Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One Read Online Free Page A

sage. To the west,
the road led far across the desert, disappearing over the next arid
rise. Cassie followed it, sipping sparingly from the first of her
two water bottles. As she hiked, she recorded her thoughts on a
small dictation machine that her mother had bought her for
Christmas.
    "Well Kiddo," Kathy had said, as Cassie squealed with delight at
the gift , "A writer has to be able to
put their thoughts down, whenever and wherever they
are."
    In the bag on her back, Cassie had a case of
twenty miniature cassettes that fit the recorder, as well as two
spare sets of batteries. Five of the thirty-minute tapes were
already filled with ramblings about school and leaving home. She
knew she would have to put down her thoughts and feelings about her
mother's death, but it was still too soon for that. She hoped to
get some good material on her trip west; who knew what might come
of it?
    Several hours later, the rutted track ended at the steep
shouldered edge of Interstate 10. Cassie scooted down the dusty
embankment and squinted at the sign fifty yards up the
highway.
    Bowie, 20 Miles.
    She had come out four miles short of
Willcox, still a little too close to home for her taste. Nothing to
do about it now but keep walking and try to make herself scarce
when traffic came along. Cassie had looked at her Arizona map and
decided that once she neared Benson, fifty miles to the west, she
should be safe from the chance of any accidental sighting by a nosy
neighbor. Sixty miles was the far-off big city for most of the
residents of her little town. The traffic on the Interstate was
light, in fact, it was nearly nonexistent, and Cassie smirked into
her recorder,
    "That's right folks," she said, "Be sure to
watch out for the rush-hour traffic to the thriving metropolis of
Bowie!"
    Occasionally a lone pickup would come
barreling across the flats, headed for Willcox or Tucson, but they
were no great threat. The thin air and flat terrain made for
wonderful acoustics, and Cassie had plenty of warning to scramble
off the shoulder of the highway and duck behind the nearest cluster
of juniper trees. The heat of the day began to fade as the sun
turned orange on the western horizon, and Cassie tugged a worn
denim jacket from her bag and slipped it on. She was suddenly
overwhelmed with memories. She had begged for this jacket as it
hung in her mother's closet.
    The copper buttons were tarnished and the
hems and cuffs were beginning to fray. The scent of her mother's
perfume still lingered and the memories broke loose within her.
Cassie climbed, sobbing, to the top of the embankment and sat, legs
dangling over the precipice. There she buried her face in her
folded arms and breathed in the faint smell of roses that had been
a small part of the mother she had lost.

    *

    The funeral had been held at the Sunset
Chapel, across the street from Bowie's high school. Built in the
early 1930's, the chapel had seen better days. The pitted
rose-colored stucco walls were beginning to crumble at the corners.
Equally worn, but meticulously clean, the interior’s faded beige
carpets were permeated with the scents of flowers and wood polish.
Cassie had been escorted to the family room, alongside the chapel
itself, and from there, she could see the casket that held her
mother's body. Covered in fine blue fabric and edged in gleaming
dark cherry, it rested on the draped bier, and beside it stood a
small oak table topped with a dozen blue carnations and a framed
picture of Katherine Belanger. Soon the casket would lie in the
shadow of the small marker that would identify to all that
Katherine Belanger had been Cassie's beloved mother. Guy and Grace
had insisted on paying for the marker and having it in place as
soon as possible following the service, knowing that Cassie
couldn't afford to. She had thanked them tearfully, insisting amid
their protests that she would pay them back. Grace Williams had sat
beside her in the small curtained area, squeezing her hand as Guy
had