The Winemaker's Daughter, page 13
She flies up the stairs, runs outside across the courtyard, past the fountain and the rose garden. In mid dash, she slips on the wet ground, falling face first in the mud. The door is open in the stone cellar—the new cellar, they call it—built when Angelo was starting to feel flush. Inside, she sees an ax on the floor with red on the blade, and wine running in a stream, pulled toward the drain. The cellar smells of raw leather and oak, an overwhelming scent.
“What happened here?”
Miguel moves a barrel perforated with bullet holes, slashed at one end. He taps it. “Empty.” He does the same thing to several other casks, all of which have been violently ripped open and drained.
“Where are you, Babbo?” Brunella shouts.
“This is the gold-medal vintage,” says Miguel. “Somebody has destroyed us. It’s all gone. They even took the hen. You know the shed, Brunella; somebody must have broken in. There are feathers all over the floor. We have to call the sheriff.”
Brunella staggers outside, her shoes drenched in gold-medal wine, face caked with mud. The clouds are gone, and a heavy wind cleans out the coulee, a dry northerly breeze. The highest flank is burnished by the last light of the day, and it draws her upward. She wanders up to the edge of the coulee, where she looks out over the storm-scuffed vineyards of the Cartolano estate, away to the far west, where Mount Stuart is aglow.
At dusk, on her walk back, a wisp of smoke comes from the house. She can smell it before she enters: sausage blended with garlic and tomatoes. She finds her father standing over the stove, the old man directing a quartet of burners.
“Ho fame,” says Angelo.
“Where have you been?”
“Ho fame.”
“Me too. Is it—?”
“S. Pappardelle con salsiccia e pomodoro.”
He makes his tomato sauce the Bolognese way, browning thick spicy sausages in order to draw out the juices that form the stock. He empties a basket of tomatoes into boiling water, rumbling them just long enough so the skins will slide off easily. Then he smashes the peeled cored tomatoes and throws them in a bigger pan, which contains juices from the sausage. Into this mix go garlic, oregano, chopped onions, and a handful of basil leaves.
“It’s so simple I could make this blind,” says Angelo.
“And this?” She sniffs at a giant pot, stuffed with a large slow-simmering bird.
“My old girlfriend from the shed.”
“Not—?”
“S. Gallina vecchia fa buono brodo.”
“Of course,” she says, tearing up. “An old hen makes a good broth. I’m so happy to see the life has returned to you, Babbo.”
Brunella points to a bandage wrapped around Angelo’s thumb. “I cut myself with an ax,” he says.
“An ax? It was you who did all that damage in the cellar?”
“I think I got rid of it all. Two rounds from the Luger, finished off with the ax.”
“Why would you ever—?”
“Because I cheated. Don’t think any less of me, Nella, but I cheated last year. I took a shortcut. I tried to oak-chip the wine, to do in a few months what should take years because I was afraid it would be weak and not up to my name. We had so little water last year, I got scared, and then I got greedy and used more water than I’m supposed to take—”
“Your charts?”
“S. You saw them? Let me explain. I almost flooded the vineyard last year, but you want to know something? It didn’t help. It made things worse. The grapes were shit. Today I asked God to forgive me, and maybe he will. I don’t know about God anymore, because I heard nothing back.”
“You destroyed the best American wine of the year?”
“Says who? The French and those wine people who flock to Bordeaux like pigs to their slop? What do they know?”
“What do they know? Food, wine, and love, for starters, Babbo, but then—”
“They hide the true taste of their food in all that sauce, Nella. You think they would ever cook an old hen like this, just for the juice? Their so-called best wines are overrated and overpriced. Their true best wines are unknown. You give me a little vino of the country—I forget what they call them—from the south. Per amore, why do you think the French invented perfume? Same reason they cover a decent piece of meat in a blanket of sauce. I’m done with it. It’s gone—all of last year’s vintage— gone, back into the ground. Finito. Morto.”
“That’s why you wanted to start fresh, with Niccolo and this year’s crop?”
“S.”
“So this is what, your feast of thanks?”
“My appetite came back. But the reason I’m hungry, Nella, is because I feel like a man again.”
A woolen fog holds the coulee air down at night, just at the freezing point, and when it lifts in midmorning the vineyard looks glorious, as if everything has been scoured new by the storm. When Brunella opens the window upstairs she hears a bell ringing from somewhere out in the vineyard and her father singing.
He appears in waders and suspenders, wearing his sweat-salted Mariners cap, with a basket full of grapes. He says it is a morning like fall in the Piemonte, when the fog—the nebbia that gives the vines of Barolo its name—rolls out over the hills. Angelo nibbles on little bunches of grapes. Reflectively, he swishes the mash around in his mouth, wrinkles his nose, spits, and takes another bite. He nods in satisfaction. Now he squeezes one bunch at a time, holding the grapes tight, then slowly letting his grip go, testing the resistance. He drops the basket and slaps his hands.
“It’s time,” he says. “Don’t let us waste a minute. It’s time. L’uva è matura.”
In the Cartolano vineyard, the picking has always been done by hand. Many growers use mechanical sorters, which look like the kind of four-wheeled rig used to shave brush from a roadside and can clean a row of grapes in minutes. But the industrial harvest runs the risk of breaking seeds, which can impart a bitter substance. The Cartolanos equip their pickers with handheld shears and teach them to cut the grapes at a forty-five-degree angle on the stem about three inches from the cluster.
“Mettiamoci al lavoro!” Angelo says to Brunella, his call to work, handing her a basket and shears, revved up for the harvest. Perhaps a third of this year’s fruit was lost to the storm, but Angelo is anything but heartbroken. The grapes still hanging are robust and flavorful—the survivors. The storm, he says, was nature’s way of culling out the inferior fruit.
“And look here,” he says, picking a single grape and holding it up to the light, “they should all be this good. No cracks. No leaking juice. No sunburn.”
In the course of a long day, the picking crew brings in nearly half the grapes. They are not washed, so that that the powdery resin remains; it contains a natural yeast that helps with the kind of fermentation used in making the great Barolos. Angelo believes there are some very good winemakers with excellent palates, but no great ones—only great grapes. It is the winemaker’s job to see that the fruit lives to tell its full story.
Most of the day’s harvest goes immediately into the crusher, where the stems, seeds, and skins are flattened into a thick pulp, the mosto, as Angelo calls the initial phase of unfermented juice. Nebbiolo’s color comes from the skin and is released during the crush. Bees swarm around the fruit; it is a constant fight to avoid getting stung.
Brunella tells her father about her discovery.
“I saw an enormous amount of water, Babbo, coming from underground and then being channeled off somewhere,” she says. “Do you know anything about it?”
Angelo shakes his head.
“Right up there on the ridgeline.”
“That does not sound right.” There is only one natural source of water in this parched bowl, he explains: a small aquifer deep in the ground, which feeds into the little salmon stream at the edge of the Cartolano land and from which the wells in the coulee draw their extra water. The irrigation water that brings everything to life starts with the Columbia River, he tells her, just behind the Grand Coulee Dam. A massive siphon sucks the water three hundred feet up from the reservoir behind the dam and directs it downhill into what used to be the hollowed-out tub of the original Grand Coulee. From there, it goes into several major arteries, moving out in all directions, and then breaks into a series of smaller canals that lead to ditches and ultimately to the coulee.
“Nobody runs water up from the ground and back into the ground, Nella,” he says.
“But I saw it, Babbo. Up on the bench.”
“Who knows what you saw,” says Angelo, poking his hand into the mosto. “Take a look at that color, Nella. You may not see that again in your lifetime. God, that’s wonderful!”
Alden Kosbleau shows up again on day two of the harvest, ready to help. Angelo is happy to see his old friend, the water king. Kosbleau tells the Cartolanos about his winter plans: He will go to Belize to fly-fish in the saltwater shallows, followed by a six-week cruise of the Caribbean.
“Provided, of course, that nothing holds me here,” he says. “You haven’t got some trouble brewing, do you, Brunella? I hear you’ve been talking to the government.”
“You hear . . . ?”
“Talking to the government. Let me tell you something, born out of experience: You let a rapist into your house before you let those bastards cross the threshold.”
“But you yourself talked to the investigator,” Brunella says to Kosbleau.
“Just long enough to size him up.”
At the end of the day, the grapes are all in and the mosto has been transferred to big open vats. Some vintners add yeast and sugar at this stage, hoping to make slightly more alcohol and produce a bigger, more fruit-forward wine. Angelo prefers to let the juice become wine in the way Italians have done since the Etruscans stored grape juice in terra-cotta jugs. He simply lets the sugars and yeast go at it, making alcohol. The mosto undergoes primary fermentation in big stainless-steel tanks and must be punched down by hand around the clock. The tanks are filled to within a foot of the top, allowing for expansion during the most vigorous stage of fermentation. Alden, Miguel, and Brunella take turns punching down the heavy material that floats to the top, but otherwise they leave it alone.
“This vintage will be Niccolo’s,” Angelo says. “And with this wine he will never leave us.”
Now that the heavy work is over, Brunella prepares to go home, leaving the winemaking to her father, with some help from Alden Kosbleau.
“I want to thank you for what you’ve done, Alden. You are like family.”
“I am family,” he says. “As much as any non-Italian can be family.”
“So, you watch over my father, okay? Don’t let him do anything stupid.”
“He watches over me. He’s afraid I’m going to outlive him and get that bottle in your cellar.” He moves closer to her, confidential. “Brunella. Tell me what the government is trying to do to you. Maybe I can help. I’ve given an untold amount of money to a lot of political campaigns over the years, and I’m not without connections in Congress.”
“It’s all around the coulee. You know the kind of questions.”
“They’re blaming it on Niccolo, aren’t they? Is that what that Indian bastard is trying to do?”
“I’m not sure where he’s going, Alden. He’s just . . . doing a job. But I will clear the family name.”
“So you must. And that’s what took you up to the bench a couple days ago?”
“How did you know about that?”
“I sold that two-oh-sixer Gorton a couple thousand acre-feet of water a few years ago, when it looked like the Indians planned to start going after our water. He’s a nervous Nellie, like most of these dumb shit heels from the city, so he’s always calling me before he lets his brain kick in. Somebody saw you up on the ridge, near his place, and he called me. Said you were snooping.”
“Is that what they call a passeggiata?” says Brunella.
“I may be like family, but my Italian’s not so good.”
“I took a little walk. But I know what I saw up there.”
“And what was that?”
“Enough water coming out of the ground to flood this coulee up to my father’s porch.”
“Out of the ground?”
“Yes, and then right back into the ground.”
“And you saw this?”
“I did.”
“Did you talk to your father about it?”
“Only in passing. His mind’s on other things.”
“Did you tell the Indian about it?”
“No. What do you make of it, Alden?”
“Wasn’t supposed to be much water left up there. But I’m never surprised anymore, Brunella, by anything in the water game. People think it’s static, like property. Tell you what: There isn’t any such thing as still water. Another thing, what you see ain’t what there is. Most of the water in this en-tire basin is out of sight, underground. That’s how folks get confused. They only see what’s on the surface. Did you get pictures, documentation?”
“No. But we can go up there now, if you want, and I’ll show you.”
“I believe you. Let me look into it.”
On the drive out she passes the old Flax homestead. Two teams of Indians are working in the burned-over orchards, dismantling the irrigation pipes that brought water to the apples. At the spot where the family home was torched, some Indian women have set up food next to a big bonfire. They are cooking hot dogs on cedar sticks planted in the ground and placed next to the fire. Brunella stops to chat, asking about their plans for the old Flax farm.
“We don’t have any plans,” says a large woman, middle-aged, in a T-shirt that barely covers her belly with LAS VEGAS written over the front. “We have hope.”
“For what?”
“Starting something. Giving some water back to the salmon. Getting people to think about the future.”
The woman asks Brunella to join them, pointing with open hands to quarts of Diet Coke, pitchers of lemonade, fruit pies, flatbread, corn that’s been seared on the fire, bowls of chips.
“As you know, we Indian people come from a long line of Diet Coke drinkers,” the woman tells Brunella, and all the other Indian women laugh. “But before that, before the Europeans came, we were Pepsi drinkers.”
She stops at the coulee’s edge, the asphyxiated stream where she saw the dead fish. This is home, the birthing waters and the grave, for the run of chinooks—the Coulee Kings—that keeps Duff in business. She might be able to save Duff ’s pier, she thinks, but what about this little ribbon of life? Without water, the fish will return to an arid death. It will be the end of the line. A thought occurs to Brunella: Maybe Ethan was playing her, and the reason he agreed to come to the coulee in August was to check on the stream that might have stood in the way of Kornflint’s project. He wasn’t curious about the West of rodeos, mountain meadows, and thunderstorms. He wanted to track a salmon run to its source. Or maybe not. How could he have known about Duff and the stream?
Crossing the river, she is puzzled by the expanding foundation of the Indian construction site. The footings cover several acres. Bulldozers are excavating basalt and clay and moving it onto trucks, creating an enormous primitive pit. She detours to a cliff, passing the homestead she saw with Ethan late in the summer, to the dead-end road beyond the fence. She gets out of the car and walks to the high rock perch above the Columbia. She shivers in the wind, looking for the familiar petroglyphs. She touches them, as before, and feels a current, as before, from the etched image of three humans, lively on the rock, chasing antlered animals. But they look flat today, less telling, hiding their story in the stone.
CHAPTER NINE
THE CITY FEELS sleepy at midmorning, ferries tracking back and forth across the impressionist Puget Sound, nobody raising a voice or honking a horn in the filtered sunlight. Brunella is glad to be back in the urban fold. Her routine takes her to Pike Place Market, to banter with the guitar-playing bluesman in front of the brass pig and to trade sex jokes with the fish merchant who sells giant clams, the geoducks that her father craves and that make tourists blush. Walking through the market, she ducks to avoid a fish tossed across the aisle to the counter. And when the salmon are not flying at head level, they are lighting alleys in bright neon, or holding candles in craft stalls, or going uphill, embedded in the sidewalk. An anthropologist new to the Pacific Northwest would find more fish icons than crucifixes.
At lunch, she orders iced tea and shellfish gumbo and tells her friend how good she looks. Audrey Finkelstein is Brooklyn born, dressed in a short black skirt and tights, her hair a cataract of midnight curls. Audrey and Brunella used to share a cubicle at the most promising design firm in Seattle, Tusa & Associates. When it seemed certain that the big public market downtown was going to be bulldozed, the young architects at Tusa led the cause to save it. The firm had gone on to design buildings that reached into the clouds, to draw schools, museums, and summer homes, enclosing dreams in timber and glass for the city’s new wealthy class. Their prosperity had made most of the architects flush, paunched, and politically powerful, though they seldom took risks anymore.
Audrey is obsessing about her latest passion, scuba diving. She spent the weekend underwater near the San Juan Islands, playing with octopi.
“They’re not that stupid, for mollusks,” she says. “Very selective in what they nosh on. The bigger ones, they’re like my Uncle Izzy at a wedding.”
“And this is somebody, I imagine, whose pants are pulled above his waist—”
“He has no waist. Just three expanding chins and a tush.”
“When is the last time you were with a man, Audrey?”
“Why?”
“Forget the question. So here’s my pitch for the Yodas at Tusa: Are you familiar with that little hangout called Hat ’n’ Boots? It was the drive-in for the postwar generation, and now it’s a part of quirky Seattle that’s slipping away, the Seattle of the Dog House and the Jell-O Mold building and—”
“Brunella, I don’t think Hat ’n’ Boots—or for that matter, the Dog House or the Jell-O Mold building—would ever meet the criteria for landmarking.”
