Far Far Away

by Tom McNeal

  “It’s the hot springs behind the building. It can be kind of bad when the wind’s from the north.”

  “Kind of bad?” Maddy said. “How about cruel and unusual?”

  Ginger meanwhile was looking around the attic. “This is pretty fabulous, Jeremy. Awful snug, though. You’d have more room if you had fewer books.”

  He glanced at the shelves. “Yeah, well. They aren’t really mine. They’re my mother’s.”

  She regarded a small cane-seated rocking chair. “That for when elves visit?”

  “No,” Jeremy said. “It was mine. When I was …”

  “Little?” Ginger said.

  “Yeah.”

  Ginger plopped onto Jeremy’s mattress, the other girls sprawled on the floor, and Jeremy said, “So how’d you get up here?”

  “Not hard,” Ginger said. “Only tricky stretch was climbing the cast-iron pipe to the roof. From there, your cute little balcony is within arm’s reach.”

  Marjory said, “That’s if you have monkey arms like Ginger. For me and Maddy, we’re talking near-death experience.”

  It was true. I often took this route myself, but I would not have thought it easy for mortals.

  Jeremy, too, seemed impressed. I could see that his peevishness was receding.

  “Okay,” he said, “that takes care of how. What I don’t get is why.”

  “He’s got the how,” murmured Maddy Saxon, the one with the smoldering eyes and scarred cheek, “and now he wants the why.”

  She and Marjory Falls sat on the floor, leaning back to back with their legs in front of them. When I slipped past Maddy Saxon, she said, “Whoa! Did you just feel that weird draft of warm air?” and Marjory said, “Oh! Sorry,” which, for reasons I did not understand, sent them into laughter.

  “The why is very simple,” Ginger said, and her smile had slyness in it. “We saw the light on and wanted to talk to you. Is that so bad?”

  Studies, I said into Jeremy’s ear. Examinations.

  But Jeremy said, “Talk to me about what?”

  “We’re going on a night mission,” Ginger said, “and we thought you might want to come along.”

  No, Jeremy, you do not.

  “You need to get out more,” Ginger said, “I mean, it’s a little sad, you sitting up here in the attic”—she paused—“talking to yourself when you could be out on a night mission.” She grinned at him. “Speaking metaphorically here, Jeremy, I can hardly see your life through all the dust and cobwebs.”

  Metaphor, I said. From meta—beyond—and pherein—to bear. To bear beyond! It is one of your vocabulary words. Words that we need to study!

  “What kind of night mission?” Jeremy asked. He was ignoring me completely!

  “The most fabulous kind,” Ginger said. “We’re going to perform a zounds-worthy act of derring-do. We’ve got it all planned out”—she fixed her golden eyes on him—“but we kind of need your help.” She leaned forward, bringing the scent of cinnamon with her. “And you’re already dressed for the occasion.”

  It was true that Jeremy was also wearing dark clothes, but what did that signify? Nothing whatsoever!

  Your studies! I shouted. The vocabulary! The classical roots!

  “I don’t know,” Jeremy said.

  Maddy Saxon cast a meaningful look at Ginger. “Told you.”

  “Maybe Jeremy is going to read himself a fairy tale and put himself to bed,” Marjory said. She pulled a book from the shelves, and when she read its title aloud—“The Big Book of Fairy Tales”—Jeremy’s face clouded.

  “Could you put that back?” he said. “It was my mother’s.”

  Marjory did put it back, but she at once pulled out another and read the title aloud: “Told Under the Green Umbrella: Favorite Fairy Tales and Legends.” She looked up at Jeremy with dancing ink-black eyes. “Is everything up here a fairy tale?”

  Jeremy’s face flushed red. “Not all of them,” he murmured.

  The girl turned the pages to the first story. “ ‘The Frog King,’ ” she said, and then in a singsongy voice began to read, “Once upon a time, when wishes still came true—” but Jeremy suddenly cut her off.

  “Okay,” he said.

  His manner was stiff and serious. The girls all looked at him.

  “Okay what?” Ginger asked.

  “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

  This time it was Ginger who cast a meaningful look at the other girls, after which she leaned forward and gave Jeremy’s arm a gentle squeeze.

  One after another, they crept down the ladder from the attic, not that they needed to—nothing could be heard over the din of Mr. Johnson’s television. Jeremy took the key from around his neck and locked the bookstore behind him.

  Do not do this, Jeremy, I said. Please do not do this.

  But my warning was like a hand raised to stop the wind.

  Away the girls went, all dressed in black, rushing ahead like rampant shadows, with Jeremy chasing behind. The girls slipped through backyards, cut across bare lots, vaulted fences, slid between buildings, loped along alleys. Upon reaching a collection of rubbish bins in the alley between the bakery and the baker’s house, they stopped and waited for Jeremy to catch up. When at last he did, he bent at the waist, taking in great gulps of air.

  “You should join the track team,” Ginger genially chided. “It’s good cross-training for night missions.”

  “Or,” Jeremy gasped, “I could, you know, just stay home.”

  Ginger pulled a black stocking hat out of her rucksack and handed it to Jeremy, but while the girls tucked their hair into their hats, he just held his and looked around. The Green Oven Bakery stood on one side of the alley. Over the fence on the other side loomed the large wood-and-stone home of the baker.

  “Now, tell me again,” he said. “What exactly are we doing here?”

  Ginger smiled, blinked, and—I could hardly believe my ancient eyes—suddenly sprang from an overturned bucket to an overturned trash bin to the top of the fence. Balanced there, she tossed her party a grin and then, grabbing on to an outreaching tree limb, swung out of sight.

  At once, the girlfriends pushed a board up and over the top of the fence. Then in quick fluid motions they, too, were over the fence, leaving Jeremy alone.

  We could go back to our studies, I said. It is not too late.

  “Jeremy?” Ginger called lightly through the fence. “Ready?”

  The studies, I said.

  Jeremy slowly pulled the black cap over his head. He climbed onto one bucket without difficulty, but as he pushed away from it, both the bucket and the trash barrel tipped over and crashed to the pavement. Jeremy’s hands clutched the top of the fence and his knees banged hard against the planks, but he dragged himself up. He teetered for a moment at the top and then, reaching for the tree limb, he lost his grip on the fence and skidded to the ground, where he landed with a whump. His hands and arms were badly scraped, but such was the excitement that he must not have felt it.

  “This way,” Ginger called in a hushed voice, and when he’d drawn close, she whispered, “Just so we’re clear on the concept, we’re going for stealth here.”

  Beyond them, the baker’s house stood nearly dark. Only one rear window was illuminated, and the light there was dim.

  “What are we doing here?” Jeremy whispered.

  An excellent question!—but Ginger merely nodded at the wood plank laid out in front of them. “We’re using this handy board to cross the mud,” she said.

  The plank spanned a broad swath of the backyard that collected drainage and appeared to remain perpetually muddy.

  “No, I mean after that,” Jeremy murmured.

  “You’ll see.” Ginger depressed a button that illuminated her watch. “Seven minutes,” she whispered. She pulled two small bags from one of the rucksacks and shoved them into her rear pockets, then turned to Jeremy. “Once we cross the mud, we split up. You follow me. Don’t make a sound and everything will be all right.”

  Je
remy looked at the large dark ivy-covered house and then back at the fence. “What’s our exit strategy here?” he asked.

  “Exit strategy? We haven’t even gotten in yet.”

  “In where?” Jeremy said. His voice was low but full of alarm.

  “Shh.”

  Light appeared in one window of the house, then another. The flickering glow of a television followed, and the large passing shadow of the baker.

  “Showtime,” Ginger said, and she deftly stepped across the board toward the house.

  Jeremy followed. The board wobbled, but he crossed without falling.

  The girlfriends approached the house, too, but at a different angle. They took tightly rolled foam pads from their rucksacks and unfurled them across a gravel walkway that inadvertently composed a kind of noise moat around the house. They stood carefully on the foam pads beneath a window and gave Ginger a thumbs-up sign. Jeremy followed Ginger toward the front door, where Ginger used the same kind of pad to creep quietly to a position in the ivy behind a large electrical air cooler and directly below another window.

  The muted voice of a television newsman seeped out from the house. Also another sound—what seemed to my keen ear to be a refrigerator door opening and closing.

  “Okay,” Ginger whispered to Jeremy, “here’s the deal. We’ve been watching the jolly baker the last few nights and he’s got a surprising little routine. Every night he reads the newspaper and then he goes somewhere we can’t see and then, a little before ten, he comes back, turns on the TV news, and pours out a bowl of Trix.”

  “Trix? The baker eats Trix?”

  “I know!—who would’ve guessed? But every night, like clockwork, he sets out his bowl and his spoon and his bottle of milk, and then he does something even weirder.”

  “Weirder than eating Trix every night?” Jeremy said.

  “Yep. He takes out his trash, then, right over there by those far bushes, he pees.”

  “He pees,” Jeremy repeated. He seemed surprised, but I was not. Several men in the village conducted the same nightly ritual.

  Ginger nodded. “The trash and the peeing take between two and two and a half minutes. That’s where we come in.”

  “We?”

  She pulled the two bags out of her back pockets and handed them to Jeremy. “Well, actually, you.”

  “What?”

  He peered at the two small packets she had handed him. They were marked Pop Rocks. On past occasions, I had seen Jeremy pour these Kiesel into his mouth, and I had heard the strange electrical crackling they produced there, but why he liked them I could not guess.

  “As soon as the baker comes around the corner,” Ginger told him, “all you have to do is sneak in and dump the Pop Rocks into his Trix. Then when he gets back and pours in the milk …” She let him imagine the rest.

  After a moment, Jeremy said, “I’m not doing that.”

  Exzellent thinking, I said.

  “Okay,” Ginger said. “I’ll do it myself. It’s just that …”

  “Just that what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that”—she gestured to the girlfriends positioned in the shrubbery two windows away—“they were so totally against my bringing you. Like, you couldn’t help and would slow us down.…” Her voice had trailed off; now it lifted just a bit. “But maybe you could keep watch for me?”

  Nein, I said. Let us go now, Jeremy, and leave these girls to their foolishness.

  Good advice, and had Jeremy listened to it, this would be a less dark tale.

  Ginger extended her open hand to take back the Pop Rocks, but Jeremy, to my surprise and consternation, suddenly stuffed them into his pocket.

  Jeremy, do not think of doing this!

  “Okay,” he told Ginger. “I’ll go in.”

  “Yeah?” she said.

  Jeremy’s tone was resolved. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then,” she whispered. “Quick, take off your shoes.”

  Inside the baker’s house, the television news ended. Seconds later, the front door opened, followed by gravelly footsteps, and then the rotund baker, whistling a little tune, passed in front of us carrying a small bin of trash toward the rear alley.

  As his footsteps receded, Jeremy crouched to spring.

  No, Jeremy, I said. Nein, nein, nein.

  “Go!” Ginger whispered.

  And off he went.

  When I slipped through the front door with Jeremy, I stopped to take in the marvelous smells of sugar melted and sugar baked, but Jeremy rushed to the baker’s wooden table and frantically twisted the edge of the first bag of explosive candy.

  Mein Gott! I said. I could not keep myself from saying it, for Jeremy’s hands were red from having torn them on the fence. He, too, saw the blood for the first time, and in his alarm, he pulled even harder on the packet, ripping it nearly in two and scattering candy crystals all over the table.

  Jeremy swept the Kiesel into one hand and dropped them into the bowl.

  Dimly I could hear the sound of shoes.

  Jeremy! He is coming!

  Jeremy took a backward step, but there on the table lay the empty bag, the very edge of it smeared red with his blood.

  The outside gravel popped louder and louder.

  Jeremy stepped back to the table, grabbed the bag, and shoved it in his pocket.

  To my horror, I saw another scrap from the bag lying under the table, but one of the girlfriends was tapping rapidly at the window, waving him out, and so we flew through the door and around the corner and settled into Ginger’s hiding place just as the baker passed again, still whistling his little tune.

  He locked the front door behind him, and then only the muted sounds of the television penetrated the walls.

  “You okay?” Ginger whispered, squeezing Jeremy’s arm. “I hope you’re okay, because you were pretty freaking fabulous.”

  Jeremy, too, seemed to feel exhilarated. Well, that is how it is when mortals do something foolish and escape unharmed. Jeremy pulled on his black canvas shoes but did not tie them. “Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Before the grand finale?” she whispered. “I don’t think so.”

  Jeremy rubbed the sweat near his temple. To my surprise, he actually wanted my opinion. We should go, I told him. Run! Eile! Fretta! Haast!

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered again to Ginger, but she merely swatted at something crawling up her leg from the ivy, then rose just enough to peer through the window. When she motioned to Jeremy, he did the same.

  Within the dining room, the portly baker could be observed as if on a lighted stage. He sensed nothing unusual. He brushed something from his full white beard and was still whistling as he pulled out his chair and sat down with his eyes on the television screen.

  He leaned forward and twisted the cap from the milk carton.

  “Here goes!” Ginger whispered, but just then the baker stopped to stare at the television, where there appeared a close-up picture of a missing person—a robust young man with a gap-toothed smile. A sign above his picture said MISSING? … and a sign below said OR MERELY AN OVERSEAS ADVENTURE? A woman moderator then came on the screen, but her words could not be heard. Behind her, there appeared a map of Europe with a red arrow pointing to Amsterdam. The baker was attentive throughout this story, and when it ended, he shook his head with an attitude that suggested concern or sadness.

  For this we are playing window peeper? I said.

  “Let’s go!” Jeremy said in a tight whisper.

  But Ginger was transfixed.

  She watched the baker lift the carton of milk and pour.

  The instant the liquid touched the cereal, the baker’s face froze and he wrenched his hand back. Rising quickly and stumbling away from the table, he dropped into a crouch, stricken, as if something dangerous had leapt up from the bowl. I felt pity for him, but at the windows, the girlfriends had to cover their mouths to smother their laughter.

  After a moment, the baker began
to stand up straighter. He regarded the cereal bowl, milk dripping from the table to the floor, spreading to the top of the candy package Jeremy had left behind. The baker’s eyes went to the front door and then to the kitchen and a doorway beyond. He disappeared down that corridor, evidently checking other rooms, for light appeared in a succession of windows.

  Jeremy tugged at Ginger’s arm, but still she waited and watched.

  Soon the baker returned to the dining room. He bent close to stare at the floor, at what I knew to be the scrap from the package. But he didn’t pick it up.

  And then the moment arrived that must always arrive in such situations.

  The baker’s gaze lifted. It moved from window to window until, at last, it was directed at us.

  Ginger and Jeremy ducked out of the way. I did not. I watched the baker walk heavily across the room and put his hand to a switch on the wall.

  Mein Gott!—suddenly the whole yard was flooded with light!

  “Code red!” Ginger shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Maddy and Marjory were already bouncing over the mud on the wooden plank and racing toward the high fence, with Ginger close behind. The plank shifted abruptly under Jeremy’s weight, and in the next instant his foot was sucked into the deep gummy mud. He stumbled forward, trying to pull himself free.

  Up! I urged. Up! Up!—but the mud oozed around him and pulled at his feet and hands. Suddenly, Ginger was there, leaning forward from solid ground, extending her hand, and his foot wrenched free of both shoe and mud, and Ginger and Jeremy ran for the fence as if chased by demons.

  The baker stood at the leafy window peering out at the yard. But what could he see? In their black clothes, Jeremy and the girls were but shadows.

  Maddy took a running jump at the fence, caught hold of the top, and scrabbled over, but Marjory needed help. Jeremy and Ginger boosted her up and over, then, as Jeremy stirruped his hands for Ginger, she fell back, grabbed at his collar—he would remember later a quick tug at his neck—and she fell almost to the ground before he could get hold of her. At once she was upright again, and this time she stepped back, launched herself toward the fence, and pulled herself up and over.

  The baker opened the window. “Hallå!” he called. “Who is out there?”