Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One

by Perry P. Perkins

  “The first thing I saw in here” Karl said, “was that one of the dining room chairs was overturned and there was a letter on the table in front of it."

  He pursed his lips. "I don’t think Kathy’s dead, I think she left.”

  Jack pulled himself to his feet, grabbing the edge of the table for support.

  “What’s it say?”

  “I don’t know, but it's got Bill’s name on it.”

  “Yeah, and that’s Kathy’s handwriting, so open it.”

  “Isn’t that against the law?” Karl asked. “Opening someone else’s mail?”

  Jack sighed, “It’s only mail once it’s been mailed, and you know it. Now, are you going to read it or do you want me to?”

  Karl stared at him grimly. “I don’t suppose telling you to leave it alone would do any good?”

  “You told me not to come over here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can see how well that worked. So, why don’t you just read the letter?”

  Karl sighed again and picked up the envelope, as Jack eased himself into the chair opposite his boss. “Well?” he asked.

  “It’s empty.”

  “C’mon!”

  “Seriously,” Karl said, “It really is empty!”

  He tossed the envelope across the table to Jack, and then stood looking around the room. “Aha!” he said, and hurried over to the china hutch on the far side of the dining room. Bending with a grunt, he scooped up a wadded ball of paper from the floor and walked back over to the table with it.

  “I think Bill must have already gotten his mail, and he didn’t like what he read.” Quickly, Karl flattened the paper back out and read:

  Bill,

  I told you that if you ever hit me again I would leave. You are not the man I married anymore, and I’m afraid to stay here with you any longer. I know that what I am doing is sin and I will have to pay the consequences for it myself, but the risk has become too great.

  I know what you think about Jack and I, and this is the last time that I’m going to tell you you’re wrong. Stop drinking before it kills you. Jack has always been your friend and could help you if you’d only let him. I’ll write when I’m settled, please don’t try to follow me.

  Kathy

  The two men stared at each other in silence. Outside the old house, the storm resumed with full fury; sleet and hail peppering the windows and rattling off the shingled roof. A sudden clap of thunder, close by and shockingly loud, made them both jump in their seats. Finally, Karl folded the wrinkled letter and slipped it back into the envelope.

  “We should go, Jack,” Karl murmured, “The police will be waiting at the cabin.”

  Jack rose numbly and followed Karl out into the storm to their vehicles.

  As they headed back toward Nahcotta, this time at a much more sensible speed, the storm began to dissipate. By the time the two trucks pulled off toward the gravel parking lot of the hotel, there was just a slight rain misting their windshields.

  As soon as they rounded the corner into driveway, Jack knew that something was terribly wrong. A state police car was parked sideways across the entrance, and a trooper in a heavy black poncho stood, flashlight in hand, near the front bumper, waving them to a stop. Beyond him, in the wane light of the parking lot, Jack could see two more state police cars, Paul Bradley’s suburban, and the boxy outline of an emergency rescue van. Each vehicle had its flashers going, the big, flat front of the hotel pulsed red, and blue, as the first purple smudges of dawn began to ooze over the lip of the coastal range.

  Karl spoke to the officer through the truck window, and the cruiser pulled forward allowing them to enter. As soon as the back bumper of the Toyota passed him, the trooper put the car in reverse, blocking the entrance again.

  They parked and walked together toward the front doors, as troopers rushed back and forth around them, radios squawking, without a second glance. Jack figured that if they made it past the roadblock, everyone must assume that they had reason to be there. Coming up the walk, the two men could see the shattered remains of the hotel’s big picture window that were spread, like a million tiny diamonds, across the stone path, and a great, gaping hole centered the frosted pane.

  Inside the hotel was only slightly less chaotic.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jack and Karl identified themselves to the officer at the door, who ushered them into the dining room. There they found a very pale Rolf and Tina Parker, seated with Sheriff Bradley and two state troopers.

  Rolf looked dazed, as he sat holding an ice pack to an ugly gash on his forehead. A paramedic stood behind him, just opening his med kit. The old innkeeper looked wearily up at Jack, recognized him, and began to weep, his wife taking his quaking hand in her own.

  As all eyes turned to him, Jack’s mind suddenly filled with a brilliant memory, almost a vision, of himself, rising slowly to his feet from the cabin floor and reaching over Bill’s unconscious body to lay the loaded pistol on the bookshelf.

  He felt something cold and hollow form in the pit of his stomach.

  “Jack,” the reticent little man wept, “I’m so sorry Jack, I tried to stop him…”

  “My God,” Karl breathed, “What’s happened?”

  One of the state troopers confirmed their identities again, and then briefed them on the events of the last hour, reading directly from the hastily written notes before him.

  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, “�
�miraclehe 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 themback 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.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  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 itnot 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 whooshedopen, 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 th
e 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.”