The Coastwatchers debuted in TNT’s Storyland section on November 4, 2022. It was written in the spirit of an old-fashioned fiction serial, and provided a way for TNT editor and Coastwatchers author Suzanne Guldimann to share some of the WWII Malibu lore she heard growing up. This is the final chapter. Thank you for sharing this adventure with us. Coming soon at New Times Radio, Claire Chapman reads the final chapters.
Things were bad in other parts of the world that Christmas, really bad. We knew the Allies were in trouble in Europe, and that many, many people were being killed and forced to flee. Even here in the United States things were difficult, what with rationing and so many men being sent to fight in the war, but the ranch was a sort of oasis of Christmas spirit—peace on earth and goodwill to everyone. Everyone there that day felt it, I think, and it wasn’t just that the weather was warm and sunny and beautiful, it was more than that. This wasn’t Christmas the way I had celebrated it back in Illinois, with my father and sister, but I think it was the kind of Christmas that Charles Dickens wrote that you are supposed to keep in your heart all year long.
Lots of people visited on Christmas Day. The Calzadas’ daughter Gabriela and her two babies came to stay for the week—Gabriela’s husband was serving in the Pacific, like my father. The children were too little to really understand about Christmas, but they looked at everything with wide-eyed interest. Some of the men from the Coast Guard camp came up to the house that afternoon, including my friend Bob Henry. We sang Christmas carols around the piano and everyone ate Mrs Calzada’s wonderful tamales and cookies and drank lemonade made with lemons from the trees outside the kitchen. Aunt Maddie and I helped Mrs Calzada make heaps of tamales the day before. It’s a lot of work, making tamales. The main filling, or massa, is made of cornmeal cooked in a big pot, while the different flavors that go in are cooked separately. I liked the sweet ones best, but there were all kinds of fillings. Some of them were complicated, made with all kinds of chilies and spices. Then everything gets wrapped in corn husks and steamed. We made lots of them, and it was a good thing, too, because people kept coming.
Mr Zelle and Mr Samov both stopped by, and so did Mrs Browning, who spent her Christmas making sure all of the service men had a place to go or at least a present and some good cheer. Everyone who came to the ranch that day had plenty of both. Aunt Maddie, Jacob, Jessie and I worked hard putting together gift baskets for all of the men at the Coast Guard base, including the ones who were on duty on Christmas and who didn’t get leave. Each basket had homegrown oranges and tangerines and a jar of ranch honey.
Jessie came over to show us the scarf her brother had sent her and the letter that went with it. “He was supposed to have been sent to Italy, but ended up in North Africa,” she explained.
The scarf was yellow with a geometric pattern in red, and it had tassels at the corners.
“It was woven by nomads in the desert,” Jessie said. “My brother says they wear them on their heads to protect themselves from the sun, and they ride on camels, just like that poster in Jacob’s room, and they live in tents under the vast desert sky. Someday I want to go there, too.”
“Someday you will,” Aunt Maddie told her.
Jessie liked the arrowhead I gave her. “I’m going to keep it with me always for luck, James,” she told me. “I’m sure it is lucky. It’s so perfect, even though it must be really old—hundreds of years or maybe even thousands.”
She gave me a ukulele. It looked like a miniature guitar—a fancy one, with mother-of-pearl around the edges. It was wonderful.
“It was Dad’s really,” Jessie explained. “But he hasn’t played it in ages, and he agreed you ought to have it.”
Some of the Coast Guard guys knew how to play. They showed us how to tune it and even how to play some easy chords. That led to more singing and a lot of laughter. The Christmas party didn’t break up until the last cookie was eaten.
I walked back with Jessie in the twilight. There was a strong smell of water and growing things from the creek, and the afterglow of the sunset lingered in the sky, orange in the west, fading to pale green overhead. A star winked at us from between the branches of our oak tree.
“There’s enough water in the creek to take the canoe out,” Jessie said. “We could paddle down to the lagoon tomorrow and look for birds. Jacob, too, if he’d like to come.”
That sounded good to me. I suddenly felt enormously fond of Jessie. I wanted to say something about how much her friendship meant to me, but I couldn’t find the words. She said them for me.
“I’m glad you’re here, James. I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Thanks, Jessie. Merry Christmas.”
“Tell me about my parents,” I asked Aunt Maddie. We were sitting in the living room in front of the fire. It was late. Jacob had already gone to bed, but I was too tired to move, and I couldn’t anyway, because Yuki was sleeping on my feet, and the cat Mouse was in my lap, snoring.
“I don’t know as much as you might think,” Aunt Maddie said. “Things, well, fell apart for a time, but here’s what I remember. Your father and certainly your father’s aunt might remember it differently,” she smiled at me. “Memory is like that.”
“Your father was a dashing young medical officer when he met your mother. He was back from four years in Europe where he served during the Great War and then stayed on to help mop up afterward. He was in California on leave, visiting friends and seeing the sights, before taking up a new posting at a Naval base in the East. He and your mother met at a dance during spring break. Anna was just finishing up her last year of school. I remember how excited she was to go to that dance—only the senior girls were invited. She had a new dress, pale green like moth wings, and white roses in her hair.
“It was just the two of us, Anna and I. Our mother died during the Influenza epidemic and your Uncle Jimmy was killed in the war. That had been unbearably hard, but we got through it, together, and I was doing well by then as a writer. We had a comfortable life. We were planning a trip to Europe as soon as Anna graduated. We were going to see London and Paris, and find where our brother was buried. Your mother had plans to go to art school in the fall. She was a gifted artist and she was looking forward to seeing the great museums of Europe. Her thoughts were on a future that was very different than the one that she embraced.
“I never really believed in love at first sight before, but Anna was swept entirely off her feet by your father. He proposed to her a week after they met. They wanted to get married right away, but your mother wasn’t quite 18 yet, and I didn’t think she should leave school without taking her exams and receiving her diploma. She was a good student and was expected to graduate with honors, so I told her she had to wait. She was angry with me and told me I didn’t understand. I didn’t. I still don’t.
“Your Aunt Charlotte didn’t approve of the marriage, but she also didn’t approve of the delay. I think she has always regarded it as a terrible slight that I wouldn’t let them get married at once the way they wanted to. They waited just long enough for Anna’s birthday, a month after they met and less than a month before her final examinations and her graduation ceremony. They left me a note. It was the burning-all-your-bridges kind and it was the last time I heard from my sister for a long time.
“I was a lot older than your mother, and I’d pretty much raised her from the time our father died and our mother’s health started to fail. We had always been close, until we weren’t. I took that trip to Europe we had planned together, but I went alone, and when I got there I stayed. There wasn’t anything to come back for.
“I found Jimmy’s grave. It was peaceful. Poppies grew there, just like in the poem, ‘between the crosses row on row.’ I went on from Paris to Rome and then to Istanbul and Cairo, before I settled in London and found work writing screenplays for movies there. I wrote my first novel. I stayed for five years. Eventually I came home.
“I always wrote to your mother, no matter where I was, and eventually she began to write back. She had an impulsive nature but also a loving heart. I don’t think your father ever forgave me for trying to talk her out of eloping with him, but he unbent a bit over time. When I came home I went to see them. Your sister Alice had been born by then, and your mother was very happy. I visited whenever I could and he and I wrote to each other, right to the end, an end that came far too soon.
“Your mother loved your father with all of her heart, James, and he loved her. She never regretted walking away from the life she had planned for herself, but the life she chose was often hard for her. She and your father moved often and she wasn’t able to make friends. That didn’t matter at first, when they were so in love with each other, but it did later. Your father, as you know, worked long hours and was away sometimes for months on end. Your mother was never strong. Running a household with two young children was hard and the accommodations were sometimes rough. She wrote humorous letters to me about the stoves and the plumbing and the other challenges she faced. It was an adventure for her, but adventures aren’t always exactly fun, as you know, and she and your father were proud and wouldn’t accept help or anything that would have made things easier.
“Anna died of pneumonia when you were five. That was a terrible loss for you and your sister, but your father was devastated. He was despondent. I don’t know what he would have done without you and Aly to give him a reason to keep going. It hasn’t been easy for him.”
“I never knew,” I said. “No one ever told me.”
“Then it is time someone did. I’m sorry, James. I know you still miss your mother very much. I do, too. I was glad when your father reached out to me, glad to be able to give you a home and have the chance to get to know you. I want you to know that, even though he and I don’t always agree about things, your father is a good man, and he will always love you, no matter what, even if he doesn’t always understand you. You don’t have to always agree with him either, you know, but it is important for you to remember that he loves you.”
“I wish I could talk to him,” I said.
“If he could call your Aunt Charlotte, that means we can call him. We’ll try in the morning, OK?”
“All the way to Hawaii?” I asked.
“All the way to Hawaii,” she said.
Aunt Maddie woke me early the next morning. “Come talk to your father,” she said. “The call just went through. Hurry up.”
I picked up the big black handset in the kitchen. There was my father’s voice, faint but clear. He was well, he said, and he sounded happy, something that had been rare in recent years.
“I have good news for you, Jim,” he said. “I’m getting married. You’ll like Barbara. I know you will. We can’t be married right away, so you’ll have time to get used to the idea, and you’ll like Hawaii.”
He told me all about it, and then it was time to say goodbye.
I had so much to tell him, but I couldn’t, and maybe that was OK. If we were lucky, there would be time enough later. Instead, I told him that I missed him and that I loved him, because that was the important thing. Then he told me that he loved me, too, and that he was proud of me, and then the call was over.
The orders that sent my father into war and broke up our family and our lives had come almost exactly a year ago. We had been sitting in the kitchen of our home in Illinois when it came—Father, Aly and me. I tried to picture it, but all I could see was the ranch kitchen where I was now, with its brightly colored tiles, and the sunlight pouring in through the windows, and the sound of birds singing outside, singing in December.
I missed my father terribly, but he was still alive, he was well, and I had just talked to him even though he was thousands of miles away. I thought of all the things that had happened since that message ordering him to war had arrived. Some of them were bad—Kitty having to go away to Manzanar, and the fire—were terrible, but other things were good—Aunt Maddie and her animals and the ranch, my friends, my music, and all of the adventures I’d had over the past twelve months.
Everything had changed, everything was going to keep changing, but maybe Aunt Maddie was right. Maybe you didn’t have to wait for happily ever after, maybe it was something that we were already living, something that was right here now, no matter what the future held or what the past had been.
I got up and went to the piano. I played a chord and then another and another. I could feel the potential for those chords to become music, music no one had ever heard before, something new and maybe even wonderful. We—none of us—know the future, that’s what Mr Zelle said. It hasn’t been written yet, and that meant it could be anything.
The End
