Levi was right. The Burlington County sheriff’s department didn’t have the manpower to stake out Old Man Foster’s land or even this one path. Could be weeks before the dumpers made a return trip. Had to be a way to make them give themselves away. Or better yet…
An idea began to form.
“What’s down that way?” Jack said, pointing left as they approached the first fork.
“More of the same,” Levi said. “Why?”
“Wondering if there’s a spong nearby… the deeper and wetter the better.”
“I know a cripple,” Saree said, still staring.
Elvin followed her directions through a few more forks that left Jack totally disoriented.
“You know where we are, right?”
Saree rolled her eyes.
Okay, dumb question to ask a Piney. But at least she seemed to be relaxing a little.
A few minutes later, she said, “Right up here.”
Elvin rolled to a stop before a thirty-foot-wide cripple – a water-filled depression half-surrounded by white cedars. Without the cedars it would have been called a spong.
Jack couldn’t help smiling when he saw it.
“Yeah, this’ll do.”
“Do what?”
When he told them their eyes lit. Saree even smiled.
“I still can’t see you,” she said. “But I think you’re okay.”
Weird. Too weird.
2
“What’s wrong with inbreeding?” Jack said as he spooned some niblets into the well he’d made in his mashed potatoes.
His mother gasped. “Not at the dinner table.”
“No, really. I want to know.”
His father cleared his throat and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses. “Thinking of marrying Kate?”
Kate laughed as Jack said, “No!”
His folks sat at opposite ends while Jack and his older sister Kate sat across from each other. Only his missing brother Tom kept it from being a full family meal. Jack didn’t miss him. Tom was a pain.
“Then where’s this coming from?”
Jack shrugged. “Kids at school talk about Pineys…”
He couldn’t get those weird kids out of his mind. They seemed so different… like they had their own language… an unspoken one. And that lid on the barrel… Elvin couldn’t budge it but Levi just touched it and it popped free. It reminded Jack of the time Levi and Jake Shuett faced off in the caf a couple of weeks ago over some remark Jake had made about Pineys. Suddenly a catsup pack Jake was holding squirted all over him and his lunch plate dumped in his lap. Jack had written it off to a spaz attack. He hadn’t given it much thought, but now…
He wasn’t expecting much information from his folks, but Kate was home on a laundry run from medical school – it was only in Stratford, barely thirty miles away – and maybe she’d know.
He glanced at her. “Why’s it bad?”
Kate was slim with pale blue eyes and faint freckles. After starting med school she’d cut her long blond hair back to a short, almost boyish length. Jack still wasn’t used to it.
She paused, then said, “It’s bad because we all have defective ‘recessive genes’ hidden in our DNA that are passed on from parent to child. Now, as long as that defective recessive gene is matched up with a working gene, all is well. But if a mother and a father both have the same recessive gene, and each gives it to a child, that child could have problems.”
“I saw an albino girl today–”
She nodded. “Perfect example: Two normal-skinned parents, each carrying an albino gene, have a one-in-four chance of having an albino child. Family members tend to share a lot of the same recessives, and so inbreeding – when close relatives have children – increases the risk of genetic diseases, because the closer you’re related, the greater the odds of matching up the same recessives in your kids.”
Now the important question: “But are all recessive genes bad? Could there be ones for, like, big muscles or a good memory?”
Kate smiled. “You’re thinking. That’s good. Yes, plants and animals are bred for drought resistance and giving more milk and the like.”
“Well, in that case, inbreeding people could have some good effects, right?”
“Theoretically, yes. But for every Einstein or Muhammad Ali, you could get a number of kids with cystic fibrosis.”
Or weird powers?
Or maybe I read too much science fiction, Jack thought.
3
Jack awoke to the sound of someone whispering his name… coming from the window. He hopped out of bed and crossed his darkened room. The high moon lit the grinning face on the far side of the screen.
“Levi?”
“Would you believe they came back again tonight?”
Jack felt his heart rate kick into high gear. “They took the bait?”
“Hook, line, and sinkhole. Figured since it was your idea, you oughta come see. We got the car. Wanna?”
“Be right there.”
He pulled on jeans and a rugby shirt, stepped into his Vans, then unlatched the screen and slipped into the night. Levi led him around the corner to where Elvin and Saree were waiting in the buggy, Saree behind the wheel – no, wrench. Her white hair looked silver in the moonlight. They hopped in and Saree took off without a word. At least she couldn’t stare at him.
The Pines were practically in Jack’s backyard, but she entered along a path he didn’t know. She made seemingly random turns through the trees but seemed to know where she was going. Finally she stopped in a small clearing.
“Gotta walk from here,” Levi said, “else they’ll hear us.”
The four of them hopped out and this time Saree led the way, single file, down a deer path.
“They fell for it, Jack,” Levi said from behind him. “Just like you said. I never would’ve thought of that in a million years. You got a twisted mind. I like that.”
Jack enjoyed the praise, but thought the solution had been obvious. Whoever had dumped those barrels didn’t know the Pines, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to post reflectors. So Jack’s idea had been to move the reflectors off the path to the dumping ground and onto a path that led to the cripple instead.
He heard angry voices before he saw anyone. Saree slowed her pace and gradually a glow began to grow through the trunks. They crouched as they neared the treeline. Jack peeked through the underbrush and saw a flatbed truck angled nose down into the cripple. Its headlights were still on and its motor running. A blue tarp covered whatever was stacked in its bed. Its front end sat bumper deep in the water and its rear wheels had dug ruts in the soil from trying to reverse its way out.
One man was cursing and swearing as he stood in the two-foot-deep water and pushed against the front grille while another gunned the engine and spun the tires.
“Now that we’ve got them,” Jack said, “what do we do with them? Call the sheriff?”
Levi shook his head. “No way. We bring in some grownups. They’ll take care of them.”
“Take care of them how?”
“Piney justice.”
Piney justice… Jack had heard about that. He was going to say something, but right then the one in the water gave up pushing and slammed a hand on the hood.
“Ain’t gonna happen, Tony!”
Tony – dark, heavyset with a thick mustache – jumped out and began kicking the water in a rage.
“Save it, man,” said the other guy as he splashed past him, heading toward the rim of the cripple. “We’re gonna have to offload this stuff to get outa here.”
“How’d this happen, Sammy? We marked the trail!”
“Must’ve made a wrong turn. Or…” He stopped and looked around. “Or somebody moved the markers.”
Tony stared at him. “Who?”
“Wise-ass locals, my guess. Probably out there right now having a good laugh.”