Glasgow sure!
Highlands! Jeesoh. Highlands?
Huh?
A town called Highlands. An actual town!
What is so wrong with that?
The Highlands is a whole place, not just one town.
Maybe it’s a different Highlands.
Well yeah of course but one town!
Reminded the old people of home I guess.
Well yeah but — Phil Campbell! What is that is that a town? Phil Campbell? An actual town?
Sure it’s a town.
But it’s a guy’s name! Phil Campbell!
Aunt Maureen shrugged. They all go there. All the Phil Campbells. One year a bunch of them came from the west coast of Canada.
Jeesoh!
You want the tourists to visit get a fancy name!
Do they come from Scotland too?
Well now I cant say there son.
There would be hundreds of them if they did. Imagine it! all the Phil Campbells! Murdo returned to the map and saw Millport. Millport! A Millport on the map. Millport. Aunt Maureen, that’s right beside where we live, Millport, it’s an island along from us; Millport’s the name of the town!
Huh!
We used to go there. My pal’s uncle’s got a boat and Millport is a place we sailed. There’s a great pier for jumping in the water. We used to do it.
You did?
It was great, just great. There was a chip shop there as well and if ye were hungry, ye always were, if ye were swimming, so it was great, ye went in there after, whatever, fish and chips. It was just smashing.
Sure sounds good.
All the different names. It’s great!
Aunt Maureen chuckled. That’s the old people, she said.
Rome: look! Rome!
Rome Georgia, sure: Rome Georgia, Athens Texas, Paris Tennessee. That’s the jet set Murdo. You know that one? Aunt Maureen sang:
Oh we’re not the jet set
We’re the old Chevrolet set.
You dont know the song? Rome Georgia, Athens Texas. Aunt Maureen chuckled. It’s fun. You got to listen to it. They got an Athens in Alabama too. You look and you will find it there.
Murdo didnt answer. He was seeing the very town itself: LaFayette. He studied it. LaFayette. There’s LaFayette. Aunt Maureen, he said, I’m just seeing it here.
Sure. Aint far from Chattanooga.
So it is close.
Yeah it’s close. You got cousins in Chattanooga; Gillespies — unless they all went west. Used to get on a train there took you down through Huntsville. Did that train go over to St Louis now? I think it did. Chattanooga’s Indian; they got a song.
Pardon me boy
Is that the Chattanooga choo choo?
Aunt Maureen stopped. Something going down the line, track twenty-nine… She frowned. The Dixie Line son you ever hear of that? Back then it was famous. It’s gone now more’s the pity. People dont know. You ask them and they dont know, my Lord, in the old days, they had to drive them coaches onto boats, had to stop the train. That’s how they crossed the Tennessee River. Now it’s for tourists. Aint got one for ourselves. Son it is beautiful up there. They got the Lost Sea Cave. You ever hear of that?
No.
You didnt hear of it?
The Lost Sea Cave. Never.
Huh. Son they got a whole underground sea over there, up by Sweetwater.
An actual sea under the ground?
They got boats go on it. If you like boats.
Boats!
Sure. We could go there week after next. We aint fixed any plans yet. Got the long weekend huh, so we’re going somewheres that’s for sure. Aunt Maureen glanced at the clock on the wall, made to rise from the armchair. I’m going to make a hot chocolate son what about you you want one?
Can I make it for you? asked Murdo.
No you cannot.
Murdo rose from the settee and walked with her to the kitchen. Things tied in. Amazing how it happened. When Sarah said about the gig she made it seem like it was easy to get there. How easy? Now he knew. She said him and Dad could stay overnight with friends but if it was as close as this maybe they wouldnt need to, they could just get a bus home. Maybe they had their own friends, their own family relations. But that wouldnt matter if they drove home after. Or like a bus. There had to be a bus. Ye think a bus goes to LaFayette? he said.
Aunt Maureen chuckled. You like buses huh!
Well I just mean like…
You got a notion for it. It’s mountain country; good country. They got resorts. You go skiing back home?
No.
Calum does. He goes skiing Murdo. You dont think of snow in California huh, but they got snow alright, they got mountains. Him and his wife now they got a good size of a house son they’d put you up any time; you and your Dad want to visit there. Any time. Got two children of their own, younger than you. That’s your first cousins Murdo. My Lord, they would love to see you there.
Is John there too?
John? Huh. Aunt Maureen smiled. You ask the questions.
I was just wondering.
Sure. Well no, he aint there. John’s in Springfield, Missouri, that’s where John is — little John as I call him. Him and your uncle now one’s hammer and one’s tongs.
Murdo smiled.
Yeah, only it aint so funny. Aunt Maureen lifted her mug of hot chocolate and held it to her cheek. She turned to Murdo and touched his hand. She had switched on the Weather Channel. Now she switched it off. I’m going in my room a bit, she said.
Aunt Maureen would you mind if I took the Road book downstairs with me?
My Lord Murdo I do not want you saying that kind of thing! Makes like you are not family and yes you are family. This is your home and you do what you want. Aunt Maureen brandished her fist at him.
Sorry Aunt Maureen.
She nodded.
*
Murdo’s concentration was on the book of Road Maps. Maybe ye didnt have to go through Chattanooga at all for driving, if ye could pass through the wee towns. Except if it was the bus and folk were getting off. That was his recollection of buses coming from Memphis.
Noises from outside, tyre noises on the gravel. Uncle John’s 4x4; him and Dad back from the pub. He got up off the bed, shoved a chair under the high-up window and stepped up to see, but would have needed a step ladder to see properly.
The bathroom door closed. Murdo undressed swiftly, switched off the light and got into bed, expecting footsteps down the stairs and Dad chapping the door to see he was okay. Why would he not be? Vampires attacking, creatures from the depth coming to drag him down.
He thought to put the light on after but his head was gone because of the gig and the idea of that, if it was even possible. Surely it was? Even just “possible”.
If he couldnt he couldnt. He said he would so really he had to. Otherwise he would let people down.
Amazing how black it was with the light out. Ye couldnt see a thing! Better with yer eyes shut. If ye were in the dark too long with yer eyes open ye got that weird feeling like things closing in; the land coming together and shutting ye in. An earthquake and the ground cracks, you fall in, aaahhhh, trying to cling on, the dirt crumbling. Scary.
He switched the music on, playing it quiet. Playing it quiet was listening to it quiet, and made it different. But full-sounding.
The truth is Dad knew nothing about music. So nothing about Murdo. He heard him play in his room, and knew he was in a band, or had been before Mum was ill.
No point talking.
Maybe Aunt Maureen would come with him! She could drive, she could hire a car.
He shifted on the bed. Moonlight through the wee window; it angled, making the ceiling itself a kind of map made out of papier-mâché, all the bumps, lines and cracks. Imagine a marker pen and tracing it out, following the lines, circling the bumps for mountains and lost valleys, lochs and rivers. Contours. Ye could trace them with yer tongue on the roof of yer mouth, the way sometimes Murdo drew things, sitting on a bus and an old man’s head from the seat in front. Then Mum, he didnt want to draw Mum, how she was sleeping, that way she was, the changes; these changes in her face.