Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He was pomp and quite a bit of privilege, but there was something else within him — I have read his diaries preserved within the rectory— something desirous of seeing through the opaqueness of our existence in the Dell. I believe, and you may take your shots at my theory if you wish, but I believe a part of him sought the construction of our towering campanile not simply for its grand architectural swagger, but in an attempt — a symbolistic attempt— to know God .”

“Know God?”

“Through the ability to stand upon the tower’s pinnacle and take into one’s view that land which lies spread out far beyond our valley — to know if God smiled upon that land as well. Or is the Terra Incognita, instead, some Godless realm set against us? ‘We’re here for a very short interval in the span of eternal time, and occupants of a very tiny place’—this is what he wrote into his diary, for it never came out in any of his homilies—‘a tiny place that must be made proud, that must be made good, that must be guided by the hand of God…and it is not. Yea, it is my studied opinion that it most decidedly is not .’”

“And was there anything else in his writings,” I asked,“to further expand the point?”

Upwitch shook his head with sadness.

“Something is wrong here,” he whispered. “Something is very wrong. I cannot put my finger directly upon it, but I know, as did the man who held my office many years before, that it is real and that it grows, and I know as well that there is a close connexion between that which beshadows our valley and those Dinglians who pass our laws and run our factories and manage our emporiums and distribute the goods that come down from the Summit — an association with those who smile and strut and never give evidence that all is not charmed and all is not wholly fine and beautiful in the Dell, as if there is some great feint, some grand counterfeit being worked to their benefit. Perhaps you’re right, Uriah, that it is the clerical Communist in me. But I stand by my feelings and will defend their legitimacy to the end.”

I sat for a moment nodding, not speaking. But there was something that needed to be said, and so I said it: “Mrs. Pyegrave didn’t find Dingley Dell to be charmed and beautiful. She was exceptional in that respect.”

Upwitch nodded.

Graham said, “It is the consensus of my friends on the staff of the Encyclopædia of Dingley Dell that the woman was murdered by her husband. This is why her entry must read, ‘expired at a too-early age of undetermined but suspicious causes.’”

I nearly smiled. “Who now is the traitorous agitator?”

“Aye, sir,” returned my fellow scribe. “There is indeed power in words. Most of the lasting change that has been forged in the history of this world from what I have read in the voluminous Ensyke came not from a wielding of the swift and bloody sword of battle but from the shaping scalpel of ideas, and what are ideas, Trimmers, without the words to deliver them? I live for words. We shall, all of us, live and die by our words and the words of others. At least if there be truth to the dribblings of those learned compilers of the Ensyke and our most prolific Mr. Dickens! For they have given us the lens that equip the spyglass with which we view the world, a glass that has been ground and fashioned by the very words that they have written.”

We remained at the Wang-Wang Teahouse until long after the sun had fled the sky, and then the three of us strode back to Milltown together. It became quite dark along the way but there was enough moonlight filtering through the clouds for each of us to see his feet and to see the stones of the road that wended before us, and for me to see with near certainty two hands folded together as hearts will sometimes do.

rs. DeLove had found it necessary to spend two additional nights at the side of her aunt at a hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as the old woman teetered between life and death, and ultimately chose to invest herself for a little while longer in the former. Her niece returned to her home in Lycoming County and discovered a most curious thing: Mr. Trimmers was still there. She learnt this not immediately upon her return, but it was not long thereafter that her daughter came to her with a most strange look planted upon her face — a look that could not be quickly translated into words.

“I haven’t slept, Annette,” said Mrs. DeLove, dropping her luggage heavily upon the floor of her bedchamber. “I’m very tired and I don’t have patience for game playing. What’s wrong? Tell me what’s the matter.”

“You remember the man who was here when you left?”

“Mr. T-something. Trimmers. Yes, I remember him, Annette. What happened? What do you need to tell me? Did he hurt you? I knew after I started for Harrisburg that I shouldn’t have left you here all alone with him, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time. I was so worried about your Aunt Lucille.”

“I’ll tell you, Mama, if you’ll let me get a word in.”

Annette sat down on her mother’s bed and folded her hands. The odd look on her face now transformed itself into an amalgamated display of guilt and contrition and the ever-present disquiet.

With a sudden seizure of maternal alarm: “Did he… rape you?”

“For God’s sakes, Mama, no ! He didn’t do anything to me. It was what I did to him .”

Now Mrs. DeLove found need to sit herself down so that she might be better prepared to receive whatever horrible thing her daughter was about to confess. “Tell me, Annette. What did you do to that poor man?”

“I kept him here. Against his will. I handcuffed him to me.”

“You did what ?”

“I handcuffed the two of us together.”

“Sweet Jesus, Annette!”

“I used a pair of Daddy’s old police handcuffs.”

“It’s time to put you away, Annette. I mean it this time.You’re certifiable.”

“I knew the minute I did it that I shouldn’t have. But by then—”Annette suspended her confession and took her head into her tremulous hands. “By then what ? Say it, Annette.”

“By then it was too late. By then I realised that I’d taken the wrong key from the drawer in Daddy’s workroom. I knew just from feeling it in my pocket that it wasn’t going to fit the handcuffs. I knew that Mr. Trimmers and I would have to go looking for the right key.”

“And how long did that take?”

“A day and a half.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

“The more we looked, the more scared I got that Daddy’d lost the key or had thrown it out or something. I was afraid I’d have to call a locksmith. And then people would know that Mr. Trimmers was here. It was awful, Mama, and you weren’t here to help me.”

“But you found the key. That’s the important thing. Where was it?”

“What?”

“The key, Annette? Where was the goddamned key?”

“Lying on the floor behind Daddy’s workbench. But by then—”

“By then what? Speak to me, Annette. Where is Mr. Trimmers right now?”

“In the extra bedroom. He’s sick.”

“What do you mean sick?”

“I mean that I think he caught my cold.”

Mrs. DeLove shrugged. “So we’ll give him zinc lozenges and Tylenol and he’ll be up and around in no time.”

Annette shook her head. “He’s really sick, Mama.”

“How can he be really sick? It wasn’t even that bad of a cold. You told me so yourself.”