Batsto – Part 2.

Part 2.

CONFESSION OF RORY BRADEN, 315 LANDING ROAD, LUMBERTON, NJ 08048 AUGUST 8, 1982 (CONTINUED)

We were in for a rough night ahead.

The sheer terror of what we all just did kept us sharp.

We dragged the rolled up “packages” out to the front porch where I loosened the duct tape enough to reach in and rifle the dead guys’ pockets. I was real thorough.

All I could come up with was a credit-card sized metallic badge that felt like real hard aluminum – but wasn’t – that each guy had in his right interior suitcoat pocket. The badges had an embossed two inch pyramid symbol in the upper right hand corner and were covered in weird dots – like braille writing. No words or language whatsoever. Neither guy had a drivers’ license or money. Just those funky metal cards.

I’d just popped the metal badges into my jacket pocket when Tel grabbed my arm.

“What if they can track us with that shit, man?” He asked in a guarded voice. “These guys are military – and they got access to military grade spy stuff….”

We had to head back to the garage to collect our gloves anyway. I had an idea.

Bat had his Triumph 650 Bonneville rehab project goin’ on there – and his old battery was just laying on the floor until we could install a new one and wire new electricals throughout the old clunker. Inside that battery casing were lead plates. Lead plates blocked radiation – why not tracking beams and space wave shit? It was worth a try. I didn’t want to dump the mysterious silver cards. Not just yet. There was something about them that screamed “important” – and they were all the “ID” these assholes carried.

“Let’s bust off the top of Bat’s old battery casing, clean out the acid and use the battery plates as an insulation chamber – like they use lead on submarines with nuclear reactors”, I said as we all hustled back to the garage.

“We can bury the battery case with the weird badges sandwiched inside the lead plates until we’re ready to decide what the Hell to do next….”

I was running my mouth, too terrified to make any real sense, but everybody else seemed equally out of ideas. All except Tel – again.

As I lifted the garage door and grabbed for the light pull, Tel gestured for us to gather ’round. “Look, Man…we’re in it real deep here…” He said, measuring his words.

“We gotta’ dump those dudes, the car, everything!!!” He continued.

“And not here – we gotta’ go someplace remote – sink the Freekin’ thing!!”

The rest of us knew instinctively what he was talking about – and where he was thinking about. I said it first.

“Crazy Mary’s…….”

We all rode dirt bikes in a desolate area where the Mullica, Bass and Batsto rivers converged, miles deep inside what’s now Wharton State Forest, a New Jersey Park and Preserve. The real Pine Barrens.

It’s hard to believe, but the Pine Barrens stretches acrosss seven counties of New Jersey. About 1700 square miles of mostly rural and desolate scrub, known for its sandy, acidic “sugar sand” soil. Agriculture is limited to whatever can grow in its’ nutrient-poor ground – like blueberries and pitch pines.

For the most part the deepest “hollers” of the Pine Barrens to this day are huge expanses of estuary, pigmy pines, vines and bramble cut by ruts and swamps. It’s ironic that all this woesome, useless acreage is smack in the middle of one of the most densely populated areas of the United States. And it sits atop one of the biggest fresh water aquifers in the world. Billions and billions of gallons of potable water. A national treasure.

Me and the gang would tear up trails there on Kawasaki and Suzuki dirt bikes for months on end until the Winter locked us out. We knew every nook and cranny – every trail and tar paper shack that real die-hard “Pineys” still inhabited. Even though it’s all been designated “Preserve” and nothing about is fit for human habitation, a handful of scary characters still live there in ramshackle splendor. Some of these indigenous, down and out wrecks of humanity can trace their lineage to the Revolutionary War, when their forebearers – like scores of Jersey colonials – made handsome livings smuggling (the Mullica River winds its way to the Atlantic Ocean).

Sea going Privateers would arrange midnight flea markets on New Jersey beaches and locals would snatch up all manner of rich booty, load it on small pirogues or flat bottom skiffs and vanish back into the Pine Barrons. Sheriffs got their cut and everybody made out like bandits. Fortunes were made by Pineys whose names are now considered “respectable” and whose kids later ran for Governor of New Jersey and the US Senate.

Other enterprising souls smelted “Bog Iron” out of the bounteous ferrite deposits found throughout the Pine Barrens’ shallow streams. Tons of bog iron cannon balls and iron kettles came out of the Pine Barrens in the early years of American history. Long before the rich ores of Pennsylvania were discovered, both North and South Jersey were famous for their iron industry.

Our favorite place to dirt bike was off Atlantic County Road 613. Drive down 206 South through Tabernacle, through Shamong (everybody calls it “Shammytown”), into Atlantic County across the Mullica River to the Town of Hammonton (“The Blueberry Capital of the World”) line, about mile 3.5 of NJ Route 206 South.

There, off to the left, is Atlantic County 613 at a big sign that says “Batsto”. At about two miles in after your turn onto 613 there’s an abandoned, sandy driveway disappearing deep into nowhere. Drive in – if you dare and your suspension is tough enough. You’ll hit endless ruts, washes, bogs and debris until a huge estuary and series of adjoining lakes and swamps appears after an intense five mile slog.

But for the occassional (hard core) fisherman or nature enthusiast, nobody goes there. Backwoods Pineys are salted throughout the place, sleeping in broken down double-wides and converted garbage shacks, still cooking slabs of pork in cast iron skillets over firepits. Every one of them looks like the guys from ZZ Top.

And they all have shotguns.

Me and the boys cultivated their good nature years back so we didn’t have to worry about getting shot, bringing them bottles of whiskey whenever we’d ride near their “places”. They’d keep us informed if NJ Park Rangers were on the snoop, poking their noses into the scrub brush terrain searching for marijuana plants. Once the Fall arrived, though, Park Rangers generally retreated into their cushy HQs and left everybody alone. It was the best time to grab the stash, toke up and smoke up.

In this neck of the woods, the most solitary Piney of all was “Crazy Mary”. She lived in an awful, filthy tin-roofed shack – actually more of a lean to – decorated with deer heads and animal skins. You knew you were getting close by the smell. It was situated in a deep, hazardous pitch grove five miles in, down a sandy road mostly impassable until it was hardened by Fall temperatures. If you had business with Crazy Mary, you had best wait for all that “sugar sand” to firm up after a couple weeks of nightime freezes. Late Fall was early, but do-able.

Mary could barely speak because her jaw had been crushed in some accident. She also stuttered. She once had a husband – he was on the USS Missouri when it carried the first A Bomb to Tinian Island during WWII – but he died in the early fifties from cancer. After that, Mary just withdrew deeper into her wretched, impoverished and cloistered existance. You’d see her kerosine lamp burning most evenings across the Mullica and Bass River estuaries, the brooding shadows from overgrown scrub pines obsuring her tar paper hovel in the moonlight.

The scene was like something out of Edgar Allen Poe – or maybe H. P. Lovecraft. A Piney “Fall of the House of Usher” meets the “At the Mountains of Madness” movie set. Most times when we dirt biked we’d bring her a bottle of liquor and she’d break into a toothless grin, cackling and dancing a jig. She was a pathetic figure, gyrating in a greasy, frayed raincoat and worn down, laceless work boots. Her broken jaw smile was almost sardonic.

“Gooood Boyssshh” she’d slobber as she drank whiskey straight from the bottle. Then she’d disappear into her shack as silently as she appeared. Like a ghost. For years my friends and I believed the Jersey Devil legend was someway linked to her. There always seemed to be some kind of funereal pall enveloping Mary and her small dogpatch of woe. A malign mist wafted about her. You could almost taste its bitterness and sorrow. Damn, if it didn’t feel like it was slowly choking you.

For hundreds of years bad shit went down in these hollers. And at night it bubbled up and grabbed you by the throat. Whatever “it” was, Mary was the gatekeeper and whiskey was our ticket in.

Our destination was at the very end of the lengthy, abused and rutted drive that passed Mary’s hingeless front “door” – and a few hundred potholed feet beyond it. A crumbling series of still standing – but rotted – piles and planking (not even a caricature of a real “Pier”) into the Mullica – Bass River covergence basin.

Here the currents of inky, tea-stained water laden with pine sap and ferrite sludge ran swift and deep continuing its journey left, to the Atlantic Ocean, or right to Batsto Lake. The marshes where this all happened went on for miles and were treacherous for anybody who didn’t intimately know this watershed. It was a no man’s land of deadly currents, snakes (some lethal) and ravenous insects.

Perfect for what we had in mind.

I checked on my parents and kissed them both goodnight on their foreheads.

“Keep the doors locked” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours”.

Mom was still whimpering when I left, collapsed on the couch in a heap and holding a rag to her face. Dad was silent in his rickety chair, his cloudy eyes almost submerged into the red-splotched and wrinkled folds of his eyelids. He stared blankly into space, his face slick with fresh drool. I gently daubed his chin with a tissue on my way out, like I’d do every night.

Me, Wingnut, Bat and Tel made our way to the dead-men’s car parked at the top of the driveway. A 1980 Plymouth – a square, basic gray sedan with white US Government tags. “1377-9”. No New Jersey inspection sticker. The pentagram-topped Chrysler style keys were still in the ignition. Probably had a small block V-8 motor. A lot of these mid-size Chrysler products (they marketed a Dodge and Plymouth version of the same model) were used as police cars. Rock solid and simple, old school technology. There was nothing inside – no coats, debris, coffee cups. Nothing. The glove compartment had nothing in it either.

One thing stood out: it stunk. Pits and ass. Like somebody murdered a diseased rat, ate it and shat it out while driving. It skeeved everybody out at once.

“Jesus!” Bat gagged. “What the Hell crawled up their asses and died??? These dickheads needed a doctor!!!”

Me and Wingnut just rolled the windows down and got in. We had to move. There was no time to waste.

“Help me load those Assholes into the trunk,” I said to everyone.

I started the car and eased it down the driveway to the front porch area, where we all maneuvered the duct taped “packages” into the car’s large, square trunk. I made sure to swipe a nearly full scotch bottle from my Dad’s old crash cart and throw it in with the wrapped bodies, just in case.

I blurted out what I was banging around in my brain.

“Listen, Guys — me an’ Wing are gonna’ head up and across Eayrestown Road into Medford, through Medford Lakes and past the High School on Tabernacle Road. We’ll pick up 206 South about a mile past the NJ State Police Barracks.” I emphasized my words, watching everyone’s faces to be sure they understood the plan.

I explained the route because the last thing I wanted was everybody to pass right in front of the NJ State Police Red Lion Barracks on Route 206 South when the safer way was to bypass it by going through back roads. What we were hauling was real problem cargo.

Everybody nodded in approval.

Tel and Bat took off on their bikes through the back, lights off, weaving over the Rancocas creek tree bridge and up through the Medford Horticultural Nursery property quiet and easy. They’d hook up with me and Wing later, probably around the Batsto sign on Atlantic County Road 613.

Wingnut and me kept the windows rolled down and headed out. By the time we were crossing Route 70 into Medford, the car had lost most its stink and we adjusted the windows to cut the cold wind drafts.

Wingnut, usually the most word-stingy guy of the bunch, started to open up a bit as I messed around with the shitty standard dash radio.

“Why the Hell did those goons smell like burnt electrical wires, Man?” he blurted out, genuinely bothered. “They got some electrical shit inside ’em?” He was shaking his head from side to side, flummoxed by the whole thing. “They freekin’ robots or some shit?….It’s wrong, Man!!!! Freekin’ Wrong!!!”

I was bone tired. Shit scared.

“I got no clue, Wing” I answered as best I could. “I just hope the bastards don’t explode or start makin’ noises back there…” I checked the rear view mirror to make sure nothing was pushing up the trunk lid and trying to escape or bite into us like in Night of the Living Dead.

“And what the Hell is up with those heads, Man!!” Wingnut’s voice was starting to show some real emotion for a change. “I’ve kicked Freekin’ pumpkins with harder shells than them heads…..somethin’s messed up…..it ain’t right, Man!!.”

I agreed with his analysis – a whole lot wasn’t right! But worried as I was, I felt grateful for his conversation. Usually he was the quiet one. I guess when he got nervous his mouth kicked in.

“I saw you slipped that whiskey in the back, Man……you think Crazy Mary’s still alive?”

“I don’t know….” I responded. “I just want her real lubricated if she is…..I want her distracted and sucking on that bottle – not watching us doin’ what we gotta’ do…”

“Freekin’ A.” Wing chortled. “Once she gets a bottle in her hands she’s off to that shit-shed of hers to party with her dead animals…”

Minutes and miles passed.

The trip was going smooth. Nobody seemed to give a shit me and Wingnut were toolin’ around in a an official US Gov’t tagged sedan. As we turned onto Route 206 South off of Tabernacle Road, I started screwin’ around with the radio dial again. I soon got a rock station out of Temple University in Philly that was to our liking.

They were deep into a Grateful Dead block and wrapping up “Friend of the Devil”. Now that title made me think a little. But the song they played next really blew me away.

“Henry” by New Riders of the Purple Sage.

Now here we are transporting two dead government guys in a stolen government car to someplace we can sink everything – evidence enough to get us fried in the electric chair – and on the radio we’re blasting a stoner tribute to crime!! Talk about irony.

Gerry Garcia’s rippin’ steel guitar was accompanying an anthem about a hero named Henry speeding to Acapulco to buy keys of marijuana, “Acapulco Gold”, to sell back home!

“Now the Road to Acapulco is very hard indeed,

and it isn’t any better if you havn’t any weed.

Henry’s driving hard and straight

on twisty mountain roads

There’s fifty people waiting back

at home for Henry’s load.

And now he’s rollin’ down the mountain

going fast, fast, fast!

And if he blows it this one’s gonna’ be his last!

Run to Acapulco to turn the golden keys

Henry keep the brakes on through this corner if you please!

“You can’t make this shit, up, Wing!!” I said, pointing at the radio.

“God is sending us a message!!” At last – some humor to break the tension.

Wingnut was grinning from ear to ear, diggin’ the tune. He was a serious Gerry Garcia fan and that bouncin’ steel guitar was makin’ him forget what we were up to, at least for a couple of minutes.

“Wish we had some weed, Man!” he bellowed, bobbing his head in synch with Garcia’s sweet country twangs.

I gave him a thumbs up and smiled. “Freekin’ A!” I said, punching him on his denim-jacketed shouder in a friendly gesture of mission solidarity.

The miles droned on – then, finally, we passed into Atlantic County.

County Road 613 was on the left – and there was that big sign that said “Batsto”.

The Batsto sign probably was there to direct people to “Batsto Village”, a crumbling Revolutionary War era historical site that featured a working farm and residence, complete with bog iron forge and mill. All this was on the banks of Batsto Lake. It was “must see” stuff for New Jersey history buffs.

Up County Road 613 in the distance we could see Tel and Bat leaning against their bikes, Tel making like he was working on his motor. Bat was holding a flashlight in his hand “helping”. Each bike had an extra helmet strapped behind its seat like they were going to pick up some chicks.

A sandy driveway, almost obscured by brush and pigmy pines was right across the road from them.

Both motorcycles fired up immediately and our friends tore down the dark, rutted pathway first. We followed their tail lights as a guide and only kept the cars’ parking lights on. Even deep inside the Pine Barrens, light carried for miles. Last thing we needed was a Park Ranger dropping out of nowhere for a chat. To add to the fun, there were all kinds of night critters we had to watch out for.

The bikes wove around trouble – but we had to tackle it head on. We bounced and bottomed out every few feet, the car’s bodywork screeching and moaning as it twisted it’s way through bramble, washes and puddles, ruts and potholes.

Rocks in the roadway slammed into the car’s engine oil pan every fifteen feet or so – and we got real concerned we’d split the pan open and start dumping engine oil. Water oozed in through the bottoms of the doors as we drove through standing water two feet deep in muddy, slicked over bathtub-sized voids.

Then the car’s temperature guage started to creep up into red. A radiator hose must’ve busted or torn open because steam was pouring out from under the front hood. Still, we pushed on.

“Can’t tell how far, man…but we’re gonna make it…” I said out loud to Wingnut. We came too far to give up now. Failure was not an option.

We’d lost radio signal and other than the car tearing itself to pieces and scraping it’s way through mature brush and forest growth, the only sounds inside were me cursing while I wrestled with the steering wheel. Wingnut just held onto the dashboard and yelled out his own profanity whenever a bottom impact felt particularly catastrophic for the engine or transmission.

Finally, way in the distance, we saw a light. The motorcycles up front stopped off to the side and made way for us, Tel and Bat waving us forward towards what looked like useable section of roadbed. Crazy Mary’s shed was to the right. Straight ahead was the pier – or what remained of it.

I stopped the car and headed straight to the trunk to grab the whiskey. Somebody was in Crazy Mary’s shed – and we needed to get right with them. Here’s hopin’ it was our spooky long lost ladyfriend.

I called out a “Hulllow!” in the direction of Mary’s shed, creeping forward cautiously. Around these parts it was best to keep an ear pealed for the sound of a pump shotgun shell being racked up – that is, “locked and loaded”.

“Yo….Yo…..Mary? Hey, Mary???”

Out of the shadows a wobbly apparition appeared. She was wearing a full brim hat that hid most of her crushed face. But her gravelly voice was unmistakeable.

“Halllllow….Boyyshh…”

I approched her slowly, my hand extending the whiskey bottle.

“I brought you Scotch, Mary….” I said quietly, offering it out towards her.

She glanced at us all – but stared at the car for a few seconds – and then gently took the bottle from me.

“Gooottt…Boyyysh” She said.

Mary then slowly moved towards her shed without making a sound, cradling her prized bottle like a newborn in her arms.

We watched her “door” close.

“Time to rock and roll…” I said to the boys. We stumbled our way up to the rotted pier in the dark, mentally marking flat areas I could drive the car over and gain enough tire grip to accelerate on.

Everybody knew I was going to be the one to do the deed.

Wingnut summed it up. “The roadway’s for shit, but you can make it if ya’ go balls to the wall…screw the undercarriage”.

“Looks like I’m going home wet, guys…”

I got in the car and crept it forward enough to line it up with the decrepit pier in the moonlight. And then I floored it. The overheated engine screamed and started knocking like a jackhammer. Smoke was pouring out from under the car, wafting up into the cold night air in clouds of thick black smoke.

The car pitched, rolled and careened sideways for a few seconds as its rear tires burned rubber and screamed. It lurched forward at speed, slamming into rocks underneath and almost knocking me senseless inside. The impacts traveled up the steering wheel into my hands, jarring my arms and rattling my teeth as the car moved faster and faster.

The speedometer was closing in on fifty as I struggled in the moonlight, trying to aim the shitbox inbetween two crooked timber pilings coming straight at me. I was threading a deadly needle and everything around me was pitch black. No points of reference at all.

Finally the tires grabbed at wood as the car barrelled its way out onto the rotted planking of the pier. The old boards snapped and groaned – but held – delivering the battered vehicle seconds later into dead air at its’ end. Then came a hard impact on the water. Like hitting concrete flat-on. It was bone quaking and I almost bit through my lower lip. I felt like I broke my spine.

All the car windows were open and the vehicle sunk fast. I contorted and snaked my aching body up and out the driver’s side opening into the blackness and in no time was digging my fingers into slimy, rotting wood pilings to pull myself out of the cold water. The guys grabbed my arms and helped me out.

It was done.

Between the Mullica River’s dark, fast currents, water depths and the remoteness of the location – nobody was going to find that car for a very long time.

Hopefully, by then, we’ll have figured out what to do next.

Me and Wingnut, Tel and Bat have turned this all over a thousand times now. They know what they’re gonna’ do. Opportunities for Piney trash ain’t all that great in New Jersey – and everybody thinks it’s time for a geography change. Get the idea?

My Dad don’t have long. And I know – probably to the exact month – how long my Mom got left.

I’m writing this down to keep everything straight. I’m going to give this to a lawyer to hold – with the other shit – and hope I can make it right someday. Lawyers can hold stuff like this and keep it secret. I know a good guy in Mt. Holly who’s friends with my Dad and won’t screw me over.

It’s hard living with this. But I did what I had to do. Thank God I had solid friends who stood by me. My “Crazy Marines”.

Bottom line is: The Air Force killed my father. This is the screwin’ they get for the screwin’ they gave. Piney justice.

THE END ON MY CONFESSION. OVER AND OUT.

/SIGNED/ RORY BRADEN.

End of Part 2.

Copyright, 2021 Jon Croft