Jack: Secret Histories

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Keep tension on the wrench, Jack. Not too hard, but keep it steady.”

  After almost half an hour of coaching, with Mr. Rosen hovering over his shoulder, Jack wondered if he’d ever learn this.

  Good thing it was a weekday morning, because they tended to be pretty slow at USED. Weekday afternoons were slightly busier, but things started moving Friday afternoon and stayed pretty busy through the weekends. That was when the “tourists”—really just folks from Philly and Trenton and thereabouts—went out for a ride in the country.

  As a result, the lesson wasn’t rushed or interrupted.

  Since the curved-glass china cabinet was pretty much worthless if it couldn’t be opened, Mr. Rosen had said it would be as good a place as any to start.

  Uh-uh. The lock seemed so small.

  He’d inserted the end of the thin little bar with the right angle at each end—called a tension wrench—into the bottom of the keyhole. Jack was supposed to keep pressure on it in the direction he wanted the lock’s cylinder to turn. Then he’d inserted one of the slim little instruments that looked like a dentist’s probe into the opening and gently pulled and pushed it forward and backward inside—Mr. Rosen called this “raking”—to move the pins and make them line up with the edge of the cylinder. Once they were all in line, the tension wrench would be able to turn the cylinder and open the lock.

  The tension wrench seemed to be the key—too much pressure on it and the pins wouldn’t move; too little and they wouldn’t stay lined up.

  It wasn’t hard work, but Jack could feel the sweat collecting in his armpits.

  Mr. Rosen sighed and said, “We maybe should try a bigger lock. I thought this might be better because it has fewer pins, but they’re small and sometimes harder to—”

  “Hey!” Jack cried as the tension bar suddenly rotated.

  A strange, indescribable elation surged through him as he heard the latch slide back with a click. He grabbed the knob and pulled open the door.

  “I did it!”

  Mr. Rosen clapped him on the shoulder. “Good for you, my boy. Once you get that first success under your belt, the next will be easier, and the one after that even easier.”

  Jack stared down at the pick and tension wrench in his hands. He’d simply unlocked a china cabinet, but he felt as if he’d opened the door to a world of infinite possibilities.

  He glanced up and found Mr. Rosen staring at him.

  “What?”

  The old man shook his head. “I hope I haven’t created a problem.”

  Jack had a pretty good idea what he meant. He lowered his voice into Super Friends mode.

  “I promise to never use my newfound power for evil.”

  Mr. Rosen’s stare widened. “‘Newfound power’?”

  Jack laughed. “I remember reading something like that in a comic book once.”

  “This isn’t a comic book. This is life. Do I have your word you will not use what you’ve learned here today for anything illegal?”

  Jack held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  “You’re a Boy Scout?” Mr. Rosen said with a frown. “I had no idea.”

  “Only kidding.” Jack laughed. “About the Boy Scout part, I mean. But I won’t do anything illegal. I promise.”

  And he meant it … at the time.

  3

  For the next hour or so, Jack worked on various locks around the store. Mr. Rosen had keys to all of those, so it wouldn’t matter if Jack couldn’t pick them.

  As he worked he heard classical music waft from the front. Somehow Mr. Rosen had found an FM station out of Philly that played only classical. Jack wished he had one of those new Walkmans so he could listen to his own music, but his dad had refused to buy him one.

  Turned out Mr. Rosen hadn’t been quite right: Each new lock did not become easier than the last. But as each fell victim to Jack’s array of picks and tension wrenches, he felt a growing sense of knowing what he was doing. He learned to refine his raking technique and how to use the finer picks to nudge the more stubborn pins into line.

  He felt a rush every time one clicked open.

  He was sitting on an old ladderback chair near the front of the store, working on a padlock, when an announcer interrupted Mr. Rosen’s music to say something about someone’s “sudden collapse.” He dropped the lock when he heard him mention the name “Vasquez.”

  He leaped to his feet. “What was that?”

  Mr. Rosen looked up from his newspaper. “One of the state legislators collapsed at some ribbon-cutting ceremony today.” He stared at Jack. “You’re all right? Like a ghost you look.”

  “I-I think I might have seen him last night.”

  Mr. Bainbridge’s words echoed through his head: They say deaths come in threes. We’ve had Sumter, and now Haskins. Who’s going to be the third?

  Well, now he knew. He’d been worried that Mr. Brussard would be next, but it hadn’t turned out that way.

  What was happening? The most obvious explanation tied Jack’s innards into knots.

  According to Steve, Mr. Sumter had visited his father Monday night. Tuesday morning he was dead.

  On Tuesday night Mr. Haskins had visited Mr. B. Wednesday morning, Haskins dropped dead.

  Last night, Assemblyman Vasquez … and now he was dead.

  Jack knew that at least two of the three men who’d visited Mr. Brussard had left with a little red box. They’d been told it held something that would protect them from the so-called klazen.

  Jack could come to only one conclusion. The klazen didn’t exist. He didn’t know why or how, but he had an awful suspicion that whatever was in the boxes Steve’s father had given these men had killed them.

  And that would make Mr. Brussard a cold-blooded murderer.

  4

  “Steve’s father?” Weezy said, her voice hushed. “Ohmygod, I can’t believe it.”

  Jack shrugged. “Neither can I, but can you come up with any other explanation?”

  “Could be coincidence.”

  Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Whoa! The girl who finds conspiracies everywhere says ‘coincidence’? Three visits, three days, three deaths?”

  She shook her head. “But we’re not talking about some mysterious stranger. This is Steve’s father.”

  He’d needed someone to talk to, someone who’d understand, someone who wouldn’t laugh at him. Only one person had fit that bill, though he’d had to wait until she returned from her weekly trip to Medford with her mother.

  They’d biked into the Pines, taking the easy way by finding a semipaved road running through the Wharton State Forest preserve. This was one of the more civilized parts of the Pine Barrens, with canoeing and fishing areas, and even the restored Batsto Village. This time of year it was full of tourists. They’d parked their bikes and claimed an isolated park bench just off the roadway.

  “You’ve got to tell somebody.”

  Jack nodded. “I know. But who? And tell them what? What can I say without everybody thinking I’m crazy?”

  “How about that deputy?” Weezy said.

  She wore her usual black jeans, black sneakers, and a too-large black T-shirt with Choose Death in red letters across the back. As they talked she used a long stick to draw patterns in the sand at their feet.

  “Tim Davis?” He thought about that and decided it wasn’t a good idea. “Nah. He’d just think I was kidding him.”

  “Then it’s gotta be your dad. I don’t think your sister or brother—”

  “Tom? Puh-lease!”

  “Well, whatever, I don’t think they’ve got the gravitas to make the right people listen.”

  “‘Gravitas’?”

  She smiled. “My new word. It means substance, seriousness. I’ve been waiting for days to use it.” She patted the back of his hand. “Thanks.”

  Jack’s hand tingled where she’d touched it. He felt something stir inside. He liked the feeling and wished she hadn’t taken her hand away.


  He laughed to ease his inner turmoil. “You’re amazing.”

  She smiled back at him. “And you’re very perceptive.”

  They shared brief, soft laughter over that, then Jack sighed.

  “I guess that leaves my dad.”

  She looked at him. “You can’t talk to your dad?”

  “Yeah, I can talk. But he doesn’t take me seriously. I’m fourteen but in his head I can tell he still thinks I’m six.”

  “At least you can talk to him. My dad …” She shook her head. “He doesn’t get me.”

  Jack nudged her. “What’s not to get? You’re just a typical teenage girl all done up in frilly dresses and shiny little black shoes.”

  He’d been joking but his chest tightened when he saw her eyes puddle up.

  “That’s what he’d like me to be. But I just can’t be a bowhead. It makes me sick.” She blinked and glanced at him. “No, I mean really sick. If I had to knot a paint-splatter shirt at my hip, or wear floral-pattern jeans and Peter Pan boots, I really think I’d throw up.”

  “Only kidding.”

  “I know, but my dad’s not. He wants me to look like everybody else. And he lets me know it.”

  Weezy’s father was a pipefitter. Like everyone else in town, it seemed, he’d been in Korea. But he hadn’t fought. He’d been in the construction crew that built Camp Casey. More than once Jack had heard his father say that instead of going to college after the war, he should have enrolled in a trade school and become a pipefitter like Patrick Connell. If he had he’d be less stressed and making more money.

  “He just doesn’t get me.” She glanced at Jack again. “Do you?”

  Jack hesitated. He wasn’t about to lie to her, but knew he needed to put this just right.

  “Truth?”

  “Of course.”

  He took a breath. “I don’t get you either.”

  She gave him a sharp look. “Oh, great. Et tu, Brute? Just great!”

  He held up a hand. “Let me finish. I don’t get you, but I don’t need to. I don’t get the black clothes or the downer music—it’s like you’ve joined some club where I’ll never be a member—but so what? We’ve known each other forever, Weez. You are who you are. You’re Weezy Connell, the smartest and also the strangest person I know. Yeah, I don’t get you, but I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

  She dropped the stick, hopped off the bench, and walked maybe a dozen feet away. She kept her back to him but he noticed her chest heaving, as if she was sobbing, or maybe holding sobs back.

  What’d I say? he thought.

  He’d been trying to make her feel good but he guessed he’d screwed that up. Would he ever learn how to talk to a girl?

  Watching her made him uncomfortable so he stared at the ground where she’d been doodling with the stick. He noticed with a start that they weren’t random scratchings—they looked an awful lot like the pattern etched on the inside of the mystery cube. The longer he looked, the more convinced he became. Had she memorized it? But then he remembered how Weezy had told him she had a photographic memory.

  Suddenly two black-sneakered feet stepped into view. Jack looked up to find Weezy’s face only inches from his. She kissed him on the lips. Not a long kiss. Barely a second. But her lips were soft and their touch sent a shock through him.

  And then it was over. She straightened and looked down at him. She was smiling but her face was blotchy and her eyes red.

  “You’re the best friend anyone could have. I don’t deserve you.”

  She stepped over to where her Schwinn leaned against the side of the bench. She swung her leg over the banana seat and looked at him.

  “Come on, Jack. Don’t sit there like a lump. We’ve got to get you back to civilization.”

  But Jack did sit there, totally confused. He’d upset her, but then she’d kissed him. Weezy Connell had kissed him. Not that he hadn’t kissed a girl before—sometimes hanging out turned into making out—but this was Weezy.

  Of course, it hadn’t been a make-out kiss, but still … she’d kissed him. And the feel of her lips lingered against his.

  Unable to sort out the strange mix of feelings bubbling within, he pushed himself off the bench and grabbed his bike.

  5

  They took a different way home. Weezy, who seemed to have this entire end of the Pine Barrens laid out in her head, led him along deer trails and firebreaks he’d never seen before.

  All along the way he watched her butt.

  Well, what else was there to look at? As far as size went, it wasn’t much. Hard to tell what her baggy clothes hid. She was thin, he knew that, but curvy thin or straight-up-and-down thin he couldn’t say. Either way, he found he liked watching her from the rear as she pedaled along.

  Her shortcut back to Johnson led through Old Man Foster’s land and now things were starting to look familiar. When they came to the clearing with the spong where they’d found the leg-hold traps, she skidded to a stop, turned to give him a surprised look, and pointed.

  There in the clearing stood a lady in a long black dress and a scarf around her neck. She carried a bundle of sticks in one arm and was moving from trap to trap, springing them with the sticks. Her three-legged dog stood by, watching.

  Mrs. Clevenger.

  Without hesitating, Weezy hopped off her bike and walked into the clearing. She seemed to believe in just about every kind of weirdness, but maybe she didn’t believe in witches—or maybe she didn’t believe Mrs. Clevenger was one. Jack wasn’t so sure about that, but he followed anyway. The dog watched their approach but made no move toward them.

  “Hi,” he heard Weezy say as she neared.

  Mrs. Clevenger looked up. She didn’t seem surprised to see them. Jack had a strange feeling this old lady didn’t surprise easily.

  “Hi, yourself, Weezy Connell.”

  She took a stick from the bundle in her arm and jammed it into a nearby trap. It snapped shut, breaking off the end. She used the broken tip on a neighboring trap. When this one snapped closed, it trapped the stick. She abandoned it and grabbed another.

  “Looks like fun,” Weezy said. “Can I try?”

  Mrs. Clevenger gave her a long look, then handed her a stick.

  “I like you, young lady. But be careful where you step. Nasty things, these.”

  Jack grabbed one of the already sprung traps and worked its anchor free from the ground. Then he tossed it into the spong where it splashed and sank.

  “You threw them in there a few days ago,” Mrs. Clevenger said. It didn’t sound like a question—she seemed to know. “A good thing, but in the end, only a temporary solution, as temporary as springing the traps. The trapper simply fishes them out and resets them. All we accomplish by what we do here is a respite for the animals and an inconvenience for the trapper.”

  Jack said, “That’ll have to do, I guess.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “For now, yes. But someday he may do harm to creatures that must not be touched. Should that happen, he will pay dearly.”

  Her tone chilled Jack. For some reason he found himself very glad he wasn’t that trapper.

  “Oh, and we anger and frustrate him as well,” she added, “so don’t let him catch you at this.”

  Weezy looked up. “What do you think he’d do?”

  Her expression was grim. “A man who sets these traps for unsuspecting animals coming to the spong to ease their thirst? What wouldn’t he do?”

  Jack looked over at her dog who hadn’t moved from where it sat. He feared it might be a touchy subject but he had to ask.

  “Did he …” He pointed to the dog. “Did a trap do that to him?”

  Mrs. Clevenger looked at him and smiled. “No, he chose to have only three legs. Perhaps in sympathy for the animals hurt in the traps, perhaps for another reason. He’s never said.”

  Jack could only stare at her. What on Earth was she talking about? It made no sense.

  “What’s his name?” Weezy said.

  She turned towa
rd Weezy, and as she did, Jack craned his neck to see if he could catch a glimpse of a scar beneath her scarf, but it was wrapped too tightly.

  “He’s had many names, and he has none. He simply is.”

  More weirdness. Mrs. Clevenger seemed to like to speak in riddles.

  Weezy took a step toward the dog. “Can I pet him?”

  “He would rather you didn’t. He prefers not to be touched.”

  Jack looked around for a car or even another bike, but found none.

  “How’d you get here?” he said.

  She smiled at him. “The usual way.”

  Jack realized then that he might never get a straight answer from this old woman, so he bent to the task of ripping the traps from the ground and tossing them into the spong.

  After springing the last trap, Weezy joined him. Mrs. Clevenger and her dog watched until the last trap was in the drink.

  Jack was panting a little from the effort, as was Weezy. A sweat sheened her face and arms.

  “Good,” the old woman said. “I am proud of you both. But it’s time for you to go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hear the trapper coming.” Jack listened but heard only the incessant bug buzz of the Barrens.

  “You sure?”

  The old woman nodded. “Clear as day. He’ll be very, very angry when he finds what we’ve done. So go now. Quickly.”

  “Are you staying?” Weezy said.

  She shook her head. “No. Though I don’t fear him, it’s best he doesn’t see me. I’ll follow soon.” “It’s an awful long walk.”

  “I’ll return the way I arrived.” She made shooing motions with her knobby, veiny hands. “Now get. Get!”

  They got.

  6

  They rode side by side along the firebreak trails, talking about Steve’s father and Mrs. Clevenger and this and that until they connected with the end of Quakerton Road in Old Town. They crossed the bridge, cut right onto North Franklin, then stopped at Adams Drive. Here they’d part ways. Weezy lived on Adams and Jack up at the end of Franklin on Jefferson.