“Pleased to make your acquaintance. My brother Sol — he didn’t tell you about the deputies comin’ by this morning, now did he?”
I shook my head.
“I need your view of things, Mr. Trimmers. Now, you know better than most the way of things, so I ask you this: they says we’re to leave the grove by mid-week. Now, they’ve been a-sayin’ this for quite some time now, and we give it no never-mind. But it’s a new sheriff now, they say — one what ain’t a’goin’ to abide our staying here the way the last one — that Muntle— did. Now as them deputies was leavin’, one of them says something of a confidential nature that one of my kidlings hears, and she tells it back to me and my brothers. Them two deputies, now they be talkin’ one to another about what’s goin’ to happen when we all get moved into the middle of the Dell — when all of us on the edge gets pushed in with everybody else.”
“Zephaniah, I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
“They’s goin’to light it all on fire, Mr. Trimmers. This place — the Chowser School, Blackheath — everything along the edges of the Dell.”
“Who, Zephaniah?”
“They’s callin’ them the ‘Enforcers.’”
“The Enforcers?”
“My brothers and me — we don’t scare too easy, but we do worry for our families. That’s why we’s armin’ ourselves with the bows and arrows and such-like to protect ourselves, when they come with the torches.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Timberry was equally staggered. “I’ve heard nothing about this,” I said helplessly.
“Here’s what my brother Mel he says. It’s his theory. He says they’s gettin’ ready to bring an end to Dingley Dell. But first they got to get us all into one place.”
Timberry now interposed, “I don’t quite understand, Mr. Scadger. Upon what evidence is your brother basing this theory of his?”
“I tell you now but you cannot let on to the new sheriff what you know.”
“Why should I — or Mr. Trimmers here — have reason to betray such a confidence?”
“If you’re a Scadger, doctor, you learn not to trust nobody. I guess it’s come time, though, to put a little faith into somebody, and I think that Mr. Trimmers, he done a little good for us, and you being his friend — now I make bold to tell you both: we’ve seen encampments — in the eastern wood.”
“Encampments?” I replied. “What do you mean, Zephaniah?”
“Outlanders with guns. Waiting. We’ve seen more than one of them camps. We’re stealthy in the wood, can move ourselves through it with our eyes closed. But with open eyes — this is what we see. They’re gatherin’ themselves for some wicked purpose, no doubt about it.”
“Inside or outside the fence?”
“Inside. That’s cheeky, hum?”
“Quite,” I replied. “Zephaniah, you and your clan cannot stay here. If the deputies don’t succeed in removing you, the Outlanders are apparently prepared to come in from the woods and route you themselves.”
“Sol and Mel and my other brothers — we’ve made our decision. We’re goin’ to take a stand.”
“But that would be suicide,” countered Timberry.
“This orchard is all that we have. This valley is all that we have. Why should we move into town only to die in whatever way they’ve done chosen for all the rest of you? We make our stand here, that’s what we do — right here where our Papa put down his stakes many year ago.”
I could not argue with Zephaniah’s reasoning, though it was blind clan pride that largely motivated it. I gave no response. Nor did Timberry know what to say. However, it wasn’t necessary for either of us to reply. What was required of me were answers to a very specific line of questions, put next by Zephaniah Scadger in all earnestness and with no small measure of concern.
“Is Dingley Dell coming to its end, Mr. Trimmers? And for what reason? Have we displeased the powers that rule this valley?”
“What do you know of the powers that rule Dingley Dell?”
“Nothin’ that I could say for certain. But I know that they watch us. That they laugh at us. We’ve done heard them talk about us in the midnight encampments. How we’re like little string puppets. How we don’t be human. My clan has lived for many years on the edge of Dingley Dell. Here is where a man is closest to the Outlanders. Here is where a man gets the strongest feeling that the path we’re on ain’t one of our own making. Is Dingley Dell coming to its end, Mr. Trimmers? And why is such a thing to be?”
“I won’t dissemble, Zephaniah. I believe now, as do several others with whom I affiliate, that our days are indeed numbered, but the best course is not to keep ourselves divided, but to band together to fight whatever is being planned for us.”
Zephaniah shook his head. “It ain’t possible. Ain’t nobody but yourself would band with a Scadger. We’re on our own. Always have been, always will be — right to the bloody end.”
As Zephaniah had predicted, we found Harry and Matilda and their five children beneath the Westminster Bridge, settled uneasily amongst the People-Under-the-Bridge. We gathered them up and conducted them to the empty apartments above Antonia’s stationery shop. She was waiting for my brother and his family with boiling water for the washtub and clean linens and open arms.
I related to Harry and Antonia what I had learnt from Harry’s brother Zephaniah. A dark, foreboding silence supervened — the sort of quiet that only intensified the fear of what was being carefully and diabolically arranged for all of us, Scadger and non-Scadger alike. And what was to become of us in the end.
Chapter the Fortieth. Monday, July 7, 2003
uth Wolf stood beneath the strange tree-like steel tower that the Dinglian metals-sculptor Waldengarver had erected upon the grounds of Bedlam asylum two years earlier. It bore a strong resemblance to four other Dinglian towers whose construction offended the eye of most who viewed them, but would never be removed without plenary Parliamentary approval. Waldengarver had been commissioned by his brother Lord Mayor Feenix to put up all five of the “steel trees”—one of which stood atop the Northern Ridge near the Summit of Exchange and another of which was erected upon an outcropping of the Southern Coal Ridge, where coaldusty collier boys and girls climbed and begrimed it to adorn its metallic branches with Christmas ornaments and garland of their own impoverished construction, giving at least this one tower amongst the five a look of near-festivity during the happy holiday season.
Ruth Wolf stood beneath the oddly welded Bedlam tower for good reason. This was the best place to engage the secretly-purposed tower to transmit the signal emanating from her portable wireless telephone — to direct it to the ear of her colleague in the underground rescuing league, Phillips the jeweller. The tower did the equally serviceable job of returning Phillips’ reciprocating signal back to her, bouncing it from one tower to the next like invisible saltatory voltaic arcs. The magic in the transaction allowed the two to speak as if they were standing within natural earshot of one another. “Hello,” said Ruth Wolf into the tiny rectangular telephone. “Thank God you called, Ruth. I was starting to get worried.” It wasn’t a tiny rectangular pencil-case of a telephone into which Phillips was speaking, but the voice-amplifying mouthpiece of a much larger tethered variety of telephonic device. The apparatus sat upon Phillips’ desk in the cluttered back office of his jewellry store.
“Things have been crazy,” Ruth replied. “They’ve summoned me to to-night’s hospital board meeting. I have every reason to believe that I’m about to get canned. I have to get out of here, Phillips. I went to talk to Chivery up in the attic room just a few minutes ago. He didn’t make much sense, but he gave me something. It sent a chill down my spine. It’s a memo from Michelena Martin to Patty Kreis. Does the name Martin ring a bell?”