by Tom McNeal
His father kept staring at the television, but I could tell he was not really watching it. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “If this was one of those fairy tales you and your mother used to read, I’d send you out to seek your fortune, and you’d do some impossible thing and a king would give you a kingdom.” He smiled miserably and turned to Jeremy. “But this isn’t some fairy tale we’re in the middle of, is it?”
“No,” Jeremy said, “it isn’t.” He stared dully at the television. “Maybe we should leave,” he said. “Maybe we should just let them have the store and we could just go somewhere else.”
“Go where?” his father asked. “And do what?”
It was true. If they had no money here, they would have no money anywhere else. It was as Ginger’s grandfather had said. It did not matter how far you go, you always take yourself with you.
That night, Jeremy climbed the ladder to the attic, drew down an edition of the Household Tales, and began reading “Iron Heinrich.” It was a conciliatory gesture—he knew this to be one of my favorites. He read to himself, as did I, but my ability to read is akin to my ability to hasten about—I read with unnatural rapidity.
Often, waiting for Jeremy to catch up, I was left to reconsider a line or a paragraph. It was true that during my mortal life I did not want to tamper with the tales for scholarly reasons, but it was also true that I had no talent for such tampering. It was Wilhelm who had the deft stylistic hand. His smoothing and shaping drew the characters up from the paper and set them free—the princesses and princes, giants and dwarves, talking foxes and frogs, huntsmen and shepherds, fishermen and their wives.
I will give an example. In the story before us, “Iron Heinrich,” the king’s youngest daughter was described as being “so lovely that even the sun, which had seen so many things, was filled with wonder when it shone upon her face.” Beautiful words, yes?—but they will not be found in the first version of the story. Again and again, Wilhelm’s flourishes would enrich a tale. Enrich, and change, too, and I resisted these changes. For my brother, the transformation of the tales rose from his deepest being. “Its source is simple,” he told me once when I questioned him. “It comes from belief.”
I remembered how he looked at me as he spoke these words—his eyes full of kindness but sorrow, too. Yes, it was true. He felt sorrow for me. I loved the search for our people’s history in the tales. But Wilhelm loved the tales themselves, and the princes and princesses who lived within them.
“Want to read more?” Jeremy said when he had finished “Iron Heinrich.”
Would you?
“I’m kind of tired, but I could just turn the pages for you if you want.”
He knew that I liked that very much, to swim through the familiar words as rapidly as I liked. A bit faster, I said as he flipped the pages. A bit faster yet.
We were midway through “The Cunning Little Tailor” when we heard a sudden tap-tap-tapping and spied Ginger Boultinghouse smiling through the window of the small balcony door.
Jeremy unlatched the window and let it swing open. He looked past her for the girlfriends, but Ginger was alone. He said, “You could just come to the front door like a normal human being.”
“Tried the front door,” she said. “Found the ‘closed’ sign discouraging.”
“And then there’s the telephone,” Jeremy said.
“Tried that, too”—she smiled at him—“nobody seems to answer.”
Jeremy’s gaze fell away. “Maybe that’s because nobody here wants to talk to anybody.”
Ginger sighed. “The village idiots have gotten you down, I guess.” She paused. “The village idiots aren’t worth it, you know.”
“Yeah, well, it’s still a little weird, walking down the street and having people stare at you like you’re a … child molester or something.”
Ginger slid several strands of hair through her mouth.
From some distance, I detected the dull rhythm of a freight train. So did Ginger. “Hear that?” she said. “When the coal train goes up Clearlake Grade, it makes my grandpa’s house tremble.” She listened for another moment or two. “That’s how I would leave if I had to—jump on a freight train. I’ve taken a couple of short rides but nothing long. I was talking to Conk today, and he said one weekend he rode to Omaha and back in empty freight cars. He knows a railroad guy who tells him where they’re all going. He said it was cold, but he still really liked it.” She shrugged. “ ’Course he’s an idiot.” She turned to Jeremy. “What do you think? Want to do that sometime with me?”
Careful, Jeremy, I whispered, but it will be no surprise to you that he did not listen.
“Maybe,” he said. “Sure.”
“You could teach me French while we ride the rails.” She smiled. “Could be très romantique, oui?”
She stretched, yawned, and picked up the book whose pages Jeremy had been turning for me. “You were reading a fairy tale?”
Jeremy’s whole body tensed. “Not really. I was just looking through it for a particular story.”
“Yeah? What story?”
“ ‘Bearskin,’ ” Jeremy blurted, and, once started, went stumbling on. “It’s about a man who can’t wash or comb his hair for seven years. It’s kind of a love story.”
“Kind of a gamey love story, I’d say.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the part I was trying to remember. Two of the princesses won’t have anything to do with him, but the youngest one agrees to marry him because of a kindness the man did for her father.”
“So it has a happy ending.”
“Yeah. Except for the two sisters who refused him. They—”
But Ginger cut him off. “Don’t tell me,” she said, and handed him the book. “Just start at the beginning.”
Jeremy appeared confused. “You want me to …”
“Read me the story. Exactly. But wait just a second.” She slipped off her shoes, lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “From the beginning. From ‘Once upon a time.’ ”
Jeremy began to read, and by the time he turned the third page—mein Gott!—the girl was asleep! Jeremy closed the book and regarded her for a moment.
Then an even more disturbing turn—he leaned over and switched off the light!
Jeremy?
“Mmm?”
Do not allow her to sleep here.
He turned the light back on and quickly set the alarm clock.
“There,” he said. “It’ll wake us at midnight. Then she can go.”
But—
“Good night, Jacob,” he said, so what else could I do? I took my leave.
But before dawn the next morning, when the cocks began to crow, I stole down from my belfry and hastened to the attic, where I found an alarming sight: Jeremy lay asleep, and there, beside him, with her head nestled into his outstretched arm, was Ginger Boultinghouse, also fast asleep.
Jeremy! Jeremy! Wake up! Wake up!
Jeremy’s eyes flew open and fell at once upon the clock and then upon the girl.
“Ginger!” he whispered, and when she awakened and saw the hints of daylight through the window, she became a flurry of motion, scrambling out and over the balcony and scaling down the outside pipe just as the night sky gave way to the yellowish gray of morning.
She dropped from the pipe, slipped around to the alley, and on her long legs flew past the hot springs and red-stone buildings. She had just started to cross Main Street when she heard whistling and ducked back. It was Frank Bailey, dressed in white, heading down the street toward the bakery, where dark gray smoke was already pouring from the tall chimney. The boy’s whistled tune was somber. His eye seemed to flick in Ginger’s direction; in the next instant, he was placidly looking straight ahead, still whistling his soft tune.
Once he had passed, Ginger peered up and down the street, saw no one, darted across, turned the corner, and broke into a graceful loping run down the dirt road into the country. Why did I follow? Perhaps I wanted to see her safely
home. Or perhaps I wanted to see the home where she chose to spend so little time. In any event, she kept a steady pace, but she was also wary. Whenever dust rose from an approaching car, she ducked into a field until the car had passed by. She ran a great distance before finally cutting across a plot of green alfalfa and approaching a tall, dilapidated farmhouse from the rear.
She crouched behind a hedge of blooming lilacs to take the measure of the place. Roosters crowed, sheep bleated. Ginger’s gaze alighted on the old farmhouse, which stood decrepit, unpainted, and quiet, and then shifted to a dull red barn, where the motor of an unseen tractor suddenly chugged to life. A moment later, it emerged from the barn, purple-gray smoke puffing into the sky and a stiff upright elderly man at the wheel.
Once the tractor had turned away, toward the fields, Ginger darted to the house, but she did not go through the front door. She quickly climbed a rickety trellis onto the back-porch roof and from there slipped through an open window.
The room was doubtless hers—clothing of all sorts had been slung everywhere. She studied the bed—at first it seemed she had a sister who lay sleeping there—but when Ginger sat on the mattress, she pulled out the pillows she had shaped into a human form, an old trick but serviceable still. Then she walked to her closed bedroom door and inspected something—a length of tape stretched from the edge of the door to the doorframe. From this she knew that her grandfather had not looked in on her during her absence—if he had, the tape would be broken or unaffixed. Another tried-and-true tactic.
Ginger went back to the bed and sat on its edge.
Then this reckless girl with the wild hair did a surprising thing.
She placed both hands over her eyes and began to speak very softly.
“Please don’t let Grandpa find out I was gone last night, because I didn’t do anything and he will think I did.” She was quiet a second or two. “God bless Jeremy,” she whispered, “and help me figure out a way to help him. And God bless Grandpa, but please don’t put off calling him to you on my account.”
This last sentiment caused me to chuckle—not that she could hear me.
She quickly concluded. “Please give shelter to those without shelter, food to those without food, and hope to those without hope, amen.”
A kind prayer, I thought, drawn from a well of pure belief. I had once had such a well from which to draw and felt a fresh pang that I no longer did. Still, as I drifted back to the village, my assessment of Ginger Boultinghouse began to soften. Perhaps she would yet prove a hypothesis that Wilhelm believed to be found again and again in the Household Tales: that beauty is goodness, and goodness beauty.
The next morning, Jeremy pedaled his bicycle through the alley behind the red-stone buildings of Main Street and the smoldering hot springs that lay behind them, a route I knew he had chosen to avoid being seen. It was a sultry Saturday, the sun sealed off by a thick cushion of clouds bearing the prospect of rain. Behind his bicycle he pulled the little trailer his grandfather had built him for carrying his equipment.
A woman out walking with her dog began to smile at Jeremy, but upon realizing that it was he, she turned her face to stone and looked pointedly away.
Jeremy stood on his pedals to power his bicycle along more quickly and did not stop riding hard until he reached a neat yellow bungalow trimmed in green and surrounded by a small, tidy yard.
This was the home of Jenny Applegarth, the very woman Ginger and Jeremy had run into the night of their misadventure. She was presently unmarried, after four previous attempts at such unions. Over the years, the smoothness of her beauty had eroded somewhat, but she still possessed the kind of physical advantages that men noticed and women regarded warily.
She worked two daily shifts at Elbow’s Café, one in the early morning and one at the noon hour, which allowed her to come home for an hour or so in between. This morning, while Jeremy was pulling weeds in the flowerbed, she turned up the walkway, wearing denim pants and a pink sleeveless blouse.
“Is that Mr. Johnson Johnson among the irises?” she called out in a friendly voice.
“Hi, Mrs. Applegarth. How’s it going?”
“Oh, it’s going,” she said, and then went inside and returned a few minutes later, nudging open the screen door with a tray laden with sandwiches and beverages. “Hungry?” she asked.
They sat on the steps of the green porch, the sandwiches smelling of butter and cucumber, Jeremy smelling of mown grass and turned earth, and Jenny Applegarth smelling of lavender soap. Well, that is how it is in the Zwischenraum. You taste nothing, but your sense of smell grows keen.
“Sticky weather,” she said, pushing her loose hair from her neck and looking off toward the red buttes, silhouetted now against the purple clouds, a pretty sight in itself, but Jeremy seemed distracted by Jenny Applegarth’s caramel-brown shoulders and streaky blond hair. “I bet it rains,” she said almost to herself.
When she let her hair drop back down over her neck and turned to Jeremy, he quickly averted his eyes and took another bite of his cucumber sandwich.
She regarded him with a kindly expression. “Guess you know you’ve been the main subject of conversation the last couple of days in the café.”
Jeremy kept chewing.
“So how’re you doing?”
He shrugged. “Just okay.”
After a moment or two, Jenny Applegarth said, “And your father?”
Jeremy opened his mouth to speak but suddenly stopped.
“What?” she asked
“I don’t know. I was going to say, ‘About the same,’ which is what I usually say. But when Sheriff Pittswort took me down to the station, my dad wanted to go, too, to help defend me or something crazy like that.” Jeremy lowered his eyes. “But it’s been so long since he’s gotten dressed to go out, he couldn’t get into any of his clothes.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “The poor man.” She sipped her tea. “Doesn’t he have friends?” she asked. “He used to have friends.”
Jeremy appeared surprised. “When was that? That he had friends, I mean.”
“When he was in school. He was shy, but he was nice to people and, really, he had the nicest smile. He had a good voice, too. For a while, he sang in the madrigals.”
“My father sang in a choir? Who told you that?”
“Nobody told me, Jeremy. I was in it with him. We were in school together.”
“But isn’t he lots older than you?”
She laughed mildly. “Your father and I graduated the same year.” She swirled the ice cubes in her glass. “He didn’t stay in the madrigals, though. He was the only boy, so he ran for it.” She looked off. “You know, all my husbands were different, but they could all sing. Every one of them, even though a couple of them didn’t like to.” She smiled at Jeremy. “So your dad’s pretty down, huh?”
“Yeah. All he does is watch TV, but, really, he hardly even pays attention. The only show he’s interested in is that goofy one called Uncommon Knowledge, where—”
“I know that show!” Jenny Applegarth exclaimed. “And it’s not goofy! I watch it all the time! I loved the one with the woman who studied prairie dogs.”
Jeremy smiled. “Yeah, I watched that one with my dad. He liked it, too. He liked the clip of the male prairie dogs fighting over a mate.”
Jenny Applegarth gave a small laugh. “There’s the difference between men and women. I liked the part about how they kiss when they go visiting.”
It was quiet for a moment or two. Then she said idly, “They’re coming through the Plains this summer, you know.”
“The prairie dogs?”
Another chuckle. “The scouts for Uncommon Knowledge. They’re looking for contestants.” She sighed. “I’d love to go on that show, but all I’m an expert on is how not to pick husbands.”
“I could go on for being good at getting a whole town to hate you,” Jeremy said.
Jenny Applegarth yawned, arched her back, and stretched, which distracted Jeremy from his gloomy th
oughts, as I suspect she intended. Then she said, “You know, if you and your dad want to feel better about things, you need to make a plan.” She smiled at him. “Everybody needs a plan.”
“Do you have one?”
She laughed. “I’ve had dozens.”
As she began to tidy up the tray, she said, “Just for the record, I didn’t tell the sheriff I saw you the night of the … incident, I guess you’d call it. He asked if I’d seen anybody on the street and I said, ‘Not that I could remember.’ ”
Jeremy turned. “Did he believe you?”
Jenny Applegarth’s laugh was so cheerful, it seemed musical. “Not for a second, but I said, ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.’ ”
“Well, thanks,” Jeremy said.
It again grew quiet.
A question had formed in my ancient mind, and when Jeremy moved away and Jenny Applegarth stood and stretched and stared out across the lawn, I drew close and whispered, Listen, if you will.
Well, here was something! She caught her breath and cocked her head!
I said it again: Listen, if you will.
She turned intently toward the trees, as if they were speaking, but the next time I said Listen, if you will, she gave up. She shook her head and heard nothing.
“That was odd,” she said.
Jeremy turned from his gardening equipment. “What was?”
“This faint … oboe-like sound—I heard it for a second, and then it was gone.” She looked at Jeremy and smiled. “Maybe I’m losing my marbles.”
It was me, I told him. She almost heard me, but not quite.
It seemed a shame because, in my experience, it never went any further than that.
As Jeremy wheeled his bicycle and cart toward the gate, Jenny said, “Jeremy?”
He stopped and turned.
“You know, you might tell your friend Ginger that male chauvinism can have its happy byproducts.”
“How’s that?”
