Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

Newman took the first half of the injunction for himself and ate all that his belly could hold and then feeling actually quite crapulous as a result, he excused himself and went to lie down upon Chad’s more permanent bed — the one that didn’t have to be “deflated” (whatever that meant), but not before taking a swipe at the honey puddle to have something dessertlike to lick from his hands in the privacy of his guest apartment.

Once safely installed therein, Newman sat for a moment on the side of the bed and licked at his fingers like a hungry bear cub and felt quite the feral beast in the middle of this strange and marvellous place of horseless carriages that sped along like trackless locomotives, boxes that spoke and gave weather predictions, and unfettered access to all of the orange juice that one felt like drinking. Having tongued off most of the delicious honey (for honey was one of Newman’s favourite sweets), the boy lay back upon the bed, intent on pondering his future, but was asleep within a couple of minutes.

He woke to the sound of Chad standing next to him, chewing something cud-like that he never swallowed, a mischievous smile screwing up his face. “You’re in for it now,” he said, referencing with a jerk of the head the soft, low voices wafting into the room through the open door.

“There’s a police officer out there,” Chad elaborated, “and some lady from child protective services, and they’re gonna haul your ass right out of here and you can go and baby-piss on somebody else’s mattress pad for a change.”

“I didn’t urinate in your bed, Chags.”

“Cha d . My name’s Chad , Pisspants. And you sure as fuck did. You peed in my bed like a baby without his Pampers. And I know what else you are. You’re like that crazy lizard man — the one who says he’s from Dingley Doodie Dell.”

“I didn’t urinate in your bed. I was still wet from having fallen into that stream.” Newman, having finally made his point, rose from the bed. “Where’s my bindle?”

“Your what?”

“My bindle of clothes. I would like to change into my own clothes. Would you be so kind as to—”

“Stop talking like a fucking fruitcake!” enjoined Chad Ryersbach, clipping Newman hard upon the shoulder and knocking him backwards upon his heels.

Newman recovered his balance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t talk like a fruitcake. A fruitcake cannot talk. A fruitcake is a comestible.”

“A what?”

“A comestible. And please refrain from pushing me again or I shall have to answer this assault upon my dignity by punching you forcefully in the mouth.”

Newman rubbed the sore spot on his shoulder whilst Chad Ryersbach took a step back, as if to better gauge the strength of Newman’s threat. Chad was tall for his young age — at least six inches taller than his unwanted houseguest. “You’re gonna do what ?”

“I have two pugilist medals. I will shew them to you if you will kindly produce my bindle.”

“Nutjob!” crowed Chad. There was another bold step forward on the part of the irate Master Chad, and then another stiff-armed push to Newman’s already throbbing right shoulder. Newman, his patience now worn to a nub, took a deep breath, and then retaliated against the second assault upon his dignity by punching the rude thief of his bindle directly in the mouth. To make certain that the boy didn’t give pursuit, Newman shoved him to the floor.

And then he fled…

…Out of the bedroom, down the corridor, and then with brazen audacity right into the Ryersbach front parlour with his sights set upon the front door. Here he was greeted by four startled faces belonging to Dean Ryersbach, his wife Evelyn, a uniformed and beetle-browed police officer, and a pinch-faced woman holding a leatherish satchel. The two men reached out for Newman as he raced past but caught only air. It was the pinch-faced woman who succeeded in securing Newman’s arm and, in fact, sending him stumblingly to the floor. In her attempt to snare the decamping Dinglian boy, the woman dropt her satchel. It flew open and a large number of papers fluttered out. Newman attempted to wrest himself from her grasp and after a bit of a tussle, which quickly set him against not only the woman but the two men as well (as Evelyn Ryersbach stood fretfully by, wringing her hands and crying, “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!”), he was able at last to roll himself away in the manner in which Mr. Chowser had instructed his pupils should they ever find themselves engulfed in flames and must put out the fire through their own initiative. Freed now from all the hands that grasped and clawed to take hold of him, Newman leapt to his feet and renewed his flight. Out the door he ran, too fast for his pursuers to catch him, and into the dark woods that environed the country house.

Alas, the boy didn’t have his bindle and was by unfortunate circumstances required to wear the oversized clothes of the rude and belligerent Beyonder lad named Chad. But he did possess one thing that he’d had the foresight to keep upon his person: a watch — a beautiful gold Geneva watch that he had taken from Mr. Chowser’s nightstand drawer so that he would have something to sell in the Terra Incognita when funds became necessary. Yes, it was stealing; but Newman had every intention of eventually paying Mr. Chowser treble-fold what the watch was worth.

As the boy attempted to reach down into his right trowser pocket to confirm that what he felt bouncing round in there was, in fact, the precious watch, he discovered that there was something papery attached to his honey-sticky hand. It was a paper that had affixed itself to his palm as he had rolled about the floor of the Ryersbach parlour. He hadn’t time to stop and look at the paper except to see what it said at the top — three words that made little sense to him: “The Tiadaghton Project.” Newman peeled the paper from his hand but did not discard it, stuffing it instead down into the other pocket to be read and considered more carefully when it was safe to do so.

Without thinking, Newman Trimmers found himself running in the direction of Dingley Dell. Newman Trimmers was running home.

ere is Dingley Dell as it appeared to me on that early summer morning in 2003 when my brother and I made our way on foot to the Northern Ridge that separated this portion of our homeland from the Outland: a large valley with rolling green hills and a motley patchwork of agricultural colour, bounded on the north by a steep rocky incline and on the south by a ridge much different from the other: black and scored, half carved away to extract the coal that had for over a century warmed our homes and cooked our food and besooted our walls and chimneys and the faces of our industrious colliers. In the southeast was the iron pit from which we drew that which made our little world so hard and black and solid and venerable.

The air was clear and bright this morning, and one could see stretching far eastward and westward two distinct forests of some expanse, which sloped upwards as well, but with gentler acclivity than the Northern and Southern ridges. As rite of passage, each of us in his youth had climbed wantonly through those leafy opposing portions of our perimeter, but not much was there to be gleaned by them, save the fact that it was quite easy to get oneself lost therein (once one passed the open vestigial stumpland — evidential of years of harvest by previous generations of Dinglian timbermen — and the currently cultivable timber sward).

The eastern and western woods carried additional risk as well; both displayed a propensity for growing thick and dark with only a short venturing trespass into their beshadowed breasts. And if one pushed far enough into the heart of that sylvan darkness, one reached a tall fence, topped with coiled barbed wire and resembling in construction that same fence which trailed upon the Summit — a fence that paradoxically intimidated the onlooking Dinglian through its impounding insinuation and at the same time contributed to a feeling of protection from unknown forces without.