“How long have I lain here?” asked Gus of Mrs. DeLove. “All the days and nights seem of one piece in my head.”
“Too long. Annette and I were to the point of ‘recover or die already, Alien.’ I’m not kidding you, Mr. Trimmers, you have been one super-sized headache for my daughter and me.”
Gus struggled to pull himself up a little upon his pillows to better see the woman who remained partly obscured by the shadows of the room. “Why didn’t you just let me die?”
“You think I wanted that on my conscience? You know, they let us live here — the ones who oversee your valley. They let us stay here because they think we’re a couple of loony tunes who aren’t going to get in their way. But aside from the fact that Annette goes off her rocker every now and then— case in point, this whole ridiculous handcuff episode — well, when it comes right down to it, we’re just as sane or insane as they are. I don’t know why they keep you there. I don’t know where you come from or much of what you’re about. I do know you have no idea what the real world is like, as if they’re keeping you all in the dark on purpose. And I also know this: you’re a human being and you don’t deserve to die from some germ you don’t have any immunity to, so that’s why Annette and I have been playing Florence Nightingale for the last several days. Because it wasn’t your fault your boy ran away. And it wasn’t your fault you got sick. And I’ll tell you something else, Mr. Trimmers: whatever Annette tried to tell you about the way they go after you people is true. We’ve seen it right here on my property: one of you funny-drest escapees, shot dead right in the back. We watched it from this very window, and then we spent the rest of the day hiding down in the basement to make them think there’d been no witnesses.”
“But they have to know, don’t they? — that you’ve been watching them all of these years?”
Mrs. DeLove shook her head. “Couple of loonies, like I say. And lucky for you we loonies decided to save your life in two different ways this week.”
“You mean keeping me here. And then nursing me when I was ill.”
Mrs. DeLove nodded. She took another sip from her cup.
“Then I thank you doubly.”
“You don’t have to thank me. You just have to get yourself well and then get yourself back home. There’s something going on — a lot more of those unmarked trucks and vans going in and out of the big fenced compound down the road. You should be back home in your valley where it’s safe.”
Gus nodded. He was quiet for a minute, and then he said, “Do you think my boy Newman is dead?”
Mrs. DeLove sighed and drew her shoulders up into a half-shrug. “If he’s still out here, then maybe his chances aren’t so good. But I want to believe that he’s made it back home by now. And you need to be thinking the same thing. Oh, the little painted picture you brought with you — I put it in a frame and set it on the table so you could look at him. Not the lamp table. The other one.”
“Thank you,” said Gus, picking up the miniature of his Newman to give it a closer look.
“Nobody takes pictures in Dingley Dell?”
“Takes pictures?”
“Photographs.”
Gus shook his head. “The tradesmen never brought us any cameras.”
Annette clomped back into the bedroom. “Your tea will be ready in a minute,” she said to Gus, moving to seat herself on the side of the bed. “I made you English breakfast tea. Because of how much you like England and Dickens and all that.”
“Thank you.”
“I wish I could come with you, Mr. Trimmers. I like all that you’ve told me about Dingley Dell.”
“It probably is a very nice place,” allowed Mrs. DeLove. “But Annette hasn’t left this house in fifteen years.”
Annette nodded and then cast down her eyes in sad regret. “Someday I will though, and I’ll climb that ridge over there and I’ll come and visit you.”
“You won’t climb the ridge, Annette, because of your legs. But Netty Girl, if you ever do someday find the courage to put your sorry ass outside this house, I will personally hire somebody to carry you piggyback all the way to the top of that mountain and then all the way down again, and baby, I’ll be shouting ‘hallelujah’ all the Goddamned while.”
Annette broke into a smile. There was a warm look between mother and daughter at that moment that wanted no words.
Gus now fixed his eyes upon his former captor: “Will you at least step out upon the porch to wave goodbye to me when I get strong enough to make my return trip?”
“I wish I could. I really want to.” And then Annette gave a hopeful smile and quitted the room to check on the tea.
I will move temporarily ahead in our story to tell you that Gus, with the help of his two Outland nurses, was put squarely upon the recuperative path, and two nights later under cover of darkness found sufficient strength to make his homebound journey. And a long and exhausting journey it was for a man who had only recently recovered from a near-fatal illness — a trip requiring a steep and steady climb up the spur that his own son had earlier taken to such a prominent height as the Northern Ridge. Yet as hard as it was for Gus, he essayed it with a burning desire to find his son returned home himself and happy and well, pushing back thoughts as best he could that Newman had been tragically lost to the murderous aims of that unknown force that the DeLoves had adumbrated.
Up the ridge Augustus Trimmers betook himself on that dark Friday night with the strength of a man only partially restored to his usual mettle, and with huffings and pantings and a stumble here and there and frequent rests upon the sturdy ash walking stick he had been given by Mother and Daughter DeLove. At last upon finally surmounting the mountaintop, Gus paused to behold the darkened valley of his birth, only faintly sparkling under distant Milltown street lamp, and then Gus turned to give a final parting glance back at the black, unwinking Outland — deep and dark and pricked only by the tiny glow of the DeLove porch light, still electrified long after his parting. Gus wondered if she was still there, still standing upon the porch, having found the courage to step out from behind the imprisoning walls of her mother’s house for the first time in fifteen years. Taking the clean night air fully into her lungs. Sending off her new Digglian friend with hopeful, heartening words and a whispered prayer on his behalf and one bag each of Milk Chocolate Milanos and Strawberry Veronas. Proud of what she herself had just accomplished, as monumental an achievement in those mere three or four steps as a walk across the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!
Chapter the Thirty-third. Thursday, July 3, 2003
y head throbbed. I had taken far too long to rouse myself from the bed in which Dabber’s manservant Fips had deposited me (pursuant to a word-slurring appeal by his employer that he must be the one to tuck me beneath the coverlet, for I could not execute the task myself whilst in such a severely intoxicated state, and Dabber was in no condition to do it, finding himself in a similar situation of full prostration.) It was post-noon before I could bring myself to rise and dress and force a piece of dry toast and the yolk of an egg upon my topsy-turvy stomach, and then to transport myself with a slack and painful gait out of the front door of Dabber Hall, having been medicated by the master of that lonely household with a salutary dose of salicylic powder that had at least reduced the size of the hammer that assaulted my recovering temples to something well nigh endurable.