Back to the Future (Sequel to Outlander Reversed)

Four

Back at the Mountain homestead that’d to suddenly support a family easily three Times the size of what it’d supported a Year ago, Jamie was quite amused by his brother-in-law’s reactions. Once the womenfolk’d left to start their shopping spree, he’d headed out to the barn so he could get started on his own Day.

        It hadn’t taken long to get the Cows and Goats milked, considering he and Ian’d both grown up doing such a thing. Between the two of them, they’d almost more milk than they knew what to do with, which was a good thing. Luckily for them, Summer’d long since shown him how and where to store what her dairy Animals produced, and the former was easily able to show the latter that same location. He’d been amazed by the plastic jugs they’d poured their bounty into, but even more so at the freezers that’d turn it into solid blocks like Winter Weather did to Water.

        After the Animals’d all been fed and milked, the ginger man used the key he’d been given to unlock the other side of the barn. He could veritably feel his brother-in-law’s eyes widen in shock as opening the door Revealed a machine he still couldn’t help marveling over in his own right. God only kent he’d never seen such a thing before getting dumped into this Modern Time period, but he loved it almost as much as he loved his wife.

        “What on Earth is this thing?” the brunette man queried, shocked Awe coloring his voice as he edged closer.

        “Summer calls it a lawn mower,” Jamie answered on a chuckle. “It does the same thing as a scythe during haying Season, ken?”

        “It does?” He looked up at him, brown eyes wide with surprise.

        “’Tis louder than an entire platoon,” the ginger man answered, nodding. “But it does the job so much faster than a scythe, ’tis unbelievable.”

        “It doesna seem like it’d be loud,” Ian mused, limping closer for a better look.

        “’Cuz I havena started its motor,” he laughed. “Once I do that–och, ye best believe ye’ll want something to plug yer ears with!”

        “Motor?” The brunette’s man shifted to one of confusion as he glanced up at him.

        “This thing,” Jamie explained, patting the part in question. “According to Summer, it uses a type of oil as fuel like Horses use hay to fuel their bodies–but it doesna require Horsesta move any more than her truck does.”

        His eyes widened once again as he looked back down at the contraption. “Where are its scythes, then?”

        “Underneath it,” the ginger man answered. “Ye canna see them without jacking it up, though–and since they were sharpened at the Beginning of the Summer, I dinna relish doing that again till the same Time next Year, if I dinna have to.”

        Ian was enthralled as he moved to grab a rag from a nearby counter, then moved to where the motor’d been mounted to the back of the machine. There was no mistaking that as he twisted something, then pulled out a stick nearly as long as either of their arms. But he didn’t mind explaining what he was doing, even as his own eyes squinted and he brought the stick up closer to his face.

        As he wiped the stick off and shoved it back in, only to pull it out a second Time for another look, Jamie explained that he was checking the oil. While one type of oil was used for fuel so the motor’d run, another type was used for lubricating the inside of the motor. His wife’d made it quite clear that running a motor with too lil of that second type of oil in it–or God forbid, none of it at all–would cause it to seize up. She’d also made it quite clear that replacing a motor in a vehicle or lawn mower wasn’t cheap, and he might not live to see his next birthday, if he caused such a thing to happen by not checking like this.

        Deciding that the mower contained enough of that second type of oil, he shoved the stick back into its proper hole. Twisting it in the opposite Direction so it wouldn’t come back out on its own, he explained that the reason he was doing anything with said machine was ’cuz the grass closest to the house needed to be mowed.