Far Far Away (30 page)

The baker laughed heartily. “All we need now is a wood crib, which we will soon build. But, first, did you build up an appetite? Yes? Then you are in luck.”

He led them into the hut, which was clean and welcoming, with plain, hand-hewn furnishings—a table, two chairs, a bed—and a simple kitchen arranged around a circular stone fireplace.

“Zoundsapoppin’,” Ginger said, a new term for her and, I was sure, for linguists everywhere. Her eyes flew around the room. “A guy could live here.” She grinned. “Also a girl.”

“Yes, yes,” the baker said. “I’ve often thought that I would retire here someday, when the bakery is finally behind me.” He followed Jeremy’s gaze to the enormous oven at the center of the room. “It burns wood,” he said, “which some people find difficult, but not a Swedish baker.” He gave a modest shrug. “The ovens and I have always understood each other.”

The rear door of the hut gave on to a shaded clearing with a beamed table on which the baker had spread rolls, fruits, meats, and cheeses. One tin pitcher was filled with stalks of lavender, another was filled with thick nectar.

As the baker’s eyes moved from the sumptuous table to
Jeremy and then to Ginger, one could almost see a prideful pleasure coursing through him. “Does it please you?” he asked.

“And then some,” Ginger said at once, and Jeremy was smiling, too.

The baker nodded. “You know, our days too often pass one like the other. I hoped to make this a day that you would not forget.” He gave a broad, beaming smile, and seemed in that moment like a real-life Saint Nicholas, one whose presents came in the form of food in all of its aspects—the baking, the staging, and finally the tasting. It looked so tantalizing that I had to avert my eyes as Jeremy and Ginger sampled one delicacy after another.

The baker, too, partook of the offerings.

“What’s that?” Ginger said, suddenly stilling herself and cocking her head.

I had heard it, too: the distant cracking of a limb.

The baker stared off alertly in the direction of the sound but soon relaxed. “Probably just a falling branch,” he said. “The dead limbs grow brittle and when the wind blows …” He broke off a bit of roll and applied a liberal coating of butter, then mentioned idly that he had seen bears here several times and, once, a mountain lion.

“They aren’t supposed to be here,” he said, “but they are. The foresters call them ‘long-distance dispersals.’ ” He gave a slow-rolling laugh. “Of course, I am a bit of a long-distance dispersal myself.”

“So why
did
you come here?” Jeremy asked. He was layering the most delicious-looking meat and cheese onto a butter-browned roll.

The baker considered the question. “It is a strange thing, but
as a boy in Malmö I always dreamed of owning my own bakery and living in America.”

Ginger dipped a strawberry into heavy cream and asked where Malmö was.

“In Sweden,” the baker said. “Toward the very south. It was such a bustling town! We built ships, we caught herring, we had our own railway station—a wonderful place. But then I grew up, and had a … romantic disappointment.” He smiled. “It is probably hard for you to imagine, but I was younger then.” He sipped from his cup of nectar. “So I decided the time had come for my departure.”

“Do you miss it?” Ginger said. “Sweden, I mean.”

“Sometimes, my dear girl. But less and less.” He glanced toward the cabin and the forest. “It is good here.” And then, rather suddenly, his expression stiffened. “But I will tell you, there are times when the customs here disappoint me. The lost young people that the police cannot find and explain always as runaways. In Sweden, the authorities will not rest in cases like these, but here …” He waved his arm in a gesture of weary dismissal, then drank from his nectar. “And then there is the way the people in town have treated you.” He smiled suddenly and winked. “And how they would treat me if they knew I was hiring you.”

“No problem on that account,” Jeremy offered. “No one saw me this morning, and all I told my dad was that I was doing something with Ginger, but I wasn’t sure what. Which was true.”

Ginger rolled a small slice of meat over a piece of cheese. “That’s more than I told my granddad—or anyone else, for that matter.”

“Thank you.” The baker shook his head. “It’s a shame we
have to take these precautions, but that is how things are in the village in which we live.”

“Yeah, well,” Ginger said, “someday I’m going to live somewhere else.” She smiled and passed a quick glance toward Jeremy. “Someplace far, far away.”

It was quiet again, except for the birdsong and the hollow wind through the trees.

After a last bite of food, Jeremy sat back and said, “That was delicious.”

“And we’re not done yet!” the baker announced. He went into the cabin and returned with a pot of coffee, tin cups, and raspberry and lemon cuts, which they enjoyed in a leisurely way that put me pleasantly in mind of life with Wilhelm and Dortchen before the death of my nephew. I understood the happiness in Jeremy’s and Ginger’s eyes. I, too, was as happy as a ghost might be.

Ginger, sipping her coffee, noticed several sheets of paper, a pencil, and a pen lying on the food tray. “What’s up with that?” she asked. “You writing a letter?”

The baker smiled. “When you talked about wanting to go far, far away, I thought of something I did as a child that made me feel better,” and he went on to explain that when he was young and he was angry at his parents or his school friends and wished he were far away in America, he would sometimes sit down and write a letter to his parents as if he were already gone. “Sometimes I would write as if I were stowed away on a ship crossing the Atlantic, sometimes I would write as if I were already in America selling newspapers in New York City. I would sign the letter, fold it carefully, and address the envelope, and
then, when it lay there sealed and ready to go, I always felt better. It was as if writing of my leave-taking foretold it, and made it my destiny.”

Jeremy asked what he did with the letters.

“Oh, put them aside, into drawers, under books. My mother found one—it made her very sad.” He winked. “After that, I hid them better.”

Ginger eyed the writing paper. “Could I try one?”

The baker shrugged agreeably. “Of course, if you like. But there’s no need. It’s just a little trick I found useful, and I thought …”

Ginger and Jeremy each selected a piece of paper and an envelope, hers a square one that she addressed to her grandfather, Jeremy’s long and rectangular, which he addressed to his father. While the baker cleared the table, Ginger and Jeremy composed their notes. Ginger was quickly done. Jeremy was more hesitant and, when finished, folded his note into its envelope.

“Well, then,” the baker said. “Did that help? What did we write?”

Ginger held up her sheet of paper and read: “Hi, Grandpa. We took a train out of town. I’m not sure where we are exactly, but it’s far away and I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.” Her amber eyes shone as she read this, and when she was finished, she looked genially from Jeremy to Sten Blix. “You’re right. It really does make you feel like you’ve already got one foot out the door.”

She turned to Jeremy. “So what did you write?”

He shrugged. “Not much.”

“C’mon, Jeremy Jeremy! No fair! Cough it up.”

He looked down as if abashed. “I just wrote my dad that I
didn’t miss a lot of people in town but I missed some of them and I missed him most of all.”

“Ahh, you’re such a sweetheart, Jeremy,” she said. “Did you say where you were?”

“Arizona.”

Ginger issued an abrupt laugh. “Arizona! Why Arizona?”

Jeremy shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.”

At this pleasant moment, we heard another cracking sound some distance away, and again everyone stared into the shadowy woods and waited. But we heard nothing more.

“As long as it’s not a bear,” Ginger said.

The baker’s laugh was jovial. “Even the bears leave humans alone unless you come between a mother and her cub.”

Ginger grinned. “That’s a hard-and-fast rule of mine: Never come between a bear and her cub.”

Jeremy said, “My rule is: Never come between a Ginger and her cheeseburger.” He laughed and turned to the baker. “You should see her eat a cheeseburger. It’s not what you’d call routinely carnivorous.”

Well, I will tell you, it was a charming sight: a girl, a boy, and a Saint Nicholas–like baker, all in radiant good humor.

After dining, they set to work on the wood crib, a job that moved smoothly because the baker had already cut and drilled the boards according to a prescribed plan. “I like this,” Jeremy said. “It’s like assembling a kit.”

“Seventy percent of success is planning,” the baker said. “Twenty-five is execution. And”—he chuckled—“the last five percent is alignment of the stars.”

By midafternoon they had finished the wood crib, and soon they had it filled with the wood Jeremy and Ginger had split earlier. Jeremy leaned against it and took in a deep breath of the piney air.

“Thanks,” he said to the baker. “That was fun.”

Ginger, standing nearby with skin damp from sweat, said, “Yeah, it was, kind of, considering that it was actually work.” She turned to the baker. “What’s next?”

“No more work. Now it is time to rest and enjoy yourselves.” He pointed off. “Do you see the lightning-split pine at the crest of the hill? Beyond it is a pond that is perfect for swimming. You go ahead, and I’ll follow along.” He gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t swim myself.”

“Don’t like to or can’t?” Ginger asked.

“Can’t. But you both can swim, yes?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ginger said. “We can swim like the fishes.”

The pond, when they came to it, was as placid and picturesque as everything else in the baker’s domain. An enormous boulder reached toward the sky and overhung the water, and Jeremy and Ginger changed into their bathing costumes on either side of it. Ginger ducked into the pond first, bobbed quickly up, and said, “Okay, then. Not that warm.”

But soon they were splashing and kicking and reporting where they could and could not touch bottom. The breeze filtered through the trees and my mind wandered. A short time later, I noticed Jeremy regarding Ginger, who was staring up intently at the massive boulder that leaned out over the deepest portion of the pond.

“Don’t even think about it,” Jeremy said.

“Oh, I’m thinking about it, all right.” She grinned. “What’ll you give me if I dive from up there?”

“I don’t know—how about the Unrivaled Stupidity Award?”

Ginger laughed. “That happens to be an award I’ve been dying to get.”

“Excellent. Of course, you might die getting it.”

Ginger emerged dripping from the water, and my ancient heart tightened as she picked her way up a series of ledges and momentarily disappeared behind the rock. When she next appeared, she was walking crablike along the rock’s domed top. She stood carefully, as if on slick ice, and peered down.

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s the thing. It looks way different from up here.”

“Don’t do it,” Jeremy said. “Just because something’s pointless and dangerous doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

This advice echoed my own sentiments, but she did not reply. In fact, as she stared down, a concentration of purpose seemed gradually to be building within her.

Jeremy!
I cried.
You must tell her to stop!

“Ginger, seriously. Don’t even think about this.”

Her smile was frozen, but her words were full of bravado. “Oh, I’m thinking about it, all right.”

Real fear took hold of me.
Jeremy! Stop her! You must stop her!

Jeremy sought middle ground. “Look, Ginger, if you do it, don’t dive. You can just jump. You’ll still get the Stupidity Award if you just jump.”

Ginger edged forward, looking down. She took a deep breath, bent slightly forward, but still did not dive. She stood frozen midway between fear and resolve.

Help her, Jeremy. Help her to step back
.

“Ginger, listen to me. Just climb back down. I’ll give you the Stupidity Award for just thinking about it. And if you dive and hit a rock, you might wind up a vegetable, which is worse than dying.”

But this, if anything, had an effect opposite of what he desired. Ginger inched so close to the ledge that a gusting touch of wind might send her over. She stared straight forward, staring, staring, not moving, standing perfectly still, staring, staring … and then she bowed her head, raised her hands, and—
mein Gott!
—plummeted headfirst into the water, which swallowed her in one quick gulp.

For a moment, the world’s heart stopped beating.

Then, suddenly, Ginger’s head burst through the surface and her tightly closed face opened into an exultant laugh. “Ha!” she called, splashing water toward Jeremy. “That Stupidity Award is mine, all mine!”

Jeremy’s laugh was fueled by relief. “And I can think of no recipient more deserving.”

Well, there it is: youth, and the pleasures of unpunished recklessness.

They swam and paddled about for a while, and then Ginger
began walking the length of a slippery log that cantilevered over the far end of the pond. At its end, she stood on one leg posing, it seemed, as a stork.