by Tom McNeal
I listened, perfectly still. How had he done it? I did not remember telling Jeremy of this episode, but even if I had, how could he know where I was standing, what I was wearing, the length and color of my hair? How had he slipped into the rooms of my own memory?
“Then the little boy—Jacob’s nephew, I think—asked him to sing, and he didn’t want to, but I knew he should, that it might make him happy, so I tried to ask him, too.” He waited. “That’s probably why I was saying Please again and again. He wasn’t hearing me.”
I said nothing. This memory, as ever, did nothing but sadden me. Perhaps Jeremy sensed this, for he said, “It wasn’t Jacob’s fault he couldn’t sing.”
“You mean he couldn’t carry a tune or couldn’t bring himself to try?”
Both, I said. And for the former I could not be blamed. Still, for the latter I must.
“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, as if to Ginger, though I knew he meant it for me, too. “You can try to be different, but in the end we always are who we are.”
They were quiet for a few moments. Then Ginger whispered, “No tape recordings tonight. I wonder what that means.”
Jeremy did not answer, but I could tell from his breathing that he still lay awake. After a time, Ginger said softly, “Remember the story you told about Faithful John—the part about leaves and tongues when the prince sees the painting of the princess? Could you repeat that part?”
Jeremy needed only the slightest prompt from me. “When the king’s son sees the portrait of the princess, his love for her is so great that if all the leaves on all the trees were tongues, they could not declare it.” He paused. “That part?”
It was pitch-black in the dungeon and the circumstances could not have been more wretched, and yet her voice was tender. “Yeah,” she said. “That part.”
When at last the wall again moaned open, followed by the squealing wheels of the baker’s serving cart, the prisoners did not move on their cots. They merely raised their eyes.
“Hallå! Hallå!” the baker said, but he did not ask if it was not a great day to be alive. He seemed, in fact, a bit weary himself—though weary of what, I had no idea. Still, he regarded the prisoners and pretended concern.
“Oh, my. You don’t look at all well, my dear children. There is now hot water—or were you too lazy to notice?”
The prisoners did not speak. They did not even move on their cots.
The baker pushed bundles of clothes and flowers onto each of their shelves, and opened the serving doors to provide access, but the prisoners lay still.
“I’ve brought spaghetti, as promised,” he said. “And with my own special spaghetti sauce. None of the Rangu stuff you were talking about.” He gave a tired smile. “ ‘Resist, annoy, never give up.’ Wasn’t that the rallying cry?”
None of the prisoners spoke. Their eyes were now on the plates that he was filling with small portions of pasta.
“I’m afraid these are leftovers,” he said.
The food smelled rancid, and the tiny bits of meat were coated with a furry gray mold. He pushed the flowers and clothes through the small doors and onto the floor of the cells, and left the plates of moldy food on the shelves.
The prisoners stood with difficulty and pulled the plates through the door. There were no utensils. The baker stood watching as his prisoners ate with their hands and wiped their faces with their forearms.
Finally, when there was nothing left on their plates to lick, the prisoners picked up their parcels of clothes. Ginger unrolled hers first. They were all black. So, too, were Jeremy’s. They looked from the clothes to the baker.
“Just like the night of your famous stealth mission,” he said.
“And his?” Ginger said in a low, raspy voice, pointing to Frank Bailey’s clothes. “Why are they black?”
The baker shrugged. “Who knows? It just seemed to suit the occasion.”
He turned then and, rolling the serving tray before him, headed for the door.
And I with him.
“You’re going, right?” Jeremy said.
The baker turned. “Who are you talking to?”
“You,” Jeremy said.
“But why, my dear boy? You can see that I am going.”
“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. He dropped his head. “I’m just really tired.”
Yes, I am going, Jeremy, I said. I must try to change our fortunes.
Jeremy nodded very slightly, but otherwise held himself completely still. He looked like he was fighting back tears.
The wheels squeaked as the cart rolled on.
I moved quickly past Jeremy so that he would feel the slight current of warmth.
Lebewohl, Jeremy, I said. Good-bye. Do not give in and do not give up. Perseverance is all.
But just as the baker was turning out of view, Jeremy called to me: “You’ll come back, right?”
Again the baker stopped his cart. His expression seemed almost consoling. “Yes, my dear boy. I will be back. But I cannot say with certainty when.”
I again swept close to Jeremy. Yes, I said. I will return. It is a promise. I will.
The baker’s cart was moving again, and this time, when he pushed the numbered buttons and passed through the wall, I followed. After mounting the stairs and tidying his kitchen, he stepped into the garden to cut flowers. I hastened past him, close enough to stir the air, for he said in a low voice as if to himself, “Ah, is that you, ancient ghost, or a gentle breeze?”
I darted close again, this time from the other side.
“So it is you,” he whispered. “But it is too late, old ghost, and you are too weak. Yes, try, by all means try. But don’t waste time playing parlor tricks with me. Be off to do what you cannot do! And who knows, dear ghost? Perhaps you will protect the next children better than you have protected these.”
So I fled the Finder of Occasions, fled him as he bent close to examine his bed of irises, separating the long, upshooting stalks, searching for the showiest flowers for cutting.
Main Street was quiet. The light was harsh, and though I could not feel the heat, I could see its vapors rise from the black asphalt. I hastened at once to the Twinkle Tub Laundry. During the time in the dungeon, I had nurtured an idea. Now I would test it.
Mrs. Truax was there, and the door was open. I slipped close to her at her ironing board, within an inch of the hood of her musty cloak.
Mrs. Truax! I shouted. Mrs. Truax! Listen, if you will!
The washing and drying machines that lined the walls hummed and thumped.
I shouted louder. Mrs. Truax, I need your help! I believe I know what happened to your son. Mrs. Truax! Your son, Possy! He may be alive!
I believed what I said. But Mrs. Truax heard nothing. I darted by her, back and forth, and swirled about her in hopes that she would pull back her hood to hear me better, but this hood had been her hiding place for years, and it protected her now from the stirring air. She detected nothing. She turned a shirt on the padded board before her, and pressed the iron along its sleeve.
Mrs. Truax! Mrs. Truax, please!
Nothing. She continued to iron, a woman who had worked for years in the same laundry and lived in the same tiny trailer so that her son would know where to find her if he ever came back, a woman who could not hear the hopeful news I had come now to deliver.
I hastened down Main Street to Elbow’s Café, where citizens were dining heartily and Jenny Applegarth bustled from table to table. The everyday busyness of it all was alarming. Three children were missing, locked in a dungeon a stone’s throw from this very café, and here were the villagers eating and talking and laughing as if nothing at all was wrong!
I drew close to Jenny Applegarth and said into her ear, Listen, if you will.
But she was taking someone’s order for chicken and potatoes. When she was finished writing on her pad, I tried again, this time even louder: Listen, if you will!
She did not hear me. I followed as she bumped through the swinging door into t
he kitchen, where Mr. Johnson looked up from his dishwashing and offered a blank smile, which she returned. I have seen such blank smiles before. They belong to intimates sharing a common grief. The blankness comes from waiting—waiting for something to be revealed, or written, or understood.
She pinned up her order. “Lemmy Wittle says kudos on the pepper steak,” she said in a dull tone to Elbow Adkins, who, spatula in hand, nodded and mopped his brow before leaning again over the hot black fry-top.
In this town, Jenny Applegarth was my last faint hope for communication, so I waited as patiently as I could until the crowd had finally abated and she had stepped into the back alley with Mr. Johnson to sit and sip a glass of lemonade.
“Busy,” she said.
Mr. Johnson stared off toward the smoke rising from the encrusted hot springs.
Jenny Applegarth said, “Now that Pittswort’s calling the kids runaways, everybody is. Cassie Willis called them runaways today, and so did Bill Kibbs.”
Mr. Johnson turned toward her. “What did you say to them?”
“What you always say. That Jeremy’s no runaway.”
She sipped her lemonade.
It became perfectly quiet. This was my moment. Listen, if you will!
Jenny Applegarth looked wonderingly toward Mr. Johnson.
I shouted this time. Listen, if you will!
She shook her head, and peered in my direction.
Listen, if you will! I shouted. Listen, if you will! Listen, if you will!
“Did you hear that?” she said to Mr. Johnson.
“What?”
“The wind through the trees,” she said in a soft voice. “It was almost like faraway words. Pretty words. Like they were coming from heaven.”
“Don’t say that!” Mr. Johnson said with sudden vehemence. Then, more gently: “Don’t say that. He’s not dead.” His eyes drifted again toward the hot springs. “He’s not a runaway,” he murmured, almost to himself, “and he’s not dead.”
I know where he is! I shouted. I know where he is!
But Jenny Applegarth only gazed out at the trees, where, she believed, the wind made the leaves whisper.
The screen door behind us swung open and young Conk Crinklaw stepped through. “Hey,” he said, and Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Applegarth nodded.
“Elbow said you were back here.” Conk took off his hat and held it in his hands. “Guess you haven’t heard anything.”
Jenny Applegarth shook her head.
Conk sat down and turned his hat in his hands. He wanted to say something, and finally he did. “Just seems so strange that Ginger’d do this. And then to write to her grandfather, who couldn’t care less about her, and not write …” His voice trailed away.
Jenny Applegarth turned to him. “Not write to you?”
“Well, yeah. Or Maddy or Marjory—somebody who actually cares about her.”
He turned and tightened his face so that nothing—a tear, for example—might escape, but this did not fool Jenny Applegarth. She laid an arm over the boy’s shoulder and then they were staring off, all three of them, waiting and waiting and waiting, with only eroding hope to soothe their fears.
Listen, if you will! I shouted one more time, then again, and again, exasperation and even anger hardening my voice.
Nothing. She heard nothing. This time she did not even look toward the trees.
I left those grieving people. I left that town and searched out others, moving from person to person, from ear to ear, whispering, cajoling, and shouting ever more desperately, trying to find just one mortal who might understand my words and repeat them to a sheriff. I traveled farther and farther from the town by the red buttes. Several days passed, and several more. I found a few other dead souls.
Three children in a dungeon, I told them, and yet I can find no one to help.
The ghosts were indifferent.
We should not interfere, one dead man told me.
Perhaps it is for the best, another said. Between death sooner and death later, there is little to choose.
This was a fatalism I could not accept. Perseverance is all: this had always been my belief. And so farther and farther I went, speaking into the ears of mortals of every description—Listen, if you will! Listen, if you will!—but no one heard my words.
I found no one able to hear me. No one, and I was far from home.
That was what I thought to myself. Far from home. A phrase that carried within its ribs a meaningful surprise.
Home, as I now thought of it, was where Jeremy Johnson Johnson was.
“My ghost.” That was how he had described me to Ginger.
Suddenly, my fear for his safety and my need to see him one more time came upon me with such force that I gave up my search and hastened back to the little town by the red buttes. I had no trouble finding my way. It was as the wanderer had told me years before: It is difficult to find, but, once found, you will never lose it.
It was nearly dusk by the time I reached Main Street, which, except for a few trucks parked in front of the Intrepid Bar & Grill, was almost deserted. Elbow’s Café was closed and so was the bakery, but, far down the block, the Green Oven Bakery truck stood parked in front of Crinklaw’s Superette. Inside the market, I found the baker himself, carrying a basket of groceries toward the cash register.
“Hallå,” he said to the clerk, “is it not a great day to be alive?”
He asked his question dully, without his usual exuberance.
The clerk seemed to notice this, for she said, “You okay, Sten?”
“Yes, yes.” He hesitated. “The truth is that I am sorry to see summer ending. I had such fond expectations for it, and now—” He made a vague wave with his hand.
The clerk tried to jolly him by saying, “Well, don’t forget autumn. We usually get two or three full hours of autumn before blowing full-tilt into winter.”
The baker chuckled politely, and the clerk weighed a cluster of bananas, then ran a few more items through and said, “So, Sten. What about it? When’re we going to get some more Prince Cakes? It’s been a while, or did I miss something?”
An odd expression crossed the baker’s face. He glanced around—there were no other customers nearby. “Well,” he said, “I will tell you a little secret. I have been thinking of giving up the Prince Cakes.” He sighed. “They take a certain toll. So I think I will give them up”—he smiled—“after one last batch.”
“What? Tell me it ain’t so!” the clerk joked. “But okay, then. If it’s the last batch, put me down for a double portion. I’ll freeze me some for a rainy day. When will you be doing them?”
The baker raised his shoulders in a shrug. “Soon, I think. The idea has taken hold, and that is always the first step.”
All the while, the clerk was pushing buttons on the cash register as she slid goods past—a carton of oatmeal, a half pound of bacon, a bag of walnuts, a red box of raisins, and then a small carton of rodent poison.
I had been in Sten Blix’s bakery, I had been in his storerooms, and I had been in his dungeon. I had never seen the smallest sign of rodents.
My foreboding grew as the baker drove home with his groceries, as he wearily stored his kitchen goods, as he set water for boiling, as he steeped and stirred his peppermint tea. Finally, he carried his cup and saucer to a dim, windowless room that was clearly his sleeping quarters. Hanging on the walls were several more of the woodcuts from The Dance of Death. A television sat perched on a metal shelf mounted near an upper conjunction of the walls.
The baker switched on this television, and, oh, it must be said: Not even my darkest fears could prepare me for what I saw. Instead of a normal show, the lighted screen displayed three panels, each showing different views of his dungeon—one of Frank Bailey’s side of the chamber, one of Jeremy’s and Ginger’s cells, and one of the massive metal wall that separated the dungeon from the world.
So! The baker did not just listen to the prisoners. He observed them from the comfort of his bedroom.
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The images were alarming. Ginger and Jeremy lay on their cots, turned toward the bars between them. Their hands lay close but did not touch. They both wore baggy black pants and shirts. They were both still. In his cell, Frank Bailey lay on his cot, tucked into a sickle-like curve. He, too, was still.
A fear of the most terrible kind took hold of me.
It seemed the baker felt it, too, for he drew close to study the screen.
A full minute passed, and none of the prisoners moved.
The baker set down his tea and approached one of the macabre woodcuts hanging in the room—one of a woman glancing lovingly at her husband as Death approached unbeknownst. At the baker’s hand, its hinged frame swung open to reveal a panel of buttons, one of which he pressed.
A sudden piercing human shriek could be heard from the television screen, and the heads of the prisoners jerked up almost as one. They stared starkly about, and then, when the shrieking stopped, their heads dropped back down.
Ginger could be heard to say, “What was that?” Even though her voice was weak and low, it could be heard clearly.
“Just one more memento from the past, my dear girl,” the baker whispered, then went to his closet and turned a valve on a water pipe.
On the television screen, the prisoners could again be seen raising their heads. Jeremy rose with difficulty and moved slowly toward his small bathroom. On the screen, these movements looked like a series of detached images played in staccato, one stuttering into the next, an effect that made Jeremy look other than human.
When he came out of the bathroom, he said, “Water.”
The baker watched as Frank and Ginger pushed themselves up from their cots and moved toward their bathrooms, then he turned the television off.
He knelt at his chest of drawers and pulled out the lowest drawer. Neatly folded within it was an array of shirts of various styles and sizes. He began to sort through them, regarding each one, then setting it aside. His manner was almost tender. Then, a shock: he picked up the pink shirt that had been Ginger’s, the one with As Is written on it in glittery letters. And below that was Jeremy’s faded blue T-shirt and Frank’s formal white shirt, clean now and carefully folded. The baker set aside all these shirts, and a frightening number of others, too—each one, I feared, representing a lost life—until finally he came to a small shirt in dingy green. This was the shirt he wanted, for he placed all the others back into the drawer and carried the green shirt with him to the kitchen and laid it on the counter.
