Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One

by Perry P. Perkins

  “Where did you get the truck?” she asked.

  “I rented it in Benson, and left the car for Grace to pick up. Then we started our little cat and mouse game across the country. I thought you had me in Gold Beach, when I couldn’t find the exit to that darned library parking lot.”

  Cassie laughed, and then frowned, “If you knew it was me, why didn’t you just stop us?”

  “What good would thathave done?” he replied, sipping from the coffee and taking a huge bite of his doughnut.

  “I suppose I could have hog-tied you and brought you back to Bowie in the bed of the truck, but you would have just taken off again. I can’t spend the rest of my life tracking you down; the rental fees alone would break me.”

  Cassie smiled again, but sheepishly, still feeling guilty for the lies she had told and the trouble she had put Guy and Grace through.

  “Besides,” Guy went on, “I saw you and Jack together enough to feel like you were safe with him, so I thought I'd just tag along until you got to where you were going." He grinned suddenly. "I’ve known you your whole life, Cassie, and your mother a long while, too. If I’ve learned any one thing, it’s this: when one of you makes up her mind to do something, it’s best to just stand aside and let you do it!”

  Cassie laughed again, some of her anger with God and worry over Jack starting to dissipate. Guy was right; he had known her all of her life and he was the closest thing to father she had ever known. It was such a relief to have him near, to not be alone. The old photograph of Guy, waist deep in the river, baptizing Kathy Belanger and her baby daughter, sprung to Cassie’s mind and her eyes filled with tears. They loved her so much, and she had treated them so badly.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice quavering, “I’m so sorry that I worried you and Grace, I just didn’t think.”

  Cassie broke down, burying her face in her hands to hide her tears. The next moment Guy was beside her, his familiar arms circling her, and she clung to him, desperate for his reassurance. She heard him murmuring prayers as he stroked her hair. Finally, the worst having passed, she sniffled and lifted her head. Guy smiled at her and kissed her forehead, slipping back over to the other couch. Cassie took a sip of her cocoa and then, slowly and methodically, gave Guy the step-by-step of her trip West. The hands on the big clock had made two revolutions by the time she had finished.

  There was a long silence, punctuated by Cassie’s occasional sniffle, and the squawk of the dispatch radio. Guy took her hand and said another quick prayer, thanking God for her safety, then sat back with a long sigh.

  “That’s a story and a half,” he said, “but Jack sounds like a good guy. I can see why you thought that he might be your father. I wish I had a clue, but your mom never mentioned him, or your father, to us.” Guy glanced at his watch. “Has the doctor said anything, yet?”

  As if on cue, a nurse stepped into the room, smiling awkwardly. Cassie had the sudden impression that she had been waiting behind the half-closed door until Guy had finished his prayer. She looked to Cassie to be in her middle thirties, pretty, with dark red ringlets cascading over the shoulders of her crisp white uniform.

  “Cassie Leland?” she asked, checking her clipboard.

  Guy raised an eyebrow in Cassie’s direction but said nothing. Cassie blushed to her roots under her pastor’s gaze.

  Names are like clothes, different suits for different occasions, that’s what I say.

  “Yes?”

  The woman offered her hand, which Cassie shook.

  “I’m Aimee Phillips,” she said, “and I wanted to thank you for getting Jack here so quickly, he’s a very old friend, and I think you may have saved his life tonight.”

  Cassie nodded, fighting back tears.

  “I didn’t know that Jack had a niece,” Aimee went on, “but I surethought you looked familiar, when you came in.”

  “Is Jack going to be okay?” Cassie asked, changing the subject.

  “We’re pretty sure he’ll be fine,” Aimee replied, checking her paperwork again. “He did have a heart attack, but luckily it was fairly mild. Too much fried food would be my guess. We’ll keep him here a couple of days for observation, get him going on some blood pressure medication, but he should be home by the end of the week. We gave him enough morphine that he should sleep until tomorrow afternoon.”

  Cassie felt a knee-weakening wave of relief rush through her, as she squeezed Guy’s hand. He squeezed right back.

  "Just to let you know," Aimee said, "We sent a tow truck to pick up Jack's van. You can tell him that Wally has it in the shop, and he'll call in a couple of days for instructions."

  Cassie thanked her, barely understanding what she was saying; Jack was going to be okay!

  Aimee introduced herself to Guy, and asked if the two of them needed a place to stay for the night. “Not me,” he replied, “I’m going to have to head back home tonight. I have to be back in Bowie day after tomorrow; I just wanted to make sure that Cassie got here safe."

  “How about you?” he asked Cassie, and she smiled as he squeezed her hand again.

  “I…I don’t know. I need to find a hotel I guess…”

  Aimee looked at her, puzzled. “A hotel?" she asked. "Aren’t you going to stay with your Uncle? Jack’s place is only a few miles up the road.”

  “Oh,” Cassie said. In the panic of the last several hours, she hadn’t given a thought of where she'd be sleeping tonight.

  “I’ll tell you what,” the nurse replied, “I’m off shift in about twenty minutes, how about if I give you a lift to Jack’s apartment? Since you’re a relative, I can give you his keys and things; at least you won’t have to try to find a hotel at this time of night.” Cassie agreed wearily. By now, she was so exhausted that she would have agreed to a cot in the local jailhouse if it meant she could close her eyes and get some sleep. Aimee told her to wait there and she would meet her when the shift ended, leaving Cassie and Guy a few minutes to say good-bye.

  “Is Grace going to kill you for not bringing me back?”

  “Nah,” Guy smiled, “she wanted me to make sure you were safe, that’s all. It sounds like Jack’s going to be okay, and you have a place to stay, Grace will be fine with that.”

  Guy paused a moment, thinking, and then continued, “Well, maybe I’ll give her a call tomorrow and let her know what’s going on before I get home--”

  “--and she can kill you.” Cassie finished, laughing.

  “Exactly!”

  Guy and Cassie took hands and said a quick prayer, then he hugged her fiercely and she was surprised to see tears in his eyes.

  “You take care of yourself, Kiddo,” he murmured, “call Grace tomorrow and let her know you’re all right. And you call us if you need anything…anything, you understand?” Cassie nodded and squeezed his hand one last time. Guy turned to go.

  “Hey!” she called, as he reached the door.

  “Yeah?” Guy said, turning.

  “Don’t lose your banana comb!” Cassie smiled.

  Guy grinned and waggled a finger at her, “Don’t you go pulling a knife on anyone!” he laughed. Then he was gone.

  *

  Aimee and Cassie headed north in the nurse’s Honda, the streets gleaming wetly beneath the blue-white glow of streetlights. They made some small talk about the weather, but it was clear that Aimee was tired from a long shift and Cassie from her lack of sleep. The conversation lapsed into a comfortable silence and the lull of the windshield wipers, skimming the morning mist from the glass, soothed Cassie to sleep. When she awoke, they were pulling up to a curb just off the main street.

  “Here we are,” Aimee said, shutting of the engine and lights.

  Cassie looked around dazedly for a moment, expecting to see an apartment complex. Instead, what she saw was a looming, two-story building, covered with heavy wooden shingles, and painted a flat gray. It took her a moment to realize that she was looking at Jack’s bookstore. A solid set of wood steps led up to a second-story landing an
d a single door. A dim light gleamed through the door’s small window. Aimee had parked her little car behind a gleaming red Jeep with a black leather ragtop.

  “Oh good,” she said, coming around to meet Cassie on the sidewalk, “Beth’s here.”

  Cassie grabbed her bag from the backseat and followed Aimee up the stairs. They knocked and a moment later came the sound of light footsteps, and the door opened.

  A tall willowy woman stood in the doorway. Her black hair, just starting to gray at the temples, was pulled back and held in place with a leather barrette. High cheekbones and long raven lashes accentuated her bright, coral-blue eyes. She glanced from Aimee to Cassie, and when her gaze fell on the younger girl, something seemed to surprise her, her azure eyes widening and her hand starting to rise toward her mouth.

  There was a long pause as she stared at Cassie Belanger, her face gone slightly pale. Then she blinked, as though shaking herself from a daze, and turned her eyes from Cassie’s face.

  “Aimee,” she said, taking the woman's hands in her own, “Thank you for calling, I was just starting to worry. I still think I should have come down to the hospital. You're certain he's going to be okay?”

  “He’ll be fine.” Aimee smiled, “And he wouldn’t have even known you were there, with all the drugs we pumped into him. Better that you keep the home fires burning tonight; you can visit Jack tomorrow afternoon when he’s awake. Until then you both need your rest." She smiled. "He’s a tough old goat, and too stubborn to let a measly heart attack beat him.”

  The dark haired woman rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t I know it?” She sighed, and then seemed to remember that they were standing on the dark, cold landing at just after five in the morning, “Come in, both of you, come in!” She ushered them into the small apartment, closing the door behind them.

  From the stunted hallway, a small living area gave the illusion of space beneath a high, vaulted ceiling. Beyond this, Cassie could see a tidy dining area and a door that she presumed led into the kitchen. One corner of the living room was taken with a small, antique writing table, the two adjoining walls with a leather sofa and love seat the color of warm caramel. All four walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, with books. The carpet was a deep brown shag, and at least as old as Cassie, but clean and not too worn. The one space on the wall that was free of books stood above the writing table; this housed a stereo and three deep shelves of records and compact discs.

  Cassie could see the corner of an old, upright piano, its top littered with picture frames, through the entrance to the dining area. It took her a long minute to realize what seemed out of place in the room: there was no television! She wondered, for an instant, if Jack kept a TV in his bedroom, but decided that he probably didn’t. Who had time for the idiot box (as her mother had called it) when there were hundreds of books here to be read, and probably thousands more in the shop below?

  “Can I get you something to drink,” the woman asked, breaking Cassie’s reverie, “some water, perhaps, or orange juice?”

  “No, thank you,” Cassie answered, feeling suddenly, strangely shy, “I’m fine, Ms…?”

  The woman laughed, a high, silvery tinkle, and extended a hand towards her. “I’m getting too old to remember my manners,” she smiled, “I’m Elizabeth Marshall, but please, call me Beth. I look after the store when Jack is gone.”

  Cassie might have been a young woman, but she wasa woman, and she didn’t miss the way Elizabeth Marshall’s voice softened when she spoke Jack’s name, or the sad determination that crossed her face for a moment and then was gone.

  The younger woman realized, in that moment, that Beth was very much in love with crusty old Jack Leland, and probably had been for some time.

  Cassie felt a warm rush of empathy for her, and a sudden surge of irritation with Jack that made her jaw clench.

  Beth smiled knowingly, still holding her hand, and murmured, “Careful honey, don’t close the cover until you’ve read the whole book.” Cassie blushed, embarrassed at being read so easily and, finally, Aimee broke the uncomfortable silence of the moment.

  “Well,” she said, a little louder than she meant to, “I’m going to head home. I’ve got a husband to feed and send off to work, a hot bath, and a warm bed waiting for me!”

  Elizabeth laughed again and walked the young nurse to the door, giving her a quick hug and thanking her once more.

  “Sounds like quite a schedule,” she said, then bid the younger lady a goodnight and closed the door behind her.

  The two women looked at each other, and Cassie felt that shyness again, beneath the older woman’s strange, questioning gaze. Finally, Beth smiled.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m going to brew us a nice cup of tea to put us to sleep, then I’ll make up the couch for you.” She started toward the kitchen, calling back, “Why don’t you put your bag down and have a look around?”

  Cassie thanked her, dropping the duffel bag by the door and walking around the living room, studying the odd collection of books and knickknacks that lined the shelves. The books themselves ranged from huge, leather bound collections that looked to be hundreds of years old, some in foreign languages, to modern western and science fiction paperbacks. She brushed her fingers over the silky surface of the writing table and peered at the titles of the discs above. Mostly jazz, she noted, and no one she had ever heard of. Cassie stepped into the dining room, where a small oval table rested on the off-white linoleum.

  The apartment must have been bigger than she had at first thought, Cassie realized, as she noticed the entrance to a second hallway.

  A picture, resting on top of the piano, caught her eye and she crossed the room to it. It was an old, square, colored photo, similar in vintage to her baptism picture. That, however, wasn’t the only common factor.

  Three young people, with the beach and ocean behind them, stood, arm in arm, smiling at the camera.

  Kathy Belanger was in the center.

  Her hair hung in long, dark braids, her face broken in a carefree grin, and Cassie’s breath caught in her throat, seeing her mother at a time before the sadness and fear had come to her eyes.

  She was wearing a t-shirt that read LBCC Youth, and a pair of white cutoffs that showed her long, shapely legs all the way down to her bare feet. On her right was Jack, twenty years younger than the man who lay sleeping in the Ocean Park Hospital, medications slowly dripping into a needle in his wrist. No, this was Jack soon after the picture in his wallet was taken, the one of him in Vietnam. He, too, was grinning, and giving the camera a cheesy thumbs-up with one hand as the other was draped across Kathy’s shoulder, his hand resting on the shoulder of the man opposite him. To Kathy Belanger’s left, with a slight smirk on his lips, was a man that Cassie had never seen before, but a chill went through her all the same. Tall and lean, his bare chest and arms tanned, and his long black hair shining in the hot summer sun, was William Beckman, her father. He stood with his arm protectively around his young wife, one dark hand resting on her light-skinned waist.

  Cassie slowly lifted the small photo from its place on the piano and gazed at it, so lost in thought that she didn’t hear a door open and close softly from the hallway behind her. Shakily, her fingers traced the fading images of her mother, her father, and Jack. There was a faint ringing in her ears and everything seemed suddenly very bright. The small room began to spin.

  “I’m going to faint,” Cassie whispered matter-of-factly.

  She might well have fainted, too, dropping the photo and slipping bonelessly to the cool, white floor, if a man’s voice, sleepy and confused, hadn’t, at just that moment, spoken up right behind her.

  “Beth?” the voice asked, softly and slightly slurred.

  Cassie spun with a blood-chilling shriek, dropping the picture after all, and lurching backwards into the piano. The man stood in the entrance to the hallway, clad in a gray t-shirt and matching sweatpants, shifting his weight from one barefoot to the other. He was tall, and looked to
be going slightly to fat in his middle age. His hair was short and peppered with gray and a long pink scar ran down the left side of his face, from temple to jaw-line. His right eye seemed to bulge and be slightly off center. The man looked at Cassie with confused, slightly dull eyes, his lips wet and slack and his big hands clutching a worn stuffed rabbit nervously.

  In another, less terrified frame of mind, the sight of the grown man with the toy bunny might have struck Cassie as humorous. Instead, as she stared at the man’s face, her mouth gaped open and her breath came in a choked whistling gasp.

  He was older, certainly, and had put on some pounds, but the man in the gray pajamas, one side of his fleshy face oddly skewed, was unmistakably her father.

  Bill’s reaction to Cassie’s shriek was a shrill cry of his own, bringing the stuffed animal up to be clutched protectively to his chest. For just a moment, Cassie Belanger thought for sure that he was going to burst into tears. All of this happened in a heartbeat. Then, just as suddenly, the walls began to warp and close in, the pictures, the furniture, even Bill himself loomed in on her from where he stood, filling her vision, suffocating her.

  Cassie whirled...she couldn’t breathe!

  She heard, over the roaring in her ears, the sound of Beth calling her name, faintly and from far away. Then she was out the door and down the wooden steps, barely catching her balance and saving herself from a nasty tumble to the concrete sidewalk below.

  In the cold darkness, the streetlights were ablaze and bolted to the one sitting on the nearest corner was a large sign, bathed in yellow light, which read: “Public Beach, 3 Blocks,” a huge white arrow pointing the way. Cassie didn’t hesitate, even at the sound of the older woman's voice calling to her from the landing, but ran, gasping the cold morning air as tears streamed down her pale cheeks.