The Winemaker's Daughter, page 17
“Yes, in many ways.” He sips and sniffs again; the wine dribbles down his chin. He has his facial color back, the blush of a new father one day out of the delivery room. “See if you can taste where this is going.”
She sips, runs the young wine across her tongue, shrugs in frustration.
“I can’t tell.”
“What you taste in the front of the tongue will be different from the back. Now tell me what you taste.”
“You know I don’t have your gift, Babbo.”
“Close your eyes and try again.”
“I can’t be Niccolo, dammit!”
He looks away, the joy gone from his face. She apologizes for snapping at him.
“Let me ask you something, Nella: What did Niccolo mean at the party when he said he was going to be a winemaker with humility?”
“I think he was talking about listening to the land, not trying to force something.”
“Ah, s. And let me ask you something else: Those people at VinFaire, they said the wine was like shoe leather . . . in the face?”
“No, Babbo. Shoe leather on the nose.”
“I don’t understand shoe leather on the nose. I tasted many barrel samples of that wine before I destroyed it all and I don’t remember this shoe in the face.”
She takes another sip of Niccolo’s vintage, slowly letting some air into her mouth, closing her lips, swishing gently before she spits. “There’s a lot of fruit here.”
“S. S. Molto frutta. Very big in the front. What else?”
“Tannins are . . . strong.”
“S. S. Backbone. Strength. A long life ahead of it. Now tell me about the mouth feel.”
She takes another sip and rolls it with her tongue. “It’s intense, but it’s also a little . . . chalky.”
“What’s that last word?”
“Chalky. Like the soil.”
“Ah, s. Chalky. Molto bene. You’re tasting the land. You know what I think? Well, I don’t know for sure what to make of this wine, Brunella”— he slaps his hands and grins—“but I think, because these grapes were so stressed by the drought and then culled by the storm, what we have left is . . . the best. The strongest. You know what that means, Nella?”
He lowers his voice to a reverential whisper, as if letting her in on a confidence.
“Niccolo’s vintage has a story.” He claps his hands together again and kisses his daughter. “Oh, I cannot wait!” He does a little dance, a jig up and down the cellar. “I need a woman. Sono allupato.”
“What?”
“Your friend you used to work with, I met her at your house in Seattle. Audrey something, with that little skirt. Is she still a woman like the one I saw at your house?”
“Babbo, she’s half a century younger than you.”
“And that Mormon girl in Wenatchee?”
“Emma?”
“S, Emma. Oh, boy, she has the look of hunger in her eyes, and I love that red hair. She must have red hair . . . everywhere! Imagine!”
“Take a nap this afternoon, Babbo. Maybe the lust fairies will pay you a visit. What happened at the irrigation meeting last night?”
“I couldn’t listen anymore, Nella. Mrs. Flax was there, leading them on.”
“Teddy’s mother? I thought she moved into town with her cats and faded away.”
“Acch—she’s gone mad. She’s boiled up all the time. Same with everybody. It’s becoming a mob that wants blood.”
“And wasn’t there some counselor there, sent by the government?”
“A doctor with a big fat bag and a bunch of big fat words to go with his big fat bag.”
“And what did he say?”
“He wants everyone to take some pills to make us numb.”
Waiting for Leon Treadtoofar inside the café, Brunella eats French toast with watery berries and sips from a large glass of tomato juice. She is the only woman in a restaurant full of pink-faced men in baseball hats. Trophy heads of elk, deer, bison, and goat stare back at her from the wall, a glassy-eyed audience. A television with stock quotes blares in the background. The goat looks particularly lost. The waiter slides a petition in front of Brunella while refilling her coffee.
“You a registered voter?”
“Yes.”
“Live in this state?”
“Yes.”
“You want to save your entitlements?”
‘That depends.”
“We’re talking about our dams, lady. Our water. Our people who are being driven off the land. You want some cheese on that French toast?”
“Cheese?”
“It comes with it.”
“What does this petition do?”
“Makes everybody equal.” He puts down the coffeepot and leans into her face. “No special rights for Indians. You see what they’re building down there on the river, that big construction project, with a goddamn dome of some sort covering the ground? What do you think they’re up to? They’ve been getting our water, sucking the upper basin dry, for whatever the hell it is they’re building down there on the river. Some kinda cultural center, huh? They went around buying up water rights, making like they were somebody else, like they were gonna farm. And now they can just tell us to go to hell, ’cause they got the water and they got the government on their side. And they got special rights.”
“Treaties.”
“Yeah, I got a treaty too. It’s called the Constitution.”
“That’s enough coffee, thank you.”
Leon arrives, head to toe in Forest Service green, visibly nervous. The men in the café all turn toward him, no concession in their eyes.
“Let’s sit in the corner,” he says to Brunella, without greeting her.
“Did you eat?”
“No . . . do you have time? I know you’re anxious to show me something in the coulee, but I need something in my stomach.”
“You look scared.”
“I’m just hungry.”
“Don’t worry about these people, Leon. They’re all talk. Watch.” She slides over to a table of pink-faced men, but Leon gets up and pulls her back before she can say anything.
“I’ve never seen you so unsure,” she says to him.
“Let’s talk about the water. I want to get this field trip done and still leave enough time to make it home to Seattle by evening.”
“What’s at home?”
“That water you say is up on the ridge above the coulee, it’s not in the blueprints of the irrigation master plan. They got a good-sized aquifer in there, which might be a little low because of the drought and heavy draws from the wells. But the main artery—in fact, the thing that keeps everybody alive—is the spur off the Grand Coulee. Dates to ’52, I think, a canal that runs along the coulee. It’s been drawn down the last years for endangered species regs. That’s it for water in that coulee. Do we have a waiter?” He flags for help.
“You’re saying what I saw doesn’t exist?”
“There’s no record of it.”
The waiter arrives but will not look at Leon; he stares at a bison head on the wall as he takes his order. Leon asks for eggs with toast and Coke.
“A Coke?” the waiter says, dismissive. “This early?”
“You’d serve me a Bloody Mary without a question.”
“You want cheese on those eggs?”
“Does it come with it?”
“Cheese comes with everything.”
Brunella’s phone rings and she excuses herself. “Yes . . . yes, I haven’t been able to reach him for two days. I’m worried. Uh-huh . . . And what does the Coast Guard say? Okay, please keep me informed, and thank you.”
She explains to Leon about Duff Almvik. Nobody has been able to raise him by radio or cell phone. The Coast Guard has been dispatched to his last location near Whidbey Island.
“Apparently they don’t serve Indians in this café,” he says.
“Leon, of all the things you’ve said to me in the last four months, there’s one thing I can’t get out of my mind,” she says.
“What’s that?” His eggs arrive, scrambled and cold, with a small pond of half-melted cheese atop them.
“About Niccolo: You said a hundred and fifty years ago they would hang him.”
“I didn’t mean to be cruel.” Mouth full, nervous glances back at the table of men.
“You make him sound like a criminal.”
“You want some of this?” She shakes her head. “I’m a man of science. I’m very clumsy about people’s feelings. I’ve never been very diplomatic.”
“Does that mean the charm offensive is officially over? Look, all I ask—all I’ve wanted from the start—is for you to be open-minded.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Three sharp blasts come from outside, like a car backfiring, loud enough to pierce the walls of the café. A truck screeches away. One of the pink-faced men smirks, whispers to the others. Leon gets up slowly, puts money on the table, and walks outside. One of the rear tires in his Forest Service truck has been blown out by gunfire.
A half foot of snow on the upper ridge makes it hard for Brunella and Leon to make it to the crest. They slip back with every step, like walking up a sand dune. Wind is blowing from the north with a bite, scattering snow in horizontal slaps. The vineyards below form distinct rows in their dormancy—scraggly brown vines lined along the broad-sloping shoulders of the snow-covered coulee. The other side of the coulee, the steep river wall, is untouched by sun during the winter. Brunella pauses next to one of the few big trees not destroyed in the fire, a ponderosa pine, its bark scarred.
“Even after the fire,” she says, sniffing the air, “you can still smell the butterscotch of these yellow bellies.”
“We logged most of these early on,” says Leon. “Pine was thought to be a weed by the Service. And then we planted it in fir. As the firs grew, they shaded out the young pines.”
He tells her how a century of trying to put out every fire has thrown the natural cycle out of whack. Sage grouse have disappeared. The migratory birds that stopped at the coulee’s edge twice a year are a fraction of what they used to be. There is little food for the elk herd that migrates down from the high country in winter to graze during the coldest months. In the summer, beetles prey on weakened trees, aphids choke off the life of perennials before they ever hit their technicolor peak. The conditions are ripe for a catastrophic blowup. But how much of that is the fault of the Forest Service, or the life-killing drought, or something larger?
She grabs his hand and guides him to a flat rock, brushing snow away to make room for both of them. “Sit.”
“No, let’s continue.”
“I want to show you something down below. Get your breath. Relax. Your face seems so stressed; bring that Forest Service butt over here and let me tell you a small story. Do you see our house? We were the first people here. My father came as a boy, a refugee from the internment camp at Missoula, and he built the house in a place where cold never gathers because of the fog. Ingenious to recognize that, I think. And see . . . see where he planted his first vines. He put in windbreaks, the poplars and cottonwoods, up higher, to protect the vines, and topped it all off with a little stone chapel. In some ways this coulee is like a painting that is never finished. He just keeps putting new brushstrokes on the canvas.”
“I admire him,” says Leon. “But you’re wrong about one thing. He was not the first.”
“Oh, yes, he was. I’ve seen the county records. Nobody put so much as a phantom homestead in this coulee until the water came.”
“You’re lobbying me.”
“I’m telling you a small story, the Cartolano story. But yes, if you want me to bare my heart, I’m begging you, Leon. You have to keep looking. You can’t close us out with that hasty summary blaming Niccolo.”
“There were people here, Brunella, but they were scared of this coulee. The Sanpoil share a myth that Coyote took three women as his wives in here.”
“This coulee?”
“Yes, right down there where your father built his house and planted his vines. Coyote would lure them in with the hope that they could be his bride, for he was a handsome man when he wanted to change himself into something. The women, once they made love with him, lost their beauty and had to wander. Harsh, huh?”
“You believe that?”
“In Indian country, every place has a creation myth.”
“Italians are the same way.”
“You asked me if I believe. The answer is no. I’m a forester, Brunella.”
“But you believe in Big Ernie?”
“Every forester believes in Big Ernie.”
They hike along the dry fresh snow at the edge of the burned forest, to the highest reach of the coulee, where the new vineyards put in by Gregory Gorton meet the burned-out land. Spindrifts of snow grate in their faces. Brunella picks up the pace. She stops in her tracks, cups her ear.
“Listen.”
“I do hear something. Like a creek.”
“Not a creek. Follow me, Leon.”
She hurries around a big boulder and comes to a stop. She feels triumphant. “See!” Water gushes up from the ground and enters a rusting pipe that channels it back into the earth. Ice has formed around the pipe. Leon is taken aback. The snow is flying so thickly now they cannot see the coulee below.
“Where did this come from?”
“The flow is much smaller than the first time I saw it.”
He removes a video camera from his backpack and begins to record the scene.
“Do you know whose land this is?” he asks.
“It’s Forest Service, isn’t it?”
“No, the boundary is about a quarter mile from here, if my map is right. I think this land belongs to your neighbor. It’s vital that we find out. This water is not on any of the hydrology maps. And where the hell does it go?”
She kisses him on the cheek as he videotapes the scene.
“I’m sorry, I’m just . . . excited. Now you believe me.”
“It doesn’t prove anything.”
“In the report, you quote an exchange between my brother and the Incident Commander.”
“Yes, Niccolo asked the IC for a bucket drop.”
“And you remember what happened: The helicopter never came.”
“Smoke on the ground. He couldn’t find the reservoir your brother was talking about.”
“Reservoir? I’ll show you that reservoir.” She pulls him by the hand around another boulder and points to a deep depression, covered like the rest of the ground with snow.
“That’s your reservoir—bone dry.”
“So it’s been drained for the season. Most growers do that in the winter. This storm is starting to chew at me.”
“It was full in August. I went for a run on the day of my father’s party, and I saw it.”
“We don’t know.”
“Leon! What do you mean we don’t know?”
“We don’t know until we follow the water at both ends. See where it came from and see where it’s going, and maybe this tells us something about the bucket drops and maybe it doesn’t. But it’s a sidelight, Brunella. I can’t see how this changes anything.”
“You can’t? If the buckets had been able to get in here, shit—maybe the fire wouldn’t have blown up. Somebody is moving a lot of water back and forth.”
“Like who? I’m not real clear on who stands to gain by stealing water from this coulee.”
“Don’t think like a forester. Think like a thief.”
He resumes videotaping, walking slowly around the pipe, but then he plunges suddenly through thin ice covered in snow, falls away, disappears. It looks like the earth has opened up and taken him.
“Leon!”
Bubbles rise to the surface of the ice-chunked water in what appears to be an old narrow well, but no sign of Leon. She drops to her knees at the edge of the water, lowers her hand, and reaches for him. She pulls back his wet Forest Service wool cap. A minute later, he surfaces, choking, his face a fevered red, ice in his hair, spitting, coughing, and flailing. She lowers her leg into the well while holding tight to the side of the old well.
“Grab on!” He continues to slosh and flop in the water, disappearing again beneath the surface. “Leon, grab my leg, dammit!”
He rises and spits out more ice. “Grab it!” she screams. “I’ve got a good hold.”
He clutches her foot, and she pulls her leg up just enough for Leon to reach a twisted piece of rebar on the inside of the well. He uses that to lift himself over the edge and into the snow. He coughs up water, small bits of ice, and stands, trying to regain his dignity.
“Lost my camera. Forest Service bought it new last month. . . .” His words trail off in a low mumble, and he limps a few feet forward before heading off into the teeth of the storm.
“Wrong way, Leon.”
His hair, his nose, his neck, his coat, his pants, and boots are iced over from the plunge into slushy water. When Leon’s teeth start to chatter, he shakes his head—a snap—as if trying to deny it.
“Can you feel your feet?” She looks into a face contorted by cold. He tries to whistle, his lips purple, not answering her. They fight the frontal force of the windblown snow, slipping often, falling to their knees. Leon’s black hair is thick with white flakes caked on ice.
In the whiteout, Leon is disoriented; Brunella senses the panic of a man without any sense of direction. “I know we’re going downhill, but I can’t tell much else,” he says. “I need to call for help.”
“You’re lost?”
“Yes. Maybe not.”
“Nobody’s going to help us, Leon. Your backpack and camera are somewhere in that well. Follow me. Breathe easy and keep moving. I know we’re close to my father’s house, I would guess maybe less than a mile, on the edge of the coulee somewhere, but we might as well be on top of K-Two, ’cause I can’t see a thing. How are your feet?”
He slips, falls on his stomach, Brunella tumbling on top of him. She sees the fear again, the man of logic and science without a road map. She helps him up, clutching his hand even after he is on his feet. Each step now is a gingerly reach downhill. He is disoriented from the snow and burning cold on his ice-encased face. He seems to be walking in a circle.
“You must let me lead,” Brunella says.
