Scottish African Hebrews and the Missing Texas Girl (Part 3)

I staggered out of the terminal, blinking in the pale Scottish sunlight. The shame, the confusion… the lingering taste of that dead lizard. This assignment had already cost me my dignity and the better part of my liver, but at least I still have my freedom, or at least the illusion of it.

My phone, crusted over with what I can only assume was dry vomit, buzzed in my hand. It was a single, curt message: "Call me." No salutation, no signature, just the simple command of a man who knew his power. I hit the button.

"Dean Fucking Merritt," his voice came through, clear and crisp, a shocking contrast to my own slurred reality. "I had to have an entire flight crew medically examined for 'mass hysteria' and cut a check to British Airways that would make a small country's GDP look like a bar tab."

"It was an exorcism, I'm telling you," I corrected, a bit too loudly. "It had to be done. That lady was draining the soul of the entire cabin!"

He laughed. "You're a natural, Merritt. A pure, unadulterated fool. I'm starting to think this money was well spent. Now, listen to me. I've got you out of the hands of the law, for now, but we still need the rest of the story. Head on down to Jedburgh. Find the Kingdom of Kubala. Talk to them. See what they're doing when the media isn't watching." A notification chimed on my phone: a Zelle transfer of $3000. It was the same amount I had blown on the night before my flight, but this time it was a lifeline, not a death sentence.

"Another three grand, as I promised. Now, get an Uber, and I don't want to hear from you again until you've finished the story." And with that, he hung up.

I was left alone, standing on the curb of an international airport in a country I knew nothing about, with a bank account full of money and a mission to find a "lost tribe" of Africans in the Scottish Wilderness. I pulled out my phone and with a shaky hand, ordered an Uber. A small, black car pulled up, driven by a man with a wild red beard and eyes like mine; the eyes of a man who had seen too much, a kindred spirit.

"Jedburgh?" I asked, sliding into the back seat. You know where that is, mate?"

"Aye," he said, a knowing smile spread across his face. "I know it well. What business do you have in Jedburgh, stranger?"

I didn't answer right away. I had a choice to make. Tell him the truth, a tale of a delusional king and his queen and their runaway handmaiden, or play it cool and pretend I was a tourist. The old me, the one before the blackout and the holding cell, would have gone for the latter. But the new me, the one who was staring into the heart of the absurd, knew better.

"I'm looking for a lost tribe," I said. "A king and a queen, and their handmaiden. They're living out in the woods somewhere."

The Uber driver's eyes lit up. He knew.

"Aye, the Kubala lot," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Been causing a right stir, they have. Funny lot. Not exactly a 'lost tribe' if you ask me. I hear they're just over the border now, after the council chased them from the last spot. No one knows exactly where, but a few of the lads in the pub know where to look." He eyed me through the rearview mirror, "For a price, of course."

I just smiled, an unhinged grin of my own. "For a price?" I said, leaning forward. "Well, you've come to the right place, my friend. I've got enough money to create a documentary out of this whole adventure. The kind of money to make a man forget all about his digital overlords. To the pub, mate!" My voice, still a little raspy from performing an exorcism high on Acid and enough booze to kill a man. "The wildest one you've got. The kind of place where a man can find a lead on a missing tribe."

The driver, the red-bearded beast of a man named Angus, grinned, his eyes gleaming with a mix of avarice and mischief. "Aye, I know the place," he rumbled. "Horse and Hound. Only fifteen minutes south of Jedburgh. It's a place where business is done, and not the kind of business that gets reported in the papers."

The drive from Edinburgh to Jedburgh was a blur of emerald green hills and grey, rain-soaked skies. Angus kept up a running commentary, a chaotic symphony of local gossip and half-baked conspiracy theories. He talked about the "Kubala lot," as he called them, with a mixture of amusement and genuine outrage. "Right weird bunch, they are," he laughed a hearty laugh. "Say they don't recognize our laws. Mad as a box of frogs."

The car slowed, turning onto a narrow road leading into a small hollow. A cluster of sturdy, grey stone buildings appeared, huddled together against the encroaching wilderness. This was Bonchester Bridge. Not much of a town, but more of a stubborn human settlement clinging to the banks of a dark, rushing burn. No plastic signs, no garish storefronts, just stone and slate.

"There she is," Angus grunted, pointing his thick finger.

I locked onto the building. Not quite the moss-covered fortress I'd imagined, but a long, low, whitewashed structure. The white paint desperately trying to cover the weathered bones of the building. A heavy wooden sign, its painted letters faded by a century of wind and rain, swung slowly on its rusted chains. The place radiated indifference, and that is the kind of energy that soothes a chaotic soul like mine. There's no doubt in my mind that this was the place. A refuge for freaks, outcasts, and outlaws.

I walked into the bar and ordered a pint of whatever they had on tap. As the bartender slid the glass across the worn wood, Angus walked in, a grin splitting his beard. "Right, lads!" he bellowed. "This here's Merritt. He's looking for the King of the Highlands."

The small crowd erupted in laughter as if they knew right away the joke he was referring to. A man in the corner, with a face like a grumpy troll, shouted, "He's no King!"

Another fairy tale creature beside me shouted, "Looney, is what he is!" then broke out in the kind of laughter that made me think I walked into a Disney animation from the 1930s.

I took a long pull from my pint. "I've heard as much," I said. "But aren't we all?"

"Aye!" the crowd agreed, lifting their ales in the air.

These bastards are ready for it, I thought, feeling at home in this otherwise strange environment. So, I laid it on heavy. "Here's the truth! I'm a coroner, you see? No, not the kind that tears through the post-living searching for clues as to why they are, in fact, post-living. No, I am the kind that tears through the souls of the dead. The living dead, for that matter. I dissect lies. The ones we tell ourselves in order to forget the struggles of the day, the struggles of our lives, the indifference of the universe that landed us in this very bar at this very moment."

The men around me stared, silent confusion smeared across their pale faces. I continued my grandiose tirade. I told them about my employer, a man who believed in authentic lunacy. I told them about the debauchery in Galveston and the holy baptism of Saint Jack Daniel's. I laid it all out there, the glorious, the pathetic, the truth that drives me on my pilgrimage. And to my surprise, they listened. Their faces, a gallery of shock and growing admiration.

The pints kept coming and we talked about the King, a Ghana opera singer named Kofi Offeh, who claimed he was a descendant of the Messiah. We talked about his Queen, the Zimbabwean mother of seven (or eight), whose children had been taken by social services. We talked about the young Texan woman, a handmaiden and "second wife" who fled her own abusive family. The men saw them as squatters, con artists, cultural thieves, and nuisances, then I told them what I saw: beautiful disasters.

The night got longer, and the pub became a maelstrom of boisterous laughter and drunken camaraderie. Bottles were smashed, songs were sung, and somewhere around the tenth pint, a group of the more adventurous Scotsmen, fueled by a mixture of Johnny Walker and my ludicrous story, decided they would help me.

"We know the area," one of them slurred, a blurry man named Hamish. "We'll take ye. We'll show ye where they've moved to. A big night out, aye!?"

"Aye!" the rest of the pirates screamed as Angus slapped me on the back, nearly sending me across the room. "See?" He roared. "I told ya this be the lot!"

I laughed out loud, my head spinning, but primed for a fresh dose of chaos. This was it. The plan, no longer half-baked but totally cooked. The men were drunk, and I was in no condition to be in a car, much less a forest. It was perfect. We stumbled out of the Horse and Hound into the cold, damp night, a small army of misfits on a pilgrimage to find a "lost tribe" in the Scottish wilderness.