The Winemaker's Daughter, page 21
“No cable.”
“This was Roberto’s room. He kept it perfect, never a stitch of clothes on the floor or a book out of place. He was born with his hair parted.”
Her nightshirt is oversize and loose, the tops of her breasts visible when she leans over, the nipples outlined through the fabric. A slight breeze through an open window gives her a shiver, her nipples erect. She crosses her legs and starts to sing in a whispery voice.
“Loooo-chela . . . loooo-chela . . .”
Leon tightens, still holding his pen over his notebook. “What’s that you’re singing?”
“An Italian lullaby: lucciola—it means firefly. A family song for us. Loooo-chela . . . loooo-chela.”
“That’s nice,” Leon says. He sets the book down and listens to her. “We have no songs in our family.”
She slides closer to him, spider-walks her fingers down his chest, his stomach, to the edge of the sheets. He puts his hand there to block her. She continues to sing as she stands and slips away. “Sogni d’oro, Leon.”
Angelo is awake at dawn, talking up a storm in the kitchen, when Brunella greets him. He is in his boxers, carrying a full pot of coffee in one hand and a magnifying lens in the other; he barely notices her as he trails off for the climbing room.
“Babbo? Who were you talking to just now?”
“The coffeepot.”
“Does the coffeepot ever talk back?”
“Of course not. Coffee is a living thing, but it can’t talk. Nella, I found a key on the counter, near the pasta bowl. Probably belongs to the Indian.”
“That’s where I left it.”
“You hid the Indian’s car key?”
“Something like that.”
He points to a notepad. “Message for you.”
She tries to read his jittery scrawl on a scrap of paper. “Who is this?” Disbelief in her voice. “Teddy Flax? Can this be right?”
She dials the number, waits; there is no answer, not even voice mail. “Four-oh-six. This is Montana’s area code. Did you talk to him?”
“S, s.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Buon giorno, Signor Cartolano.’ ” Angelo laughs as he imitates Teddy’s voice.
“What else?”
“He said, ‘Come va, Signor Cartolano?’ His accent is terrible, but he’s a quick learner, that boy.”
She’s impatient, takes the coffeepot from his hand. “Babbo, this is important: What . . . did . . . he . . . say?”
“He asked about you. Wanted to know if you had any fishing trips planned this year. Use the royal coachman, he said. I told him about the Indian from the Forest Service, and he seemed to know everything. I told him you looked like a Botticelli painting these days. And he said, ‘Botticelli? I’m looking at better frescoes now than anything you ever had in Italy.’ ”
“Frescoes?” says Brunella. “In Montana?”
“That’s what he said. I told him I’m going to climb Mount Stuart. And I told him we’re going to crush those bastards from Texas, no matter how many players they buy. He didn’t believe the last part.”
She follows her father down the hall, to Niccolo’s room.
“Babbo, Leon’s question last night. You never answered it.”
“What was that?” He walks away from the mountain picture and runs his shaky left hand through his climbing notebook.
“How did you make a world-class wine in the worst drought in a century?”
“I’ll tell you something, Nella: I’ve made much better wines.”
“When?”
“The ’86 is just now starting to show. The ’94 is better than almost any Bordeaux of that year, if you’ll allow me one immodest moment. The ’98 is going to live a long time.” He turns toward her, looking into her eyes for the first time today.
“How did you do it, Babbo?”
“By accident.”
“You mean it wasn’t your fault?”
“No, it was my fault. I overwatered the grapes at the end of that summer. I was afraid because of the drought. The grapes came out very ripe, very fat. Troppo grasso. But that wine had no story. No life ahead of it. It would do nothing in the cellar, and that’s why I oak-chipped it. It’s a— how do you say something when it’s like a big faker?—it’s a lie.”
“And where did you get all the extra water?”
He brushes Brunella’s hair out of her face and strokes her cheeks with the backside of his sandpapery hand.
“Alden Kosbleau helped me. He saw that my grapes were suffering and he—I will never betray him; he’s the most loyal friend I have—he gave me the water.”
“Where did he get it? Tell me, Babbo. I have to know.”
“No, you listen to me, Nella. That year is gone, no matter what they say at VinFaire. Now, let me tell you something about last fall’s vintage. This wine of Niccolo’s is different. I did not try to outsmart the grapes.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHE HAS long ago given up trying to find the voice of God inside a church. Better to listen at the margins of life, at low ebb, in desperation, when the soul is famished, or in the sweet moments, the high notes of triumph. But here she is inside the tattooed space of the Saint Ignatius Mission in Montana, and a scratchy voice is filtering down from among the murals. If it’s not God, it is certainly familiar. She and Leon left the coulee just after breakfast, driving east across the Coeur d’Alene mountains, through the old silver mining country of the Idaho panhandle, the Bitterroot range. More than 150 years ago, the Jesuits wrapped a frame of timber, brick, and Flathead Valley stone around a piece of the Big Sky near the high mountain walls of the Mission Range. Inside, a cleric spent most of his life on his back, painting fifty-eight murals. Brunella realized after thinking about the phone call that Saint Ignatius had to be Teddy’s refuge. It was in the valley where he last lived, the place where he started to build a life just before the fire.
“You found me.”
That voice: Where is it? She is afraid to see what he looks like, afraid—mostly—of her reaction. She scans the painted walls, conjuring images of a blackened and scarred face.
“Teddy, where are you?”
“I can see you. I saw the car approaching.”
Brunella and Leon walk down different sides of the church, heads back, searching the rafters. She tells herself she will not wince if the liquefied nose, chin, and mouth of Teddy Flax appear. She will not show horror or pity. She will be strong and look through the face and find the man she last saw at camp in the Cascades.
“Teddy, I brought a friend. He’s investigating the fire. He’s trying—”
“I know who he is. Sit down, both of you.”
“Aren’t you going to come out? Let me see you, please.”
She stands directly beneath the source of his voice. But looking up, all she can see is another mural. When Teddy speaks again, his vaguely amplified voice comes from another part of the church, in a corner. She moves under that space; still no sign of Teddy. And then the voice emanates from a different section, as if it has bounced from one spot to another. Her image of what he will look like changes every time she hears the voice, from monster to featureless polymorph. Maybe he will have softened. She will look for the eyes, make contact, and let nothing distract her. Remember the boy from the coulee.
She wonders how he has kept himself alive, what the burns have done to his immune system, his ability to sleep. She wonders if he has become an OxyContin addict, floating though life on 150 milligrams a day. She wants to know how a man can disappear. What does he do with his time? How does he live?
“I remember what you said about this church, Teddy, and you’re right: not your usual bleeding Jesuses and haloed Marys,” Brunella says. “Teddy, please come sit with us and talk. We have so much to catch up on.”
Lock on the eyes. Lock on the eyes. She will not betray him, not stare at the skin, not dwell on the scars and the hideous surface. She will remember the hike up to the North Cascades, the day at the Omak Stampede, fishing an alpine lake, reveling in his body, laughing at his jokes, the surprise of his humility.
“Have you seen your folks?” Brunella asks.
“I work in the orchard.”
“So this is home?”
Damn—now it is starting to piss her off. Where is he? She will put a high beam on that face, if she must, and not wince.
Leon Treadtoofar motions for Brunella to quiet. “We need your voice, Ted,” he says. “We need your firsthand account.”
“I’m going to tell both of you something, and then you must leave.”
“You don’t have anything to fear,” says Leon.
“You owe it to Niccolo,” says Brunella. “Please.”
“I owe nothing to Niccolo except a face that looks like it was left in a waffle iron.”
“You think it was his fault?” Brunella asks.
“What I think does not matter. Listen to me and then go.”
They settle into a pew under Brother Carignano’s murals, but Teddy’s voice has now left them. They wait in silence for his message. Five minutes pass. Ten. Fifteen.
“He’s gone,” Brunella whispers to Leon.
“I’m still here.” Teddy’s voice is now behind the altar, though it no longer sounds amplified or projected. He speaks in low, even tones, strained and reedy. Brunella can see a silhouette of Teddy in this dark corner of the church. He’s wearing khakis, a T-shirt. She cannot see his face except for the contours and what looks like a layer or a mask over the front. She tries to find his eyes.
“You came all the way to the Mission Valley to see me. But the answers are just outside your father’s doorstep, Brunella.”
“I don’t understand, Teddy.” She rises from the pew and starts to walk toward him, searching for his face in the silhouette. Does he have hair? Were the follicles seared like the ground in the ghost forest? “Let me be next to you.”
“Don’t come any closer.”
Now she can see the covering on his face, like a clear ski mask with silicone gel underneath, holes cut for the nose, the mouth, the eyes. He wears gloves as well.
“What are you going to do, Teddy? You can’t live your life as an invisible man.”
“I already am.”
“Ted,” Leon begins, turning on a tape recorder as he remains seated, “the day the Johnny Blackjack blew up, you folks had set up some pumps that were airlifted into that forest basin.”
“I have something to tell both of you. But I will not answer questions. You need to go back.”
“Back where?” says Brunella.
“To the fire.”
“I’ve been to the burn zone several times, Ted,” says Leon. “We have it staked and gridded. We’ve taken a lot of soil samples, ash content readings.”
“You’ve done everything except the most obvious.”
“What would that be, Ted?”
“Go back to the fire. Go and see where we died. Go and walk it. Go and hear me scream when my face caught fire. Go and see the Old Man blow up. And while you’re in there, do what you should have done a long time ago.”
“What is that, Ted?” says Leon.
“Bring in a pump. Take some water out of that basin. Then you’ll know what happened.”
They hike toward the ridge the next day. The Cartolano vines, braided with the old hair of seasons past, are starting to show life, the tight-coiled white-and-red buds forcing through the thick wood. The fruit trees are blossoming showy and pink; a swarm of bees holds the morning light; the long curtain of rock on the other side of the coulee is still in shadow. After talking to Teddy, Leon called the Forest Service regional office in Wenatchee and asked them to air-drop a pump into the husk of the Johnny Blackjack fire.
They top the ridge and start to traverse down into the valley toward the burned-out forest. Leon’s stride is almost a gallop, while Brunella slows, afraid to enter the place where her brother took his last breath. The ghost forest smells like a burned mattress that has smoldered on for weeks. Nothing has come back, not a hint of green—just dead trees, a black and gray floor. They drop into the draw at the base of a hill, the place where the fire took a leap and swept upward in an explosion. Brunella hears a voice, very low at first, more distinct as they walk over the ashen ground: the sound of Niccolo in her head, the babble of his last words.
“We don’t need to go any farther, Leon.”
“Of course we do.”
“Let’s go back. I think we know what happened, don’t we?”
“You can go back.”
“Give me a moment, Leon. I just . . . have to get clear.”
Leon checks a map. Small wooden crosses have been staked into the ground where the jumpers died. Here, the Old Man tried to run through the wall of flames to get to the black as Niccolo ordered, only to be consumed by the fireball. Here, the Pendleton ladies, Suzanne and Laura, held the hoses as long as they could before retreating to coffins of their own making. Here fell the Neds, first-timers Dennis, Mack, and Wag, bundles of adrenaline as the heat took them. Here gasped the Indians, Sherman, Wes, Joseph, and Noflight, tough sons of bitches, cooked without making a sound. And over there, on a spot leveled of soil by his burrowing face, is where Niccolo died. She hears the final beats of his heart, the rabbit pulse as his skin started to boil.
“You ever been in a shake-and-bake?” she asks Leon.
“For training. Never in an actual fire.”
“You think you would stay inside and trust it? I mean, it’d be like an oven with the door closed. Or would you run?”
The plane drops a pump and Leon sets it up on the spot where the jumpers made their last stand. He tells Brunella to unwind a hose and then hold it tight, because when the water comes the hose will stiffen quickly and snap around on its own power. He checks a hydrology map, trying to find a seep.
“We know there’s water down below,” he says. “All the snowmelt from this flank seeps into this little basin. Should be lots of pressure. That’s what Niccolo told the IC.” He finds a crevasse between rocks and drops the suction end of the intake hose into the crack. He lowers it about fifteen feet. He leans over the pump and fires it up; the dead basin fills with engine noise.
Nothing comes. Brunella clutches the flat hose just as the Old Man and the Pendleton women and the Neds held theirs, waiting for water to inflate, waiting on deliverance from a machine. She closes her eyes. Leon adjusts the valve on the pump, running it at high speed. He checks his intake valve as well, pushing it down even farther.
“Forget it!” Brunella says. “There’s no water in this basin.”
“There was supposed to be a ton of water under here. A ton.”
Leon cranks the engine to its highest level, an ear-straining whine that fills the dead forest land, bouncing over the rocks. He stands back with his hands on his hips, staring at Brunella with the hose, the full-running pump, the connection to the rock. He holds his hand up to stifle whatever Brunella is trying to say, shakes his head, and shuts the engine off.
“Niccolo didn’t fuck up,” Brunella says.
“Then who did?”
“Why does it have to be somebody?”
“I’ll tell you a secret we never let out of the Forest Service. And you must keep it here, in this graveyard: Big Ernie only takes somebody when there’s a fuckup.”
“Fine, believe what you want. Write what you want. But you can’t blame Niccolo. There’s no water here, and that’s why the pumps couldn’t save them. There was never any water, can’t you see?”
“There’s nothing here now, sure. But there could have been water in here last summer. Would your father know anything about that?”
“I can’t imagine how.”
“Probably the aquifer is down from all those dry winters when it barely snowed.”
“Leon, it’s obvious what Teddy is trying to tell us: Niccolo did not fuck up. Niccolo had bad information.”
“So why would he ask for pumps when there’s no water here?”
“You’re too smart by half. All you need to know is that what killed these jumpers—what killed Niccolo—is what killed this forest. It was dead before they came. The fire just finished it off.”
He takes notes of two more tests, with the same results. The pumps work fine, but they draw no water from this junction of rock, seared earth, and dead trees. They walk back up to the crest of the ridge, arguing the case. Leon still wants to check the tribal water records and make one more trip to Montana to talk to Teddy. Brunella wants him to close the book and write in the words Act of God.
At the ridge, she finds a big boulder, the one they sat on at the start of a blizzard a few months back.
“The well should be somewhere around here,” says Leon. “And I thought the pipe was—oh, there it is.”
“But it looks empty now,” says Brunella. “Nothing coming out of it.”
“You don’t seem very curious anymore.”
“I just think we’re at a dead end.”
“Our well”—he stumbles around, takes a visual reading across the coulee, stops—“should be right here.”
“You’re standing on top of it,” says Brunella, pointing to a patch of fresh sod, a circle, out of place against the still-brown native grass. “Pull that turf back.”
He tugs at the new grass and it lifts away easily from a layer of fresh dirt. He kicks the dirt back until his boot hits a solid surface: cement.
“Capped,” he says. “Somebody capped this well.”
They pace along the ridge, near the edge of the dead forest and the new homes, to a three-story house with high timbered columns in the front, an entrance of glass, a long curving driveway of limestone. Leon went to Gregory Gorton’s house once before, just after the fire, but has not been able to talk to him since then. When they ring the bell, they are met by barking dogs. They try knocking; nobody answers. Brunella walks around the back, toward a garden away from the house, protected from the wind. There she finds Gorton stooped near an immaculately tended row of vines.
Gorton looks up, startled. “You’re trespassing.”
“Excuse me, I’m Brunella Cartolano, your neighbor. We met at my father’s party last year.”
