Far Far Away (20 page)

“What’s cooking?” Jeremy asked.

“Chicken pot pie,” Jenny Applegarth said. “In fact, could you just peek at it and see if the top’s brown?”

No sooner had Jeremy opened the oven door and peered in than Jenny Applegarth slipped into the kitchen behind him. “You can’t just stand back and look at it,” she said. “You need to lean in a little bit.”

Jeremy instead used a heavy cloth to pull the rack toward him.

Jenny Applegarth glanced at the pie and said, “Let’s give it three more minutes.”

She closed the oven door and gazed out the kitchen window for some little while before she turned her eyes to Jeremy. “Guess you’re kind of surprised to find me here.”

“No,” Jeremy said, his face blazing again. “I mean, yes, I was, but I’m not now. I mean, it’s fine. It’s really good, in fact.”

Jenny Applegarth smiled. “It was kind of spur-of-the-moment. And I knew if I tried to arrange it all, he’d just say he didn’t want company.”

“No,” Jeremy said, trying to recover himself. “I’m glad you came. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smiling in I don’t know how long. How’d you do it, anyway?”

Jenny Applegarth shrugged, but there was a shine to her eyes I had not seen before. “Okay,” she said, again. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

The chicken pot pie she pulled from the oven was wondrous to behold.

“Yum,” Jenny said, and she served portions onto three plates, laid forks across each edge, and then, with the ease of a practiced waitress, carried all three into the next room.

“Think you’re going to like this, Harold,” she said, and Mr. Johnson (who, I noticed, had now run a wide-toothed comb through his hair) said, “Yes, indeed.”

While they ate, his father said, “So what did you do with your day?”

Jeremy did not look up from his plate. “Nothing much.”

His father snorted. “Well, for nothing much, you sure got up early and came home late.”

“I went to Bank’s Bluff with Ginger and Conk.”

“With Ginger and Conk?” His father was looking up now. “What for?”

“No good reason. We just got something to eat and came back.”

This answer did not satisfy his father. Jenny Applegarth, too, was looking at him with curiosity. His father said, “Well, you
must’ve had a reason. You don’t just drive a hundred something miles to get a hamburger and come back.”

Jeremy kept eating.

His father took another bite, and said carefully, “I’ve been to Bank’s Bluff. It’s not a place people drive to for the fun of it. So there must’ve been—”

Jeremy suddenly jumped up. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t do anything wrong. But I don’t want to talk about it. Is that okay with you?”

And before either of the adults could answer, he had bolted from the room, through the Two-Book Bookstore, and out into the street.

Jeremy turned toward the park. Even in the pale evening’s light I could see that his face carried a dark gloom.

Are you well, Jeremy? Are you feeling well?

If he heard me, he did not respond.

What is the matter?

Still he did not speak.

I waited until he had seated himself on his favored picnic table. He looked for another note from Ginger squeezed into the table planks, but there was none.

And then I again said,
Are you well, Jeremy?

He turned toward my voice. “Am I well?” His mocking tone was unmistakable. “Am I well? Why can’t you just talk like everyone else? Why can’t you just say, ‘How you doin’? You doin’ good?’ ”

Very well, then
, I said.
I look forward to the day when every schoolchild will read Shakespeare’s great comedic play All’s Good That Ends Good
.

We both fell silent for a long while, listening to the chorus of crickets and frogs. From a distant corner of the park a child shouted, “Olly olly oxen free!”

Finally, I said,
Jeremy, what is the matter?

“Everything’s the matter!” he blurted. “Every single freaking thing!”

Ah. And may we consider them particularly, one by one?

“Okay, sure. For starters, there’s the foreclosure problem. And there’s the Ginger problem, and then there’s the Ginger plus Conk problem. Then there’s the everybody and his brother thinking I’m a slimeball problem. And then you have the Conk and possibly everyone else wondering why I know so much about fairy tales problem. Oh. But wait! I forgot maybe the most important problem of all—which would be you!”

Me?

“You.
Definitely
you. Maybe mostly you. You’re the one, for just one example, who got me into this whole fairy-tale mess with the TV show.”

I was trying to help, if you will recall
.

“But look where it’s gotten me! If I go on that show as a fairy-tale expert, not only will I look like some dweebish weirdo, but I’m going to feel like a fraud.”

I did not understand this.
A fraud? Why a fraud?

“Because it’s not
my
uncommon knowledge! It’s yours! And that makes
me
a fraud!”

I collected my thoughts and said,
Jeremy, it may be true that it is not your knowledge, but it is your talent. Your talent to hear me
.

“Yeah, well, in case you missed it, this isn’t a talent show. It’s not called
Uncommon Talents
.”

There is little difference, Jeremy. Some have a talent for memorization; you have a talent for listening
.

He breathed deeply in and out. “Yeah, that sounds good, but then, throwing a few Pop Rocks into the baker’s cereal sounded good at the time, too.”

And here I made the mistake of pointing out to Jeremy that going into the baker’s house had never sounded good to me, and I had said so at the time.

“Okay, that’s it!” Jeremy said. “Just leave me alone. Leave me absolutely alone.”

I was quiet. I knew that I must be. Time passed. Somewhere in the park a child shouted, “Hello, hello, hello,” and waited for the dim respondent echo:
oh, oh, oh
. The town clock struck nine, and parents began calling their children home. Jeremy stretched out on the table and stared up at the starry sky. A coal train strained its way up the grade and out of town. Finally, Jeremy sat up and said in a low voice, “You still there?”

Yes
.

“I’m sorry if I was rude.”

Do not worry, Jeremy. I know you are caught in a gloom
.

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “I don’t know. It’s just that after my mother left and then after my grandfather died, it was pretty bad. But you came, and I got used to just doing
my studies and my odd jobs and taking care of my father and having you nearby and everybody else just leaving me be. It wasn’t great, but it was okay. Now all of a sudden, it’s like I’m under everybody’s microscope.”

Yes
, I said.
I understand. But we must work together, I am here to help you—

But I did not finish.

We heard footsteps behind us, then a girl’s voice softly calling, “Jeremy?”

Ginger stepped from the darkness, holding a small paper bag from the Green Oven Bakery. “So where’ve you been?” she asked.

“Since when?”

“Since fleeing Conk’s truck like it was on fire.”

“Home. Then here.”

“For, like, four hours?”

“I guess. I kind of lost track.”

She sat on the table beside him and pulled from the paper bag a single slice of Prince Cake, which she handed to him.

“The bakery was closed,” she said, crumpling the bag into a ball, “but it turns out that Conk’s dad has a standing order for the first Prince Cake anytime Sten bakes them.” She paused. “Guess being the mayor has its fringe benefits.”

Jeremy broke the cake in two and handed her the bigger
piece. As they were eating, Ginger said, “Conk talked to his dad about the bank loan, and his father thought maybe he could do something. Maybe not a lot, but something.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy said quietly. “That seems good.”

It was silent except for the frogs and crickets, and then Ginger said, “Conk is such a moron. He wants to go to Brazil and start a cattle ranch.”

“Conk Crinklaw?” Jeremy said in a surprised tone. “In Brazil?”

Ginger chuckled. “Yeah, I know. A concept and a half. But he’s been listening to Spanish tapes and everything.”

I told Jeremy something that he passed on to Ginger: “I think they actually speak Portuguese in Brazil.”

Ginger laughed a quick snorting laugh. “There it is—Conk in a nutshell—studying Spanish to go live in a country where they don’t speak Spanish.”

The words were disparaging, and yet she seemed amused. “Know how all the Crinklaws have those weird names, like Intrepid and Dauntless? Well, I found out that Conk has one, too. His real name is
Stalwart
. But as a baby, he kept crawling headfirst into things all the time, so they started calling him Conk.”

Jeremy laughed softly. “Conk’s not a bad name, I guess. Better than Stalwart, anyway.” Then, staring off into the darkness, he asked, “So if you actually jumped a freight train, who would you go with? Conk or me?”

His seriousness appeared to surprise her. “Why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know. Because I was thinking it, I guess.”

Ginger seemed to be considering the matter. “And it has to be either-or, right?—I can’t ride the rails with both of you?”

Jeremy gave her a decisive shake of his head.

“Okay, then. I guess if I was having to deal with thugs and stuff—like I was in a hobo jungle or something—I’d choose Conk, because, well, he’s Conk. But if I were just riding along in a freight car, I’d want to be with you.” She looked at him. “That help?”

“I guess,” he said, but I could detect the disappointment in his voice. “Also, just so you know, I don’t think they have hobo jungles anymore.”

“Well, there you go, then. If there are no hobo jungles, I don’t need Conk at all.”

She stretched out on the table, put her head in his lap, and stared up at the sky. “Why don’t you tell me a story—one of those fairy tales, one with a happy ending.”

“Which one?” he said.

“I don’t care. You pick.”

Perhaps “The Fisherman and His Wife,”
I said, because, truthfully, I thought the shameful influence of the greedy wife might cloud the romantic climate that I felt was developing, but Jeremy would not listen.

“Okay, I’ve got one,” he said, and a strange ease came into his voice as he began: “Long ago and far, far away, there was an old king who, as he lay dying, called for his faithful servant …”

It was the tale of Faithful John, a wide-ranging story of enchanted love and of amorous abduction and, most of all, of the servant who gave his life to save his master’s. When the king’s son enters the one room he has been forbidden to enter, his eyes fall upon a portrait of the Princess of the Golden Dwelling, and he is, as Jeremy recited, “possessed by a love so great that if all the leaves on all the trees were tongues, they could not declare it.”

An appreciative murmur escaped Ginger. “Zounds …,” she said softly. “That’s a whole lot of love.”

Jeremy gave a small laugh and continued. At Faithful John’s direction, he said, the prince’s artisans were soon crafting beautiful objects of gold, to be used to lure the Princess of the Golden Dwelling. “And so,” Jeremy related, “the ship laden with golden objects set sail for the land of the Golden Dwelling when—”

His voice broke abruptly off.

A dazzling light had split the darkness and now held Ginger and Jeremy in a tableau of startled surprise. Ginger shielded her eyes and pushed herself upright.

“Curfew,” said a hard, gruff voice. It was Deputy McRaven.

Ginger squinted into the searing brightness. “Curfew?”

“That’s right. I should write you up.”

“For what? Sitting in the park telling stories?”

The deputy kept his bright light shining into their eyes. “For breaking curfew, littering, and loitering. And I’d probably have to mention that the subject female was lying prone on the picnic table.”

At this, Ginger abruptly jumped down from the table. “C’mon, Jeremy,” she said, and strode past Deputy McRaven. Jeremy followed behind. “We’re leaving,” she said, “but if you still need to write us up on your cute little curfew charge, you should also note that the subject female referred to the subject deputy as a giant horse’s ass.”