Atlantic View: A Novel

By Matthew Geyer

Set against the backdrop of the Obama presidential election, Atlantic View is the story of how Patrick Munchen loses his job, his wife and his way, only to discover an improbable new path with the support of his daughter, Megan. As the hope for change turns sour in the wake of another American election, the end of one way of life becomes the beginning of another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532095399

Matthew Geyer

Matthew Geyer has been a motion picture propmaker, a corporate lawyer, and a commercial arbitrator and mediator. He lives in Santa Fe. This is his second novel. He blogs about literary fiction and more at www.MatthewGeyerWriter.com.

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Copyright © 2020 Matthew Geyer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9540-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9539-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020903036

iUniverse rev. date: 03/12/2020

CONTENTS

1 Dust

2 Cobblestone

3 Patrimony

4 The Sea

5 Joseph’s Coat

6 Yankee Doodle

7 Caledonia

8 Toole

9 Slapton Sands

10 Megan

11 Mailbox

12 Atlantic View

13 The Quarry

14 The Ruins

15 Exercise Tiger

16 St. Catherine’s

17 Whitchurch Canonicorum

18 Coming Home

19 Drive-By

20 Manzanita Nighthawk

21 Valentia Redux

22 The Servants’ Quarters

23 Kylemore

24 Living Room

25 Memory and Duty

26 Tether

27 Nora’s Awakening

28 Megan’s Mishap

29 Reversion

30 The Scenic Route

31 Squall

32 Chicago

33 Innocence

34 New Day

35 The Stockyards

36 GI Joe

37 DNA

Epilogue

For Pheme

ATLANTIC VIEW

1

DUST

I t all started with a dusty box of letters. I say dusty, and so it was, like everything else in the angled attic of the gabled Victorian my father took to living in year-round after Mom died. A 1908 Queen Anne it was—still is—standing three blocks up from the bay on a rise looking out over Sausalito.

Even now, four or five years and a lifetime of revelations later, I sense the foreboding that filled me as I reached into that bankers box, picking my way past the diplomas and the pictures and the paperweights from his law office, to where a cigar-box made of waxed cardboard—an old ammunition box, as it turned out later—sat safely tucked away on the bottom. Inside I found the stack that started it all: Handwritten letters they were, something you don’t see much anymore, since the internet came into our homes and our pockets and god knows what next. The letters themselves weren’t dusty. But like the house and everything in it in those days just after my father died, they had the feel of family heirlooms.

Like most people who use bankers boxes for attic storage, I guess, Dad was the kind of guy who kept things in order. The letters start in December 1943. Written from a place I’d never been by a woman I’d never heard of, I leafed through them all. For six months they go on, un-posted and so—I presumed then, and know now—delivered by hand. Then there’s a break. The next one is posted in September, from a little town in England to:

Private Edmund Munchen

United States Army, First Infantry Division

16th Regiment, First Battalion, Company C

It found him in France, judging from notations I now know to be those of a WAC or an Army clerk. Later ones found him in Belgium, then Germany. The last one, by far, is the shortest:

8 May 1945

Lyme Regis, Dorset

Dear Ed:

We’re dancing all up and down Broad Street. I so wish you were here.

Write back—will you?—when you get wherever you’re going.

Love,

Molly

Є

The week after I found the letters, a parcel arrived at our place a few miles north in Mill Valley. Nora signed for it, then turned back to the decktop garden she tended, after trading us up from a shoebox overlooking the freeway to a redwood-and-glass contemporary within walking distance of the square. I spent that evening in the office downstairs, going through books on the GI’s in Dorset I’d ordered online, with interviews of elderly locals and grainy black-and-white snaps from war times. Photos of troop carriers, and the landing craft used for infantry and tanks. I turned in late, awoke hours before dawn, rolled over a few times then gave up, and headed back downstairs.

The next day, after getting Megan off to high school and checking email from her colleagues at the agency, Nora sat in the office paging through some of the books. Earlier that morning I’d collected pictures from around the house, lining them up on the shelf that ran along under the window just above the desk: Pictures of me sitting in Dad’s lap, on the porch of what was then our vacation house in Sausalito; of Dad in a T-shirt with an Army logo, standing with Mom and a puzzled look on his face in front of a Hollywood bungalow; of a man I knew as Joe Darby but only in pictures, standing with Dad in their field jackets under a sullen sky. The letters, too, lay in a file open on my side of the desk.

A few days later a package came in the mail from my Aunt Margaret, keeper of the flame in Mom’s family, custodian of all curios Grandma O’Keefe left behind. She’d thought there were letters from the war years, when the three women still lived together and the men were away. And sure enough, there were. I spent the next evening going through everything I’d gathered. Set against each other, the two sets made an odd collection: Letters from my father to my mother before they were either, posted through Grand Central Annex while he was overseas; and letters from a woman in Dorset, to a man going through something he soft-peddled in the letters to his bride back home. I read through the books I’d ordered, and poked around some more on the internet late into the night.

I woke again before dawn. Something happened there, I said when Nora rolled over. I can’t tell what, from the record so far.

So go, she said.

For what?

For what you can’t get in those letters.

Є

I grew up playing solitaire in that attic in Sausalito. Hiding from my imaginary sister, too. But I wasn’t playing that day I found the letters. And I’m not hiding anything as I sit here now, beneath the pitch of roof boards whose memories I can’t bare to lose to insulation, peering out a dormer window into a breeze blowing in from the bay, trying to make sense of it all.

They’re all gone now, no reason to hold back.

2

COBBLESTONE

T he ships docked without warning in the dead of night. They were British ships full of Americans, and had steamed around aimlessly for weeks while rumors floated through like flotsam after a beach invasion: The Germans had surrendered one hour, the men were being ordered to invade Europe the next. What tonight’s maneuver meant was anybody’s guess. The soldiers were marched off at double-time, then herded into buildings the size of aircraft hangars.

It is November now, soldiers, said an officer at the head of the crowd. And you’re in England.

The men of the 16th Infantry had endured the chaos of North Africa, from catastrophic landings at Arzew to the desperate last stand at Kasserine Pass, where the tide finally turned in the desert. Next they’d landed at Gela, and marched across Sicily to slug it out again with the Panzer Grenadiers.

No doubt you’ve been wondering about all the steaming around, and the order to take off your arm-patches. The Big Red 1 is the mark of the greatest fighting division the world has ever known. If the Gerries were to hear it had been spotted in Dorset, they’d know where the invasion would come from.

They had been picked to lead the campaign that would end the war for everyone, or leave the world in Hitler’s hands.

Є

From the shipyards they piled into trains bound for Dorchester, then onto trucks that worked the wrong side of the roads into Dorset. At Bridport a twisting coast road led west, the English Channel on one side and age-old farmlands on the other. The convoy rumbled through a village with a thatched-roof inn and a general store, Charmouth, then stopped at a crossroads on the far edge of town. A narrow road led down to the coast, and the First Battalion would march the rest of the way. Halfway down, D Company peeled off toward a tent camp with Quonset huts that huddled near a coastal cliff.

Charley Company marched on. Tiny country cottages with endless water views appeared round every bend. As they neared another hamlet, townspeople came out to welcome these men who had fought alongside their own, oblivious to the infighting between the two armies, or willing to set it aside as the soldiers did when it counted. The road straightened for a stretch, passed a soccer field and a sign announcing Lyme Regis. When cobblestone appeared underfoot, the GI’s looked down and around at each other; and as the road descended into a winding canyon of stone-spired churches and broad-timbered inns, they talked of pictures they would send home if they laid hands on a camera, but the mail wouldn’t make it through the censors. Finally they reached a wide open square, where a tall, steeply gabled two-story marked the spot where the town met the sea.

It’s like a postcard from Newport or Provincetown, said Hurley, a private from Boston with an accent thick as clam chowder.

If you say so, said Munchen, who had joined as replacement troops halfway through the Sicily campaign. It’s not Yorkville or East Harlem, I can tell you that.

And it ain’t Oran or El Guettar, either. Joe Darby, a stonemason’s son from South Philly, who had been there from the beginning at Arzew and lost a dozen comrades since, hadn’t warmed as quickly as some others to the replacement troops, only to have them die in the next engagement.

Munchen stepped atop a seawall, peering across the cold grey water toward occupied Europe. I’m guessing that’ll come.

Not for a while it won’t, soldiers. Corporal Murcko handed out assignments, explaining they’d be quartered for now in hotels around town. Reveille’s at oh-six-hundred, he said, looking around. Right here in the square is as good a place as any.

Munchen tailed Darby up a narrow cobbled street. At the Royal Lion, a doting Englishwoman showed them to their rooms. As they climbed the stairs behind her, their bulky field-packs filled the narrow well as the stairway turned back on itself. At the top they turned down an even narrower hallway, where doors stood open to rooms awaiting their arrival.

There’s a view of the high street from these, the landlady said, pointing to the first two on the left. And since you’re the first to arrive, you’ve your pick—unless I’m mistaken about something. The officers were staying at The Alexandra, she explained, a fancier place at the top of the hill. The bath is just down the hall, and breakfast is at half-five.

Darby looked puzzled at this.

That’s oh-five-thirty, said Munchen, who’d spent a year of his war in Norfolk before joining up with the First.

And half an hour before your Reveille, she said, or so we’ve been told. I can’t imagine what you’ll be doing in the dark at that hour. She turned back as she took her leave. And speaking of the dark, she motioned to the windows, you must always draw the blinds after sundown. Wouldn’t want to give the German bombers any ideas.

Darby took the first room. Munchen dropped his pack in the second, took his red arm-patch from his shirt pocket and dropped it in the chest of drawers. From the breast pocket of his field jacket he took a photo of his bride, a raven-haired girl of nineteen, and slipped it into the gap between the mirror and its frame. He stepped to the window and looked down on the street. A few doors up stood a pub. It looked quite like the one he’d frequented that spring in Wendling, so he thought he’d have a go straightaway.

Є

Mike Bowditch wiped down the bar. A clutch of regulars had just left, buzzing about the arrival of the Americans. Mike inherited The Volunteer from his father, who died while Mike lost half his leg with the 1st Dorsets at the Battle of the Somme. Lyme Regis had been quiet through that war—unless you count the wailing widows whose men died fighting on the Continent. But not this one, for the little town sat just across the Channel from Normandy, where Luftwaffe airfields launched nightly bombing raids on London and weekly sorties across Dorset.

Like everyone else in town, Mike hoped the Americans could change that. Together with Montgomery and his Eighth Army, they had taken North Africa from Rommel last year. Sicily now seemed well in hand judging from reports on the BBC, and Allied forces were starting into Italy. But Americans had rolled into Dorset and Devon today, setting up a headquarters in Beaminster according to the lorry driver who brought the kegs this morning. When a company of infantry marched into town, Mike had pegged his way down Broad Street to watch them come into the square. He’d found it hard to cheer, for he knew what lay ahead for them. The war would soon be fought on the ground across Europe—a good place to lose a leg, and more—if the Germans didn’t give in first. Which they wouldn’t.

At the sound of boots stepping down into the entry, he turned and saw three Americans duck their heads through the inner doorway. Good evening, Sir, said one. Your best scotch, please.

Certainly, Sergeant.

And two beers, one private said for both of them.

Mike reached for the single-malt while the soldiers took stools at the bar. No beer ’ere, mate he said. Ale, ’tis. Like to try?

When in Rome.

In Rome you could ’ave beer, said Mike, anywhere on the Continent, for that matter.

We had lots of it in Sicily, said the soldier who’d asked.

Enough, Sergeant Cronkhite reprimanded with a whisper, and a look that emphasized the transgression. No one was to know where the men had been, and even they didn’t know where they were going.

Another GI ducked through the door. He seemed more reticent than the others, and walked on past the group. A pint, if you please, he said, your finest ale.

Mike pulled a second and third pint, then poured a scotch neat and served the sergeant first. Cronkhite waited while he served the privates. Then the sergeant took up his glass, and without raising it in a toast, poured half the scotch out onto the bar top. Mike started for his towel but stopped, eyeing the sergeant as the whiskey lay in a pool atop the varnish. His men had seen this before, it seemed. They waited while the officer reached into his pocket, and offered Chesterfields all around. Then he lit his smoke, looked at the soldier on his left from under an arched eyebrow, and lowered the match to hover just above the puddle. The scotch flared orange and blue, and Cronkhite sat back as Mike jumped in, smothering the flame with his bar towel.

Now the sergeant raised his glass, and motioned to his men to raise theirs. Here’s to an honest barman, he said, and to England.

Warming a notch at this, Mike took another towel and wiped the experiment clean while the men drank their toast.

If you’d drunk as much scotch-and-water as we have—when we paid for it straight, said the sergeant, you’d be wary, too.

Well you needn’t worry about the whiskey in Lyme Regis, Mike said. In this pub or any other. If ever you find I’m wrong about that, you let me know.

Є

Munchen lay in bed, ears ringing in the quiet from the drink.

A knock came at the door. Ed, a soldier stage-whispered through the door. It was Liam Corley, a fireman from County Mayo by way of the Lower East Side. I found the Catholic Church—Saint Michael and Saint George, ’tis. We’ll be goin’ day after tomorrow, we will. Corley seemed to listen for a response.

When he heard him move on, Munchen got up to write. Mostly he wrote letters home, most of which he tore up and wrote again, leaving out the parts he hoped someday to forget. This made them more suitable for his bride, whom he spared the worst of the details.

Like most of the letters he’d written since the Panzers’ retreat at Troina, tonight’s could go out in first draft.

November 6, 1943

Dearest Betsy: