F. Wilson - Secret Histories

“And more easily noticed. We don’t want to be seen.”

Eddie laughed. “Why not?”

“Because then we’l be chased home.”

Jack could make out Eddie’s face in the light through the branches. He looked insulted.

“No way! It’s a free country. We can watch if we want.”

Weezy rol ed her eyes. “They don’t want anyone watching.”

“That’s stupidacious. And besides, how do you know?”

Jack thought the answer was pretty obvious, but he let Weezy tel her brother. She stepped closer and got in his face.

“Can you think of any other reason why they’d go to al this trouble at night when it would be so much easier during the day?” When Eddie didn’t answer,

Weezy looked at Jack, then back at Eddie. “So, can we al start walking?”

“Let’s go,” Jack said. “We’re wasting time.”

He took the lead now. With the lights ahead as a beacon, they no longer needed flashlights or Weezy’s keen sense of direction. He kept to the side of

the firebreak until he noticed a deer trail angling toward al the activity. He took it.

This path was much narrower … branches scraped against him as he passed. He was glad he’d worn ful -length jeans instead of cutoffs, but wished

he’d picked out a rugby shirt instead of this T.

As the three of them neared the site, the noise of the copters grew even louder. Ahead and above they looked invisible—black fuselages against a

black sky—with their searchlights seeming to come out of nowhere.

But another sound gradual y joined the mix—the throaty, up-and-down roar of diesel engines.

Construction equipment.

As they closed in on the mound area, Jack lowered to a crouch, then turned and motioned Weezy and Eddie to do the same. When he reached a break

in the trees he came to a sudden stop. Weezy bumped him from behind. He heard her gasp as she saw what he saw.

Just a hundred feet away, the burned-out area of the mound was ablaze with light, il uminating the dozen or so men walking back and forth among the

charred pine trunks. And among those trunks, a backhoe furiously dug up the sand.

He felt Weezy grip both his shoulders and squeeze—hard.

“Our mound!” she said softly, leaning over him, so close he could feel her breath on his ear. “They’re tearing up our mound!”

Not our mound anymore, Jack thought. Pretty soon it wouldn’t even be a mound.

He watched the backhoe systematical y tearing up the ground, its yel ow arm swinging up and down, ramming its bucket into the mound, pul ing out a

yard of sand, then dumping it to the side before backing up for another go. If a tree had grown too close, the backhoe’s tractor simply pushed it aside or

knocked it down.

Weezy said, “That must have been what the helicopter was carrying when I saw it.”

Men fol owed in its wake of destruction, some with rakes, some with hoes, some with baskets. Some wore police uniforms with black leather belts that

circled the waist and crossed the chest, others wore dark suits and narrow-brimmed hats. They’d poke through the turned-up sand and every so often one

would stoop to pick up something. Mostly they tossed whatever they found aside, but every so often one would cal the others over. They’d al cluster

around and look at his find for a few seconds, then place it in one of the baskets and go back to work.

“They can’t do this!” Weezy said. “They’re going to ruin everything!”

She stepped around Jack and started toward the mound. He grabbed her arm and pul ed her back.

“Are you nuts? You can’t stop them.”

“I can try. They’re ruining everything! They’re—”

“Hey!” said a gruff voice behind them. “What are you doing here?”

Eddie squealed. Jack jumped and turned to find a flashlight beam in his eyes, the glare blotting out whoever was holding it.

“Did you hear me?” the voice said, louder. “What the hel are you kids doing here?”

“We-we-we saw the copters,” Eddie said. He sounded scared, his we-can-watch-if-we-want attitude of a few minutes ago vanished.

“Damn!” the man said. After a pause, he pointed to three state police cruisers parked on the fire trail. Jack had been so intent on the backhoe, he

hadn’t seen them. “Al right, get over there.” The man gave Eddie a shove in the direction. “March.”

Eddie stumbled away, his path angling away from the mound. With the light out of his eyes, Jack could see that the man wore a NJ State Trooper

uniform. It looked loose on him, as if he’d lost weight. After a few heartbeats’ hesitation, Weezy started to fol ow. Jack fel in line between her and the

trooper.

A state cop … al he could think of was how this would end: The trooper knocking on his front door in the middle of the night, his father answering, the

trooper explaining where they’d found his son, Dad yanking him inside, grounding him for life, maybe longer.

Oh, this was bad … very bad.

As they reached the nearest police cruiser, a man in a dark suit came over.

“What the hel ’s going on?” he shouted over the sound of the copters.

The trooper jerked his thumb at them. “Saw the choppers. Told you we should have made a southern approach. How many more peepers we gonna

have to deal with before the night’s over?”

The suit stepped closer and played a flashlight over them. The beam lingered on Weezy.

“They’re just kids—dumb piney kids.”

Jack heard a sneer in his tone and felt a flash of anger. He wasn’t a piney and he wasn’t dumb.

“Not pineys,” he said. “We’re from Johnson.”

The suit waved his hands in the air. “Ooh, now there’s a metropolis.”

“We happen to be on private land,” Weezy said. “We know Mister Foster and he lets us come here whenever we want.”

Jack glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. They’d never once seen Old Man Foster.

“Yeah?” the suit said. “Wel , if we could find him we could check that out, but he’s a hard man to track down.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t like you digging up his land.”

The trooper said, “Doesn’t matter what he likes. This is a crime scene and we’ve got warrants. It’s al nice and legal.”

“Then why are you doing it at night?” Jack said.

Weezy chimed in, “Because you’re not looking for evidence, are you. You’re looking for something else.”

“Enough of this crap,” the suit said, sounding annoyed and surprised. He turned to the trooper. “Lock them in your unit until we’re done.”

Jack’s gut tightened. Locked up?

“We wanna go ho-home,” Eddie said.

“You wil ,” the suit told him. “But not til we’re finished here.”

The trooper opened a rear door and pointed to the backseat.

“In. Now.”

Jack thought of bolting—not back down the fire trail, because he didn’t know how fast the trooper was, and he might not be able to outrun him on a

straight course. But he was sure he could duck into the brush just ten feet away and disappear among the trees before the guy knew what happened. With

his dark clothes and the sound of the helicopters and the backhoe drowning out any noise he made, he could circle around to the bikes and hightail it out

of here.

Get home. Sneak back in the window. Slip under the covers. Pretend nothing had happened. And avoid being grounded for life.

Yeah … he could do it.

But it meant running out on Weezy and Eddie. Sure, the distraction he provided might give them a chance to bolt too, but he couldn’t count on it. If he

escaped alone, he’d never be able to look them in the eye again. Never be able to look himself in the eye either. Didn’t want to look in the mirror and see