Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“I don’t attend this school,” said Newman.

“Neither do I. My church is borrowing the school’s bus. Are you homeless?” Gregory looked Newman up and down, taking special notice of his oversized, soiled clothes.

“No. I have a home.”

“In school we learned all about homeless kids. We went to a shelter and gave them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I thought you were homeless because of the way you’re drest. Are you a meth addict? We learned about them, too.”

Newman didn’t know what a meth addict was, but he was certain that he wasn’t one, so he shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye he descried a man looking at him. The man appeared to be one of the fathers of the children who were boarding the bus. It was a penetrating look as if the man were studying Newman in some purposeful way.

Newman sat down next to Gregory, who continued to take particoloured pellets from his bag and pop them into his mouth. He offered the bag to Newman who took a few of the pellets and put them into his own mouth. They tasted sweet and a little like chocolate.

“Do you go to school with all these children?” asked Newman, munching.

“Some of them. But school’s out for the summer. I have seventy days of freedom left. I count them down every day. That makes them more precious.”

Newman nodded, thinking to himself that this fragile, bookish boy would not last a day at the rough and rowdy Chowser School.

“Where are you from?” asked Gregory.

“Not from here,” Newman answered. He had learnt his lesson about telling people that he was from Dingley Dell. It seemed to him now that the only people who knew about Dingley Dell were those with whom he did not wish to associate. Of course, it was at this moment that Newman thought of someone else — another person who lived amongst the Outlanders — who would know quite a bit about Newman’s home. Hadn’t Chad Ryersbach mentioned a “150-year-old-man” who communed with the lizards and the snakes at the Reptilarium? Perhaps he was a lunatic who had appropriated the name Dingley Dell for his own manufactured life story because he liked the sound of it. But there was another possibility as well: that the elderly man could very well be one of those who left the Dell in its earlier days and never returned — a man who was still very much alive, in spite of what Nurse Ruth had said happened to people who left the valley.

Newman wanted to meet him. He wanted to find out if he was really from Dingley Dell. He wanted to see someone from his home — someone who had once lived the way that he had lived, had once enjoyed all the things that Newman enjoyed and which he now missed deeply. Perhaps the 150-year-old man from Dingley Dell would know a better way for Newman to get home — a way that did not require Newman to retrace his steps through the woodsy, mossy darkness.

“May I come with you?” Newman impulsively asked the boy named Gregory.

“If you have seven dollars. That’s what it costs to get in.”

Newman knew that he had more money in his pocket than seven dollars. He nodded and smiled as his new friend gave him a few more of the sweet chocolaty pellets.

The omnibus was filled, for the most part, by children Newman’s age and perhaps a little younger and a little older. But there were a few adults who had put themselves inside the vehicle as well, including the man who had looked so hard at Newman and who now darted a look in his direction every so often as if he were keeping a permanent fix on him. Each look unsettled Newman, but he pretended to pay them no mind. Some of the children gave him strange looks of their own as he climbed into the omnibus and followed Gregory to a double-seat near the back. But their looks were fleeting in the midst of all the roystering merriment. A woman stood next to the driver of the omnibus counting silently to herself whilst moving her finger up and down. Then she turned and said something to the man in the driving chair. He said something to her in response. She nodded.

“Quiet! Quiet!” commanded the woman, waving her stiff, flat hands up and down. The chattering, chirping voices drew down in volume and then silenced themselves altogether. “Children: we have three extras. You new children, please raise your hands.”

A boy and girl sitting a couple of rows behind Newman put their hands into the air. Newman did not.

“Raise your hand, Newman,” prompted Gregory. “You’re new. They have to put your name down.”

Newman tentatively put his hand into the air and held it there.

“I need your signed permission forms,” said the woman. “New children: please get out your signed permission forms from your parents.”

The boy and girl in the back of the bus obediently held up slips of paper.

“I don’t have a permission form,” said Newman to his new friend Gregory. “What am I to do?”

“Take my extra one,” said Gregory. “My mom already turned one in for me and didn’t tell my dad. He wrote one out for me just in case she forgot.”

Gregory put the required piece of paper into Newman’s hand so stealthily that not a soul detected the transaction.“My parents are divorced,” offered Gregory matter-of-factly as the woman moved down the aisle to collect the permission forms. “It generally sucks except when sometimes I get things done for me twice . I especially like birthdays. Last birthday…”

Newman handed the slip to the woman who gave it a cursory, unstudied glance and continued on her way to the back of the bus.

“…for example,” the voluble Gregory went on, “I got both a microscope and a telescope. I asked for one or the other and I got both ! How cool is that ?”

Newman smiled and nodded as the omnibus began to move. His heart began to race as he felt the vehicle vibrate beneath him. He could not believe that he was travelling along the road in such a miraculous manner, with not a horse in sight to offer propulsion. His skin tingled and he felt a frisson of joy shoot through him. It was hard for him to concentrate on Gregory’s chittering, but he owed a debt to the boy for keeping him on the omnibus when surely he would have been forced to alight and stand and watch the large boxy yellow carriage roll away without him.

“Which would you have asked for, Newman? A microscope or a telescope?”

Newman thought this over for a moment.“They’re each quite precious and scientifically helpful in their own way.”

“But would you rather study the stars or the microbes? I think microbes for me. In my science class my teacher Mr. Isbell let me prepare all of the slides. I got extra credit.”

“The stars,” said Newman. “I should like to look at the stars.”

Newman thought about the stars and about the night sky. He smiled to himself. It was the very same sky here as that which cowled Dingley Dell. No two places could be as different upon the ground (for why else was the land abroad called the “Terra Incognita”?); yet the sky and the stars and even the clouds that passed from one valley to the next were identical. For a brief moment Newman Trimmers felt slightly less estranged from all the newness that surrounded him. Had he not made a friend — an inquisitive boy just like himself? Was the boy not helping him to get to Clive and Clare’s Reptilarium?

Newman came to a rather profound conclusion about Dingley Dell and the Outland: that people are the same regardless of where they live. There are some who are bad and there are some who are good, and it served him well to find the good ones who would give him succour and avoid the bad ones who would hurt him. It was really no different here than it was in Dingley Dell.