Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (2 page)

"That'll be just fine," Guy said, picking up
the now-empty weapon and slipping it into the pocket of his jacket.
He gathered the shells and put them in the other pocket.

"I'll get it cleaned up and oiled before I
put it away," he said, "looks like your Mom kinda let it go the
last few years…"

Guy's voice faltered and the room filled
with silence, and she realized that her pastor and his wife must
have been suffering almost as much as she, having been her mother’s
best friends since before Cassie could remember.

Finally, Guy slapped his knees with his
palms and stood.

"Well,” he said, “these boxes aren’t going
to pack themselves…"

"Guy?" Cassie had whispered, unable to look
up and meet his eyes, "Why did Mom want a gun like that?"

There was a long pause and after a few
moments Cassie thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, clearing
his throat, he spoke.

"Well Cass,” he’d said, “sometimes it can be
scary living on your own, especially with a little one in the
house. Way out here on the edge of town, you want to feel
safe…"

There was another long pause, but he left the sentence
hanging, slowly walking out of the bedroom. Cassie could hear the
quiet, unintelligible murmur, as Guy spoke to his wife. Then the
sound of moving and taping boxes resumed. Cassie wasn't sure how
she felt about Guy's answer, but she knew this; there was more to
it than he’d told her.

Sitting there, Cassie had pulled the
marriage certificate back out of her pocket. For some reason she
hadn't wanted Guy or Grace to see it. She unfolded it once more and
studied her father's handwriting on the faded page, listening to
the windy scratch of sand, like cat fur, whispering past the
aluminum walls.

William
Beckman
, she read again, a man she had
never met and of whom her mother refused to speak. His date of
birth didn’t mean much to her, nor did the listing of his
occupation as a fisherman; what started her heart beating hard was
the cryptic entry for his place of birth. There, in what Cassie
assumed was her father’s own rough script, were the words
Just past Oysterville,
WA
.

The strange phrase had stuck in her
consciousness like a burr, and she read the line over and over,
sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed as their meager belongings
were loaded into apple boxes from the Bowie Grocery.

Just past
Oysterville
, did it mean that William
Beckman had been born somewhere called Oysterville? If so, why not
just write that? If he had been born in the next town, why not put
the name of
that
town? Cassie rescued her mother’s
atlas of the world
from a box
full of books and had found Oysterville at the very tip of the Long
Beach Peninsula in Washington State. Her discovery, however, only
added to the confusion, there was
nothing
past Oysterville except
for the Pacific Ocean to the West and Willapa Bay to the
East.

As Cassie sat, the tattered atlas across her
knees and a numb void of loss shadowing her heart, a sudden need,
dark and simmering, flickered within her.

What if she went to this place, this
Oysterville, and found somebody there who had known her parents,
maybe even knew her father’s whereabouts? Could she find him? Could
she track this William Beckman down and let him know the wife he
had abandoned had lived and breathed and struggled and sacrificed
to raise his child? That she had worked three jobs to put food in
the belly of the daughter he had walked away from, and carved out a
life in a run-down old trailer on the edge of the desert?

She could, no, she
would
tell
him!

For her mother and for herself she would
find this man and tell him that Katherine Belanger was dead. He
would ask how, and what would she tell him?

Alone, in the cold early hours of morning,
she had been struck by a drunk driver and left lying, broken and
bleeding, in the street.

A drunk driver who had, himself, been found
dead an hour later, hopelessly crushed beneath the crumpled remains
of his Cadillac, in a ditch along Interstate 10.

The fine white pages of the atlas had
crumpled unconsciously in her fists.

No
, she thought fiercely,
I won't
tell him anything, except that she’s dead
. She would tell him this and then turn and walk away, as he
had walked away.

When Cassie had closed and locked the door
of that shabby, rented trailer for the last time, it was with a
burning sense of purpose. That purpose had warmed her as she walked
through the cold night to her borrowed room at the Williams’
house.

She would find out, for herself, who and
what were just past Oysterville.

*

Cassie had made her plans, even as those
around her took care of the details of her mother’s funeral. As
much as she disliked the idea of lying to the Williams, she would
do so, cashing in her ticket at the bus station and thumbing rides
all the way to the West Coast.

The small amount of money she had
saved for college (this she had already transferred to a Portland
bank) now included the few hundred dollars that had remained in her
mother’s savings account. With the cash from the bus ticket, she
was sure she could spend the next several months searching for her
father.

She had called the University and, despite
what she had told Grace, there would be no problem holding her
loan, and enrolling in the later, Fall courses.

Now, just a day later, as she stood under the bright blue
awning that shielded her mother’s casket from the sun, Cassie began
to doubt. She wondered what she’d really say when she found him, if
she found him.

Guy had often said, while standing behind
the pulpit of the Bowie Baptist Church, that there was a place
within each of us designed for love. That nothing else, not money,
or fame or power would fill that void. Most of the bad that was in
the world, he said, came about from the futile attempt to fill that
place with something besides love.

Cassie suspected that hating her father
wouldn’t fill it either, but could there be more? She shook her
head as the last blue flowers disappeared into the darkness of the
grave. She didn’t know, and she didn't want to know. For now, hate
would have to be enough. As her life in Bowie, Arizona ended, she
felt in her pocket for the folded copy of the marriage certificate,
her first step, her only clue to finding her father.

As for what she would do when she found him,
she would, as Kathy Belanger had been fond of saying, burn that
bridge when she came to it.

*

Those who had words to say said them and the
graveside memorial ended.

Guy saw Cassie standing near the edge of the
canopy, next to his old station wagon, nodding absently as the line
of well-wishers slowly passed, murmuring their condolences.

She looked, to him, like one of those dogs
with the bobbing heads that you put in the back window of your car.
Just nodding and nodding, eyes glassy and vacant, the lights are
on, the power’s running, but the folks have gone to Florida, thank
you and please leave a message.

Guy ran an unsteady hand through his hair;
it had been a long week, and he was feeling his years increasingly
as each hour passed.

It’s
not
, he thought,
as if we haven’t lost friends before
.

He knew that this was different; the
Belanger’s were family, Kathy had become the sister he’d never had,
and Cassie was almost a daughter. Hadn’t he watched her take her
first steps across the faded linoleum of his kitchen? Hadn’t he
been the one sitting where her father should have sat for a hundred
soccer games and dance recitals? He sighed, feeling a cold churning
in his belly at the thought of Kathy’s absence, the bone-weary
sadness at the pain his wife was facing, losing her oldest and
dearest friend.

Grace was being brave, of course, keeping
strong for Cassie, but a husband, a good husband anyway, was the
one on whose shoulder you cried after the lights were turned off
and no one else could see.

Cassie.

Guy watched her accepting hugs, condolences,
and murmured kindnesses that she would never remember. He watched
her eyes, and saw her mind awhirl behind them, as though all of
this were already a memory.

He knew she was planning something, but
what? She was too smart to not be subtle, but he had watched this
young woman grow up from an infant, almost as much in his own home
as her mother’s. As a father himself, Guy recognized a whitewash
when he saw one. Cassie had given up on her hitchhiking plans much
too quickly for his liking. He knew the girl, and her sudden and
unquestioning submission was out of character. The Cassie he knew
would have fought, setting her jaw and refusing to budge. She could
be a pit bull when it came to getting her own way, and when she
suddenly became a poodle, something was wrong.

Cassie looked up and caught his eye, and Guy
produced a weary smile as he came up to her, placing his hands on
her shoulders.

"You hanging in there, Cass?" he asked, and
Cassie nodded, smiling as best she could.

"You, um…" Guy continued, looking over the
tops if his wire rimmed glasses and into her eyes, "You take care
of yourself, Kiddo. Call us as soon as you get to Portland. I…I
hope you find what you're looking for."

He looked in her eyes as his mind raced.

What are you thinking
Cassie Belanger?
Guy wondered to
himself,
what are you up
to?

And more importantly, what can I do about
it?

Guy smiled again and bent to kiss her
forehead, then turned and walked away.

Grace Williams came and took her hand.

“
How are you doing, Honey?”
she asked.

“
I’ll be okay,” Cassie
answered, taking a deep breath.

“
Are you sure you have to go
so soon? Maybe you could just take a week or two, let things settle
and then--”

“
No," Cassie interrupted,
"the bus tickets are nonrefundable. Besides, I want to get there
early and have a look around the campus on my own.”

Grace sighed. “Oh Cassie,"
she said, "all the way to Oregon? You must be able to find a school
closer to home? There has to be
one
college in Arizona with a
writing department!”

Cassie smiled. “Portland State University is
one of the best writing colleges in the country, and besides,
they’ve already accepted my transcripts.”

“
It’s just--”

“
I know," Cassie said, "I
know, it’s so
far
, you keep telling me. I just feel like I have to get away. I
need a new place, somewhere unexpected where I don’t recognize
every rock and tree. I can’t write here, it’s too familiar,
especially now…”

Cassie paused, and took another deep breath,
fighting the tears that threatened to well and overflow. How could
she tell Grace how she felt? How could she explain the way that her
soul turned cold whenever she passed the street where her mother
had died, hearing the screech of rubber and the crush of metal? How
she pictured her lying there in the darkness, crying for help? How
many times now had she woken up, trembling and gasping for air,
with this vision seared into her nightmares?

“
I know,” Grace whispered,
“I know. Maybe you’re right, sometimes change is the only way to
heal.”

Cassie squeezed her hand gratefully, unable
to look in her eyes.

“
Now,” Grace continued,
“tell me the truth. You’ve given up this silly notion of
hitchhiking and bought a bus ticket, right?”

Cassie hesitated, “Yes…” It
was the truth,
technically
, she had, at one
point given up on the idea, and she
had
bought a ticket…

Grace squared her shoulders and stepped
back, all business. “Let me see it…”

As she dug through her pockets, Cassie
grimaced.

“
Thanks for the trust,” she
muttered, “it's a real vote of confidence.”

Pastor William’s wife smiled at that.

“
Oh, I trust you dear, but I
was young once myself, and I remember how hard it can be to let go
of a good idea.”

Cassie found the blue and red striped
Greyhound envelope and handed it to Grace, who opened it and
quickly scanned the ticket inside.

“
Gracious,” she exclaimed,
“Two hundred and fifty-eight dollars! You should be able to fly
there for that!”

“
Not both ways.”

“
Cassie!” Grace cried, “This
bus leaves at three, that’s less than an hour away!”

“
Don’t worry,” Cassie
replied, “Frank is going to pick me up in the taxi, and he should
be here any minute.”

As though on queue, a horn honked from the
street as a faded yellow cab pulled up to the curb. Cassie reached
into the backseat of the Williams' station wagon and grabbed her
faded duffel bag and jacket.

“
Well," Grace said, taking a
deep breath, "if you’re determined to go, then give me a hug and
walk away before I cry.”

Cassie felt tears well once more in her own
eyes.

“
Thank you so much,” she
said, “for everything. Thank Guy too, for helping with the funeral,
and with Mom’s stuff.”