A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Who told you that?” I said as levelly as I could.

  “You did. Back in school.”

  “Did I?”

  It shook me to see how far I’d traveled from my roots. As a scared, naive, self-deprecating frosh at Rutgers I probably had indeed referred to myself as a Piney. Now I never mentioned the word, not in reference to myself or anyone else. I was a college-educated woman; I was a respected professional who spoke with a colorless Northeast accent. No one in his right mind would consider me a Piney.

  “Well, that was just a gag,” I said. “My family roots are back in the Pine Barrens, but I am by no stretch of the imagination a Piney. So I doubt I can help you.”

  “Oh, but you can! The McKelston name is big in the Barrens. Everybody knows it. You’ve got plenty of relatives there.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  Suddenly he looked sheepish.

  “Because I’ve been into the Barrens a few times now. No one will open up to me. I’m an outsider. They don’t trust me. Instead of answering my questions, they play games with me. They say they don’t know what I’m talking about but they know someone who might, then they send me driving in circles. I was lost out there for two solid days last month. And believe me, I was getting scared. I thought I’d never find my way out.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first. Plenty of people, many of them experienced hunters, have gone into the Barrens and never been seen again. You’d better stay out.”

  His hand darted across the table and clutched mine.

  “You’ve got to help me, Kathy. My whole future hinges on this.”

  I was shocked. He’d always called me “Mac.” Even in bed back in our college days he’d never called me “Kathy.” Gently, I pulled my hand free, saying, “Come on, Jon—”

  He leaned back and stared out the window at the circling gulls.

  “If I do this right, do something really definitive, it may get me back into Miskatonic where I can finish my doctoral thesis.”

  I was immediately suspicious.

  “I thought you said you ‘left’ Miskatonic, Jon. Why can’t you get back in without it?”

  “ ‘Irregularities,’ ” he said, still not looking at me. “The old farts in the antiquities department didn’t like where my research was leading me.”

  “This ‘reality’ business?”

  “Yes.”

  “They told you that?”

  Now he looked at me.

  “Not in so many words, but I could tell.” He leaned forward. His eyes were brighter than ever. “They’ve got books and manuscripts locked in huge safes there, one-of-a-kind volumes from times most scholars think of as prehistory. I managed to get a pass, a forgery, that got me into the vaults. It’s incredible what they have there, Mac. Incredible! I’ve got to get back there. Will you help me?”

  His intensity was startling. And tantalizing.

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Just accompany me into the Pine Barrens. Just for a few trips. If I can use you as a reference, I know they’ll talk to me about the Jersey Devil. After that, I can take it on my own. All I need is some straight answers from these people and I’ll have my primary sources. I may be able to track a folk myth to its very roots! I’ll give you credit in the book, I’ll pay you, anything, Mac, just don’t leave me twisting in the wind!”

  He was positively frantic by the time he finished speaking.

  “Easy, Jon. Easy. Let me think.”

  Tax season was over and I had a loose schedule for the summer. And even if I was looking ahead to a tight schedule, so what? Frankly, the job wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as it once had been. The challenge of overcoming the business community’s prejudice and doubts about a woman accountant, the thrill of building a string of clients, that was all over. Everything was mostly routine now. Plus, I no longer had a husband. No children to usher toward adulthood. I had to admit that my life was pretty empty at that moment. And so was I. Why not take a little time to inspect my roots and help Crazy Creighton put his life on track, if such a thing was possible? In the bargain maybe I could gain a little perspective on my own life.

  “All right, Jon,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Creighton’s eyes lit with true pleasure, a glow distinct from the feverish intensity since he’d sat down. He thrust both his hands toward me.

  “I could kiss you, Mac! I can’t tell you how much this means to me! You have no idea how important this is!”

  He was right about that. No idea at all.

  2. The Pine Barrens

  Two days later we were ready to make our first foray into the woods.

  Creighton was wearing a safari jacket when he picked me up in a slightly battered four-wheel-drive Jeep Wrangler.

  “This isn’t Africa we’re headed for,” I told him.

  “I know. I like pockets. They hold all sorts of things.”

  I glanced in the rear compartment. He was surprisingly well equipped. I noticed a water cooler, a food chest, backpacks, and what looked like sleeping bags. I hoped he wasn’t harboring any romantic ideas. I’d just split from one man and I wasn’t looking for another, especially not Jonathan Creighton.

  “I promised to help you look around. I didn’t say anything about camping out.”

  He laughed. “I’m with you. Holiday Inn is my idea of roughing it. I was never a Boy Scout, but I do believe in being prepared. I’ve already been lost once in there.”

  “And we can do without that happening again. Got a compass?”

  He nodded. “And maps. Even have a sextant.”

  “You actually know how to use one?”

  “I learned.”

  I dimly remember being bothered then by his having a sextant, and not being quite sure why. Before I could say anything else, he tossed me the keys.

  “You’re the Piney. You drive.”

  “Still Mr. Macho, I see.”

  He laughed. I drove.

  It’s easy to get into the Pine Barrens from northern Ocean County. You just get on Route 70 and head west. About halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and Philadelphia, say, near a place known as Ongs Hat, you turn left. And wave bye-bye to the twentieth century, and civilization as you know it.

  How do I describe the Pine Barrens to someone who’s never been there? First of all, it’s big. You have to fly over it in a small plane to appreciate just how big. The Barrens runs through seven counties, takes up one-fourth of the state, but since Jersey’s not a big state, that doesn’t tell the story. How does 2,000 square miles sound? Or a million acres? Almost the size of Yosemite National Park. Does that give you an idea of its vastness?

  How do I describe what a wilderness this is? Maps will give you a clue. Look at a road map of New Jersey. If you don’t happen to have one handy, imagine an oblong platter of spaghetti; now imagine what it looks like after someone’s devoured most of the spaghetti out of the middle of the lower half, leaving only a few strands crossing the exposed plate. Same thing with a population density map—a big gaping hole in the southern half where the Pine Barrens sits. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the U. S., averaging a thousand bodies per square mile. But the New York City suburbs in north Jersey teem with forty thousand per square mile. After you account for the crowds along the coast and in the cities and towns along the western interstate corridor, there aren’t too many people left over when you get to the Pine Barrens. I’ve heard of an area of over a hundred thousand acres—that’s in the neighborhood of 160 square miles—in the south-central Barrens with twenty-one known inhabitants. Twenty-one. One human being per eight square miles in an area that lies on the route through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D. C.

  Even when you take a turn off one of the state or federal roads that cut through the Barrens, you feel the isolation almost immediately. The forty-foot scrub pines close in behind you and quietly but oh so effectively cut you off from the rest of the world. I’ll bet there are people who’ve lived t
o ripe old ages in the Barrens who have never seen a paved road. Conversely, there are no complete topographical maps of the Barrens because there are vast areas that no human eyes have ever seen.

  Are you getting the picture?

  “Where do we start?” Creighton asked as we crawled past the retirement villages along Route 70. This had been an empty stretch of road when I was a kid. Now it was Wrinkle City.

  “We start at the capital.”

  “Trenton? I don’t want to go to Trenton.”

  “Not the state capital. The capital of the pines. Used to be called Shamong Station. Now it’s known as Chatsworth.”

  He pulled out his map and squinted through the index.

  “Oh, right. I see it. Right smack in the middle of the Barrens. How big is it?”

  “A veritable Piney megalopolis, my friend. Three hundred souls.”

  Creighton smiled, and for a second or two he seemed almost . . . innocent.

  “Think we can get there before rush hour?”

  3. Jasper Muiliner

  I stuck to the main roads, taking 70 to 72 to 563, and we were there in no time.

  “You’ll see something here you won’t see anyplace else in the Barrens,” I said as I drove down Chatsworth’s main street.

  “Electricity?” Creighton said.

  He didn’t look up from the clutter of maps on his lap. He’d been following our progress on paper, mile by mile.

  “No. Lawns. Years ago a number of families decided they wanted grass in their front yards. There’s no topsoil to speak of out here; the ground’s mostly sand. So they trucked in loads of topsoil and seeded themselves some lawns. Now they’ve got to cut them.”

  I drove past the general store and its three gas pumps out on the sidewalk.

  “Esso,” Creighton said, staring at the sign over the pumps. “That says it all, doesn’t it.”

  “That it do.”

  We continued on until we came to a sandy lot occupied by a single trailer. No lawn here.

  “Who’s this?” Creighton said, folding up his maps as I hopped out of the Wrangler.

  “An old friend of the family.”

  This was Jasper Mulliner’s place. He was some sort of an uncle—on my mother’s side, I think. But distant blood relationships are nothing special in the Barrens. An awful lot of people are related in one way or another. Some said he was a descendant of the notorious bandit of the pines, Joseph Muiliner. Jasper had never confirmed that, but he’d never denied it, either.

  I knocked on the door, wondering who would answer. I wasn’t even sure Jasper was still alive. But when the door opened, I immediately recognized the grizzled old head that poked through the opening.

  “You’re not sellin’ anything, are you?” he said.

  “Nothing, Mr. Mulliner,” I said. “I’m Kathleen McKelston. I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

  His eyes lit as his face broke into a toothless grin.

  “Danny’s girl? The one who got the college scholarship? Sure I remember you! Come on in!”

  Jasper was wearing khaki shorts, a sleeveless orange T-shirt, and duck boots—no socks. His white hair was neatly combed and he was freshly shaved. He’d been a salt hay farmer in his younger days and his hands were still callused from it. He’d moved on to overseeing a cranberry bog in his later years. His skin was a weathered brown and looked tougher than saddle leather. The inside of the trailer reminded me more of a low-ceilinged freight car than a home, but it was clean. The presence of the television set told me he had electricity but I saw no phone nor any sign of running water.

  I introduced him to Creighton and we settled onto a three-legged stool and a pair of ladderback chairs as I spent the better part of half an hour telling him about my life since leaving the Barrens and answering questions about my mother and how she was doing since my father died. Then he went into a soliloquy about what a great man my father was. I let him run on, pretending to be listening, but turning my mind to other things. Not because I disagreed with him, but because it had been barely a year since Dad had dropped dead and I was still hurting.

  Dad had not been your typical Piney. Although he loved the Barrens as much as anyone else who grew up here, he’d known there was a bigger though not necessarily better life beyond them. That bigger world didn’t interest him in the least, but just because he was content with where he was didn’t mean that I’d be. He wanted to allow his only child a choice. He knew I’d need a decent education if that choice was to be meaningful. And to provide that education for me, he did what few Pineys like to do: He took a steady job.

  That’s not to say that Pineys are afraid of hard work. Far from it. They’ll break their backs at any job they’re doing. It’s simply that they don’t like to be tied down to the same job day after day, month after month. Most of them have grown up flowing with the cycle of the Barrens. Spring is for gathering sphagnum moss to sell to the florists and nurseries. In June and July they work the blueberry and huckleberry fields. In the fall they move into the bogs for the cranberry harvest. And in the cold of winter they cut cordwood, or cut holly and mistletoe, or go “pineballing”—collecting pine cones to sell. None of this is easy work. But it’s not the same work. And that’s what matters.

  The Piney attitude toward jobs is the most laid back you’ll ever encounter. That’s because they’re in such close harmony with their surroundings. They know that with all the pure water all around them and flowing beneath their feet, they’ll never go thirsty. With all the wild vegetation around them, they’ll never lack for fruit and vegetables. And whenever the meat supply gets low, they pick up a rifle and head into the brush for squirrel, rabbit, or venison, whatever the season.

  When I neared fourteen, my father bit the bullet and moved us close to Pemberton where he took a job with a well-drilling crew. It was steady work, with benefits, and I got to go to Pemberton High. He pushed me to take my schoolwork seriously, and I did. My high grades coupled with my gender and low socioeconomic status earned me a full ride—room, board, and tuition—at Rutgers. As soon as that was settled, he was ready to move back into the Barrens. But my mother had become used to the conveniences and amenities of town living. She wanted to stay in Pemberton. So they stayed.

  I still can’t help but wonder whether Dad might have lived longer if he’d moved back into the woods. I’ve never mentioned that to my mother, of course.

  When Jasper paused, I jumped in: “My friend Jon’s doing a book and he’s devoting a chapter to the Jersey Devil.”

  “Is that so?” Jasper said. “And you brought him to me, did you?”

  “Well, Dad always told me there weren’t many folks in the Pines you didn’t know, and not much that went on that you didn’t know about.”

  The old man beamed and did what many Pineys do: He repeated a phrase three times.

  “Did he now? Did he now? Did he really now? Ain’t that somethin’! I do believe that calls for a little jack.”

  As Jasper turned and reached into his cupboard, Creighton threw me a questioning look.

  “Applejack,” I told him.

  He smiled. “Ah. Jersey lightning.”

  Jasper turned back with three glasses and a brown quart jug. With a practiced hand he poured two fingers’ worth into each and handed them to us. The tumblers were smudged and maybe a little crusty, but I wasn’t worried about germs. There’s never been a germ that could stand up to straight jack from Jasper Mulliner’s still. I remember siphoning some off from my father’s jug and sneaking off into the brush at night to meet a couple of my girlfriends from high school, and we’d sit around and sing and get plastered.

  I could tell by the way the vapor singed my nasal membranes that this was from a potent batch. I neglected to tell Creighton to go slow. As I took a respectful sip, he tossed his off. I watched him wince as he swallowed, saw his face grow red and his eyes begin to water.

  “Whoa!” he said hoarsely. “You could etch glass with that stuff!” He caught Jasper l
ooking at him sideways and held out his glass. “But delicious! Could I have just a drop more?”

  “Help yourself,” Jasper said, pouring him another couple of fingers. “Plenty more where this came from. But down it slow. This here’s sippin’ whiskey. You go puttin’ too much of it down like that and you’ll get apple palsy. Slow and leisurely does it when you’re drinking Gus Sooy’s best.”

  “This isn’t yours?” I said.

  “Naw! I stopped that long time ago. Too much trouble and gettin’ too civilized ‘round here. Besides, Gus’s jack is as good as mine ever was. Maybe better.”

  He set the jug on the floor between us.

  “About that Jersey Devil,” I said, prompting him before he got off on another tangent.

  “Right. The ol’ Devil. He used to be known as the Leeds’ Devil. I’m sure you’ve heard various versions of the story, but I’ll tell you the real one. That ol’ devil’s been around a spell, better’n two and a half centuries. All started back around 1730 or so. That was when Mrs. Leeds of Estellville found herself in the family way for the thirteenth time. Now she was so fed up and angry about this that she cried out, ‘I hope this time it’s the Devil!’ Well now, Someone must’ve been listenin’ that night, because she got her wish. When that thirteenth baby was born, it was an ugly-faced thing, born with teeth like no one’d ever seen before, and it had a curly, sharp-pointed tail, and leathery wings like a bat. It bit its mother and flew out through the window. It grew up out in the pine wilds, stealing and eating chickens and small piglets at first, then graduating to cows, children, even growed men. All they ever found of its victims was their bones, and they was chipped and nicked by powerful sharp teeth. Some say it’s dead now, some say it’ll never die. Every so often someone says he shot and killed it, but most folks think it can’t be killed. It gets blamed for every missing chicken and every pig or cow that wanders off, and so after a while you think it’s just an ol’ Piney folktale. But it’s out there. It’s out there. It’s surely out there.”