The Winemaker's Daughter, page 19
“I brought you something,” she says, handing him a wrapped gift.
“I’m . . . not supposed to take anything from the subjects of an investigation.”
“I didn’t know I was a subject.” She edges nearer, whispers, “Open it up.”
“I have some news,” he says.
“Can it wait?”
He opens the package and finds a liter bottle with light green fluid inside, which puzzles him.
“Olive oil. Cold pressed, sent by a cousin in Umbria. Look at the deep wonderful green of the oil, Leon; it’s fruity. You won’t believe the taste. This is the only smuggling we still do in the Cartolano family.”
He stands, raising his hands as if he has touched contraband.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Tell me your news.”
He unrolls a diagram that covers most of his desk, and his hand brushes her thigh, though she does not move. The paper shows the aquifer, the canals, and the wells drilled throughout the coulee. “Let me show you something. I’ve been going over these schematics I found. You see here . . . where the water was coming out of the ground and into that mystery pipe. We haven’t been able to find the source of that water, but we do know where it’s going.”
“That’s great news.”
“The water is channeled downhill—just at the edge of this scheme— through a connection that runs through the crest and down to the Columbia, where it is being stored.”
“Stored? Who’s the owner?”
“The tribe.”
“Jesus. What the hell are they doing with it?”
“I don’t know. They’ve got a construction project on that site, a big development listed on the permit as a cultural and commercial center, and they got a request in for—let me check this now—” He finds another notebook. “Ten thousand acre-feet.”
“That’s a lot of water.”
“A ton. But for my purposes, the big question is: Who was hoarding that much water to begin with, before the tribe got hold of it?”
“I think it’s obvious—the same people hoarding it now. You’re not going to ignore the tribe?”
“Of course not. The other thing I checked was the reservoir, the one up on the hill that you saw last summer, by Gorton’s place. I checked the helicopter pilot from the Johnny Blackjack. He confirmed what he said earlier, about the smoke being too thick to get in there. Then he told me something else. Now, you say that pond was full, yes?”
“On the morning of our party, I went for a run, and I’m sure I saw it.”
“And we had the same information; that’s why the chopper was sent in there. But this pilot—he said he got a pretty good look at the reservoir, and it was empty on that day.”
“Drained! Like I thought! Oh, Leon, this means the bucket drop that could have held down the fire and given those smoke jumpers some breathing room was never made because—” She is pacing when he interrupts her.
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s . . . a wrinkle. Very curious, somewhat troubling. We have to find the source of that water now going to the tribe: see who owned it, see what was going on with this—with what looks like a very sophisticated act of hydraulic manipulation.”
“A water grab, you mean.”
“I have decided to hold back signing off on the report until I can get back there to take one more look and connect the water to a sequence leading up to the fire.”
“Thank you.”
“I have—uh, one question.”
“Yes?”
“What do you do with this stuff?” He holds the bottle like an alien object.
“Olive oil? You bathe in it.”
“Seriously?”
She smiles, allowing his imagination to drift beyond the Forest Service office. “Leon, you pour a little bit in some soup. You dip your bread in it. You smell it. You pay homage to—to Sonny Sixkiller with it. Are you doing anything tonight? I’d be happy to give you a baptism in olio di oliva.”
“I have a meeting. Regional foresters.”
“Don’t you ever go home?”
“Thanks for the gift.”
“You’re lonely, but who isn’t? If you fill up your life with enough fuss and schedule, you won’t have to face the empty—”
“We’re done here.”
She builds a fire, turns up Sinatra, and sings a duet for the first five songs. She is drinking from a bottle of Valpolicella Classico, the heady ripassa from a small vineyard in the Veneto, nothing like the industrial swill sometimes sold under the same name. The wine is dense, earthy, ripe, and lush, and all the flavors taste bittersweet because there is no one to share it with. Her palate is starting to develop; it took some doing, using her nose to identify the pillars of taste, then separating out fruit and texture. She feels a shudder come over her, the start of a dance without romance, leading to the inevitable self-entertainment, bringing herself to climax.
In the life summary that now forces itself on her this night devoted to the Italian saint of the heart, she comes up short. Too many starts, no finishes. A lot of movement and lurches. She follows her spirit, a guide that seems forever lost, prompting so many urges and omens, most of them unfathomable. Acting on impulse, trying to save a fisherman who is now dead, stirring up another one who probably killed him. What an idiot. She never belonged in Salmon Bay.
She loves the story of Valentine and wishes she had someone to tell it to today. In the midst of several military campaigns, the Roman emperor Claudius II banned marriages, decreeing that his armies would be full of single men, unattached by the heart to anything but Rome. Valentine defied him, performing marriages in secret. He was caught and sentenced to death. On the eve of his execution, he cured the jailer’s daughter of a terrible disease, but it did not save him. As he was led away to death, he left a note to the woman: Your Valentine. It was one of those stories, perhaps no more than half true, that Brunella chose to believe.
Niccolo always said Brunella needed to think more like a man: do a rough draft of her life and then go out and build it. Avoid detours. But she knows she will never be linear and tidy; she could no more stay in the lines than a mountain lion from the Cascade wilderness could learn to love a parking lot. All she really wants is to belong, to see herself in the story, her link in the chain of Cartolanos dating back to an Etruscan feast; to a Roman bath; through years of defying the plague that swept the peninsula like the winter fog of the Po Valley; through the fresh air of the Renaissance to the magnificent chaos of the risorgimento; to the hungry years, the ugly time of fascism, to the wanderings of the last century, the leap across the Atlantic, across the continent to the American far corner, digging a toehold in a new land; then only to play her part, to dig in a little deeper on her own and keep the baton of life moving; to have a baby and say, You are me, and we both belong here. Is it so hard to fit?
Monday afternoon at Salmon Bay, at the unveiling of Kornflint’s final design for the waterfront, the day is clear with a hint of spring. Invisible for the last two weeks, Mount Rainier is out today, beaming off the city skyline like a runway model. Today again Brunella could not look at the city whole and sparkling in late-winter sheen without seeing the Seattle Fault, a basin of soft sediment along a fracture line that must slip, sooner or later, the earth opening and bringing down much of this big new metropolis, making cliffs into beaches, waterfront homes into underwater basements. A string quartet, the musicians clad in running shoes and turquoise stretch pants, plays Vivaldi while waiters deliver café au lait and pastries on a pier where generations of fishermen once mucked about in blood, oil, viscera, and piss. The mayor is here, wearing his Maui tan. A ribbon extends across the pier; behind it is a massive curtain. The promise of an appearance by the hermetic Waddy Kornflint makes for a giddy edginess among the two hundred guests; sentences are half finished as people glance back and forth at the stage, awaiting his arrival.
“I hear he’s adopted a school in the central district,” says a woman. “Almost all black kids.”
A small plane overhead makes three passes before dropping hundreds of tiny parachutes carrying small packages: gifts from Kornflint, each slightly different from the next, as each snowflake is unlike another. They all carry the same inscription, today’s date and this line from Goethe:
ANYTHING YOU CAN DO,
OR DREAM YOU CAN , BEGIN IT.
BOLDNESS HAS GENIUS, POWER,
AND MAGIC IN IT.
Brunella is an honored guest with a reserved seat in the front row, next to the mayor, close enough to Kornflint’s acolytes to smell the smugness. This city that has never known serious corruption revels in a process where the losers are given applause at the winner’s banquet; only a few know they are on the menu. She arrives a few minutes past the designated starting time, with two uninvited guests in tow: Cindy and her mother, Nolanne. The Goddens are flamboyant in heavy makeup, a foundation of leather-colored blush and bruise-purple mascara. Cindy is wobbling on stiletto heels. There’s a fuss at the entrance.
“I’m sorry, they’re not on the list.”
“Oh, they have to be,” says Brunella, motioning for someone from the mayor’s office. “This is their home you’re talking about here,” says Brunella. The slight amplitude of Brunella’s voice, followed by a head nod from the mayoral aide, prompts the usher to give in. Brunella seats Cindy and Nolanne and then mingles, chatting amiably with her former adversaries. She sees her friend Audrey Finkelstein, clustered with the delegation from Tusa & Associates. Audrey greets her as if at a funeral.
“I’m so sorry, Brunella.”
“You look good, Audrey.”
“Do you think so? You’re sweet. Kornflint is going to do something memorable on this dock, Brunella. He’s not going to create another trashy knockoff of those factory waterfront productions you see in Florida. He won’t Disnefy the place.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Audrey. You know my father wants to jump your bones?”
A frail man inside a thick parka taps Brunella’s shoulder.
“Ethan, you’re not going to give me the same speech?”
“Will you do me a favor and reserve judgment on what Mr. Kornflint is putting together here? And when he’s done . . . tell me this is not good for the city.”
The string quartet trails off to light applause as everyone takes a seat. The dock is silent, except for the whine of distant traffic and some jets far overhead. Without introduction, a man with a long ponytail and native beads, draped in a shawl of nineteeth-century coastal Salish frog design, walks to the front and turns to the crowd.
“I am Jamon Hearts Afire of the Duwamish. I have a poem.”
Nolanne whispers to Brunella, “He doesn’t look like an Indian.”
“Shhhhh.”
“As my people walked this land,” says Jamon Hearts Afire, “so must the caretakers who came later learn to tread gently. As my people built their homes here, so must the new stewards shape this land to match our hopes.’’
“Guy looks familiar,” Nolanne says to Brunella. “I think I knew him when his name was Jimmy Hicks. Yeah, that is him: Jimmy Hicks. He ain’t no stinkin’ Indian.”
“Shhhhh.”
When the poet finishes, he sprinkles cedar shavings on the dock—a blessing, he says—and walks away. A long silence follows. Brunella looks up and spots a bald eagle, perhaps the one she saw on a previous visit. The eagle swoops down in a circular pattern toward the pier. An announcer prances to the front of the curtain.
“Thank you, Jamon, for your prayer, your wisdom, your blessing. Now, please, if everybody will look off to the right side of the pier and see the wood ducks. Mr. Kornflint plans to incorporate many of the native species of this bioregion in the habitat that he will create at this wonderful site in the heart of our city. These wood ducks, which Mr. Kornflint believes to be the most beautiful of all migratory waterfowl, are just the start. Mr. Kornflint will carefully inlay a series of nest boxes near the water. Every year, the wood ducks will return to those places, their new homes, courtesy of Mr. Kornflint.
“Now, before our feature presentation, I would like to thank a special guest. Up front, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brunella Cartolano. We thank you for making all of us see the value of the past. Brunella.” He tips his hand; the audience claps; she remains seated.
“Now then. I’m afraid I have one bit of disappointing news.” The host lowers his voice. “Mr. Kornflint has run into a last-minute emergency. Alas, he will not be here.” The wattage dips. “However, we have arranged for him to make an appearance by alternative media. Mr. Mayor, would you come forward, please, and cut the ribbon?”
The mayor takes the scissors and clips the ribbon; as it falls, the massive curtain is pulled back across the broad pier. Murmurs in the crowd turn to gasps—the dry-rotted, oil-stained, slightly listing pier is empty except for one object: a lone purple door, standing like an obelisk of great iconic value. The bald eagle has circled closer to the pier, catching the attention of many in the crowd. People are unsure of what to make of the purple door, but when a single person starts to clap, the crowd follows the cue, two hundred people giving it up for the purple door.
A laser beam shoots down from a corner in the sky; it looks like it’s coming from a radio tower atop Queen Anne Hill. At the end of the beam, an image appears, nearly full-dimensional and multicolored: a rumbled, bearded, extremely thin man in a plaid shirt.
“Mr. Kornflint would like a moment of your time,” the announcer says, pointing with glee to the laser image on the stage.
“Our little tavern down here is gone, but the Purple Door lives,” says the laser-built Kornflint onstage. The image is astonishingly real for broad daylight, a figure formed out of what looks like color and light borrowed from a rainbow. But the vocal quality is odd; the voice sounds manufactured.
“We have taken a bit of history in removing the Purple Door, and we plan to give it an important place in the pantheon of our future. Look for the Purple Door inside our main building.”
Applause, a few murmurs.
“Now—as you know—we have lost our fishermen. But they too have a place in our vision. Just across the bay will be a much more sanitary home for the fishermen of the future. When we are fully built out here, I suggest it will be closer in spirit to the sea than what came before. And you just heard about our wood duck restoration project. Wood ducks, what marvelous creatures! Nature answers to its own rules. We respect those rules in our ruuuhhhh——whooooooo——jigggaaaaaaa . . .”
The bald eagle has started its downward lurch for prey, circling in and out of the laser. Every time the bird goes through the laser, the image of Waddy Kornflint is splintered and the voice wobbles, rendering it incomprehensible. The eagle is aiming directly for the wood ducks. The charge of the predator creates a panic among the small birds, their bloodred beaks and matching eye circles all aflutter. A burst of feathers and squawking seems a pathetic response. They circle tightly together as the eagle slows its descent, pausing in the middle of the laser. After several moments of screechy confusion, the laser disappears entirely. The emcee returns to the stage.
“I’m terribly sorry about the technical trouble,” he says. “It appears we can no longer carry Mr. Kornflint’s address. But we will have something on-line later today.”
Brunella is the first to stand. She reaches for Cindy and Nolanne and leads them to the mayor.
“Mr. Mayor,” she says. “I’d like you to meet Cindy and Nolanne Godden.” The mayor does not rise; he looks to an aide for help. “Our fishing community.”
Cindy rolls her eyes. Nolanne gives a thumbs-up.
“Duff is dead, God rest his soul. But this pier has life in it yet. These women have fishing in their blood. They’ve lived down here all their lives, and they helped to bring in the last big haul of salmon to this pier—Duff’s legacy. They plan to keep his boat seaworthy. And because there are two of them, they are, in fact, a community.”
The mayor stands and waits for an aide to step between him and the heavily made-up fishing Goddens. He whispers something.
“And with this mother-and-daughter community,” Brunella says, “we will be seeking a temporary restraining order to keep this pier from becoming another memory hole.”
But before the mayor can decide how to respond, either to the lost laser image of Waddy Kornflint or to the sudden appearance of Salmon Bay’s unknown fishing community, his attention is drawn to the side of the pier, to the splash and frenzied squawking in the water where the magnificently full-colored wood ducks are cowering in a circle. Now the eagle dives for the hapless ducks, claws fully extended. The big predator makes two runs, missing on both. On the next attempt, the eagle grabs a wood duck by the neck, punctures a vein that squirts blood over the tan-and-white breast, and carts the hapless victim away, off to tall trees near the locks, away from the purple door and the string quartet and the French waiters and the stunned crowd on the pier, waiting still for an image of the civilized Seine on Salmon Bay.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IN THE SPRING, the mountains shed their snow early, exposing tree stumps on the floor of the high reservoirs in the Cascades and leaving the land naked. The governor declares an emergency, water rationing across the state, telling people the green will disappear this year and fish will die and the lights may not even come on in some places. The rituals of the season move forward, tentatively, but it’s like walking in the dark in a strange room. Brunella holds a party under a full moon for everyone who helped her in the fight against Kornflint. She cooks up piles of ravioli and grills halibut cheeks outside and opens a case of Cartolano wine, the early-release blend that Angelo makes as a vino da tavola. She invites Leon, who doesn’t show, and she invites Ethan, who does, but he leaves early without saying goodbye. She dances late with people whose names she will not remember in a week and drinks too much wine and forgets to close the grill on the deck, leaving crisp charred hunks of halibut for the raccoons, who cart away every scrap.
The next morning, the sun comes over the Cascades and wakens her in the way that a sheriff with a flashlight can snap to life a sleeper in the backseat of a car. She hears a banging on the door and stumbles downstairs in a woozy daze to find Leon Treadtoofar in pressed Forest Service shorts.
