Chapter 1: Paved With Lies

      "Sorry sir, no hires left this eenin."

"But I made this reservation six months ago," I exclaim louder than intended to the young guy behind the EuropCar counter.

"That's the way of it, but may do check Anns a' mhadainn." 

"Let me speak to your supervisor!"

"I'm the boss, chief," he grins a little larger than I'd like before adding, "but where might ye be heading?"

"I was going to tour the area around Langholm," I gripe, dejection already creeping into my tone.

"The Paisley treana or Buchanan bhus will thoirt ye shios an sin," he sighs with an eye roll while placing a closed sign in the window and flipping off the lights.

     I'd read all kinds of advice about traveling the rural countryside by bus or train - mostly to avoid them at all costs due to irregular schedules and only proximate destinations. In fact, all of my planning had been obsessive for this trip to the ancestral homeland, but what better way to spend the three pandemic years of geographic isolation?   

     Thirty years before, when I was an underpaid doctor-in-training during a previous pandemic of the suppressed sort, an older brother had mentioned seeing a lot of Bateson grave markers in an ancient churchyard while driving up the A7. The name of the place had stuck, and now I was dead set on taking the road to Langholm in this long weekend of a trip. Determined, that is, right up until the best means of back country transportation had immediately fallen through.

      "You're going to Langholm?" I ask a striking woman holding up a sign near the Glasgow terminal exit. 

I recognize the words on her sign as the Buddhist monastery listed as having a unique guesthouse in all the tour books for the region.

"If contemplation is your goal, I'll be your ride," she replies with an inviting smile, her long brunette hair hiding the bare right shoulder of a maroon kashaya robe.

"Then I'm your man," I assert, surprising myself with a bit of deceit to start my supposed genealogical journey to the Scottish borders.