Beach Town: A Story

By Leon Taylor

A small town on the Oregon Coast, Beach Town is the descendant of the once-thriving logging and fishing industries which have since fallen into decline, giving way to the vagaries of tourism.  The mayor of Beach Town, Jasper Williams, owns the one approachable watering hole in town, The Whaler Bar and Grille.  He bought it from the widow Cindy Hawkins for fifteen-thousand dollars and a month's worth of screwing.  The Whaler was worth more than a month, Cindy complained after the completion of their agreement, but Jasper's defense against an extension was that he had his wife, Sally Marie, to consider. 

 

Cindy didn't care about Jasper's wife, but Chief of Police Jerome Willis did, he was having an affair with her, complicating his business relationship with Jasper, who was selling all the weed Chief Willis confiscated.  Deputy Thomas "Johnny" Johnson sold all the other drugs the police force acquired, an arrangement which met Chief Willis' approval.  He didn't like waste, and drugs unused were a waste to him.  Deputy Johnny Johnson had been an altar boy in his youth and wanted to become a priest, but his service in Vietnam destroyed him.  He now stayed drunk and stoned to kill the pain of what he'd done and seen in Vietnam.

 

Jane Colburn had fled to the Pacific Northwest to escape the drugs and alcohol of San Francisco, but the drugs and alcohol that had led her into prostitution for their profitability eagerly awaited Jane's arrival to Beach Town.  An erstwhile suitor of Jane, James "Fishy" Boyd, who was one of the few remaining crab fishermen on the Oregon Coast, didn't care that Jane had once been a prostitute, his virtual headquarters was The Whaler where Jane worked.

 

Out of place and new arrival to Beach Town, William Williams, was Jasper William's long-lost cousin from England.  William had once served in Her Majesty's clandestine services but now secretly worked for the U. S. Government after a bad incident in Hong Kong had brought about his fallout with Her Majesty's men.  William Williams wasn't accepted in Beach Town, however, by Harry Hansen, an old and broken-up, but legendary logger.  It was the filter through which he valued all men in his town.

 

 The corrupt dealings of the Beach Town Police Depafrtment soon enough brought a state investigation which turned Deputy Jordan Coghill state's evidence against Chief Willis.  With the arrival of the investigators, Jasper Williams flees, the specter of his involvement with a seventeen-year-old girl chasing him out of town.  In their report, the investigators found that the men of Beach Town were morally deficient, and the women were taking advantage of that fact.  They concluded the incessant winter rains turned decent people to a life lived questionably.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leon Taylor
• Release date: Apr 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223845898

Leon Taylor

Leon Taylor is a college graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Science and Humanities and a veteran of military intelligence.  He has lived and worked in many different venues that have contributed to a vast array of experiences, all lending their credence to the stories he writes.

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Chapter One

On the Oregon coast was a small town, that, without the ocean’s beaches, would be nothing short of a poorly executed wide spot on the winding coastal highway.  Tourism fed the coffers of this small town, almost every business and nearly all residents depended upon it. Without tourism, Beach Town would have withered away along long ago with the logging and fishing industries that once flourished there.  Even with tourism, Beach Town labored along in economic pain from one season to the next, the rush of the summer season woven in with the slow drizzle of the rainy winter months.  Long, wet, and gray months dulled the senses and brought little to no respite from the clouds of winter for the residents of this small town.

Jasper Williams, a stodgy bald middle-aged businessman and mayor of Beach Town was the owner of The Whaler Bar and Grille, the only approachable watering hole in town.  He had bought it from an old widow, Cindy Hawkins, for a month’s worth of screwing and fifteen thousand dollars, neither of which were to her satisfaction, but at the month’s end, she signed off on their agreed-upon arrangement anyway.  A deal was a deal, Jasper answered her complaints, and satisfaction wasn’t written into their agreement, verbally or otherwise.  As to an extension on the agreed upon month, there was little to no chance, Jasper maintained, he had his wife to consider. 

No one knew, or really cared, who was screwing who, but they did care that Jasper had turned The Whaler into a somewhat decent and more respectable establishment.  Cindy’s deceased husband, Brad Hawkins, had catered to the lesser sort in the area, who, for the most part, scared away the more decent residents of Beach Town.  For Jasper, he figured if being a drunk was his life’s calling, he might as well make it profitable and did what he could to upgrade The Whaler into an establishment that would attract a better local trade as well as the tourist.  Even so, as if to express his sentiments about life, his plaque on the wall behind the bar beneath the stuffed marlin read: 

What the hell, we’re all gonna die when the tsunami hits, anyway.

The giant mirror beneath the plaque on the wall was covered with pictures of men holding their catches high in the air; marlin with their bills pointing skyward.  Jasper had spent a winter in Baja and had gotten hooked on the warm sunny weather and fishing for marlin.  He hadn’t been back since, but longed for the day when he could return, if for only a month or two.  He’d even considered opening up a bar and starting a charter fishing business of his own in Cabo San Lucas, but didn’t, deciding the Mexican government would just take all his money as well as his business once he turned it to profit.  And knowing his penchant for skirting the law, he knew he’d probably end up in jail for an extended period of time, anyway.  A Mexican prison was no place for a soft and fat man like himself, Jasper knew, and he, for once in his life, chose prudence over desire, giving up thoughts of opening a business of any sort in Mexico. 

The Whaler served the locals well, a place to trade stories of their workday and of their futures never to come.  It was their commonality that brought them together, not the events of the world, political or otherwise.  Their lives were driven by their needs, a slow and tempered existence where the pursuit of money to provide for their livelihoods fueled the daily grind.  The Whaler gave provision to the airing of the events of the day, the good along with the grievances, and the opportunity to relieve stress through the consumption of alcohol.

One of the more colorful of The Whaler’s regulars was James Fishy Boyd, a small wiry crab fisherman who lived on the edge of his mind’s imagination.  Fishy had been a crabber his entire adult life, the most dangerous of all the dangerous occupations on the Oregon coast.  It was in the winter months, when storms ravaged the ocean, that the commercial crabbers plied their trade.  Storms that were at times so violent they closed off the entrance to the crabbers’ home ports, stranding them at sea or locking them in the harbor so they couldn’t get out to tend their crab pots.  Knowing the dangers that awaited him every time he left port for the open ocean, Fishy lived his life on land accordingly to the vagaries of life at sea, an existence measured in minutes, not hours or days, or months.

The Whaler in Beach Town was Fishy’s de facto headquarters, but his home was Sally Ann, a fifty-three-foot crabbing vessel that was moored at the nearby Port of Seatowne.  Living on his crab boat helped explain why Fishy had no wife, along with his pervasive smell of bait fish and crabs, from which he derived his nickname.  Even given his somewhat cantankerous personality and offensive odor, locals accepted him as he was, a man hewn by the rain and wind and waters of the sea that he loved.  It was a hard way to make a living, most people considered, but Fishy never complained about his chosen profession.  What was unknown to most people about Fishy was the many other options he had had in his life for a way to make his living, the avenues his intellect would have provided for him had he so chosen.

Jane Without Shame Colburn, a woman of the night, was one of the more honest citizens of all Beach Town.  Fair in all her dealings, she gave full value in trade for the money she received for her services, which, to her, made laws against her practice inappropriate.  A plump and voluptuous woman of a gregarious nature, Jane was a product of the Bible Belt of the Great Plains.  She had been raised Lutheran but departed that church in early adulthood to find her way, which led her to San Francisco.  It was the seventies, after all, and it was there she found, to her detriment, her new savior, drugs and alcohol.

Jane knew she couldn’t live on drugs and alcohol all her life and had decided to escape their poverty by fleeing north to the Great Northwest where trees grew tall and green, the water ran clear and the air breathed clean.  It was unfortunate for her, however, that the drugs and alcohol of San Francisco that she was fleeing had already found their way to the Great Northwest, and eagerly awaited her arrival.  They were the same drugs and alcohol that had led her into prostitution for their profitability.

Jane’s first stop when arriving in Beach Town was The Whaler, where the drugs that flowed in and out of there found her.  Jasper Williams wasn’t only dispensing alcohol as the proprietor of the Whaler, but the town’s most respected and dependable source of weed.  This was the result of his closest friend and silent business partner being Jerome Willis, Chief of the Beach Town police.  A police force in name only which was comprised of Chief Jerome Willis and Deputy Thomas Johnny Johnson, with inadequate support from Deputy Jordan Coghill. 

Everyone suspected Chief Jerome Willis was turning a blind eye to Jasper’s side business, but no one knew for certain.  It was a fair question to ask how it was that Jasper Williams never got busted when it was common knowledge that you went to The Whaler if you wanted to get drugs.  Jasper Williams only sold weed along with his alcohol, but he tolerated his customers selling whatever else was available on the black market in his establishment.  It was easy to ask how Jasper never got arrested with all the drug dealings that went on in The Whaler.  There were even those who suspected Chief Jerome Willis’ evidence locker was seldom full, even when he arrested outsiders and confiscated their drugs.  Where were those drugs going, was the question whispered about town?

The child of depression era parents, Chief Jerome Willis never wasted or threw anything away.  Drugs were the equivalence of money, and their sitting around in his evidence locker unused was a waste to him, a man of thrift and diligence.  And since he didn’t use drugs, the best thing for them, in his mind, was that they are sold for profit.  His good friend Jasper Williams was already in the weed business, who better to sell any weed he confiscated than him, was Chief Jerome Willis’ reasoning.  Deputy Thomas Johnny Johnson could sell the rest, he had no compunction against selling drugs.  Chief Jerome Willis’ business arrangement was an even fifty-fifty split with each of his partners, a fair and responsible business agreement to his understanding.

Since she considered her prices fair, Jane Colburn saw nothing wrong with the way she practiced her profession, but the more proper women of Beach Town considered her values contrived.  What they didn’t know was that she wasn’t alone with her conflicted values.  Mayor Jasper Williams and Chief of Police Jerome Willis rationalized that selling weed was alright since they didn’t sell cocaine or heroin.  They left that for Deputy Thomas Johnny Johnson to do.  But then, Deputy Johnny Johnson had scruples of his own.  Even though he would sell heroin, he wouldn’t use it.  He’d already seen what heroin did to men in Vietnam.  His drug of choice was cocaine, moderated by what little weed he could get before Chief Willis gave it all to Jasper to sell.  Working the midnight shift had its demands, as well as its benefits, the cocaine kept him going through the night and the darkness hid his illicit dealings.  The proper people of Beach Town didn’t need to know it was the police who were selling the drugs back to the dealers they had taken them from, as well as to the local residents who demanded them.

Vietnam hadn’t done well by Thomas Johnny Johnson, an altar boy who had wanted to become a priest.  Drafted into the Army, he became conflicted and compromised by the contradictory demands of his faith and the military.  Killing led to the drugs, Johnny’s mind and soul became twisted and scorched watching his friends and comrades die while he, at the same time, demanded the lives of the young Vietnamese soldiers who were as innocent as was he in this mistaken war.  Vietnam left Johnny in mental torment, and the next best thing for him, he had decided upon getting out of the Army, was to join the police force.  And that was what he did after spending months doing nothing but getting drunk and stoned trying to kill the pain of serving in Vietnam.  Sleep didn’t come easy for Johnny, and neither did functioning in normal society.  No one could understand what he had gone through, other than the veterans he turned to for solace, and the drugs and alcohol he consumed.

It was Johnny’s mother who complained to her friends about her boy being drunk and stoned all day as well as all night.  She didn’t understand, and Johnny couldn’t explain it to her.  Vietnam had been a living hell on earth, and he needed to wipe the horrors of it from his consciousness. 

He was such a nice boy before he went to that Vietnam, Miss Ethel would vent to her friends. 

He should have stayed home and become a priest, one or another of her friends would agree, even though Johnny had had no choice in the matter.  He had been drafted and hadn’t considered fleeing to Canada or being a conscientious objector as a viable option, even though he didn’t believe in killing.  He would have been such a fine priest. 

Why’d he turn out like he did? Miss Ethel would question when speaking of Johnny’s drug and alcohol abuse.  He could have been a servant of God.  Now look at him.

The Army did this to him, her friends would repeat Miss Ethel’s words back to her.  That’s the kind of men they are.  Truly they are all lost souls. 

He can’t go into the priesthood now, her friends would mutter in private, not after some of the things he’s surely done.  He may not even be able to get into Heaven.  Poor soul.

Miss Ethel would lament that she was going to Hell herself for the way her son turned out.  Pity be upon me, she would cry to her friends.  My life in the hereafter isn’t going to be worth living.  I’m as doomed as Johnny.  Woe be unto us.

Her friends would console Miss Ethel, but they would wonder at times if she might be the one to blame for Johnny’s state.  Other men came back from Vietnam and appeared to be normal.  Could it be her fault, after all, the way Johnny turned out?  Or maybe it was the Catholic church where the blame should be lain, they were the ones who had made him an altar boy.  Who would ever know, but he was surely a mess.

One thing was for certain, Miss Ethel would never be the same again, and neither would Johnny, her only child.  Vietnam had irreparably damaged both of them, and that was without apology.

Chapter Two

Across town, in more ways than one, was Tad Morrison, an artist, environmentalist, and young man more or less removed from the underbelly of Beach Town.  For Tad, starving was a virtue.  As long as he was starving, he believed, his art would remain pure.  Every beer and pop bottle he salvaged for its return value prolonged his art’s purity, and he rode the back alleys of Beach Town on his red and white Schwinn bicycle with pride, the environment would be saved along with the sanctity of his art.

Even though he lived a meager existence, there were never enough beer cans and pop bottles to support him, which opened Tad up for compromise.  A man had to survive, was Tad’s reasoning, and delivering the small brown sacks around town for Jasper didn’t mean he was involved in the dealing of drugs, Jasper was.  In fact, he was protecting the environment by doing Jasper’s delivery work on his red and white Schwinn bicycle.  If he didn’t do it someone else would and that would no doubt be somebody with a big four-wheel drive diesel pickup truck belching black smoke all over town to the death of clean air.  And since the money Jasper gave him for his delivery service went directly to his landlord, Tad was absolved, in his mind, of being involved with Jasper at all.  That was on his landlord, who got the money.

For Jasper Williams, Tad Morrison was the perfect delivery vehicle, even though there was little chance his enterprise would ever be in danger.  Not with Chief Jerome Willis providing protection while supplying him with some of the weed he sold.  Even though he had little concern about his dealings in weed ever being a problem for him, Jasper liked that Tad, who rode around town every day on his red and white Schwinn bicycle played neatly into his distribution network.  Who would ever suspect a beer can collector of being a weed distributor?  If only Tad could ride his bicycle further and faster, he could expand his distribution network up and down the coast, was Jasper’s wish. 

Jasper Williams was happy with the utility of using Tad Morrison for his delivery service, but being short, pudgy, and balding, he was slightly envious of the younger, taller, and relatively handsome Tad Morrison.  And not only for his youthfulness and freedom of life, albeit slightly compromised, but for his creative talent.  Tad’s seascapes in oil were exquisite, even though they rarely sold in the gallery where he displayed them because the locals could only afford the essentials in life and the tourist only wanted cheap prints of beach grass, consigning Tad Morrison to a life of relative poverty.

In his youth, Jasper Williams had dreams of his own, and that was to play in a rock and roll band, but two summers of slinging burgers, accompanied by his band’s miserable failures, taught him life was better served with pockets full of money.  Thus began his quest for enough money to avoid answering to the daily grind of some other person’s clock.  Instead, Jasper now had people toiling under the grind of his clock.  Two of which were Charlie Chan, his head cook at The Whaler, and Kathy Jones, his most reliable waitress, even though not his best. 

Another of those who depended upon Jasper’s vacillating demands was Cindy Hawkins, who had begun working part-time in The Whaler after selling it to Jasper.  She needed the money, the fifteen thousand dollars she’d gotten for The Whaler hadn’t gone far enough, and she still had hopes of an extension on the original agreement of one month’s screwing.  One month was hardly enough, she often complained to Jasper, for such a fine establishment as The Whaler.  The best he could do was an occasional one-night stand after work when he was drunk, was Jasper’s answer to Cindy. 

As it was, however, Cindy coming to work at The Whaler was a real asset for Jasper, as he knew little about the food and beverage business before buying The Whaler.  He’d only seen the potential for the business, given how poorly it was run when Brad Hawkins owned it, and that accompanied the ever-growing influx of tourists to the Oregon coast.  Jasper Williams recognized an opportunity when he saw it, and that was the poorly run and maintained restaurant and bar owned by the desperately widowed Cindy Hawkins.

Charlie Chan’s parents owned and operated the only Chinese restaurant in town, but Charlie wanted nothing to do with their restaurant or being Chinese, to his parent’s displeasure.  Charlie’s parents, Billy and Martha Chan were both first-generation Chinese, their respective parents had immigrated to Portland, Oregon from Canton.  It was Billy’s parents, Charlie’s grandparents, who had started their Chinese restaurant in Portland, with great difficulty, to eventually survive to prosperity.  It was there that Charlie’s father, Billy Chan learned the business, to eventually move to Beach Town and open his restaurant, Canton’s Garden. 

Charlie had grown up in Beach Town, the only Chinese boy in school, and hated being different than all the other students.  Constantly being picked on and harassed by the sons and daughters of loggers and fishermen, Charlie had grown to despise being Chinese.  He survived the discrimination, however, to adulthood and his job as head cook for Jasper Williams, who didn’t care what color or race Charlie was, he was an excellent cook.

Kathy Jones, on the other hand, wasn’t a very good waitress, but she came with nice looks and posture, a decent family, and was well-known and liked by the local residents.  Her long blonde hair and flirtatious nature kept the young men coming back, whether it was for drinks or whatever, and that was good for business as far as Jasper was concerned.  He didn’t care what she did after work, or before, for that matter, as long as she came to work on time, which she always managed to do despite whatever condition she was in when she arrived.  Jasper tolerated all sorts of behavior from Kathy, his was a business in a beach town was his reasoning, not a convent, and the tourists were just passing through to probably never return, besides.  For nearly four years, starting when she first got out of high school, Kathy never missed a day of work, which meant a lot in the bar and restaurant business of a tourist town.

Right next door to The Whaler was the Seashore Bowling Alley.  As far as Jasper Williams was concerned it may as well have been a church.  Bennie Benson, the owner, didn’t drink, swear, smoke, or do drugs, and since he didn’t go to church Jasper considered him a hypocrite.  His only redeeming quality, as far as Jasper was concerned, was that Bennie didn’t serve alcohol in his establishment, driving his winter league bowlers to The Whaler when their night of bowling was over.  And since Bennie wouldn’t allow the bowlers to smoke in the Seashore, Jasper’s cigarette machine hummed with business along with the bar’s cash register on bowling nights.  Bennie Benson was good for his business, Jasper realized, even though he considered him a hypocrite and social misfit.

Both men maintained a friendship on the surface, they were after all businessmen, and both understood open conflict would do neither one of them any good.  But, inwardly, they each held a distaste for the other that was hard to swallow.  Bennie knew