“Did you rest well?” asked the mother, whose name, when it wasn’t “Mrs. Ryersbach,” was “Evelyn.”
“Yes, very well, thank you,” answered Newman in his most courteous tone.
The young girl — perhaps seven-years-of-age — who sat at the right hand of her mother and whose name when it wasn’t “Cindy” was “Pumpkin,” chirped: “Chad says he and Daddy found you in a ditch. Do you live in a ditch? Do you have fish gills?”
Newman shook his hand and withheld his opinion of the question.
“You retard,” said the girl’s brother, insultingly.“Only Aqua-boy has gills.”
“He could be Aqua-boy,” said the little girl with a look of hopefulness that would make one think that this was her greatest wish in the world.
“He isn’t Aqua-boy,” shot back Chad.
“Shut up! The both of you,” said the father, chewing toast.
Newman could not help himself; he gave the father a strongly quizzical look. Dinglian parents seldom addressed their children in such sharp and rude tones. Even workhouse fathers generally shewed good manners unless there was gin present.
“Well, whoever you are, Newman, we’re happy to have you,” said the mother. “Take some eggs.” She pointed to the bowl of whipped eggs on the table. Newman nodded, picked up the bowl, and began to spoon the whipped eggs onto his plate.
“It looks like rain again to-day,” said Mr. Ryersbach, glancing out the window. “Chad, turn on the radio. I want the forecast.”
Newman suspended his spooning and watched as Chad rose from the table and went to a shelf where there sat a dark box with little buttons and knobs upon it, and a thin, metallic staff rising from the top. The boy did something to the box that Newman could not quite see, and suddenly a voice could be heard — a tiny, reedy voice, which seemed to be coming straight from inside the box.
Newman started at the sound, dropping the bowl of eggs upon the table and sending some of its clumpy contents into his lap, some onto the table and some onto the floor. The bowl struck a jar of honey which sat upon the circular dumb waiter in the centre of the table, popping open the lid and dispatching a sluice of slow-moving, viscous bee jelly toward his place at the table.
“Jesus Christ!” cried Mr. Ryersbach.
“Oh God,” blurted Mrs. Ryersbach.
“Spaz,” joined in Chad Ryersbach smirkingly.
Mrs. Ryersbach bolted up from her chair to clean up the mess as a man said from inside the box, “… are mourning the loss of their native son, Army Private First Class Timothy Baxter, who was born in Danville and spent most of his life in Milton. Baxter received fatal gunshot wounds while on guard duty at a propane distribution centre in Baghdad. He was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”
“The radio is a little too loud, Chad. Turn it down. Dean, it’s going to rain again to-day. Look up in the sky. That’s a rain sky. Newman, would you like me to make you some more eggs?”
Newman shook his head as the tiny voice proceeding from the box got even tinier and almost indiscernible.
“You’re a strange child,” noted Evelyn Ryersbach as she deposited the bowl and the eggs she was able to rake into it, into the sink.
“Creepy weird,” Chad added.
“Shut up, Chad,” said Mr. Ryersbach whilst glancing at the front page of his newspaper, which Newman noticed was called the Williamsport Sun Gazette.
“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 Delclass="underline" 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.”