“Ever wonder what it’s like being a quadriplegic? Do anything stupid and you’ll find out.”
Through the picture window he saw Mr. Robinson between Mr. Rashid and Mr. Longwell. The side window was open so he could hear their angry words. Normally it would be music to his ears. Mr. Fabrini and Mr. Woolbright came out of their houses to try to calm things down. Mr. McCuin joined them.
Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, Mr. Garcia was racing across the street. He took Mr. McCuin down with a flying tackle. It took three men to pull him off.
“Hold it, guys,” Mr. Robinson shouted. “Hold it for just one goddamn minute!” When the men calmed, he said, “Look at us. We were never like this. What’s going on here?”
“I can tell you what’s going on,” Mr. Longwell said, pointing a finger at Mr. Rashid. “He calls me a thief and writes ‘nigger’ on my lawn!”
Mr. Robinson said, “Hold it! Hold it! Do you know what kind of abuse Munaf gets? He gets called a ‘towel head’ or a ‘terrorist’ or – you’ll like this one, Cletus – a ‘sand nigger.’ You really think he’s gonna write ‘nigger’ on you lawn? And by the way, I heard the story about Cletus’s parole and asked a friend in the DA’s office to do a little checking. The call was a lie.”
“Who’d do something like that?”
“Look around,” Mr. Robinson said. “Who’s not here?”
Theodore held his breath as all heads swiveled his way.
“All this started after Gordon moved in. And I’m pretty damn sure he drained my crankcase.”
“And that homo classified I got signed up for,” Mr. Woolbright said. “Phil told Jean he had gay porn in his mailbox today.”
“But why?” Mr. Garcia said.
“Why don’t we go ask him?”
The muzzle pressed harder against his spine.
“That’s what I want to know. Why? That ledger of yours – looks like you’re writing reports. Who are they going to?”
He had the ledger! How–?
How didn’t matter. Everything was falling apart. And he was asking the question Theodore never would answer. Never.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The muzzle pressed deeper into his flesh, then was removed.
“If we had time, you’d tell. But things are moving faster than I’d planned. Robinson is sharp, and you’re about to have some very angry people on your doorstep.”
“I’ll talk to them, reason with them.”
“No amount of talk will calm them after they see what’s in your garage.”
“My garage?”
“Yeah. I raised the door halfway. Front and center is Rashid’s wrench set. But there’s also an empty can of Speed Weed, some strychnine-containing rat poison, and Robinson’s drain plug along with pink panties and photos of his daughter.”
Theodore felt as if his bones were dissolving.
“What do you think Robinson is going do when he sees all that?” the intruder continued. “Oh, and I called the vet. I said I was from poison control and he told me it looked like the Garcia dog died from strychnine. So I called Garcia – again as poison control – and told him to make sure he didn’t have any strychnine-containing pest control around. How do you think he’ll react when he sees that box of rat poison?”
Theodore closed his eyes and trembled.
“You’re busted, pal. I’d love to have more time with you, but I don’t want to be here when company comes calling. Have a nice day.”
Rising on wobbly legs, Theodore turned and faced him. He found his voice. “You’d make a good distributor.”
“Is that your game?”
Game? It wasn’t a game. It was serious business.
“Who would I be working for?”
Theodore shook his head.
A gloved hand shot out and smashed against his jaw, rocking his head back and sending him to the floor.
“Just in case you thought I’d forgotten about the dog.”
Theodore lay there, groaning. After a moment he heard the back door open and close. And then he heard the voices in his front yard.
“What if he’s not home?”
“He’s always home – haven’t you noticed?”
“Maybe he – hey! That’s my wrench set! What’s it doing–?”
The voices moved toward the garage.
“Speed Weed! That kills grass doesn’t?”
“And geraniums too.”
“What’s this? Pictures of Chelsea and – oh shit!”
“Rat poison! The motherfucker!”
An angry babble rose as someone began pounding on the door.
Theodore struggled to his feet and stumbled upstairs.
Exposed . . . bad enough, but losing the ledger was the final humiliation
He was finished. Nothing to do now but bow out and avoid further embarrassment.
He jumped at the sound of smashing glass. Something had crashed through the front window.
His shaking fingers removed the cyanide capsule from its container. He put it between his teeth and bit hard.
Time to move.
introduction to “Piney Power”
In mid-2008 I agreed to donate a short young-adult thriller to another ITW-sponsored anthology. Once again, I’d be limited to 5k words. At the time I was deep into the young-adult Repairman Jack novels I’d contracted to write and had introduced some piney kids into the trilogy. (If you’re not familiar with what a piney is, it’s explained in the story.) I thought maybe I’d take them out for a spin in their own story (with young Jack along, of course) and see what they could do.
Piney Power
1
Old Man Foster had the signs posted all over his land.
NO FISHING
NO HUNTING
NO TRAPPING
NO TRESPASSING
No kidding. And no big deal.
Jack never paid them much attention. He figured since he wasn’t involved in the first three, he deserved a pass on the last. No, what caught Jack’s eye was the bright red object tacked to the bark just below the sign.
“Hey, check it out,” he said, hitting the brakes. His tires skidded in the sandy soil as his BMX came to a stop. “Who’d put a reflector way out here?”
Weezy stopped her bike beside his. “Doesn’t make sense.”
Her birth certificate said “Louise” but no one had called her that since she turned two. She was older than Jack – hit fifteen last week, while Jack still had a few months to go. As usual, she was all in black – sneaks, jeans, Bauhaus T-shirt. She’d wound her dark hair into two braids today, giving her a Wednesday Addams look.
“Never noticed it before.”
“Because it wasn’t there,” she said.
Jack accepted that as fact. They used this firebreak trail a lot when they were cruising the Barrens, and if the reflector had been here before, she’d remember. Weezy never forgot anything. Ever.
He touched the clear sap coating on the head of the nail that fixed it to the tree. His fingertip came away wet. He showed her.
“This is fresh – really fresh.”
Weezy touched the goop and nodded. “Like maybe this morning.”
Jack checked the ground and saw tire tracks. It had rained last night and these weren’t washed out in the slightest.
“Looks like a truck,” he said, pointing.
Weezy nodded. “Two sets – coming and going. And one’s deeper than the other.” She looked at Jack. “Hauled something in or took something out.”
“Maybe it was Old Man Foster himself.”
“Could be.”
Foster had supposedly owned this chunk of the Jersey Pine Barrens forever, but no one had ever seen him. No one had ever seen anyone posting the land, either, but the signs were everywhere.
“Want to follow?”
She glanced at her watch and shook her head. “Got to go to Medford with my mom.”
“Again? What’s this – an every Wednesday thing?”
> She looked away. “No. Just works out that way.” When she looked back, disappointment shone in her eyes. “You going without me?”
Jack sensed she wanted them to go together, but he didn’t think he could hold off.
“Yeah. Probably nothing to see. If I find anything, we can come back together.”
She nodded and offered half a smile. “Sure you won’t get lost without me?”
He glanced at the sun sliding down the western sky. Every year, people – mostly hunters – entered the Barrens and were never seen again. Folks assumed they got lost and starved. No big surprise in a million-plus acres of mostly uninhabited pine forest. If a vanilla sky moved in, you could lose all sense of direction and wander in circles for days. But with the sun visible, Jack knew all he had to do was keep heading west and he’d hit civilization.
“I’ll manage somehow. See you later.”
He watched her turn her Schwinn, straddle the banana seat, and ride off with a wave. After the trees had swallowed her, Jack turned off the fire trail and began following the tire tracks along the narrow passage – little more than two ruts separated by a grassy ridge and flanked by the forty-foot scrub pines that dominated the Barrens. They formed a thick wall, crowding the edges of the path, reaching over him with their crooked, scraggly branches.
The passage forked and the tracks bore to the right. A half dozen feet into the fork he spotted another reflector. At the next fork the tracks bore left, and sure enough, another reflector.
Odd. He’d figured the first had been a marker for the starting point of the trail. Grass and trees could thicken over a growing season and obscure what had once been an obvious opening. But whoever had come along here this morning was marking every turn, placing reflectors where headlights would pick them up as they approached. That meant he was planning to come back in the dark. Maybe tonight. Maybe many nights.
Why?
Jack found the answer a half mile farther on where the tire tracks ended in a clearing with a large, solitary oak in its center. Near its base someone had dumped a dozen or more 55-gallon oil drums – old ones, rusted, banged up, and leaky.
He jumped at the sound of a car engine roaring his way. A few seconds later a weird-looking contraption bounced into the clearing on the far side. It had the frame of a small Jeep, maybe a Wrangler, with no roof, sides, or hood. The engine was exposed, though the firewall was still in place, and instead of a steering wheel, someone had fixed a long-handled wrench to the column. The front and rear seats had been replaced by a pair of ratty-looking sofas occupied by three kids in their mid teens. Jack recognized the driver: Elvin Neolin from his civics class. He’d seen the other boy around school as well, but the white-haired girl was new.
Pineys.
They lived out here in the woods. Some had jobs in the towns around the Pines, and some lived off the land – hunting, fishing, gardening. All were poor and a few were a little scary looking in their mismatched, ill-fitting clothes and odd features. Hard to say why they seemed odd. Not like they had bug eyes and snaggle teeth; more like looking at a reflection in one of those old-time mirrors where the glass wasn’t even.
Some folks called them inbreds, talking about brothers and sisters getting together and having kids. Jack didn’t know if any of that was true. People liked to talk, and some people just naturally exaggerated as they went along. But no one could deny that some Pineys didn’t look quite right.
The kid riding shotgun was Levi Coffin, a sophomore at SRB High. Coffin was an old Quaker name that Jack envied. Jack Coffin… how cool to have a name like that.
Levi jumped out and strode toward Jack. He was tall and lanky, and his clothes were too short in the arms and legs. His mismatched eyes – one blue and one brown – blazed.
“This your doin’?”
Jack tensed. Levi looked a little scary.
“No way. I just got here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, north. “Followed tire tracks from back there. They ended here.”
Levi glanced over his shoulder at Elvin who was staring his way. Elvin was on the short side with piercing dark eyes, stiff black hair, and high cheekbones. Looked like he might have some Lenape Indian in him.
Their eyes locked, then Levi turned away, muttering, “All right, all right.”
What’s that all about? Jack wondered.
Levi inspected the tire tracks while Elvin hopped out and walked over to the drums. Jack sensed the white-haired girl staring at him from the buggy. He realized with a start that she had pink irises. White hair… milk-white skin… what was that called…?
Albino… she was an albino.
“I can’t see him, Levi,” she said in a high-pitched voice.
Was she blind?
“What?” Levi swiveled to stare at Jack.
Elvin was struggling with the top to one of the drums. He looked toward Levi who turned back, then gave his head a sideways jerk toward Jack.
Elvin nodded, saying, “Hey, Levi. Gimme a hand.”
Levi walked over and touched the lid – barely touched it – and it popped loose.
Jack felt a funny sensation ripple down his spine as he remembered an incident in school with Levi. Something way strange here. He hesitated, then started toward the drums as the two boys lifted the lid. They dropped it when they saw what was inside.
“Damn!” Levi said. “Damn them to hell!”
Jack might have quipped about where else you could damn someone to, but the rage in Levi’s voice warned him off. He stepped up and saw the thick, cloudy green liquid; his nose stung from the sharp chemical odor.
“What is it?”
“Some sort of toxic crap,” Levi said. “They’re using this spot as a dumping ground.”
“Who?”
“Crooks from upstate. We’ve found stuff like this before.”
Jack said, “Better than dumping it in some river, I guess.”
Levi glared at him and pointed to a barrel on its side. The sand near its top was wet with gunk.
“That one’s leaking. It sinks into the ground water. And guess who gets their water from wells out here. We do. But who cares about Pineys.”
Jack understood some of the reaction. Kids at school tended to rag on the Pineys, make fun of their clothes, joke about the brother-sister connections. But Jack wasn’t one of those and didn’t like being lumped in with them.
“No fair.”
Another look passed between Levi and Elvin, and then Levi shrugged. “Forget it. El says you’re okay.”
Fine, but Jack hadn’t heard El say anything.
“We should tell the cops,” Jack said. “My sister used to date a deputy and–”
Levi and Elvin and the girl were shaking their heads… same direction, same speed, moving as one. Jack was getting creeped.
“Uh-uh,” Levi said. “Cops ain’t gonna go patrolling the Pines looking for someone they don’t know, who might or might not come back.”
“Oh, they’ll be back.”
Levi’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
“Because they marked the path with reflectors.”
“Yeah? Show us.”
As Jack reached for his bike, Elvin pointed to the weird buggy. “With us.”
“You’re old enough to drive?”
The two boys laughed.
“Plenty old enough to drive,” Levi said. Elvin never said much at school and didn’t seem to have much more to say out here. “Just not old enough for a license.”
“Aren’t you af–?” Jack began, then cut himself off. Afraid of being caught? Out here? By what – the Jersey Devil in a sheriff’s Stetson? Stupid question.
He spotted a “Piney Power” sticker on the rusted rear bumper.
“What’s that mean?”
Levi shrugged. “Some folks hereabouts think Pineys should get organized and vote and all that.” He glanced at Elvin. “We just like the sound of it.”
Elvin laughed. “Yeah. Sounds cool.”
The girl said
nothing, simply stared at him.
Jack gave the buggy another once-over. Without sides, a top, or even a roll bar, it had to be the most dangerous car he’d ever seen. He’d be risking his life in that thing.
“Well,” Levi said, “you ridin’ or not?”
Jack couldn’t wait.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
As he seated himself on the rear sofa, the albino girl scooched away and squeezed against the far end. Her pink gaze never wavered from his face.
“I can’t see him.”
“Yeah?” Levi turned in the front sofa and looked at Jack. “El says he’s okay.”
“But I can’t see him!”
Jack waved his hand between them and she flinched.
“You can see me.”
“That’s Saree,” Levi said. “She’s talking about a different kind of seeing.”
Jack was going to ask what he meant but then Elvin started the engine with a roar.
Trying to ignore Saree’s unwavering stare, he directed Elvin down the path, following his own bike tracks, till they came to the firebreak trail. Elvin turned around and drove back.
Levi was right. The Burlington County sheriff’s department didn’t have the manpower to stake out Old Man Foster’s land or even this one path. Could be weeks before the dumpers made a return trip. Had to be a way to make them give themselves away. Or better yet…
An idea began to form.
“What’s down that way?” Jack said, pointing left as they approached the first fork.
“More of the same,” Levi said. “Why?”
“Wondering if there’s a spong nearby… the deeper and wetter the better.”
“I know a cripple,” Saree said, still staring.
Elvin followed her directions through a few more forks that left Jack totally disoriented.
“You know where we are, right?”
Saree rolled her eyes.
Okay, dumb question to ask a Piney. But at least she seemed to be relaxing a little.
A few minutes later, she said, “Right up here.”
Elvin rolled to a stop before a thirty-foot-wide cripple – a water-filled depression half-surrounded by white cedars. Without the cedars it would have been called a spong.