Far Far Away (11 page)

The room filled with tight silence—everyone stared at Jeremy.

But the sheriff then did something unexpected. He softened his voice. “You know,” he said, “what we have here ain’t real
real
serious. It’s a little bit bad, all right, but it ain’t
murder
or anything. More of a prank than anything else. And the truth is, Jeremy, we’d just like to get it all sorted out. We know you was there, and we know there was other fellas, too, and if you was to fill in the blanks, that’d help your own situation a little. More than a little, even.” The sheriff’s smile seemed the smile of a friendly uncle. “So, Jeremy,” he said, “who were your
compadres
?”

Jeremy did not say Ginger’s or Maddy’s or Marjory’s name, and I knew he never would. Nor did he touch his temple. There was no point. What could I do? The misery in Jeremy’s face gathered around his mouth—he was fighting away tears.

Across the room, the baker’s eyes were fixed on Jeremy, and as he studied him, I detected uncertainty in his face, or even confusion. But about what? The case that the sheriff had presented left no doubt.

The sheriff must have noticed this, too, for he said, “Something the matter, Sten?”

The baker kept staring at Jeremy, and as he did, I saw a sudden sureness come into his eyes, as if something had come clear to him. “It wasn’t him,” he said in a quiet voice.

The sheriff leaned forward in surprise.
“What?”

“It wasn’t him,” Sten Blix repeated. He nodded toward Jeremy. “He’s much taller than any of the figures I saw.”

The sheriff’s face stiffened. “You just said
boys
when you described them to us, Sten. You didn’t say
little
boys or
short
boys.”

“That may be true,” the baker said. “But now when I think of the voices and their size, I think they must have been small boys.” The baker cast a kindly glance at Jeremy. “Immature boys, but probably good boys at heart. Boys who didn’t know the prank they were playing might be seen as something more serious than a prank.”

The sheriff smirked. “And the size-eight shoe, Sten? And the key that fits? And
your
real estate on the floor of
his
house?”

The baker shrugged. “I only know what I know, Sheriff. And I know that this isn’t the boy who was in my yard last night.”

The sheriff’s face was as stone. “That your final word on the subject?”

The baker nodded yes.

The sheriff exhaled heavily, pushed back from his desk, and raised his great form. “Then I guess we’re done here,” he said, and he lumbered out of the office.

The deputy, however, did not move. He continued to stare at Jeremy. “The baker knows what the baker knows,” he said in a low, seething voice. “But I know what I know.”

Jeremy nodded but seemed barely to hear the words. A brief minute earlier he had been fighting tears, and now, to his utter surprise, he was free. As he passed by the baker, he whispered, “Thanks, Mr. Blix.”

The baker nodded and returned a gentle smile, a smile the deputy saw. The moment Jeremy was gone, Deputy McRaven said, “Backing out on your story don’t make our job any easier, Sten.”

“I understand,” the baker said, “but this episode started to seem a small thing beside …” His voice trailed off and he pointed to a photograph on the sheriff’s desk. In it, Possy Truax sat beside the sheriff at the counter of Elbow’s Café. Possy was smiling and the sheriff was smiling and no one could imagine a future in which Possy would disappear without a trace.

Deputy McRaven was not impressed. “Sure, that was worse, but you don’t turn a blind eye to housebreaking just because there’s bigger crimes in the world.”

“Yes, yes, I take your point,” the baker replied, smiling and nodding slowly. But he did not change his story.

When I caught up to Jeremy as he headed home, he seemed anxious to talk.

“What just happened?” he asked. “Why did the baker let me off?”

I do not know. He was studying you when something seemed suddenly to come clear to him. That is when he said that it was not you. And just now he told the deputy that the crime seemed small compared to the loss of that boy Possy and the others who are missing
.

Jeremy kept walking. The waking village had begun to stretch and scratch. A man retrieved his newspaper, waved genially at Jeremy, and went back into his house. “And that’s it?” Jeremy whispered to me. “The baker just thought it was too small a crime to worry about? You think that’s the whole reason?”

Perhaps also that you seemed repentant
.

Jeremy considered this. “Maybe it was a test. Like in one of your stories. It was a test of the baker’s kindness, and he passed.”

Perhaps
, I said. But in truth I did not know. The mystery was still unfolding before me, and I had little sense of how dark its nature would become.

We found Jeremy’s father in his room sitting on the side of his bed. He had tried to comb his gnarled hair and he had tried to put on long pants and a shirt, but they were so tight, they could not be fastened. His eyes were puffy. I smelled salt. He had been crying.

“You okay, Dad?” Jeremy said.

Mr. Johnson did not look at Jeremy. “I wanted to come help.”

“You didn’t have to. They let me go. It was all some kind of mistake.”

Mr. Johnson seemed relieved but not consoled. “I wanted to come help, but I couldn’t get into any of my clothes.” He clamped his eyes to keep back tears, but one escaped. “I’ve gotten … I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Jeremy said. His voice was gentle. “Everything’s okay.”

But Mr. Johnson lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over his face.

When Jeremy looked in on him a few minutes later, his head was still under the covers. “I’m going to school now,” Jeremy said, for he had remembered what I had nearly forgotten: he had to go to school today, and take examinations—examinations for which he had not properly studied. “Dad?”

His father poked his head out. In the distance, the first school bell could be heard. “You’re going to be late,” Mr. Johnson said, but then, as Jeremy swung his book bag onto his back, he said, “Jeremy?”

Jeremy looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” his father said.

“For what?”

His father’s eyes slid away. “For everything. For just about everything.”

Yes
, I thought.
You should be sorry. Your example is beschämend. Shameful
. That is what I would have said. But Jeremy’s way was kinder. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’m just glad to have a father at all.” He looked at his father. “Okay?”

Mr. Johnson did not seem to believe Jeremy’s words, but still he said, “Okay.”

Jeremy burst into the classroom just as Mrs. Kilgarten was distributing the examinations.

“Eyes forward!” she barked, and Ginger, who had turned to give Jeremy a questioning look, swiveled back around. “You all know the importance of this exam. While taking it, there will be no talking and no straying eyes.” The teacher sternly scanned the room. “Very well, then. You may … begin!”

Such a rustling of papers! Such a concentration of faculties! Generally, I enjoy a scene like this, but this morning my pleasure was only momentary, for Jeremy, who had slept little and studied less, was passing over half as many questions as he answered!

He would never ask for help, nor would I customarily offer it. Still, it was the sheriff’s visit that morning that had preempted Jeremy’s last chance to study, so it did not seem quite fair to let him fail.

I tried something new.

At the next difficult question, I produced the answer in just the way he would have memorized it—
ossify from os, ossis, Latin for bone
—but I spoke in so thin a whisper he might think he was reaching into the dark corners of his own memory.

And, look here!—he entered the correct answer on his paper.

A few questions later, I whispered,
Phobia from phobos, Greek for fear or flight
.

Really, I must admit it, it was all quite satisfying. I almost looked forward to the difficult questions so that I could whisper the answer so softly that he was not even aware he was hearing it.

Gastric from gastro, gastreros, Greek for stomach
.

Oration from orare, Latin for plead, speak, or pray
.

I was clever. In order to avoid arousing his suspicion, I withheld answers to two questions altogether, no matter how long he stared at them. Finally, he expelled a deep breath, laid down his pencil, and turned his paper over.

“Time!” Mrs. Kilgarten called out in a piercing voice. “Pencils down, papers forward, no talking.
Henry Hollis and Samuel Thompson!
Did I not
just
say
No talking
?”

Henry Hollis and Samuel Thompson exchanged rascally smiles. Like every other student in the room, they knew that when the bell rang in precisely two minutes, they would be beyond the reach of Mrs. Kilgarten until autumn.

Ginger caught up to Jeremy as soon as he had left the classroom. “So?” she said.

“What?”

“Your little visit to the sheriff’s station this morning?”

“Wow,” Jeremy said. “News travels fast.”

“Like I said, Jeremy—small towns, big ears. So what happened?”

He shrugged. “Not a thing.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Even after he had given her all the details, she shook her
head. “So Sten Blix knew you’d done it … and he sprang you, anyway.” She slid several strands of coppery hair through her lips. “I guess we really kind of owe him one.”

“I do, maybe,” Jeremy said, “but you don’t. Your name never came up.”

She turned to him and her eyes shone. “I knew you’d never give Pittswort any names. I just knew that about you.”

The corridor had grown quiet. The few remaining students moved off toward their next classes.

“So how’d you do on that
demonic
test we just took?” she said.

“Okay, I guess. At first, I was tanking, and then all of a sudden it was like I slipped into the Vocabulary Zone or something.”

I shimmered with pleasure. Well, it is true. Even a ghost has his vanities.

“I think I was in the Not Enough Sleep Zone,” Ginger said. “That police-pursuit deal last night was like a quadruple espresso. I thought I was never going to fall asleep.”

The warning bell rang and Ginger sailed away. “Bye-ya,” she said over her shoulder. Farther down the hall, Conk Crinklaw slammed his locker shut, then turned and bumped into Ginger in a way that did not seem accidental. After untangling himself, he doffed his cap and made an elaborate show of apology, which drew a gaze of disbelief from Ginger and then—I was quite sure of it—a look of mild amusement.

Jeremy observed this, too. I followed him toward his geometry classroom for his last examination of the year, but as he drew close to the door, he stopped and looked around to make sure no one was nearby. “Okay, Jacob,” he whispered, “no help with the answers this time.”

Mein Gott!
I felt like one of those toys that looks like a ball made of metal leaves, but when its spring is pumped and made to spin, the leaves open to reveal a standing figure. Well, that is how being caught at something can make you feel.