Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One

by Perry P. Perkins

  The Belanger ladies would pack up their meager camping supplies; a second-hand tent, two sleeping bags, a cooler and the pillows off their beds, and set up camp in the shade of the willows that lined the creek. Kathy would bring the monopoly board, and they would play long games of financial conquest, taking a break to toss a Frisbee or play Bocce.

  When the heat became too much, the two would swim in the deep pool where a bend in the stream had been dammed. This was the same spot where, years before, Kathy had held her baby to be dedicated. Each night, they would walk across a meadow of short, brown grass to the shower house and wash away the sweat of the day. Then, sitting in the cool concrete building, her mother would comb the tangles from her hair as they made up scary stories together, and then raced back through the darkness to the lights of their camp.

  Standing in front of the mirror, Cassie felt the ache of loss engulf her. Her mother wouldn't be waiting by the campfire when she got back, with two freshly cut sticks and a bag full of marshmallows. She wouldn't join Cassie in round after round of campfire songs about silly billboards and bears in tennis shoes, or lie with her on their backs and point out the constellations.

  Her mother was gone. In her mind, Cassie heard again the squealing tires, the dull thump of a steel bumper hitting flesh and then, worst of all, the broken cries for help echoing through the dark, quiet streets. Cries that no one heard.

  She was alone now. As the tears rolled down her cheeks, Cassie fingered the folded scrap of paper in her pocket and felt the tiniest spark. If she could find him, track him down to wherever life had carried him in the last two decades; maybe he would be different than her mother had remembered.

  Time, Cassie knew, could change people, sometimes mellowing and softening the hardest hearts. Why couldn't this be true for William Beckman?

  Whoever he had been eighteen years ago, didn’t mean that he had to be that same person now. Cassie shuddered as she remembered her mother's fevered voice,

  "He's not someone you want to know, Cass."

  Looking at her reflection in the harsh white lights of the shower room, Cassie heard once more the merciless screech of tires and her eyes narrowed.

  Why should she give him a chance?

  Why should hebe happy, after all the hurt he had inflicted on his wife and daughter? Maybe she shouldconfront him, spitting the truth into his face without mercy, or maybe she should just forget about finding him and start building her own life.

  Nevertheless, Cassie knew, even as she felt the anger and resentment churning in her stomach, that she had to find the truth. She wanted to start her own life clean, with no questions or doubts. She wanted to be rid of the hurt.

  “Okay, Lord," Cassie whispered, leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, her hands clenched into white fists on either side of the steel sink, "please tell me what you want me to do. If you want me to find him, tell me what I should say. If you want me to forgive him, then show me how. I don't want to carry this around forever."

  A sudden picture came to Cassie's mind as she spoke those words, the grim haunted look on Jack Leland's face, that expression of hopeless regret that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go flat.

  Then, she saw herself in thirty years, her hair starting to gray, those same deep lines carving down from the corners of her eyes and mouth, that same look of bitter loss shadowing her face.

  "Not me," she whispered fiercely to her reflection, "maybe I'll find him and maybe I won't, and even if I do and he's the same person he was, at least I can walk away knowing that I tried. I'm not going to spend my life wondering about what might have happened; I'm not going to end up like that!"

  She spoke this oath to the empty walls, her voice echoing with the slow drip of water. Then, pulling on her boots, she gathered her dirty clothes and walked back to their campsite. Climbing into her tent, Cassie fell immediately to sleep.

  Late that night, Cassie awoke to a strange sound outside the tent. Lying very still, she listened, and finally realized that it was coming from the van. Jack’s voice escaped from inside, mumbling, rising and falling, silent then crying out loudly, deep in the clutches of a nightmare. The van squeaked on its springs with his violent thrashing.

  Cassie untangled herself from her sleeping bag and, just as she found the tent zipper, Jack gave one last anguished cry and fell silent. By the time Cassie was standing, barefoot, in the cool moonlight beside the van, he was quiet once more.

  *

  Jack was still snoring outrageously when Cassie rose and quietly rolled up the sleeping bag and tent. Behind her, the morning sun cast pale-pink spokes through the timbered campground. Rummaging through the plastic cargo box that Jack had left on the picnic table the night before, she lifted out the Coleman burner and the coffeepot. The latter she took over to the campsite's water faucet, a single gray pipe attached to a wooden post.

  Cassie filled the pot, swirling the contents around and then, dumping the water onto the gravel-filled grave at the base of the pipe, she filled it again. This she carried back to the table and, lighting the stove with her Zippo, put the coffee on to heat. Cassie then filled the dented tin percolator from a baggie of coffee grounds. Jack's special blend he had called it the morning before, enlightening Cassie to the joy of specialty coffees. Cassie's own java experiences had been more in the arena of instant crystals, and Jack had rolled his eyes at this, commenting again on his concerns for the future of western civilization. Cassie had admitted, partially in hopes of avoiding further diatribes, that his personal recipe was farbetter than she was used to.

  Once the coffee began gurgling over the tiny blue flame of the stove, Cassie dug into her duffel bag for the surprise. The day before, when they had stopped, briefly, for a rest room break, Cassie had remembered seeing an old skillet in the big camp box, and had bought a package of bacon and half a dozen big, brown farm eggs. These she had carefully stashed in her duffel bag before Jack returned to the van.

  Sparrows had gathered, twittering, in the nearby oaks when she surmised the coffee had steeped long enough. Cassie removed the pot from the flame and replaced it with the iron skillet. Into this, she laid several thick strips of bacon, which sizzled and popped on the heated surface. While the bacon cooked, Cassie dug deeper into the supplies and pulled out two tin plates, a spatula, salt and pepper, and a bag full of plastic-ware. She turned the bacon with the point of the buck knife that Jack had given her, and was lining one of the tin plates with napkins when she heard the sliding door of the van creak open behind her.

  "Now what in the world is all this nonsense?" Jack yawned, rubbing sleep from his eyes and blinking owlishly at her as he pulled on his shoes.

  "I thought maybe,” Cassie retorted, “just maybe, you wouldn't be such an old grouch in the mornings if you had a decent breakfast!"

  She placed the crisp cooked bacon on the plate and cracked two eggs into the sizzling fat. These she dusted with salt and pepper before pouring a cup of the thick black coffee into a cup and handing it to Jack.

  "One word," she warned, "about what a great little wife I'll make someday, and you're wearing breakfast!"

  "I guess I'm not in much of a position to argue," Jack said, accepting the steaming mug and breathing in the aroma with a sigh of appreciation.

  "You just make sure you don't put any soap in that skillet,” he muttered. “It took me forever to get it seasoned just right!"

  "What do you mean, seasoned?"

  Jack sighed again.

  "Cast iron," he began, "is porous. That means the surface of the metal is pitted with thousands and thousands of tiny holes. You have to heat oil in a new pan to fill all of these holes so food won't stick to the surface and the pan won't rust. This is called seasoning the iron.

  Okay," said Cassie, "that makes sense I suppose…"

  "Thanks," Jack replied dryly, "now the reason you don't want to use soap on cast iron is that it will pull the oil out of all those little holes and leave soap behind. Then, not only does you
r food stick, and your pan rust, but until you season it again, your food is going to taste like the soap that’s caught in the pores."

  While Jack was teaching her the finer points of camp cookery, Cassie noticed a chunky squirrel, drawn by the smell of food, which had scampered down a nearby tree trunk and stood, nose twitching at the edge of their camp. Breaking off a small piece of the bacon, she tossed into onto the grass near the creature and watched, delighted, as he dashed over and stuffed the morsel into his cheeks, spinning and racing back up the tree with his treat.

  "You haven't heard a word I've said," accused Jack, waving a finger in her direction, "have you?"

  "I heard every word," she replied airily, "not that it matters anyway, I'm not the one who'll be doing the dishes.” Jack had no response to that, but chuckled as Cassie handed him a plate.

  “So,” he said, chewing on the last of his bacon, “tell me something about Oysterville.”

  Cassie took a gulp of her coffee.

  “Well,” she began, “Did you know that Oysterville was originally called Shoalwater Bay?”

  “I’d heard that somewhere, yes,” Jack replied.

  “Hush,” Cassie snapped, “I gave you coffee, be nice. Also, during the gold rush, that oyster you were talking about, Ost… Ostra…um…”

  “Ostrea Lurida, the Olympic Oyster,” Jack helped.

  “Thank you,” she continued, “Ostrea Luridawas about the size of your palm. During the gold rush, one oyster could cost as much as a dollar. That was a day’s wages for most men back then!”

  Jack laughed, taking a last swallow from his mug, “We'll make an oysterman out of you yet!”

  *

  They drove almost five hundred miles that day, heading north on Highway 101. Cassie picked up a disposable camera when they stopped for gas, and began taking pictures of the breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean. Jack had been quite impressed with her cassette recorder, even submitting to her requests to say his name into the tiny microphone. As they followed the winding freeway, Cassie told him a little more about growing up in Bowie, and about her mother. Jack, in turn, told Cassie about his time in the war, and how he had gone to college afterward with his G.I. loan.

  "Where did you go to college?" Cassie asked.

  "Clear Creek Baptist Bible College, Pineville Kentucky."

  "You went to a Biblecollege?"

  "What?" he asked, his voice heavy with indignation, "Are my horns showing again? Why couldn't I have gone to a Bible College?"

  "I…uh…I don't know…" Cassie stammered, "you just didn't seem like the type."

  "Well then," said Jack, his self-mocking grin returning, "this should, in the parlance of mygeneration, really blow your mind. In addition to graduating from Bible College, I spent a year as a missionary, and then another year as a pastor, as well."

  Okay," she said, "now I'm in shock! Where were you a missionary?"

  "Lagos, Nigeria."

  "Yeah, like I know where that is. Where were you a pastor?"

  "Assistant Pastor," Jack corrected, "of Long Beach Community Church, Long Beach Washington.” Cassie paused a moment, letting that sink in. "Why did you quit?"

  There was a pause.

  "Who said I quit?" Jack replied, his voice growing subdued.

  "No one," said Cassie, "I guess I just thought…" Her voice trailed off into an uncomfortable silence.

  "I left for personal reasons," Jack said in a tight voice, "I didn't feel like I should be in ministry until I worked out some things in my life. Unfortunately, it's been twenty years and I'm still working them out."

  Cassie sat in silence, wishing that she hadn't brought the subject up to begin with.

  They rode for a long while without speaking. Jack’s face was a thundercloud, scowling through the windshield at the road ahead, his lips compressed in a thin, pale line. As the highway swung north, the temperature, already lower that what she was used to in Bowie, began to drop, and Cassie found herself shivering as evening progressed. Jack, finally glancing at her and seeing her huddled in her seat, reached behind him and pulled a thick wool blanket from the mattress.

  "Here," he said gruffly, "take this. You should have told me you were getting cold; I would have turned on the heater an hour ago."

  Cassie said nothing, huddling miserably beneath the blanket.

  "Hey," Jack said, his voice softening, "I'm sorry if I barked at you back there. I'm not going to throw you out for asking a couple of questions.” Cassie nodded as Jack turned the heater to high, repositioning the vents and directing them towards her.

  "It's okay," she said.

  "No, actually it's not," Jack replied, "I've made my mistakes, and I live with them, but I don't take them out on other people. So, like I said, I'm sorry."

  Cassie looked up and caught Jack's eye.

  “Okay," she said again, a bit more firmly.

  "Good." Jack smiled humorlessly, "Now see? I warned you that I was a pain in the rear.” Cassie smiled and they were fine again.

  She didn't get a chance to try oysters that day, raw or otherwise, as the sun had long since set when they pulled into Fortuna, California. Jack drove into a nearby parking lot beneath a huge lit sign that advertised Fortuna Super Eight, Best Rates in Town!

  Digging into the seemingly bottomless glove box again, he pulled out a battered coupon book, and licking a finger, he began to thumb through the dog-eared pages, peering through his reading glasses in the scant illumination of the dome light.

  "Ah, here we go!" he said finally, tearing a page from the book and handing it to Cassie. "No sleeping bags and tents for us tonight, it's time to rejoin civilization. Besides," he winked at Cassie, "It's cold up here at night."

  The coupon offered a free motel room rental with the purchase of a rental of equal or greater value.

  "'Course," Jack went on, "You can always sleep out here in the parking lot if you really have your heart set on it."

  Fifteen minutes later Cassie was standing beneath the steaming flow of the shower in the bathroom of room four.

  Chapter Eight

  She woke with the late morning sun slanting through the window of her room. Cassie yawned, stretching luxuriously in the soft twin bed, glancing around the sparsely decorated room as she rose and began to dress. She briefly considered turning on the television and seeing if she could find a news channel, and then decided that she was enjoying the peace and quiet too much to disturb it with the prattle of world events. Jack bought a local newspaper each morning, and she had gotten in the habit of reading it when he was finished, usually on the first leg of each morning’s drive.

  Cassie had rinsed her laundry in the sink the night before, and now she gathered her clean, if stiff, clothes from the shower curtain rod, and repacked. Checking the room one last time to make sure she hadn't missed anything, Cassie shouldered her duffel and closed the door behind her, walking to the lobby to meet Jack.

  "Good morning!" she said to the motel clerk.

  "Good morning yourself," the woman replied, glancing up from her soap opera digest with a smile, "your dad said to tell you that he would be across the street at the Pancake House, if you ever got out of bed."

  Cassie blinked at the woman, her shock at the mention of her father stopping her in her tracks. "Wha…excuse me?" she spluttered.

  "Across the street at the restaurant, hon. He said he'd meet you there."

  "Oh!" Cassie exclaimed, realizing the woman was talking about Jack, “Okay, thanks!"

  "Sure thing, hon."

  Cassie shook her head as she crossed the parking lot towards the restaurant.

  "Geez," she muttered, "Good morning, Cassie!"

  Walking through the front doors of the Pancake House gave her an eerie sense of deja vu. She could see Jack seated at a booth towards the back of the room, facing away from her, his short white hair showing over the top of the booth behind him. If she could have replaced the aroma of breakfast sausage with the smell of French fries, it would be the truck
stop in Phoenix. This time, however, she approached him without apprehension.

  "Well," he said, looking up from his paper, "I'd given up on breakfast, but I was hoping you would make it in time for lunch!"

  "Very funny," she replied, sliding into the booth and picking up a menu, "how long have you been waiting?"

  "Young lady," he growled, "I learned a long time ago, as a much younger man, there are two questions that a smart fella never answers."

  "And those are?" Cassie asked, rolling her eyes, knowing he wouldn't go on until she asked.

  "How long have you been waiting?" Jack answered with a flourish, "and does this make me look fat? Try the omelet; it's the talk of the town."

  Cassie threw her napkin at him as she continued to scan the menu. The omelets did look good. "So," she asked, "will we make it to Long Beach today?"

  Jack took a sip of his coffee, "Possible," he replied, "But unlikely. It would be a long drive to push all the way home. We'll probably hole up somewhere about halfway. I have to stop in Gold Beach for a book delivery. It's going to save me sixty bucks in postage, and a whole lot of worry, to pick them up myself."

  "Where's Gold Beach?" Cassie asked absently, still scanning the menu and sipping from her water glass. Jack set down his newspaper and looked at her, his face serious but his eyes twinkling.

  "I thought you were doing a book on coastal towns of the Pacific Northwest?"

  Cassie nearly choked on her water, as she looked up at Jack and then back to her menu, her face a mask of guilt. "I've focused mainly on Long Beach and the Washington Coast," she replied lamely.

  "Of course," Jack replied, picking up his newspaper, "I forgot."

  As Cassie watched him make a great show of his reading, she had the sickening feeling that her story, as well-contrived as she’d thought it had been, wasn't fooling the old man for a second.

  Later that morning, as Cassie sat dozing in the passenger’s seat, they rolled into Oregon. Crossing over the Rogue River, Jack pointed down to the bank where a man stood, knee-deep in the current, lazily waving a long, supple fly fishing rod, back and forth, above his head. The sun cut the water in a curtain of sparkling diamonds, silhouetting the angler in a silvery nimbus of light, and glistened off the long slow curl of wet line. The scene reminded Cassie of Norman MacLean’s vivid descriptions of his ill-fated brother Paul, plying the waters of the Big Blackfoot River.