Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (23 page)

Jack could see the man was working himself
up, and allowed a momentary pause before probing.

"What’s everything?"

"Me!" Bill growled, "I'm everything! No
drinking, no cigars, no cussing, I'm a whole net full of bad
influences on the poor innocent little church kids!"

This time the pause stretched to an
uncomfortable length as Jack struggled with an answer. In his
heart, he knew that he agreed with Kathy; if Bill was going to be
involved in ministry, he needed to live a lifestyle that was a good
witness to the teens. His witness had to be real, born out of the
overflow of Christ's love in him.

At the same time, Jack knew Bill, and if
there was one thing that would turn the man to stone, impenetrable
and unmovable, it was a sense that he was being ganged up on.

Jack remembered Bill's own mother used to
say that if you paint a Beckman into a corner, he's likely to go
through the roof. This was a fact for Jonathan Beckman and it was
just as much a fact for his son. Jack knew he had to step carefully
if he wanted to make Bill hear the truth.

The decision between ministering Christ to
the youth of Long Beach, and protecting the feelings of his oldest
friends, was a brutally short battle. The fact was, Bill wasn't
going to like the truth no matter how Jack coated it and, in the
end, the kids had to come first.

"Look Billy--" Jack started,
pausing as Bill muttered a curse. "What was
that
for?"

"The only time you call me Billy is when you
know you're about to make me mad…" Bill replied, crossing his
arms.

"Fine,
Bill,
" Jack continued, trying
to keep his cool, "no one expects you to be perfect, certainly not
me. I'm a long way from perfect and you and I both know
it."

"But?"

"But," Jack took another deep breath, "there
are some things you need to work on, just like all of us, and the
Bible is clear on how a leader is supposed to act."

"
The Bible
…" Bill snorted again,
rolling his eyes.

"Yes!" Jack snapped, his own voice starting
to rise, "The Bible! What do you think we're doing here, Bill? This
isn't a game; we're trying to make a difference for these kids;
we're trying to help them form a relationship with Christ!"

Jack was speaking through clenched teeth
now.

"This isn't some glee club," Jack said,
jabbing a finger in Bill's direction, "this is serious. These kids
need role models, and I'd prefer that their role models not show up
smelling like Kentucky bourbon!"

Jack stopped, as angry with himself for
losing his temper, as he was with Bill's attitude. Locking eyes
with his old friend, he could see the vein beneath Bill's left eye
pulsing as his face reddened with anger. Bill stood slowly to his
feet, and Jack did the same.

"Okay," Bill replied softly, his jaw
clenched, "I won't show up again, problem solved."

With that, William Beckman walked across the
room, up the stairs and out of the church. A moment later Jack
heard his friend's truck roar to life and peel away in a clattering
rain of gravel. Jack sighed, folding the two chairs back up and
tossing them on the pile.

Boy did I blow that one!

Whatever Bill had needed to hear from him,
he was pretty sure that wasn't it. Jack climbed the stairs, one
heavy foot at a time, and switched off the basement light. Kathy
was waiting in the hallway as he closed the door behind him.

"Where's Bill?" she asked, slinging her
purse over her shoulder.

"My guess would be about halfway home by
now," Jack said.

"What?"

"It looks like whatever disagreement you two
had earlier, he and I just finished, sorry." Jack leaned against
the whitewashed wall, closing his eyes.

"That doesn't sound good."

"It wasn't," he sighed, "Kathy, I feel like
I'm betraying my best friend here, but keeping his secret isn't
going to do him any favors. You know that he's been drinking?"

"Yes," Kathy replied, her shoulders
slumping.

"A lot?"

"Yes, at least, I suspected."

"…and you understand," Jack went on, "why I
can't have that in the youth group, around the kids?"

"Of course," she replied, her voice
quavering. "That's what we were arguing about earlier. I think he
used to be more careful about when and where he was drinking, and I
believed him when he said he had quit. Now he comes staggering home
and I can smell it on him before he's through the door."

Kathy paused, as tears started down her
cheeks, and Jack struggled to think of what to say, what to do for
his friend.

Suddenly, Kathy was in his arms, weeping
into his shoulder.

"Jack," she cried, "I love him so much and I
don't know what to do. Everything I say is wrong, I try to
encourage him and end up making him more defensive!"

Jack patted her shoulder awkwardly, trying
to think how to free himself from her embrace without hurting her
worse.

"It's going to be okay," he murmured, "he'll
cool off, let's go find him and--"

Neither of them had heard the truck pull up.
As the front door swung open, bathing the half lit hallway in the
amber light of the street lamp, Jack looked up to see Bill frozen
in the doorway, his hand still clutching the latch.

Jack felt Kathy's body stiffen against his,
just before she stepped away.

Bill's voice was low and rough, "I came back
to get my wife..."

"We were just getting the place closed
up..." Kathy stammered quickly, taking another step away from Jack,
who closed his eyes in horror at how guilty her words sounded.

"All done here," Jack said, "look, maybe
I'll walk back, I should finish a few things in the office before I
go."

"Yeah," Bill murmured, taking Kathy's arm as
she met him at the door, "why don't you do that."

Bill's face was still hidden in shadows but
Jack winced at the chill in his voice. Anger was there, certainly,
more anger than Jack had ever heard from his oldest friend, but
worse than that was the note of suspicion, of betrayal.

As the door closed behind them, Jack slid down the wall until
he was seated on the worn wood floor.

The emotional roller coaster of the day
finally came to a crashing halt and left his head spinning. Jack
struggled to decide which was worse, the accusation in Bill's
voice, or the fact that he could still feel Kathy Beckman in his
arms.

Jack hefted the last box of books into the
back of Martin Peterson's old station wagon and swung the heavy
door shut. He was amazed at how many belongings he had collected in
just the two months he'd been home. Still, he could pack everything
he owned in the back of a Ford Country Squire, with some room to
spare. Karl had warned him to hold off before he spent any money on
his new place, as the Ladies Ministry, headed by Martin's wife
Bobbie, was collecting goods to help their impoverished, bachelor
youth pastor furnish his new home.

"Look, man," Bill said, coming up behind
Jack as the wagons door slammed shut, "I said I was sorry, you said
you were sorry, why can't we just leave it at that? I hate seeing
ya go like this."

Jack turned, smiling to his friend.

"Billy," he said, "I appreciate your
forgiveness, more than I can say, and I appreciate you accepting my
apology, too, but I can't live here forever. This is your place;
you and Kathy need your privacy, and I'm always going to feel like
a third wheel."

"You’re not--" Bill began

"Yes
I am
," Jack said, interrupting
him, "or I will be eventually and I don't want that to happen. If
you want me over, invite me over. I'm not going to turn down a
home-cooked meal. But it’s time I got my own place." He slugged
Bill's arm playfully. "You should come over and see it; it’s great,
right on the bay!"

"I'd like to," Bill said, "but I got a
meeting with the bank. They're squeezing me on the loan and you
know what the harvest has been like this year."

Jack nodded in sympathy.

Beckman
Farms
was one of the last totally
organic oyster producers on the peninsula. Most of Willapa Bay was
owned by the Bjorklund family
and
Coastal Pacific Oyster. The
rest, by a handful of small family operations like the
Beckman's.

At low tide, Bill's own thirty acres, out
past Nahcotta, looked like nothing more than a broad, muddy field
of bristling iron rods. Closer inspection found that each of the
three-foot high stakes, sunk deep in the floor of the bay, were
clustered with layers of oyster shells. After swimming free in the
high tide, the oyster seedlings, called spat, attached themselves
to the vacant shells covering the stakes, and grew there until they
reached a size to harvest. When the tide came in, the stakes would
be covered by eight to ten feet of water, allowing the oysters to
feed.

During the gathering season, Bill, along
with several high school boys that he hired part-time, would roll
heavy plastic barrels out among the rows of stakes. At low tide,
they’d collect fresh oysters from the clusters and from the tide
flats surrounding them.

They used long flat-bladed oyster knives to
pry the tough bi-valves from the clusters. Occasionally a shell
would shatter under the weight of the knife and the worker would
pause briefly to enjoy a quick snack. Few of the boys returned from
the flats hungry.

Thick, black mud reached knee-high and
sucked jealously at the men's rubber boots.

Often the only way they could free
themselves was to lean forward on their buckets until their weight,
working as a fulcrum, slowly pulled their legs from the squelching
quagmire. By the end of the season, both men and boys would have
worked their calves into steel pillars of muscle. It was a hard way
to make a living, and knee injuries were a common ailment among the
oystermen.

Once filled, the barrels were left until the
high tide floated them up off the mud and Bill, waiting in his
battered aluminum boat, would then lasso each barrel and pull it to
the dock. There the oysters would be washed, sorted by size, and
bagged, with most going to local seafood stores and restaurants, or
sold to tourists at the Beckman's tiny roadside stand, where Kathy
sat reading her Bible most afternoons.

In good years, they could expect to harvest several hundred
pounds of oysters a day. This season, however, Bill had been lucky
to gather that many in a week. Already he had been forced to let go
half of the boys that picked for him. Rumors were that chemicals
used to fight the ever-spreading spartina grasses and the burrowing
ghost shrimp populations might be affecting the mortality of the
young oysters. Others claimed the dredging done by the larger
companies was filling the shallower bay areas with silt and mud,
suffocating the growing bi-valves.

Whatever the reasons behind the bay’s
dwindling oyster populations, the fact was the harvest numbers of
earlier years, which had barely allowed Beckman Farms to remain
solvent, were down by half this year. Moreover, the loan, which
they had taken to cover expansion and new materials the previous
winter, was becoming increasingly difficult to pay each month. The
strain was starting to show on Bill, both in his temperament and in
the frequency of his trips to the Surfside liquor store.

"We're praying for you guys," Jack said, his
words sounding strained in his own ears.

"Well," Bill replied, "we'll take all the
help we can get."

He held the blue flame of his Zippo up to a
fresh cigar, the fire dancing around the unlit tip in his trembling
hands. "It's a good thing the house and flats are paid for, or we'd
have been sunk by now." Bill shook his head, taking a deep breath,
"Anyhow, you've heard all this before, best you get over to that
new place and start settling in."

"Yeah, I'll do that," Jack said, extending
his hand.

Bill paused a moment, shook, and then turned
without another word and walked back into the house. Jack watched
him go, grinding his teeth in frustration. There was a coldness, a
detachment between them that had never been there before. They had
never kept any secrets from each other, from their first boyhood
crushes through the trials of adolescence…right up to the night
that Bill had walked in on Kathy and Jack in the hallway of the
church.

From that moment, a wall had been erected,
high, wide, and ever thickening. Sure, they still talked, joked,
and teased each other like before, but it was more of a
going-through-the-motions.

The spark of their friendship, if not
smothered, had waned, and Jack felt helpless to bridge the gap that
was forming between them.

*

Jack's new home was a weathered, slightly
sagging cabin, sheltered among the pines behind the Moby Dick
Hotel, halfway between Nahcotta and Oysterville. Twenty yards past
his front porch, Willapa Bay lapped the reed-swathed shore at high
tide.

Two creaking Adirondack chairs rested
beneath the covered porch and six split-log steps led down from the
broad deck to the dirt path running from the bay, up past the cabin
and hotel, and ending at Sandridge Road. The hotel, a great white
box of a building, had welcomed travelers since its doors had
opened in 1929, and was a popular rest stop for returning tourists.
It had served its country as well, housing the U.S. Coast Guard
Horse Patrol during World War II.

The restaurant was known by both locals and
visitors to serve the finest dinners to be had anywhere on the
peninsula, especially when those dinners included oysters fresh
from the hotel’s own backyard farm. The current managers, Rolf and
Tina Parker, had attended Long Beach Community Church since moving
from San Francisco a decade before to take over the Moby. Rolf, the
restaurant's much-acclaimed chef, was a painfully shy man with a
slight potbelly and a receding chestnut hairline.