Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“ Now ,” said Mrs. Ryersbach as she pulled her chair up to Newman’s, “why don’t you tell Mr. Ryersbach and me who your family is, so we can give them a call and let them know you’re all right?”

“My family lives in Dingley Dell. It’s much too far to call to them. They wouldn’t hear you.”

“Har, har, har,” said Chad in mock hilarity.

“On the telephone, Newman,” clarified Mrs. Ryersbach patiently.

“We don’t have any of those,” said Newman.

“You don’t? Hmm.” The father took a sip from his steaming mug. “And this Dingley Dell: where is it? Is it a made-up place?”

“Made-up place?”

“A pretend place,” explained the mother, attempting to be helpful. “Mr. Ryersbach would like to know, honey, if it’s a place you’ve made up in your head.”

Newman shook the head in question and replied, “It doesn’t live in my fancy. It lives beyond the mountains.”

“Which mountains? Those mountains?” Mr. Ryersbach was pointing out the window in the direction from which Newman had come.

Newman hadn’t time to answer.“You live with the aliens?” barked Chad.

Newman squinted, as he usually did when something made little sense to him.

“The aliens ,” elaborated Chad. “In the facility .”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Newman, who was fast losing patience with this rude and overly inquisitive family. Then suddenly something redemptive caught his eye. “What’s that ?” he asked, pointing to a glass pitcher of orange liquid that Mrs. Ryersbach was now setting upon the table.

“It’s orange juice, of course,” said the mother. “Would you like a glass?”

Newman nodded enthusiastically.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t had orange juice before.”

“Only a couple of times. It’s very expensive. It comes from the orangery and one drinks it only on very special occasions. I had a glass on my eleventh birthday. Can I have more? Can you bumper it?”

“Bumper it?” asked Evelyn, the mother, as she poured.

“Yes. Fill it to the brim.”

“You talk funny,” said little Cindy as the mother obliged her guest.

Newman shrugged.

“So are you one of the aliens or not?” pursued the brash son. “Are you from the planet Zargassian 64?”

“I don’t know…” Gulp. “…what you…” Another gulp. “…mean.” Newman couldn’t help smiling; the drink was like ambrosia — or at least it was what he imagined heavenly ambrosia should taste like.

“Stop picking on Newman, Chad,” scolded the father. “He’s our guest.”

“I think he wet my bed.”

“He didn’t wet your bed. And even if he did, we can wash the mattress pad. So shut up.” Turning to Newman, “Son: I am obligated to find out if you’ve run away from home and where you live. You don’t live on the other side of those mountains. That’s a private valley leased to a defence contractor. So please tell us where you do live, so we can be in touch with your family.”

“I don’t want you to be in touch with my family. I’ve left my family.”

“So that’s it, is it?” said the father, glancing knowingly at the mother. “I thought you might be a runaway. Where’d you run away from, son? Williamsport? Lock Haven? Milton? Lewisburg?”

Newman shook his head. “Dingley Dell.”

“Again with the Dingley Dell,” said the father with growing impatience. “Now where in the hell is Dingley Dell? Geographically speaking.”

“Dean,” said the mother, waving her hand at her husband in a quieting fashion.

“I told you,” said Newman with some vexation of his own. “It’s beyond the mountains. That’s where I come from.”

After a long, drawn-out respiration, Dean Ryersbach set down his cup of coffee, placed both hands upon the edge of the table, and leant forward to make his point. “Son. Nobody lives in the valley beyond those mountains. It’s totally cordoned off. Some kind of government-sponsored installation is there. Word is, they test top secret weapon systems. Been doing it since World War II. Now. You know that I’m required by law to call the police and report you. So why won’t you be truthful with me?”

Newman shook his head. By this action he was signaling that he didn’t happen to know that his host was obligated by law to report him to the police. But one might also deduce that he was shaking his head to be dissembling and uncooperative, for the look that accompanied the action was dour and sullen.

Mr. Ryersbach resumed: “But I won’t report you if you’ll just let Mrs. Ryersbach and me help you. Is there another family member we can contact? If you’ve been abused, there are people out there whose job it is to help kids like you.”

Newman didn’t understand half of what the father of this family was saying. For example, why did he refer to Newman as a baby goat? Newman took another swallow of his ambrosial beverage and wiped his mouth with his napkin. Then, finding himself at a loss over what to say in response, he shrugged.

“Does your father beat you, Newman?” asked the mother in a gently solicitous tone.

Newman nodded. “I mean, he used to when I was younger.” (This was something about which Newman could say a thing or two, for Augustus Trimmers was never the sort of father to spare the rod.)

“How often would he beat you?” pursued the mother with a troubled look.

“Whenever I would misbehave. Once, sometimes twice a week, out would come the hickory stick.”

Mrs. Ryersbach tutted.

Mr. Ryersbach said, “And you’re sure that there aren’t any other family members you could stay with?” Appalled by the rather slipshod grammatical construction of Mr. Ryersbach’s question (though Newman had formerly nursed a contempt for all rules of discourse), Newman Trimmers was happy that Mr. Chowser wasn’t nearby to overhear, or even the teacher in his village school, Miss Clickett, who once fell into a paroxysm of tears when one of Newman’s desk-mates committed the egregious double error of misusing a reflexive pronoun in the same sentence in which a gerund was left unpossessing.

Newman shook his head. “All of my family lives in Dingley Dell. Everybody I know lives in Dingley Dell. I am going to make my way in the world and become very rich and bring them wonderful things.” Newman, having now drained his glass of orange juice, held out the empty tumbler for a refill.

“Wonderful things. Like orange juice,” said Mrs. Ryersbach with a gentle, almost knowing smile.

“Dingley Dell. Dingley Dell. Now where have I heard the name before?” pondered Mr. Ryersbach aloud.

“It’s the nickname they give to the state crazy house, Dad,” offered the son. “We talked about it in my social studies class. A long time ago there were all these crazy people there who said that’s where they came from.”

“And there’s no one there who’s like that now?” asked Mrs. Ryersbach with a look of concern.

Chad shook his head. “They’re all dead. My teacher Mr. Guinter says the only man who talks about Dingley Dell these days is like 150 years old and spends all his time with the snakes and the lizards at the Reptilarium.”

Mrs. Ryersbach snorted indignantly. “Mr. Guinter should spend more time teaching and less time telling you kids where to find all the crazies and weirdos of Lycoming County. That isn’t why your father and I pay property taxes every year.”

“I’m just telling you what he said.”

“Finish your breakfast,” said the mother, “and go deflate the Aerobed. Somebody’s liable to trip over it, all spread out in the middle of the TV room like that.”