Far Far Away

by Tom McNeal

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jeremy said.

  “Oh, I’m thinking about it, all right.” She grinned. “What’ll you give me if I dive from up there?”

  “I don’t know—how about the Unrivaled Stupidity Award?”

  Ginger laughed. “That happens to be an award I’ve been dying to get.”

  “Excellent. Of course, you might die getting it.”

  Ginger emerged dripping from the water, and my ancient heart tightened as she picked her way up a series of ledges and momentarily disappeared behind the rock. When she next appeared, she was walking crablike along the rock’s domed top. She stood carefully, as if on slick ice, and peered down.

  “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the thing. It looks way different from up here.”

  “Don’t do it,” Jeremy said. “Just because something’s pointless and dangerous doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

  This advice echoed my own sentiments, but she did not reply. In fact, as she stared down, a concentration of purpose seemed gradually to be building within her.

  Jeremy! I cried. You must tell her to stop!

  “Ginger, seriously. Don’t even think about this.”

  Her smile was frozen, but her words were full of bravado. “Oh, I’m thinking about it, all right.”

  Real fear took hold of me. Jeremy! Stop her! You must stop her!

  Jeremy sought middle ground. “Look, Ginger, if you do it, don’t dive. You can just jump. You’ll still get the Stupidity Award if you just jump.”

  Ginger edged forward, looking down. She took a deep breath, bent slightly forward, but still did not dive. She stood frozen midway between fear and resolve.

  Help her, Jeremy. Help her to step back.

  “Ginger, listen to me. Just climb back down. I’ll give you the Stupidity Award for just thinking about it. And if you dive and hit a rock, you might wind up a vegetable, which is worse than dying.”

  But this, if anything, had an effect opposite of what he desired. Ginger inched so close to the ledge that a gusting touch of wind might send her over. She stared straight forward, staring, staring, not moving, standing perfectly still, staring, staring … and then she bowed her head, raised her hands, and—mein Gott!—plummeted headfirst into the water, which swallowed her in one quick gulp.

  For a moment, the world’s heart stopped beating.

  Then, suddenly, Ginger’s head burst through the surface and her tightly closed face opened into an exultant laugh. “Ha!” she called, splashing water toward Jeremy. “That Stupidity Award is mine, all mine!”

  Jeremy’s laugh was fueled by relief. “And I can think of no recipient more deserving.”

  Well, there it is: youth, and the pleasures of unpunished recklessness.

  They swam and paddled about for a while, and then Ginger began walking the length of a slippery log that cantilevered over the far end of the pond. At its end, she stood on one leg posing, it seemed, as a stork.

  A mourning dove made a soft hoo-hooing sound.

  Only at this moment of pleasant quietude did I realize Jeremy was not here.

  “Geronimo!” he shouted from above, and as Ginger broke her pose and looked up, he leapt from the top of the rock, pulled his knees to his chest, and rotating slightly forward, exploded into the water with a ferocious whump! Ginger turned her head from the massive splash.

  Jeremy surfaced looking happy yet dazed.

  “Had to hurt,” Ginger said.

  “Affirmative,” Jeremy said. “It totally did.”

  He held his hands to his smarting face, but he was clearly exhilarated to be, in his own fashion, a member of this little club.

  Ginger, sitting on the log now, said, “That was some serious Jeremocity.”

  Normally, a compliment like this would have caused Jeremy to blush, but this was no normal day, and he did not blush. He just smiled happily.

  Ginger slid off the log and glided through the water, drawing closer to him, her coppery hair floating out behind. When she stood, their faces were very near. “So,” she said in a soft voice, “how are things in Jeremopolis?”

  “Good. Really, really good.”

  Her amber eyes bore into him. “I told you that you had potential,” she whispered, and before he could reply, they kissed.

  Yes. Just like that, before I could issue a warning or create a distraction, they kissed.

  And, to my own surprise, I was happy for Jeremy, and happy even for Ginger, and what did this mean? Did I, the ancient and venerable Jacob Grimm, whose life had been governed by fact and reason, believe in the power of a youthful kiss, or in the nonsense of a sealed enchantment? No. That was what I told myself. Nein, nee, nö. It was something even simpler—I was happy that they were happy.

  Ginger’s laugh was so merry that it seemed musical. “There,” she said. “We got that out of the way.” Then, a few seconds later: “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing and have to get out of here.”

  They placed their towels on a flat, sunny rock and sat side by side.

  “You know, Jeremy Jeremy, not only are you the first boy I ever spent the night with and the first boy I ever hugged wearing just a towel, but now you’re also the first boy I ever kissed in a pond.” She leaned into him. “You’re knocking off some key categories in my personal history book.”

  “And don’t forget I’m the first one to confer upon you the highly coveted Unrivaled Stupidity Award.”

  She laughed softly.

  The wind through the trees made a low hushing sound.

  There was the whisk and chatter of a squirrel.

  “I really love it here,” Ginger said.

  “Me too.”

  “It’s like somehow, without even knowing how we did it, we suddenly found the secret passage to the Far Far Away.”

  How much time passed by in this state of pure and guileless pleasure, I cannot accurately say, but it is the nature of such happiness that its intensity is often matched only by its brevity.

  A sudden cracking sound broke into their reverie, and Ginger and Jeremy, turning as one, were relieved to see that it was only the baker huffing and puffing his way up the hill, carrying a woven-wood picnic hamper.

  “Hallå!” he said as he drew near, and he paused to take a few deep breaths. “Whew.” He issued a wheezy chuckle. “That hill has gotten steeper over the years.”

  But he was soon smiling again. He set down his basket, removed his shoes, rolled up his pant legs, and dipped his pink feet into the water. “Ha!” he said, and his blue eyes twinkled. “It could be Swedish water, it’s so cold.”

  He dried his feet with a towel, then pulled from his basket a deck of playing cards and several cloth-covered bowls of nuts and crackers and small salted fishes. “Here,” he said, “eat a little bit and I will teach you a card game played in Sweden.”

  And so, over the next long, congenial hour, the three of them played card games, and laughed, and ate the savory snacks. The baker’s happiness was a match for his helpers’—it was a rare minute that passed without hearing his rumbly, gladsome laugh. Ginger and Jeremy liked the fish he had brought but favored the pretzels, and who could blame them? They had been tied and baked that very morning, with coarse salt clinging to the golden glaze.

  No one seemed happier than the baker, who was gratified when he won a card game, and more grateful still when someone else did.

  “Oh my, oh my,” he would say when he lost. “It’s a good thing we are not playing for money. I would have lost yesterday’s fortune and tomorrow’s, too!”

  Between games, while Ginger shuffled the cards and Jeremy lay back staring at the clouds, the baker went to his hamper and drew out the insulated container he had used before, so they knew what was in store.

  “Nectar?” Ginger asked, and when the baker nodded, she grinned. “Fabulous! I was getting so thirsty, I was about to drink pond water.”

  The baker began unscrewing the cap but then paused. “I will tell you something strange. You kno
w who I was thinking about this morning?—Rumpelstiltskin. It’s an odd story, isn’t it? Because he is the villain even though he simply made an arrangement and kept his end of the bargain. He taught the girl how to weave gold from straw in exchange for her first-born but then, when she becomes queen and the baby is born, she will not give it up.”

  Ginger was still staring at the flask of nectar. “Well, of course not,” she said distractedly. “What mother would?”

  “Yes, yes, you are right, dear girl.” The baker unscrewed the cap another turn before stopping again. I could almost feel Ginger’s disappointment. “But of course the queen could bear another child,” he said. “Poor Rumpelstiltskin could not. He was small and strange. Everyone despised him. Perhaps his only chance at companionship was to raise a kindly child who might befriend him.” He had been staring off toward the trees but now turned his blue eyes to Jeremy and then Ginger. “What do you think?”

  Well, his idea was, in its odd way, astute. But “Rumpelstiltskin” is a story full of greed, and no one is more greedy than the little gnome himself, so of course we are satisfied when he stamps and shrieks and tears himself in two. Here, though, is what I did not properly notice: the sudden seriousness in the baker’s eyes. Nor did Jeremy and Ginger.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” she said, still eyeing the flask in the baker’s hand. “I think I am going to scream if you don’t pour us some of that nectar.”

  A laugh burst forth from the baker. “Yes, yes, of course. I forget my duties as host.” He nodded formally at one then the other. “Allow me to serve you.”

  He filled two tin cups with the pale pink nectar and extended them to Ginger and Jeremy. Ginger at once sipped from hers. “Wow,” she said, and took several more quick swigs. “What’s in this besides strawberry?”

  The baker shrugged modestly and poured a portion into his own cup. “Several fruits and soy milk.”

  “You should market this stuff,” Jeremy said to the baker between gulps.

  “But what could I call it?” the baker said, smiling and watching them drink. “I never make it the same way twice.”

  “Blix-Elixir!” Ginger said, and Jeremy laughed, but there was an odd thickness to his laugh, and when he said “That a good name,” the words were odd and elongated, which made Ginger laugh her own odd laugh. And when she said “You soun funny,” her words were so thick and muddy, she could hardly be understood.

  A sudden cold fear coursed through me. Sudden, and too late.

  I turned to the baker, whose smile was that of a kind father’s. “Now, now, dear children,” he crooned. “Just go ahead and sleep. Just relax and let go and sleep and sleep and sleep.”

  Jeremy sat back on his towel. He curled onto the ground. He closed his eyes.

  I rushed close. Listen, if you will, Jeremy, I cried. Listen, if you will!

  Jeremy’s eyelids fluttered open, then closed. They did not open again.

  At his side, Ginger stared at Jeremy, then clamped her hands to her ears, as if trying to ward off sounds she did not want to hear. “Whad …,” she said, turning to the baker, and her voice trailed off. She moved her flattened hands to cover her eyes as if to pray, but after only a moment her hands slid away.

  She, too, slumped onto the ground. Her eyes, too, fell closed.

  Methodically, the baker now began putting things right. He poured onto the ground the nectar from his own cup. He set the dishes and cups and cards neatly back into the picnic hamper. He gathered the towels. Then he stared again at the two unmoving youths before gazing out at the pond.

  In a soft voice, he said, “Sa börjar det igen.”

  I translated at once: So another moment has come.

  These words, and the calmness with which he had spoken them, filled me with terror. Nein! I cried out. Nein! Nein! Nein! But of course no one heard.

  And so I could disbelieve it no longer.

  It was the baker.

  The kind, jolly, Saint Nicholas–like baker.

  The villain without villainous qualities.

  The Finder of Occasions.

  A few moments later, I heard the heavy crackling of a branch, and I turned to see a man materialize from the dark woods, trudging slowly, a heavy-spirited man of unknown age with a blank face and long hair pulled back and tied behind his head. The baker did not acknowledge him, nor did this man acknowledge the baker. Theirs was a prescribed pattern of behavior, as if what I was watching was an established ritual. Without any expression on his face whatsoever, the man presented a cigarette to the baker, then struck a match to light it for him. The baker drew the smoke deep into his lungs and then, after several long moments, allowed the smoke to stream through his bearded lips. Imagine Saint Nicholas with a cigarette, and you will see what I saw in that dreadful moment.

  In the tales, horrific evils are routinely perpetrated against innocents—maidens are butchered before our eyes, children are devoured—yet in the end, justice is meted out, and bodies are reassembled and restored to life. Innocence is rewarded; cruelty is punished. And there is something else, too—a small but critical distance between the words on the pages and the world as we know it. Now, however, watching the man with the blank face load Jeremy’s and Ginger’s bodies into the Green Oven Bakery van, watching him secure them with ropes and cover them with blankets, I knew that there had been a terrible alteration.

  The small but critical distance had been bridged.

  The horror had escaped into the everyday world.

  Beneath the blankets, they breathed—Ginger and Jeremy breathed—but between each breath stretched a terrifying stillness.

  The baker finished his cigarette, then he and the man with the blank face went about the cabin putting things away, making fast the windows, and finally locking the doors. The baker took one last look around.

  There was not a sign or a hint that Jeremy and Ginger had ever been there.

  The man with the blank face stood and waited.

  The baker went to the van and peeled back the blankets to examine once again Ginger’s and Jeremy’s faces. “Oh, you poor children,” he whispered. “What an ordeal. But do not worry. It will all soon be over.”

  Then he again draped the blankets loosely over their heads.

  The baker turned to the blank-faced man and gave him a nod. Silently, the man turned and dissolved into the dark woods whence he had come.

  Not one word had passed the stranger’s lips. Nor had the baker spoken one word to him. No, their dreadful business had been conducted entirely in silence.

  I slipped into the delivery van with the baker. As he drove away from the forest, he listened to his Swedish composer, and when finally he turned onto the hard highway, he hummed along with the bucolic melody.

  Can a ghost go mad? For as I hovered in the back of this delivery van, I felt myself spreading out in all directions and yet unable to do anything at all except wait in terror for the next sustaining breath from Jeremy and Ginger, and then, when it came, indulge the barest moment of relief before the fear began to build again. It made dark and ancient memories fresh, for it was in just this way that I watched my dear nephew breathe, and breathe again, until, finally, he did not.

  At the edge of town, the baker stopped to service his delivery truck, adding gasoline and washing the dust and spattered wings from the front window.

  “Hallå!” he said to Lemmy Whittle, the town grocer, who pulled up nearby. “Is it not a great day to be alive?”

  I hovered close to the grocer’s ear. Call someone! I shouted. This man has two children drugged and bound and possibly dying in the back of his vehicle! Call someone at once!

  “Sure,” the grocer said to the baker, “but they’re saying heat to beat all tomorrow.” He cupped his hands to his eyes and made a show of peering into the baker’s van. “Not hiding any Prince Cake back there, are you, Sten?”

  The baker laughed. “No, no, not today, Lemmy. But wait a few weeks, and I am sure you will see the green smoke.”
r />   The grocer smiled and nodded. “All righty, then. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  And then the baker and the grocer went about their business just as they might have done at any ordinary moment of any ordinary day. Is this how the horrors move hidden among us—carried in the pockets and cuffs of the commonplace and the routine?

  From the service station, the baker wheeled his delivery truck onto Main Street. It was early Sunday evening; the street was quiet. The van passed by the darkened bakery and—what was this?—pulled into a space near the café. The baker glanced at the covered bodies in the back—they still intermittently breathed; otherwise they were motionless—then without locking the doors or raising the windows behind him, he walked into Elbow’s Café.

  Upon entering, the baker genially received the welcoming nods and greetings of his fellow citizens. He found the Sunday newspaper on a seat near the front counter and, passing a friendly glance here and there, made his way to a table in the middle of the room, where he snapped open the newspaper and began to read.

  Jenny Applegarth set a glass of iced water on the table. “Well,” she said in her good-natured way, “to what do we owe this little surprise?”

  The baker’s blue eyes twinkled. “A beautiful Sunday and a strange hankering for one of Elbow’s beef pies.”

  As Jenny Applegarth walked toward the kitchen, I said, Listen, if you will. This man—he is the Finder of Occasions. Jenny Applegarth, listen. You must listen!

  “Beef pie,” she said to Elbow Adkins through the window to the kitchen.

  Fräulein Applegarth! I said in a rising voice. I was shouting, actually. Listen! You must listen!

  She scooped a glass full of ice and poured iced tea.

  Jeremy’s father emerged through the swinging kitchen doors carrying an empty tray. He began clearing dishes from a vacated table.

  Jeremy is in trouble! I screamed into his ear. He and Ginger—in terrible trouble!