Far Far Away (8 page)

When I slipped through the front door with Jeremy, I stopped to take in the marvelous smells of sugar melted and sugar baked, but
Jeremy rushed to the baker’s wooden table and frantically twisted the edge of the first bag of explosive candy.

Mein Gott!
I said. I could not keep myself from saying it, for Jeremy’s hands were red from having torn them on the fence. He, too, saw the blood for the first time, and in his alarm, he pulled even harder on the packet, ripping it nearly in two and scattering candy crystals all over the table.

Jeremy swept the
Kiesel
into one hand and dropped them into the bowl.

Dimly I could hear the sound of shoes.

Jeremy! He is coming!

Jeremy took a backward step, but there on the table lay the empty bag, the very edge of it smeared red with his blood.

The outside gravel popped louder and louder.

Jeremy stepped back to the table, grabbed the bag, and shoved it in his pocket.

To my horror, I saw another scrap from the bag lying under the table, but one of the girlfriends was tapping rapidly at the window, waving him out, and so we flew through the door and around the corner and settled into Ginger’s hiding place just as the baker passed again, still whistling his little tune.

He locked the front door behind him, and then only the muted sounds of the television penetrated the walls.

“You okay?” Ginger whispered, squeezing Jeremy’s arm. “I hope you’re okay, because you were pretty freaking fabulous.”

Jeremy, too, seemed to feel exhilarated. Well, that is how it is when mortals do something foolish and escape unharmed. Jeremy pulled on his black canvas shoes but did not tie them. “Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Before the grand finale?” she whispered. “I don’t think so.”

Jeremy rubbed the sweat near his temple. To my surprise, he actually wanted my opinion.
We should go
, I told him.
Run! Eile! Fretta! Haast!

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered again to Ginger, but she merely swatted at something crawling up her leg from the ivy, then rose just enough to peer through the window. When she motioned to Jeremy, he did the same.

Within the dining room, the portly baker could be observed as if on a lighted stage. He sensed nothing unusual. He brushed something from his full white beard and was still whistling as he pulled out his chair and sat down with his eyes on the television screen.

He leaned forward and twisted the cap from the milk carton.

“Here goes!” Ginger whispered, but just then the baker stopped to stare at the television, where there appeared a close-up picture of a missing person—a robust young man with a gap-toothed smile. A sign above his picture said
MISSING?
 … and a sign below said
OR MERELY AN OVERSEAS ADVENTURE?
A woman moderator then came on the screen, but her words could not be heard. Behind her, there appeared a map of Europe with a red arrow pointing to Amsterdam. The baker was attentive throughout this story, and when it ended, he shook his head with an attitude that suggested concern or sadness.

For this we are playing window peeper?
I said.

“Let’s go!” Jeremy said in a tight whisper.

But Ginger was transfixed.

She watched the baker lift the carton of milk and pour.

The instant the liquid touched the cereal, the baker’s face
froze and he wrenched his hand back. Rising quickly and stumbling away from the table, he dropped into a crouch, stricken, as if something dangerous had leapt up from the bowl. I felt pity for him, but at the windows, the girlfriends had to cover their mouths to smother their laughter.

After a moment, the baker began to stand up straighter. He regarded the cereal bowl, milk dripping from the table to the floor, spreading to the top of the candy package Jeremy had left behind. The baker’s eyes went to the front door and then to the kitchen and a doorway beyond. He disappeared down that corridor, evidently checking other rooms, for light appeared in a succession of windows.

Jeremy tugged at Ginger’s arm, but still she waited and watched.

Soon the baker returned to the dining room. He bent close to stare at the floor, at what I knew to be the scrap from the package. But he didn’t pick it up.

And then the moment arrived that must always arrive in such situations.

The baker’s gaze lifted. It moved from window to window until, at last, it was directed at us.

Ginger and Jeremy ducked out of the way. I did not. I watched the baker walk heavily across the room and put his hand to a switch on the wall.

Mein Gott!
—suddenly the whole yard was flooded with light!

“Code red!” Ginger shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”

Maddy and Marjory were already bouncing over the mud on the wooden plank and racing toward the high fence, with Ginger close behind. The plank shifted abruptly under Jeremy’s weight,
and in the next instant his foot was sucked into the deep gummy mud. He stumbled forward, trying to pull himself free.

Up!
I urged.
Up! Up!
—but the mud oozed around him and pulled at his feet and hands. Suddenly, Ginger was there, leaning forward from solid ground, extending her hand, and his foot wrenched free of both shoe and mud, and Ginger and Jeremy ran for the fence as if chased by demons.

The baker stood at the leafy window peering out at the yard. But what could he see? In their black clothes, Jeremy and the girls were but shadows.

Maddy took a running jump at the fence, caught hold of the top, and scrabbled over, but Marjory needed help. Jeremy and Ginger boosted her up and over, then, as Jeremy stirruped his hands for Ginger, she fell back, grabbed at his collar—he would remember later a quick tug at his neck—and she fell almost to the ground before he could get hold of her. At once she was upright again, and this time she stepped back, launched herself toward the fence, and pulled herself up and over.

The baker opened the window.
“Hallå!”
he called. “Who is out there?”

Jeremy pulled off his remaining shoe and tossed it over the fence.

“Hallå!”
the baker shouted. “Stop there! Stop there right now!”

Jeremy flew for the fence and, springing almost out of himself, caught hold of the fence top and spilled over it, bouncing off clattering trash cans and rolling to the ground on the other side.

Where, to my utter surprise, he sat up, looked at Ginger, who was standing there with his shoe in her hand, and began to laugh.

“Code red?”
he said. “I don’t remember anybody talking about
code red.
”

“Yeah, well,” Ginger said, and now she was laughing, too. “I didn’t think it was going to come up.” She extended his muddy shoe. “Here you go, Cinderella!”

“Hope it fits,” he joked, stuffing his muddy foot into the muddy shoe and half limping, half loping after her as they all scampered down the alleyway.

I, however, paused at the fence to look back.

Framed by the large window, the baker stood talking into the telephone while gazing out toward the yard, the fence, and the unseen me.

Ein Anruf bei der Polizei
.

I was sure of it.

The baker was contacting the sheriff.

Maddy and Marjory had gone in one direction, Ginger and Jeremy in another. I caught up with them just as they rushed around a corner and
—mein Gott
!—knocked someone down!

Mrs. Jenny Applegarth.

In fact, Ginger had also gone sprawling, and Jeremy hardly knew whom to help first.

Jenny Applegarth, he decided.

“Sorry,” he said, extending his hand to pull her back up. “Are you okay?”

They had fallen within a circle of light thrown by one of Main Street’s three streetlamps. When Jenny Applegarth looked up at him, a smile came to her lips. “Is that you, Jeremy—all dressed in black?”

“Hi, Mrs. Applegarth,” Jeremy said. “I guess we weren’t paying attention.”

Jeremy did yard work for Jenny Applegarth and had always liked her. Now she was brushing herself off and regarding Ginger, also dressed in black.

“It’s me,” Ginger said, peeling up the front edge of her black watch cap. For once the girl seemed not to know what next to say.

Mrs. Applegarth gazed down the empty street for a moment. “I thought I heard someone else, too.”

The girlfriends, probably.

“Maybe,” Ginger said, and offered nothing more.

Jeremy said, “Well, I guess we’d better go now.”

Jenny Applegarth nodded and then added a small smile. “I’ll let you know if I run into your missing shoe.”

Jeremy glanced down at his muddy feet and started to offer an explanation, but Mrs. Applegarth held up an open hand to stop him. “The less I know, the better I like it.” Again she smiled. “Night, kiddos.”

She began to walk away.

“Mrs. Applegarth?” Ginger called softly, and Jenny Applegarth looked back.

“If anybody asks—probably they won’t, but, I mean, let’s say they did—could you just forget you saw us tonight?”

Jenny Applegarth regarded her for a moment. “It depends,” she said, “but maybe.” Her expression softened. “My memory always
has
been kind of dicey.”

She turned the corner, disappearing from sight, and Ginger said they’d better keep moving.

I glided smoothly ahead and soon confirmed my worst fear: I saw Sheriff Pittswort’s black-and-white patrol car wheeling from the police station and turning toward Main. I slipped back to Jeremy and advised him to hide at once.

“What?” he said.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ginger said.

Sheriff Pittswort. He’s coming this way. Hide
.

“Quick,” Jeremy said, grabbing Ginger’s arm. “In here.”

He pulled her behind a short wall of blue plastic bins stacked in the alcove of Crinklaw’s Superette.

“What are you doing?” Ginger said.

“Hiding.”

“Because?” she asked. But at this moment the arcing beams of headlights swept onto the street. “It’s Pittswort!” she said, ducking back. She looked at Jeremy in amazement. “The baker called the freaking
sheriff
? Over freaking
Pop Rocks
?”

Ginger and Jeremy crouched behind the bins as the sheriff’s car prowled down the street. Mounted to the car was a strong lamp that the sheriff used to probe into dark nooks and crannies, including those around the superette, but Jeremy and Ginger were well hidden, and the patrol car slowly passed by.

“Okay,” Ginger whispered, “that was an unnecessary thrill.” She stood and looked around. “Let’s get out of here.”

Wait
, I said, for I had seen something else as well.

“Just a second,” Jeremy said.

“Why?” Ginger said. “Let’s just—”

At that moment a second set of headlights turned onto Main. It was Deputy McRaven in a second patrol car. It, too, passed slowly by.

All right, then
, I said, and was about to tell Jeremy to hurry home when to my dismay I heard something else!
Wait!
I said.
Wait. And hush
.

Jeremy took hold of Ginger’s arm to keep her quietly in place.

Footsteps
, I said, and in the next moment they could hear them, too—slow, shuffling footsteps coming this way. Behind the grocery crates, Ginger and Jeremy shrank into their smallest selves and held their breath.

Closer and closer came the shuffling footsteps of a dark hooded figure.

It was Mrs. Truax.

And then, a few feet away, on the opposite side of the grocery crates, she stopped. She peered that way and this.

“Possy?” she said at last in a dry, hollow voice. “Possy?”

The stillness seemed to stretch beyond the earthly world. And then, at last, this strange hooded woman turned and shuffled slowly on, and Jeremy and Ginger fled toward home, where yet another unhappy surprise awaited.

At the bookstore door, Jeremy pulled the leather thong from inside his shirt and … found it broken.

“What?” Ginger said.

Jeremy stood holding one end of the broken leather thong. “My key. It’s gone.” He looked back down the street. “I’d better go look for it.”

“With Pittswort and McRaven and crazy Mrs. Truax crawling the streets?” Ginger said. “Are you doing any kind of thinking here at all?”

Jeremy admitted that he probably was not.

They circled to the side of the building, where Jeremy pried open a window that he knew was never latched. As he got set to climb through, Ginger grabbed hold of his arm. “So,” she said, grinning at him through the darkness. “How’d you like your first night outside the Jeremopolis city limits?”

He gave a small laugh. “I’m not sure. It was all right, I guess.”

“Not sure? My God, Jeremy. You were amazing! I said you had potential, and I was totally right.” She reached for his one remaining shoe. “I’m going to jettison this.”

“Why?”

“What good’s one shoe going to do you? Besides, from this minute on, you never owned a pair of black Converse.” She folded a stick of cinnamon gum into her mouth. “I’d also advise throwing all your muddy clothes in the washer.”

“Yeah, okay.” He paused. “I think I’m not really suited to a life of crime.”