“Marbles? Where do you shoot marbles?”
“In the woods.”
“Around here?”
He shook his head. “We’re from Little Egg Harbor. Just riding around.”
Little Egg Harbor was on the east side of the Barrens.
“You must be a good shot if you’re hitting marbles.”
He grinned. “Getting there. Sarge is a great teacher. Gave me a Ruger seventy-seven. It’s really cool. Been shooting pinecones but now we’re looking for something smaller.”
Jack felt a pang of envy. He’d love a rifle. Not to hunt, just for target practice. He was sure his own dad could teach him to shoot as well as this Sarge. Maybe better. After all, hadn’t Mr. Bainbridge called him “Deadeye”?
Guns were common in and around the Pines. Lots of hunters. Deer season opened last month, and small-game hunters were waiting for pheasant and quail season to start in a week or two. Almost everyone in Johnson had a rifle or a shotgun somewhere in the house. Or so it seemed.
But despite countless requests—at times he felt as if he were living A Christmas Story—Dad hadn’t even let him have a BB gun.
The man returned to the front.
“Nothing else here, son.” He nodded to Jack. “Be seeing you.”
The boy said, “See ya,” and the three of them left.
Jack pondered how to talk his father into letting him have a rifle—he’d pay for it himself—but he had more important matters to address. Like Operation Toliver.
He headed for the bin where Mr. Rosen kept all the toys—used toys, of course. He began emptying it item by item. He remembered some months ago when he had been cleaning it out he’d found—
Here it was: a small tin, the size of a beer can, labeled PEANUT BRITTLE.
But Jack knew it wasn’t peanut brittle.
He pulled off the cap, and even though he was ready for it, the four-foot green spring snake that launched itself from the can sparked a laugh.
It wobbled through the air and landed on the far side of the room. Jack retrieved it and inspected it. The snake’s polka-dot fabric was faded and worn in spots that let the metal coils of the internal spring show through, but it still worked. And that was all that counted.
He stuffed it back into its can and recapped it. Then he took it to the counter. As he began to write it in the sale book, he glanced out the window and recognized the Connells’ car. Mrs. Connell was behind the wheel, and slunk down in the rear, her head barely above the lower edge of the window, sat Weezy. Almost looked like she was hiding. Somehow she’d been pried out of her room. They were coming in from the highway. Jack wondered where they’d been. To that psychiatrist?
He sighed. Poor Weez. Sure, she wasn’t like everybody else, but did she need a shrink? She wasn’t crazy, just … different.
When they’d passed out of sight he returned to business, peeling the $1.50 price tag off the spring-snake can and sticking that next to his written entry. He fished two bucks from his wallet, placed them in the cash register, and removed a pair of quarters.
He was now the proud owner of a novelty spring snake. But not for long.
He’d heard it was better to give than receive and so he intended to make a gift of it to someone real soon.
6
“I can’t go anywhere, Jack,” Weezy said.
He’d got off early and had swung by Weezy’s instead of going straight home. They sat in her darkened bedroom.
“Sure you can. We can take a ride in the Pines. No one will see you there.”
“No. My folks won’t let me out. They say if I’m not going to go to school, then I can’t go anywhere else.”
Jack debated mentioning it, then decided why not?
“Um, then that wasn’t you I saw with your mother earlier?”
She reddened. “Oh, that. She dragged me somewhere. That was different.”
Jack didn’t press. He had an idea where.
“You can’t sneak out?”
“Kind of hard with my mom checking on me every two seconds asking how I feel.”
“I was thinking maybe checking out the pyramid and—”
Tears rimmed her lids. “I can’t go anywhere, Jack. Don’t you get it?”
Yeah, he got it.
And so he got going. Their talk had started him thinking about that pyramid in the Pines. He hadn’t been back since last month. Maybe he could find something else out there to interest her, something she couldn’t refuse to go see.
As he rode through the trees and neared the spong, he spotted a fairly new blue Ford F-150 pickup—maybe a 1982 or ’83—parked off the fire trail in the brush. The piney trapper’s? He doubted it. Then whose?
No sticks in the traps this trip. The piney must have reset them. He speeded up as he approached, planning a quickie spong flyby, and was halfway past when he glanced over and thought he saw something wriggling on the ground. He looked again and no doubt about it: something moving there.
He skidded to a halt and stared. Jack wasn’t sure what it was, but a furry little something appeared to have got itself caught in one of those nasty traps.
Jack’s stomach tightened as he had a sick flash of how much those steel jaws had to hurt when they closed on a little leg. He scanned the spong area for signs of the piney but it looked deserted.
Knowing he might regret it, Jack leaned his bike against a tree and trotted over to the animal, watching for other traps. The last thing he needed was to step in one himself.
He stopped a few feet from the struggling animal. Its ringed tail and black-encircled eyes identified it as a raccoon. A young one, probably heading to the spong for a drink when it stepped on one of the traps.
Not right, he thought as anger spewed acid into his already turned stomach.
Okay, one thing dies so another can live. That was the way nature worked. But was the piney going to eat this coon or just strip off the pelt and throw the meat away? And even if he did eat it, he should kill it clean. Don’t torture it like this.
How long had it been here? Raccoons were nocturnal. Probably got caught last night. That meant it had been suffering all night and the whole day.
Not right.
As he stepped closer it tried to crawl away, scratching frantically at the dirt with its forepaws. But the trap’s jaws had its left thigh and right lower leg vised. It must have closed pretty hard because both legs were bleeding. And from the angle of the left thigh, Jack was pretty sure it was broken.
Slowly, carefully, he edged his hands toward the trap. The coon must have thought he was coming for it and scrabbled faster in its futile efforts to get away.
“Easy there,” Jack said in a soft, soothing tone. “I’m not out to hurt you. Just going to try to help.”
He grabbed the jaws and tried to spread them but his fingertips kept slipping off. He looked around and found a twig. He forced that between the jaws to spread them just enough to relieve the pressure on the raccoon’s legs.
Finally its scraping and scratching with its front paws paid off. It pulled itself free and away from the trap, but not very far. Its rear legs were broken and wouldn’t hold it. It stopped and lay panting, looking at Jack over its shoulder with its big black eyes as if to say, What now? It looked exhausted, probably from dehydration and loss of blood.
Unsure of what to do next, he rose and stared at it. He didn’t feel right just leaving it here. Maybe he could—
He heard a noise behind him and turned in time to see the piney trapper swinging a tree branch at his head.
“I knew it was you kids!” he screamed, his unshaven face a mask of rage. “I knew it!”
Jack’s instincts overcame his shock and he ducked. He heard the branch whistle through the air where his head had been. Keeping in a crouch, he turned to run away but the branch slammed against his thigh before he could get started. His foot slipped in the sand and he went down on all fours. As he was scrambling back to his feet the branch caught him across the back, knocking him flat.
br />
Terrified now, he rolled onto his back and saw the piney standing over him, looking like a maniac as he raised the branch for a two-handed blow.
“This’ll learn ya!”
But then Jack saw something else—a tall, broad silhouette looming up behind the crazed trapper. The piney cried out and stumbled back as the branch was ripped from his hands. When he turned the big figure grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground.
“Jameson!” it roared as it shook the piney like a rag doll. “I should have guessed!”
Jack squinted against the low sun and saw a big man holding the kicking, struggling trapper. He had broad shoulders and a thick but neat gray beard. A soft hat with a wide, down-turned brim—something like the Shadow of the Spider might wear—hid most of his upper face.
“Let me go!” the piney rasped—it might have been a screech if he’d had more air.
The big man shook him again. “How many times have I warned you? How many?”
With that he shoved him through the air as he released him. The piney—Jameson—landed on his back, clutching his throat and gasping.
But the big man wasn’t through. He grabbed Jameson by the back of his shirt and dragged him kicking and struggling toward the spong. Before he reached it he dropped the piney and knelt next to him. Jack saw him grab his right arm. He didn’t see what was happening, but a faint clink! followed by a shout of pain pretty much told the story.
The big man dragged him another half dozen feet, dropped him, and grabbed his left arm this time. Another clink! and another cry of pain.
The big man ripped two trap anchors from the ground, then stood and stepped back. Jameson rose to his knees and began trying to remove the leg-hold traps from his hands, whimpering as he found it impossible.
“You can’t do this, Foster!” he screamed. “You have no right!”
Foster? Was this Old Man Foster himself?
“No?” Mr. Foster said. “If I catch you trapping on my land again, you’ll go home with one of your traps on your face. Now get!”
He held up the traps locked on his fingers. “But my hands!”
“Get!”
“My traps!”
Mr. Foster growled and took a step toward him. Jameson jumped and hurried away, dragging the trap anchors and their chains with him. Mr. Foster watched for a moment, then turned and strode toward Jack, his expression fierce.
“And who are you? Related to him?”
Jack jumped to his feet and backed up a step. This guy was scary—scarier than that piney by a couple of light years.
“N-no way! Just passing by.”
He could see now that the man had blue eyes and olive skin—the two didn’t seem to go together. He wore green work pants, a blue work shirt, and a worn brown corduroy jacket. His blue gaze bored into Jack.
“You had to be doing more than that for him to start beating you—although anyone who angers Jeb Jameson can’t be all bad.”
Jack pointed to the young coon, still panting and cowering on the ground.
“I was just freeing that little guy when he jumped me.”
Mr. Foster stopped when he saw the animal. His expression softened as he squatted for a closer look.
“Broken legs.” He shook his head. “Damn him.”
In one smooth motion, with a gentleness in jarring contrast to the violence he’d inflicted on the piney, he scooped up the terrified animal and tucked it inside his jacket. As he rose he glanced at Jack.
“Follow me.”
Something in his tone made disobedience unthinkable. Jack followed and they wound up at the pickup he’d spotted on his way by.
“I was wondering who owned this.”
“I found the traps and I’ve been waiting around to see who set them. I figured it was Jameson and wasn’t surprised. Mark my words, he’s going to come to a bad end, that one.”
“I’ve run into him before. He said he was your son.”
Mr. Foster barked a harsh laugh. “That’s rich.”
He opened the passenger door and gently placed the injured coon on the floor in front of the seat. Then he pulled a knife with a gleaming blade at least ten inches long from a sheath attached to his belt.
Jack stiffened and stepped back. “You—you’re not gonna kill it, are you?”
“This little fellow?” He stared at it. “A good argument could be made for that—it will never survive on its own—but I feel somewhat responsible. I’ll bring him home to my wife. She’s good with animals.”
He grabbed a paper coffee cup from a holder and sliced off all but the bottom inch of the base. He opened a bottle of water, rinsed out the shortened container, then filled it and placed it before the little coon. The creature drank greedily.
“The lord of the land returns,” said an old woman’s voice. “Finally.”
Jack turned to see Mrs. Clevenger and her three-legged dog approaching. The elderly woman wore her usual long black dress and a black scarf, which made no sense in this heat. The dog moved with odd efficiency despite its missing foreleg. Jack realized that Mrs. Clevenger’s cane was sort of an extra limb, giving the pair the normal complement of eight limbs between them.
“Is that you?” Mr. Foster said, squinting at her, then the dog.
She nodded. “It’s me.”
“You turn up in the oddest places.”
“No place is odd for me.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Weird conversation, Jack thought. But then, every conversation with Mrs. Clevenger was odd.
As she and Mr. Foster continued talking, her three-legged dog stepped forward and nudged Jack aside. It stuck its head inside the pickup cab and sniffed the raccoon. Jack expected the little animal to freak but it only stared up at the mutt. Then the dog began licking the coon’s bloody legs.
“He’s not going to eat it, is he?”
Mrs. Clevenger looked up with a surprised expression. She tapped her dog gently on the back with her cane.
“You know you’re not supposed to do that. Remember the natural order—no interfering.”
The dog looked at her.
She sighed. “You’ve gone and done it, haven’t you.”
The dog moved away and sat at her side.
Jack felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see the big man staring down at him.
“You’re trespassing on my property.”
Uh-oh.
“Just riding through.”
“You can’t miss the signs.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts. I’m going to have to fine you.”
“What?”
“Don’t you think that’s fair?”
Fine? What was he talking about?
“Come on,” Mr. Foster said. “It’s my land. You’ve used it without my permission. Fair or not? Yes or no?”
“Well, I guess … what do I owe you?”
He smiled. “Hard labor.”
“What?”
“Spring all of Jameson’s traps and pull them up. Think you can do that?”
“He already has,” Mrs. Clevenger said. “More than once. And then he’s thrown them into the spong.”
Mr. Foster gave him an appraising look. “Have you now? Well, seems there’s more here than meets the eye.”
“Oh, there is,” Mrs. Clevenger said, her gaze fixed on Jack. “There most certainly is.” She looked at Mr. Foster. “There’s something I need to discuss with you in private.”
Now they both looked at him and the message was clear.
“I guess I’d better get to work.”
They both nodded.
“Bring them to the truck,” Mr. Foster said.
As Jack hurried toward the spong he wondered what they’d be talking about and why he couldn’t hear.
7
“That’s all of them,” Jack said as he tossed the last of the piney’s leg-hold traps into the back of Mr. Foster’s pickup.
The bearded man nodded with approv
al from where he leaned against the passenger door.
“Good job. You’ve worked off your fine. Now, don’t let me catch you trespassing again or I’ll have to think up something else. Mrs. Clevenger says you come here often with a couple of your friends.”
Jack glanced at the old woman where she stood down the trail with her dog, staring into the spong area.
“So does she.”
“She has my permission to be here. You do not. I want the trespassing to stop.”
No way, Jack thought. The Pine Barrens were like an extension of his backyard. He didn’t care who had official title to the land, he reserved the right to explore it.
“We don’t hurt anything.”
“I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you being hurt.”
“We know the Pines. We’re careful.”
Mr. Foster shook his head. “Nobody really knows the Pinelands. It’s been a dumping ground for a long time.”
“You mean like bodies? I’ve heard the Mafia—”
Mr. Foster chuckled. “Ah, if only bodies were the worst of it. Things—some not always dead—have been deposited here for millennia.”
“‘Deposited’ or dumped?”
“Let’s just say ‘hidden’ and leave it at that. Especially in this area. That was why I bought this particular parcel—back in the day when you could still buy pieces of the Barrens.”
“So … you know your land pretty well?”
“Pretty well, I guess. I haven’t been over every foot of it.”
“Do you know about the men who dug up the mound east of here?”
His eyes narrowed. “Mrs. Clevenger told me. They had no right.”
“They said the body we found made it a crime scene and they didn’t need permission to investigate.”
“Did they look as if they were investigating?”
“More like excavating. Do you know who they were?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Foster offered no more, so Jack was forced to ask, “Who?”
He looked away, toward the lowering sun. “No one I can do anything about.”
Jack looked too, and saw Mrs. Clevenger and her dog approaching. He was a little miffed at her for tattling to Mr. Foster, but supposed she thought she was looking out for him.