Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (6 page)

Somewhere nearby Cassie
could hear the rush of freeway traffic and see the glow of
streetlights beyond the tall hedge at the back of the parking lot,
that and the muffled country music that seeped out under the
building's door. Climbing quickly, if stiffly, from the pickup, she
pulled her bag after her and jogged around the back of the
building, a shabby tavern who’s flashing neon sign identified it
as
The Spur
.
Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Cassie realized that, except for her
sore back and feet, she felt better and more rested than she had in
a week. The weather was pleasant, just cool enough to be
comfortable in her jacket as she walked through the twilight
towards the sound of evening traffic.

Now if only I knew where
I was.
Cassie thought,
I wonder how long I slept?
Long enough for the sun to set that much was
clear. What if the driver had taken an off-ramp to another highway?
She could be in California by now, or worse, in any one of the many
tiny settlements that dotted the Arizona desert.

The tavern was in a low-rent district, and
Cassie passed through two or three neighborhoods full of shabby box
houses, mostly built just after World War Two for the soldiers
returning home from overseas. She breathed a somewhat reserved sigh
of relief, the little flyspecks on the Arizona map didn’t have
neighborhoods this big, or streets this well maintained. The
houses, however, were another story. Fifty years of wear and
neglect showed in the sagging porches and peeling paint. Many had
the junked remains of old cars and trucks, rusting into oblivion,
on cement blocks in their yards. Occasionally, a motorcycle, or
several, would be parked on the dirt-packed driveways.

Once or twice Cassie jumped as dogs ran out
from under houses to bark at her as she passed. None left the
confines of their yards, however, and after they saw that Cassie
didn't seem interested in invading their territory, the dogs
quickly grew bored and returned to the confines of their
subterranean stations.

An hour later, she came to
an intersection with a sign directing her to the on-ramp for
Interstate 10. The street sign at the corner put her at the
intersection of Buckeye Road and South 16
^th
. The large green sign hanging
above the intersection also stated that it was one-half mile to the
Phoenix City Center Bypass. She was in Phoenix! She must have slept
almost three hours in the back of that truck; this was an
unexpected stroke of good luck, and Cassie breathed a quick prayer
of thanks. Her first try as a stowaway had saved her at least one
full day of hard walking, maybe two.

She sat down on the curb, in the pool of overhead light, and
pulled a map from the inside pocket of her jacket. It was a huge
Rand-McNally driving map with all of Arizona on one side and
Phoenix on the other. She had a similar map of Washington State in
her bag as well, along with computer-printed maps of Portland and
Long Beach. She carefully unfolded the Phoenix side and, after
several minutes of searching, she pinpointed her exact
location.

A dimly lit bus snored past her, going the
opposite direction. Tracing her finger back along the red line of
Interstate 10, Cassie found the City Center exit listed on the sign
above her head, then followed that a half mile south to its
junction with Interstate 17. If she were going to find a truck
stop, that was the place to do it!

She folded the map and stowed it back in her
pocket. Her watch read nine forty-five and Cassie knew that she
wouldn't be ready to sleep again until morning. So, after eating
her remaining chocolate bar and finishing off the last of her
water, Cassie repacked her duffel bag and headed east on Buckeye
towards Interstate 10. With a little luck, she would find a road
that paralleled the highway back to Interstate 17. She briefly
considered refilling her water bottles from a hose lying in the
yard of a nearby house. Her sojourn across the desert had left her
very aware of her provisions. Still, after a moment's hesitation,
Cassie decided against it, unwilling to risk having to explain
herself to the homeowner should a light come on in the darkened
windows at the sound of the hose.

Twenty minutes on shanks mare, as Mrs.
Miller had been fond of saying, brought Cassie to the on-ramp for
Interstate 10, where she found a blocked alley that followed the
same general path as the freeway.

Cassie could see the streetlamps here and
there down the long, narrow path and, from where she stood, the
stretches of darkness between each bright oasis seemed forbidding.
Standing alone in the shadows, she suddenly realized that she
hadn't considered, in her hasty planning, any means of defending
herself. The very idea, in fact, hadn't occurred to her until she
found herself at the mouth of the long, dark alley. Cassie scanned
the weed littered concrete but the best she could come up with was
a short, bent pipe crusted with concrete. She hefted the crude
cudgel and after a couple of experimental swings, started down the
narrow road.

“
Okay," she muttered to
herself, "now if I can keep from hitting myself in the head with
this thing..."

Her fears proved for naught
and, except for one heart stopping moment when she spooked an alley
cat and
did
nearly succeed in smacking herself, the way proved to be safe
and uneventful. The terrified calico scooted across the path and to
the top of the fence. It paused there to look back, appraising the
threat and, determining Cassie to be a false alarm, it sauntered
indignantly, tail high in the air, down the length of the fence and
back into the darkness.

“
Stupid cat!” Cassie hissed
after it, taking a deep breath and waiting for the machine-gun beat
of her heart to slow.

Knee-high weeds forced themselves up through
the broken concrete, brushing at Cassie’s legs as she passed, long
skinny tendrils of bramble tugged at the hem of her jeans. A faint,
cool breeze rose, tumbling a candy-bar wrapper down the path
towards her.

Reaching the end of the alley revealed the
highest of her hopes as Cassie saw, on the far corner of the
intersection, a huge parking lot dotted with trucks of all shapes
and sizes. Smack in the center of these, shining like a beacon to
the freeways running on either side was the Flying T Truck
Stop.

Cassie waited at the corner
for the traffic lights to change and then hurried across the busy
street. She wandered through the parking lot, growing disheartened
at the number of
Employees
Only
signs she found affixed to the big
trucks. There were several smaller trucks and a few cars on the lot
as well but, checking the license plates, Montana was the furthest
west that she could find. She had a sinking feeling that it
wouldn't be too long before she would be willing to hop a ride with
anyone headed even remotely in the direction of the West
Coast.

Cassie ate the last of her bread and lunchmeat, washing it
down with a diet soda from a bright, humming vending machine near
the gas pumps. The pungent smell of diesel fuel was thick around
the pumps, and she took a deep breath as she walked past with her
cola. Cassie had always liked the smell of diesel, an enjoyment
that had caused her mother to roll her eyes. In the near corner of
the parking lot, she found a covered bus stop beneath a bright
overhead streetlamp. The bus stop sat at the main entrance to the
lot and seemed like a strategic spot to watch the incoming traffic.
After digging out her recorder and her Bible, Cassie dropped her
bag against the hard plastic wall of the shelter and sat with her
back resting against the wall.

She related her thoughts and feelings on
stowing away in the back of the pickup and her encounter with the
cat in the alley. Then, after carefully packing the tiny machine
back in her bag, she picked up the worn, leather-bound Bible with
the fading gold initials, her mother's initials, on the cover.
Inside the flyleaf was a brief, smudged inscription in a neat
flowing script that read:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and
lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge
Him, and He will direct your path. Proverbs 3:5-6

Cassie murmured the words aloud, laying the
Bible back in her lap. She knew this verse, as well as the rest of
the chapter by heart. This had been her favorite scripture growing
up, one that her mother prayed along with her each night as she
tucked her in to bed. For years, Cassie had thought that her father
might have written that verse in his young wife's Bible, maybe as a
wedding or anniversary gift. The rough penmanship on the tattered
marriage certificate in her pocket, however, was nothing like the
small clean lettering on the Bible's flyleaf.

Marking her place, midway through the book
of Psalms, was a photograph of a young woman standing waist-deep in
a pool of water. In her arms was a small, pink-wrapped bundle, and
standing beside her, with one hand on her shoulder and his other
holding an open Bible, was a much younger Guy Williams. The
picture, she knew, had been taken soon after her birth, the year
that Kathy Belanger had moved to Bowie. Her mother looked so young,
her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing jeans and a
white cotton shirt, knotted at her waist. She looked, in fact, very
much like Cassie did now, eighteen years later. The picture had
been taken with a zoom lens and the three of them filled much of
the frame. She had always laughed at the long, feathered hairstyle
that Guy had worn in the early eighties and she would tease him and
ask if he still carried a banana-comb in his back pocket. Her
pastor would shake his finger at her with a mock frown and say that
if he had, he would paddle her with it.

In the photograph, her mother was smiling as
she held her newborn daughter for dedication, but Cassie could see
the smile on her lips didn't reach her eyes. Her gaze held a sad,
scared, far-off look. The arms that held her baby clutched
protectively, not only from the river that swirled around them, but
also from something else, some secret fear. Cassie had seen this
look, off and on, her whole life, usually in those rare times when
she pressed Kathy for information about her father.

"He's not someone you want to know, Cass,"
she would say softly, "best to leave it alone."

Her voice would be soft, but there was steel
in her tone that warned Cassie to drop the subject. Once, when her
mother had spent weeks deathly ill with pneumonia, fading in and
out of delirium from the fever and medications, she had turned her
head on her pillow one evening and, and looked strangely at
Cassie.

"I was all alone, Baby.” She had said. “I
was young and scared and I didn’t have anywhere to go. He was
handsome and funny, and he said that he loved me; that he’d take
care of me.”

Tears had trickled unnoticed down her
scarlet cheeks.

“
You may be the only good
thing that Bill Beckman’s done in his whole life…"

Cassie had been ten years old at the time.
She was alone with her mother while Grace had run to the store to
fill a prescription for antibiotics. The girl had sat, terrified,
by her mother's bedside, wiping her face over and over with a faded
washcloth as the woman tossed and thrashed. She wasn't even sure
that her mother had known she was in the room, and Kathy's words
were never mentioned again after she recovered.

She had looked long and hard in the mirror that night, trying
to imagine what her father might look like. She definitely had her
mother's dark, almost black hair, but her complexion was ruddy
where her mother was very fair, almost pale. She had her mother's
high cheekbones, but fuller lips and an upturned knob of a chin
that gave her face a heart-shaped, impish look.

Cassie had cried herself to sleep that
night, quietly under the covers so Grace, who was sleeping on the
living room couch, wouldn't hear. Beneath her pillow was the small
pink diary her mother had given her for her birthday that August.
Before turning out the light, Cassie had carefully printed, "Bill
Beckman, my daddy" on the inside cover. She had underlined the name
twice and then locked the little book back up with a tiny brass
key. Somewhere in the Williams' attic, back in Bowie, that little
pink and white diary rested in a cardboard box with Cassie's name
on it.

The photo was starting to fade around the
edges. It was her favorite picture of her mother who, though sad,
had been so young and beautiful, holding her baby safe, as she was
dedicated to God.

Cassie closed her eyes, fighting off the
nagging voices of fear and doubt, and prayed.

"Okay Lord," she whispered, "I'm trying to
trust with all my heart; I hope I'm not doing something really
stupid here." Cassie clenched her fists in her lap, fighting tears,
"Tell me what to say when I find him, show me what you want me to
do…" She paused for a long moment, unsure of what else to say.

"Please keep me safe and direct my path,
amen." She sighed, repeating the words her mother had used each
night, and felt little satisfaction from her prayers.

Cassie opened her eyes as a great, lumbering
truck rounded the corner slowing and passed her in a cloud of
exhaust. The license plate read Georgia.

She picked up her Bible once more and, after
carefully removing her photograph-bookmark, continued to read. An
hour later, Cassie closed the book and stood to stretch. A
half-dozen vehicles had pulled into the truck stop parking lot
since she had sat down, but none of them had plates from any
western states.