Far Far Away

by Tom McNeal

  “But I thought he wasn’t supposed to—”

  “I know, but he has a plan so nobody’ll know. He didn’t tell me what plan—he just said he had a plan. We’re supposed to go to the bakery a little after seven-thirty and act like we’re customers.”

  “I don’t get it. How do we work for him without—”

  But Jeremy’s question hung in the air, because the storefront door swung open and in walked Jenny Applegarth, followed by a man who was barely recognizable as Jeremy’s father.

  “Wow,” Jeremy murmured, and Ginger said, “Yeah, me too. Zounds, even.”

  Jenny Applegarth glowed with well-being; Mr. Johnson appeared happy but dazed. His face was shaved clean, his hair was trimmed, and he was wearing nice clothes, smart and neatly pressed. He looked ten years younger, and almost handsome.

  “Where’d you get the clothes?” Jeremy asked his father, but it was Jenny Applegarth who answered.

  “Oh, those,” she said. “I had them in a closet at home.” She gave a small, frisky laugh. “Seems a couple of my exes were the same size as Harold here.” She turned to Jeremy’s father. “That scare you, Harold? That you’re just the right size for me?”

  Mr. Johnson’s face sent contradictory signals: he beamed with pride while shaking his head as if to say, Why would a woman speak like that in public?

  “I’m not real scared, no,” he said.

  Jenny Applegarth regarded him approvingly. “It’s a whole new Harold,” she said, and then, turning back to Jeremy, went on, “Oh, and by the way—he’s also gainfully employed.”

  Jeremy’s father nodded. “Yep. Elbow needed a busboy at the café. Except what he got is more of a busman, I guess.”

  Jeremy stared in astonishment at his transformed father. “And how do you feel about that—about being a bus … man?”

  “Good,” Mr. Johnson said. First he smiled happily at Jenny Applegarth. Then he smiled at Ginger. When he turned to Jeremy, his smile turned earnest. “Real good, in fact.”

  The following morning, Jeremy and Ginger arrived at the Green Oven Bakery promptly at 7:30. There were several customers already there, all older women, and their collective bearing grew stiff when Jeremy and Ginger walked in. The rotund baker, however, greeted them as always.

  “Hallå! Hallå!” he called out. “Is it not a great day to be alive?”

  “If you say so,” Ginger said pleasantly, as she always did, but one of the older women shook her head and another said in a stage whisper, “Impudence!”

  The baker pretended not to notice the women’s irritation, and soon Jeremy and Ginger were enjoying coffee so rich, cream so heavy, and pastries so golden-glazed that I myself was treated to a large serving of envy. The baker stood nearby enjoying the pleasure they took in his wares.

  “Good?” he said, beaming.

  Ginger laughed. “Let’s leapfrog good and go straight to fabulous.”

  The baker’s round face glowed.

  The older women paid their bill and exited in arch silence.

  “Oh, my,” the baker said, watching them go. “The women were chilly this morning.” He turned to Jeremy and Ginger. “But they can also be friendly and generous. I’m sure you’ll see their better side again someday.”

  “Right now,” Ginger muttered, “their better side is their big-behind side as they’re walking away.”

  A laugh rumbled up from the baker’s ample belly. “Charity, charity,” he sang out, and then, casting a quick look toward the door to be sure they were alone, he said, “And where did you leave your bicycles?”

  “At the park,” Ginger said, and Jeremy said that he had walked.

  “Good! Then it is time to put you to work!”

  “Here?” Ginger said. “Won’t everyone know?”

  The baker merely chuckled. “This way,” he said, and led Jeremy and Ginger through the counter and into the kitchen, where Frank Bailey was brushing butter over a large pan of hot rolls. He turned and smiled, at home here among the ovens and rolling pins, happy as I had never seen him happy before.

  “Pardon us, Frankie,” the baker said. “We’re just heading to the storerooms.” Though before moving on, the baker took a moment to examine the pink frosting Frank Bailey was about to apply to the raspberry cuts.

  Well, while the baker is occupied, let me describe his kitchen. It smelled divine, of course, and shiny racks, counters, and ovens lined the room, but what drew the eye, amidst all this gleaming steel, was the cylindrical green-brick oven that rose from the center of the room. The craftsmanship of its slightly concave surfaces was obvious, and the oven itself was enormous—its door large enough to admit a full-grown man. So remarkable, in truth, was this oven that Jeremy and Ginger stared at it as if spellbound.

  “Perfection, Frankie!” the baker was saying about the pink frosting. “You really do have the gift!” Frank Bailey beamed at the compliment, and then the baker, gesturing to Jeremy and Ginger, said, “This way, please,” and led them through an accordion metal door into an elevator.

  “You’re in charge, Frankie!” the baker sang back to his helper and then, with a push of a button, the caged compartment began slowly to descend.

  “Zounds,” Ginger said. “This is pretty fabuloso.” And Jeremy asked, “Where’re we going?”

  “Down to the storerooms,” the baker said, and again his cheeks were glowing. It was endearing, this pride that he took in his bakery and its complex inner works.

  In another moment, the elevator opened onto a stone-lined tunnel.

  “After you,” the baker said.

  The passage was so dry and well lit it seemed more a corridor than a tunnel.

  “Where are we?” Jeremy said. “Are we going north under the alleyway?”

  The baker held a finger to his lips. “Our little secret,” he said, and just then the passage opened into a great, softly illuminated chamber. A series of three metal doors ran along one of its concrete-lined walls, and four simple wooden chairs hung from pegs on another wall. At the far side of the room a long, spiraling, metal-lined chute descended from an unseen point overhead.

  “Wow,” Jeremy said quietly. “Is this a basement?”

  “Yes, yes,” the baker said with twinkling eyes. “It is how it is done in Sweden. With thick walls, the temperature is almost constant, so it is an excellent place to store goods year-round.”

  He unlocked two of the three metal doors. Each revealed a large storage room paved with white ceramic tiles and lined with sturdy metal shelves.

  “These are two of my storerooms,” he said. “I need you to scrub the floor and walls and shelves to make them suitable for the storage of baking supplies.”

  “Are you kidding?” Ginger said. “They already look freakishly clean.”

  The baker was carrying a bucket filled with cleaning supplies. He set the bucket down and removed three of the chairs that hung from pegs in the wall. “Sit,” he said genially, “and I will tell you a story.”

  And once they were seated, he said, “This is the story of the mouse who slew the baker,” and he rubbed at his white beard while he assembled his thoughts. “All right, then … Once upon a time, there was a baker’s apprentice who was so splendid at his baking that his master feared to lose him. He kept him locked inside the kitchen day and night. The boy had no friends except a brown mouse who lived in his coat pocket. ‘What am I to do?’ the boy would ask his mouse each night before falling to sleep. ‘I do all the baking and I am locked in the kitchen and the master goes home to his beautiful wife.’ And this was true. The apprentice’s baked goods were so marvelous that each day they were delivered to the king himself, and because of this, the boy’s master had grown rich and had married the village beauty. And so each night the boy would hold the brown mouse in his hand and ask, ‘What am I to do?’ and the mouse would say nothing.

  “But one night, the brown mouse said, ‘I have the answer.’ The mouse asked the boy to pluck just one whisker from its nose. ‘No, I will not,’ t
he boy said, ‘because it will cause you pain,’ and the mouse said, ‘But you must, and though it will cause me a moment of pain, it will bring you a lifetime of joy.’ So the boy closed his eyes and plucked a single whisker from the mouse’s nose and put a small poultice to the spot where the whisker was gone. It was a fine black whisker, and the next morning, as instructed by the mouse, the boy mixed it into the batter for the baker’s famous walnut-and-raisin breakfast rolls, the very rolls the king ate to begin his every day. ‘Ho! And what is this?’ the king declared angrily as he drew the mouse whisker from his roll.

  “And that, my dear young friends, was the end of the baker. The king bought no more of his goods, and soon no one else did, either. Before the next winter was over, the baker’s beautiful wife had deserted him and the baker had grown old and died of grief.”

  Sten Blix smiled and let his twinkling blue eyes fall on Jeremy, then Ginger.

  “So do you see how it is? One mouse whisker and I live unhappily ever after. That is why my storerooms must sparkle.”

  After a moment, Jeremy asked, “What happened to the apprentice?”

  At this, the baker’s blue eyes began to twinkle again. “Oh! What a sorry storyteller I am! I forgot the happy ending! So let me remember.… Ah, yes.… After his master died, the boy opened his own bakery in a nearby town, and one day the king’s daughter, dressed as a peasant, stole away from the castle and walked all the way through the countryside to the nearby town, where she peered into his shop. The boy, seeing how pretty she was and knowing how penniless she must be, offered her a pastry. She took one bite, then another, and then she knew she was eating the very roll she had often been served at her father’s table. ‘I have no money,’ she said, ‘but I would like to take a whole plate of these rolls to my father.’ ‘Who is your father?’ the boy asked, and the girl was careful in her reply: ‘A broken man who once tasted such rolls and has not tasted one since.’ Even dressed as a peasant, the princess was too beautiful to refuse. The boy gave her every roll he had. So she took the rolls to her father the king, and soon the apprentice was supplying the king and his court with baked goods.” Sten Blix broke into a broad smile. “And before long, to the delight of all the king’s subjects, the baker and the princess were wed and lived happily ever after.”

  They were all quiet a moment, then Jeremy said, “That’s a good story. I’ve never heard it.”

  I had not heard the story, either, but it would be untrue to say I did not enjoy it. It was of the very kind that Wilhelm and I loved to collect.

  Sten Blix gave a jolly laugh and seemed to drink in the appreciation on the faces of both Jeremy and Ginger. “Who knows?” he said. “It may be popular only among Swedish bakers.”

  He stood then and showed Ginger and Jeremy how to scrub the tiles until they shone. Once he had them started, he made to leave. “And now I will see how Frank Bailey is managing our bakery!”

  But before he could go, Jeremy pointed to the third door, the one that the baker had not opened, and said, “What’s in there?”

  “Oh,” the baker said, his eyes falling on the door. “Nothing, nothing. Please do not open it.”

  Again the baker made to leave, and again Jeremy stopped his progress. “Mr. Blix?”

  “Yes?”

  “You can’t do that.”

  The baker seemed confused. “Can’t do what?”

  “You can’t leave and tell us not to open the door, because that happens all the time in fairy tales and movies, and everyone knows that sooner or later whoever isn’t supposed to open the door is going to open the door, and …”

  “Yes?” the baker said.

  “And that’s when things start happening.”

  A laugh rumbled up from the baker’s belly. Then he walked over to the third door and lifted the latch. He pushed the door gently open and stepped aside so that Jeremy and Ginger could peer in.

  Well! This room was just like the other two, except that the gleaming shelves were already stacked with sacks of flour and sugar, baking soda and salt.

  “Frank Bailey and I cleaned this one last week and loaded the shelves, which”—he winked—“you will know something about before your workday is over.” He smiled at Jeremy. “I didn’t mean to be mysterious. I just didn’t want anything disturbed or any dust to get in. You understand?”

  “Sure,” Jeremy said. “Sorry.”

  The baker seemed unperturbed. “Not at all,” he said, pulling the door closed again. “Perhaps it’s been too long since I read a story or went to a movie.”

  He departed, and then, in this place of perfect coolness and quietude, Jeremy and Ginger set to work. The minutes passed slowly, but little by little the storerooms began to shine, and when the baker returned several hours later, he appeared delighted. “Well done,” he said, beaming his blue eyes here and there. “Very well done.”

  He’d brought them fruit nectar, along with pastries, and again he seemed to enjoy nothing more than watching them eat. Then he said, “I suppose I should be sorry for you, the way the townspeople are treating you, but I think I am more sorry for our town, that they cannot see your better natures”—he smiled—“as I do. It is a shame that they spend their time shunning two young people of whom they should, in fact, be proud.”

  It had grown quiet as the baker made this little speech, and he had to laugh at himself. “There!” he said. “I am too serious sometimes.”

  And not a moment later, with a sudden shush, a large bag of flour came sliding down the spiraling metal chute in the middle of the room, and soon after it, several more—shush, shush, shush.

  “Aha!” the baker said merrily, and you might have thought it was Christmas. “Our goods are delivered!” And then, calling up toward the top of the gleaming chute, “Keep them coming slow but sure, Frankie!”

  So they again set to work. From the garage of the baker’s house (I slipped up the spiraling chute to observe this myself), Frank Bailey pulled the bags of flour from the Green Oven Bakery van and gave them a gentle nudge that sent them sliding easily down the chute to the great room below, where the baker waited. He smiled and made happy oofing sounds as he hoisted the bags onto a cart, which Ginger pushed to the storeroom. There Jeremy heaved the bags up onto the shelves. For the higher shelves, he used a ladder, and Ginger, who strained no more (and very possibly less) than Jeremy, held the bags over her head for him to take. By the time they were done, their faces glowed with perspiration.

  “Well done!” the baker said, smiling first at Jeremy and then at Ginger. “We are an excellent team!”

  Well, there can be no denying the pleasure of hard work properly done, and after Ginger and Jeremy slipped away from the bakery carrying bags of lemon and raspberry cuts, Ginger said, “That was almost fun.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “Also remunerative,” she said, leaning into him gently, for this was one of their classical vocabulary words. And it was true. The baker had again paid them a generous sum.

  “He’s nice,” she said. “I feel pretty bad I ever dreamt up the Pop Rocks thing.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Me too.”

  Several villagers stood in a cluster on the sidewalk before them, casting stony glances their way, so Jeremy and Ginger crossed to the other side of the street, but then, seeing a patrol car on Main Street, they ducked into the alley.

  It is Deputy McRaven, I told Jeremy. When he saw you, he turned around.

  “What?” Jeremy said.

  “What what?” Ginger said, and I said, He turned around and is coming this way. It is all right, though. You are doing nothing wrong.

  But Jeremy made an impetuous split-second decision. “Quick,” he said, lifting a lid from a trash container. “Get in! McRaven’s coming.”

  “What?” Ginger said. “How do you—”

  “Quick!” Jeremy said, and already he was climbing into another container and pulling the lid over his head.

  Ginger did the same but peered out until the patrol car
nosed into the alley, and then she eased the lid down, too. All of this made me uneasy. It created the appearance of guilt, for why would two people hide if they had done nothing wrong?

  Deputy McRaven must have thought they had run, for he sped down the alley, and I thought all would be well, but then, upon reaching the street, he stopped and—Mein Gott!—started the car rolling slowly backward through the alley!

  He is returning! I shouted to Jeremy, who relayed the news to Ginger. “Be quiet!” he said. “He’s coming back!”

  As the car drove through the alley in reverse, the deputy gazed into the rear doors of businesses and peered into every crevice and cranny. He slowed further as he passed the trash containers, and then … he stopped the car completely!

  From his seat, he stared at the cluster of containers. He turned off the engine to listen for sounds. After a moment, he said quietly, “I know you’re in there, Mr. Johnson. And the thing is, I’m going to start shooting some rats right now, and I’d hate for anyone hiding in a trash can to get hurt.” He waited. “Okay,” he said. “Gun out. I begin firing at the count of three.”

  He does not have his gun out! I shouted to Jeremy, and wondered if he could hear me from inside the container, and wondered, too, what good it would do because Ginger could not hear anything at all.

  “Okay,” the deputy said quietly. “One. Two. Three!”

  Deputy McRaven stared at the trash containers.

  Neither Ginger nor Jeremy moved.

  The deputy waited another few moments, then started the engine and continued his reversed course through the alley.

  Finally, when the car was out of sight, I shouted the news to Jeremy.

  “Quick!” he said to Ginger. “He’s gone!”

  They tumbled out of the trash cans and began to run.

  Why did you hide, Jeremy?

  We were back in the bookstore, the children’s laughter over their escapade having finally been spent.

  Jeremy, composed now, did not quite answer my question. He merely rephrased it. “You know what’s funny?” he said. “I’m not even sure why we hid.”