Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (9 page)

Jack turned to Cassie, searching her eyes
for panic, and then nodded crisply.

Okay,” he said, “time to move along.”

They walked quickly to the van, where Jack
unlocked Cassie’s door and then climbed into the driver’s seat. The
engine started easily, idling into a soft smooth hum confirming
Cassie’s first assessment that, despite the van’s road-weary
appearance, it was well maintained.

Jack pulled out of the parking spot and
drove slowly back towards the café.

“
First things first,” he
said, and removed the trucker’s pistol from his pocket. Pressing a
small button on the grip, he popped the magazine out into his hand.
Then, pulling back on the slide, Jack checked the chamber
thoroughly to be sure the gun was unloaded.

Setting the pistol down carefully between
the seats, he quickly unloaded the clip, stuffing the bullets into
his jacket pocket. Then, with rapid efficiency, he disassembled the
slide, spring, and barrel until he held an awkward handful of gun
parts in his lap. These he slipped into an empty burger bag from
the floor.

Next, he pulled a battered denim wallet from
another pocket and showed it to Cassie.

“
Let’s
see,
” he growled, grinning evilly in
the dimness, “
what the Baggins had in
his nasty little pocketses!
” He opened
the wallet, thumbing through it and slipping the driver's license
out. A small wad of cash was folded into one corner, and Jack left
it there, sliding the license into his shirt pocket. The wallet
then joined the gun parts in the bag.

“
Be right back,” Jack said,
opening the door.

Cassie watched him walk over to a mailbox on
the sidewalk next to the café. Looking quickly to his right and
left, Jack opened the slot and dumped the contents of the bag down
into the box. The bag he crumpled and tossed in a nearby trashcan.
Starting back toward the van, he paused and, kneeling over a rusty
gutter grate, he dumped the handful of ammunition down the sewer.
Moments later they were heading west with the flow of traffic on
Interstate 10. Jack checked his mirrors periodically and finally
leaned back in the driver’s seat and sighed heavily.

“
Well,” he said, “that was a little more than the pie and
coffee I had bargained for.”

Cassie started to speak, but felt her throat
constrict, she could still feel the iron grip of the truckers hand
on her arm, and smell his stink in her nostrils, she began to shake
once more.

Jack, his voice still soft and reassuring,
sounded concerned, “Are you going to be okay?” Cassie nodded, and
in a hitching teary voice replied, “Yeah, it’s getting better…”

“
You’re starting to get some
color back, anyway," he said. "I thought we were going to lose you
for a minute there.”

“
It was pretty close,”
Cassie replied, her breathing returning to normal as her reaction
to the stress of the last few minutes began to pass. “If I could
just stop shaking.”

“
Adrenaline. Fight or flight
response. You’ll be okay in a few minutes. You did
good.”

“
I did?”

“
Yup. Tell me something, if
I hadn’t shown up, what were you going to do next?”

“
I’m not sure,” Cassie said,
closing her eyes and then quickly snapping them back open as the
image of those tattooed hands floated before her.

“
I was so scared I couldn’t
move," she said, "all I could think of was if he got me back into
those shadows I was going to start screaming and
kicking.”

“
Good girl,
where?”

“
Where?”

“
Where were you going to
kick him?”

Cassie blushed and glanced away, looking at
the rush of nighttime traffic along the interstate.

“
Good,” Jack nodded,
“that’s
exactly
where. Don’t let anyone fool you, kid, there’s no such thing
as a fair fight!”

There was a long pause as the traffic hummed
around them and they flashed from one circle of light to the next
along the thoroughfare. Finally, when Cassie could stand the
silence no longer, she glanced back over at Jack.

“
Would you…” she asked,
swallowing hard, "would you have cut him, or…or…?”

“
Or shot him, if he’d turned
on us?” Jack finished.

“
Yeah,” she
whispered.

There was another long pause and Cassie
began to think that Jack wasn’t going to answer her question.

“
I’ve never killed a man
before,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving the road, “Not even in
the war…”

Cassie waited, holding her breath.

“
I’ve seen enough good
people hurt by bad people, though, that I think I could do what I
had to, to keep it from happening right in front of me. So, if it
was going to be him or us… I guess it was going to be
him.”

This time it was Cassie’s turn to pause
before replying.

“
Good,” she said
finally.

“
Why don’t you try to get
some shut-eye,” Jack advised. “I was going to find a place to sleep
in Phoenix, but I think we’d better put a few miles and a couple of
turns between us and Mr. Wexler--"

"Who?"

"Mark Wexler," Jack replied,
slipping the driver's license, the one he had taken from the wallet
before throwing it away, from his pocket and handing it to her, "of
Phoenix, Arizona. He must have just gotten back from a run, that
would explain why his truck was empty," Jack smirked. "I took the
liberty of mugging your assailant while we were waiting for you to
bring the keys around.” Jack smiled grimly, "I wanted him to know
that
we
know
who he is."

Cassie glanced at the license, and there was
that narrow, pinched face, sneering into the camera. "Ugh!" she
said, and handed the card back to Jack.

"I’m going to try to get us onto I-8" he
said, "and then find a rest stop. I’ve been driving for better than
twelve hours today, and I’d rather not nod off at the wheel.”

Okay,” Cassie replied.

“
I’ve got a tent in the
back, and an extra sleeping bag. I’ll pitch that for me and you can
sleep here in the van with the doors locked. We’ll try to get a few
hours of sleep and then hit the road again at first
light.”

“
Thanks Jack,” Cassie
replied, leaning her head against the dusty window, suddenly
exhausted, “for everything.”

“
Goodnight kid.”

Jack drove in silence for
another two hours, cruising south through the featureless desert,
Cassie sleeping in the seat next to him, drifting away comfortably
to the endless hum of rubber and asphalt. Like two glowing eyes,
the van’s dusty headlights cut a bright path through the darkness,
far down Interstate 10 until they reached the exit for Yuma and San
Diego, then onto AZ-85, and finally to Interstate 8. When the high
beams lit a sign reading
Sentinel Rest
Stop, Next Right
, Jack pulled into the
near lane and took the long curving off-ramp into the parking
lot.

A dozen empty parking spaces sat in front of a squat brick
building housing a men’s rest room to the left and women’s to the
right. Two glowing soda machines stood, in heavy iron cages, next
to a lit billboard covered with maps. Jack drove past the building,
down to the last space on the lot and parked. His headlights came
to rest on a wide circle of emerald lawn, backed by a thick, low
hedge. As he turned off the engine, Cassie stirred in her
seat.

Okay,” he said, gently shaking her, “we’re
home.” Cassie yawned and stretched, blinking her eyes.

“
Wow,” she said, sleepily,
“am I ever thirsty!”

“
I’ll grab us a couple of
sodas on the way back. The tent’s wrapped in that green tarp in the
back,” he reached beneath the driver’s seat, “here’s a hammer, do
you know how to set up a tent?”

“
Are you kidding,” she
yawned, “I was in Girl Scouts for six years. I can pitch a tent
with my eyes closed.”

“
Good enough,” Jack said,
“what do you want to drink?”

“
Something diet.”

Jack rolled his eyes, muttering. “Never knew
a woman who wasn’t on a diet!”

“
What was that?” Cassie
asked sweetly, hefting the hammer.

“
Ah…nothing,” said Jack,
making his retreat.

“
Wait up,” she called,
suddenly, “I’ll go with you. I need to…um…talk to a man about a
horse, too.”

Jack laughed as they crossed the lawn.
Inside the low, block building, Cassie rinsed her face in cold
water, running her fingers through her hair. She grimaced at her
reflection in the scarred, graffitied, square of polished sheet
metal bolted to the wall above the sink.

Digging in her pocket she pulled out a
handful of coins and, walking back to the vending machines, popped
in a couple of quarters for a diet cola. Jack met her by the
machines and requested a root beer. Together they walked back to
the van.

Jack pulled the tent and tarp from the back,
thanking Cassie again for helping him set it up.

“
This old back isn’t what it
used to be," he said, "and bending over to pound in tent stakes
sure makes it squawk.”

“
I should be thanking you,”
she replied. “You’re the one giving up your bed.”

After her earlier ordeal, Cassie couldn’t
turn down the security of the locked van but she did insist that
Jack let her pull the heavy mattress out from under the boxes and
put it in the tent for him.

“
My back,” she replied to
his arguing, “has a good thirty years on yours and I can sleep on
the floor just fine.”

Jack grumbled but conceded, rolling out his
sleeping bag onto the thick twin-size mattress. He took a battered
old Coleman lantern, and his root beer, over to the nearby picnic
table and sat. Cassie joined him and Jack saluted her with his
half-full aluminum can.

“
To your health!” he said,
and drank.

Cassie laughed, raising her own soda, “and
to yours, sir!”

“
So,” Jack began, after
setting down his drink, “What do your parents think about your
little excursion?” Cassie averted her eyes, setting down her own
pop, “Not much…” she replied vaguely.

“
Is that a fact?” he
murmured, “Please tell me I’m not harboring a fugitive. Do they do
know you're out here?”

“
I’m eighteen, so I wouldn’t
be a fugitive anyway, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t know my
father and my mom…died a while back.” Cassie stumbled over her
words, which sounded strange and foreign coming from her
mouth.

“
I’m sorry.”

Cassie shook her head quickly and smiled to
brave off the tears.

”
Boy,” she said, “my mom
would be throwing three kinds of fits if she knew what I was doing!
She was quite the mother hen.”

“
You better be careful,"
Jack smiled, "you could get struck by lightning!”

Cassie took another sip of her pop.

“
Why, Mr. Leland,” she
replied in a shocked voice, “does that constitute a belief in a
higher power?” Jack's smile seemed forced, and his eyes had taken
on that sardonic, self-mocking look once more. “I never said I
didn’t believe, I just said it never did much for me.”

“
So you do believe in God?”
Cassie asked.

"You really need to learn to express
yourself, Cassie Williams," he replied, sourly, "you're just too
reserved."

Cassie said nothing, her eyes never leaving
his. She had learned this trick from Guy Williams. When someone
wanted you to take over the conversation, they would force a
silence, hoping the listener would grow uncomfortable and speak. If
you could hold out the longest, you usually won. In the silence,
Cassie could hear trucks rushing past on the highway and the sound
of crickets singing in a far-off field. The night air hung cool and
motionless around them and only the faint hum of the vending
machines disturbed the stillness.

Finally, Jack sighed, “Let’s just say that we have an
understanding, God and I…”

“
And that is?”

Jack finished his root beer in one long
swallow, “…and that is, that He’s better off without me.” Cassie
paused a moment to reposition her argument, “So do you--”

“
Yeah,” Jack interrupted
her, “both of my parents passed on when I was about your age, too.
‘ Course, I was overseas at the time. Vietnam. Sweeping bird poop
off an airstrip in Can Tho, serving my country,” Jack said with a
derisive snort.

“
You were in the
army?”

Jack winced, “Please,
Navy
!”

“
Oh, sorry.”

“
Yeah,” Jack continued, his
voice a soft murmur above the night sounds. “I got a letter there
at the airfield that they had died in a house fire. They both
smoked cigarettes from dawn to dark, I figure that one of them fell
asleep with a smoke smoldering in their hand and that, as they say,
was that.”

“
I’m sorry,” Cassie
whispered.

“
Oh, it’s okay.” Jack
smiled, a little easier this time.

“
That," he said, "is the one
condolence that I can offer you now. Someday that hurt is going to
fade and all that will be left will be your memories of the good
times and just a little bit of sadness.”