Far Far Away (15 page)

“Very funny,” she said, dusting herself off. She was wearing a white shirt and white shorts. She looked around. “How’d you know I was there, anyway? That was my stellarest stealth mode. Plus you seemed so … lost in thought.”

“Guess stellarest wasn’t stellar enough,” Jeremy said, sitting again on the table.

Ginger sat nearby and let her long, freckled legs stretch to full length.

“What’s that?” she said, nodding at the letter beside him.

He handed her the auction notice, and she read it through.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ve really got to think of something here.”

“Yeah, well, if you happen to have twenty-two thousand one hundred and six dollars in your piggy bank, we would have something to think about.”

“I could probably scrape together the six-dollar part,” she joked, “provided you give me a little time.” A low roll of thunder carried from the distance, but she ignored it. “There’s got to be some way to come up with the money.”

He folded the letter and put it back into his pocket. Ginger was rubbing her index finger over a softening scab on her freckled
knee when Jeremy said, “So did you know Morley McRaven saw you this morning?”

She turned with a stricken look. “Saw me where?”

“Coming out of the attic. Jenny Applegarth told me people at the café were saying you’d stayed the night.”

“Oh, God.” She paused. “I
wondered
why some of the fossils were looking at me funny.” Another pause. “Well, let them think what they think.” Then: “But it means I’ll get it from my granddad.” Her voice dropped. “Get it and then some.”

Another rumble of thunder, deeper, angrier, and it seemed to stir the air.

“Where are Maddy and Marjory?” Jeremy asked, because, it was true, they were usually like shadows to her.

Ginger shrugged. “Their parents threatened them with total lockdown if they get caught, as they put it, ‘associating with that housebreaker kid,’ so when we were at the bakery and I said I was going to go find you, they stayed put.”

“It’s okay,” Jeremy said. “I don’t blame them.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of do. I prefer my friends to come with a backbone.”

She held up a maple leaf and watched it bend in the wind. “So last night, when I fell asleep, did you kiss me good night?—you know, like on the forehead or ear or lips or something?”

Jeremy shook his head. “Why? Should I have?”

She shrugged, then tossed the maple key into the wind and watched it whirl sideways. A few moments passed and she said, “So what happened to the selfish sisters at the end of that Bearskin story? Something bad, I’m hoping.”

“Pretty bad. When Bearskin returns as a fine gentleman and
marries the nice sister, one mean sister drowns and the other mean one hangs herself. Then the devil shows up to say he got two souls instead of one.”

“Zounds. That’s kind of severe.”

“Yeah, well, those Grimm Brothers.” He grinned. “They love a bloody ending.”

Ja, ja
. He was having his sport with me! But, truly, those were the cautionary elements and the rules were observed. Evil would not be punished with mere finger wagging!

Another boom of thunder, sharper, almost crackling.

Ginger looked up at the sky. “Maybe my granddad will get hit by lightning.”

“Seems unlikely.”

She shrugged and grinned. “A girl can hope.”

The gray sky deepened toward black. Ginger slid several strands of hair through her lips and regarded Jeremy for a second or two.

“Just for the record,” she said. “I’m sorry about everything.”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

“That’s just it. It is. If I hadn’t—”

Jeremy cut her off. “And if I hadn’t agreed to go into the baker’s house and if I hadn’t dropped my key and if McRaven hadn’t gotten the town all riled up and if and if and if.”

“Yeah, but my
if
is the
if
that started it all.”

A moment passed and then Jeremy said quietly, “Yeah, but if that
if
hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Which I kind of like.”

They fell silent, and with a casual ease she set her hand to his bare arm. This time, unlike others when she had touched him,
he did not flinch. She ran a finger experimentally along his bare inner arm and he, to my surprise and perhaps his, turned and leaned subtly toward her.

And, at this exact expectant point of time, a sharp crack of thunder shook the trees and the first fat drops of rain spattered on their picnic table.

Ginger and Jeremy sat as if paralyzed for a moment before he quickly stuffed the auction notice into his pocket. Lightning and thunder crackled together, and the scattered fat raindrops soon turned into a watery throb.

It must have been a warm rain. Ginger grinned at Jeremy, spread her arms, and turned an open mouth to the sky.

Jeremy, however, stood abruptly up.

“Hey, now,” Ginger said. “Where’re you going?” She looked about. “We could go over there to the bandstand and ride it out.”

Jeremy glanced at the covered band shell, but shook his head. “Naw. I’d better get back. My father will be waiting on his lunch by now.”

Ginger studied him, her face glistening with rain. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, but he did not move.

They stood letting the rain run over them, looking at each other.

A small smile formed on her lips. “Know what?”

“What?”

“When a girl falls asleep on your bed, you really should kiss her good night.” She pulled her wet hair back and grinned. “For future reference.”

And she was off, loping across the wet green grass as frisky as a deer in the meadow.

Jeremy found his father napping when he returned home and slipped through the room without waking him. He changed into dry clothes, took a bowl of cereal to the front of the bookstore, and saw that the light on the answering machine was blinking. He pushed the button and listened to a new message from Ginger.

“Okay, Jeremy, weird but good. I was walking by the bakery soaking wet and Maddy and Marjory were gone, but Sten Blix waved me in, gave me a coffee, and asked if you and I would like to work for him at his house tomorrow! See? Weird but good, like I said! I know it’s Sunday, but I told him we could.” A pause. “Which I hope is okay. He said nine a.m.” Another pause. “I’ll come by beforehand and we can go together.”

The smallest smile appeared on Jeremy’s face.

Jeremy spent the rainy afternoon reading, but that evening, when the rain had ceased, he put on his shoes. “Going for a walk,” he called out to his father.

“
Uncommon Knowledge
is on tonight!” his father shouted back.

“Okay,” Jeremy called, which, his father knew, was not the same as saying he would return in time for it.

“So you’ll be back?”

“I’ll try,” Jeremy yelled, and set the door closed behind him.

It was the pleasantest sort of evening, with streets gleaming
from the rain and billowing clouds floating past a nearly full moon.

Where are we going?
I asked.

“Nowhere. Anywhere. Out of the house.”

Yes, of course, and yet I observed that our circuitous route took us by the Corner Pocket, where Ginger and the girlfriends could sometimes be found, and then past Maddy’s house, and then Marjory’s.

Jeremy saw no one in any of these places, but on the way back to the bookstore, he passed in front of the Intrepid Bar & Grill and, glancing in, suddenly froze. There, in a booth near the front window, Ginger Boultinghouse, Conk Crinklaw, and the two girlfriends all sat watching a television screen mounted on the wall. Conk sat closest to Ginger, at the end of the row of girls.

They were watching
Uncommon Knowledge
, and when Conk said something—evidently about the contestant’s answer—the girls all laughed and Ginger bumped him softly with her shoulder. Jeremy stared at this tableau as if mesmerized and was prompted again into motion only when the beams of headlights swept past. It was a patrol car, and it slowed to a stop next to Jeremy.

Deputy McRaven leaned from the window. “She gets around, don’t she?”

“Who?”

The deputy snickered. “Your little girlfriend. Or is she Conk’s little girlfriend?”

Jeremy said nothing and resumed walking.

The patrol car moved forward, too. “Where you headed?” the deputy asked.

“Nowhere. I’m just out walking.”

“I see that. But out walking where? And doing what, exactly?”

“I’m not
doing
anything,” Jeremy said, his voice rising.

Jeremy’s irritation seemed to please the deputy. “Casing things, maybe?”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, I think you know what
casing
means, Mr. Johnson. It means looking over a place to see how it shapes up for robbing it.”

A malicious grin spanned Deputy McRaven’s broad face, but before Jeremy could say something in anger, I gave him something more obscure to say.

“Nur wenn die Sonne niedrig steht, kann ein Zwerg einen langen Schatten werfen.”

For a moment, the deputy was nonplussed, but for only a moment. “And right back at you,” he said calmly, and let the patrol car ease away.

“What did I just say?” Jeremy whispered.

Only when the sun sets low can a dwarf throw a long shadow
.

Jeremy issued a small laugh.

It was perhaps unkind
, I said.
Our deputy is not a true dwarf
.

Jeremy said, “Close enough that he gives dwarfs a bad name.”

He continued past the darkened businesses, then veered toward the municipal park and the table where he and Ginger had visited earlier in the day.

The park was dark and quiet now, the light of the moon shone in small puddles of water, and the trees threw slow-moving shadows. The flutish call of an owl carried on a gentle breeze. Jeremy had been sitting at the table for perhaps a minute when his hand brushed across something on the table, something odd and
startling. He leaned away so the moon could illuminate whatever it was.

Wedged between the planks was a tightly folded piece of paper.

Jeremy stared at the paper for several seconds before pulling it free and unfolding it in the moonlight.

Within it lay a single strand of long reddish hair.

Written on the paper was this:

A smile eased across Jeremy’s face. But then, abruptly, his face clouded and he stared off toward town. He folded the strand of hair into the paper and wedged it back between the planks of the picnic table so that it would seem unfound.

From the west, a coal train approached with a loudening throb. Through the trees, it could be seen slowly passing in the moonlight, black car after black car, loaded with coal, the wheels clicking rhythmically over the rails. When finally it had passed, Jeremy said, “Jacob?”

Yes?

“Did this ever happen to you?”

I’m not sure what you mean
.

“Where when you think of someone, it’s like your whole body is lighter than air and you feel like you’re floating off to another world or something.”

I said nothing.

“Jacob? Did that ever happen to you?”

No
.

It was quiet, a mild breeze stirred the leaves, and I could see her face.

Well
, I said.
Perhaps once
.

He looked toward my voice. “Really? When?”

I could see her face, and I would tell him. But I would start at the beginning.

While immersed in my studies, I resisted the temptation of the Mädchen—the girls—but I always supposed that some faraway day I would become a husband and a father. But it was not until I joined the household of Wilhelm and Dortchen that I saw what actual sustenance such company might provide
.

The breeze bore the last faint whistle of the freight train.

I found myself looking forward to Dortchen’s casual questions and friendly banter. I became comfortable with her company. Yes—perhaps you have guessed it—I fell slightly in love with her
.

There they were: words I had never spoken. I will tell you, it was a relief to pass them to another.

“What happened?”

Nothing. If she heard my thoughts, she pretended not to. I loved my brother, as she did, so I would not speak and she would not hear
.

Such a long time ago. Such a long, long time ago. But there was more.

One day while Wilhelm and I were at our desks, Dortchen came in with a tray of boiled eggs and black bread and butter, a pleasant surprise for both of us. After she departed, Wilhelm looked up and quizzed me about my bachelorhood. Would I never have a wife of my own? I constructed a careful answer. Had I met someone like Dortchen, I said, I might easily have found my way to wedlock. He nodded and did not speak, but later, while I was out of the room, he wrote something on a small piece of fine paper and slipped it into the book I was reading
.

I fell quiet and Jeremy said, “Do you remember what it said?”

Oh, yes, I remembered the words. I could see them as if that slip of paper were still in my hands.
One does not know love until it arrives, and its arrival will always surprise
.