Far Far Away (27 page)

“And how did the Brothers Grimm respond?” Milo Castle said, and while Jeremy rubbed his temples, I told him.

“Wilhelm Grimm wrote back to say the tale was useful because he had himself heard it as a child from his own mother and it made him careful about child’s play.”

I was waiting for the panel to lean forward to illuminate the green light, but they did not. Instead, they looked warily at one another. Finally, one of them said, “The contestant’s first two answers are correct. The third answer is not incorrect, but it is
not complete. We are looking for the brothers’ actual
editorial
response.”

Milo Castle said, “Jeremy?”

Jeremy rubbed his temple. I was suddenly quite nervous. I said,
Sie haben die Geschichte von den Folgenden Ausgaben beseitigt
.

Jeremy said,
“Sie haben die Geschichte von den Folgenden Ausgaben beseitigt.”

Milo Castle cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

But I recovered, and quickly provided Jeremy the translation, which he recited: “They eliminated the tale from all subsequent editions.”

Milo Castle and everyone else turned toward the screen, where the experts were all smiling and nodding, and then, wondrous to behold, the green light shone!

In the audience, the celebration appeared exuberant.

Finally, when it had evidently quieted, Milo Castle said, “Well, Jeremy, here we are. You have earned an incredible sixty-four thousand dollars. Retire now, and you take it all home—or at least what Uncle Sam leaves for you. If you go on, and answer one more question, you will earn one hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars, which will be yours to keep and will additionally qualify you for this year’s
Uncommon Knowledge
Tournament of Champions. So what will it be, Jeremy Johnson Johnson? Keep your winnings and retire … or risk your winnings and go on?”

It was clear that Jeremy wanted to stop, but he gazed out at the audience and found his father. He was nodding yes. So were Ginger and Jenny Applegarth. While Jeremy was looking at them, I said,
Let us go ahead, Jeremy. We can make your small town
proud of you
. But it was more than that. I was shimmering with excitement. Never had the
Zwischenraum
been so exhilarating, and I knew it never would be again.

“Well, Jeremy,” Milo Castle said, “stay or go?”

Say yes for me, Jeremy, if you kindly will
.

“Okay,” Jeremy said in a faltering voice.

“Okay?” Milo Castle said. “Okay what?”

“I’ll go ahead.”

Again we could see the audience applauding, although it quickly gave way to apprehension, I could see it in their faces, but this fact only doubled the sum of my pleasure. If we could not answer questions regarding my own life and the tales my brother and I collected, then who could? Besides, there was no turning back—Milo Castle was now wearing the solemn look that preceded his more difficult questions.

“Okay, Jeremy Johnson Johnson,” he said in a hushed tone, “in the tale of Snow White as related by the Brothers Grimm, the jealous queen sends the royal huntsman out into the forest with Snow White for the purpose of killing her. For one hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars, your two-part question is this: In the Grimms’ version of the tale, the queen asks the huntsman to bring back what evidence to prove he has killed Snow White? And, secondly, what change in the nature of this evidence was made when Walt Disney produced his animated version of the tale?”

What?
What kind of foolery was this? I was appalled by the question. Who was this Mr. Walt Disney and why were they asking questions about
his
version of
our
tale?

Jeremy was rubbing his temple, and I told him what I knew.

“In the version collected by the Grimm Brothers,” Jeremy
said, “the huntsman is asked to bring back Snow White’s lungs and liver so the queen might eat them.”

The panel of experts all nodded in agreement.

“And in the Disney version?” Milo Castle said.

Jeremy rubbed his temples again, but what could I do? I could not have felt worse. I was of no help to him.

I do not know
, I said.

“Ten seconds, Jeremy,” Milo Castle said.

Jeremy stared out at the audience. All of the people were very still. They looked at Jeremy as if at somebody perched at the very lip of a high cliff.

Milo Castle said, “A small hint. In the Disney version, the queen wanted to put this into her golden jewelry box.”

So this Mr. Walt Disney wanted something less ghoulish than lungs and liver!
A necklace?
I said.
A buckle from her shoe?

Jeremy shook his head. He was rubbing his temple very hard.

Then, from somewhere within the glass booth, a man’s voice, so soft that it was hardly audible, said, “Her heart.”

Jeremy stiffened for a moment, then his expression turned to confusion. His skin seemed stretched in different directions. He rubbed his temples hard.

That voice was not mine
, I said.
It was a mortal’s voice. I do not know whose
.

“Jeremy?” Milo Castle said. “I’m afraid I have to ask for your answer.”

Jeremy had heard the words. He knew the answer. But he would not speak it.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “I’m sorry.” His face was contorted—he was on the edge of tears. “I never saw the Walt Disney movie. I’m sorry.”

“We will allow you one guess,” Milo Castle said.

“Her heart,” the soft voice within the booth said again.

Jeremy’s expression was wretched. He cast his eyes down and mumbled, “A lock of Snow White’s hair.”

As if shot, Milo Castle’s chin dropped dramatically to his chest. All eyes turned to the experts, who looked gravely at one another and shook their heads.

The dread red light suddenly brightened.

The members of the audience collapsed in their seats, stared at Jeremy in disbelief, clapped their hands to their head. Open mouths, I was sure, were releasing groans.

In a somber tone, Milo Castle said, “Our panel tells us that the first half of your answer is correct, but both answers are required, so, Jeremy, I’m afraid your quest sadly ends here.” The moderator’s voice then turned expansive. “But we and inquisitive minds across America and around the world thank you, Jeremy Johnson Johnson, for sharing with us your … 
uncommon knowledge!
”

Everything else was anticlimactic. The door to the glass booth swung open, and Milo Castle, accompanied by applause, walked across the stage to shake Jeremy’s hand. “Sorry, young man. We were really rooting for you,” he said, and he did seem genuinely regretful. Then the lights dimmed, Milo Castle hurried off into the side darkness, and out in the auditorium there was a general shuffling as people moved toward the exits.

A short time later, Jeremy was escorted to some double metal doors that led into the glaring sunlight of a back alley, where Jeremy’s father, Jenny Applegarth, and Ginger stood waiting.

“Sorry,” Jeremy mumbled when he saw them all looking at
him. Then, without any warning at all, his face gave way and he began to cry. His father was the first to reach him. He put his arms around him and said, “You did great, Jeremy. I couldn’t be prouder.”

“You were fabulous, Jeremy,” Ginger said. “I mean it. I couldn’t believe how you answered all the hard stuff.” She shook her head. “Them bringing the Disney version into it was totally bogus.”

Jeremy dabbed at his eyes with his new blue shirt, then took a few deep breaths. “Well, we got a lot further than I expected,” he said. “I just wish …” But he could not say more.

Jenny Applegarth said, “I had no idea anybody could know so much about the Brothers Grimm. Question after question. I don’t know how to say it, but it was really something.”

“Not really,” Jeremy said. He took a deep breath. “Just so you know, it’s not like I really learned it or anything. It’s more like this stuff just channels through me.”

Everyone in the group was staring at him. Finally, Ginger said, “So you’re not an actual whiz kid—you’re an actual mystic. In what way is that less impressive?”

Jeremy seemed glad to receive Ginger’s kind words, but still he said, “I wasn’t calling myself a mystic.” Then, looking around, he said, “So where’s the big black car?”

“Over there.” Ginger was nodding toward a boxy orange vehicle parked down the alley. A man with a sleepy expression sat behind the wheel.

“The orange van?” Jeremy said.

Ginger offered a wan smile. “I guess the deal is that if you don’t win, they send you home in a pumpkin.”

Over the next few days, Jeremy grew very quiet. He did not rub his temples to invite commiseration from me. In fact, he seemed relieved that I kept my silence. Whether he was annoyed with me, or angry, or disappointed, I did not know. I only sensed that some strange barrier now stood between us.

As disagreeable as these days were for me, they were worse for Jeremy. He owed money he could not pay, and when he went out, the villagers seemed more scornful than ever. Mayor Crinklaw said, “Holy Harry, boy, you were so close to that pot of gold, I could smell it!” and Elbow Adkins said wistfully, “Almost, Jeremy. Almost.” But it was evident that most villagers were on familiar terms with Mr. Walt Disney’s version of the story of Snow White and knew the answer that Jeremy could not give (her heart, just as the mortal’s voice had told us), and so in addition to the town’s judgment of him as an unpunished housebreaker, many citizens seemed to feel a further measure of disdain for his inability to answer what, to them, was the easiest question of all.

Conk Crinklaw, for example, stopped by the bookstore to offer his condolences, then shook his head and said, “But c’mon, Jeremy, I knew the answer to that question when I was, like,
two
. What was in that little glass room—some kind of brain-numbing gas?”

To which Ginger, sitting on the edge of the reading table,
replied, “Nobody I know produces brain-numbing gas but you, Conky.”

Conk nodded as if complimented and asked Ginger if she wanted to come over and get shellacked in a game of horseshoes. “We’ll see who shellacs who,” she said, sliding from the table. She turned to Jeremy. “Wanna come?” she asked, but of course he declined.

And so she went off to play horseshoes, but in less than an hour she had returned to the bookstore and sat down without a word.

“Who won?” Jeremy asked.

“Nobody,” Ginger said. “He was ahead and then I was ahead and then I just didn’t feel like playing anymore.” She looked at him. “I just kept wondering how you were doing.”

He shrugged. “I’m doing fine.”

But, truly, he did not seem fine, and Ginger stayed on, like a nurse waiting for a patient’s fever to break. Days passed. She stayed close and ate with him and sat with him. Sometimes an hour or two would go by and Ginger would say nothing more than “There goes McRaven again,” because, it was true, the deputy continued his vigilant surveillance of Jeremy and the bookstore. But what could a Finder of Occasions do if Jeremy stayed indoors? Nothing. That was what I believed.

The mayor stopped by one day to say he was sorry about it all, and—who knew?—maybe an inheritance would come through for Jeremy, he was sure hoping so, but if it didn’t, well, then, Jeremy and his father could take anything at all they wanted from the building when they went, “except”—the mayor gave Jeremy and Ginger his square-jawed smile—“the walls, floor, and roof, a’course.”

That night, after Ginger had gone home, Jeremy was eating dinner with his father and Jenny Applegarth when his father said, “You know, if anybody’s to blame for you missing that Walt Disney question, it’s me. I remember when
Snow White
was playing over in the next town. You were six or seven, and you wanted to go, but, I don’t know, that was after your mother left and I didn’t like going out. And then I never would spend the money on one of those recording machines, which I thought were a passing fad … So it was my fault if it was anybody’s.”

Jeremy said, “It’s not anybody’s fault, Dad. It’s really not.”

Jenny Applegarth left a delicious-looking bite of red potato poised before her. “That’s right,” she said. “Besides, what matters isn’t so much what you did yesterday as what you do tomorrow. What you do next is who you become.”

Ah. She meant well. But a well-meaning bromide is still a bromide.

A while later, when Jeremy was alone in the kitchen with his father, he said, “I knew the answer to that Disney question. Well, I didn’t really know it. I heard it. When I was in the glass booth.”

His father, washing dishes at the sink, stopped. “What do you mean, you heard it? Like one of those voices in your head you said you heard?”

“No. It was a real voice. A man’s voice. Soft but real. Somebody was trying to help me. It wasn’t Milo Castle, but it must’ve been somebody from the show.”

Mr. Johnson stood still for a moment thinking. “And pay you all that money? Why would they want to do that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve wondered, too. Maybe they thought having
a kid win would help the ratings or bring in a younger group of viewers—I don’t know.”