Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One Read Online Free PDF

one
of Joe’s beers.
    As she passed back around the counter, she
paused to sit a minute, removing her thick-soled shoes and rubbing
her aching arches. Elli Young’s eye caught the creased boarding
slip resting at her station, the word CANCELLED stamped across it
in crimson capitals.
    That little snippet hadn’t improved her mood
today either, with her wide eyes and snotty little smile. The old
woman grimaced as she picked up the slip with one hand, the other
still kneading relief into her arthritic extremities.
    Cassie
Belanger , she thought, where have I heard that name?
    Who cares?
    Maybe she’d swing
through Quick Time
Video on the way home and grab a pizza
and a couple of movies. If Joe didn’t like it, he could fix his own
pot roast. She almost laughed aloud in the empty office. The day
that Joe Young marched his clodhoppers into the kitchen and fixed
himself a meal was the day that they’d buried his old ball and
chain!
    Cassie Belanger.
    Dropping the ticket back on the worn
counter, Elli picked up the heavy, black receiver of the old rotary
phone and dialed a number from memory, scowling once more as the
young woman’s voice echoed in her memory.
    Have a great day!
    The line was picked up after two rings.
    “ Hello?” A woman’s voice
said.
    “ Hello, Gracie?” the older
woman replied, her mind already drifting to a mushroom and
pepperoni pizza and a good ninety minutes of Mel Gibson’s flexing
muscles. Now that would be a nice end to a long and lousy day, “it’s Eleanor
Young, down at the bus station.” She glanced over the top of her
glasses at the ticket again, “Say, aren’t you friends with a
‘Belanger’?”

    *

    After a long and restless night, Cassie woke
up to a chilly gray morning. Sometime before dawn, heavy dew had
fallen, descending through the gaps in the barn roof and seeping
through cracks in the walls. She lay still for a few moments,
looking out through the sagging barn door. The building had been
abandoned longer than she had thought when she’d stumbled across it
the night before. The roof and east wall were just a skeleton of
thin sticks, cracked and gray with age, and Cassie could see
scarlet holes in the boards where the old iron nails had long since
rusted away.
    Cassie shivered as she climbed from her damp
bedroll and, with shaking fingers, pulled dry straw from the middle
of the remaining bale to start a fire. Luckily, she had tossed her
duffel bag into the corner and covered several shattered pieces of
board, which had stayed dry enough to light. Returning the battered
Zippo to her pocket Cassie hunched low over her work, rubbing
circulation into her arms and legs, as tiny flames licked at the
dry straw and wood. She fanned the flames with her hands, as it fed
and smoked, until a small fire was snapping cheerfully at her
feet.
    After a sip or two of her dwindling water
supply, and a handful of granola, Cassie rolled up her clammy
sleeping bag, promising herself that she would let it air-dry after
the sun was fully up. She ran her fingers through her short dark
hair, wincing at the tangles, and brushed away the larger pieces of
hay that clung to her clothes.
    "Well," she said to the sagging walls, "I
must be a real beauty this morning!"
    Without running water, her
soap and toiletries were useless. She packed them back up and made
a mental note to find a gas station up the road with a rest room
for her morning ablutions . For the moment,
she settled for a quick and merciless brushing of her tangled black
locks.
    Half an hour later, she still wasn't warm,
but at least she had stopped shivering.
    Pulling her bag onto her shoulders, Cassie
crushed her fire, kicking sand over the smoking remains. Then,
squeezing out through the broken door, she hiked back to the
highway, breathing deeply the cool morning air. The sun was just
peeking over the edge of a gray-blue cloudless sky, promising
another hot day.
    Following the highway, which was all but
deserted at this hour of the