A Scottish Scout in Geronimo's Land - Prequel
by Toby Johnston
Chapter 2
The Scout in the Texas Asylum
Enter Stage Four: Capitulation. I was France in 1940. I had spent weeks building my impregnable Maginot Line of excuses, denial, and digital sabotage, only to have Da simply outflank me like Erwin Rommel's 7 th Panzer division. He hadn't fought my defenses head-on; he'd just driven right around them while I was busy polishing my metaphors.
No Churchillian fight them on the beaches. My government had collapsed. I was sitting in the railcar in Compiègne, signing the armistice papers on the breakfast table. The ninety-nine percent probability hadn't just become one hundred percent; it had become an occupation.
The house transformed into a command center for the new move. Da came home every day with operational reports on the Austin business. Mum was constantly on the phone with our relocation liaison—a blonde real estate agent with a mountain of hair that seemed to defy gravity. They scrolled through listings, many with pools; for the first time, my resistance wavered.
At least I had the remainder of my time with the troop here in Scotland to keep me occupied through the rest of the summer. My Scout Leader reached out to his peer with the Boy Scouts of America troop in Austin to arrange for my continued progress. I was to be folded into their Troop for all local activities while linking back to Scouts Scotland to track my requirements. I was still defiant, though my territory had been occupied and my people dispersed, I would continue to fly the flag of the King's Scout from whatever this new land proved to be. I was a one-boy Free Scottish Forces—mentally unconquered.
As the days flew by, I methodically began to distance myself from my mates. It was easier to pull away now than to endure a slow, agonizing goodbye. I even packed my room when Mum asked, abandoning the scorched earth policy of defiance in favor of a quiet, hollow cooperation. I didn't fight the boxes; I just filled them.
To stay sane, I also threw myself into my cross-country training with a grim, solitary intensity. If I was going to be deported to the colonies, I wasn't going to arrive weak. I spent my mornings pounding the damp Edinburgh pavement and my afternoons on the trails of Holyrood Park, pushing my pace until my lungs burned with the cold Scottish air I knew I'd soon be trading for a furnace. If I couldn't control my geography, I would at least control my stamina.
By the end of July, the move preparations were nearly complete. All our household goods and the clothes we didn't immediately need were hauled away, destined for a shipping container bound for the Americas. The flat in Edinburgh began to echo, the walls stripped of our history, leaving me standing in the middle of a life that was already being sent across the sea in a steel crate.
And that's how I ended up on a non-stop flight from Heathrow to Austin, Texas, in early August. I have to give kudos to Da's company—they did it right and flew us all, including our Golden, Bonnie, Business Class. It's like having your own little fortified bunker at thirty-thousand feet; enough privacy for a young teen to join the Mile High club solo if he were so inclined, which I was.
Bonnie certainly enjoyed her flight. I got the chicken dinner; she enjoyed the salmon, which she inhaled with a lack of dignity that made me question our boy-and-his-dog bond. I refused the American-themed snacks on principle—a final, hunger-striking protest against our displacement. But Bonnie? Bonnie was the ultimate collaborator, happily eating anything the flight attendant offered her. She did sympathetically listen to all my whining without complaint—though, to be fair, it's possible she was just asleep or waiting for me to drop a pretzel.
I was glued to the window as we came down into Austin. Scotland is green; Texas is brown. I'd heard they said in Texas that Satan called and wants his weather back, and I can tell you they were not exaggerating. We stepped off the plane and hit a wall of blistering heat. It was a pleasant 18°C in Scotland when we'd left; it was 39°C in Austin when we landed.
I practically wilted as we hit the tarmac—even my balls were sweating. Seriously, I could feel the droplets dripping down my thighs like a leaky radiator. My mood reflected the oppressive heat—how can people even live in a country like this? It was an environmental war crime.
It seemed like everyone was wearing a cowboy hat; it didn't matter if they were in jeans or a fancy suit. I was a little worried when we got to passport control, but they just gave us a cursory glance and waved us on. Once we cleared customs, we were met by a mountain of a man holding a MacKenzie sign. He had a skycap all lined up to grab our luggage and whisk us to his car—a huge black Suburban with killer AC.
Bonnie hopped into the leather interior like she'd lived in Texas her whole life, already panting with a sort of misplaced enthusiasm. I was glued to the window for the whole drive to the new house, watching the shimmering heat waves rise off the asphalt and wondering if the Free Scottish Forces had any chance of survival in a place that felt like the inside of a hairdryer.
I kept trying to relate this unfolding landscape to my home in Scotland—or even what I had experienced in France and Germany—but this was just so different. So big. So spread out. So flat. Even the green here had a desperate, thirsty quality to it that still looked kind of brown.
We had read Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court this year in school, and I couldn't stop feeling like the main character Morgan trying to reconcile nineteenth-century Connecticut with sixth-century England. Like him, I had been ripped out of my own time and place and deposited into a world where the rules were different and the landscape was unrecognizable. Morgan had thought he'd landed in an insane asylum —now I really understood the analogy, only my insane asylum was in Texas, not England.
The parallels were starting to itch. Morgan was an engineer, a man of practical reality, suddenly surrounded by knights and wizards. I was a boy raised on history, ancient stone, and drizzly lochs; suddenly surrounded by strip malls, massive trucks, and a sun that seemed personally offended by my existence. Like him, I knew no one here—save for Mum, Da, and Bonnie, of course. I was a stranger in a strange land, a thousand years, or miles, from home.
Finally, we drove into an actual neighborhood and pulled into the driveway of the house I recognized from Mum's listings. There she was—the lady with the big blonde hair. She must have been tracking our Suburban via satellite, because the front door flew open before we even came to a complete stop.
She went right for Mum, greeting her like a long-lost sister with the kind of aggressive hugging and kissing that would be considered a breach of the peace back in Edinburgh. Then she pounced on Da. Thankfully, I had six thousand pounds of American steel and tinted glass between me and her, so I managed to escape with just a wary wave from the backseat.
She ushered us into the kitchen, where she had papers, keys, and welcome home kits all laid out on a massive central island. And she talked. And talked. And talked. It was a torrential downpour of Texas hospitality, a verbal blitzkrieg that left no room for retreat. I felt trapped, pinned down by the sheer volume of her enthusiasm. I couldn't just wander off; my scout training wouldn't allow me to be that overtly rude, plus her hair might be a weapon.
After an eternity, Mum finally started maneuvering her toward the door—a tactical withdrawal if I ever saw one—while the woman still talked. I waited until they were at a safe distance and whispered under my breath, "I have one more question…"
Da snorted, his eyes fixed on the realtor's retreating back. "Careful, second son. You're expendable!"
We both breathed a collective sigh of relief when we finally heard the door click shut. Mum came back to the kitchen, looking like she'd just survived a gale-force wind.
"She's a piece of work, isn't she?" Da opined, loosening his collar.
"She's got big hair," I wondered aloud, staring at the space where she'd been. "Do you suppose all that talking makes it grow higher? Like some kind of pressure valve?"
Mum laughed, the tension finally breaking. "Well, they do say the higher the hair, the closer to God."
I stared at her. "No way. Do they really say that? Do they actually believe it?" Now I really felt like I'd landed in an insane asylum like Twain's poor Morgan. It wasn't just a new country; it was a new reality where the laws of physics and social conduct had been replaced by hairspray and proverbs.
"Apparently, they're quite colorful with their sayings here in Texas," Mum said, still chuckling. "I'm sure we'll learn a lot more. Let's have a proper look around and see what's what!"
Together we wandered room to room, getting a sense of the actual layout of the house as opposed to the glossy, deceptive drawings Mum had shown us in Edinburgh. I'll admit, the occupation had its perks: it was a nice house, and it actually had a pool that didn't look like a glorified puddle.
Upstairs, the master suite claimed the front of the house. Then came the two rooms designated for Rhona and Magnus when they were over, and finally—at the very end of the hall—my room.
My eyes bugged out at the view. The house was situated high enough on a ridge that I could look out over a broad, sun-scorched plain with hills shimmering in the distance. But the real Aha! moment wasn't the landscape; it was the ensuite. My room had a bathroom with a triple-headed shower—a regular wall-mount, one of those fancy overhead rain ones, and a handheld. I kind of chubbed up just imagining myself in there. If this was my cell in the American asylum, at least I'd be the cleanest prisoner in Texas.
The rest of the house, however, was a maze. The household goods had arrived ahead of us, and the movers had apparently decided to play a high-stakes game of Tetris, haphazardly shoving furniture and boxes into every available corner. My head started spinning as I contemplated the magnitude of the unpacking task—mountains of cardboard and crates that held the entire disassembled version of my previous life.
Fortunately, the 'rents seemed to be suffering from the same tactical exhaustion. Mum looked at Da, then at the sea of boxes, and sighed. "How about we start on all this tomorrow? Let's order some takeaway and eat out by the pool."
Da looked visibly relieved and gave a sharp nod of agreement. After a few minutes of scrolling through Yelp reviews and trying to decipher the difference between street tacos and crispy shells, he had a massive order of Tex-Mex on the way.
I lugged my bags up to my room, stripped off the layers of Edinburgh that were now practically fused to my skin, and dug out my trunks. Minutes later, I was cannonballing into the pool with Bonnie right behind me.
Oh my God. It wasn't just cool; it was silky. I surfaced, wiping the water from my eyes, and braced for the familiar, stinging burn of chlorine I'd grown up with at our pools. But it never came. I licked my lip—salt.
"It's saltwater, Lachlan!" Da shouted from the patio, sounding far too pleased with himself.
I floated there, stunned. In Scotland, saltwater was something that tried to kill you during a winter hike near the Firth of Forth; it was a gray, churning force of nature. Here, it was apparently a backyard amenity. These people hadn't just conquered the heat; they'd domesticated the sea. It was a chic, shimmering lagoon of liquid velvet.
My balls were particularly grateful; the cool water had finally brought them down from a state of near-critical meltdown. For a moment, I forgot I was an exile. The salt on my skin felt like a ghost of the North Sea, but without the biting, bone-chilling wind.
Okay, I thought, watching the small, wispy clouds floating by in a sky that was a more aggressive shade of blue than anything I'd seen in the UK. Maybe there are some redeeming parts of Texas.
Bonnie seemed equally thrilled. I had to show her where the stairs were—she spent the first thirty seconds trying to climb the sheer tile wall like a panicked seal—but once she had the geography down, she was in and out constantly, shaking a fine mist of saltwater over the patio furniture with every exit.
I christened my room with my first official American wank that night—featuring my first official American fantasy boy. He was a stunner I'd seen at the airport, leaning against a pillar in jeans that hugged his slim legs, and a pair of worn cowboy boots. He'd caught me looking; he didn't look away, just gave me a slow, knowing smile and an obvious, lingering adjustment of his crotch that left me red-faced and breathless. If I was going to be a prisoner in this heat, at least the local scenery was inclined to be friendly.
The next morning, after I'd christened the triple-headed shower, I became Mum's conscripted labor. I spent the day unpacking and forcing our Scottish life into Texas-shaped cupboards. It was probably for the best; the physical labor kept my head busy and gave me less time to feel sorry for myself. Besides, as everyone knows, the massive task of unpacking is best accomplished with the help of a Golden Retriever who thinks every piece of packing paper is a personal gift.
Between the boxes, I tried to maintain my Free Scottish Forces training regimen. I ventured out for a few runs, but the Texas heat was a tactical nightmare. Back home, a hot run meant 20°C and a light breeze; here, the air felt like breathing through a warm, wet towel. By the second mile, my skin was salt-crusted and my lungs felt like they were bubbling. I was used to the hills of Holyrood Park, not this flat, shimmering asphalt that seemed to radiate heat directly into my soul.
The only thing that kept me from a total collapse was the ritual at the finish line. I'd stumble through the back gate, shedding my soaked shirt on the patio, and collapse straight into the saltwater pool. Bonnie, who had usually been lounging in the AC, would hear the splash and come charging out to join me.
We'd spend an hour just drifting together—me and my loyal dog, cooling our collective heels. I'd float on my back, watching the hawks circle in that aggressive Texas sky, while Bonnie paddled circles around me, her golden fur fanning out in the silky water like seaweed. In those moments, with the salt on my skin and my dog by my side, the Occupation felt almost bearable.
While we were getting the house in order, Da was heading off to the office every day. Over the next two weeks, it felt like the cement was hardening around my feet. I'd harbored a secret hope that Da would realize he'd made a catastrophic mistake, but every day he came home pumped up and excited.
Mum tried her best to turn me Texan, dragging me out to shop for jeans and western shirts, but I shut her down. I refused to abandon my Scottish roots or my dignity. I wasn't buying into the whole cowboy thing that everyone here seemed to follow like a cult. Americans were supposed to be the kings of independence, yet they all dressed like they were extras on the same John Wayne western film set.
"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be," I muttered to myself, channeling my best Churchill. I wasn't just defending a country, its culture, its history—I was defending my wardrobe. You weren't going to find me dead in jeans and a cowboy hat, I defiantly swore to myself.
I was a King's Scout. I was the Free Scottish Forces. I would never surrender.
Fortunately, the ride to Saint Luke's Episcopal—my first day as a sophomore—had been quiet. Mum knew I wasn't happy, and I think she realized that any attempt at an extended conversation would be met with the stony silence of a prisoner of war being transported to a new holding facility.
As she dropped me off, I stepped out and immediately began shaking my head at the God-forsaken heat. It was only 8:00 AM, and the sun was already acting like it had a personal vendetta against my Scottish complexion. The only advantage was the school's dress code; they seemed to have factored in the climate, so I was comfortably dressed in Bermuda shorts and a button-down. I didn't even have to tuck it in or wear a belt—a level of sartorial anarchy that would have given my headmaster in Edinburgh a stroke.
I took a deep breath, adjusted my bag, and headed into my scholastic asylum; I snickered when I remembered that Twain's Morgan had called the commoners White Indians. I was the nineteenth-century engineer, tasked with civilizing this sixth-century tribe over the next three years. Or, more likely, just surviving them. I wasn't totally lost; we'd done the requisite tour with the headmaster, so I had my schedule and a rough map of the school burned into my memory.
The school was nice enough, though strikingly modern compared to my school I'd left behind in Scotland—two-hundred-years-old and housed in a sprawling manor house twice as old. It was a bit of a toss-up, really. My école in Paris had been just as ancient as Edinburgh, but my privatschule in Germany had been every bit as sleek and glass-heavy as this place.
I suppose it makes sense if you look at the history: If you're like the French, you surrender right off the bat and your buildings don't get demolished; start a war like the Germans and you get pummeled into oblivion. Austin, on the other hand, had no such concerns. Two hundred years ago, this entire metropolis was probably just a single, lonely adobe mud hut and one very confused goat. There was nothing to demolish because there was nothing here to begin with.
I marched toward my first period, feeling like Morgan walking into Camelot for the first time, mentally checking the perimeter and waiting for the first sign of the bloodthirsty White Indians.
The hallway was a total riot—a churning mass of humanity that looked less like a school and more like a chaotic village square on market day. Throngs of boys and girls surged left and right, threading between unmoving clusters of veterans who stood like obstacles in a stream. The din was deafening; the air was thick with the shrieking of girls and the awkward, breaking braying of boys, all engaged in the frantic, primitive rituals of those who'd survived another summer in the wild.
Teachers were attempting to direct traffic but failing miserably, looking like inept versions of Twain's Sir Kay the Seneschal or Sir Sagramor le Desirous; frantically trying to maintain order in a camp that was clearly being run by the human muck. I didn't bother fighting it; I simply jumped into the current moving in the right direction, letting the primitive momentum carry me toward my first-period, Mr. Schneider's homeroom.
I spilled out of the current and into Mr. Schneider's room. It was like stepping off a battlefield and into the Great Hall. Schneider sat behind his desk, not fazed at by the chaos, just watching it with the heavy, patient eyes of a king who had seen empires rise and fall before first period. The human muck quieted down the moment they crossed his threshold—a man with authority. He remained focused on his papers, though he offered me a brief, distracted smile as I entered and claimed a seat toward the middle.
A pretty even mix of boys and girls eventually filled the room. I sat back and watched, narrowed my eyes, and began the formal assessment of potential friends under Rule Two. Most of them clearly knew each other already; they self-organized into little tribal units, chattering away in that loud, percussive American cadence.
I felt like a naturalist observing a new species. Almost every girl was blonde—either by the grace of God or the local salon—and I noticed their hair was already beginning that ambitious, vertical climb toward the stratospheric heights of Texas womanhood I'd seen on our real estate agent. It was like watching a slow-motion architectural race to the ceiling. I spied only a lone redhead and a single, sleek black ponytail a few rows ahead of me who seemed to be opting out of the local societal trends.
As the minute hand inched toward the top of the hour, Mr. Schneider stood, moved around the front of his desk, and casually leaned back against it. He scanned the room, papers in hand, looking every bit like the King Arthur holding court or hearing petitioners.
Clearly, Schneider leaning against the desk was an established signal; the side conversations dwindled, and the White Indians shifted in their seats to face him. When he had everyone's attention, he smiled.
"Welcome back, one and all, to another academic year at Saint Luke's! It's so nice to see you again after the summer break. I do hope you all recovered from the ravages of freshman year...because sophomore year will make last year seem like child's play!"
The class seemed to be enjoying his banter—polite giggles and smiles all around. Everyone was leaning forward in their seats, and the try-harders in the front row were already taking notes, probably recording his opening statement for future evidence.
Then he paused, his gaze sweeping over the room until it locked onto mine. So much for blending in with the rabble.
"Now, we do have one new student joining the school, and our homeroom, this year," he said, glancing down at his notes. "Is it... Lak-lan?"
The butchery of the name hung in the air like a bad smell.
"Close, Sir," I said, my voice sounding impossibly Scottish even to my own ears. "It's pronounced Loch-lin."
"Ah, like Loch Ness. Got it." Schneider grinned, seemingly pleased with his own geographical reach. "Well, Lachlan, why don't you stand up and introduce yourself? The rest of these other miscreants already know each other from freshman year. The floor is yours…"
I'd not expected to be the only one, but I had my prepared intro ready—it was time for Texas to meet Scotland. I stood up and opened my mouth, my lips moving, but for the first time in my life, no sound emerged.
It turns out it's incredibly difficult to speak when you're looking directly into the eyes of the most beautiful boy you've ever seen. That girl with the sleek black ponytail? Not a girl. He was a boy. Not a White Indian, he was a Native American boy with eyes as dark as his hair and a smile that could melt the polar ice caps. He was sitting right there, half twisted in his seat, looking right at me, and my brain simply stopped functioning. All I'd need was a flint and those cheekbones to start a campfire. My entire resistance strategy was currently being held hostage by a jawline.
"Lachlan? Go ahead, lad. Don't be shy, we're all friends here," Mr. Schneider offered, his voice pulling me back from the brink of a total intellectual blackout.
Shy? Not me. If I couldn't be invisible, I was going to be unforgettable. I shook off the hypnotism of the ponytail and hit them with the full force of the Highlands.
"Madainn mhath, is mise Lachlann, tha mi à Alba."
I let my eyes roam the room, making a conscious effort not to let them snap back to the boy in the middle row. It was much easier to maintain my dignity when I wasn't being dazzled.
"That's Gaelic for Good morning, my name is Lachlan, and I come from Scotland," I translated, my accent crisp and practiced. "Edinburgh, actually, though I've also lived in Inverclyde and Dundee and I've spent three years each in France and Germany."
"Ah, Deutschland, also sprichst du dann Deutsch? " Mr. Schneider interrupted, his eyes twinkling with the challenge.
I instinctively came to attention, clicked my sneakers with a bit of flair, and grinned. " Ja, Herr Schneider, ich spreche Deutsch. Ich ging in München zur Schule für die Klassen fünf, sechs und sieben. "
The class went silent. I could feel the natives staring at me as if I'd just started speaking in Martian.
"And you lived in France," Schneider continued, clearly enjoying this. "So you speak French as well?"
"Oui, Monsieur Schneider, je parle français aussi," I replied, allowing the smoother, Gallic vowels to replace the harsh German ones. " Mais j'étais plus jeune quand j'ai habité à Paris, donc mon vocabulaire est plus faible. "
"Well, I don't speak a lick of French, so you've got me there," he said, turning to grin at the rest of the room. "Pay attention, class. We have a genuine linguist in our midst. I know some of you could well use a tutor to get a passing grade in your foreign language studies!" He turned back to me, looking genuinely impressed. "Continue, Master MacKenzie."
I stood a little taller. The Interrogation had turned into a Commendation. I looked out over the room, feeling like I'd successfully established my intellectual dominance over the compound. But then my gaze accidentally drifted back to the boy with the black ponytail.
He wasn't just smiling now; he was looking at me with a mix of amusement and genuine curiosity, his dark eyes sparkling. My sophisticated, multilingual brain suddenly went back to being a pile of mush. I had four languages at my disposal, and not a single word in any of them felt adequate for the way he was looking at me.
"Well, we've just moved to Austin," I continued, my voice regaining its steady, Edinburgh-standard cadence. "My Da is running the US operation for Nordika, so I'm here for the duration. I'm also big into Scouts. I've been at it since I was old enough to join, even with the moves to France and Germany. I'm currently working toward my King's Scout award, which I believe is the equivalent of your Eagle Scout."
"Ah, another Scout! Most excellent!" Schneider's face lit up. "I got my Eagle Scout back in the last century! Mr. Allen and Mr. Bennington are also Scouts. You're in good company here, Lachlan. Anything else we should know about you?"
I was feeling good. The natives weren't attacking; they were actually listening. I figured it was time to deploy the tactical nuke of my prepared intro—the joke I'd been refining since the flight over the Atlantic.
I leaned in slightly, lowering my voice as if checking for hidden microphones. "I'm not supposed to tell, but I'm also here on a secret mission for the King. He's considering taking back the Colonies and wants my personal assessment on whether they're actually worth the trouble."
I let a small, dangerous grin play on my lips. "So far, the jury is still out on the weather, but the untucked shirts are a point in your favor."
The room erupted into laughter. Even Mr. Schneider was chuckling. But the only reaction that mattered was a few rows away. The boy with the black ponytail didn't just laugh—he ducked his head, a genuine, shoulder-shaking grin spreading across his face.
My winning over of the masses was going better than I could have ever planned. I'd officially declared war, and they were cheering for me.
Mr. Schneider didn't skip a beat. He quickly recovered, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the conflict.
"Oh no, a counter-revolutionary in our mix!" He jumped up from his desk and began pacing back and forth across the dais, rubbing his hands together with villainous glee. "This is going to make our American History and Government class so much more entertaining this year. Tread lightly, young Lachlan, you vile toady of the King! You should know that Mr. Allen is a legitimate Son of the American Revolution —honor-bound to protect the principles of liberty and the Republic. I sense an unstable powder keg in our midst!"
The class was in stitches, but I just offered a small, dignified nod of acknowledgment. If I was to be the Villain of the Republic, I would do it with the poise of a royal emissary.
He then shifted to the more mundane, though critically important, administrivia of the day—schedules, rules, and announcements. In my mind, these were the King's Directives being read aloud, the daily grind of life within the walls of Camelot. I dutifully recorded the intel in my notebook, aware that even the nineteenth-century engineer needs to know when the kitchen is serving food.
Then, with about fifteen minutes left in the period, the King relaxed his posture.
"Alright, you miscreants. I've heard enough of my own voice. You have the rest of the period for socialization. Try not to start any actual revolutions before the bell."
The room immediately dissolved into a low roar of shifting chairs and overlapping voices. I felt the familiar urge to remain a solitary figure of mystery, but before I could reinforce my defenses, I felt a presence at the edge of my tactical perimeter.
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