Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (10 page)

Cassie said nothing, but watched as the
moths flew in frantic circles around the burning globe of the
lantern.

“
The letter was three weeks
old when it reached the base. By that time the funeral was two
weeks past. I only had another couple of months of active duty, so
I didn’t see any point of coming all the way back home just to look
at the headstones and then go right back to the war.” Jack paused,
crumpling the soda can in his fist before going on. "I stayed and
finished my tour, so I didn’t make it back until the next summer.
By then, the graves didn’t even look new anymore. Three weeks after
that I left for college.”

Cassie wanted to ask him what college he had
gone to, but her eyelids wouldn’t stay open and her head was
nodding. Jack noticed and stood, yawning himself. Okay,” he said,
“enough ancient history for one night. It's almost midnight, and
morning's going to come awful early.”

Cassie began to turn away when Jack
remembered something.

"Wait a second," he said,
walking over to the van and rummaging briefly through the glove
box. Coming back over to Cassie, he handed her a small bundle,
wrapped in an oil-stained rag. Unwrapping the cloth revealed a
heavy folding knife with the word
BUCK
imprinted on the wood
inlaid sides. Cassie opened the gleaming, steel blade carefully,
jumping slightly when it snapped into the locked position, and
tested the edge with her thumb. The slightly curved bladed had been
carefully honed to a razor sharpness, and ended in a needle pointed
tip.

Open, the knife was roughly eight inches
long and felt solid in her hand. Jack watched her eyes and nodded
as she slowly pressed the lever on the handle that released the
blade from its locked position.

"Good," he said, "You know how a lock-blade
works. If someone grabs you again like our friend back there, you
stick 'em as hard as you can and start screaming bloody murder;
chances are they'll be doing the same! It probably won't kill them,
but it'll sure slow them down in a chase. Could you do that?"

Cassie stood, hefting the heavy pocketknife
in her hand, thinking back to the helpless fear that she had felt,
being dragged back into the shadows.

"Yes," she said softly, "I think I
could."

"Well," replied Jack, "You
put that knife away in your bag until you're sure. A knife is no
different from a gun; don't ever carry one for self-defense if you
don't
know
that you could use it. Otherwise you’re just providing your
attacker with a weapon."

Cassie nodded hesitantly, her eyes still on
the knife.

"I know it's an ugly thought," Jack
continued, "maybe even wrong, but sometimes you have to weigh
what's right with the way the world is and find a happy medium.
Remember,” Jack reached out and tapped her forehead with one thick
finger, “the best thing you can do to keep yourself safe is to stay
in safe places. Second-best is to scream your head off--"

Cassie nodded as she slipped the knife from one hand to the
other.

"--and always yell
fire
," Jack went
on, "never
help
. There are too many folks out there, sad to say, who'd rather
not get involved, but everyone wants to see a good fire. Fighting
is always your last option, when you've got no other way
out.”

She nodded again, a little more confidently
this time, and slipped the Buck knife into the front pocket of her
jeans.

“
Just think about it is all
I'm saying. Now get some sleep."

Cassie locked the swinging back door of the
van behind her and twisted into the most comfortable position she
could find on the hard metal floor. She could feel the hard length
of the knife pressing against her leg, and felt a little more
reassured.

Then, as she was trying to decide which boot
to take off first, she fell asleep.

Jack had been right, morning did come early,
and Cassie felt as though she had just closed her eyes when there
was a tap on the side window of the van. Cassie raised her head,
groggily, and nodded to Jack, letting him know she was awake.
Despite what she had said the night before, her back was stiff and
sore from hours of lying on the hard floor. Also, she was cold; the
soft gray light in the window told her that the sun had yet to peak
over the nearest hills to warm the desert. She shivered, pulling
her jacket from the front seat and rummaging through her duffel bag
until she found her toiletries.

Reaching up she unlocked the sliding door
and, squirming out of her blankets, she stepped out into the cool
morning air.

Jack was at the picnic table, his short
white hair in wild disarray, and his shirttail flapping loosely in
the slight morning breeze. He had a small tin coffeepot steaming
over a single burner camp stove and, while the coffee percolated,
Jack busied himself slicing apples and oranges. Cassie smiled as
she passed him on her way to the restrooms,

"Morning, Jack," she said.

Jack replied with an unintelligible grunt
that may or may not have been good morning. Again, Cassie splashed
her face with the icy water from the tap, brushed her hair and
teeth and, beginning to feel somewhat presentable once more,
started back to the campsite.

She found Jack still seated at the picnic
table, a heavy mug full of steaming black coffee in his hand. He
was staring absently into a patch of grass several feet ahead of
him.

"Beautiful day!” Cassie
grinned. Jack was obviously not a morning person, and her comment
hung there for a while, as it slowly filtered into Jack's brain. He
glanced up at Cassie with a sour expression, "The Japanese have a
saying,” he muttered, “
Never rely on the
glory of the morning nor the smiles of your
mother-in-law.
The only good morning is
the one that you've missed when you wake up at noon!"

Cassie laughed and, nibbling on an apple
slice, walked back to the tent.

While Jack slowly succumbed to the affects
of sunlight and caffeine, Cassie broke down the tent and loaded it,
and the mattress, back into the van. As she worked, the two semi
trucks, which had pulled in during the night, fired up their
engines and pulled out of the rest stop and back onto the highway.
Except for a black pick-up at the opposite end of the parking lot,
she and Jack had the rest stop to themselves. Jack nodded to the
truckers as they rolled past.

"Wow, Cassie said, "They don't sleep long do
they?"

"Probably sleeping in shifts," Jack replied,
"When you're driving a big truck like that, you're only allowed so
much time behind the wheel before you’re required to rest for
several hours. A lot of truckers get used to sleeping three or four
hours at a time during those breaks so they don't lose any more
time on the highway than they have to."

"Well, that makes sense, I guess,” Cassie
replied, “doesn't sound like much fun though."

"No," said Jack, gathering the stove and
lamp. "I tried it for a while before I joined the Navy, just for a
summer. I didn't care much for it."

"Oh?"

"No, some folks were meant to stay in one
place, like they're born with roots already in the ground. I
learned quick, that summer, that I could only be away from the
smell of the ocean for so long before it started to wear me
down."

"A homebody, then?" asked Cassie with a smile.

"Good a word as any, I suppose." Jack
replied, "George Moore said that a person travels the world over in
search of what he needs, and returns home to find it. I guess a few
of us are born lucky enough to want to stay put to begin with."

"I don't know," Cassie said, plopping down
at the table opposite Jack. "I couldn't wait to get out of Bowie!
As much as I loved everyone, I just knew there was a whole world
going on and we just caught the echo of it there. It was like
standing outside the stadium listening to people cheering for a
game you can't see."

"Now that you're in the game,” he asked,
“what do you think?"

"Well," Cassie grimaced, "I
don't know that Sentinel, Arizona is exactly
in the game
either, but at
least I feel like I'm moving in the right direction.”

"So, let me get this straight,” Jack
grinned, “you're leaving a pitifully small town called Bowie,
Arizona to go find the world in another pitifully small town called
Long Beach, Washington?"

Cassie threw her orange peel at him.

"You can be a very disagreeable person,” she
said, haughtily, “Do you know that?"

"It has been mentioned, yes."

Cassie tried to maintain her frown, but gave
up and laughed.

"First, smarty,” she
retorted, “I'm not expecting to find
the
world
in Long Beach, it's just a
starting place. I thought that some time in a different small town
might ease me into life at a city college."

"And what city would that be?" Jack
asked.

"Portland," Cassie answered, "Portland State
University. I'm enrolling there in the fall. The writing department
requires a thesis at the end of each year, so I thought I'd get a
head start on it while I still had some free time."

“
So, you changed your mind?”
Jack asked, smiling slyly.

Cassie looked at him blankly.

“
Changed my mind about
what?” she asked.

“
I thought you had to hurry
up and finish your book for
spring
term?”

Cassie’s mouth grew dry and her stomach did
a cold flip-flop as she groped for an answer. Jack saved her any
further indignities, interrupting with a wave.

"Sounds like a good plan, either way," he
said with a wink, standing and gathering the last of the items on
the table, "and now, we should probably get a head start on the
road!"

Cassie, her face flaming, retreated
gratefully into the van; neither of them noticing as the black
pick-up truck, with its dark, tinted windows, pulled onto the
highway behind them.

*

They followed Interstate-8 west through
Yuma, and into California.

Reaching San Diego around
noon, Jack pulled the van into a bumpy gravel parking lot, stopping
in front of a small seedy-looking gas station and food mart.
Sharing the parking lot with the fuel pumps was a worn Airstream
travel trailer that some industrious soul had converted into a
mobile lunch wagon. Cassie got the impression, looking at the rusty
wheels and voluminous patch of weeds growing up all around it, that
the aluminum trailer hadn't been
mobile
in some time. A brightly
striped awning hung above the windowed counter of the trailer, and
a giant sandwich board menu, all in Spanish, stood beside the
road.

Jack eased from the driver’s seat with a
groan, as he stretched his back, twisting left and right, his hands
on his hips. Yawning, he proceeded to fill the gas tank from the
dusty nozzle hanging beside the pump.

Cassie wandered off to find a rest room and,
finding it locked, went to the office, where she was handed the
key, firmly chained to a long lead pipe. Jack snickered as she
walked past, hefting the pipe with both hands. Cassie ignored him
haughtily and returned to the back of the building to unlock the
ladies room door.

After returning the key, she walked back to
the van to find Jack holding a white paper bag in his lap. The
smell rising from the bag made Cassie’s stomach rumble loudly and
her mouth began to water. Jack laughed.

"Well,” he said, “I was going to ask if you
were hungry yet, but I'll take that for a yes!”

Cassie grinned as he handed her an offering
from the bag, warm and wrapped tight in foil.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A
carne picada
taco," he replied, unwrapping his own lunch, "and
not your pasty, flavorless American versions of a taco either,
these are the real thing!” With that, he took a huge bite of the
steaming, tortilla-wrapped morsel, rolling his eyes in ecstasy as
thick juice dribbled down his chin.

"Heaven!" he mumbled, his mouth full.

“
Attractive!” Cassie laughed
and handed him a napkin, then took a bite herself. Jack had been
right; this was nothing like the offerings of the drive-through
chains she knew. The tortillas were fresh and warm and the chunks
of stewed beef were delicious and spicy. Cassie chewed slowly,
savoring the mouthful for perhaps a second and a half before her
tongue burst into flames.

She emitted a muffled shriek; her eyes going
wide as her taste buds burned and her lips grew numb.

"Water!" she croaked, flailing her free hand
in Jack's direction, "WATER!"

Cassie could feel the surface of her tongue
starting to crisp as Jack, laughing uncontrollably, handed her a
bottle of water and several plain tortillas.

Cassie began to gulp the contents of the
bottle.

"Eat the tortillas first, “Jack advised,
“their going to do a lot more than that water. You could drink all
day long and it's still going to burn!” Cassie, her face crimson
and beginning to drip with perspiration, swallowed the offending
bite of taco as she continued to pull from the water bottle,
pausing just long enough to turn on Jack.

"You're gonna die!” she said between
coughing fits, “if I live through this I'm going to kill you!"

Jack laughed even harder.
"You must have gotten one of my tacos!” he gasped, his wide eyes
the very picture of innocence, “the other two in there are mild.
Besides, it's not really
that
hot.” He took another
bite.