Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

Having fortified himself with the contents of the paper bag of food, my nephew improved his steps and marched more vigourously toward the place called Jersey Shore, which was gained by late afternoon.

It was not a shore, as it turned out, but a town — a town with a most misleading name.

Along the high street Newman strolled, marveling at the strange architecture and the colourful placards hanging all about and all the people who were drest in similitude to members of the Ryersbach family and to all the people he had seen in the fast-moving horseless conveyances, each clad dully and simply in colours that Newman had never seen worn in his native Dingley Dell, for there were no such dyes available there.

The first thing that I must do, thought Newman to himself, is to find a pawn shop so that I can put money into my pocket, which will afford me a full meal and a change of clothes and perhaps a bed for the night. Newman knew not whether there was such a shop in the Outland — a place where one could go to take money in exchange for leaving a thing of value behind. He looked for the three balls that he knew to be the pawnbroker’s symbol in the Dell and found none. However, what he did find was a jewellry shop, and inside, a proprietor who very much liked the make of the watch Newman presented.

“Nice. Quite nice!” remarked the man who said that his name was Phillips. The jeweller was an elderly man who was, in spite of his age, quite spry and light in the step. He took up the watch, and affixing the watchmaker’s glass to his eye to give the treasure a close inspection, popped the watch open to peer at its intricate workings. “Gold hunting watch. Engine turned. Jewelled in four holes. Escape movement. Horizontal lever. Did you know that you can set it to give a little tinkle every fifteen minutes?”

“Yes, I knew that,” answered Newman (but really he did not). “It is my choice not to set it in such a way.”

“I haven’t seen a pocketwatch like this in years. It’s rare to find this kind of craftsmanship anymore.”

“Except in Switzerland,” said Newman, attempting to shew himself duly informed about his valuable possession.

The old man nodded. He had a thick mane of white hair and now combed one hand through it. “That’s right. You know your classic Genevas. My son collected bugs at your age. I collected stamps. You collect pocketwatches and I do take my hat off to you.” (Though the man was not, in fact, wearing a hat.) “How old are you?”

“I’m eleven years of age.”

“So young to take up such a serious hobby.”

Newman nodded, acknowledging the compliment.

“Now why do you want to depart with this watch, I wonder?”

The man removed his eyeglass to take a better look at the boy who had entered his shop to do business with him.

Newman could not think of what to say other than to take a little bit of the truth and use it to his advantage: “I should like to use the money to buy myself some new clothes.”

The man named Phillips looked Newman over. “Yes, those pants don’t really fit you, do they? Wait here. I need to go on-line to get a valuation. It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. I want to be fair.”

Newman smiled. He was happy that he had come to a jeweller who would be fair. According to his father, most jewellers in Dingley Dell were not fair as the general rule, save the Fagins. Perhaps this man was a Beyonder version of Herbert Fagin.

It would come later to me what happened when the jeweller named Phillips went back into his private office. I would learn later exactly what was done and said there: that the old man picked up the instrument, which was called a telephone, and punched its buttons to put himself in touch with another person to be found elsewhere in the town of Jersey Shore, a woman by the name of Ruth Wolf.

Here is what the jeweller said to Ruth Wolf through the telephone instrument and in a voice made very quiet so that the boy standing outside in the showroom shouldn’t hear: “Hello, Ruth. This is Phillips. The kid’s here — the one they’ve been looking for. I’m almost positive. No, I didn’t ask questions to confirm it; I’m going with my gut. He’s wearing some other kid’s clothes — they’re almost falling off of him, and he’s got a Geneva hunting watch he’s obviously been carrying around with him since he left. What do you want me to do? Uh huh. No, I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t want him to get too suspicious. I’m going to give him some money and then ask if he’s hungry. He looks like he could eat. I’ll suggest that he get himself something at Penny’s. You okay with that? I’ll call you back on your cell if he decides to pass up the diner and head off somewhere else. Otherwise, get yourself over to Penny’s as fast as you can. Where are you? Well, hurry the hell up. I don’t want Caldwell or any of his men to get to him before you do.”

Phillips emerged from his office, with money in hand for Newman.

“You’ve got quite a prize there, son. You’re sure you want to give it up?”

Newman nodded.

“Well, I think it’s worth at least a hundred and fifty dollars.”

Phillips told the currency upon the counter and then picked it up and placed it into Newman’s hands.

Newman stared at the paper money, wondering if the jeweller was giving him too little, but knowing that anything he said along these lines might betray the fact that he was not a citizen of the Outland. For all Newman knew one-hundred-and-fifty dollars could be worth nothing more than one-hundred-and-fifty mil in Dingley Dell currency—barely enough money to buy a loaf of bread. Newman needed a frame of reference. His eyes sought and then found some jewellry on display within the glass case next to him. There was a ring for sale priced at “$550” and a necklace for “$750.” Newman calculated that “$” must be the sign for “dollar,” and that the dollar must be on some par with the Dinglian pound. If such were the case, then he was not getting enough money for his watch and would have to bargain with the old man.

Newman coughed and cleared him throat and then as he had once seen his mother’s intermittently depleted brother Leicester do in the presence of a pawnbroker in Milltown’s East End, rolled his eyes and cocked his head and said, “Do you take me for a fool, governor? This watch is worth treble that amount and you and I both know it. Now, if you do not give me something in the vicinity of its market value, I shall have to take my business elsewhere.”

Phillips stared at the Dinglian boy, knowing now for certain that he was a Dinglian boy, but not wishing to give this important fact away. He chuckled. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said.

Newman grinned. This was exactly the reply that his maternal uncle had received upon saying the very same thing when there was a silver snuffbox at issue. Some things, Newman conjectured at that very moment, are no different outside the Dell as within. When it comes to buying and selling and trading, each man seeks to get the better of his trading partner. Perhaps it was simply a part of universal human nature.

Phillips the jeweller told out another three hundred dollars (and still considered that he had got the better deal, for he could resell the watch for several thousand dollars to one of the antique watch collectors with whom he did business).

As he had mentioned to the woman named Ruth Wolf with whom he had just spoken through the conduit of the telephone apparatus, Phillips asked if Newman was hungry, and Newman owned that he was. So Phillips directed the boy to Penny’s “Diner” where he could get himself a good chicken sandwich. The suggestion sounded quite appetising to Newman, whose stomach continued to growl even after eating the throwaway meat sandwich and the fried potato sticks.