Batsto – Epilogue

EPILOGUE

I wasted a few hours just walking around my neighborhood. As soon as got home, I showed Rory Braden’s notebook to my wife, Anita – and told her about the call from the Colorado State Police. She read it cover to cover.

A typical Jersey girl, she didn’t go the long way around any barns.

“Burn this Goddamn thing, NOW!” She said, giving me that “No sex if you don’t” look. She continued in her special, tender way.

“What the Hell is wrong with you? Why do you always get wrapped up in shit that doesn’t concern you?” She stormed out of the living room and straight into her – that’s right – “her” kitchen.

I waited a respectable fifteen minutes, then crept in.

“Hey………still pissed?” I ventured. The last thing I wanted was to get her mad. I needed her help – her insight.

“Yeah….but I’m more interested in why your old lawyer buddy dropped this bag of shit into your lap and didn’t warn you. There’s a ton of commercial places he could’ve archived his files – like Iron Mountain in PA. – but NO! Bob has got to slip you this big dick up your ass…and then drive out to Arizona and die!!”

She had a point.

“Look…” I said as diplomatically as I could, slowly easing into my sales pitch. “Let’s take a drive – it’s a nice day – down by Atlantic County Road 613 and check it out. It’ll be fun….like a Sherlock Holmes mystery. We can get dinner later.. wherever you want…..”

That got her. Besides, we were both unreservedly nosey people.

“Dinner at the Knife & Fork in Atlantic City?” She asked, her eyes making it clear: we had a deal – now we’re just haggling over the price.

“Done” I responded. This was gonna’ get expensive.

The Knife & Fork was the one of the oldest restaurants in Atlantic City, NJ – and one of its most renowned. “Nucky” Thompson of “Boardwalk Empire” fame and scores of gangsters and NJ hoodlums made the place their personal eatery for ages. Rich guests parked their Dusenbergs and Packards in its lot during the 1920s and, these days, merrily handed over the keys of their Bugattis, Morgans and Lamborghinis. On any night – if you could get in – dinner and wine would set you back a princely sum. What the Hell.

In no time we were heading down Route 206 South, looking for that Batsto sign off AC 613.

When we did make that left off NJ 206 South, we immediately knew something was up. Sure, there was the Batsto sign in all its glory – but down AC 613 where an “obscure, overgrown and nearly unnoticeable pathway” (as described in Rory’s Confession) was supposed to be, there now were four NJ Dept. of Transportation barriers with blinking lights on top, blocking what was now a crushed stone roadbed. Anita’s reaction as she surveyed the scene just about summed it all up.

“What the Hell….is…happenin’…here…..”

Behind the blinking barriers to my left I saw what appeared to be a newly graded but extremely rough stone road surface, about the width of a double driveway, disappearing into the distance. One story house-sized mounds of crushed rock – standard shist NJ roadbed – were on each side of it, flattening the brush and pigmy pine trees as if the environment was an afterthought.

The “distance” this rough new stone roadbed was disappearing into was the precise direction of the Mullica, Bass and Batsto river convergence basin. It’s as if somebody wanted to cut a nice big driveway straight to Crazy Mary’s front door and retained a major construction company to make it happen. In a flattened brush area off the edge of AC 613 there was a huge-bladed bulldozer with “Ferranti & Sons Construction Company, Red Bank, NJ” on its side.

I knew of Ferranti Construction. They did most of NJ Turnpike projects below the Raritan River. A well-connected, huge operation that, oddly enough, was at this very moment building aircraft hangers and support facilities at McGuire AFB. They recently won the bid on a major base renovation contract that was supposed to take a decade. Hundreds of millions of dollars and a shit load of NJ jobs were hooked to that contract and the NJ Governor himself presided at a “gold-shovel” opening ceremony that was broadcasted live on NJ News 12 last month.

The cheesy NJ Governor actually brought gold-painted shovels for everybody to hold at the photo ops – with our tax dollars! What can I say? Welcome to New Jersey.

Whatever activity that resulted in this crushed stone roadbed being laid looked to be over for the time being. At least the rough surface grading looked complete. I parked my Subaru Outback about a quarter mile up the road at a broken down and abandoned farm produce stand and we took a little walk.

I slung my binoculars around my neck like a geek just in case we had to explain why we were there. You know, Officer – we’re just birdwatchers trying to get to the estuaries out in that direction…..looking for the spotted humpback stewgotz bird…..my, my! Look Dear! A road that’s going in the direction we want to go!!!

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The road bed area was deserted. The rock was rough cut and hard to walk on but we’d worn our LL Bean hiking gear and were ok. We walked at least two miles in when the forest and brush started to look blackened and burnt. I saw a grizzly old guy about fifty feet away, across the creek bed on my left wearing waders and making his way into the deep brackish swamp balancing his fishing pole over his head. I yelled in his direction.

“Yo – Hey!! Yo!!” I called out, waving my arms. “Helllooo!!”””

The guy meandered his way closer, struggling to lift each step of his rubber cladded lower half out of the muck and goo of the bogs. He seemed to be good natured enough, smiling – probably glad to meet another Pine Barrens fanatic. Why they all found this place so damned alluring was beyond me. I mean, think “inhospitable” writ large.

“Hello, there’ He responded. “Can I help ya?”

“Yeah!” I said, trying to sound like a real birdwatcher. “Me and my wife here are looking for the estuaries up there – the Mullica Basin – trying to see some Blue and White Warblers, or Northern Flickers…..see anything up this road area here???”

“Oh Hell yeah!” He damned near jumped out of the swamp. “There’s a ton of birds up lil’over two miles at the water’s edge…..the Mullica’s banks are full of ’em now!!”

“Keep walking through the burned out brush and you’ll come to the Mullica River basin…..”

“Gee, Mister”, I said in a conversational tone. “Was there a fire here? What happened? When did this all burn, looks like hundreds of acres all around us….?” Anita just kept silent and watched his reactions.

“Aww, Hell…..” The man replied. “Must’ve been a few months ago…it was one of those burns that happen ’round here…..lightnin’ or somethin’….hundreds of acres all right! It was a real doozey!!! It burned some the old Pineys outta’ their shacks, too….”

Well, now. THAT seemed of interest. Anita grabbed my arm gently, signaling me to ask more questions.

“Old Pineys???” I asked, feigning surprise.

“Yeah…..” He responded, scratching his chin stubble.

“Some old Piney die-hards lived here – but they’re gone now ’cause of the fire….I knew that old, cripple lady at the water’s edge up there….. ……she’s gone….ole’ Mary Verner…..

She ran a car repair garage with her husband up in Chatsworth ’till he drank it all away. Sad, really…..I guess it’s better this way…she was real sick – in ‘er innerds and mentally, ya’ know?” He touched the side of his forehead for emphasis at that last comment, just to make sure we knew she was a bit off her rocker. Like we’d expect somebody normal to be setting up house in a swamp shitshow like this…..

“Sorry to hear that” I responded, cranking up my best quizzical face. “Wonder where somebody like that goes once they’re burned outta’….a place….like this??”

“Aww, she’ll be alright!” He declared. “The VA’s takin’ care of her now….her husband was US Navy, ya’ know…..yeah…she’ll be ok…”

“Well now, you two take care…..” He once more commenced his laborious slog through the desolate swamp, happy as a clam. You could hear his wader boots suctioning up the dark muck as he moved on, fishing pole raised high in victory above his head. His personal journey of Zen.

“That guy’s batshit nuts,” Anita said under her breath as we headed further up the crushed rock surface. “How I let you drag me outta’ beautiful Bedminster up in Somerset County to live here, I’ll never know…..”

Finally, water in the distance glimmered and we saw birds of every description buzzing overhead and hanging onto the foliage – or what was left of it. Blackened hulks of tree trunks and swathes of flattened, charred weeds surrounded us for what now looked like miles.

It looked like the place was ground zero in an incendiary bombing campaign. Like the Look Magazine photos of burned-out rice patties in Viet Nam during the war. Whatever conflagration ate through this swamp was serious – I’m talking epic obliteration, the likes of which was complete and permanent.

The water line was about fifty feet away. To the right was a pile of sticks, twisted tin and refuse. Anita articulated what I was thinking.

“Crazy Mary’s” shack…..she uttered, shaking her head. Her eyes were already moist. “How sad……that poor, poor old lady!”

“Yeah” I said, looking down and momentarily joining in her pathos.

Let’s head to the water….” I had to see if there was any remnants of the pier…some final clue Rory’s story was real. And I was starting to wonder what the Bejesus I’d gotten myself into.

Sure enough, there they were. Old pilings of various heights, some snapped off like twigs, others pushed sideways. Pieces of planking showed in places, swinging on old flat nails and spikes, undulating in the river currents. Whatever had been there was now blackend and rotten, but the crumbling, disintegrating remains were there, standing in the river muck – mocking us like the blind sleuths we were.

Anita was more interested in what she’d found.

Chevron shaped indentations of huge construction tires about fifteen feet abreast leading right to the water’s edge. You had to stand back to see them. I was so interested in looking for the pier that I didn’t realize I was standing in them. Ruts made by some piece of equipment so heavy it crushed the stone into the earth below it, forming a kind of casting or mold in the dry terra firma. Heavy equipment, rolling on huge tires – like a crane?

And something at the Mullica River’s edge caused it to sink visibly deep enough to make castings of its tires inside the rock covered ground. What it’s cables lifted out of the water was heavy….. something really heavy – like a car.

It all made sense now. Rory Braden’s story looked like it was true. I took Anita’s hand and we started back.

At the end of the roadbed, just as we walked back on to AC 613, Anita let out a sigh. “Let’s just go home. I’m not up for the Knife & Fork…..I’m just not hungry anymore…”

We didn’t speak much for a few hours, even after we got home. Finally, as I was wrapping up some TV news, she sat next to me and offered me a glass of her favorite table wine – Australian Shiraz.

“Good for what ails ‘ya”, she said. I knew what as coming and I took the glass readily, knocking back a good mouthful.

“So…..” She started out, her voice a bit edgy.

“Let’s recap, shall we? Rory Braden buries both parents, heads to Colorado and spends a few peaceful years until he’s beaten to death and thrown down a ravine. By Air Force goons – who, presumeably, get him to sing like a bird before they finish him off.

They – whoever they are – know about what Braden did, where he dumped their weird, Fedora-hatted-McGuire-Air-Force- Base-Dynamic-Duo and…..they also know about you. They probably even set the blaze that burned Crazy Mary out… You are screwed with a capital F, my love…….”

“Not necessarily….” I responded, staring out a window just beyond her very concerned face. I tried to convince her.

“Look – Braden’s dead. Bob, my lawyer buddy, is dead. The funeral director in Sedona, AZ doesn’t know dick – just Bob’s pre-packaged burial plans. Even if somebody thinks I got something Braden wanted – because of the cell phone call he placed to me – they don’t know for certain………”

“Why?” I asked as I looked directly into my wife’s now incredulous eyes.

“Because the battery lead plate trick worked! The battery plates sandwiched against the cards the dead guys were carrying – they’ve been blocking any signaling or tracking signature since Rory batched them all together! Those kids stumbled onto the answer right from the gitgo…it was brilliant! A bunch of Piney trash kid garage mechanics beat them at their own game!”

Anita shook her head in the negative, visibly perturbed.

“Even if nobody can prove you’ve got them badges, Goons may be on their way here to question you” She said, obviously not impressed with my analysis. “And they ain’t gentle, Tarzan! You ain’t exactly a martial arts hero or ripped like Thor! Wakey, Wakey, Eggs and Bakey!!!”

“I know…..” I said picking up my cell phone. “After I talk with Doc’ Sweeney at the Veteran’s Administration Clinic in Vorhees, let’s take another ride”. Anita now looked at me and just threw her arms up in complete exasperation.

My wife and I both knew Doctor Sweeney well. When we were taking care of my dying Dad, we’d be at the VA facility every few days. My father was US Navy – and never let anybody forget it. He hated civilian doctors and would insist VA medics treat his every ache and pain. Two broken hips, two total knee replacements, heart valves and vena-cava filters, brain bleeds – you name it. Dad’s twilight (of ninety-four total) years was an ongoing medical nightmare of never-ending falls, bone breaks, operations, therapies, drugs – you name it. He got real difficult towards the end, too. We were worn out by it all. The memories of it all were painful even today.

But Sweeney was cool – for a Military Doc. He took my phone call after two rings and seemed genuinely happy to hear from me.

“Heeeyyyyyy!! Counsellor!” He guffawed into the phone. “What’s a lawyer callin’ me for?”

“Doc, I got a problem…” I said. “I gotta find my neighbor’s Aunt…..he name is Mary Verner and she’s at a VA facility somewhere….now I know you got a database……”

Within the hour Anita and I were driving to the Veteran’s Administration Extended Care Home in Vineland, NJ. It turns out they had a patient there that we needed to visit. After an uninspiring hour’s slog in the car we finally got there.

The facility was beautiful, much to my surprise. Modern new buildings built in the fashion of a DelWebb retirement community more than a medical care facility. Wings of new rooms snaked around a lake, providing the patients with a stunning view. Things were clean. It was amazing. I’d expected a horror-show; a crumbling and broken-down warehouse of ancient human detritus, vomiting over themselves in wheelchairs and writhing in their own execrement on filthy bed sheets.

A helpful, smiling woman at the front desk directed us to “E” Wing where – sure enough – there was a patient named Mary Verner. I was sure to let her know we were so happy to have finally located my long-lost auntie – Mom’s half-sister……Praise Jesus!

The desk nurse at “E” Wing was just as helpful. “Go to room 115”, a chubby, middle-aged woman cheerfully said, pointing out a general direction. She was attacking a box of Krispy Kreme Donuts and couldn’t have been less interested in us. So far so good.

Room 115 was light and airy. Four beds were arranged along its walls, each amply outfitted with all kinds of oxygen hoses, monitor wiring, breathing assistance apparatus – all the medical equipment you’d find in an ER crash cart duty-station.

Simultaneously, Anita and I saw a wisp of gossamer hair, white as snow, gently moving on its pillow. An old woman with a badly sunken face and painfully crushed-in jaw, staring out the window. Ducks in the pond in the distance were effortlessly swimming by in the bright afternoon sunshine. It was serene. For a VA facility, it was like a resort.

Her plastic hospital-style wristband said “VERNER, MARY” and a VA patient number. I didn’t catch her date of birth. Slouched to her side in a kind of fetal position and covered by a thin (clean) sheet, Mary gave the outward appearance of a small bird, folded into a woven twig nest. Her eyes seemed a bit cloudy but noticed Anita and I as soon as we hovered by her bed. She made small noises from her mouth, intermittantly coughing from drool that she was aspirating. We strained to discern words, but couldn’t.

A nurse entered behind us pushing a cart that was chocked-full of medicines and bandages. She, too, was cheerful and greeted us both.

“Hello! I see Mary has visitors!” She said, propping the old women up for her medicines. She maneuvered a small paper cup containing capsules to Mary’s mouth and with her other hand inserted a straw from a water container that was on a night table. Mary dutifully swallowed her pills and her head was eased back on her large pillow, disappearing into it like a puff of emaciated lint.

“I’m sorry, but Mary’s been a bit aggitated lately….some soldiers came in to see her a few days ago and she hasn’t been the same….” The nurse said to us. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to keep your visit brief”. She left Mary’s bedside and migrated to another bed across the room.

Anita bent over the withered, almost translucent woman and gently put her hand on her forehead and whispy hair.

“Hello, Mary. I’m Anita. This is my husband.” She whispered.

The nurse across the room was busy working on another patient and wasn’t paying us much attention.

“We’re friends of the young boys that used to ride their motorbikes by your place on the Mullica River years ago……they wanted to say hello….and ask how you are…..”

Mary’s eyes slowly started to focus on my wife’s face. She tried to raise her impossibly dessicated, skeletal fingers towards Anita and appeared to tremble a bit, despite her mostly rigid fetal positioning. She was like a helpless bird who hatched too early – or had fallen out of a birdhouse. But there was a reaction, Unmistakeable. I could see it – as could Anita. The nurse, thankfully, was still otherwise engaged.

Anita moved closer to her small, malformed mouth. Mary’s lips quivered, deeply sunken back on her toothless gums. Her whispered words nearly floored me.

“Goooood boyyyshhh……”

“Yes, Mary…….” My wife continued as calmly as she could. We were both uncomfortable trying to rush what we needed to do, mindful our “brief” visit was being monitored by a nurse about fifteen feet away.

“When you last saw the good boys…….did they have a car with them?”

Mary’s slight tremble suddenly became more strident. It actually caused her hospital bed to squeek a bit – a detail that caused our nursey friend to notice and shoot us the stink-eye.

“Mary….” I whispered as gently as I could, my wife’s hand still caressing the old woman’s sparse white hair.

“Do you remember the car, Mary? What happened to it….what kind it was….the good boys did with it….?”

Mary suddenly found sufficient, albeit pathetic, strength to raise her voice and arch her back. Her body now shook in visible tremors that looked emotionally – and neurologically – related. The bed groaned beneath her.

She struggled moving her arm – and then pointed at me.

“Bbbbblii…..bbbleye…….bleye…eye……””

The poor woman was spitting out words ensnared by drool and gesturing to me in proxisms and body throes. Despite her spasms, she continued her struggle to form the words she couldn’t make her mouth say out loud.

“Beye!!! Bleye ………..Mmmowwwttt!! Beye….Mmmmmmmowwt!!!!”

Mary’s mouth was covered in wetness. Anita tried to dry her up a bit with her bed sheet.

“Mary….Mary, are you trying to say we’re lying to you? That our mouths are telling lies? We just want to ask you about what happened that night……we’re not lying to you… Mary…”

“BBBleye!! Mmmmowt!!!” Mary continued, now physically spent and disoriented. We tried to calm her down.

“I’m sorry, folks” The nurse was approaching us from across the room. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now…..”

We drove home is a daze. Neither of us could make heads or tails out of what just happened. The only thing I could come up with was that Mary didn’t like the thought of me snooping around about her “Goot Boyyshh” pals and was afraid they were in trouble. So she called me a liar. A liar mouth.

Somewhere around Rt. 70 I suggested getting an ice cream just to break the awkward silence. Anita didn’t object.

I stopped at the Evergreen Dairy Bar, a sprawling, 1950’s ice cream joint that had a huge parking lot and rock and roll music usually cranking. Their weekly muscle-car show was in full display, all the locally owned 1960s and 70s iconic rides were polished and their hoods open, flashing kick-ass engines for everybody to gawk at. Motors that reached power curves we all just dream about now. Ah, the days of yore. Gas mileage aside, those were the days!

Three 1966 440 Wedge Chargers, 2 1967 Hemi ‘Cudas, a 1966 Chevelle SS396, a Boss 302 Mustang, a 1968 Z-28 Camaro and countless “in progress” shitbox projects their owners were hoping to complete before they died.

Anita and I made our way to the ice cream counter, got a couple vanilla cones and started meandering around the cars. She had her favorites – usually the 1960 MGBs and English Triumph sportscars of that same period – and I had mine.

While my wife admired the classic English convertibles, I planted myself in front of my wet dream – a 1968 lipstick blue Road Runner with its hood open, flashing that beautiful 383 big block Mopar V8. On top were three 2-barrel carburators – known as a “six pack” – connected to the car’s accelerator by a “progressive” linkage to make them guzzle obscene amounts of gas together and churn over 500 horsepower wide open. There was a gleaming Hurst shifter, wide tires and those funky Road Runner cartoon stickers. This was a hot car! I was lost in my nostalgia of the era, cars and years when I realized Anita was right beside me, standing frozen like a stone.

Her jaw was open – but not for her ice cream, which was melting and running down her hand. My wife’s eyes seemed to be staring straight ahead – at the Road Runners’ front hood. At the metal letters that spelled the car company that made it.

“What’s up, babe?” I asked in a jocular tone. “Fallin’ in love with this heartbreaker car?”

She didn’t respond – and didn’t look amused. She met my stare, then – knowing I was following her focus – looked at the cars’ metal brand emblem, pointing at it with her dripping cone, speechless.

I strained to see what she was struggling to make me to look at……

Anita finally looked into my eyes and blurted it out.

“She was trying to say P-L-Y-M-O-U-T-H!!!!!!! The car! Mary Verner couldn’t pronounce the word Plymouth!!! She was trying to tell us what we were asking for – but couldn’t!!!”

In a flash it all added up.

Rory Braden wrote that Crazy Mary had stared at the car that night the boys ditched it in the Mullica River.

She’d run an auto repair garage in Chatsworth with her husband years before and would have known car brands. She wasn’t saying I was a “lier mouth”. She was confirming she’d seen everything. And that it was a Plymouth car that was driven into the Mullica River by one of the “Gooot Boyyshh” that gave her whiskey that night. Mary was sick – and maybe dying – but she wasn’t blind or stupid.

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So there it is. I’m sitting here at my desk with a double Glenlivet on the rocks and a rather heavy 6” X 11″ envelope in front of me. It’s about 3:00 in the morning and I’m deciding whether to open it.

I’m pretty confident there’ll be flat lead plates from an old motorcycle battery inside, inbetween which will be two very weird cards covered with braille dots and a pyramid symbol up in the corner. Of course, once I remove them from their protective leaden sandwich, they’ll probably broadcast a “come and get me” signal to some very bad hombres who’ll show up and kick my ass. My 38 Colt snub nose is in my pocket already.

Oh, well…..as the Irish song says, “There’s whiskey in the jar…”

And I’ve got to ponder my next move.

THE END.

Copyright, 2021 Jon Croft