Jack wanted to ask her why that wasn’t a surprise but she’d turned away again. She took Walter’s arm and the two of them began walking, her dog
close behind. Jack heard bottles clinking in Walter’s paper bag.
“Now, Walter,” Jack heard her say, “you’re overdoing the drinking. You must learn to pace yourself, otherwise you won’t survive to complete your
mission.”
Walter shook his shaggy head. “Not surviving … that doesn’t sound so bad. I hate this …” He glanced back at Jack. “Do you think he might be the one?”
“I can understand why you might feel that way. But no, he’s not the one you seek …”
And then their voices faded.
What were they talking about? Why was Walt seeking someone, and why could Mrs. Clevenger understand why he might think Jack was the one? Jack
wanted to trail after them and hear more, then realized that they were both sort of crazy. He couldn’t expect to make sense out of a conversation between
those two.
Weezy too was watching them go, but she had her own questions.
“How could she know about the box?”
Jack shrugged. “And where did she come from? Did you see?”
Weezy shook her head. “No. Al of a sudden she was there, swinging her cane.”
Jack looked at the Old Town bridge that spanned the narrow midsection of the figure-eight-shaped lake. On the far side of that creaky one-lane span lay
the easternmost end of Johnson, where it backed up to the Pine Barrens. The area included the six square blocks of the original Quakerton settlement,
cal ed Old Town for as long as anyone could remember. Nobody knew for sure when it had first been settled. Most said before the revolutionary war—
before the war.
Mrs. Clevenger lived in Old Town. She must have come from there.
Jack reconstructed the chain of events: Johnson didn’t have a liquor store, so Walt must have been stocking up in Old Town. Some of the Pineys had
stil s, but instead of using corn they made their moonshine from apples. Every Wednesday and Saturday one or two of them would come in from the
woods; they’d park their pickups at the end of Quakerton Road where it dead-ended at the edge of the Pines and sel their applejack. They transported it
in big jugs and customers had to bring their own bottle—or in Walt’s case, bottles—to be fil ed.
Nearly everybody in Johnson had at least one bottle of applejack in the house, and it was an ongoing argument as to who made the best—Gus Sooy or
Lester Appleton.
Walt must have gone over to get his bottles fil ed and run into Teddy and Joey on the way back. Mrs. Clevenger must have been close behind him.
Wel , wherever she came from, Jack was glad she’d arrived when she did.
He looked back and saw the pair turning the corner onto the block where Walt lived with his sister and brother-in-law.
“There goes an odd couple,” he said.
Weezy nodded. “Way odder than Oscar and Felix. She wears that same scarf day in and day out, and he wears gloves no matter how hot it gets.”
“You believe she’s a witch?” Jack said as they headed back to their bikes, and immediately realized Weezy was probably the wrong person to ask.
“Could be. She’s hard to explain. I mean, how did she know about the box?”
Remembering that caused a trickle of uneasiness to go down Jack’s spine.
“I don’t know, but should we fol ow her advice?”
Weezy looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown a second nose and a third eye. “Are you kidding me? Go back and bury it? No way! Even if she
witch.”
Obviously he’d struck a nerve. No surprise, though.
“Wel , I don’t believe in witches, but did you hear her threaten Teddy with a spel ?”
“So? I can threaten
“Yeah, wel , maybe she just pretends to be a witch. She’s already got the Clevenger name. Maybe letting the more superstitious folks around here think
