Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (24 page)

Shuffling up to Jack one Sunday morning
after services, Rolf had, with much stuttering and wringing of
hands, made his offer.

"The missus and I have an old cabin out back
of the hotel," he said softly, his eyes wandering nervously, "it
isn't much, but I've kept the roof tight and I can run an electric
line out to it. You’re welcome to stay there if you like, no
charge," he added, hurriedly, "you could use the shower and toilet
in the hotel, and maybe do a bit of the ground care in trade, if…if
you'd like."

Jack told him he would like that very much, shaking his hand
warmly, after which a much-relieved Rolf Parker fled to his car and
headed back to the safety and sanctity of his kitchen.

True to his word, Rolf had run a power line
and wired it into a small breaker box tacked to the wall of the
tiny second room, where Jack set up his bed.

He had no oven, but a wide hot plate rested
on the counter. Beside it sat a wheezing refrigerator that had come
from the appliance store in Astoria when Kennedy was still
President. It kept the orange juice cold and the butter solid, so
Jack found no reason to replace it with a newer model.

His second day in the cabin, the Peterson's
station wagon had pulled up to the hotel, hauling a small, covered
trailer behind it.

Beneath that tarp, Jack found enough
flatware and dishes to serve half the church. Also, a small,
overstuffed horsehair love seat, two table lamps, one floor lamp,
towels and washcloths galore, a set of cookware, a fully stocked
knife-block and lastly, a small color television set with a foil
wrapped antenna.

With the installation of
bookshelves, consisting of six pine boards separated by cinder
blocks and running the full-length of the main room,
Jack’s
cabin was furnished
in what Pastor Ferguson
jokingly referred to as
Modern American
Thrift Store
.

Karl's own contribution had astounded Jack.
From the depths of the Pastor's basement, Karl had dug out his
grandfather's desk.

Four thick, ornately carved legs held up the
hinge-lidded writing table. At roughly three feet square, the desk
fit nicely in the corner of Jack's living room, the oak top lifting
to reveal a six-inch deep storage area. Karl identified the
circular and rectangular cavities on the top of the desk as
repositories for pencils and inkwells. Overjoyed with the antique,
Jack insisted that it was too much.

"It's been taking up space in my basement
for years," Karl insisted, "and it's way too small for me. I think
someone should be using it!"

Running his hand lovingly along the polished
surface, Jack couldn't force himself to argue. He accepted the gift
thankfully, immediately placing it beneath the old wrought iron
floor lamp and setting his Bible and a small, framed photograph of
his parents on top.

That evening, Jack sat on
the weathered deck of his new home, watching seagulls swoop low
over the bay and great blue herons stalk the swampy, reed-lined
shore. The Chinook Indians had called this area
Tsako-te-hahsh-eetl
, the place
of the red-topped grass, and that made sense to Jack as he looked
out over the crimson stalks, undulating in the ocean breeze. To the
west, he could hear the throaty growl of oyster barges pulling into
the old cannery, now a shelling station for the bay's harvest. From
his seat, Jack could just make out the long, wooden pier, jutting
out into the Willapa, with its great piles of oyster shells, rising
like rocky, pallid mountains along the shore.

*

Days turned into weeks, and then months, and
soon the early winter storms were sweeping the coast in torrential
rains. Jack had spent much of his free time bobbing around the bay
in the Parker's rowboat, fishing, casting net traps for crabs, and
gathering oysters at low tide. There were no longer any oyster beds
open to the public but, besides his lawn care duties for the hotel,
Jack had taken over the harvesting of the Moby's oyster beds just
offshore from his cabin. The Parkers insisted that Jack keep a
portion of his harvest and, eventually, he had been forced to
haggle a used chest-freezer from the hardware store in Ocean Park.
Now that winter was approaching and the weather grew increasing
foul, Jack could relax in the knowledge that he had enough seafood,
both frozen and smoked, to last him through the winter.

The youth group had been the highlight of
Jack's autumn. For something that he had at first felt roped into,
Jack found that watching the kids learn and grow, sharing in their
hopes and fears, gave him a sense of accomplishment like nothing
else he had ever done. A dozen teens had showed up on the last warm
weekend of October, hosting a car wash in the church parking lot,
and splitting the profits between a weekend campout and a
contribution to the missionaries in New Guinea that LBCC
supported.

Both the elders and the parents had been
pleasantly surprised when the kids had voted unanimously to donate
the money. Jack had smiled at their reaction, and didn't mention
that he had spent the last three weeks teaching on missions and
sharing his own experiences in Africa.

Kathy, along with the Petersons, had continued to show up
faithfully every Wednesday night, and Jack decided that when the
ministry grew large enough, he could create four small groups, two
for the girls, and two for the boys. Bill, however, hadn't been
back to a youth meeting since their confrontation in September, and
though he continued to attend Sunday services, his presence was
becoming more and more occasional as the year
progressed.

Jack worried about Bill and had spoken and
prayed with his pastor on several occasions about his old
friend.

"Jack," Karl had responded, leaning back
against the rain-splattered window of his office as the old wall
heater chugged and hissed in the corner, "each of us makes his own
choice. The invitation has been laid out for Bill Beckman. He can
accept or reject the sacrifice Christ made for him. No one else,
not you or I, or even Kathy, can decide for him."

Jack knew that this was the truth, but his
concern gnawed at him, adding to his guilt over the one subject he
had yet to broach with his pastor. As the weeks passed, Jack found
it increasingly difficult to be near Kathy Beckman. His heart would
start to race when she was near and he had dreamed, just once, that
they were walking hand-in-hand along the beach together.

As the two worked on projects, or took part
in events with the youth, Jack struggled to make sure that they
were never alone together; there were always several youth between
the two of them. On the odd occasion that they did brush arms or
hands in passing, Jack would flinch back as though burned, as shame
flooded through him.

Kathy didn't seem to notice his strange
behavior, at least he hoped and prayed this was the case, as he
knelt on the hardwood floor of his cabin, clutching his Bible and
pleading with God to take away his traitorous feelings.

*

"Ho Ho Ho!" Pastor Ferguson bellowed again,
and Jack flinched as the cry passed through the thin wall between
their offices.

"Yo, Saint Nick," he called, rapping on the
wall with his knuckles, "You wanna hold it down, some of us are
memorizing our lines!"

"What do you think
I'm
doing?" Karl
shouted back. "HO HO HO!" he bellowed even louder.

Jack laughed, gathering his Bible and
script. Time to flee to the sanctity of the coffee shop! As he
turned to close his office door, a large, red, jovial figure
stepped into the hallway, blocking his path.

"Look out Saint Nick," he growled, "some of
us have real lines to work on!"

Karl waggled a thick finger in his
assistant's face.

"Watch it there, young
feller," he warned, "or it's gonna be nothing but coal in
your
stocking!"

"As long as there's a paycheck in my
stocking, I'll be fine!" Jack laughed, "Can I buy Saint Nick a cup
of tea?"

"Nah," the old elf replied, "I have to get
this jacket over to Myra Feldman so she can sew these buttons back
on."

"You know," Jack called, getting a head
start towards the door, "maybe if Santa cut back on the cookies and
milk…"

"Why you…" Karl hurled a
candy cane after him, which Jack dodged, "I'll have you know these
buttons
fell
off!"

Jack was still snickering as he walked into
the Coffee Clutch and straddled his usual stool facing the window.
Here, between cups of coffee and pages of script, he could watch
the world of Long Beach roll past through the squeaky-clean
glass.

The play was a fun one and,
after Sue the waitress brought him a steaming mug, he opened the
cover page to read the entire work again. The youth group had
brainstormed the script, which Jack had then painfully typed up on
the church’s moody old Smith-Corona, an aging electric beast that
would occasionally add a few letters that you hadn't bothered to
press the keys for. The plot was a modern telling of
Dickens’
Christmas
Carol
. The main character was a spoiled
young girl named Rachel who, after complaining about the little
orphan boy that her parents have taken in, is visited by an angel,
late on Christmas Eve.

The angel, whose name is
Michael (what else?), takes the young girl hither and yon through
the city, showing her how the less fortunate are spending
their
Christmas Eve;
in emergency rooms and back alleys. Finally, Rachel is shown the
starving young orphan boy, as he would be if there had been no one
willing to minister to him. The girl, of course, repents
wholeheartedly and everyone lives happily ever after.

Not bad, Jack thought for the hundredth time, not bad at all.
It had taken the kids three weeks to bring the script from seed to
flower, and they had done a great job. No sets were needed, but
Jack had half a dozen women in the church furiously fitting and
sewing costumes, to be ready by dress rehearsal this Friday. Jack's
only lines were narration and, though he could have just read them
from the page, he felt he owed it to the kids to give the show his
all, and memorize his part.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he murmured, hoping
no one in the coffee shop noticed him talking to himself, "welcome
to the night before Christmas…"

He had repeated this line a
thousand times, it seemed, and he still fought the urge to
say
Christmas Eve
instead of
The Night
Before
. Sue passed by a moment later
and swooped in to top off his cup.

"Remember," she stage-whispered with a grin,
"The night before…"

"I know," Jack grumbled, waving her off, "I
know!"

Sue returned to the kitchen, where he could
hear her chuckling.

Jack continued to rehearse his lines all
through the afternoon and by six o'clock that evening, when
rehearsal started, he felt comfortable with the task.

*

The run-through went smoothly, with only the
expected theatrical disasters.

Aimee, who played the angel, spoke the wrong
line in scene two, effectively rushing them directly to scene
seven, ending the play in a record eight minutes. Howls and
catcalls erupted from backstage when Jack yelled, “Cut!”

Aimee’s pale cheeks blushed
as bright as her auburn hair and started giggling until finally
fled to the ladies room before something even
more
embarrassing
happened.

Kathy, the costume designer for the first
annual Christmas play, was chuckling over this when she backed into
the water cooler, which fell, dousing half of the freshly washed
and pressed costumes with lime Gatorade. She, however, did not
giggle, and Jack had to call a break and do some fast-talking to
keep his costumer from bursting into tears. Bobbie Peterson saved
the day for him by scooping up the whole stack and running them to
the Suds-N-Duds in Sea View.

Finally, after two long, stumbling
rehearsals, the last car full of kids pulled away from the doors of
the church, leaving an exhausted Jack Leland, Kathy Beckman, and
Peterson family collapsed across the front steps.

"Need a lift home, Kathy?" Martin asked,
"Bobbie should be back pretty quick, you're right on the way."

"No," she said, "but thanks! Bill should be
by anytime to pick me up."

"I'd better head out too," Jack said, a bit
more quickly than he meant to, and stood to go. Kathy looked up at
him, puzzled, and Martin stood and made a show of looking up the
street for his returning wife.

"Jack?" Kathy asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sure," he said. "Just a little tired,
it was a long day, ya know?"

"Okay," she said, seeming unconvinced,
"you're sure I haven't done something…"

Jack felt his heart speed up and his tongue
seemed suddenly thick and dry, clinging to the roof of his mouth as
he feigned nonchalance.

"Not a thing," he smiled, "but if you do,
you'll be the first person I'll tell.” Jack tried to hide a
grimace, certain that his smile looked as forced and fake as his
words. "I'll see you Friday!"

With that, he fled to the back of the church
and retrieved his battered ten-speed, another relic that Karl had
disentangled from the depth of his garage.

Pedaling furiously, Jack set off towards
home, praying all the way.

The play was an enormous success. The church
was packed with family and friends, and Karl was euphoric, greeting
each newcomer with a warm smile and a vigorous handshake. Jack, on
the other hand, stood behind the hastily erected curtain, trying to
calm his shaking hands and churning stomach.