Lost Man’s Coast

Chapter One

Saturday morning at 0830, Jack Armstrong pulled the Jeep Wrangler into the designated parking spot next to the dive bar owned by his friend. The vehicle was a vanity item really; he had never owned a jeep before; preferring to be more practical and frugal, his wife and he had spent almost 30 years buying dependable workhorses like Nissans and Hondas to get back and forth all over the place. But he was in a new and different realm now. And the bright yellow jeep fit in perfectly with their new surroundings. Nobody around here would’ve given it a second look in a parking lot.

The plate on the jeep proclaimed him a veteran of the two-decade-old century’s wars, this one, the so called “Operation Enduring Freedom,” which now after twenty years of what had been continuous war was a catch-all name for anyone who’d deployed to anywhere in the world outside Iraq in the never-ending effort to stop terrorism, or line the coffers of the massive weapons industry, depending on your political point of view, or more accurately, which Kool Aid you preferred to drink.

The plate wasn’t there to proclaim his military service; it was there because the state in which they resided only charged three dollars a year for the plate as opposed to the regular fee of twenty dollars.

Truth be told, Jack would’ve preferred no one know about any of his previous “lives.” People immediately started to make biased opinions of others based on such things. And they wanted a tabula rosa. It was one of the reasons they’d chosen this area; they didn’t know a single person when they moved in, and nobody knew them. And that’s how they wanted it.

They had put a lot of thought into where they wanted to settle down. They didn’t like the word “retire;” she still worked, mostly from home, and he was too damn active and involved in multiple things. After 30 years of marriage, they probably knew the other person better than the other person knew themselves, and she was the one who knew even more than he did that he needed to stay busy; he tended to get restless and go down dark holes if he had nothing to do. So the “R” word was verboten; “settled down” was a much better phrase, and it accurately captured the sentiment of what they now had.

They had considered every place they had lived for any significant period of time. The first was southern California, where he’d been stationed numerous times while on active duty, and where the boys had spent the majority of their early, formative years. They had first moved there in 1999, just before the turn of the millennium and all the chaos in the world that came shortly thereafter.

California, even back then, could get wacky in some places, but San Diego was still a military town. The Navy and Marine Corps had bases at North Island on Coronado, Marine Corps Recruit Depot next to the airport, San Diego Naval Station off 32nd Street, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and up Interstate 5 at Camp Pendleton. During both tours, they had lived in the same military neighborhood two miles from the beach in the Pacific Beach area, and they had loved it. The people were great, the weather was perfect, and they thought they might come back for good someday.

But after they left in 2008, things started to slip a bit. The state and local governments were a disaster and did very little to improve the slow, sure deterioration. And it was too bad when you considered it. Jack and his family had experienced the best California had to offer, the beaches, the Mediterranean climate of San Diego, the skiing in the San Bernardino Mountains east of LA and at Mammoth Mountain, the spectacular national parks at Yosemite, Sequoia, and Redwood, and everything in between. But it just wasn’t enough to overcome everything else. To be certain, they would always love San Diego and consider it one of their adopted hometowns. But the sad truth was, California had spun out of control, and it was just too expensive to live there anyway. They would always return to visit. But they would not live there.

Then there was the town where they had both gone to college, met, fell in love, and gotten married. But life experiences had taught them it was impossible to go back permanently.

“When people show you who they are, believe them.”

The small college town in the hills they had loved as students had turned into something very different once they started their professional lives, and several personal events had radically changed their perspectives about the place and their desire to live there. Like one of William Faulkner’s southern Gothic novels, it was suddenly revealed as a small-pond, over-inhabited by self-avowed big fish; political to the hilt, shallow, and stifling.

Still, they had actually made multiple attempts to make it work there; to operate within a twisted environment where everyone seemed to insinuate themselves into what everyone else was doing; the gossiping, the backbiting, the spitefulness, and the insecurities that folks developed when someone else seemed to not give a crap about it all — to not succumb to the manipulation and incessant social coercion to conform to local standards and opinions.

Indeed, both of them had experienced an eerily similar incident in their professional lives there, separated in time by almost two decades, that seemed like it was taken right out of some ham-handed playbook the big fish apparently employed when they wanted to bring someone to heel.

It had happened to his wife in 1996 and was one of the precipitating events that had led to them leaving the area in the first place, and it had happened to Jack in 2014, two years after they had — inconceivably in hindsight — returned, thinking that things had maybe evolved. Like his wife in 1996, Jack had quit in his case the morning after the incident, sending shockwaves across the organization he was working for and placing a black eye on that office for years to come. And just like when they left the first time, the decision to leave the stifling, limited place behind had once again allowed them to do and accomplish things they would’ve never done or accomplished had they stayed. Those two decisions to leave had been two of the best and most important decisions they’d ever made together; they were just a bit surprised they’d had to do it not once, but twice.

Beyond all of this, it was too gray, cold, and wet from November to April, it was too small, and Jack had no anonymity there. All told, including school, they had spent over a decade living there, twice attempting to make a life and career, but it had not worked for them. Something was always off, and never right. In brutally frank and sometimes heated conversations he’d had with people defending and extolling the purported virtues of the area, Jack had said the only good things that had ever happened for him there were meeting his wife, falling in love with her, getting married, and having their first child. And that was absolutely true.

No. They were not going to settle there. Jack didn’t like to use the word “never,” because he believed it was just tempting fate. But he wanted to; he wanted to use that word very badly.

Eventually, they narrowed it down to two areas, both along the Atlantic coast. They were familiar with one, having lived there during multiple tours. It was a known quantity, and they both felt like they could settle there. But something had happened recently that had suddenly put the place on the map, and almost overnight, real estate prices tripled, and the usual outside interlopers started to invade. They had begun to cool a bit on settling in that area.

The second area was a complete tabula rosa for them, the proverbial blank slate, an unknown quantity, and without any of the personal baggage they had in any of the other places. This was exciting, and after a lot of detailed investigation and consideration, it was finally decided.

After parking the Jeep, Jack made his way around back to the outdoor area of the establishment, a fenced-in space that measured roughly sixty feet on the long end by forty. Depending on what time of the year it was, the “garden” as it was called, was tricked out to reflect the current prevailing seasonal theme: Oktoberfest in the fall, colored lighting of all sorts over the holidays, and so forth. Year round its main feel and theme was Tiki and surf bar. Old boards of various shapes and sizes and portraits of famous surf breaks and Polynesian beaches adorned the ceilings and walls, and palm trees were planted here and there. An extended roof overhung the outdoor bar, which had a ground-level wooden deck that extended about fifteen feet out from the bar, and the rest of the surface was compacted beach sand.

Jack sat at the outdoor bar, the only patron this early on Saturday morning, enjoying something different than his usual breakfast for a change: a jerk-seasoned ham and cheese scramble with peppers, onions and tomatoes, dry white toast and some Caribbean fried potatoes. Spicy stuff, just the way he liked it.

The morning bartender, his young friend Jay Miller, had brought out a full press of strong Hawaiian coffee, and Jack was set for a while, the steam slowly wafting upward from his plate and coffee mug, as he perused the local news and kept an eye on the Premier League game playing on his laptop. For some reason, there was just a bit of chill in the air as the marine layer was still breaking up in the early morning sun. So he was wearing a fleece vest over his t-shirt to go with his usual Saturday uniform of khaki hiking shorts and Keen water sandals.

He leaned momentarily over the piping hot array of food and coffee to let the steam envelop his face, then methodically dug in. It was only Miller and him; no interloping tourists … yet. He ate slowly in the sound of the relative silence; most of the businesses including the bar weren’t yet open, and he had the place to himself, the only sounds at this early hour the intermittent, small waves languidly lapping up onto the white sandy beach, an occasional call from a seagull overhead, and young Miller making an occasional comment as he moved back and forth getting the bar ready for another day of serving customers.

Armstrong savored his Saturday morning breakfast ritual. But on fall Saturdays like this one, if he wanted to enjoy his own ritual, he had to navigate around one of the most predictable of American rituals, one that was currently playing out on the big screen hanging over the bar at which he now sat.

The Gameday boys were doing their thing from just outside the cavernous Bryant Denny Stadium on the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. He was able to ignore the constant drone of their voices yapping back and forth, although he picked up the subject matter. The Crimson Tide were playing Ole Miss later that night, Miller’s alma mater and something the young bartender wasn’t too happy about. He walked over to Armstrong and muttered, “Who in the hell scheduled this game for week two? Their gonna get their asses kicked.”

Jack, having in a long-ago distant life played D1 football himself on a championship team in the SEC, though not much of a football fan after his playing days (it was a strange affliction having been a player and then trying to be a fan), understood Miller’s frustration; he made a brief effort to console young Miller, although he could not have given a rat’s ass.

“They have to schedule somebody early. But they’re pretty good about rotating the victims now. Better to get that game out of the way early in the season.”

“Do you think they have a chance?”

“Honestly I have no idea. I don’t watch.”

“You don’t even keep up with your alma mater?”

“Nope. Haven’t watched a down of football in ten years. I couldn’t tell you what anyone’s record is. I could not care less.”

And it was true.

When Jay excused himself to go finish some work inside, leaving Jack alone with his breakfast, Jack picked up the remote from behind the bar and changed the big screen to the Weather Channel.

Glen Hines is the author of six books, including the recently published Welcome to the Machine, all available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, the Human Development Project, and elsewhere.