The Winemaker's Daughter, page 29
In the evening light, the mountain shadows stretch well over the irrigated steppe. From this distance, high on Stuart, they can see a small stretch of the Columbia and the alternating tables of tumbleweed brown and irrigated green on either side of it. Barely visible in the valley, they see light from another camp.
“We are very lucky men,” says Alden Kosbleau. “The government gave us this land for peanuts, backed up the water, told us to take it and make something of it. We started with nothing. Now they’re going to pay us to do nothing.”
“Scusi, mi amico. The Cartolano family is holding on. Brunella will make wine when I’m gone.”
“Shit, Angelo, that daughter of yours is one fiery gal, but she’s no winemaker, you know that. We’re set. Long as you stay quiet, you won’t ever have to turn a spade of coulee dirt.”
“Nobody else knows about the water?”
“Just you and me. They can’t prove anything but that the Indians got themselves into a powerful mess. The water is all out of that pipe now and sitting in that big pit the Indians dug for themselves. That water pit—talk about a smoking gun! Dumbfuck Indians. Think they can play the water game. Our end is clean. The pipe’s gone, the well capped. They can’t prove a thing unless you say something, Angelo, my boy. You listening to me?”
“I want to see how Niccolo’s vintage turns out. And I want to see a World Series in Seattle.”
On the floor of the coulee where Angelo Cartolano first spent the night as a young man looking for a home, Brunella spreads a sleeping bag. She thinks of the sky as a blanket, the silvery cover of Milky Way stars. Her ankle is wrapped, swollen. She will never be able to look at Leon without seeing the back of his hand. She still feels the grip of the Columbia as she replays going over the dam in slow motion, holding on to the wire, being pulled loose and dragged over the spillway. The horror at the base of the dam, trapped underwater, then popping up like a balloon. It leaves her with a sense of how little control she has over anything. All these passive, painterly scenes of nature, of rivers flat and sunset-filled, of mountains erect and orderly, of forests green and cool, of inland seas that serve as postcard foreground—they are so deceptive. They only look pretty in repose. The earth is neither predatory nor embracing. It is a heaving, clanking, shedding, burning ball whose only mandate is to keep spinning. Nobody is a spectator, no matter how fortified their lives. She summons the good days the land around her has brought: the forest a wondrous playground for a girl; the mountains that hold the snow that melts into water that fattens the grapes and ends up in a bottle of pure pleasure that will live for a half century or more; the inland sea on the other side of the crest, nursing giant clams and zestful orcas; and the big river itself, still carrying salmon from the desert to the sea while trying to deliver the base nutrients of the Planned Promised Land. But look again and the forest is a furnace that consumed Niccolo, the mountains volcanic and studded with ice daggers, Puget Sound a ragged soup of death for the last fisherman, and the River of the West as life-destroying as it is life-sustaining.
Once more, she feels compelled by a simple desire to belong, to find her place, attach herself to bedrock and move in tandem with the spinning globe. She rises from her sleeping bag and hobbles slowly among the vines, forcing herself to sing “looo-chela, looo-chela,” under the universe of stars, forcing “looo-chela, looo-chela” and its summers of nonchalance on her, but all she can see is the back of Leon’s hand, and she knows that she is falling over the dam again and has no choice but to leave the coulee and probably take Angelo with her.
She is spooked by a sound coming from somewhere near the stone chapel; she thinks a deer is grazing among the vines, despite the eight-foot-high wire fences on the edge.
“Continue.” The voice of a man. “I like the song.”
“Who’s that?” In the dim light, she sees a face of rough contours and, beyond that, the eyes. “Teddy?”
“You told me if I ever needed a place to hang, come to the Cartolano vineyard.”
“You startled me.”
“Does Treadtoofar know about Angelo?”
“I told him everything.”
“Everything?”
“Why did you come back?”
“I won’t testify, Brunella, not if you don’t want me to. I’m the only witness to what happened during the fire, and I can have a loss of memory, if you want me to.”
He comes out in the open, walks slowly toward Brunella. She stiffens.
“Are you afraid of me, Brunella?”
His hair is short, as before, and his face . . . is not so bad. She can see where it is going in the healing, the skin new, a face somewhat like the old one emerging. He wears clear silicone gloves on his hands.
“It doesn’t matter if you testify or not. It’s out. I hope people see that my father is too old for jail and let him keep the place. I hope people can forgive him.”
“Not likely, judging by the fever running through this basin.”
“Do you know there was supposed to be enough water backed up by the Grand Coulee Dam to last a thousand years?”
“You didn’t believe that, did you, Brunella?”
“At one time I did.”
“You think there’s anything in this country that’ll still be around in a thousand years? We’re a buncha great ideas in a big land. We’re about open space and every race under the sun. We don’t hold on to stuff.”
“Why did you come back, Teddy?”
“I had to see if there was anything here for me. And you?”
“Same reason.” She moves closer to him now, drawn in. “Did you talk to your mother?”
“Tomorrow I’m gone, and I’m never looking back.”
“We are the Ladin, Teddy.”
“The what?”
“The lost Romans who wandered around the Dolomites looking for one lousy little forgotten valley where they could hide out from the world and start something.”
She takes his gloved hand and runs it against her chest, pulling him in. Two of his fingers, unscathed by fire, are ungloved, and she feels a tingle when they touch her breasts. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To a village on a hilltop, like I said before, to a small house of old stone, surrounded by ancient footsteps, with grapes sloping to eternity—”
“And a festival for every food, and a miracle reenacted twice a year in a thousand-year-old church. I remember, Brunella. After you left the hospital, I had a dream and heard what you said again. But what am I supposed to do, be a kept man?”
“No, you can teach—”
“I won’t be a kept man. That will never work.”
This night on cold granite has brought only a skip of a dream to Angelo, and now he does not want to leave the womb of the sleeping bag. The chill has made his left hand more of an arthritic mess; he can’t even make a fist. He feels like a very old engine trying to crank a tired body, but crank he must, dressing in the dark, joints cracking. The fingers are so stiff, his back all knotted up, one leg numb. So many layers to think about. Long underwear on the chest, topped by a wool shirt, a vest, a parka. What’s missing? On his legs, tattered wool knickers, knee-length socks. Angelo spends a long time trying to tighten the laces on his boots; but with only one usable hand, the task is impossible.
“I need you to tie my boots,” he says.
Kosbleau boils water for coffee while chomping on hard tasteless biscuits, never offering one to his partner. He stares at Angelo without sympathy. “Jesus effing Christ, you can’t tie your own boots?”
“I can’t.”
Angelo stomps around camp, trying to get the blood moving, coughing in the dawn. He runs through the mental list again: hardware, food, bin-oculars, his lucky summit cap. The bottle of Cartolano Nebbiolo, which spent the night next to him wrapped in fleece, looks out of place this morning. He holds up the bottle, shining a flashlight on his lifework. The alchemy that makes fruit from a desert coulee into a wine for the ages strikes him as the one great truth of his life.
“You ready?” The call from Kosbleau, like an order.
“Momento, momento, per favore.” He kisses the bottle.
Kosbleau has the rope laid out, stretching from their camp to a rise about thirty feet above. He has doubled up the line and tied in advance the knot that will hold Angelo to his carabiner.
“What’s the holdup?” Kosbleau says, his new hard plastic boots crunching on the rock as he approaches.
“Niente, niente. Are you scared, Alden?”
“Listen.” Kosbleau takes the knot and holds it, beckoning Angelo. “Get over here. Now listen to me. You remember this, don’t you?”
Angelo attaches himself to the rope, latches his helmet over his wool cap, signals he’s ready. He follows Kosbleau. They walk very slowly over hard-crusted snow in a wide couloir. Once they reach the granite where the slope is not as steep, they pick up the rope, so it does not snag on a nub, and untie themselves. They are close to each other, wordless, breathing hard. Angelo’s body is starting to warm, all but the toes, which feel dead.
“Rest,” says Angelo.
“Too soon. Try to suck it up, old man.”
“You suck it up yourself.”
They are above tree line, where the snow lives ten months out of the year. The mountain comes alive very quickly with the sunrise, marmots whistling across the face, birds at eight thousand feet, the jays looking for easy food. The Indian paintbrush is deep orange in the first light, a whole flank full of it. Angelo thinks he sees a goat. Now three goats, whiter than the snowfield. They are so agile, bouncing around the good granite of Mount Stuart without a slip; they must have suction cups for feet.
“Rest,” says Angelo. “Please.”
“Ten minutes.”
For Angelo’s first time on Stuart, as a man not yet twenty years old, every upward step was a thrill, every nuance of the new day a discovery. He knew in his heart that he would make the summit, just as he knew the coulee would be good to him. He had no fear. He wanted, if anything, to go faster. He didn’t need a rope. Gravity was a friend. Death was unknown. He knew nothing of the tricks of the mountain, where to look for handholds, when to duck out of the wind, how to read the clouds. He knew only confidence and adrenaline, the cocktail of youth. Today, he knows so much more about himself, about the winds of the Columbia basin and how to make friends with the granite. But he cannot fool himself into believing he is anything but an old man with a useless left hand and a back compressed by the years.
At the base of the big steep snowfield they sit for fifteen minutes. Sweating, Angelo zips open his parka and removes his wool hat. He’s breathing like a fat man, but his heart is good, he says to himself. No chest pains. Kosbleau checks his altimeter. “Another fifteen hundred feet.”
After the break, they attach crampons to their boots and retie the ropes. Angelo has to ask for help; the left hand might as well be an ornament. The snowfield is hard, but with the sun it will soften quickly and then go back to ice when the sun slips away. It has a surface like a white-capped lake, the sun cups formed by the pattern of daytime melting and nighttime hardening. Angelo moves very slowly, following Kosbleau’s tracks. He slips once—yells “Falling!”—and goes immediately to his gut, clawing at the snow with his ice ax. The ax catches after three stabs. When Angelo gets his footing again, he moves even slower: two steps, rest, two steps, rest. Below them, a climbing party appears at the base of the snowfield, lively, full of bluster. Two men and a woman, in shorts, unroped; they are stripped to their T-shirts. They race by the old men, bantering the whole way, led by the woman with legs that come up to Angelo’s chest.
“Morning, boys.” The blonde with the legs cuts a switchback over the snowfield. “You guys know what you’re doing?”
At the top of the snowfield, long after the other climbing party has passed, Angelo and Kosbleau take their final break before the summit. Kosbleau studies the steep section they have just climbed, looks to the sun, back again at the snowfield. Angelo feels light-headed. He is starting to smell the summit; he thinks he is going to make it. He takes off his helmet and puts on his sweat-stained Mariners cap, the brim chalky.
“Did you see those legs?” he says to Kosbleau.
“Let me take you out of the rope here. It’s just a scramble to the top. That’s what the book says. Leave the rope here.”
Angelo sits against the base of a spire, leaning against the sun-warmed granite, facing Rainier. He sips his water, tips his head back. In two minutes he is asleep and starts to snore. Kosbleau watches him in disgust. After a twenty-minute nap, Angelo snaps awake. As he comes to, he sees a pair of tan extended legs move by him in scissor fashion. His eyes meet the tight butt of the woman as she leads her party down the mountain.
“Summit view is awesome this morning,” she says.
“I have a good view already,” says Angelo.
The nap has invigorated him. He leads up through the boulders, the scramble to the top. “Where you going?” says Kosbleau.
“Alto, mi amico. To heaven.”
Using his good hand, he pulls himself over a series of boulders, clambering, strength building with every minor triumph. The final pitch of Stuart follows the ridge, along the south side, where the climbers pick their way through a maze. Several times, Angelo comes up short, his head popping over the ridge, looking straight down to a drop of several thousand feet. He down-climbs and tries again. With trial and error, picking and poking, he gets closer to the sky, leaving more planet behind him. I can do this, he thinks. He can taste the old cocktail again, confidence and adrenaline. He looks up and sees a rock cairn, with a tattered flag poking out, and nothing above it.
“Whooooooo-eeeeeeeeee-oooooooooooooooooo!”
Kosbleau follows in ten minutes. He arrives with a scowl on his face, angry at Angelo for “acting like a goddamned rabbit.”
“Mi dispiace,” says Angelo. “The summit called.”
From the top, alpine lakes spread north, cradled by peaks covered with glaciers, stretching well into British Columbia. The wind is just right. Rainier, Saint Helens, Adams, Hood, Jefferson—all the volcanoes are in splendid formation to the south. But what gets to Angelo’s tired heart is the little notch in the potato-skin-colored basin to the east, the place where he made Nebbiolo come to life. He slouches next to the summit cairn, eyes fixed on the coulee, a tired smile on his face.
“I wish . . . I wish I could make this moment last forever.”
“Sure. Let’s take our time.”
“I’m worried about thunder,” says Angelo.
“Take our time. Why don’t you crack that wine, old man. We’ll just have a sip.”
Kosbleau looks downslope toward the snowfield, glances back up at the sun, checks his watch. Angelo is having trouble opening the wine; Kosbleau grabs it from him.
“Let me do it.”
He pulls the cork and sniffs. “Take a long pull,” he says to Angelo. “No hurry.”
“But the sun will be off that snow before long, yes?”
“No hurry. Take a pull. You deserve it.”
Angelo takes a few sips but makes a face. “It’s not right. Too cold up here. Cork it.”
“No, let’s relax.”
“I have to get down, Alden. Let’s go now.”
“Another twenty minutes.”
They leave the summit, moving slowly in a downward crawl. Angelo nearly slips on a lichen-slick boulder, holding to the rock for ten minutes without moving. Kosbleau hurries past Angelo, telling him he will wait at the top of the snowfield and to take his time.
Angelo straggles to where Kosbleau is waiting, looking at his watch. “You want to take another nap?” Kosbleau asks.
“I don’t want to go down,” Angelo says, the summit glow still in his face. “But we have no time. The sun is on the other side.”
“You looked so perky going up, why don’t you lead?”
“I’m slow.”
“That’s okay. You lead. Angle off to the west, in that shade there. The footing should be easier.”
Angelo turns on his stomach and kicks a step into the snowfield; in shade, now, it quickly hardens. He turns over on his other side, using his heels to step into the snow, his face toward the sky. After half an hour, he is only a few hundred feet down the snowfield. He lets his mind skip away to the coulee. It has been several months since he sampled Niccolo’s vintage, and he thinks that the licorice of the grape must be starting to show. That’s the thing with good Nebbiolo when it starts to reveal itself, the licorice. Near the edge of a small cliff, Angelo pauses to look up for Kosbleau, and as he takes his eyes off the snow, he slips. He falls quickly on his butt, slides to the edge. He slashes away at the snowfield with his ice ax, trying to get a grip, but he is falling fast on the sheen on the steep slope. The ax bites at last into the ice. But Angelo is holding on with just the one good hand, and the grip is tenuous. He calls out for Kosbleau. His partner is sitting down, strapping metal crampons to his boots.
“What’re you doing, Alden? I need you!”
“Just wait there for me.”
“I’m afraid I can’t hold for long. Come quickly!”
“Don’t do anything. Just wait there for me.”
Slowly, digging his metal-pronged boots in the snow, Kosbleau edges toward Angelo.
“Hurry!” Angelo says. His one hand is starting to slip. “You must come now!”
Kosbleau moves even slower, pausing to look around for other climbers, to check the light, to get his footing. When at last he reaches Angelo, he says nothing. Spit and froth cover Angelo’s lips. His eyes are wild. The bad hand is shaking; the good hand is numb, clinging to the ax.
“Thank you,” Angelo says, in a whisper.
Kosbleau plants his ice ax for a grip and kicks Angelo’s ax away from the snow. Angelo looks for a half second into Kosbleau’s face and then disappears off the cliff, down the face of Mount Stuart.
Two days later, they find Angelo’s body, broken and deflated, more than two thousand feet from where he lost his anchor. The county coroner rules the death an accident, based on an account from Kosbleau, the only witness to the fall. Brunella cannot accept the coroner’s verdict, but the county will not investigate further. There is no evidence. Kosbleau was your father’s oldest friend, Ms. Cartolano. Your father was an old man on a very big mountain. He fell, he lost his grip, and then the mountain took him. Try to accept this. The body rests for one day in the stone chapel, with Brunella nearby at all times. Down below, Kosbleau gets Roberto to let him into the house; he finds his way to the cellar where Angelo first made wine in the Columbia basin, and he removes an ancient bottle, its label marked by the blood of ten boys who have all left the earth save one.
