Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [2]
As they neared the end of Quakerton Road, where Old Town petered out and the Pines began, Jack spotted Lester Appleton’s pickup, parked in its usual spot next to the Lightning Tree. That was the applejack spot. Depending on the day of the week, you could find either Lester or Gus Sooy there, ready to sell their moonshine. A couple of men stood by the tailgate, watching as Lester filled their whiskey bottles from a large ceramic jug.
The Appletons were an old piney family, supposedly inbred. If anyone had a doubt about that, one look at Lester was pretty convincing. Skinny, with his left eye always pointed toward his nose and tufts of wild-looking hair shooting off his scalp in all directions, he wore overalls worn through at the knees, and sneakers with no socks. His hands and his ankles were gray with grime. His back was bent and twisted, which made him lean forward and to the right. He kept licking his lips with a big red tongue.
Some people said he made the best applejack in the Pines—a secret he learned from his father, Jacob—while others preferred Gus Sooy’s. All strictly illegal, but nobody complained. Applejack was a part of life in and around the Pine Barrens.
“Where we headed?” Jack called as he followed Weezy onto one of the firebreak trails that cut through the trees.
“You’ll see,” she said without turning.
No matter how many times he entered the Barrens—and he’d been doing it most of his life—Jack never failed to feel a little uneasy as the gnarled, forty-foot scrub pines leaned their scraggly branches over the path as if looking for a chance to grab him. The place seemed alive.
“Want to talk now?”
“When we get there.”
They moved deeper into the Barrens, the million or so acres of woods smack in the center of the state that hid places no human had ever seen. Every year a few people walked in and never came out.
The familiar NO FISHING / NO HUNTING / NO TRAPPING / NO TRESPASSING signs tacked up everywhere were a sure sign they were on Old Man Foster’s land. They passed the spong where a cantankerous piney kept putting out leg-hold traps and Mrs. Clevenger kept springing them. Looked like she’d been here recently because all the traps had sticks stuck in their sprung jaws.
Weezy led him deeper into Foster’s land until she turned off the trail onto a path that consisted of two ruts with a grassy ridge between. Jack had never been this way but Weezy probably had. She loved to explore the Barrens.
Finally she came to a stop near a small open area where a sturdy old oak stood tall and wide among the more spindly pines.
She turned to Jack and said, “This is where it happened.”
He looked around. “Where what happened?”
Her face screwed up and her eyes filled with tears. “Where Carson attacked me!”
Before Jack knew it, he was off his bike and in her face.
“He what? Carson Toliver attacked you?”
Suddenly Weezy’s arms were around him and her face was pressed against his chest.
“Yes! I thought he was going to … you know!”
As she sobbed against him, Jack raised his arms, unsure of what to do with them. Finally he slipped them around Weezy’s back and gently held her. He tried to think of something to say but came up blank. All he could think of was murder.
Carson Toliver, a big, studly senior, the captain and quarterback of the Burlington Badgers, and the heartthrob of South Burlington County Regional High. When he’d first shown some interest in Weezy during the summer, her IQ had immediately lost eighty points. Jack had assumed it was because of her notoriety as co-discoverer of a ritually mutilated corpse in the Barrens. He’d seen him sniffing around a few times since then, but hadn’t seen any signs that it had progressed beyond that.
Apparently it had.
Weezy sobbed a couple more times then pushed away, head down as she wiped her eyes.
“Sorry. I guess I’ve been holding it in too long.