Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One

by Perry P. Perkins

  Beckman Farmswas one of the last totally organic oyster producers on the peninsula. Most of Willapa Bay was owned by the Bjorklund familyand Coastal Pacific Oyster. The rest, by a handful of small family operations like the Beckman's.

  At low tide, Bill's own thirty acres, out past Nahcotta, looked like nothing more than a broad, muddy field of bristling iron rods. Closer inspection found that each of the three-foot high stakes, sunk deep in the floor of the bay, were clustered with layers of oyster shells. After swimming free in the high tide, the oyster seedlings, called spat, attached themselves to the vacant shells covering the stakes, and grew there until they reached a size to harvest. When the tide came in, the stakes would be covered by eight to ten feet of water, allowing the oysters to feed.

  During the gathering season, Bill, along with several high school boys that he hired part-time, would roll heavy plastic barrels out among the rows of stakes. At low tide, they’d collect fresh oysters from the clusters and from the tide flats surrounding them.

  They used long flat-bladed oyster knives to pry the tough bi-valves from the clusters. Occasionally a shell would shatter under the weight of the knife and the worker would pause briefly to enjoy a quick snack. Few of the boys returned from the flats hungry.

  Thick, black mud reached knee-high and sucked jealously at the men's rubber boots.

  Often the only way they could free themselves was to lean forward on their buckets until their weight, working as a fulcrum, slowly pulled their legs from the squelching quagmire. By the end of the season, both men and boys would have worked their calves into steel pillars of muscle. It was a hard way to make a living, and knee injuries were a common ailment among the oystermen.

  Once filled, the barrels were left until the high tide floated them up off the mud and Bill, waiting in his battered aluminum boat, would then lasso each barrel and pull it to the dock. There the oysters would be washed, sorted by size, and bagged, with most going to local seafood stores and restaurants, or sold to tourists at the Beckman's tiny roadside stand, where Kathy sat reading her Bible most afternoons.

  In good years, they could expect to harvest several hundred pounds of oysters a day. This season, however, Bill had been lucky to gather that many in a week. Already he had been forced to let go half of the boys that picked for him. Rumors were that chemicals used to fight the ever-spreading spartina grasses and the burrowing ghost shrimp populations might be affecting the mortality of the young oysters. Others claimed the dredging done by the larger companies was filling the shallower bay areas with silt and mud, suffocating the growing bi-valves.

  Whatever the reasons behind the bay’s dwindling oyster populations, the fact was the harvest numbers of earlier years, which had barely allowed Beckman Farms to remain solvent, were down by half this year. Moreover, the loan, which they had taken to cover expansion and new materials the previous winter, was becoming increasingly difficult to pay each month. The strain was starting to show on Bill, both in his temperament and in the frequency of his trips to the Surfside liquor store.

  "We're praying for you guys," Jack said, his words sounding strained in his own ears.

  "Well," Bill replied, "we'll take all the help we can get."

  He held the blue flame of his Zippo up to a fresh cigar, the fire dancing around the unlit tip in his trembling hands. "It's a good thing the house and flats are paid for, or we'd have been sunk by now." Bill shook his head, taking a deep breath, "Anyhow, you've heard all this before, best you get over to that new place and start settling in."

  "Yeah, I'll do that," Jack said, extending his hand.

  Bill paused a moment, shook, and then turned without another word and walked back into the house. Jack watched him go, grinding his teeth in frustration. There was a coldness, a detachment between them that had never been there before. They had never kept any secrets from each other, from their first boyhood crushes through the trials of adolescence…right up to the night that Bill had walked in on Kathy and Jack in the hallway of the church.

  From that moment, a wall had been erected, high, wide, and ever thickening. Sure, they still talked, joked, and teased each other like before, but it was more of a going-through-the-motions.

  The spark of their friendship, if not smothered, had waned, and Jack felt helpless to bridge the gap that was forming between them.

  *

  Jack's new home was a weathered, slightly sagging cabin, sheltered among the pines behind the Moby Dick Hotel, halfway between Nahcotta and Oysterville. Twenty yards past his front porch, Willapa Bay lapped the reed-swathed shore at high tide.

  Two creaking Adirondack chairs rested beneath the covered porch and six split-log steps led down from the broad deck to the dirt path running from the bay, up past the cabin and hotel, and ending at Sandridge Road. The hotel, a great white box of a building, had welcomed travelers since its doors had opened in 1929, and was a popular rest stop for returning tourists. It had served its country as well, housing the U.S. Coast Guard Horse Patrol during World War II.

  The restaurant was known by both locals and visitors to serve the finest dinners to be had anywhere on the peninsula, especially when those dinners included oysters fresh from the hotel’s own backyard farm. The current managers, Rolf and Tina Parker, had attended Long Beach Community Church since moving from San Francisco a decade before to take over the Moby. Rolf, the restaurant's much-acclaimed chef, was a painfully shy man with a slight potbelly and a receding chestnut hairline.

  Shuffling up to Jack one Sunday morning after services, Rolf had, with much stuttering and wringing of hands, made his offer.

  "The missus and I have an old cabin out back of the hotel," he said softly, his eyes wandering nervously, "it isn't much, but I've kept the roof tight and I can run an electric line out to it. You’re welcome to stay there if you like, no charge," he added, hurriedly, "you could use the shower and toilet in the hotel, and maybe do a bit of the ground care in trade, if…if you'd like."

  Jack told him he would like that very much, shaking his hand warmly, after which a much-relieved Rolf Parker fled to his car and headed back to the safety and sanctity of his kitchen.

  True to his word, Rolf had run a power line and wired it into a small breaker box tacked to the wall of the tiny second room, where Jack set up his bed.

  He had no oven, but a wide hot plate rested on the counter. Beside it sat a wheezing refrigerator that had come from the appliance store in Astoria when Kennedy was still President. It kept the orange juice cold and the butter solid, so Jack found no reason to replace it with a newer model.

  His second day in the cabin, the Peterson's station wagon had pulled up to the hotel, hauling a small, covered trailer behind it.

  Beneath that tarp, Jack found enough flatware and dishes to serve half the church. Also, a small, overstuffed horsehair love seat, two table lamps, one floor lamp, towels and washcloths galore, a set of cookware, a fully stocked knife-block and lastly, a small color television set with a foil wrapped antenna.

  With the installation of bookshelves, consisting of six pine boards separated by cinder blocks and running the full-length of the main room, Jack’s cabin was furnished in what Pastor Ferguson jokingly referred to as Modern American Thrift Store.

  Karl's own contribution had astounded Jack. From the depths of the Pastor's basement, Karl had dug out his grandfather's desk.

  Four thick, ornately carved legs held up the hinge-lidded writing table. At roughly three feet square, the desk fit nicely in the corner of Jack's living room, the oak top lifting to reveal a six-inch deep storage area. Karl identified the circular and rectangular cavities on the top of the desk as repositories for pencils and inkwells. Overjoyed with the antique, Jack insisted that it was too much.

  "It's been taking up space in my basement for years," Karl insisted, "and it's way too small for me. I think someone should be using it!"

  Running his hand lovingly along the polished surface, Jack couldn't force himself to argue. He accepted the g
ift thankfully, immediately placing it beneath the old wrought iron floor lamp and setting his Bible and a small, framed photograph of his parents on top.

  That evening, Jack sat on the weathered deck of his new home, watching seagulls swoop low over the bay and great blue herons stalk the swampy, reed-lined shore. The Chinook Indians had called this area Tsako-te-hahsh-eetl, the place of the red-topped grass, and that made sense to Jack as he looked out over the crimson stalks, undulating in the ocean breeze. To the west, he could hear the throaty growl of oyster barges pulling into the old cannery, now a shelling station for the bay's harvest. From his seat, Jack could just make out the long, wooden pier, jutting out into the Willapa, with its great piles of oyster shells, rising like rocky, pallid mountains along the shore.

  *

  Days turned into weeks, and then months, and soon the early winter storms were sweeping the coast in torrential rains. Jack had spent much of his free time bobbing around the bay in the Parker's rowboat, fishing, casting net traps for crabs, and gathering oysters at low tide. There were no longer any oyster beds open to the public but, besides his lawn care duties for the hotel, Jack had taken over the harvesting of the Moby's oyster beds just offshore from his cabin. The Parkers insisted that Jack keep a portion of his harvest and, eventually, he had been forced to haggle a used chest-freezer from the hardware store in Ocean Park. Now that winter was approaching and the weather grew increasing foul, Jack could relax in the knowledge that he had enough seafood, both frozen and smoked, to last him through the winter.

  The youth group had been the highlight of Jack's autumn. For something that he had at first felt roped into, Jack found that watching the kids learn and grow, sharing in their hopes and fears, gave him a sense of accomplishment like nothing else he had ever done. A dozen teens had showed up on the last warm weekend of October, hosting a car wash in the church parking lot, and splitting the profits between a weekend campout and a contribution to the missionaries in New Guinea that LBCC supported.

  Both the elders and the parents had been pleasantly surprised when the kids had voted unanimously to donate the money. Jack had smiled at their reaction, and didn't mention that he had spent the last three weeks teaching on missions and sharing his own experiences in Africa.

  Kathy, along with the Petersons, had continued to show up faithfully every Wednesday night, and Jack decided that when the ministry grew large enough, he could create four small groups, two for the girls, and two for the boys. Bill, however, hadn't been back to a youth meeting since their confrontation in September, and though he continued to attend Sunday services, his presence was becoming more and more occasional as the year progressed.

  Jack worried about Bill and had spoken and prayed with his pastor on several occasions about his old friend.

  "Jack," Karl had responded, leaning back against the rain-splattered window of his office as the old wall heater chugged and hissed in the corner, "each of us makes his own choice. The invitation has been laid out for Bill Beckman. He can accept or reject the sacrifice Christ made for him. No one else, not you or I, or even Kathy, can decide for him."

  Jack knew that this was the truth, but his concern gnawed at him, adding to his guilt over the one subject he had yet to broach with his pastor. As the weeks passed, Jack found it increasingly difficult to be near Kathy Beckman. His heart would start to race when she was near and he had dreamed, just once, that they were walking hand-in-hand along the beach together.

  As the two worked on projects, or took part in events with the youth, Jack struggled to make sure that they were never alone together; there were always several youth between the two of them. On the odd occasion that they did brush arms or hands in passing, Jack would flinch back as though burned, as shame flooded through him.

  Kathy didn't seem to notice his strange behavior, at least he hoped and prayed this was the case, as he knelt on the hardwood floor of his cabin, clutching his Bible and pleading with God to take away his traitorous feelings.

  *

  "Ho Ho Ho!" Pastor Ferguson bellowed again, and Jack flinched as the cry passed through the thin wall between their offices.

  "Yo, Saint Nick," he called, rapping on the wall with his knuckles, "You wanna hold it down, some of us are memorizing our lines!"

  "What do you think I'mdoing?" Karl shouted back. "HO HO HO!" he bellowed even louder.

  Jack laughed, gathering his Bible and script. Time to flee to the sanctity of the coffee shop! As he turned to close his office door, a large, red, jovial figure stepped into the hallway, blocking his path.

  "Look out Saint Nick," he growled, "some of us have real lines to work on!"

  Karl waggled a thick finger in his assistant's face.

  "Watch it there, young feller," he warned, "or it's gonna be nothing but coal in yourstocking!"

  "As long as there's a paycheck in my stocking, I'll be fine!" Jack laughed, "Can I buy Saint Nick a cup of tea?"

  "Nah," the old elf replied, "I have to get this jacket over to Myra Feldman so she can sew these buttons back on."

  "You know," Jack called, getting a head start towards the door, "maybe if Santa cut back on the cookies and milk…"

  "Why you…" Karl hurled a candy cane after him, which Jack dodged, "I'll have you know these buttons felloff!"

  Jack was still snickering as he walked into the Coffee Clutch and straddled his usual stool facing the window. Here, between cups of coffee and pages of script, he could watch the world of Long Beach roll past through the squeaky-clean glass.

  The play was a fun one and, after Sue the waitress brought him a steaming mug, he opened the cover page to read the entire work again. The youth group had brainstormed the script, which Jack had then painfully typed up on the church’s moody old Smith-Corona, an aging electric beast that would occasionally add a few letters that you hadn't bothered to press the keys for. The plot was a modern telling of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. The main character was a spoiled young girl named Rachel who, after complaining about the little orphan boy that her parents have taken in, is visited by an angel, late on Christmas Eve.

  The angel, whose name is Michael (what else?), takes the young girl hither and yon through the city, showing her how the less fortunate are spending theirChristmas Eve; in emergency rooms and back alleys. Finally, Rachel is shown the starving young orphan boy, as he would be if there had been no one willing to minister to him. The girl, of course, repents wholeheartedly and everyone lives happily ever after.

  Not bad, Jack thought for the hundredth time, not bad at all. It had taken the kids three weeks to bring the script from seed to flower, and they had done a great job. No sets were needed, but Jack had half a dozen women in the church furiously fitting and sewing costumes, to be ready by dress rehearsal this Friday. Jack's only lines were narration and, though he could have just read them from the page, he felt he owed it to the kids to give the show his all, and memorize his part.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he murmured, hoping no one in the coffee shop noticed him talking to himself, "welcome to the night before Christmas…"

  He had repeated this line a thousand times, it seemed, and he still fought the urge to say Christmas Eveinstead of The Night Before. Sue passed by a moment later and swooped in to top off his cup.

  "Remember," she stage-whispered with a grin, "The night before…"

  "I know," Jack grumbled, waving her off, "I know!"

  Sue returned to the kitchen, where he could hear her chuckling.

  Jack continued to rehearse his lines all through the afternoon and by six o'clock that evening, when rehearsal started, he felt comfortable with the task.

  *

  The run-through went smoothly, with only the expected theatrical disasters.

  Aimee, who played the angel, spoke the wrong line in scene two, effectively rushing them directly to scene seven, ending the play in a record eight minutes. Howls and catcalls erupted from backstage when Jack yelled, “Cut!”

  Aimee’s pale cheeks blushed as brig
ht as her auburn hair and started giggling until finally fled to the ladies room before something even moreembarrassing happened.

  Kathy, the costume designer for the first annual Christmas play, was chuckling over this when she backed into the water cooler, which fell, dousing half of the freshly washed and pressed costumes with lime Gatorade. She, however, did not giggle, and Jack had to call a break and do some fast-talking to keep his costumer from bursting into tears. Bobbie Peterson saved the day for him by scooping up the whole stack and running them to the Suds-N-Duds in Sea View.

  Finally, after two long, stumbling rehearsals, the last car full of kids pulled away from the doors of the church, leaving an exhausted Jack Leland, Kathy Beckman, and Peterson family collapsed across the front steps.

  "Need a lift home, Kathy?" Martin asked, "Bobbie should be back pretty quick, you're right on the way."

  "No," she said, "but thanks! Bill should be by anytime to pick me up."

  "I'd better head out too," Jack said, a bit more quickly than he meant to, and stood to go. Kathy looked up at him, puzzled, and Martin stood and made a show of looking up the street for his returning wife.

  "Jack?" Kathy asked. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, sure," he said. "Just a little tired, it was a long day, ya know?"

  "Okay," she said, seeming unconvinced, "you're sure I haven't done something…"

  Jack felt his heart speed up and his tongue seemed suddenly thick and dry, clinging to the roof of his mouth as he feigned nonchalance.

  "Not a thing," he smiled, "but if you do, you'll be the first person I'll tell.” Jack tried to hide a grimace, certain that his smile looked as forced and fake as his words. "I'll see you Friday!"

  With that, he fled to the back of the church and retrieved his battered ten-speed, another relic that Karl had disentangled from the depth of his garage.