“Dry cat food?”
“Door-to-door salesmen, Jehovah’s Witnesses…”
“I keep telling you, he’s not dangerous. Just a little reserved. I hope he’ll get along with dogs. Marge may be there.”
Geoffrey smiled. “Does she know what you think of her?”
“What?… Oh, I see. What I meant was that Marge Hutcheson always brings border collies to the games, and I wouldn’t want them to chase Cluny. Or vice versa. Marge was always one of my favorite people at the games. I used to help her set up the gates and ramps for the herding competition.”
“Do you mean to tell me there will be sheep at this ordeal?” asked Geoffrey, inspecting the sole of his shoe as if anticipating future indignities.
“No. Of course, in Scotland border collies herd sheep; but for the games here, sheep are too much trouble to haul around, so most exhibitors use ducks. It’s amazing what the dogs can get those ducks to do.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll bet if we got a giant carnivore to slink around after you, you’d be doing amazing things, too.” He paused to look at Elizabeth, who was hopping on one foot with one hand arched over her head.
“I’m shedding,” she informed him, placing her left foot in front of her knee, then behind it, then in front again.
“A balsam conditioner would do you a world of good, but why are you bouncing around like that?”
Elizabeth pretended to stop in order to answer his question, and Geoffrey pretended not to see her gasping for breath. “Shedding,” she said between heaves. “Name of… dance step… Highland fling… practicing.”
“You’re not going to practice too much, are you, dear? Father insisted that we learn CPR, but it’s been years.”
“Dinna worry about me, laddie!” snapped Elizabeth.
“Oh, now really, this is too much! I can take the costumes and the peculiar dancing, but if you start lapsing into a vaudeville Scottish burr, I will lock you in the trunk for the duration of the festival.”
“You’re not going to be any fun at all.”
“Nonsense! I shall be indispensable. With all those demented hams running around pretending to be Jacobites, I shall be that all-important figure: the audience. I expect to enjoy myself hugely.”
“You’ll be lucky if no one brains you with a bagpipe,” muttered Elizabeth.
Dr. Colin Campbell glared at the gaggle of pipe-band members trying to dash across the road to the cafe, apparently trusting their youth and stamina to transport them before his Winnebago mowed them down. They couldn’t be presuming on Dr. Campbell’s good-wilclass="underline" the nonexistence of that was an accepted fact among the games crowd.
Just what you’d expect of a Campbell, most people said, thereby overlooking an important psychological point. Highland games festivals spent a lot of time emphasizing Scottish traditions and lauding Bonnie Price Charlie, whose band of overconfident nincompoops were slaughtered, sword in hand, by the musket-toting Campbells. To the idealists enamored of lost causes, coming to a battle well fed, with state-of-the-art weaponry and a sizable army to back you up, was cheating; and the Campbells were vilified in song and jest for their calculating and unsportsmanlike behavior. Some two hundred and forty-odd years after the Battle of Culloden, the Campbells were still considered the flies in the broth of Scotland, which explains why Colin Campbell thrived on ill will. What other sort of person would go, year after year, to a gathering at which he was guaranteed to be hated?
Dr. Campbell waited until he could see the whites of the pipe band’s eyes before pumping his horn, which blared out, “The Campbells are coming! Hooray! Hooray!” As he sped off in the direction of the campsite, he could see them in his rearview mirror shaking their fists and shouting Campbell epithets. Colin smiled; it was an auspicious beginning for the games.
Jerry Buchanan winced as he removed his kilt from the monogrammed clothes bag. Whoever had inquired “What’s in a name?” had not been a Buchanan of Scottish origin. In Scotland, last names denote clan affiliation, and thereby clan tartan, which meant that Jerry Buchanan would spend a lifetime of Highland festivals running around in a tartan of red, green, and yellow with a predominant orange stripe, in marked contrast to the muted grays and browns he wore the rest of the time. Why couldn’t he have been a Gordon or a Douglas, with their tasteful blues and greens?
Jerry was tired of having to be good-natured about the jokes-that Barnum and Bailey were septs of Clan Buchanan; that Buchanan was Gaelic for rainbow. He’d almost rather be a Campbell. He had considered quitting the games circuit, but he did enjoy the sporting events, and he had quite a reputation as a hurler. The trophies looked good in his office waiting room, and it gave him something in common with MacDonald and Ogilvy, his partners at the clinic. Someday it might even be worth more than that.
Jerry glanced out the window to see if a battered old AirStream had pulled into the campgrounds yet. Someday all this Highland business might pay off very well indeed, he told himself. Jerry didn’t usually dabble in politics, but this was different. He wondered what news would be arriving with the man in the AirStream. Perhaps he would speak to him about changing the Buchanan colors-when he had the power to do it, of course. When he was the Earl of Buchanan.
Jerry smiled, picturing his little dental office tucked into the turret of a castle and his receptionist decked out in a kilt of tasteful blue and gray.
Cameron Dawson hadn’t said anything for six miles, ever since he had realized that nobody was going to talk about porpoises; but his hosts hadn’t noticed his silence. Probably never would, at the rate they were nattering about this festival they were taking him to. From what he could gather, they all thought it was the most amazing stroke of good fortune that their visiting professor from Scotland had arrived just as the Highland festival was about to begin: it solved the problem of how to entertain him for the weekend.
Cameron Dawson was less sanguine about the coincidence: he would have preferred to be given a tour of fast-food restaurants and then left alone with a big-screen color television hooked up to cable. But it was not to be. He wasn’t sure just what to expect of an American Scottish festival, but if the previous hour’s conversation was any example, it was going to be the longest weekend of Cameron Dawson’s life.
“You’re sure you don’t have a kilt, Dr. Dawson?” asked Mrs. Carson with a disbelieving smile.
“Positive,” said Cameron, trying to smile back. And you’re sure you don’t wrestle alligators? he wanted to answer.
“Dawson-what clan is that, anyway?” asked Andy Carson, the assistant dean of biology. Opinions in the department were divided over whether he had taken up the study of salamanders because he looked like one, or whether he had grown to resemble them after long years of close association.
“Clan MacThatcher,” said Cameron, going for broke.
Betty Carson giggled. “You can’t fool us! There’s no such clan. I’ll look you up.” She held up a small book called Scottish Clans and Tartans, which Cameron realized he was expected to know by heart. “Dawson… Dawson…” she murmured, flipping pages. “Ah, here it is! ‘Dawson is a corruption of Davidson, and the Davidsons are now a branch of Clan Chattan.’ I’ll turn you over to one of them for the parade of clans. I expect you’ll want to be with your clan, won’t you?”
Cameron blinked. “Do any of them know anything about porpoises?”
Betty Carson considered it. “If they’re like most clans, they’ll be M.D.s. Andy always introduces himself as Professor Carson, rather than Doctor, so that people won’t try to talk to him about AMA politics.”
“Or tax shelters,” Andy Carson grunted. “They certainly prescribe good Scotch, though, at these festivals. What’s your brand, Scotty?”