Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (28 page)

Jack sat relaxing in a deep corner of the
Sand Castle Bookstore's worn sofa, studying the script for his
returning role of the narrator. He was surprised when Dottie came
out of the backroom and told him, with an unabashed smirk, that he
had a phone call on the office line.

Karl had come to refer to the little seaside
bookshop as Jack's second office. In truth, a week did not often go
by that he didn't find himself passing beneath the tinkling
doorbell to peruse the shelves, or chew the fat with the shop’s
outlandish owner.

In the intervening months since he had cashed in his Christmas
gift from the Beckman's, Jack had become a recognized piece of
furniture at the shop. Dottie usually had a hot cup of coffee on
the table beside his favorite seat moments after he walked through
the door.

Jack had never known his own grandmother,
but he liked to imagine that she was something like Dottie
Westcott. A sweet old woman, barely five feet tall in heels; she
would give you her last dime with a smile, but she had a twinkle in
her eye that suggested it might be best to remain in her good
favor. She was a woman who brooked no foolishness, not to her age,
nor her gender. Dottie was famous, or infamous, throughout the
peninsula, for having once faced down the hulking Sheriff Bradley
as he stood at her counter, and rapping his knuckles smartly with a
ruler when the officer had interrupted her. Glen Bradley, known far
and near for his fearlessness and temper, had stammered an apology
on the spot.

Dottie had taken an
immediate shine to Jack Leland, and they quickly became confidants
as well as sparring partners. The old woman had no truck with
his
religious
foolishness
, meaning the church, and
she would tell Jack Leland that he could mind to his own corn, when
he asked if she believed in God.

The first time that Jack had challenged her
views on organized religion, she had sniffed and refused to
reply.

However, when he came to the
store the following day he found the
New
Books
table displayed every new age and
evolution-related book that she could find on the shelves, with a
hand lettered sign reading,
25%
Off
. Jack had laughed until tears
poured from his eyes, and bought a biography of Charles Darwin from
the top of the stack.

"Doesn't sound good, honey," She whispered
as she passed the cordless handset to Jack and then hurried away.
"Hello?" Jack said. There was a pause and Jack thought he could
hear a woman crying in the background.

"Jack," Karl Ferguson's familiar voice came
back over the line, "I need you to come over to the church."

Jack stood and began stuffing his notes into
his book bag. "What's up?"

He heard a pause and, with the sound of a
door closing, the crying ceased, and Karl continued. "Just a little
crisis with one of the families, and I need you to hold down the
fort."

"I'm on my way."

"Good," Karl sighed, "I'll see you in a
couple of minutes."

Jack hollered thanks to Dottie as he set the
phone down next to his coffee cup and, grabbing his bag and jacket,
headed for the door. Ten minutes later, his bike rolled into the
gravel parking lot behind the church and he was up the back steps
and inside. Many times, over the following years, Jack would wonder
what might have happened if he had come through the front doors of
the church instead, how much heartache might have been avoided.

However, it was the weathered back door, its
paint peeling at the corners, that Jack tore open after vaulting
the steps two at a time. Unfortunately, Karl Ferguson had just sent
Kathy Beckman to that same door, promising to catch up to her in
the parking lot, where the Petersons were to meet them shortly.
Karl then headed for the front foyer to meet Jack and get him into
the office and away from the current storm that was brewing in the
halls of Long Beach Community Church.

Jack lunged through the doorway and crashed
into Kathy Beckman like a linebacker. Both went down in a jumble of
arms, legs, and books.

"Katie!" Jack cried, leaping to his feet in
dismay. "Oh man," he stammered, "I'm so sorry, are you okay?"

As Kathy rose shakily from the polished wood
floor, Jack could see immediately that she was anything but okay.
Much like the last time they had spoken, her eyes were red and
swollen, and her cheeks damp with tears. This time, however, her
right eye was a purple mass of bruised flesh, the upper and lower
lids so swollen that Jack couldn't see the eye beneath. Kathy's
knees buckled, forcing Jack to catch her around the waist before
she could fall again, and, at that worst possible of moments, a
furious Bill Beckman rounded the corner of the hallway, with Pastor
Ferguson on his heels.

Bill skidded to a stop, his eyes widening at the sight of his
wife, once again, in Jack's arms. With a roar, he started forward.
This time, however, it wasn't embarrassment or shame that flooded
Jack, as he lowered Kathy to the floor, it was rage.

Jack took two long strides
and met Bill's charge with a thunderous pile driver, and the
meaty
thunk
of his fist connecting with Bill's face reverberated down the
hallway of the church. Bill's momentum carried him forward, and
Jack's military training brought a knee up into the man's skinny
midsection, driving the wind from his lungs and flipping him neatly
over, crashing to the floor on his back.

Bill lay there, blood pouring down his face
and he struggled to focus his eyes, his arms pin-wheeling drunkenly
as he tried to rise.

"You
hit
her?” Jack bellowed, curling
up his fists and starting forward again, he could hear Karl
shouting as he ran towards them, but his words were lost in the
crimson tinged fury that surrounded Jack like a thick
fog.

As Bill made it, shakily, to his knees, Jack
drew back his fist again, and then Karl Ferguson's bulk hit him
like a freight train, driving him up against the hallway wall.

Karl had some training as well and, when
Jack's ears stopped ringing from the concussion, his pastor had
both of his hands trapped behind his back and the younger man's
feet spread wide enough to keep him off balance.

Jack felt blood trickling down his chin from
where his lip had split when he hit the wall, and Karl's voice,
shouting into his ear, began to form actual words as the haze
around him dissipated.

"Calm down!” Karl bellowed, “Calm down Jack,
right now!"

Taking a deep breath, Jack slumped against
the wall, wincing at Karl's grip on his wrists. “Okay," he said,
"I'm okay Karl, you can let me go."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm okay." Jack repeated.

The weight pinning him to the wall lifted,
as Karl stepped back.

The larger man kept his hands out in front
of him, ready to grab Jack again if he tried to get at Bill, who
had slipped back to the floor and lay groaning with both hands over
his face.

In that first lucid moment after his rage
had passed Jack realized that, as surreal as the moment
seemed--

Wasn’t I sipping coffee and reading the book
of Mark just ten minutes ago?

--what made it even stranger was the
silence, a shocked and deafening stillness as Kathy leaned against
the wall where Jack had left her, staring at the bleeding figure of
her husband, but offering no support or sympathy. She looked at
Bill with a strangely distant, slightly disgusted look. As quickly
as it had come, the tension seemed to melt from the room, and Jack
slumped back against the wall himself, panting and trembling. His
right fist ached terribly as he flexed his fingers.

"Karl, I--" Jack started.

"Not now," Karl interrupted, wiping sweat
from his gleaming forehead with one hand, as he waved off Jack's
appeal with the other, "we'll talk about it later.” Just then,
Martin and Bobbie Peterson opened the back door and froze in the
entrance to the hallway.

"Good Lord!" Martin muttered, looking from
Bill to Kathy to Karl. "Is everything okay?"

"Under control," Karl said, "but just
barely. Let's get Kathy into your car and over to the
hospital.”

"Shouldn't we take Bill in, too?" Bobbie
asked, grimacing at his swelling, blood-smeared face.

Karl glanced coldly over at Bill Beckman,
who had given up trying to rise and simply lay, face down, on the
floor. "Bill has his truck, let’s get him into it and if he wants
to get checked out, he can drive himself."

As the Petersons helped Bill and Kathy out
of the hallway, and into the waiting cars, Karl caught Jack's elbow
and pulled him into the office. Jack tried, again, to apologize for
his actions, but Karl waved him off again.

"I'm not worried about that right now. If
you hadn't given him that haymaker, I might have." Karl took a deep
shuddering, breath.

"Right now," he said, "my biggest concern is
Kathy, I've tried to talk her into pressing charges, but she won't.
She won't even admit that he hit her. She just keeps saying that
everything will be okay."

Jack snorted in disgust, wiping blood from his lip with the
back of his hand.

"Sorry about that." Karl said, nodding
toward his bloodied chin, “I might have gotten a little carried
away there."

"No,” Jack said, “you did what you had to
do," he shook his head ruefully, "I don't know what might have
happened if I'd have gotten my hands on him again. I can't remember
ever being that mad. Not in the war, not ever."

"We'll talk about that later.” Karl
repeated, and then turned to go. "Why don't you just lock up and
head home, Jack?"

"Will do."

Once Karl had stumped wearily from the
office, and after waiting to hear both cars pull out of the parking
lot, Jack locked the doors to the old church and started for home.
The sky was dark and ominous, thick with iron-gray storm clouds,
and his heart was heavy as he pedaled toward Nahcotta, a lump of
cold lead beneath his ribs.

Whatever chance he might have had at making
amends with Bill had probably ended right there in the hallway.
Jack felt an empty, hollow place in his heart where his oldest
friend, his best friend, used to be. He knew it would never be the
same after today.

*

It was nearly dusk, and rain was just
beginning to patter across the cedar shingles of his roof, when
Jack was startled from his reading by the brisk rapping of knuckles
against his door. Crossing the cabin in his stocking feet, he
peeked through the window to see Karl, a sad, exhausted smile on
his face, peeking back.

Opening the door, he found his boss standing
on the wide deck with a steaming pizza box in his hand. The smell
of onions and sausage issuing from beneath the lid made Jack's
stomach growl, as he ushered his guest in and took his coat,
setting the pizza on the small dining table.

"Thought you might be hungry," Karl said, in
lieu of a hello, "and I didn't feel like eating alone. You have any
oysters?" Jack smiled as he pulled a couple of sodas and a plastic
baggie of smoked oysters from the refrigerator.

The oysters he dumped in a pan and set on
the hot plate to warm before adding them to the pizza. While they
waited, Jack set out plates and napkins.

"Thanks Lord," he said simply, bowing his
head, when the meal was ready.

Karl helped himself to a thick slice of
pizza, took a long sip of his root beer, and sighed.

"Well, they're keeping Kathy overnight," he
said, "just to watch for a possible concussion…"

Jack felt the muscles in his neck tighten as
blood rushed to his face; Karl noticed the set of his jaw and,
reaching across the faded Formica, laid a steadying hand on his
assistant’s arm.

"Breathe, Jack. She's going to be okay."

"
This
time," Jack said with a
grimace.

"Yes," he agreed, "this time. She still
wouldn't make a statement, even after the doctor called Paul
Bradley in,” Karl chuckled humorlessly.

“
Boy oh boy,” he said, “you
thought
you
were mad; you should have seen ol' Paul. If he could have
gotten the truth from Kathy I think he would have tossed Bill into
a cell about five minutes later, and I don't know that he would’ve
opened a door first."

Jack smiled grimly, both at
Karl's chuckle and at the thought of Bill Beckman's head bouncing
off the bars a time or two.
Careful
there
, he thought,
that attitude isn't going to solve
anything
.

Karl must have been watching his face, or
reading his mind.

"Prayer is what Bill Beckman needs," he
murmured, "more than anything else, prayer.” Karl sighed, “I know
it's hard to think of what's best for Bill right now, but we have
to."

Jack nodded, nibbling at his dinner, his
appetite gone.

"Don't get me wrong," Karl continued, "I'd
be just as happy to pray for Bill's salvation knowing that he's
cooling his heels in jail, but that's up to Kathy, not me."

"Is she going to be all right?"

"I think so," he said, "As all right as she
can be in this …situation. Hopefully, one of them will come to
their senses before she really gets hurt. If I had any proof, you
can believe the good Sheriff would be knocking on Bill's door right
about now. Ouch!"

Karl dropped the still molten pizza back on
his plate and took a swallow of soda to cool his mouth. Jack took
the opportunity to jump back into the conversation.

"So, is Bill going to be okay?"