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1. EXPOTITIONS AND SUCH
Joseph Dawson leaned forward across the bar, wetting the front of his trousers against the rim of the bar sink. He didn't feel the warm water or the errant suds. This was partly due to the complicated harness of his prosthetics, the thick leather and buckle contraption which secured the replacements for the limbs he had lost in a war. Some war. It was so long ago now that Joe had stopped naming it. He couldn't stand the blank expression in the young ones' eyes when he proclaimed the "V" word.The world kept right on rolling around and other tragedies piled up so abundantly that older hurts went by the boards, lost, forgotten, except by those who bore the scars--the old scars, the woundings that followed to the grave.
In a more perfect world, Joe thought, you lost your legs to some impersonal mine, you gave up everything that had made your life what it was, you crawled and sweated and cursed your way back to a bitter shadow of what you had been before, and then...
...and then life was merciful at last, and there was no more pain, no more suffering, no more tears.
Ah, but this was not that world. It wasn't even in the next galaxy.
Joe folded his arms on the bar and lowered his head. I do much mind if it rains or snows, Bartender Dawson grumbled silently to himself.
Seacouver sloppy winter was just another drop in the deluge, and there had been so many more.
Last winter he'd lost--well, temporarily, he hoped--two men--well, not actually men in the mortal sense--who had been his friends.
Hadn't they?
They weren't dead--he really didn't think they were--just missing.
Weren't they? Missing, not dead?
As Duncan MacLeod's official watcher of record, Joe Dawson had received any number of sightings from all over Europe, and lately up and down the east coast.
Then, in September, there had been that single sighting in New York, and the two gigantic towers had fallen to dust and taken all sensible expectations with them.
Since then, nothing. No sign of the brawny Scot and his willowy colleague, the Eldest Immortal.
Much as Joe tried not to think the worst, there it was anyway, like the Heffalump in the living room that no one wants to talk about. They all thought it. The south side Central Park sighting on the eleventh of September just as the sun was rising, and then no sightings since. One month, then two, now four months later, still no word of the two Immortals' whereabouts.
"Nine-One-One used to mean rescue," Joe mumbled aloud, "very soon it will mean only despair."
"Now, now, Eeyore," a silken sound rustled his left ear. "We are just bound to find that tail of yours any day now."
"Granny!" Joe jerked his head up, and despite himself, his salt-and-pepper beard widened around a grin.
Neurologist Grimes pretended she did not hear the much-hated nickname. "And this," she leaned forward, disappeared below the edge of the bar and lifted up a strange little girl. "This, is Uncle Dawson. Uncle Dawson, this is Broden. Broden, Uncle Dawson."
Odd as it was, the waif's name was the least strange thing about the child. Joe was glad she hadn't accepted the automatic offer of his hand as Ethel finished the introductions. If he had seen the child at his door on the eve of All Hallows he would have complimented her on the fine makeup job, how scary it was, and "Here, have another caramel apple." But it wasn't that night of pretend horrors and mischievous terrors, this child's face might have been ground zero, it was so disordered. If the eyes could see--Joe thought she must be blind--they were looking at opposite walls.
He suppressed the urge to offer her something to drink. It wasn't at all clear whether that was possible with such a mouth, or whatever that was beneath what appeared to be an abysmally misshapen nose--or two noses melted together, the nostrils withered and gaping.
"Isthn't nithe ta thtaih," Broden put both her hands on the bar. With great concentration she practiced a "b" sound several times and then, slapping the bar, she said, "Beer."
Then Ethel Grimes and her little patient had a good laugh at little Broden's joke.
Though, except for Granny's joining in, Joe thought, you would never know that sound was laughter.
"If you ladies will excuse me," Joe turned away and tottered towards his office. "Please, feel free to raid the bar fridge. "
"Joe!" Ethel growled so emphatically, that Dawson turned back. "Oh, Joe," her tone transformed immediately. "Are you okay, Honey?"
The Watcher set his jaw. "I was just leaning against the sink," he answered.
"Of course you were, Honey."
The answer was solicitous, if not sincere. In any case, Ethel let him go change without further interruptions while she stole two wonderful 'nilla ice cream and honey creations that Joe kept for his younger, off-hours customers.
"Joe?" Ethel peeked around the crack in the door to Dawson's office. "Really, are you all right?"
"No," Joe did not look up from the paper on his desk, which he'd been studying since he'd gotten his pants changed and given up his prostheses for the old chair he sometimes used.
"New legs been botherin' ya, Hon?" Ethel picked up the hinged, wooden, painted leg things, setting them tidily, with the harness, under the couch across from his desk.
"How'd you know they were new?" he asked.
Ethel smiled sweetly, as if the question were superfluous, "I know how tall you usually are, Old Man. I know that spot just south of--."
"All right, all right," Joe blustered. "Point taken. I am all right, really. I just leaned--."
"Against the bar sink. Yes, I heard that the first time," she changed the subject, "Before her surgery tomorrow, Broden wanted me to prove to her that there were people who would not think she was a monster. The only catch being she wouldn't let me warn the people beforehand."
"I didn't do so well, did I, Granny?"
"Sibusile did better. She's out there now, convincing Broden she's a baby snake or some such, just waiting to molt into an elegant--something--I don't know, but Broden's eating it up."
"What is wrong with her, Ethel?"
"Cranio-facial dystocia with polysyndactyly," Dr. Grimes began, but when she gauged the look on Dawson's face, she simplified, "early on, the cells got lazy or forgot where they were supposed to go, or what they were supposed to do when they got there. Some cases are inherited. Some are spontaneous mutations. Usually they aren't this old when we start surgical corrections, but her--" She stumbled, clearly unable to say parents. "Her people shut her up in a basement closet and Social Services would never have found her, but, one drunken night, the house burned down above her and killed them. And when the firemen dug through the smoking coals, investigating, they found her."
"Oh, Jeeesus," Dawson shook his head. "Poor Broden. Is she sane?"
"Are you?" Ethel barked back, snatching up the object of his obsession. "Why don't you just connect the dots and give it a rest, Joe?" She flapped the missive with its three-color map under his nose, but not quite long enough for him to snatch it back.
"Please," Joe whined.
"They might both be dead, you know," Ethel was never one for verbal mincemeat.
"I know," Joe said solemnly. He took back the map and traced the path from the park to Ground Zero one last time before he put it to rest in the middle desk drawer. He wanted so very badly to think there had not been enough time for them to reach the towers.
"That can't be all, Joseph Timothy Dawson," Ethel continued. "Come on, 'fess up. What's wrong?"
"Leverage," he answered.
Ethel leaned forward across the desk and buried her long fingers in his frosty beard. "English, Old Man," she made the request gently, but firmly, knowing full well that the view which the lean afforded was more than distracting.
"Don't you ever wear anything under your shirts," Joe said, in a way that made it unclear as to whether he was asking or suggesting. "Hey, Old Lady, easy on the whiskers. All right, all right. It's like this: when they send a bigger batch of muscles, you need leverage. I thought taller would do the trick."
Ethel retreated to the couch and sat down gracefully, tucking her ankles to one side, straightening her dark suit, and waiting.
"Oh, Gran," Joe sighed. "You really don't want to know this. It has nothing to do with--. Well, it's just the price of doing business on Water Street."
Dr. Grimes picked a tiny bit of lint off her luscious thigh and flicked it to the floor.
"You know--," Joe put his finger beside his nose and bent it sideways, "--muscle. Da guys in da shiny suits."
"The Mafia!"
Joe shuddered visibly. "Shhh. Let's just say they're not the South Seacouver Sodality. Anyway, they wanted to--umm--help me with some liquor orders and some cigs with no tax seals and--well, I told them where they could put--" he sighed, "You get the idea. They made a few threats and they tried to hold up repairs on that drain pipe behind the bandstand, but in the end I made them rethink their plans."
Ethel's amber eyes sparkled and widened, with her mouth, into three perfect circles. "Oh, Joe! You went up against the Family? How?"
Dawson shook his head. "Sometimes it's an advantage to be Northwest Territory Watcher Chief. Drop a dime, retrieve a favor or two, get taller," he laughed. "I don't think they'll be bothering us in the near future."
"That's just, just so exciting!" Ethel chortled and beamed. "You Old Dog! I knew you were a hero!"
Joe suddenly found himself strangling in ardent Granny hugs and kisses. "Is it a good thing to leave Broden alone for so long?" he finally managed enough air to ask.
"I told you, Siel is with her, Joe."
"Did you?" Joe rasped as Ethel undid his belt.
"Of course I did, you vanquisher of Sicilian nasties."
Joseph Dawson settled more deeply in his favorite chair and wondered idly about such divers items as whether the neighborhood toughs could actually be termed a "family," or whether he were actually a hero, or more just your average bar owner, or whether the bounce tolerance of his old wheel chair would hold up to their combined weight and Ethel's ardent enthusiasm.
"Piglet," said Rabbit, taking out a pencil, and licking the end of it, "you haven't any pluck."
"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."
"Hahdt ta--be--bahrve," Broden repeated.
"It is true, Little One," Siel agreed. "Hard to be brave when we are so very small."
Dawson stood at the door to his office, feeling oddly embarrassed for the inch he'd added to his "legs," and a bit more embarrassed he'd made Ethel help him put them back on again, just because, just because...
Oh, hell, he thought, they were all so very small in the scheme of things, what did he have to be ashamed of?
All of them, small and scared. How did anyone manage to be brave?
How did the Princess Sibusile go on after nearly dying with her sisters in the palace coup?
How did the tiny ruined child go on through all that ugliness of her "family," uglier than what fate and misfortune had done to her face, and--synpoly-something or other--the kid had six fingers on each hand. One finger for each year of her life in the dark, in the grave they had made for her in the cellar.
Joe had to admit he was ashamed. He had no excuse for his earlier wallow in self-pity, not with such brilliant lights everywhere to show him what it meant to be brave. He glanced back into the office where Dr. Grimes lay in blissful slumber. You are the hero, Granny.
"Can I join?" he asked as he walked his legs over to the bar where Siel sat on the floor beneath the blue neon, an old book and the broken child in her lap.
"UndaTchoe," Broden said cordially, if incoherently, waving her strange hands of many fingers excitedly.
Dawson propped himself against the nearest stool and listened to Siel teaching the child from her first English book, When We Were Very Young. It was the story about trying to kidnap Roo from Kanga.
Or something like that. Joe found his thoughts drifting away, planning the reopening, now that the pipe was fixed, staring at his guitar, propped against said pipe at the far end of the cozy little bar. God's in His Heaven and all's...
"Close the Fucking Door!" Joe bellowed before he remembered there were children and princesses present.
It was just that your eyes got used to the dim light of the bar and everytime someone opened the door in the daytime, they let in a blinding light and--this time of year--a blasting cold.
And all the regulars knew perfectly well there was a two-second limit on open door at Joe's. These idiots--Joe could just make out two fuzzy shadows in the winter light glare--these yayhoos were just standing there, letting them freeze.
"Sorry, Ladies," Joe apologized as he pushed away from the stool and made his way towards the door. Halfway there, it occurred to him that these two might be those very Sicilian meanies that had so excited dear Granny.
"Okay, Gentlemen," Dawson said in his very best I'm-a-mean-mother-fucker voice. "What do you want?"
"Oh a great many things, you mean old man," a familiar voice warbled. "But we've come bearing gifts and we'll not be gainsayed."
"You won't be--?" Joe lunged forward, "Oh, get your sorry asses in here! We thought you were dead!"
The Watcher would have fallen, but the Highlander's strong arms held him up in a hug while the Oldest Immortal scampered by him and fell to his hands and knees beside Siel and Broden, chatting and laughing.
"I'm sorry, Joe," Duncan MacLeod said, pushing back from his Watcher. "I am so sorry we made you worry."
Joe thought he might say "That's okay," but it wasn't.
He thought he might complain about his grief, but Mac was already apologizing, after all.
In the end, Joe Dawson just did what he did. He shuffled back behind the bar and offered the Highlander a drink.
And because he was a discrete and ethical Tender, he didn't even ask about where they had been all this time or what they had done or what was the crumpled brown bag with the big red bow.
Not yet.
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