After a long, drawn-out respiration, Dean Ryersbach set down his cup of coffee, placed both hands upon the edge of the table, and leant forward to make his point. “Son. Nobody lives in the valley beyond those mountains. It’s totally cordoned off. Some kind of government-sponsored installation is there. Word is, they test top secret weapon systems. Been doing it since World War II. Now. You know that I’m required by law to call the police and report you. So why won’t you be truthful with me?”
Newman shook his head. By this action he was signaling that he didn’t happen to know that his host was obligated by law to report him to the police. But one might also deduce that he was shaking his head to be dissembling and uncooperative, for the look that accompanied the action was dour and sullen.
Mr. Ryersbach resumed: “But I won’t report you if you’ll just let Mrs. Ryersbach and me help you. Is there another family member we can contact? If you’ve been abused, there are people out there whose job it is to help kids like you.”
Newman didn’t understand half of what the father of this family was saying. For example, why did he refer to Newman as a baby goat? Newman took another swallow of his ambrosial beverage and wiped his mouth with his napkin. Then, finding himself at a loss over what to say in response, he shrugged.
“Does your father beat you, Newman?” asked the mother in a gently solicitous tone.
Newman nodded. “I mean, he used to when I was younger.” (This was something about which Newman could say a thing or two, for Augustus Trimmers was never the sort of father to spare the rod.)
“How often would he beat you?” pursued the mother with a troubled look.
“Whenever I would misbehave. Once, sometimes twice a week, out would come the hickory stick.”
Mrs. Ryersbach tutted.
Mr. Ryersbach said, “And you’re sure that there aren’t any other family members you could stay with?” Appalled by the rather slipshod grammatical construction of Mr. Ryersbach’s question (though Newman had formerly nursed a contempt for all rules of discourse), Newman Trimmers was happy that Mr. Chowser wasn’t nearby to overhear, or even the teacher in his village school, Miss Clickett, who once fell into a paroxysm of tears when one of Newman’s desk-mates committed the egregious double error of misusing a reflexive pronoun in the same sentence in which a gerund was left unpossessing.
Newman shook his head. “All of my family lives in Dingley Dell. Everybody I know lives in Dingley Dell. I am going to make my way in the world and become very rich and bring them wonderful things.” Newman, having now drained his glass of orange juice, held out the empty tumbler for a refill.
“Wonderful things. Like orange juice,” said Mrs. Ryersbach with a gentle, almost knowing smile.
“Dingley Dell. Dingley Dell. Now where have I heard the name before?” pondered Mr. Ryersbach aloud.
“It’s the nickname they give to the state crazy house, Dad,” offered the son. “We talked about it in my social studies class. A long time ago there were all these crazy people there who said that’s where they came from.”
“And there’s no one there who’s like that now?” asked Mrs. Ryersbach with a look of concern.
Chad shook his head. “They’re all dead. My teacher Mr. Guinter says the only man who talks about Dingley Dell these days is like 150 years old and spends all his time with the snakes and the lizards at the Reptilarium.”
Mrs. Ryersbach snorted indignantly. “Mr. Guinter should spend more time teaching and less time telling you kids where to find all the crazies and weirdos of Lycoming County. That isn’t why your father and I pay property taxes every year.”
“I’m just telling you what he said.”
“Finish your breakfast,” said the mother, “and go deflate the Aerobed. Somebody’s liable to trip over it, all spread out in the middle of the TV room like that.”
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.”
“Chad. 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.