F. Wilson: Secret Histories

al ? I don’t—” She stopped, grabbed Jack’s arm, and pointed. “Look! What’d I tel you?”

Jack kind of liked the feel of her fingers gripping his forearm, but he fol owed her point. When he saw what she was talking about, he broke free and

hurried forward.

“Traps! A whole mess of traps.”

“Yeah,” Weezy said, coming up behind him. “The nasty leg-hold type. Some dirty, rotten …”

As her voice trailed off Jack glanced at her and flinched at her enraged expression. She looked a little scary.

“But they’ve al been sprung.” He started walking around the spong. “Every single one of them.”

“Whoever did this is my hero,” she said, fol owing close behind. “Didn’t I tel you that everything that happens out here—”

“—happens for a reason,” Jack said, finishing for her.

Clear as day that someone had set up a slew of traps around the perimeter of the spong, planning to trap any animals that stopped by to drink from the

water in its basin.

And just as clear, someone else had come by with a bunch of dead branches and used them to tap the trigger plates, springing the traps and making

them harmless. In some cases the steel jaws had snapped right through the dead wood; in others it had only dented it, leaving the branch upright.

“Got to be at least a couple dozen along here,” Jack said.

“Not anymore.”

She bent, grabbed one of the trap chains, and started working its anchor loose from the sand.

“What are you doing?”

“Watch.”

As the coiled anchor came free, Weezy grabbed it and the trap itself, then hurled the whole assembly into the spong. The two ends swung around on

their chain like a boomerang before splashing into the shal ow water and disappearing beneath the surface.

She turned to him, brushing the sand from her hands.

“Come on, Jack. We’ve got work to do.”

He stared at her, surprised by the wild look in her eyes …

“But—”

“These rats don’t check their traps for three or four days at a time.”

“How do you know al this?”

“I read, Jack.”

“So do I.”

“Yeah, but you read fifty-year-old magazines. I read about what’s real y going on in the world.” She pointed to a trap. “Three days in one of those. Think

about it.”

He did, imagining himself a fox or possum or raccoon with a broken leg caught in the steel jaws, hungry and thirsty, with water just a couple of dozen

feet away but unable to get to it. It made his gut crawl.

Without a word, he bent and worked an anchor free of the ground, then fol owed Weezy’s example and tossed the trap into the water.

“Two down. How many more to go?”

He found her staring at him with a strange light in her eyes.

“About thirty.”

“Then we’re gonna need help.” He turned and waved to Eddie. “Over here! You gotta see this!”

As Eddie made his way toward them, Jack and Weezy bent again to the task of ripping out the traps and hurling them into the drink.

Eddie arrived and gawked at what they were doing. “Are you guys crazy? You can’t do that!”

Jack held up a trap. “Real y? Watch.”

He tossed it into the water.

Eddie slapped his hands against the side of his head. “What if Old Man Foster comes along and catches us?”

Weezy said, “Wel , his signs do say, ‘No Trapping.’ We’re just helping him out.”

“That means no trapping by anybody else. We could be in hel acious big trouble.”

Jack doubted that. Old Man Foster was just a name. No one had ever seen the guy. Everyone knew he owned this big piece of the Barrens and that

was about it. Though nobody saw them go up, fresh NoTrespassing signs appeared every year. Sometimes poachers would take them down, but before

you knew it they’d be back up again.

Another mystery of the Pine Barrens. A very minor one.

As for Eddie, Jack wasn’t sure if he was acting as the voice of good sense, or trying to duck the work of pul ing out the traps. He hated anything more

strenuous than working a joystick.

“Look,” Jack told him. “The sooner we get this done and get on our way, the less chance we’l have of being caught. So come on. Get to it.”

Eddie obeyed, but not without his trademark grumbling.

“Okay, okay. But I don’t have to ask whose idea this was. It’s got my crazy sister written al over it.”

In a flash Weezy was in his face. “What did you say?”

Eddie gave her a sheepish look. “Nothing.”

“You did! I heard you! Hasn’t this been talked about a mil ion times?” Eddie nodded without looking at her. “Right,” she said. “So you keep your mouth

shut or someone’s going to hear about this.”

Eddie sighed, saying, “Okay, okay,” and returned to working on a trap.

Baffled, Jack caught Weezy’s eye as she turned from her brother. “What—?”

“Family matter, Jack.” She turned away. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jack wasn’t worried. But he couldn’t help but wonder. He’d known these two al his life. What was this al about?

“Okay,” Weezy said, stopping her bike. “Here we are.”

After sinking al the traps, they’d pedaled like mad away from the spong. Along the way, Jack had wished for a few clouds to hide the sun and cool the

air, but the sky ignored him. At least now they’d arrived at their original destination.

Jack fol owed her gaze. “It’s just some burned-out patch.”

Fires were common in the Barrens during the summer. Tourists and nature lovers came to camp and sometimes got careless with their campfires or

Coleman stoves or cigarettes. Same with poachers. And many times Nature herself took the blame, setting a tree ablaze with a bolt of lightning.

Usual y a ranger in a fire tower, like the one on Apple Pie Hil , would spot the smoke and send out an alarm. Then the local and county volunteer fire

companies would go racing to the scene along the fire trails. But the smal er fires started during a storm often would burn only an acre or two before being

doused by the rain.

“Not just any burned-out patch.” She motioned Jack and Eddie to fol ow. “Come on. I’m going to show you something no one else—except for me—has

seen in a long, long time.”

Eddie said, “Aw, come on, Smurfette—”

She stopped and turned to him. “And you can cut the Smurfette bit. Unless you like ‘Pugsley.’”

“Okay, okay. But what about the firemen who put out the fire? They must have seen it.”

“No firemen for this one.”

Eddie snorted. “You psychic now?”

“Check it out.” She gestured around them. “What’s missing?”

Eddie and Jack did ful turns.

“Green trees?” Jack said.

Weezy shook her head. “Litter. There’s no litter. Firefighters always leave coffee cups, candy wrappers, Coke cans, Gatorade bottles, al sorts of stuff.

But not here. Ergo …”

Jack knew from his father that ergo was Latin for “therefore,” but a glance at Eddie showed he hadn’t a clue.

He checked the ground again. Not even a gum wrapper. Weezy didn’t miss a trick.

As they fol owed her into the burned-out area, Jack noticed how the pine trunks had been charred coal black. The remaining needles high up were a

dead brown, and the usual spindly little branches sticking out here and there lower down the trunks had been burned off. But the trees weren’t dead. Every

single trunk was sprouting new little branchlets, pushing them through the scorched crust of the bark and sporting baby needles of bright green. Everyone

had heard of the Sears DieHard battery. These were nature’s die-hard trees.