by Tom McNeal
Perhaps also that you seemed repentant.
Jeremy considered this. “Maybe it was a test. Like in one of your stories. It was a test of the baker’s kindness, and he passed.”
Perhaps, I said. But in truth I did not know. The mystery was still unfolding before me, and I had little sense of how dark its nature would become.
We found Jeremy’s father in his room sitting on the side of his bed. He had tried to comb his gnarled hair and he had tried to put on long pants and a shirt, but they were so tight, they could not be fastened. His eyes were puffy. I smelled salt. He had been crying.
“You okay, Dad?” Jeremy said.
Mr. Johnson did not look at Jeremy. “I wanted to come help.”
“You didn’t have to. They let me go. It was all some kind of mistake.”
Mr. Johnson seemed relieved but not consoled. “I wanted to come help, but I couldn’t get into any of my clothes.” He clamped his eyes to keep back tears, but one escaped. “I’ve gotten … I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Jeremy said. His voice was gentle. “Everything’s okay.”
But Mr. Johnson lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over his face.
When Jeremy looked in on him a few minutes later, his head was still under the covers. “I’m going to school now,” Jeremy said, for he had remembered what I had nearly forgotten: he had to go to school today, and take examinations—examinations for which he had not properly studied. “Dad?”
His father poked his head out. In the distance, the first school bell could be heard. “You’re going to be late,” Mr. Johnson said, but then, as Jeremy swung his book bag onto his back, he said, “Jeremy?”
Jeremy looked at him.
“I’m sorry,” his father said.
“For what?”
His father’s eyes slid away. “For everything. For just about everything.”
Yes, I thought. You should be sorry. Your example is beschämend. Shameful. That is what I would have said. But Jeremy’s way was kinder. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’m just glad to have a father at all.” He looked at his father. “Okay?”
Mr. Johnson did not seem to believe Jeremy’s words, but still he said, “Okay.”
Jeremy burst into the classroom just as Mrs. Kilgarten was distributing the examinations.
“Eyes forward!” she barked, and Ginger, who had turned to give Jeremy a questioning look, swiveled back around. “You all know the importance of this exam. While taking it, there will be no talking and no straying eyes.” The teacher sternly scanned the room. “Very well, then. You may … begin!”
Such a rustling of papers! Such a concentration of faculties! Generally, I enjoy a scene like this, but this morning my pleasure was only momentary, for Jeremy, who had slept little and studied less, was passing over half as many questions as he answered!
He would never ask for help, nor would I customarily offer it. Still, it was the sheriff’s visit that morning that had preempted Jeremy’s last chance to study, so it did not seem quite fair to let him fail.
I tried something new.
At the next difficult question, I produced the answer in just the way he would have memorized it—ossify from os, ossis, Latin for bone—but I spoke in so thin a whisper he might think he was reaching into the dark corners of his own memory.
And, look here!—he entered the correct answer on his paper.
A few questions later, I whispered, Phobia from phobos, Greek for fear or flight.
Really, I must admit it, it was all quite satisfying. I almost looked forward to the difficult questions so that I could whisper the answer so softly that he was not even aware he was hearing it.
Gastric from gastro, gastreros, Greek for stomach.
Oration from orare, Latin for plead, speak, or pray.
I was clever. In order to avoid arousing his suspicion, I withheld answers to two questions altogether, no matter how long he stared at them. Finally, he expelled a deep breath, laid down his pencil, and turned his paper over.
“Time!” Mrs. Kilgarten called out in a piercing voice. “Pencils down, papers forward, no talking. Henry Hollis and Samuel Thompson! Did I not just say No talking?”
Henry Hollis and Samuel Thompson exchanged rascally smiles. Like every other student in the room, they knew that when the bell rang in precisely two minutes, they would be beyond the reach of Mrs. Kilgarten until autumn.
Ginger caught up to Jeremy as soon as he had left the classroom. “So?” she said.
“What?”
“Your little visit to the sheriff’s station this morning?”
“Wow,” Jeremy said. “News travels fast.”
“Like I said, Jeremy—small towns, big ears. So what happened?”
He shrugged. “Not a thing.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Even after he had given her all the details, she shook her head. “So Sten Blix knew you’d done it … and he sprang you, anyway.” She slid several strands of coppery hair through her lips. “I guess we really kind of owe him one.”
“I do, maybe,” Jeremy said, “but you don’t. Your name never came up.”
She turned to him and her eyes shone. “I knew you’d never give Pittswort any names. I just knew that about you.”
The corridor had grown quiet. The few remaining students moved off toward their next classes.
“So how’d you do on that demonic test we just took?” she said.
“Okay, I guess. At first, I was tanking, and then all of a sudden it was like I slipped into the Vocabulary Zone or something.”
I shimmered with pleasure. Well, it is true. Even a ghost has his vanities.
“I think I was in the Not Enough Sleep Zone,” Ginger said. “That police-pursuit deal last night was like a quadruple espresso. I thought I was never going to fall asleep.”
The warning bell rang and Ginger sailed away. “Bye-ya,” she said over her shoulder. Farther down the hall, Conk Crinklaw slammed his locker shut, then turned and bumped into Ginger in a way that did not seem accidental. After untangling himself, he doffed his cap and made an elaborate show of apology, which drew a gaze of disbelief from Ginger and then—I was quite sure of it—a look of mild amusement.
Jeremy observed this, too. I followed him toward his geometry classroom for his last examination of the year, but as he drew close to the door, he stopped and looked around to make sure no one was nearby. “Okay, Jacob,” he whispered, “no help with the answers this time.”
Mein Gott! I felt like one of those toys that looks like a ball made of metal leaves, but when its spring is pumped and made to spin, the leaves open to reveal a standing figure. Well, that is how being caught at something can make you feel.
“I’m not mad or anything,” he said, “but … you understand, don’t you?”
Ja, ja, I said quietly, and kept myself still, craving the covering of the metal leaves.
I slipped away from the school but had no time to contemplate my misdeed because, once beyond the school campus, I saw that something graver was amiss.
Whispers carried in the warm spring air, moving from house to house and street to street, a strange, dark animus wrapped in everyday phrases. On the sidewalk of Main Street, in the aisles of the market, across fences and hedgerows, the whispers met and bred more whispers.
“The baker’s house. Broken into. That’s right, the Swede’s.”
“The Johnson boy. Harold Johnson’s boy.”
“The strange one. The one who hears voices.”
“Last night. Around ten p.m. Broke right into Sten’s house.”
“They say the Johnson boy had been stalking him for months.”
“Botched the job, though, and left behind his shoe!”
“Not just his shoe. His key, too, and his blood.”
“They had him dead to rights.”
“They say his father was behind it.”
�
�What kind of father would send his boy out to steal?”
And so it went, the fantastic, malevolent whisperings stretching and reconfiguring until at last their shape was one on which the villagers could agree: Jeremy Johnson Johnson had broken into the baker’s house to steal something but had been disrupted by the return of the baker himself. Then the boy had been thoroughly found out by Sheriff Pittswort, but because of the baker’s misplaced kindness, Jeremy had escaped the punishment he deserved—and the citizens were ready to do something about it.
Well, that is how it is. No matter the time, no matter the place, a village will often take a false story into its clenched fist.
I repaired to my belfry and gazed out across the flat plains in the direction from which I had hastened that fateful day after coming upon the traveler who walked endlessly into the wind, the man who told me about a boy who read fairy tales and heard voices and needed protection from …
Suddenly, I had this thought: Perhaps the rumors moving through the town, evil as they were, were a strange gift to me! Only two people might have played out the leading thread of the twisted information: the sheriff and his deputy. So perhaps I was a step closer to identifying the Finder of Occasions.
From the steeple I scanned the town—how small the cars seemed! how harmless the humans!—until I spied a black-and-white patrol car sliding under the railway trestle toward the business district, and I descended to investigate.
It was Deputy McRaven, prowling along Main Street. I followed behind, an easy thing given his lax pace, and when he turned onto a leafy residential street and pulled up in front of the garage over which he lived, I drew closer still.
The neglected building stood in the shade of a large, overhanging tree. The deputy huffed his way up the outside stairs, unlocked two locks, and pushed open the door. But he did not enter. I was distracted by the short-legged bed, the short-legged desk, and the short-legged chair. The deputy stood studying things, as if to see if everything was exactly as he had left it. He was especially intent on the papers spread across the short-legged desk in the far corner of the room, so I slipped in and, by passing rapidly above the papers, caused them to stir.
One paper fell from the desk.
At this, the deputy stumped hurriedly across the room, picked up the paper (it was nothing, merely an advertising notice), and then did something interesting: he looked around the room one more time and pulled open the lower right-hand drawer. He then lifted aside a false bottom that lay within it and regarded a large envelope hidden below.
That this envelope was safely in place seemed to quell whatever fear had come over him—the apprehension drained at once from his face.
He locked the front door, took a bottle of ale from a small refrigerator, and went back to the desk. He took two long draughts from his bottle, then laid open the large envelope.
Inside lay a packet of photographs that the deputy began shuffling through. One was of a man alone in a car reading a letter. One was of a man and woman embracing behind a building. Another was of a man handing cash to another man in the shadows of the municipal park. The deputy studied each photograph—often they were blurred, as if shot from some distance—before going on to the next. There were perhaps a dozen, each one evidence, it seemed, of behavior that the pictured villagers would not want known. There was also something that sent a tremor through my ancient soul: an exact copy of the obituary of Zyla Johnson Newgate, the very one that had been posted anonymously to Jeremy’s father.
When the deputy got to the last pictures in the packet, he took out a magnifying glass and held it over the blurry images. There was one of a boy and a girl walking along Main Street, one of a boy and a girl laughing on Main Street, one of a boy and a girl standing on the corner of Main Street and Elm.
Yes, you have doubtless guessed it.
The girl in these photographs was Ginger, and the boy was Jeremy.
The deputy returned the envelope to the bottom of the drawer, twice-locked the door behind him, and clumped back down the steps to his patrol car.
So, who was this Deputy McRaven?
A man who accumulated bits of information about villagers and hid them away, as a miser might money.
A man who was particularly interested in Jeremy and his father.
A man, in other words, who might be the Finder of Occasions.
I waited for Jeremy at the school. When at last the final bell rang, the front doors flew open and the students streamed out amidst a raucous din, Jeremy among them.
Listen, if you will! I shouted to Jeremy, but the boisterous noise could not be penetrated. This was the last day of school—children waved and shouted and threw papers into the air.
Finally, when he separated from the other students, I drew close and fairly shouted. Jeremy! It is I, Jacob. Listen, if you will.
But he had begun to whistle! He was happy, and something in me went out to him. He knew only that his examinations were over and that the summer holiday lay ahead, time he could use to earn money toward saving his bookstore and home.
Jeremy! Listen, if you will!
Still he did not hear me.
No, what finally stopped his whistling were the cold stares from citizens on the street, and the way, when met by Jeremy’s genial nod and smile, these villagers stiffly tipped their chins and turned away.
Jeremy slipped into an alley and rubbed his temple. “What’s going on?”
I have been trying to tell you, Jeremy. Someone has spread word of the clues that led to your door.
“But Mr. Blix told them it wasn’t me.”
Yes. And so now you have been tried in the court of community opinion.
After a few seconds, Jeremy said, “Tried and found guilty, from the looks of it.”
I said nothing. I could not disagree. We turned onto Main Street.
“And my punishment?”
One of the oldest.
He cocked his head quizzically.
Public shunning.
Barely had I spoken these words than I saw the town banker turning curtly at Jeremy’s approach; two other villagers did the same.
Poor Jeremy lowered his head and bolted for the bookstore. Once inside, he locked the door, scrambled up to his attic, and flopped onto the bed.
His father called from the other room. Jeremy did not answer.
Someone rapped on the front door. Jeremy did not stir.
The telephone rang several times. Jeremy stared at the ceiling and listened to the voices leaving messages.
The first voice said, “Jeremy, this is Norman Harang. I no longer need your gardening services.”
A few minutes later, Eva Tanner said, “Don’t come to do my yard tomorrow or ever after. I think you know why.”
Then Melvin Blood said, “I am calling to inform you that I have found someone else to do my yard work.”
And then as it grew dark, a softer, warmer voice flowed from the answering machine: “Jeremy? Are you in there? It’s me, Ginger. I’m sorry about everything. It’s all so horrible and it’s all my fault.” A pause, then: “Could you please pick up?”
But Jeremy simply turned on his bed and stared at the wall.
Jeremy?
“What?” His voice was snappish.
Perhaps there is a silver lining.
“And what would that be?”
I think this chapter of your tale has revealed the Finder of Occasions.
Though I had told Jeremy of the Finder of Occasions—and more than once!—he neither believed it nor feared it as I knew to do. So he said nothing.
I think it is the deputy. He collects information about the villagers that is embarrassing or incriminating so that he might hold it against them. He is the one who sent your mother’s obituary to your father. He has taken photographs of you and Ginger.
In a sullen voice Jeremy said, “This is not a chapter in a tale, Jacob. It’s my life. And even if there is such a thing, what difference does it make if McRaven is the big bad Finder of Occ
asions?” He looked in my direction. “He found his occasion and he used it. Game over.”
I started to disagree, to defend my ideas, to defend myself, to tell him that worse might be coming, and might yet be avoided, but he was in no mood for it.
“Good night, Jacob,” he said.
Well, what could I do?
I said, Good night, Jeremy, and departed.
The next day was the first of the summer holiday, the day Jeremy had meant to look for more work.
Instead, he left the closed sign hanging in the window of the Two-Book Bookstore and did not venture out of doors. He sat watching television with his father. They did not just watch Uncommon Knowledge; they watched anything that appeared on the screen. They ate popcorn. They drank a sickeningly sweet-smelling fruit beverage made by stirring sugar and water with powder poured from a small packet. When the telephone rang, they did not answer it.
Finally, I could bear no more.
You cannot do this, Jeremy. You cannot do what your father has done—lie down and stay inside and stop living.
He made no sign of hearing me.
You must listen, Jeremy! I said. You need to face the town. Let them know that, yes, you did something wrong but not a large thing and that you intend to make amends and perhaps even learn something from the episode.
Jeremy sat staring at the television. “What I learned is that you do almost everything right for most of your life and then you screw up one time—one stinking time!—and everybody thinks you drip with slime.”
A silence followed this pronouncement, and then Jeremy’s father said, “Who’re you talking to?”
Jeremy’s face flushed. “Oh … myself. I was just thinking how unfair this all is. Well, not unfair, exactly, but not completely fair, either.”
“Yeah,” his father said, “learning that things aren’t always fair is a bad lesson.” His gaze drifted to the window. “Sometimes I think it’s the worst lesson of all.”
Surely he was thinking of Zyla Johnson. I think Jeremy sensed this, too, for he said, “How about I pop another batch of popcorn?”
While they munched their popped corn, Jeremy said, “What are we going to do, Dad?” His father did not speak, so Jeremy continued. “What are we going to do about losing the store and the place where we live?”
