Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (35 page)

“
Yeah,” the younger man
grimaced, “been feeling a little under the weather
lately.”

Karl eased himself into the old wicker chair
opposite Jack and stared at him wordlessly for several moments.
Jack suddenly wished that he had combed his hair this morning,
maybe put on a fresh shirt as well.

“
Hmmmm,” Karl intoned
finally, “so, just how much did you have to drink last night,
Jack?”

Jack sighed. There it was, out in the open
now. Trust Karl not to beat around the bush. If only he could have
gotten a couple of more cups of coffee in him first, he wouldn’t
have felt so off guard—

(guilty)

--and been a bit more ready to face the
tongue-lashing that was about to begin.

How much
had
he drunk last night? Jack
couldn’t say.

Fuzzily, he seemed to remember an empty
bottle, one more dead soldier, laying on the floor beside his bed
this morning and, even more fuzzily, the recollection that he’d
stopped at the liquor store yesterday afternoon.

“
That much, huh?” Karl had
asked, interrupting the thick molasses flow of his thoughts, and
Jack had felt the warmth of blood rushing to his face.

He rubbed a hand across his eyes as the
headache that had plagued him all morning began to return in
earnest, like a rusty, frozen spike piercing his forehead.

“
Look Karl,” he started,
“it’s not a big deal. I had a couple of drinks to help me get to
sleep, that’s all. I might have had a little more than was good for
me last night, but it’s under control.”

Karl nodded, letting the conversation lapse
back into silence as he picked imaginary lint from the knees of his
slacks. Jack sat there, the cup cooling in his hands, and began to
wish that he’d stayed in bed this morning, pretending not to hear
when Karl knocked.

“
It’s under
control
,” Karl repeated to him softly.
“I guess I don’t need to tell you that’s what they all say,
huh?”

The warmth in his cheeks had turned hot, and
Jack had sat with his burning face pointed at the weathered planks
of the old porch. He felt as though Karl was seeing into the dark,
hidden corners of his soul, and he found himself desperately
embarrassed at what his pastor was finding there.

“
I know,” he muttered,
looking away across the wide expanse of the bay, where sparrows
flitted across the mudflats, picking at sand fleas. He was too
ashamed to look his former employer in the eye, “It really is under
control. I just need some time to get a handle on this…”

“
You’re not going to find any answers in that bottle, Jack. You
and I both know it.” Karl nudged Jack’s foot with a black loafer,
“You have friends here that can help you through this, if you’ll
let them.”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Jack felt tears
start to form, and he fought them off savagely.

“
I know,” he said again,
“and when the time comes--”

“
What time?” Karl
interrupted, exasperated, “what time are you waiting for?
This…this,
life
you’re living isn’t going to get you any closer to what you
need. You pick up a bottle and go down that road and you’re just
following in Bill Beckman’s footsteps, and we saw where that got
him, didn’t we?”

Jack’s head snapped up so fast that the
bones in his neck cracked like pistol shots, his lip curled, and
his face pale with anger, his fingers clutching the armrests of his
chair until the tired wicker creaked. The coffee cup, which had
rested precariously on his knee, slipped and crashed to the porch
in a splash of cold coffee and glass shards. Jack started to rise,
paused, and then slumped back into his seat, the clear fury that
had risen at Karl’s words dissipating as the cloud of guilt and
hopelessness returned.

Yes
, he had certainly seen
where Bill’s footsteps had led him, hadn’t he?

After all, Jack was the one to put him back
on that path. Hadn’t his own weakness and sin driven Bill on,
hadn’t his betrayal been the impetus that had put Bill’s finger on
the trigger?

Karl watched these conflicting emotions
flicker across Jack’s face until his features settled, once more,
into a mask of bitter apathy. He had stood, reaching into his
pocket for his keys, trying not to show the disappointment that
flooded his heart.

“
Look,” Jack muttered
without glancing up, “I’m going to have to head out to the farm
pretty soon…”

“
Yes.”

The conversation, such as it had been, was
over. Karl descended the steps and, as he reached the gravel walk,
he turned back. “You know where I am, Jack, if you need to
talk.”

“
I do,” Jack replied, “and
thanks. That means a lot, Karl, really.”

“
It’ll mean a lot if you
call me.”

“
I will.”

Pastor Ferguson climbed back into to his
listing Malibu, and rolled down his window, as Jack started back
into the house.

“
Jack?” he
called.

Jack turned. “Yeah?”

Karl’s face was set and impassive.

“
You’re giving up on Him,
Jack,” he said, “but
He
isn’t giving up on
you.”

The old preacher raised a hand, and then
backed out of the driveway and was gone, leaving Jack standing
there, biting back tears. It was the last time he had been
available when Karl dropped by.

*

By the fall of 1987, Jack had only the most
tenuous grasp of what was happening with the oyster beds, having
long since turned the day-to-day details over to one of the young
men he hired to work the fields. Under sober management, the small
farm prospered, as it never had under Bill's leadership, and the
income it produced, along with Bill's monthly check, was more than
enough to cover the meager lifestyle the two men lived.

The beauty of oyster farming, as Jonathan
Beckman (a man not unfamiliar with that demon rum, himself) had
been fond of saying, was that you could leave the cows in the
pasture, as it were. And, many a morning, Jack found the cows were
doing just fine and he had more urgent concerns at home.

Glass in hand; he would begin to deal with
those concerns as soon as the breakfast dishes left the table.

In fact, most days found Jack a fair way
through his bottle by mid-afternoon and passed out, often as not,
by nightfall. The only day that he refused the temptation of the
black label was Saturday, for their trip to the Sandcastle
Bookstore to see Dottie Westcott, which had become a weekly
ritual.

Having given himself over to debauchery,
some small spark of self-respect still flickered in him, and Jack
wouldn't have the outspoken old woman see him in that
condition.

In an alcoholic blur, he rode this unending
carousel round and round as the seasons changed and life went on
about them. Each year, as summer pressed on toward fall, Jack would
ease himself out of the fog enough to get oyster beds ready for
another season, while the weather was at its best.

Two long weeks of sweating, shaking and
mostly trying not to vomit as he repaired old stakes and buried new
ones, washed and patched the equipment, and repainted the little
roadside building where Bill sat, selling oysters, and waving to
passing cars.

Laboriously, the two men had
gone over the rudimentary math skills involved in making change on
a five-dollar bag of oysters, until Jack was comfortable that he
wasn't losing
too
much money to the tourists.

By mid-autumn the operation would be up and running itself
again, usually with a four-member crew of high-schoolers and one
supervisor.

Then, as the leaves began to turn color once
more, he would begin the long winter descent back into drunken
oblivion. This was the pattern of Jack Leland’s life.

*

The last letter had come during the winter
of 1984 and, like the five previous correspondence, Jack returned
it, marked as undeliverable.

The address was that of a law firm in Texas,
and Jack was pretty sure that Kathy's letters to Bill were being
forwarded from a real address that she preferred to keep anonymous.
Jack understood this, as he also understood that if she knew what
had happened to her husband, Kathy would feel as responsible as
himself for Bill's current condition and insist on taking care of
him.

Even in the depths of his own descent, Jack
couldn't allow that to happen. Wherever Kathy was, she had made a
life for herself, hopefully a good life, and Jack wouldn't let
himself to destroy it again by allowing her to spend the rest of
her years caring for her childlike husband.

Worried that Kathy would recognize his own
handwriting; Jack took each letter back to the post office with a
red line through Bill Beckman's name and address and stamped with
the words "Undeliverable.”

"Sorry, Katie," he whispered, as he slipped
the last letter across the counter.

Finally, the letters stopped coming, and
Jack tried to convince himself that Kathy must have decided to get
on with her new life.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

In the winter of 1988, Long Beach Community
Church burned to the ground. A freak winter ice storm brought down
the power lines that ignited the roof of the building. With the
slick roads and high winds, the fire department couldn't reach the
blaze, and by the time they got control, there was little left that
they could do. The church, which had stood for almost ninety years,
burned to its foundation.

Late one night, nearly a week after the
fire, Jack drove Bill's pickup down to the Sunshine Market. Parking
just across the street from the charred remains he’d stood,
heedless of the bone-chilling winds that whipped around him.

Tears had wet his cheeks as he stared at the
pitiful blackened hole that remained. At dawn he’d returned,
shivering, to the truck and drove slowly down Main Street towards
home. He’d fallen into bed too saddened, sickened, and exhausted to
even stop by the kitchen for a bottle.

The next great shock came in 1991. That
spring Karl Ferguson was found by his daughter, slumped in his easy
chair with his worn Bible open across his lap. His eyes were
closed, as though in sleep, and his wide face relaxed and content.
He was buried in the Chinook Cemetery.

Jack watched his former pastor's interment
to the grave from the window of the truck, parked on the far side
of the graveyard on that rainy April morning, and pulled away from
the curb as the service ended. He went home, boiled a pot of water,
and sat in his study, looking out on the Willapa Bay from the attic
window and sipping his tea. Karl's passing brought a deep regret
for the days and years that had been lost between them, but no
tears, for a man who had surely been welcomed into victory with
open arms, there was no need for tears. The teacup grew cold in
Jack's hands as he watched rain sweep the wide gray surface of the
bay, sitting alone with his envious thoughts.

*

If there was a bright light in the lives of
the men who shared the rambling confines of the old Beckman estate,
it was Dottie Westcott. She had, over the years of his self-imposed
isolation, become Jack's last friend and only confidante.

The first winter following his resignation
from the church, the old woman had invited him and Bill to come
over for Christmas dinner. Jack had declined politely. The next
year she had invited him again, and again he graciously turned her
down.

In November of 1983, Dottie had informed
him, as he lounged in the bookstore's easy chair one Saturday
afternoon, that if he didn't come over for Christmas dinner that
year, he could find another bookstore to sit his sorry, loitering
rear in.

“
No arguments!” she'd said with a growl, wagging a stern finger
in Jack’s face.

Jack had graciously accepted the invitation
to dinner, and that December the twenty-fifth was a brief voyage to
the past, to a time of laughter and warmth.

Dottie had opened the door to her small
apartment clad in a crimson evening gown, glittering with thousands
of bright sequins. A silver tiara encrusted with deep green-glass
emeralds atop her head, shod in a faded pair of pink Converse
high-tops and, of course, wearing her lime lensed glasses.

"You look lovely," Jack had said, grinning
and smoothly kissing the back of her outstretched hand.

"You are too kind, sir," she returned, "I
don't believe a word of it, but don’t ever stop!” She waved them
into the small apartment that was permeated with the mouthwatering
aromas of roasted turkey and garlic stuffing.

After eating what was, by general consensus,
far more than they should have, the three retired to the living
room to drink eggnog and watch Christmas specials on Dottie's VCR.
Bill gazed in rapt and joyous attention as the misfit toys cavorted
across the screen, and Tiny Tim proclaimed his seasonable, "God
bless us, every one!"

Laughing together, in the blinking rainbow
glow of Dottie's little plastic Christmas tree, they exchanged
gifts.

The week before, Jack and Bill had driven
down to Lincoln City and browsed the shopping mall. Bill had
insisted on an outrageous pair of electric-blue fuzzy slippers.
(Which, in retrospect, Jack had to agree made a perfect gift for
Dottie.)

He, himself had picked up a
more restrained, purple silk scarf, hand painted with bright
tulips. Her gift to Bill was a small portable radio and cassette
player with headphones. He had looked at the device with some
confusion until Jack had popped open the tape player and explained
that Bill could take his music, a handful of
boom-twang
country cassettes,
anywhere he wanted now.