F. Wilson: Secret Histories

“Okay, yes,” she said smiling at him. “Jack. I’m trying, honey, but old habits are hard to break, you know.”

“Just think: Whenever you’re about to say ‘Jackie,’ cut it in half.”

She laughed. “I’l try, I’l try.”

She turned on the dishwasher and headed for the living room to read. She loved novels and belonged to both the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the

Month Club. He’d noticed she was reading something cal ed MasteroftheGame by Sidney Sheldon.

Jack had the kitchen with its dark cabinets, Formica counters, and Congoleum floor to himself. The house had started as a three-bedroom ranch and

probably would have remained so if not for Jack. Not so many years after his arrival, his folks had added dormers and finished off the attic into a master

bedroom suite. They moved upstairs, leaving the downstairs bedrooms to the kids.

He retrieved a bag of pink pistachios from a cabinet and sat down at the kitchen counter to shel them. Rather than eating one at a time, he liked to

col ect a pile of twenty or so and gobble them al at once. As he shel ed, he thought about dinner, just recently finished.

The hot topic of conversation around the table had been—no surprise—the body. Tons of speculation on who it was, how old it was, whether it was an

ancient Lenape Indian mummy or the victim of a mob hit transported down here from New York in a trunk and buried where they thought it would never be

found. Or that maybe it was Marcie Kurek, the sophomore who’d disappeared from SBC Regional last year and never been heard from since. That idea

had silenced the table.

Otherwise it had been kind of fun listening to al the theories. One of those increasingly rare family dinners when everybody was present. What with Tom

back and forth to Seton Hal law school and Kate getting ready to start med school at UMDNJ in Stratford, that hardly ever happened anymore. Most

nights lately it had been just Mom, Dad, and Jack.

Of course the event wouldn’t have been complete without the inevitable lecture from Dad about the dangers of kids wandering through the Pine Barrens

without adults. Jack had listened patiently, trying to look interested, but he’d heard it so many times he could recite it by heart. Dad was a good guy, but he

just didn’t get it.

Yeah, the Barrens had its dangers. Some of the Pineys were what they cal ed inbreds—what his brother Tom liked to cal “the result of brothers and

sisters getting too frisky with each other”—and maybe a little unpredictable. And you could come upon a copperhead or timber rattler, or lose some toes

to a snapping turtle if you dangled a bare foot in the wrong pond. But you learned to keep your eyes open … you became Pine-wise.

Old Man Foster might have a deed that said he owned a whole lot of acres and the state conservation agency might pass al sorts of regulations, but as

far as Jack was concerned, the Pine Barrens were an extension of his backyard, and no one was keeping him out of his own backyard.

Kate came in then. Slim with pale blue eyes, a faint splash of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and a strong jawline. Her long blond hair, which she

worked at keeping straight, had gone wavy in the humidity. Jack warmed at the sight of her. Eight years older and a natural nurturer, she’d practical y

raised him. She’d been his best friend growing up and had broken his heart when she left for col ege. Last year, when she’d spent her junior year abroad

in France, had been the worst. He didn’t know what went on over there, but it had changed her. Nothing he could put his finger on, but no denying the

feeling that she’d come back just a tiny bit … different.

“Just got off the phone with Tim,” she said.

Tom came in behind her, smirking. “Rekindling the old flame?”

He was ten years older with a bulging middle; his brown eyes and brown hair were the exact same shade as Jack’s. They’d never got along wel .

Though Tom had never said it, Jack knew he saw him as a fifth wheel on the family car.

Kate gave Tom a tolerant smile. “Not likely. He’s engaged. But he gave me what information he could on the body.”

Jack was al ears. He licked his fingertips, red from opening the pistachios. He had seventeen of the little nuts piled before him—three more to go

before gobbling time.

“Do they know who it is?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. They think it’s maybe two years old.”

“Aaaaw,” Jack said as he popped open another shel . “There goes the Indian mummy idea.”

Kate smiled. “Afraid so.” Her smile faded as she glanced at Tom. “Tim says it was a murder.”

Jack froze, feeling creeped out. The three of them stood silent around the counter. Even big-mouth Tom seemed to have lost his voice.

Final y Jack regained his. “R-real y?”

She nodded. “Yeah, his skul is cracked. But more than that, he says it was some sort of ritual kil ing.”

Jack’s mouth felt a little dry. A ritual murder … images of an Aztec priest cutting out a stil -beating heart flashed through his head. Definitely gross … but

kind of cool.

“Did he say what kind of ritual?”

Kate shook her head. “I asked, but he said that’s al he’s heard.”

Tom gave a low whistle and grinned at Jack. “And to think, this heinous crime would have remained undiscovered, maybe forever, if not for our own

miracle boy.”

Jack was about to say something when Dad popped his head through the door. He looked excited.

“Hey, kids. Come here. You’ve got to see this.”

Jack left his pistachios behind as the three of them trooped into Dad’s study. They found him seated before his brand-new home computer. It looked

like little more than a beige electric typewriter with a couple of oblong boxes atop it, crowned with a six-inch black-and-white monitor. On the table next to

it lay copies of a magazine cal ed inCider.

Years ago Dad had built an Apple I from a kit, but it never worked right. This one he’d bought ful y assembled. Unlike the Apple I, which used tape

cassettes to store programs, this baby used things cal ed disk drives.

General y pretty quiet, Dad seemed fired up. He worked as a CPA, recently moving from Arthur Anderson in Phil y—for some reason, he hadn’t been

getting along with them—to Price Waterhouse in Cherry Hil , which meant a shorter commute. His two loves, outside of his family, were tennis and this

contraption, his Apple. Unlike Jack, Tom, and Mom, his eyes were blue, and he wore steel-rimmed glasses for reading. His formerly ful head of hair had

begun to thin on top.

“I just wrote this little program,” he said, pointing to the screen. “Watch.”

Jack caught a glimpse of a short column of text with lines like “N=N+1” and “Print N” and “GOTO” before Dad hit a key. Suddenly numbers began cascading down the left side of the screen:

1

2

3

4 …

And on and on, progressing from one-digit, to two-digit, and eventual y three-digit numbers.

“Neat!” Jack said. “When wil it stop?”

“Never—unless I tel it to.”

“You mean it’l count to infinity?”

“If I let it.”

“That’s great, Dad,” Tom said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “But what’s it good for?”

“Nothing. I’m teaching myself BASIC, and this is a demonstration of a program cal ed an infinite loop.” He patted his Apple. “Here’s the future, kids. I’ve

got forty-eight K of RAM—could have gotten sixty-four, but I can’t imagine ever needing that much memory.”

Jack had some idea of what he was talking about—he’d been helping Steve Brussard build a Heathkit H-89 computer—but he had a lot to learn.