by Tom McNeal
Among the leaves so green, O.
“What?” she whispered. “What baker’s dungeon?”
I sang the verse again, and added another:
The poison is blue, and sullies their food,
Among the leaves so green, O.
Jenny Applegarth stared in disbelief. Now it was she who did not know what to think or do.
And then she did.
She stared at the baker’s house, and a look of resolution formed on her face.
She began to run.
When Mr. Johnson awakened to Jenny Applegarth tapping frantically on his window glass, he rose at once and hurried to the front door.
She took several deep breaths and composed herself. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, “but I might have an idea where Jeremy and Ginger are.”
“What?” he said. “Where?”
“The baker’s house.”
For one long, still moment, Jenny Applegarth and Mr. Johnson stared at one another. Then he said, “Let’s go get the sheriff.”
He fetched her an old robe and turned toward the sheriff’s house, but Jenny Applegarth grabbed his arm.
“It’s Friday night,” she said. “He’ll be playing cards at the bar.”
As they hurried down the deserted street, they saw something and stopped short. Across the street, the lights of the Green Oven bakery burned bright, and there, in the back kitchen, one could see the dark shadow of the baker moving about.
“Look,” Jenny said, pointing. Above the bakery, rising in front of the round white moon, was a steady plume of green smoke.
There were four or five trucks parked in front of the Intrepid Bar & Grill. Inside, men sat or stood at various stations drinking and playing at cards. Several friends of Conk were also there, intently playing a table game that involved a ball kicked by hand-operated players. They had been whooping loudly, but upon seeing Jenny Applegarth and Mr. Johnson come through the door, they fell quiet. So did all the other men, and no wonder.
Mr. Johnson was dressed in pants, boots, and a nightshirt—unusual attire for public appearance—and Jenny Applegarth—barefooted, dressed in a nightgown and old robe—was even more informal.
Sheriff Pittswort, looking up from his game of cards, regarded their dress and said, “Well, howdy-do, folks. Did you lose your way from the bou-doir?”
A remark that seemed more cruel than comical, but no matter—it received appreciative chuckles from the cardplayers at his table, and even from Conk’s school friends, though not from Conk himself, whom I now saw seated at a corner table, along with Maddy and Marjory. He’d been sitting sideways on a bench with his legs extended, but he straightened himself and gave Mr. Johnson and Jenny Applegarth a little nod.
Jenny Applegarth turned to the sheriff and said, “I think I know where the missing kids are.”
“They’re in the remote regions, Jenny. Living off the grid. That’s what they wrote us themselves.”
“No. They’re not. They’re here. They’re here and can’t get out.”
Sheriff Pittswort’s attention became keener. “Can’t get out of where?”
Jenny Applegarth glanced around the room. She did not want the whole room to hear what she had to say, so she moved close to Sheriff Pittswort and whispered what I had told her in song.
The sheriff leaned back, stared at her a long moment, then broke into a harsh laugh. “They’re in the baker’s house?” he said loudly, and wagged his eyebrows at the other men. “You suppose Sten’s fattening ’em up to cook ’em?”
Oh, how impenetrable this man was! And how indulgent his companions, who murmured and chuckled at his witless remark.
“I didn’t say that,” Jenny Applegarth protested. “I just said I think they’re there.”
Sheriff Pittswort’s eyes narrowed on her. “Why do you think that?”
“I heard it.”
“Who from?”
Jenny Applegarth cast her eyes down. “A voice told me,” she whispered.
“What?”
A little louder, Jenny said, “A voice told me. A singing voice. It woke me up and told me.”
The cardplayers and cowmen joined in low laughter, and Sheriff Pittswort’s tight focus loosened to amusement. “Well, who exactly did this singing voice belong to?” he asked.
Jenny was flustered, and even Mr. Johnson was now looking at her anxiously. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know I heard it. And the voice said the kids are in the baker’s house.”
Snickers and murmurs spread through the room. The only ones who did not seem amused were the ones off in the corner: Conk and Maddy and Marjory. And there was someone else, too: Deputy McRaven, sitting by himself on a high stool at the dimmest end of the bar.
Jenny Applegarth straightened her back. “The voice said they’re being poisoned in the baker’s house.”
This was a new revelation to Mr. Johnson, who turned to her in shock and began to speak, but Sheriff Pittswort intervened. “Now, my question is,” he said, grinning, “where exactly would the baker be hiding and poisoning grown kids?”
“In the dungeon,” Jenny said.
“In the dungeon, you say … So the baker’s got himself a dungeon?” Sheriff Pittswort was nodding and smiling. “Now, I just got to ask. Did you and Harold have a tipple or two tonight, Jenny?”
All at once Jenny Applegarth’s face stiffened and reddened. She moved toward the door, but before she left, she turned back. “You’re supposed to help find these kids, Victor Pittswort, not make fun of people who bring you leads.”
The sheriff grinned and lazily scratched his neck. “Well, first of all, Jenny, those kids are runaways who’ll come back when they’re good and ready. And second of all, it’s a little bit hard to take real seriously a lead that comes from a man who’s spent most of his adult life laying up in bed and from a mysterious singing voice that your town waitress hears while trying to sleep on a hot September night.”
This did not seem funny, but several of the men in the room found it so, and their laughter followed us out. Well, that is how people can be.
On the street, Jenny Applegarth turned to Mr. Johnson. “Now what?”
Mr. Johnson glanced toward the bakery. The lights still blazed and green smoke still rose from the chimney. I sensed the quiet approach of footsteps from behind, but Mr. Johnson did not. “Looks like the baker’s in his shop,” he said. “So I guess we better go over to his house alone.”
A low, steady voice from behind said, “We’ll come, too.”
It was Conk Crinklaw. Behind him stood Maddy and Marjory. Jenny Applegarth looked at the three of them. “You know,” she said, “if I’m wrong—”
But another voice from the shadows cut her off. “We’re burning time here,” the voice said.
They all turned around and had to adjust their gazes downward. It was Deputy McRaven.
“Not in uniform,” he said. “Acting only as a concerned citizen.” The look on his oversized face was deadly serious. “So what are we waiting for?”
The group moved as one down the street, but something caused me to look back. There, in the door of the Green Oven Bakery, Sten Blix was observing the movement in the street. He stepped onto the sidewalk and watched until the group turned the corner, out of view. He stood there another moment or two, as if in contemplation, then went back inside his shop.
In the alley behind the baker’s house, Conk and the others helped Jenny Applegarth and Mr. Johnson climb onto the trash cans and over the fence. Everyone hurried. No one worried about noise. No one worried about the mud. They all slogged straight through it to the front door, which was locked.
Conk and the girlfriends quickly circled the house in search of open windows, but they were all secured. The party gathered again near the very window through which Jeremy and Ginger had peered that fateful night long ago. Maddy and Marjory cupped their hands around their eyes and stared into the darkened house. Mr. Johnson and Jenny looked at each other, wondering what
to do next. Deputy McRaven did not look at anyone. He took off his outer shirt, wrapped it around his fisted hand, and turned to Conk.
“Boost me up,” he said.
The deputy was built like a boulder, but Conk, straining mightily, raised him up, and McRaven, without hesitation, drove his covered hand through the window.
A clamorous crash of glass.
Immediately, a light went on in a yard across the street.
McRaven punched free a few more shards of glass and hoisted himself through. Moments later, he was opening the front door from within, and the party streamed through, branching off in every direction, searching every room. Jenny and Mr. Johnson were the first to find the stairs and follow them down to the storage rooms, but when they did not know where to look next, I began again to sing.
The fifth doe she did cross the brook.
She stopped and looked sharply at Mr. Johnson. “There. Quiet! It’s the voice again!—the singing voice! Did you hear it?”
Mr. Johnson had not, of course, and shook his head.
What he has done you must go and look, I sang, moving toward the third storeroom, and Jenny followed my voice as if in a trance.
Hidden on the wall a numbered square,
Among the leaves so green, O.
“What?” she asked, her eyes darting around. And then, with others spilling down the stairs, she yelled, “Quiet! For God’s sake! Everybody quiet!”
I sang the line again and she repeated it: “Hidden on the wall a numbered square?”
At once Conk and McRaven were searching the walls. It was Conk who swung the plate cover away to reveal the numbers. When he touched one of them, it lighted dimly from within. He turned to Jenny. “Now what?”
I spoke the code first, and though it was quiet, no one heard, so then I sang:
Jacky Boy?
Master.
Sing thee well?
Very well.
Thirteen,
Seventeen.
Derry, derry down.
Among the leaves so green, O.
“What?” Jenny Applegarth said. “Again?”
And so I sang it again, and she said, “Thirteen seventeen?” Then, to Conk, “Try it—thirteen seventeen.”
At his touch, the wall moaned open and they pushed through.
The dungeon was in low light, so we could all see our way, but when I rushed ahead and spied the enclosures, my ancient heart fell.
Frank Bailey lay very still.
Jeremy and Ginger lay with their arms extended through the bars and entwined. They also were motionless. I swept in and searched frantically for the subtlest movement of faint breathing but found none.
Jeremy! I cried. Jeremy! Listen, if you will!
Conk remembered the numbers—1317—and by pushing them on the keypad near the enclosures, the gate latches dropped.
Conk slipped his arms under Ginger’s head, and Mr. Johnson took his son’s limp body and pulled it to his chest. Empty, dreadful seconds passed. And then Mr. Johnson’s face contorted into a strange expression of flooding, grateful relief.
“Alive,” he said in a low, strangled voice, his eyes squeezed shut, as if the only wish that ever mattered had just been granted. “He’s alive.”
“Ginger, too,” Conk said, holding his face close to hers. “I can feel her breath.”
Just outside the cell, Deputy McRaven had been standing rigid and brittle, but upon hearing that Ginger was alive, his big face gathered around his mouth and then—he could not help it—the strange, dwarfish deputy began quietly to cry.
Jenny Applegarth had slipped into Frank Bailey’s cell and lifted his unconscious head. After a moment, she, too, nodded and said, “Alive.”
She turned to Maddy and Marjory and said, “Go get the sheriff.”
Whatever Sheriff Pittswort’s speculations may have been before reaching the baker’s house, they changed upon seeing Ginger, Jeremy, and Frank Bailey being carried from the home. He assumed quick control. He commandeered three patrol cars, put one patient along with an adult in the backseat of each, and sent them off, lights flashing, to the nearest hospital, some twelve miles away. Deputy McRaven drove the car with Ginger lying in the backseat, eyes closed, her head in Conk’s lap.
The sheriff used his radio to advise the hospital that three youths were en route, near death, suffering from starvation and possible poisoning. Then he turned to Maddy and Marjory and asked them to show him the way to the dungeon.
As they proceeded down the stairwell and toward the third room, Maddy explained how Jenny Applegarth had led the way and how, when they got to the third room, she told them to look for the keypad and then figured out the combination of numbers that opened the wall.
The sheriff stopped short. “Figured out how?”
“I think the voice told her,” Maddy said.
“Right,” the sheriff said. “The voice.”
Once they reached the dungeon itself, the sheriff drew himself up as if to absorb what he was seeing. He stared at the cells, the beds, the windowless walls. Then he approached the rocking chair and picked up the small green shirt.
He held it for a time, taking in what its presence in this dungeon must mean. Then something hardened in his face. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve seen enough.”
Outside, he thanked Marjory and Maddy and sent them home. He stood alone then for a moment, leaning against his patrol car, holding the green shirt. The last time he’d seen it, there had been a little boy wearing it, and he was sitting in a patrol car like this one, not saying a word and smiling out the window as if at a world he’d never before seen. A strange but good little boy, and then one day the town baker had gotten hold of him. Perhaps these were the kinds of things Sheriff Pittswort was thinking, and now he lifted his gaze from the shirt to the sky. The smoke still rose from the chimney of the bakery, visibly green as it drifted into the moonlight. The sheriff expelled a deep draft of air. Then, still holding the shirt, he slid into his patrol car.
I believed I knew where he was going next—it was where I, too, was going.
The sheriff had not yet reached the bakery when I arrived.
To my surprise, the door was ajar. The front area of the shop was dark, but lights shone from the kitchen. I found the baker there, wearing his white apron, applying frosted rosettes to the top of one Prince Cake after another. He was intent on his work, yet there was something different in his composure. From time to time he glanced through the kitchen door to the front of the shop, as if he was expecting someone.
And what of the fire that leapt and danced behind the open door to the giant oven? This was not how one baked—was it?—with unbridled fire.
On the counter to the side of the tray was a small note that said:
To the citizens of Never Better:
Thank you for seeing me as you wished to see me and allowing me to do all that I wished to do. That my wishes were unusual was neither your fault nor mine.
Yours sincerely,
Sten Blix, The Town Baker
There was something more self-pitying than apologetic in this note. Really, if not his fault, then whose? If he could not control his desires, could he not control his mastery over them?
But there he stood, setting rosettes on his pastries, the smallest smile forming when he had set one just so. The heat must have been intense. Repeatedly, he raised his apron to wipe his pink glistening brow.
He worked without haste, shaping perfect frosted roses for one domed cake after another. Where was the sheriff? I wondered. Why had he not arrived?
The baker went to the furnace to feed in more crystals and several lengths of wood—so furious was the fire that the logs instantly burst into orange ignition. He leaned back from the intensity of the heat, but he did not close the oven door. It was at this moment that the bells jangled above the shop’s front door.
The baker stayed where he was, staring into the furnace.
The sheriff said nothing as he entered the kitchen. Behind him stoo
d two of the men who, only an hour before, had been playing cards with him and laughing at Jenny Applegarth. Now they were tense and somber. Each wore a metal badge. Each carried a gun. The sheriff held only the small green shirt, draped in one hand, but he carried it as if it was the only weapon he needed. Yes, in the tales, justice is often merciless and horrific, but nothing had prepared me for this sheriff at this moment. His face was stone. He held the small green shirt in his hands and he was beyond pity or mercy.
But the baker was immune. His gaze moved from the green shirt to the sheriff’s hard eyes. “Your little Possy”—he gave a broad, taunting wink—“who disappeared right from under your nose.”
Something dreadful was going to happen, I could feel it.
I was right—and not right.
The baker unfastened the apron he was wearing and let it slip to the ground.
In a soft voice he said, “Sa börjar det igen.”
So another moment has come.
Then, in the half instant before the sheriff could lay his hands on him, Sten Blix, the town baker, the Finder of Occasions, with a look of utter calmness on his face, stepped into the raging flames.
Sheriff Pittswort and his two men stared into the orange fiery space and watched the baker’s brightening, writhing silhouette.
I hastened to the roof. At the chimney’s edge, I let the smoke flow through me. I felt no heat, but I smelled burned flesh, and leaned away in revulsion.
But here—and this was what I had come for—the spectral Sten Blix rose to me and regarded me without surprise.
Yes, he said, I thought the boy might really have such a companion. In Sweden I had heard of it many times. And were you in time? Were any of them still alive?
All of them. I spoke with a kind of vindication. All of them are alive.
He smiled and shook his head. No, he said. Not all of them. Only these three. You have saved those you could save. I have taken those I could take. So do not think that you have prevailed. He cast his dead eyes over the dark village. You think that you have won, but I did not lose. I grew indifferent to winning. He gave a weary shrug and then, less to me than to himself, he said, There was too much of them.
