The Winemaker's Daughter, page 33
“We all share some of the blame. I accept mine.”
“What about Kosbleau? Didn’t you have enough, with what I told you and the water records, to go after him?”
“No witness, not after your father died. And with no water left under the burned forest, I have no physical proof.”
“Are you reading any poetry, Leon?”
“I always read poetry.”
He moves past her as if she were a cleaning woman, gathering the last of his office possessions.
“Leon, I have an idea. You need proof in order to show what really happened in that forest. My father told me about a key. It was something, I never gave it a second thought because things were moving so fast in the last days in the coulee. It’s a key, he said, to a valve that controls movement of the water in that basin. Kosbleau and my father each had one. You could not move the water without using both keys.”
“Like sharing a crime. I’m sure the keys are long gone. Kosbleau covered his tracks well.”
“But what if I could draw him out?”
“With what?”
“They had a club, my father and the old men who climbed Mount Stuart a long time ago. A Last Man’s club. The winner got a bottle in our cellar. That’s where my father kept his key. Kosbleau is the last man, which means he must have both keys.”
“And how do you get him to use them?”
“I don’t know. But if he did, if you could search his home, if you could find them, it would show his intimate knowledge of all the water thefts. You could use that. It would be huge.”
He says nothing.
“Leon . . . ?”
“Is it because I hit you?”
“What?”
“Is that why you never said goodbye, Brunella? Because I hit you?”
“I see that in a man—I’ll be honest with you, Leon—and it scares me. You never look at somebody the same way afterward. All you can see is the back of the hand.”
“I have a problem. It scares me too.”
Leon hefts a box of his belongings and turns to walk out. “Are you moving back to America?”
The drought is over. The rivers west of the Cascades—Stillaguamish, Skykomish, Snohomish, Skagit, and Nooksack—all the frothy drainages named for the people who used to live at their mouths, are running near flood stage in midspring. Even in the arid country on the other side of the mountains, water is waking gravel beds that have not felt such a rousting since before the dams were built. On city streets and in the countryside, on boat decks and Little League fields, people look skyward, without umbrellas, and let the rain hit their faces. Brunella detects joy, as if a long plague has just ended and it is safe again to go outside.
On her way to the coulee, Brunella gets stuck in mud just outside the entrance and tries not to see it as a bad omen. Miguel greets her and takes Brunella on the back of his three-wheeler to the vineyard.
“You want to see the house, Brunella?”
“Don’t go near it,” she says.
“It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Don’t go near it, Miguel.”
“Just a drive-by. Okay?”
“No!” She will not look at the house. But the vineyards, now starting to leaf, and the balsamwort flowering at the base of the basalt columns, and the light against the wall of the North Cascades—it draws her in and makes her feel disloyal for being gone so long. Look at the pond; she cannot believe how full it is, brimming with rainwater. She cannot let herself go soft or sentimental. Try to make it neutral ground, hard earth, photosynthesis. The place has been sold. It’s gone. Over. She has a home in the Old World, a man she loves, a bella bambina. This life is over. She motions for Miguel to take her up through the soft green of the vines, as fast as he can, until they are high on the coulee ridge.
“Everything seems so lush.”
“A wet spring,” says Miguel. “I’ve seen things I haven’t seen for twenty years.”
“You’ve kept everything up.”
“I don’t know nothing else.”
She jumps off and waves him away. The winds carry heavy clouds, the low edges ragged, threatening. It takes most of the morning to hike down into the ghost forest, the way slippery on slick clay and still the smell of smoke like she remembered it from before, burned mattresses. She finds the Forest Service markers. To her surprise, Niccolo’s last stand is covered by water; where the ground was hard and seared there is now a shallow pond. She hears moving water, gurgling up, filling the basin. She slops around in the chill depth, talking to Niccolo, telling him about her baby and the grilled San Lorenzo, surely Niccolo’s soul mate today. Her teeth are chattering. God, where did all this water come from? Yes, it has been raining a lot this spring, as Miguel said, and maybe people are seeing things that have not been seen in the Columbia basin for decades, but this section is supposed to be drained and dry. There is still no vegetation, nothing to hold the runoff and the rainfall, so where did this swamp come from? She looks closely, following the sound; it appears that the water is seeping up from below, but how could this be? Didn’t Kosbleau suck it dry?
She listens with great care and discerns another sound, distinct and familiar; now she knows that water has been coursing through here for months.
Zeee-eeet! Zeee-eeet! What could dippers find to like in this haunted ground?
When she goes to Alden Kosbleau’s manse on the hill above Lake Chelan, she expects to be turned away by dogs or alarms. Instead, the water king himself ambles down the driveway to welcome her. Arms outstretched, wearing a loud T-shirt, baggy shorts. Why do older Americans dress like ten-year-olds?
“My prodigal friend—Brunella Cartolano!”
“Hello, Alden.” No smile from her, a cursory hug. Such a bullshit artist, how could she not see through him years ago? He looks sunbaked, the skin on his face furrowed and leathery, covered with age spots. A Palm Springs winter, he explains. Though bruised clouds coast low over the wet land, Kosbleau’s automatic sprinklers are spreading water over his acreage, all the exotic trees sloping to the lake.
“Come up to the house. Where’s the baby?”
“You heard?”
“I would never let Brunella Cartolano leave my heart. Remember, I’m like family, you once said.”
“I can’t come in. I don’t have time. We—I have some legal papers to close. I’m meeting someone later. The new buyer.”
“Bob kept me informed about the sale. You’re in my tax bracket now, kid. You must come inside. Have a drink. I’ve got some single malt— eighteen-year-old stuff—it’ll make your heart burn peat.”
“I went into the dead forest yesterday, Alden, and I found something.”
“Yes?” Hand on his mouth, eyebrows arched. She notices Kosbleau’s hand, with its brown spots and gold watch.
“I found water.”
“Well, no shit, it’s been raining for two months or more. Wettest spring I’ve seen in thirty-seven years.”
“This water didn’t come from the sky. It came from the ground.”
“Yes?” Hand still on the mouth, no expression. “Are you a hydrologist now? Why do you tell me such a thing?”
“I know what the government is paying for water.”
“Yes?”
“And I know how much you value it.”
“Yes?”
“That’s it. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Do you think I lack for water, Brunella? Do you think I need to squeeze another dime from this land? Do you think I don’t have everything I want? Look around this place. Your old man had a good thing going in the coulee, but he only took it so far. Look around here. Tell me if you think something is missing.”
The clouds collide, darken, and spill, and when the rain falls hard Kosbleau stutter-steps up the driveway. “Come quick. I want to show you something.”
“I don’t have time.”
“This will just take a minute.” He guides her up the hill and around the back, behind the manse, where delicate canes are planted in a raised bed of loamy black soil, positioned under the retractable glass roof of what looks like a crystal greenhouse. The soil is tilled like finely ground coffee, and a thin electronic fence surrounds it. The lower parts of the canes are wrapped in white cloth, and the tops have sprouted new growth. As soon as rain touches the glass, the roof automatically covers the raised bed.
“Behold the blue rose!” Kosbleau says, his face red from the exertion. “This year, I will get my flower, the one color that is unobtainable. This year, everything is in place for the blue rose.”
“Why the glass roof?”
“For protection. The blue rose will not tolerate rain without getting black spots. I control all water, all nutrients, the hours of sunshine— everything! What do you think? Your old man would have been proud of me, huh?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong? You don’t seem very impressed.”
“I have to go.”
His lips are trembling, the rain splattering his glasses. “You think you’re better than me, don’t you?”
He slips to the ground a few feet from the electronic fence. She extends a hand to lift him. He gets up without her help, mumbling to himself, and wipes the mud from his glasses.
“You think you’re better than me.”
“No, I—”
“Say it, bitch!”
“What happened to the bottle, Alden?”
“The bottle?”
“From the cellar. The Last Man’s Club bottle.”
“It’s with me. Where it belongs.”
Kosbleau rummages around the house, trying to remember everything. He grabs his pistol, a heavy raincoat, a phone. In the closet of the master bedroom is a safe. Inside, the bottle. Next to the bottle, two keys. He sets the bottle on a table and takes the two keys.
He drives south to the coulee and guns his Bronco forward. The rain makes the clay slide and fold, like great mounds of dough. He has been warned by Miguel, who greeted him in the driveway, not to go into the ghost forest. The way is unstable and it smells like death. He drops into first gear, four-wheel drive, and goes deeper into the burned woods on a slight way trail never intended for cars, the tires sinking in the mud and the rain falling so hard there is no visibility. The Bronco bounces into a rut and spins, one tire in the air, still moving forward. Kosbleau’s face is clenched.
“Here!” he says to himself. He stops the car and gets out, cursing now. Goddamn Mexicans, afraid of a little rain. Slop, slop; the charcoaled mud is horrid, hard to get any footing, and the smell—the Mexican was right—is indeed the smell of death. These wets know a thing or two about superstition. But look here, Cartolano is on to something; it’s a goddamn mother lode. Look at all this water. Christ. It’s coming from deep down, no doubt, just like the Cartolano girl said. He wades through, looking around for a source, doused by the torrent. So he didn’t get it all. Most of the water was moved to the Indians, but here is a small fortune left behind. It eats at him to think of all the water the Indians let go, the pit, emptied into the big river. And for what? The rain must have recharged some springs in here, must have flushed the deepest part of the aquifer to the surface. Well, now it belongs to the water king. All he has to do to send it back to storage in the mine shafts is gin up the pumps. Can’t let this chance slip by. One last bonanza. Water is always moving. Somebody’s going to lose it; somebody’s going to get it. It’s finite, the most consistent shaper of destiny on the planet.
He walks to a pile of boulders at the base of the hill, next to the water, searching the rock for a particular entrance. Here it is, the opening. He tugs at a small boulder, reaching to get inside at something, but it will not move. On his second attempt he falls backward into the water. He gags and coughs, spitting out the cold mouthful. Now his chest hurts, shooting pains. He staggers to his feet, soaked to his skin, shivering uncontrollably. He removes the pistol from his coat pocket, steps to the side, and fires a round at the small rock entrance. It chips away enough that he can get a grip and pull back the rock. Behind that, the big valve. Okay, now the two keys. Get both of them. Hands steady. First one; yes, of course it fits. Now the other. Perfect. He wrestles with the rusted valve handle, trying to make it budge. It starts to move. There must truly be a fortune in this deep well, an untapped gusher born of the wet spring, and all he has to do is get this big rusted wheel cranked just enough to activate the link underground that will move some of this water into one of the mine shafts— storage, for now. He completes his task, gasping for breath, the chest pains worse, his mind feverish with the numbers.
Back at the manse, Kosbleau draws a bath in the marbled Jacuzzi. He pours himself three fingers of Scotch on ice, the eighteen-year-old single malt. Oh, that’s fine. Oh, that burns peat. With every sip, the mud and cold water dissipate. He pours himself another three fingers, and sips, sips, sips; oh, shit, is that fine, the taste of the good life. His Scotch buzz on, he stumbles to the great room, full of trophy heads: the last cougar to roam the Columbia basin, shot in November near the Safeway parking lot; a six-point trophy elk; a big-chested mountain goat from uplake, got him with a single shot from the boat. He grabs the Last Man’s bottle. Time to put this thing away as well. Probably tastes like shit, but it’s a triumphant chaser. He puts the Last Man’s bottle on a counter next to the Jacuzzi tub and turns on a small television with a remote. One more belt of the single malt, then slide into the water and forget about the chill, the mud, and the memory of the Cartolano bitch. Two fingers this time. Two fingers for the last water conquest in the Planned Promised Land. Scotch in one hand, he steps into the tub but loses his balance, falls sharply against the marbled corner edge, cuts his head, and drops headfirst into the tub, unconscious. Water fills his lungs. With a jerk, his body trembles, an upward foot snagging a wire of the television from its nook, pulling it into the tub. The shock runs through his body, shorts out the electricity in the house: all the pumps, the lights, the wire fence outside. Within the hour, a deer crosses over the lifeless wires to a raised bed on the open-air side of the greenhouse and munches on the tender young shoots of a well-manicured blue rose.
The rain is still falling when Brunella arrives at the new tribal casino along the Columbia River. The parking lot is stuffed with SUVs and mini-vans, every spot taken. A tour bus from the city takes a load of gamblers to the front entrance, where ponytailed natives greet them with open arms. It’s a flow of money and people, at times like a stampede, all going one way.
Brunella has arranged to meet the new buyer of the vineyard at a restaurant in a quiet corner of the casino. She gets a window table in an area cantilevered over the river. She looks at the wine list and finds the Cartolano Nebbiolo, with a star next to it to show it’s a local product. But when she asks for a bottle, the Indian waitress frowns. “I’m sorry, we’re all out.”
Brunella asks the woman about herself, and she says she is a full-blood member of the tribe who moved to Los Angeles but returned when the casino opened. The tribe has full employment.
“We do have some of the Cartolano table wine,” the waitress says. “I can bring you a glass of that.”
“How would you describe it?”
“Well”—she flashes a dimpled smile—“I don’t drink. The reservation is dry, except for the casino. But I can tell you it’s a full-bodied red, not very tannic, with a nice finish from an excellent vintage.”
“How do you know?”
“They made us take a class on wine in Yakima. The casino paid for it. Should I bring you a glass of the red?”
“Please.”
The River of the West is bigger than Brunella ever remembers, swollen and running fast. The wine arrives. Brunella can taste the pebbles of the coulee, the stony imprint from the ancient flood, and it draws her back to the last afternoon with Angelo and Niccolo, high in the vineyard. What her father’s Nebbiolo has over the same grape in Italy is the struggle, she decides. As Angelo said, the roots in the coulee have to reach far down to find moisture, and in the process they carry the taste of the pebbled ground from the deep cleft in the earth upward to the grape. The deposit from the Greatest Flood of All Time has nurtured this cup of velvet. And she understands why the only vintage her father never liked, the one he destroyed, did not have a story. No struggle, no story. In vino veritas, of course, as the Romans knew from the beginning, unless you cheat. The new owner will never understand this. The new owner is buying a rating, a brand name.
She waits half an hour, ordering a second glass of the Cartolano table wine, her mind adrift as she stares at the river. How can she live with herself if she lets this sale proceed? It was a betrayal of her father’s life wish. Can the soul of Angelo Cartolano be free if his body remains in ground owned by someone else?
“The water is so high,” Brunella says to the waitress.
“Good for fish,” the waitress says. “Everyone’s very excited. Two years ago, somebody emptied out this great big pit of water the tribe had stored . . . here, right outside the casino. We never found out who did it. But they say it was a miracle, as if Chief Joseph came back from the dead to give the river life again. You see, it was a horrible drought, the river so low the little salmon were stuck; they couldn’t move. Then all the water poured out of the pit like a big hand of God. And that flush carried a lot of baby salmon to the ocean. There’s supposed to be a great big run when they come back as old fish ready to spawn. My dad and his friends, they talk about this as the creator’s miracle of salmon and the new casino. Can I get you something to eat?”
“I’m still waiting.”
A thin man with a hesitant gait makes his way to Brunella’s table. Ethan Winthrop looks much older, his hair on top nearly gone, his eyes sunken. He always seemed helpless and papery, but now he looks to be a step removed from life itself. He is swaddled in a heavy winter parka; when he takes off his gloves, his fingers are white, the blood drained away.
“I’m sorry I’m late. This thing”—he shows her a palm-sized Global Positioning System—“was supposed to get me here with pinpoint accuracy, but I ended up at a Wal-Mart in Wenatchee.”
