Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One by Perry P. Perkins

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