Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (40 page)

"Don't you see, Jack?" Cassie said, "We've
made the same trip, you and I, because of our anger and our
unwillingness to forgive. I couldn't forgive my father for leaving
us, and you couldn't forgive yourself for what happened. I thought
I had to hurt him the way he hurt us, and you had to hurt yourself
the way you thought you had hurt everyone around you.” Cassie moved
to sit at the edge of the bed.

"I realized this morning, when I sat and
talked and laughed with the same man that I swore I would never
forgive. I finally remembered; Jesus reminded me,” Cassie swallowed
hard, “that I didn’t have the right, that it wasn't my place to
hold back forgiveness. That's what you've done Jack, you've taken
away God's right to forgive and claimed it for yourself! Are you
qualified to do that, do you know better than God?"

Jack lay silently, his jaw clenched, the
edge of the thin cotton sheet balled up in his fist. Cassie could
see tears shining in his eyes.

"You don't understand--" he started.

Cassie's voice rose in sudden anger. "Don't
tell me I don't understand, Jack!"

"I understand," she grated, "that I had more
reason to hate my father than you have to hate yourself! I thought
he abandoned us. I thought that we were so unimportant to him that
he never even tried to find us. My mother lived most of her life
sad and scared because of Bill Beckman. You, on the other hand,
have spent the last twenty years with your life on hold, taking
care of him, pretending like it was your finger that pulled the
trigger. And making sure that you always had him near so you could
use him as an excuse to hate yourself!"

Jack's head snapped up at this, his cheeks
flushing and his eyes flashing with sudden anger.

"Well look at that," she said, her voice
dripping sarcasm, "he's alive after all."

"Show him the way to get out…"

Cassie took a deep breath, trying to calm
herself.

"Listen to me Jack,” she went on, “I
wouldn't say these things if I didn't care about you. I've spent
the last couple of days convinced that you were my father and
trying to decide if I loved you or hated you." Cassie’s eyes locked
with his.

"Now I know who you are, who you've been to
my family and I know that you're the closest thing to a real father
I'll ever have, maybe you're even the man who should have been my
father…"

Tears began to course down Jack's cheeks as
the flush of anger faded from his face. His lips trembled as he
groped one hand blindly toward the edge of the bed and Cassie took
it in her own, clutching it desperately, so tightly the older man's
fingers began to go white, but neither noticed.

"Jack," she said, and she was weeping
herself, now, "this isn't God's will for your life..."

Tell me Jack, what is God's will for your
life?

“
It happened so fast,
Cassie,” he whispered, “she was just gone and I never got to say
I’m sorry. I never saw her again, never spoke to her, or even read
her letters. If she had anything to say to me, I never got to hear
it.”

Cassie lowered her head and stared at the
gleaming white tiles beneath her feet. Suddenly her eyes widened
and she reached into her jacket, retrieving the tiny dictation
machine. From another pocket, she pulled a small cassette decorated
with a red heart.

“
Jack,” she whispered,
looking up into his grief-reddened eyes, “this is what she would
say to you if she were here…”

Cassie pressed the play button.

“
Trust in the Lord with
all of your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all
your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your
path…”

"…He's forgiven you," Cassie
whispered, "I forgive you,
she
forgives you…"

The cry came from the depths of Jack's soul,
rumbling up like an earthquake, a geyser of pain bursting from his
heart, his lungs, demanding escape. He couldn’t contain it; in
truth, he was hardly aware as the sound of his voice echoed off the
thin, white walls of the hospital room. Faces seemed to float
through his wavering, tear-filled vision. Katherine Beckman, Pastor
Karl, Dottie Westcott, all the people that have loved him, the last
people that he had allowed himself to love. Then Cassie was in his
arms and he was shaking, convulsing with sobs.

The first of the pain, the self-loathing,
the waste of his life was vomited up, spewn from him like
poison.

He said things and was hardly aware of the
words he spoke.

Crying out for forgiveness, from whom? From
Cassie? From Katherine? From God? Each of them, all of them.

You’re giving up on Him,
Jack, but
He
isn’t giving up on you.

“
I’m sorry,” he whispered,
"oh God, I'm sorry…" over and over again, and each time the words
left his lips, the burden, the great weight that he had carried so
long, seemed to lighten. Half a lifetime of bitterness and guilt,
festering in the darkness of his self-inflicted prison, buried deep
where no one could touch it, was being dragged into the
light.

No one?

“
I will take it away,
Jack.”

He felt the voice in his soul, so familiar
and so close, a voice that he had silenced so long ago.

The voice of Christ spoke to him as He once
had, and faintly Jack could hear the sound of voices raised in
worship. He felt the touch of a holy hand on his head as he felt
and remembered the hardwood floor beneath his knees, and smells the
oil and pulp, of pews and Bibles.

A thousand memories raced through his mind,
each perfectly clear and laced with longing.

Jack opened the heavy door and took his first tentative step
in twenty years, back towards light, towards home.

When Cassie at last stepped away, Jack was
exhausted. Drained, and wrung out, he collapsed back into the lumpy
pillows, breathing heavily. But there was a light in his face,
sparkling from his eyes, a glow of rediscovered hope.

Cassie smiled and closed the Bible that had
been lying open on the seat behind her, she recognized that light,
hadn’t it just begun to shine from her again, as well?

“
Well,” Cassie said, after a
moment, “that was a good start.”

Jack emitted a sound that was half laugh and
half groan.

“
It was a start," he
admitted, "but it’s going to be a long, hard road.”

Cassie smiled, and
murmured,
“Trust in the Lord with all
your heart…”

He looked up at her, his eyes red from
weeping, his face pale from the trauma of the last day and the
emotional exertions of the morning.

Cassie lifted the worn leather Bible from
her lap and rested it on the edge of the bed. Jack looked at it and
squeezed his eyes shut, his lips forming a painfully white line, as
he reached for the book.

“
That’s good advice, you
know,” Cassie said, “someone very special gave that advice to my
mom a long time ago, and she gave it to me more times than I can
remember.”

As Jack picked up the battered Bible, a
small scrap of paper slipped from it to fall, face down, onto his
chest; it was an old photograph, its scalloped edges faded and
worn. Jack turned it over and sighed, seeing the young woman with
long dark hair, standing in the river, the small, pink wrapped
bundle in her arms.

“
It’s funny,” Cassie said,
“how the Lord works. He knew what was waiting for me here, and the
whole time I thought it was just that I needed to confront my
father, to tell him off." She grimaced. "All because of that silly
marriage certificate.”

“
Marriage certificate?” Jack
asked, shaking his head.

Cassie reached over and pulled the folded
page from the back of the Bible, opening it and handing the
much-worn paper to Jack.

“
Yup,” Jack said, “that’s a
marriage certificate, what’s the question?”

“
The question,” Cassie
replied, giving him a dirty look, “is that Bill wrote his place of
birth as
just past
Oysterville
, but there
isn’t
anything past
Oysterville; I looked. It’s at the end of the peninsula, so what
the heck did he mean?”

Jack had begun to laugh before she had
finished asking, deep belly laughs to rival the power of his
earlier tears. He tried to speak but couldn’t, his entire frame was
quaking and the heavy bed squeaked in time beneath him. His face
turned crimson as tears squirted from the corners of his eyes.
Cassie sat, her frown deepening, until Jack’s mirth had run its
course and he lay, gasping once more, the certificate still
clutched in his hand.

“
Well,” Cassie said, “I’m
glad that amused you. Are you going to let me in on the joke, or
what?” Jack snorted one last time, wiping his eyes.

“
Sorry,” he said, “I
couldn’t help myself, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you…”

Cassie waited, her fingers drumming the edge
of the bedside table.

“
It’s a family joke,” Jack
said, his voice still quavering with laughter, “you see, your
grandfather, John Beckman, was an oysterman, and he ran boats
offshore during the harvest. Your grandmother used to go out with
him and help, even after she was pregnant with Bill.”

Cassie nodded, handing Jack a tissue to wipe
his eyes.

“
So,” he went on, “one day,
when your grandmother was about eight and a half months along with
your dad, they were out in rough water and she went into
labor.”

Jack chuckled again as Cassie’s jaw
dropped.

“
You can imagine,” Jack
said, “with nothing but a handful of dirty, smelly oystermen on
board, your grandma was more than a little anxious to get back to
shore and to the hospital. John pretty near burned those old Iveco
twin diesels up, trying to get back, but they didn’t quite make it,
and your dad was born right there in the wheelhouse, in sight of
land. So, quite literally, he was born—“

“—
just past Oysterville,”
Cassie groaned.

“
That was one of his favorite jokes,” Jack sighed, smiling,
“whenever anyone asked him his place of birth, that's what he'd
tell them. I’d completely forgotten that story...”

“
Well,” Cassie said, “I
guess that’s typically ironic.”

“
What’s that?”

“
I came all the way out here
based on a joke.”

“
I don’t know about that,”
Jack said, “more likely God used that joke to provoke you into
coming here, so you would find your family.”

Cassie nodded, then smiled.

“
Why, Jack Leland!” she
said. “You almost sounded like a pastor there!”

Jack grinned a little fearfully.

“
Let’s not get ahead of
ourselves, okay?”

“
Okay, for now," she
laughed, "but I'm going to keep hounding you, you know
that?"

"Why does that not surprise me?" he
groaned.

"Oh, by the way," she poked his bare arm
with one finger, "thanks for trying to ditch me in Gold Beach. What
was up with that?"

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked,
sheepishly.

"I'm talking about you trying to hard-sell
me on going straight to Portland," she said, poking him again, "you
knew who I was and you tried to ditch me!"

"Ow!" Jack replied, "Go easy on the heart
attack victim, okay? I had a plan in Gold Beach, thank you very
much, and if you hadn't been so obstinate--"

"
Obstinate
?" Cassie objected
loudly.

"Sorry," Jack replied, "stubborn,
headstrong, and inflexible. Anyway, I was going to drop you off and
then come back up there with Beth, so we could break it to you
gently."

"Yeah, sure. I think you were trying to
ditch me."

"I'm not saying that's a bad idea…"

Poke.

Jack laughed, holding the Bible out to
her.

“
Why don’t you keep it,
Jack,” Cassie said, “Mom would have wanted you to have it, the
picture too.”

“
I can’t take your Bible,
Cassie,” Jack argued, shaking his head.

“
Fine,” she smiled, “a loan
then, until you can get home and get your own. No arguments!” She
waggled a stern finger at Jack, who looked surprised for a moment,
and then burst out laughing, once more.

“
What’s so funny?” Cassie
asked.

“
Nothing!” Jack
said.

“
No way,” Cassie said, “tell
me…”

“
You just reminded me of
someone for a minute there.”

“
Who?”

Jack smiled, still chuckling, “The most
cantankerous, stubborn old woman I’ve ever known.”

Cassie rolled her eyes.

“
Gee, thanks Jack, that’s
just what every girl wants to hear.”

Jack laughed even harder and, despite
herself, Cassie joined him.

“
Speaking of what every girl
wants to hear…” Cassie took a deep breath, as she reached into her
pocket and produced a small, hardbound book.

“
Here,” she said, “I brought
this for you.” Jack picked up the thin tome, holding it at arms
length to read the feathery inscription on the faded
cover.

“
Shakespeare’s Love
Sonnets, Volume One
.”

He looked curiously at Cassie, “And why in
the world would I want these?”

Cassie shook her head. “You’re hopeless,”
she said, “You know that don't you?”