The Winemaker's Daughter, page 10
“These Indians, the government, all these salmon people—it’s obvious what’s going on in this valley. It’s a water grab. The irrigator’s day is over, Brunella. Why fight the Indians when they’ve got the government behind them? You’re looking at litigation, endless hearings, process crap. We’d probably have to max out contributions to what’s-his-name, the old cadaver of a senator. Who needs it? I say we move Dad to residential care—’’
“A halfway house to the grave.”
He sighs and looks away, as if dealing with a fool. He turns to his father for the first time and speaks in a deliberate tone, his voice loud. “Dad. You are no longer independent. I can find a first-rate place, twenty-four hours of security, all the amenities, games, therapy pool, nurses, people just like you—”
“Stop!” Brunella jumps to her feet. “Roberto, go home. Go back to Houston. You have no connection to this place. You never did.”
“And you do?”
“No, I live in the city, just like you. But the Cartolano family does . . . not . . . sell . . . land.” She faces Angelo. “Tell Roberto what you’ve always said. Tell him, Babbo!”
“What time is the game today?” he says.
One day after Roberto returns to Houston, Brunella spots a moving truck in front of the Flax family orchard. They have sold everything: orchard, house, two outbuildings, a barn, a flatbed truck, a half-dozen picker’s cabins. Most of the orchard was burned in the fire, driving the value down. Mrs. Flax greets Brunella with the same cold face she presented at the funeral. She is surrounded by cats that curl at her feet like snakes.
“I’m going to die soon,” says Mrs. Flax, picking up one of the cats and stroking its head. “And I don’t want to see the devil-spawned Cartolano family on my way out.”
“Then tell me about Teddy. I thought I would see him at the funeral, but they say he has disappeared. Surely you’ve heard from him.”
“He left us, far as I’m concerned, before he got burned up.”
“How can you say that?”
“He never belonged with us.”
“I must see him.”
“Can’t help you there.”
“But with the sale of your house, at least he’ll have some financial security.”
“I wouldn’t assume that,” says Mrs Flax. “He’s not entitled to anything. He wasn’t born to the farm, and he didn’t stick around. Maybe you can understand that, since you moved away just like him. Loyalty to a place used to mean something.”
Her thin lips look harsh and line-drawn, and she narrows her eyes to mere slits of arctic blue. She’s rigid, one hand tightly balled, the other clutching a cat.
“The white farmers made this land what it is. We made it ours. And look at it now, look what’s happened. Where is our place here? This is the end of our story.”
“Where will you go?”
“We have a rental house in town. They’ll take in my cats and me while Solvan does his time.”
“Who bought the orchard?”
“Some fella from Omak. I don’t know his family. He said he wants to make a go of it. Start from scratch. And I say, Good luck, because our day is done.”
Two days later Brunella sees smoke coming from the Flax orchard. She races over to the house and finds the Forest Service Suburban out front and another vehicle with a tribal emblem on the side. The big Indian from the Forest Service is watching as a group of natives burn the remaining apple trees in the orchard. Tozzie Cresthawk is helping to supervise the burn. Brunella is horrified. She runs up to the big Indian; he tells her—gently—to stand back. The house is next. At Tozzie’s direction, the crew douses the walls of the homestead with gasoline and torches it. It goes up in a swoosh, shingles peeling away, the roof caving in, beams and posts that stood in the coulee sun for more than half a century collapsing in moments. All that’s left standing in the smoky heap are the rock chimney and a claw-footed bathtub.
“Controlled burn,” the big Indian says. “The new owners feel these structures are too much of a fire hazard. And we agree.”
“The new owners?”
“The tribe.”
“I thought somebody from Omak purchased this place.”
“They did.”
“And he was a tribal member?”
“Or an agent, or a cousin. I don’t know. It’s not my business.”
“From what Mrs. Flax said, I didn’t think the buyer was an Indian.”
“Why? Because he was wearing shoes?”
“And now they’re burning it. For what, a new orchard?”
“Nothing. It’s going back to the way it was.”
“The way it was—when?”
“Before.”
“And the water rights? The Flax family had nearly five thousand acre-feet.”
“They go to the tribe for their project down by the river.”
“What kind of project is that?”
“I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask them. I’m a Forest Service employee, Leon Treadtoofar’s my name. I approached you after the funeral. You are Brunella Cartolano. I’ve heard so much about you, your family, the wonderful things that you’ve done in this coulee. Can you spend some time helping me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let me take you for a walk.”
“No. You . . . I don’t have anything to say.”
In the morning, she finds a dozen sunflowers and a note outside the doorstep from Leon Treadtoofar. He asks her to meet him to talk about the fire, and he includes some lines from Robert Louis Stevenson:
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!
It is just cryptic enough to move her. They meet in the Forest Service office in Wenatchee and walk a few blocks to a city park next to the Columbia River, where an army of firefighters has made their encampment. It’s a tent city, clothes drying on wires, people sleeping in the shade of the shelters, a long line of ashen-faced yellow-shirted men and women waiting for chow. It smells like defeat, like demobe.
Brunella and the big Indian walk past a circle of people kicking a Hacky Sack, a small foot bag. Leon Treadtoofar tells Brunella about his investigation. It’s not an autopsy, he says; the goal is to find out what mistakes were made, to build a record the Forest Service can use, to find lessons for all the people who spend their summers laboring under orange and black skies.
“Did something have to go wrong?” Brunella asks.
“It usually does. There are no pure accidents.”
“I don’t believe that.”
They walk past a group of Indian Hotshots from the Bureau of Land Management, a knot of wiry, muscled men sitting on the grass while they eat. Leon has the slow gait of an elegant big man, his feet soundless on the ground.
“Zunis,” Leon says. “They love to fight fire. Probably better than any of the Colville bands.”
“My brother had a lot of friends from the tribes: Utes, Navajos, Black-feet. He told me fighting fires revived their warrior spirit.”
“I’m not sure a white man can know what that means, but it seems to me, Brunella, that both you and your brother have stayed out of shallow waters. You seem alive to possibility.”
“Coming from somebody who hasn’t the foggiest idea who I am, that’s a very nice thing to say.”
“And is it true?”
“Next question.”
White feathery ashes fall from the sky onto Leon’s black bristled hair. He wipes them off his pressed uniform. Brunella notices his forearms, thick and powerful, and a Forest Service tattoo on one arm, an emblem of a tree. He is ageless-looking. In profile, she thinks he could pose for a coin minting. He’s got to be Nez Perce, she decides.
“Some of these people,” says Leon, motioning to the Indians in the circle, “they empty out their village to fight a fire. There’s no job on the reservation that pays as well. You want lunch?”
“Sure.”
They wait in line for grilled cheese sandwiches, potato salad, and Gatorade.
“What tribe are you from?” Brunella asks him.
“I live in Seattle,” says Leon. “Going on my twentieth year with the Forest Service.”
“You’re not Nez Perce?”
“My father is. On my mother’s side, Wanapum and Irish.”
“Who are you closer to?”
“My mother. She held us together.”
“And she taught you the Stevenson poetry?”
“Got that from the Jesuits.”
“Wanapums—are they out by Priest Rapids?”
“You know the tribe?”
“From growing up. I remember they seemed . . . unfriendly.”
“Unfriendly. That’s what everyone says.”
“Why do Indians fight fire?”
“Why did your brother do it?”
“Money. Fun.”
“You’ll find Indians all over this camp. The Red Hats over there near the river, they’re Mescalero Apache. They’re probably the best. Nobody is here for fun.”
“What do you think happened above the coulee, Mr. Treadtoofar?”
“I’m supposed to ask the questions.”
“Then we’re done.”
“Please bear with me. I’m starting to hear some disturbing things, some patterns. But if I share these things with you, Brunella, I need you to trust me, to see me as someone you can take into your brother’s world.”
“I don’t know you. You’re the government.”
“You have to get beyond that. Help me understand why Big Ernie got them.”
“Big Ernie?”
“The jumpers believe he lives in the wild smoke. Cousin of Coyote.”
“The Indian trickster.”
“I don’t believe in Coyote. I’m not your dream-catcher and pow-wowdancer Indian.”
“You wear shoes.”
He smiles at the sly dig. “But I do believe in Big Ernie.”
She picks through the potato salad, stares out at the river. The water is gunmetal gray. Barely moving, it looks like a worn-out rug.
“Your brother Niccolo: Was he drunk the night before he left home?”
“What kind of a question is that?” She turns her back to him.
“What did he drink?”
“You want me to trust you, and you start out with an insult.”
“Help me understand. What did he drink?”
“What are you going to do with this information?”
“I’m going to find the truth, just as my note said. What did he have to drink?”
“A glass of wine, maybe two. I didn’t count. What are you saying, that they found alcohol in his blood—”
“No. But that’s what I’ve been told.”
“—and it affected his judgment? That’s bullshit. Look at his record. Niccolo was a flawless jumper. How do you think he made foreman before his twenty-second birthday? You should be doing soil analysis.”
“I have.”
“You insult me, Leon.”
“That’s not my intent.”
“No more flowers.”
“Then give me your hand.” She holds her hand out tentatively. “An apology, with a grovel. We are trying to make sense of a fire like we have never seen before, Brunella. We know when the Johnny Blackjack blew up it was moving at better than a thousand feet a minute. Nobody can outrun a fire of that speed, carrying heavy packs, Pulaskis, a big Stihl, stumbling over smoky, rocky terrain. Trust me, as I said. I need to take some statements from your father and from you. We’ll need a couple of days.”
“I’m due back in the city tomorrow.”
“Fine. Come see me at my office in Seattle. Or, better yet, I’ll take you to lunch. On the government.”
“I think I’ll just come by the office. You should be talking to the people who pushed those trophy houses out to the edge of the forest with no regard for the laws of nature.”
“I have. And I spent some time talking to an old family friend of yours, I guess—Alden Kosbleau. Mostly, he talked to me. Fascinating guy.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He said he’s going to grow a blue rose.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE SINKS into the chair at the far end of the porch, drifting in and out of a sleep brought on by exhaustion, her head falling away and snapping back. The last rays of sun catch the tops of the firs and the peeled skin of the madrona trees, flickering like candlelight across the bay from the home she owns in Seattle. Her house is grafted into the hillside just above the lake. Brunella could never live on flatland. She grew up on the high ground of an ancient coulee and bought this house in Seattle because it seemed to float over the water. She looks across the way at the lights from the construction cranes, the towers planted around one big site on the south shore of Mercer Island, then slips into sleep again. When she opens her eyes it is dark and she is chilled. The phone rings constantly. She can see the coming winter, the backyard smothered in gray. The rains should arrive soon, and she wants to bring it on—the darkness, the low ceiling, the perpetual drizzle, the layers of misted gloom—bring it on heavy.
Voice mail: Three calls from Leon Treadtoofar, the first one perplexed at her failure to show up in his office, the second giving her the benefit of the doubt, the third saying she does not have to talk with him, if that’s what she wishes. Two from Roberto. He wants Brunella to reconsider what he said about moving Angelo out of the coulee. He says he is “angry, bordering on hurt,” that she lashed out at him. A call from Ethan Winthrop, more condolence about Niccolo’s death, need to talk about Salmon Bay. Another call from Ethan, sounding desperate, please come by for dinner, sorry about being so forceful with her at the Smith Tower. And two calls from the fisherman Duff Almvik, one questioning her motive for suddenly deciding to take on Kornflint, the other asking for a cash advance.
She returns just one call, gets the usual range of robotics, leaves a message. “Don’t insult me, Leon Treadtoofar.”
She drives across the floating bridge to Mercer Island, down a lane shadowed by big-armed maples, past the construction cranes she has seen from across the lake, and on to Ethan’s house. It looks unlived in, beige with white trim, three levels, a guesthouse in the back, a westward view of the city and the Olympic Mountains. In the front, no yard or garden, red gravel around two half-dead rhododendrons.
“You have to water these every now and then,” she says, as Ethan greets her.
“They came with the house. I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Come in.”
Ethan tries to hug her but ends up patting her on the back. He is wearing a down vest over a plaid shirt.
“It’s freezing in here,” Brunella says. “What happened?”
“I keep it at fifty-seven,” he says. “Any warmer and I start to feel clammy.”
Her eyes are red, her hair mussed. She blows her nose a lot. Ethan says he went to the cavernous warehouse store at the edge of the city, his favorite place to shop, and bought fifty pounds of yellow goldfish crackers, three hundred rolls of toilet paper, and tonight’s dinner.
“But you don’t cook,” Brunella says.
“With these, you don’t have to cook.” He shows her flank steak, ready for microwaving, and green beans in a plastic pouch.
“You can stay here, if you want, for a few days. I’ve got so much room. And I’m not as moody now that the clouds are supposed to return.”
“Why did you buy such a big house?”
“For the piano.”
“What piano?”
“The baby grand.”
“Where?”
“Nowhere. I decided against it. But when I thought I would take up piano, naturally I needed a big enough house to hold my music.” He programs the microwave. “Can you eat in two minutes?”
She shrugs. “So you bought a house for a nonexistent piano?”
“Brunella, I know this sounds perfunctory.” He approaches her and tries again to offer a hug. His outstretched arm goes to her shoulders before he pulls it back in and quickly scratches his down vest. “I thought Niccolo was a great kid.”
“How the hell do you know what he was like?”
“That day at the rodeo. He was very patient with me.”
“But you didn’t learn anything.”
“You never know. How’s your fisherman?”
“Needy.”
“And?”
“We’re doing an exhaustive search now for another fisherman, using some of the money that’s just come in.”
“We?”
“Some people who want to save the bay. Why should I tell you any of this?”
“Because I feel personally betrayed. You worked for us.”
“I did.”
“What now? Is this the end of our friendship?”
“I didn’t know we had a friendship. You said I was the help.”
“I shouldn’t have been so aggressive at the Smith Tower. But you threw me. That was a complete surprise, Brunella. Tell me it was just a lapse, a brain warp of some sort.”
“It wasn’t. I could not in good conscience write off Salmon Bay after we knew there was somebody still working down there.”
“Oh, please.”
“Believe what you will. That fisherman and I, we are connected by water.”
“You said that.”
“I suppose I should apologize.”
“At the least.”
“I’m sorry, Ethan. That’s the professional side of me talking. Not the heart.”
“You know what this means. You may never get a big job on the West Coast again. We could sue you as well. Breach of contract.”
“You paid me to be your conscience, and look what happened. That’s not a breach. C’mon, Ethan, we have no past in this city. We erase everything.”
“Maybe for good reason. Mr. Kornflint wants to add something better.”
“And how authentic will it be?”
“Authentic? I don’t see that word in the building code.”
“Here we’ve got this great history, all these Scandies who fled Northern Europe and created a community where people passed on skills that date to . . . to the Vikings, for God’s sake! It would be one thing if it was completely gone. But it’s not. This guy Duff, yeah, he stinks and looks like a dufus. But he’s the real deal, the living link to this terrific past that we’re just supposed to junk like an old couch.”
