Last Exit in New Jersey (3 page)

Typical of New Jersey summer weather, even as isolated storms deluged sections of coastline, other stretches baked under a cloudless sky. Along the southwestern shore, an unrelenting midday sun beat down on the marshy banks of the Maurice River, cooking the low-tide mud to a pungent level. Stagnant air hung wet and sticky, ripe for a good thunderstorm. This was Bivalve: the end of the road, figuratively and literally.

Long ago there had been oysters. Freight trains full of oysters, history told. In its day, the one-time oyster capital of the world created more millionaires per mile than anywhere in the country. Oyster schooners by the hundreds sailed the bay, hauling up a seemingly limitless bounty. Oystermen crewed and dredged the bay; they built and maintained the schooners in hundreds of boatyards; jobs were plentiful on roads and rail, shipping the oysters across the country. By the late 1880s, Bivalve filled ninety freight cars a week, and by the 1920s, the annual harvest reached ten million dollars. But in the 1950s, disease struck. Oysters began dying off, taking with them the region’s bustling economy. Abandoned fleets sank into neglect and into the mud. Docks collapsed and marshes reclaimed the shores. Over time nature methodically erased most traces of a once booming industry until all that remained was a building here, a twisted length of railway there. Bivalve was a ghost town, and even the ghosts had long since packed up and moved on. Only a few people, a few docks, and a few boats remained.

Among those boats were a plywood center console, an old Sea Ray, and a rust-streaked patrol cruiser. In slip F-18, the only numbered slip around, bobbed an ancient wooden Grady-White named
Kindling
, sporting hot-rod-style flames that covered the bow. Across from
Kindling
,
Witch
sat silent, all traces of the previous night’s voyage and cargo washed away.

Above the docks, a faded plywood sign read:

Along the bottom, fresh lettering in a shade of red remarkably similar to
Witch
’s boot stripe stated: GO AWAY.

Beyond the docks and past the lot paved in crushed white shells stood a sagging wood-frame building. Once a sailmaker’s loft, it presently housed Joe’s marine repair shop and yard amenities consisting of showers, a laundry room, small kitchen, wood stove, a sunken couch, and a pool table supported on all corners by car jacks. A carpenter’s level held a place of honor in the cue rack.

Inside the shop, Hazel stared restlessly out the window at the lot. Her father had left an hour earlier with no explanation, depositing her under Joe’s protective custody, and she’d spent much of that time calculating how to make a break for it. She knew she wasn’t supposed to leave. Her father made that clear, even having her recite back his instructions.

“Stay with Joe while you’re gone. Under no circumstances short of fire, earthquake, or nuclear attack should I leave this building.”

She really did intend to keep her word, at least at first. That had to count for something.

She sat beside the workbench and picked at red paint dried on her shredded jeans. She wanted to talk about last night, but since it “never happened,” that topic was off-limits. Instead she scanned the service manual for the dissected Johnson outboard currently spread across Joe’s workbench, passing him tools before he asked and trying not to worry about Micah. Joe concentrated on his work, focusing harder than usual as he loosened a fuel line. With each turn of the wrench, the colorful tentacles on his octopus tattoo writhed around the anchor and skull beneath them.

If there was one thing Joe lacked, it was subtlety. She could see it in his eyes every time he glanced up. He kept studying her the same way he had last night, when she’d wandered trancelike into his apartment, blood-soaked, axe in hand, and said in barely a whisper, “I just killed a man.” She wondered what Joe was thinking, but she was afraid to ask. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Even with the air-conditioner straining and AC/DC screaming from the radio, the silence was intolerable.

“You think it’s not getting enough fuel?” Hazel said at last, stating the obvious. She might as well have commented on the weather. Joe paused, forehead creasing like he was trying to read between the lines, and he wiped his face with a bandana.

“Yeah. Figured I’d test the fuel pump.”

She could see he wanted to say more but turned his attention back to the motor, setting the end of the fuel line into an empty two-liter bottle, cranking the engine. The pump kicked to life, and the fuel line spurted like a severed artery, filling the bottle with raw gasoline. He killed the power, capped off the bottle, and reconnected the fuel line.

Silence resumed. Minutes ticked by.

“Joe?”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

Hazel knew what she wanted to say, but couldn’t actually say it. Joe waited.

“What’s better?” she asked, just to say something, anything. “Double-clutching or floating shifts?”

Joe chuckled darkly. “Neither, if the vehicle in question sinks like a rock.”

She was never going to live that submerged Miata down. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.
RoadKill
’s tranny’s acting up again, and you want me to check it before your dad notices.”

“Could you? Please? Maybe it’s nothing, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’d tell Dad but…”

Joe rubbed his face. “Lay off the clutchless shifting until I take a look.”

Hazel smiled. Her father had bought
RoadKill
back when she’d been born; even then the Kenworth was already old and rusty. And once they finally purchased a new truck, he began suggesting what Hazel considered unthinkable: getting rid of the antiquated Kenworth. But so long as
RoadKill
remained reliable and continued to earn its keep, thanks in part to Joe’s ongoing clandestine repairs, Hazel got her way and the truck stayed.

She said, “It’s just that Dad really doesn’t need any more aggravation right now.”

“Speaking of which, I haven’t seen Micah around much these days. What’s he been up to?”

She gathered scattered sockets from the workbench, returning them to the gang box. “I wouldn’t know.” Joe was fishing, but he wasn’t going to catch anything. She knew better than to volunteer any information, not that there was anything to volunteer other than the fact that last night’s visitor asked the same questions. But that little detail might only make matters worse, and besides, it wasn’t what Joe asked. “I haven’t seen Micah.” And that part of her story wasn’t changing. “Or heard from him.”

Joe looked less than convinced. Hazel and Micah weren’t just cousins. They were best friends, confidants, and partners in crime, inseparable for as long as either could remember. Unlike Hazel, Micah’s upbringing had the benefit of married parents, a picture-perfect suburban house, traditional schooling…and a home life that was anything but happy. He rarely talked about it and never suffered any outright abuse, just emotional neglect by parents preoccupied by their own dysfunctional relationship. Aboard
Witch
he found warmth, guidance, acceptance, and sanctuary from the screaming at home.

For the most part, Hazel’s father treated them equally, though he tended to push Micah a bit harder, expecting more from him. And he blamed Micah whenever Hazel got into trouble, whether justified or not; either way, Micah always accepted it with a smile. Unfortunately this earned him a reputation as a troublemaker, no matter how loudly Hazel proclaimed his innocence. In the end her father and Joe simply assumed that if something went wrong, Micah was at fault. This was a perfect example.

“Maybe he’s just away with some girl.” Hazel said, pulling threads from the hole in the knee of her jeans. “Or lost his cell phone. Or both.” She wished it was that simple—and that she believed it herself. Joe’s skeptical look was reply enough.

“It’s happened before,” she said defensively. While her father suffered from terminal seriousness, Micah was a Labrador puppy in human form: carefree, oblivious, and prone to straying after some enticing scent. More than once she’d received a postcard or call from Ft. Lauderdale or New Orleans, where he’d wound up with a group of girls on spring break.

“Yeah,” Joe said, “but those times,
Tuition
didn’t vanish with him.”

There was that. Their gleaming new Freightliner,
Tuition,
represented far more than merely Hazel’s entire college fund. For twenty years her father had supported them by driving
RoadKill
, living frugally, and homeschooling Hazel, keeping her by his side even as he worked and saved for that rainy day when he’d ship her off to the very place he’d left in his rearview mirror when she was born. It wasn’t easy convincing him her heart wasn’t set on college and they should instead use those funds for a new truck. A childhood spent riding shotgun in the cab and under sail, while solitary and unconventional, was something she wouldn’t trade for four walls, a yard, and every sitcom she’d never watched. She was happiest behind the wheel. It suited her far better than Micah’s bustling college life. It took nearly a year to persuade her father that her mind was set; she was intent on continuing the family business, and they should buy the new truck they needed. Only now
Tuition
was gone, and so was Micah.

“Maybe it’s just coincidence.” Hazel turned away to examine the black-and-white photos on the walls she’d studied a thousand times before, frozen images from Bivalve’s prosperous days when the river teemed with schooners. She swore she could see
Witch
’s stern in one.

Joe said, “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

Hazel could feel his eyes on her as she contemplated the beam of sunlight scattered into rainbows by the facetted stone in her ring. The air-conditioner whined, the radio blared, and tension hung in the stuffy air. She tried to distract herself by organizing the trophies from Joe’s more interesting repairs. Bent props, mangled pistons, twisted valves, and the shattered remains of a crankshaft. She tried to calculate the number of screws in the unfinished sheetrock walls, then poked at hardened formations of over-expanded spray foam insulation spilling from the seams. She inventoried a cardboard box by the door packed with fireworks. Mortars, fountains, Roman candles, firecrackers, M80s, whistling rockets, Saturn missiles.

“Gonna be a hell’va Fourth,” Joe said, his voice tight.

Was she actually making him uncomfortable? She didn’t think anything made Joe nervous.

Hazel closed the box and turned to him. “Joe? Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

Joe stiffened slightly but continued to spray down the carb. “Wrong how?”

“I don’t know. It’s…” She closed her eyes, searching for the right words. “Like when we go hunting, and I have to…”

She didn’t have to explain. He knew. She’d learned to hunt beside her father and Joe and was quite skilled, yet she detested the actual killing and would have stopped long ago if not for the fact that her kills were consistently cleaner and more humane than either of theirs. How anyone could consider hunting a sport, though, eluded her. It was an unpleasant task, necessary for filling the freezer with venison. She wasn’t squeamish: she could efficiently field dress, skin, and butcher her kill, but the process left her somber for days.

“But last night…” She couldn’t say it. Saying it would be admitting it, and that—that she didn’t even want to consider.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just in shock.”

“I didn’t think. I just reacted.”

“You had to or God knows what would have happened.” He slammed the gang box drawer closed. “This is the Pierce thing all over again, isn’t it? Don’t listen to what anyone says; just because you defended yourself doesn’t mean you’re some kind of sociopath.”

She understood what he was saying, but there was a difference between last night and the time Dave Pierce tried to rape her. She had been fourteen then. He followed her until she was alone, then cornered her and held her down, fumbling with his jeans as she screamed and struggled to escape. She’d been crying for him to stop, to let her go—and suddenly he did. Then it was Pierce who was screaming. He fell off her and she stumbled to her feet, backed away, and stared down at her knife clasped in her blood-slick hand. And as he lay shrieking, his gut sliced open, she stood and considered for a fleeting moment whether to cut his throat as well. Instead she ran.

“I didn’t kill Pierce.”

Joe rubbed the back of his neck, pressing on knotted muscles. “And last night you did what you had to. You’re okay and that’s what’s important. Don’t forget that.”

She didn’t think she ever would. She could still see Kessler’s sadistic face every time she closed her eyes. Hazel stared down at the cracked linoleum tiles. “I don’t feel okay.”

“You’re in shock.”

He didn’t get it. After she stabbed Kessler, she probably could have escaped. He was already dying—just not fast enough.

“It was so…” she started, her voice trailing off. So what? Easy? Satisfying? Why was it she felt more remorse killing a deer than another human? What did that say about her?

Joe carried the carburetor to the parts bath and began spraying it with Clean-R-Carb. No. He wasn’t cleaning the carb. Hazel peeked over his shoulder, and saw
Witch’s
axe soaking in a bath of carb-cleaner. Joe turned to her. “It’s over. Let it go. It never happened.”

But it did and she had a bad feeling it was anything but over. She stared at Joe and he stared back. Sweat beaded across his forehead, and his scalp glistened beneath the shadow of stubble. Hazel rose, checking the thermostat. It was eighty-two degrees in the shop. “Too hot,” she said.

“Gonna be another scorcher,” Joe agreed, visibly relieved by the change of subject. “We could use a good storm, break this heat.”