Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“And yet…”

“How you’ve softened, Antonia.”

“I haven’t softened. I may not be a sensipath, but I am still fully capable of feeling in my breast what it is like to be put asunder from one greatly loved. I am as human as you are, Trimmers.”

“I never said elseways. I simply—”

“I concede that your argument is the stronger. Let us suspend this discussion. There is silence in the breakfast parlour as all are no doubt straining to hear what we’re saying.”

I forbore telling Gus and Charlotte about where I believed that their son was being kept. Timberry and I excused ourselves and started off for the apricot grove, where I hoped to find my half-brother Harry, reaffiliated by necessity of circumstance with his other half-brothers.

Upon reaching the grove, Timberry and I were received with brusqueness and calculated indifference by Harry Scadger’s oldest brother Sol. “Harry ain’t been here,” he said, poking a whittled twig casually between his dingy teeth. “Didn’t know he and the wife and the kidlings was evicted. Could’ve told him you get nothin’ from them high-handed snakes and swindlers that you don’t got to give back or you ain’t a-goin’ to have to pay for in the long run. We’ll take him back if he comes to the grove, but I figure he’s got too much pride to slink back to the likes of us now.”

The brother who had been resting upon a deadfall log now uprose, turned without ceremony, and walked away.

Before Timberry and I began our return trip to Milltown, I wanted a moment to look about. It had been a good while since I had last visited the apricot grove, and I noticed that there was a bit more of the Scadger presence emplaced there. The settlement had become a small hamlet of sorts, composed of old, weather-rotted deal wood shacks appointed with castoff rubbish-pile appurtenances to create some semblance of domesticity. Here was a rustic tinker’s table and over there a weaving place for some of the women, with half-completed baskets and straw hats strewn about. Most members of the clan were doubtlessly off at this moment harvesting salad weed, for the Scadgers had become adept at finding nutritious wild greens to put upon a plate that anyone else would extirpate as an inedible garden nuisance.

Our delay in withdrawing from this spot was quickly rewarded by the appearance in the distance of Harry’s brother Zephaniah, who waved to us and called my name to detain me as he ran toward us.

After raising a hand for permission to fetch his breath once he had gained us, Zephaniah Scadger finally exhaled: “My brother Sol said you were here. He told me what happened to Harry. You’ll find him beneath the Westminster Bridge, I wager, but that ain’t the reason I require to speak to you.”

“What is it? Oh, Timberry, this is Zephaniah Scadger. Zephaniah, this is Dr. Timberry, the most recent addition to the medical fraternity of Dingley Dell.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance. My brother Sol — he didn’t tell you about the deputies comin’ by this morning, now did he?”

I shook my head.

“I need your view of things, Mr. Trimmers. Now, you know better than most the way of things, so I ask you this: they says we’re to leave the grove by mid-week. Now, they’ve been a-sayin’ this for quite some time now, and we give it no never-mind. But it’s a new sheriff now, they say — one what ain’t a’goin’ to abide our staying here the way the last one — that Muntle— did. Now as them deputies was leavin’, one of them says something of a confidential nature that one of my kidlings hears, and she tells it back to me and my brothers. Them two deputies, now they be talkin’ one to another about what’s goin’ to happen when we all get moved into the middle of the Dell — when all of us on the edge gets pushed in with everybody else.”

“Zephaniah, I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

“They’s goin’to light it all on fire, Mr. Trimmers. This place — the Chowser School, Blackheath — everything along the edges of the Dell.”

“ Who , Zephaniah?”

“They’s callin’ them the ‘Enforcers.’”

“The Enforcers?”

“My brothers and me — we don’t scare too easy, but we do worry for our families. That’s why we’s armin’ ourselves with the bows and arrows and such-like to protect ourselves, when they come with the torches.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Timberry was equally staggered. “I’ve heard nothing about this,” I said helplessly.

“Here’s what my brother Mel he says. It’s his theory. He says they’s gettin’ ready to bring an end to Dingley Dell. But first they got to get us all into one place.”

Timberry now interposed, “I don’t quite understand, Mr. Scadger. Upon what evidence is your brother basing this theory of his?”

“I tell you now but you cannot let on to the new sheriff what you know.”

“Why should I — or Mr. Trimmers here — have reason to betray such a confidence?”

“If you’re a Scadger, doctor, you learn not to trust nobody. I guess it’s come time, though, to put a little faith into somebody , and I think that Mr. Trimmers, he done a little good for us, and you being his friend — now I make bold to tell you both: we’ve seen encampments — in the eastern wood.”

“Encampments?” I replied. “What do you mean, Zephaniah?”

“Outlanders with guns. Waiting. We’ve seen more than one of them camps. We’re stealthy in the wood, can move ourselves through it with our eyes closed. But with open eyes — this is what we see. They’re gatherin’ themselves for some wicked purpose, no doubt about it.”

“Inside or outside the fence?”

“Inside. That’s cheeky, hum?”

“Quite,” I replied. “Zephaniah, you and your clan cannot stay here. If the deputies don’t succeed in removing you, the Outlanders are apparently prepared to come in from the woods and route you themselves.”

“Sol and Mel and my other brothers — we’ve made our decision. We’re goin’ to take a stand.”

“But that would be suicide,” countered Timberry.

“This orchard is all that we have. This valley is all that we have. Why should we move into town only to die in whatever way they’ve done chosen for all the rest of you? We make our stand here, that’s what we do — right here where our Papa put down his stakes many year ago.”

I could not argue with Zephaniah’s reasoning, though it was blind clan pride that largely motivated it. I gave no response. Nor did Timberry know what to say. However, it wasn’t necessary for either of us to reply. What was required of me were answers to a very specific line of questions, put next by Zephaniah Scadger in all earnestness and with no small measure of concern.

“Is Dingley Dell coming to its end, Mr. Trimmers? And for what reason? Have we displeased the powers that rule this valley?”

“What do you know of the powers that rule Dingley Dell?”

“Nothin’ that I could say for certain. But I know that they watch us. That they laugh at us. We’ve done heard them talk about us in the midnight encampments. How we’re like little string puppets. How we don’t be human. My clan has lived for many years on the edge of Dingley Dell. Here is where a man is closest to the Outlanders. Here is where a man gets the strongest feeling that the path we’re on ain’t one of our own making. Is Dingley Dell coming to its end, Mr. Trimmers? And why is such a thing to be?”

“I won’t dissemble, Zephaniah. I believe now, as do several others with whom I affiliate, that our days are indeed numbered, but the best course is not to keep ourselves divided, but to band together to fight whatever is being planned for us.”