argue about it,” Tommy told her, “and that’s a solid fact, missy. I’m right pleased to do a favour for any friend of Grey’s.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to. You come on back this afternoon, and I’ll have that car of yours purring like a kitten.”

“I really don’t need it that fast.”

But, “We’ll see you tonight at your show,” he said and turned away.

Lizzie looked at her cousin. Siobhan looked as confused as Lizzie felt, but she didn’t say anything. She only took Lizzie’s arm and led her away from the garage. But Lizzie couldn’t let it go.

“Did you hear that?” she asked. “He knows this Grey fellow. He said the car wouldn’t run with the alternator being like it was.”

“I heard.”

“Jaysus.”

Siobhan nodded. “Yeah, it’s a kicker all right. Looks like you weren’t dreaming.”

“But . . . that’s impossible, right?”

Siobhan didn’t have an answer for her.

Sweetwater got its start as a mill town at the turn of the last century when Thomas Fairburn built the area’s first grain mill. The old stone mill stood where the Ashbless River fell into the Kickaha on its own endless journey down from the mountains to what was now Newford and the lake shore upon which the city was built. In recent times, the mill had become a high-class hotel and conference center, part of the ongoing transformation of the whole village into a tourist haven.