Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (31 page)

Apparently, someone had hammered on the door
of the hotel about ten minutes after Jack had pulled away in the
borrowed Toyota. Rolf, thinking that it was the police that he had
just called, opened the door to find Bill Beckman, his face covered
in blood, the .38 in his hand pointed at Rolf's face. Bill was
incoherent, screaming profanities and calling for Jack. He pushed
Rolf out of his way and started into the hotel. The old man,
fearing for himself and his wife, tried to grab the pistol from his
hand, but Bill had shoved him off and then cracked him across the
forehead with the side of the heavy revolver.

It might have been worse, much worse, if
Tina Parker hadn’t stepped out of the bedroom at that moment, her
husband’s pump action twelve-gauge shotgun at her shoulder (the
Parkers prided themselves, each season, on fresh duck and goose
from the hotel kitchen) the big barrel pointed at Bill.

He had taken a step toward her and Tina had
twitched the gun to her right, firing a deafening shot through the
window before jacking in a fresh round and leveling on Bill’s head
again.

She had told him, in a hard quavering voice,
that the next shot wouldn’t go wide, and he must have believed
her.

Months later, a friend asked her if she’d
meant what she had said to Bill Beckman that night, and Tina had
taken a long sip from her teacup before responding.

“
I saw my sweet Rolf there
on the floor," she had murmured, "blood pouring down his face, and
Jesus Himself as my witness, it was all I could do to put that
first shot through the window instead of taking Bill Beckman’s head
off his shoulders.”

Tina Parker had stood there, the weight of
the big gun making her arms ache, as Bill lowered the pistol and
staggered out through the door and back down the trail toward the
cabin. Ten minutes later, she had heard the gunshot over the raging
wail of the storm. Paul Bradley had arrived five minutes after
that, and called the state police after finding Bill’s body lying
in the shallows of the bay, the pistol and an empty whiskey bottle
on the ground beside him.

Jack felt as though all the color had been
sucked from his world. The black, cold well in his belly expanding
to encompass him, and he heard his own voice speaking, as the room
around him grew flat and monochrome. He couldn’t feel his lips
moving but, and though it felt like someone else asking, he knew it
was his own words.

“
Is he dead?”

Sheriff Bradley looked down at his paperwork
for a moment, then back up at Jack with big, tired eyes.

“
Bill shot himself in the
head, point-blank, with a thirty-eight caliber revolver. By some…”
the big officer glanced at Karl as he said the word,
“…
miracle
he
was alive when the ambulance got here. Miracle or not, I wouldn’t
believe my own mother if she told me he’s still breathing when they
get to the hospital.”

Finally, it was too much; the assaults on
his mind and body in the last twenty-four hours rolled over him
like a great black cloud. As the old hotel dining room began to
spin, Jack gave himself over, and was enveloped by the encroaching
oblivion with an almost grateful sigh.

*

Kathy Beckman stepped from the wheezing
Greyhound and into the arid, nearly deserted bus station. A
sagging, dusty banner hung above the double glass doors, welcoming
her to Bowie, Arizona. Reaching for her suitcase, she pressed a
gentle hand to her stomach, imagining that she could feel the life
that had begun to quicken there. She shook her head.

"You haven't even outgrown your jeans," she
muttered, “no one's moving around in there yet."

Lifting her suitcase, a cheap blue vinyl stuffed to bursting,
Kathy stood looking around the room as the late afternoon sun
glowed through the swirling dust.

So this was
Bowie
, she thought grimly. What in the
world had Grace Ebretson found here that could have convinced her
to stay? Kathy knew though. It was love; love for a gangly young
Bible college student named Guy Williams.

Guy had wooed her childhood friend and then
moved her out here to the edge of the desert, where the endless
seas of sand baked in the noon sun and froze at night.

Love. The word burned in her brain, bitter
oil on her lips, her yearlong marriage having just ended in her
flight to this infinitesimal town. She'd come here alone, pregnant,
and nearly penniless, based on the strength of a twenty-year old
friendship with a woman she hadn’t seen in a decade. Behind her,
far to the west, was the man she had fled. Her first three months
as Mrs. Katherine Beckman had been a dream, but the dream had faded
into a dark alcoholic nightmare as William Beckman slipped back
into the life he had hidden so well during their courtship.

Once Bill had regained a firm grasp on the
bottle, the fuse to his violent temper had become nonexistent and
Kathy had found herself, more and more often, at the receiving end
of his rages. A week before, she had come home from the doctor's
office giddy with joy over her unexpected pregnancy, only to find
her husband blind drunk and looking for trouble. Something had
stayed her lips that night, and she had told herself to wait until
Bill was in a better mood to give him the good news.

Then, just days later, she had walked into
the living room with his breakfast and, from nowhere, a bony fist
had connected with her eye. An explosion of bright, pain-filled
sparklers had driven her to the floor in a rain of milk and
cornflakes. Light faded from the room and her ears had rung so loud
that they drowned out her husband’s drunken curses.

Eighteen hours later Kathy had found herself
in Astoria.

The ticket she’d bought under a fictitious
name clutched in her trembling hand, and her hat pulled low to hide
the massive purple bruise that covered the right side of her
face.

She had paced the worn
linoleum floor of the tiny coastal bus station, trembling with fear
that Bill would find her before she got away, that he would drag
her back home, drag
them
back home. She couldn't let
her child be born in that house; she wouldn't.

That had been two days before and, after her
long ride from the west coast, the bruises were just beginning to
fade to a sickening yellow behind the cheap sunglasses she had
picked up in Portland. Two long days of agony; the pain of her
battered flesh overshadowed by the pain in her heart. She had loved
her husband once, but now there was only fear. What would she do if
Gracie couldn't help her? Where would she go? And what must her
friend think of her, after all this time, begging her to open their
home to a stranger? A pregnant stranger? Kathy had huddled
miserably, across all the miles, writhing in shame for what she had
been reduced to, certain she had made a dreadful mistake.

One of the front doors squeaked open and a
tall thin young couple stepped into the room. They paused, letting
their eyes adjust to the relative dimness, before the woman caught
sight of Kathy. Grace Williams crossed the wide concrete floor of
the station and wordlessly enfolded her oldest friend in her arms,
stroking her hair gently as Kathy began to sob.

Long, yellowing fluorescent lights hung from
the ceiling, washing down the stark white walls and across the
lime-green tiled floors of the small hospital. Two doors opened,
with a pneumatic wheeze, at the emergency entrance on the back wall
of the building. Blue and white striped curtains attached to
gleaming aluminum frames that hung from the ceiling, cordoning off
each of the four tiny trauma rooms.

The waiting room was small as well, two
couches with a long, low table between them, a couple of wooden
chairs and an old console style television that gave a slightly
greenish picture, though most folks don't seem to notice.

Their eyes may have been on the flickering
jade sitcoms that filled the nighttime slots on KLTV, but their
hearts and minds were usually elsewhere in the building.

Now though, there were no other patients and only one of the
curtained exam rooms was occupied. The staff consisted of two
nurses and one doctor, all three of whom were currently involved in
the organized panic of station three, where their only patient lay.
The waiting room, like the rest of the hospital, smelled strongly
of bleach and some type of orange scented cleaner. A CB radio, for
communication with emergency vehicles, crackled in the
background.

Besides that and the low chatter from the
television, the only sound was the rhythmic tick of a round wall
clock, mounted above the main entrance.

It reminded Cassie of the clock in her high
school cafeteria.

Guy, who had promised her that he would
explain everything as soon as he got back, had headed out into the
misty, predawn morning to find someplace, anyplace, that might have
a cup of coffee. He had also promised to rescue the box of old
books that Cassie had suddenly remembered were still sitting in the
unlocked van.

Cassie sat slumped on the hard vinyl couch,
her body exhausted, and her mind awhirl. Jack’s last words, before
slipping into unconsciousness, kept repeating slowly and
monotonously in her brain like a broken record.

“
I wish she was mine,
Kathy, I wish she had been ours…”

Over and over, the words ran
through her mind. She had been so certain about Jack. The picture
in his wallet, the handwriting in the Bible, how could
it
not
be
him?

Why couldn’t it be him?

Was her father dead after all?

Was he still alive, living somewhere close
by?

Now that she knew the man who had brought
her halfway across the country wasn’t her father, bitterness began
to coil and writhe in her belly once more.

Jack, she could have tried to forgive and
understand.

Now her father was again the faceless
stranger who had abandoned her and her mother, and Cassie felt her
heart hardening again. She ground her teeth in frustration.
Everything that she thought she had learned on the long drive west,
all the clues and hints, none of them meant anything!

Suddenly she was angry, no,
she was
furious
with God.

How could he tease her like that, lead her
along, and let her believe all that she had? She looked down at the
Bible, resting beside her on the faded seat of the couch, and
picked it up, ready to hurl it across the room and be done with it.
Her mother's fading, gold initials caught her eye and, instead, she
jammed the book savagely into her bag, and kicked it away from
her.

Just then, the double
doors
whooshed
open, and Guy Williams returned, carrying two steaming paper
cups in one hand, and a white paper bag in the other. He saw the
dark expression on Cassie’s face and paused, then sat down on the
couch opposite her, laying the fruits of his search between
them.

“
You look about ready to
chew nails and spit staples,” he said, offering her one of the
white to-go cups, “settle for some cocoa and a bear claw
instead?”

Cassie took the hot paper cup from him, but
shook her head slightly when he held out the bag.

“
I’m not hungry,” she said,
taking a tiny sip of the scalding chocolate. It had the dusty,
vacuum bag flavor of instant cocoa, and she set the cup on the
table. Her anger at God was still seething, and here before her was
someone on which to vent her spleen.

“
So, that was you in the
truck all along?” she asked, glowering across the table at him. “Do
you have any idea how freaked out we were? I thought for sure that
you were this truck driver that attacked me in Phoenix, hunting me
down to finish the job!”

Guy set his coffee down, “You were
attacked?”

Cassie waved a hand dismissively, “Jack
rescued me, but when we realized we were being followed, Jack had
the guy checked out and he was a bad character. We thought he was
stalking us.”

“
Well,” Guy said, leaning
back with a frown of his own, “serves you right if you ask me. Last
thing we knew, you were headed for Portland on a Greyhound. Then,
we get a call from Eleanor Young, down at the bus station, who, by
the way, had some fairly uncomplimentary things to say about
you…”

Despite her dark mood, Cassie had to grin at
the memory of the frustrated ticket agent. Guy raised an eyebrow at
her response and went on.

“
Eleanor plays Bunko with Grace,” he said, “and she remembered
your mom’s accident. She called us to ask if we knew that you had
cashed in your ticket, or where you were going.” Guy’s frown
deepened, “Grace hasn’t slept a night through since that phone
call, you know.”

Cassie looked guiltily at the worn tips of
her hiking boots, her own anger beginning to fade into a gnawing
shame, as Guy went on.

“
Grace and I spent that
night driving up and down I-10, looking for you. When we didn’t
find you, I figured that you must have caught a ride into Tucson or
Phoenix.”

“
Wait,” Cassie interrupted,
“how did you know I was going to Phoenix?”

Guy sighed, “I’m not just some hick from the
sticks, Cass. If someone wanted to hitch a ride west from Bowie,
Phoenix in the most likely place to do it from. God answers prayers
though, because I just happened to glance over and see you in
Jack’s van, pulling out of the truck stop as I was pulling in. I
was just getting ready to turn around and head back home, too.”