Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“How to swim , Mr. Pyegrave?”

“You misheard me, Chuffey. I said: ‘This violence — it will be stemmed .’”

“Oh, yes. Very well, very well indeed, Mr. Pyegrave.”

he Senator had agreed to speak with the Jersey Shore jeweller, though the two members of the Senator’s staff who had accompanied him to the Williamsport fundraising dinner had raised objections, the older of the two assistants registering the whispered opinion that Phillips was most certainly “some kind of nut.” The Senator had earned a reputation for doing that which was often unexpected, having spent his nearly four terms as senior senator from the state of Pennsylvania following more often the dictates of his own gut and his own head than the ideological prescriptions and partisan directives of his affiliated party. Now he was removing himself from the hotel banquet hall, having wrung more than enough hands for one evening, in the company of a man of coincident age who sold jewellry in a small shop in a very small town and who reminded him in no small way of his own father, a peddler and junkyard owner (in the American parlance, and dustman in the Dinglian).

The Senator was familiar with people who held wild ideas and embraced conspiratorial theories, for had he not many years earlier served as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, which was charged with investigating the assassination of a United States President named Kennedy? And did he not harbour doubts about its findings based upon a tip or two that was slipped to him about a secret organisation called “The Tiadaghton Project”?

And now he was hearing that same name spoken by the old jeweller all these many years later, in conjunction with the valley in his state about which he had never been told nearly enough, this fact having always been a needling frustration to him.

Phillips told the Senator everything that he knew, as fantastical and implausible as it should sound to the legislator’s ears. He told the Senator about Ruth Wolf as well, about how he now believed her to be dead when communications from her had stopt, and what agency he thought had been responsible.

The Senator sipped his tea in the hotel bar and listened to everything imparted by Phillips, without judgement (for he was, at his core, a lawyer, and not one to form a final opinion until every fact had been presented), and even as his staff stood impatiently outside the door and signalled their desire to leave, expressing wonderment over how the Senator should give the old man even a second glance, let alone a long and respectful audience.

At the close of Phillips’ lengthy presentation, the Senator agreed to go with him that next morning to the Tiadaghton compound and ask some questions. He may or may not be admitted to the facility, which, though the Project was ostensibly a government-authorised operation, sat upon private land, as did the valley adjacent to it, and there would be proper legal justification should they wish to deny him access.

However, the two never made it to the compound, for on the road that took them there next morning, Phillips, with the Senator sitting next to him, descried a very old man lying crumpled upon the shoulder.

“Is he dead?” asked Phillips, peering past the Senator to get a better view out of the passenger’s window.

The Senator shook his head. “No. There seems to be a little movement in his legs.”

Phillips stopped the vehicle and the two men went to the aid of the supine man, who was none other than Roger Rugg, the expatriate Dinglian snake-handler. “Do I know you men?” wheezed Rugg (for he was having difficulty taking in breath).

“You no doubt know this man,” said Phillips, pointing to the Senator.

“I do? And who are you ?” asked Rugg of Phillips.

“Do you not remember me, Rugg? It was only a few days ago that you and I assisted Ruth Wolf in getting the young Trimmers boy back to Dingley Dell.”

“Ah, yes,” said Rugg, squinting. “I do recall something of that escapade. Forgive me, gentlemen. I have lost my glasses. I’ve lost nearly everything else upon this journey. Everything is a haze to me and I haven’t much strength left. I fear that I am destined to fail in that which I set out to do two days ago: return myself to Dingley Dell.” To the Senator: “I’m going home, you see — home to die. Do I know you? I’ve seen you on the news, have I?”

The Senator introduced himself as he and Phillips helped Rugg into a seated position. “It’s a pleasure to know you, Senator,” said Rugg. “Do you fancy snakes? Some senators do not, though some senators are the very worst sorts of snakes themselves in my humble opinion. Now look at me, gentlemen. I’m still alive. Perhaps I’ll make it still, though I am weak.”

“What’s the matter with him?” The question came from a few yards away. All three men looked up to see a woman in her sixties walking up to them. It was Mrs. DeLove, and her house sat not too far in the distance.

“Exhaustion, I think,” said Phillips. “Do you live here?”

“For the last forty years. Let’s get the poor man inside and lay him down. He looks dehydrated.”

“I’m thirsty, yes,” said Rugg with a little smile of gratitude.

Rugg was taken into the DeLove house and put down upon the bed in the spare bedroom where Augustus Trimmers had feverishly lain, and given a drink that Mrs. DeLove said would “restore his electrolytes.” There was another woman in the house — a young woman — who introduced herself to Phillips and the Senator as Mrs. DeLove’s daughter Annette. Both Mother and Daughter DeLove spent the succeeding minutes in vocal astonishment over the fact that one of the guests to their home that morning was the senior United States senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and there was happy relief expressed that the high-ranking governmental visitor wasn’t the state’s junior senator who only three months earlier had created a public firestorm through remarks that crudely referred to men making love to their dogs.

“There was a time,” said Mrs. DeLove, as her daughter served Pirouette Rolled Wafers to her coffee-imbibing guests, “when I would have left a man like Mr. Rugg exactly where he was, assuming that he was already dead.”

“And just why would you assume a thing like that?” asked the Senator in the flat accent that matched the flatlands of his Kansan youth.

“Because it was easier that way — to keep myself from getting involved. My daughter Annette and I have done quite well in holding onto our farm— while all of our neighbours have been run off — by minding our own business, by looking the other way when things happen — terrible things. We’ve had to. Annette has agoraphobia. She tells me she’ll drop dead the minute she’s ever made to step off that porch. Don’t ask me to explain how a person’s mind can work that way. I couldn’t even begin to explain it.”

“What sorts of things — terrible things — are you referring to?” asked the probing Senator who used to be a district attorney in the early season of his career.

“People killed before our very own eyes!” exclaimed Annette.

“People have been killed on your property and you didn’t call the police?” The Senator set his coffee cup down, thoroughly amazed and really quite appalled.

“It goes to what I’ve been telling you,” interposed Phillips. “I’m curious about one thing, Mizz DeLove: you indicated that you didn’t used to want to get involved. Yet to-day you didn’t hesitate to leave your house and come out to help us. What’s changed?”