Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (20 page)

When he'd first stormed away from the van,
the shock of the accident and his anger with Cassie had blanketed
the pain in his side, which had taken a pretty heavy blow against
the driver's door. Now though, it was a hot, spiking needle,
shooting through his shoulder and down his arm with each jolting
step.

"Breaking my arm," Jack grimaced, "would
just make this the end of a perfect day." Then he gasped as another
pain knifed through his shoulder.

Another mile up the highway, Jack knew, lay
the outskirts of Ilwaco. A few miles past that was his shop and
apartment, where he was sure Beth would be sitting up reading,
waiting for him to pull up. Jack hoped that she had driven her
shiny new Jeep instead of walking, as she often did in fair
weather. The locals would have known this storm was coming for
days, so the chances were good that she'd be prepared.

Rain and wind slammed into him, and Jack
winced as the pain increased and his neck began to ache as well, he
slowed his pace as he realized that he was dripping with
perspiration. The pain in his arm grew more intense, and Jack
lurched to the side of the road as another attack of nausea
overwhelmed him.

"Oh no," he murmured, suddenly afraid, "Oh
no…"

Then the pain came again, this time like a
giant fist clamped tight around his sternum, squeezing his heart.
Jack felt his knees buckle as he pitched forward, both hands to his
chest, into the ditch, his face tearing a furrow through the mud
and gravel and he slid down into the rushing drainage. By chance,
he rolled onto his back before splashing to a halt, the change of
position saving him from drowning in a six-inch river of muddy
water.

He lay, paralyzed by the agony in his chest,
his world reduced to a burning, exhausting effort for each
constricted breath, the pain ebbing and flowing as his body
convulsed uncontrollably. Frigid water rushed past his ears and he
blinked as the fading twilight became unnaturally black.

As his eyes slipped shut, Jack felt himself
drifting away.

*

Cassie had jogged until she was gasping for
breath, stopping only to bend over and stretch out the stitch in
her side.

For an old
guy,
she thought,
Jack could really cover some ground when he wanted
to!

She had left the van far behind, and was
about halfway across a long flat stretch of dark road. As her eyes
grew accustomed to the gloom, Cassie could make out about another
quarter mile of straightaway before the road jogged to the
left.

Jack must have
really
covered some
ground, Cassie realized, too much ground. She had jogged and ran
most of the way from the van, and Jack had only been walking when
he left. She should have caught him by now, maybe even passed him
by.

Passed him by?

Cassie felt the cold, copper taste of fear
glaze her throat, as she turned to look back the way she had
come.

Could she have missed him in the dark?

Unlikely.

He could have stepped off the road into the
trees to…to talk to a man about a horse, she supposed, but if not,
then what? If he had fallen, surely she would have seen him.
Hesitantly, Cassie began retracing her steps. After a hundred yards
in the downpour, she began to pray.

Another hundred yards and she heard a
muffled cough ahead in the darkness.

Suddenly Cassie remembered that she was
alone in the woods at night, and she got scared. The rain was
easing and she listened intently for any other noise, but heard
nothing.

Slipping a hand into her pocket, Cassie
wrapped her fist around the cool weight of the buck knife, and
continued to pray as she crept up on the side of the road. At last,
the bottom of the ditch came into view and Cassie lost all thoughts
of fear.

"You have to go down and get him, Cass," she
whispers, "show him the way to get out…"

"Jack!" Cassie screamed, "Jack…" Flinging
herself down into the gully, she slid to a stop at his side. His
mud-splattered face was so pale and cold that Cassie was sure he
was dead and her stomach cramped in fear.

"May the day of my birth perish…"

As she lifted his head from the clutching
mud, she whispered another prayer. "Oh God," she wept, "Please,
please don't take him away from me, I just…I just found him…”

As if in answer, Jack coughed weakly. His
unfocused eyes fluttered open, darting from side to side, and
coming to rest at last, on her.

"Katie?" he mumbled thickly, his eyes
widening, "Katie?"

Cassie began to sob as she realized that he
was seeing her mother. "Jack…" she murmured.

"I'm sorry, Katie" Jack mumbled, shaking his
head, "so sorry…all my fault…"

"Jack," Cassie whispered, wiping blood and
dirt from his face, "Don't talk, you'll be okay. Just lay
quiet…"

"…she’s so beautiful, Katie," Jack’s
shoulders shook lightly as he began to weep, "just like you,
beautiful and so smart…" Jack slumped back for a moment, and then
arched again, his fevered eyes blazing.

"Bill didn’t deserve her," he murmured, and
Cassie could barely understand the words. "He didn’t deserve
you…”

Jack’s voice cracked and his body shuddered
as another white-hot bolt of pain tore through his chest. He gazed
up at Cassie through the rain, his eyes unfocused and distant. When
he spoke again, his voice was much weaker, fading even as his
eyelids began to droop.

“
I wish,” he whispered, his
voice thick, “I wish she was mine, I wish…she was
ours
…"

"…so sorry…” and then his eyes were
shut.

Cassie wept over Jack, his face muddied, and
bloodied, and twisted with pain, crying out in his delirium to a
woman who was, so recently, dead and cold in her grave.

The bright glare of headlights swept over
them as someone came to a screeching halt on the road above. Cassie
stuffed her soaked jacket beneath Jack's head to keep his face out
of the water, and clambered up to the side of the road, drawing a
breath to cry for help.

Suddenly, the words froze in
her throat as the driver's door of the black Toyota pickup opened,
the dark, tinted windows impossible to see through in the twilight.
Then, just as suddenly, Cassie's fear turned to rage as some line,
deep within her, was finally crossed
Her lips drew back;
teeth
bared in fury as she reached
into her pocket and pulled out her knife, taking a step toward the
truck, waiting for the stench of stale cigarette smoke to reach
her. Her knuckles turned white around the wood grain handle, as she
raised the blade.

"Cassie?" a voice questioned from the
dark.

She stopped and blinked. She
knew that voice!
Where did she know that
voice from?"

"Cassie?" the voice repeated, "what in the
world are you doing? Put that knife away!"

Guy! That was Pastor Guy's voice! Cassie was
sure that her mind had finally snapped under the strain, as the
tall, lean form of Guy Williams stepped around the front of the
truck and into the headlights.

"What…" she stammered, "What are you…"

"Later," he said, looking past her, into the
ditch. "Let's get him out of there and to a hospital.” Cassie
followed Guy back down into the gully as the storm let loose once
more with sheet after sheet of driving rain.

Jack felt himself being lifted and carried, his legs dragging
on the ground behind him, up the embankment and onto the road.
Finally, he managed to open his eyes, and could barely make out
Cassie on his right. His vision blurred, and he couldn't see who
was on his left; a man, he was sure by the feel of hard sinewy
muscle beneath the arm of his jacket.

The blackness at the edges of his vision
expanded, and then slowly became a burning white light, growing in
brightness and intensity until he had to blink and raise a
hand…

Long Beach, Washington August
1980

…
to shield his eyes from
the bright summer sun, as he stepped from the rumbling Greyhound
bus and onto the busy sidewalk.

August in Long Beach, and the tourist season
was in full swing. Jack Leland held his faded duffel bag close as
he jostled his way through the crowd. Brightly colored balloons,
flags, and kites hung from the storefronts, and the hot summer air
was thick with the smell of caramel corn and hotdogs. Sunburned
moms grimly dragged sand-encrusted youngsters away from the candy
shops and towards the public restrooms.

Jack grinned; so much had changed since he
was a boy. The sleepy little coastal village with its one gas
station and two hotels was long gone, plowed under and rebuilt by a
wave of summer money flowing west from Seattle. Someone had written
him that the oyster cannery had finally shut down, and that, he
supposed, was a harbinger of the final breath for industry on the
peninsula. Now, it appeared, the boom in Ocean Park and Long Beach
centered on art galleries and ice-cream shops.

Stepping into the shade of a candy-striped
awning, Jack set his bag down on the sidewalk between his feet. Two
pair of underwear, a small toiletries bag, jeans, his college
diploma and his Bible; all of his earthly possessions, were packed
inside.

Just turned thirty-one, with three hundred
dollars in his pocket and the hope of a job at Long Beach Community
Church, Jack paused to breathe the salty air of his hometown for
the first time in seven years.

"Jackie!" a rough voice bellowed from across
the street, "Hey, Jackie! Over here!"

Bill Beckman was, if anything, leaner and
darker than when Jack had last seen him. A faded tank top, stuffed
into an even more faded pair of blue jeans, displayed Bill's bony
shoulders and long wiry arms, tanned nut-brown. He was grinning,
wide white teeth gleaming from a narrow face framed in
shoulder-length dark hair. One arm was raised; waving in Jack's
direction, while the other lay draped, casually but possessively,
across the shoulder of a beautiful young woman in a faded flower
print dress. Jack wracked his brain for a moment, having suddenly
forgotten the name of his friend's young bride.

"Katherine…" he whispered suddenly,
remembering, "Kathy…"

Then Bill was across the street and had
those long wiry arms wrapped around Jack, lifting him from the
ground in a spine-popping bear hug.

“
Okay, okay…" Jack gasped,
laughing and wincing at the same time, "let me down…let me
down!"

Bill dropped him, grinning, and offered a
hand, which Jack shook.

"It's about time you got here; the tourists
were starting to get to me…"

Bill sneered, glancing around him with a
grimace of hard-pressed toleration. Jack looked to the young lady,
and then back.

"
Well?
" he asked.

There was a pause as Bill glanced from Kathy
to Jack questioningly, his grin starting to fade.

"Well, what?" he replied finally.

Jack shook his head and brushed past his old
friend, extending his hand to Kathy.

"I see he still has all the manners of a
stray dog," Jack laughed, "I'm Jack Leland, you must be Katherine.
It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

The young woman grinned, her face lighting
up like the sun, giving her husband a poke in the ribs.

"Yeah," she said, "We’re working on that.
Nice to meet you too, Jack."

"Great," Bill said with a snort, "just what
she needs; reinforcements!"

The three laughed as Jack picked up his
duffel and hoisted it onto his shoulder.

"Well," said Bill, "unless one of you has a
hankering for some cotton candy, why don't we get the heck outta
here!"

"Lead on!" Jack replied with a mock salute.

*

Bill and Katherine Beckman lived in a
rambling farmhouse far out Sandridge Road between Nahcotta and
Oysterville. The house, more than a century old, had belonged to
Jonathan Beckman, Bill's father, and to his father before him, who
had built his home on a small rise facing Willapa Bay. Cancer had
taken Florence Beckman while Bill was still in junior high school,
and had finally come calling for her husband as well. By the time
that Jack's own parents had lost their lives to fire, John Beckman
was already a year into his long sleep beneath the pines at the
Oysterville Cemetery.

At twenty years old, after securing a loan
from the bank to buy his sister’s half of their inheritance, Bill
had found himself the sole owner and operator of the third largest
private oyster farm on the Peninsula.

To Jack, the house looked much the same as
it had when he and Bill had shot marbles across the wide front
porch as boys. The tall, windswept oak in the front yard, from
which Bill had once fallen and broken his ankle, still cast its
protective shadow over the northern side of the house. The grounds,
which John Beckman had kept scrupulously tidy, did in truth look a
bit seedier than Jack remembered. The weeds grew knee-high in
places, and had enveloped the lower half of a rusting ‘68 Camero
that had found its rest in a far corner of the front yard.

The boat shed, which had stood behind the
house at the end of the long gravel drive, had been torn down. The
weathered lumber that had once housed the senior Beckman's trio of
oyster boats now lay in haphazard stacks amid the tall grass. As
for the boats themselves, they were nowhere to be seen.

Inside the house, though, was just as Jack
remembered, every stick of furniture stood exactly as it had two
decades before. Both couches in the living room and the love seat
in the den were covered with dark green blankets now, cloaking the
wear of two lifetimes.