The Chardonnay Charade

Chapter 4

Kit looked like I’d stabbed her through the heart when I told her I had to leave immediately. She was only slightly mollified when our waiter boxed our meals to go and included an extra-large piece of cheesecake for her. I gave him an outrageous tip and we left.

“No more criticizing me for eating in my car,” she said as we got into the Jeep and I pulled the Styrofoam containers out of a large paper bag. “You’re doing it, too.”

“Dammit. The weather forecast said the temperature would stay above freezing tonight.” I drove a plastic fork too aggressively through a piece of roasted eggplant and heard the plastic snap. “Why did I do that? All I’ve got left is a spoon.”

“Take my fork. I’m using my fingers. Don’t tell me you believe what those people say. That cute guy on Channel Two is no meteor-ologist, you know. They just hired him to boost ratings because he’s such a hunk. He used to be on a soap opera. I think he played a brain surgeon.” She fiddled with the latch of her Styrofoam box. “I can’t open this. Can you please hand me a piece of chicken? I’m famished.”

“We never had a chance to talk about you and Bobby.” I opened the box and passed her the chicken. “Do you have any napkins? I think our waiter forgot them.”

“What’s to say? He’s tied up most evenings and weekends coaching a kids’ soccer team with the Special Olympics. Look in the glove compartment. Or on the floor.”

“I didn’t know he was involved with the Special Olympics. So what happened to the two of you? You were pretty tight.”

“We’re just in different places right now. Kind of like you and Quinn.”

“Me and Quinn! What’s that supposed to mean? Quinn works for me. I thought you and Bobby might be getting married.” I handed her a napkin. “Of course, Quinn would like it if I worked for him. Drives me nuts.”

“Are the two of you going to be out together again all night?”

“Will you knock it off? It’s not a date. And, yes, unfortunately, we are.”

“Why ‘unfortunately’?”

“Because…” I hesitated. “I could kill him for not locking up that methyl bromide. It’s completely jeopardized our future. But I can’t blame him, either. He was working flat-out, dealing with the freeze and the new fields. In the end, if we lose our license the matter of fault will be moot. We’ll still have to close our doors.”

“You can’t—”

“It’s not just about getting in trouble with the EPA, either.” I cut her off. “Someone used that stuff to kill Georgia. I feel like I’m partly to blame.”

“Don’t go there, Luce.” This time Kit was firm. “Whoever killed her would have found something else. It wasn’t random. You said so yourself. As for the EPA, you might get off with a fine and a slap on the wrist. Maybe they won’t pull your license.”

“I’ll find out, won’t I?”

Kit dropped a picked-clean chicken bone into her box. “What are you going to do without a helicopter?”

“Use the smudge pots. We haven’t put them out for years.”

“Those little stovepipe things that give off toxic black smoke?”

“I definitely won’t make it on anybody’s do-good environmental list, will I? Come on, you know I can’t afford to lose five acres of grapes. It’s a lot of money. I don’t have any choice.”

She signaled for the turn at the main gate of the winery. Her headlights caught the blue and white sign that said “Sycamore Lane. Private Byway.”

“I know, I know.” She turned at the fork in the road by the two-hundred-year-old sycamore tree that gave the road its name. “But someday we’re all going to be sorry when Alaska is a tropical beach resort because of global warming.” She pulled into my driveway. “Let’s try dinner again. Maybe we’ll make it all the way to dessert next time.”

After she left, I changed into warm clothes and drove over to the vineyard. The night air was cold and sharp and the cloudless sky was star-spattered. The wind had died down—which was, once again, our problem. With no airflow moving through the vineyard when the temperature went below thirty-two, the dew would freeze the grapes. And no cloud cover meant nothing stopped the heat in the soil from radiating up into that limitless sky.

Quinn and Hector were already in the barrel room when I arrived. Hector smiled at me, but the harshness of the artificial lighting made it look like he was in pain. Normally he wore his years lightly, but tonight his shoulders seemed stooped and his step was more of a shuffle. Had we not needed him so desperately, I would have sent him home and back to bed.

“Who else have we got?” I asked Quinn.

“Manolo, of course. But I can’t find Randy anywhere. He’s not answering his mobile. We could really use him.”

“I bet that boy took off and went fishing,” Hector said. “He’s done it before. Besides, the brookies are biting.”

“The what?” Quinn asked.

“Brook trout,” Hector said. “Virginia’s state fish.”

“You people know what your state fish is?”

“Sure. Been here since the Ice Age,” I said. “Why?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Look, César and Jesús ought to be back pretty soon with that last load of tires from the garage. They’ve got Hector’s pickup and a dump truck César borrowed from a buddy of his. Hector, Manolo, and I will take the El over to Randy’s barn. He said something a while ago about a bunch of old tractor tires being dumped there.”

“He’s right,” I said. “But don’t tell me you’re thinking of burning tires for heat. The smudge pots give off enough of a smokescreen. Tires are nasty. Plus they smell disgusting.”

I was getting to know that look Quinn gave me whenever I questioned his judgment or a decision. Strained patience, fake smile. Incredulous stare like looking into my eyes would be a clear view to the back of my head.

“Tires,” he said carefully, “burn really, really hot. We used ’em in California before we installed wind turbines. We can stack piles of three around the perimeter of the Chardonnay and Riesling blocks. The fire’s gonna be contained, so it’s not like a bonfire. No worries about it getting out of control or the vines catching fire. And it’s the only choice we have right now. Unless you got a bunch of pairs of wings stashed somewhere.”

“Very funny. But the smoke—” I began.

“Will save the grapes.” He unhooked his car keys from a thick lanyard attached to his belt. “Look, sweetheart, nobody burns tires for fun. But you know as well as I do that in agriculture, you can be wiped out in a night. So what do you want to do? Either we can all go to bed or we can save the damn grapes.”

I looked at Hector, who was intently fingering the brim of his stained John Deere baseball cap. He had been through every one of our harvests since my parents planted the first vines. Hector adored my mother, whose great instincts, personal charm, and savvy marketing skills had put us on the map as a young vineyard with a promising future. When she died and my father took over, he’d gradually run it up on the rocks, wiping out nearly everything she’d built. I wanted to restore the place and put it back on the path she had charted. Hector knew that and understood the emotions tangled in what I was trying to do in a way that Quinn never would.

Hector pulled on his cap and met my eyes, watching me steadily. My mother would have saved the vines.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll burn tires, but we are really scraping the bottom of the environmental barrel right now. The rest of Atoka would go nuclear if they knew. And let’s not even talk about the EPA.”

“Hell, I want to save the earth, too.” Quinn sounded mad. “Doesn’t everybody? Unfortunately, the choices aren’t always black and white. That’s why they have those global conferences on the environment so people can figure out ways other countries ought to shape up before they go home and do what they damn well please.”

“Well, then Kit’s right. Someday Alaska is going to be a tropical beach resort,” I said. “So just how many tires are we talking about?”

“If we do this, we better do it right. I’d say a hundred,” he said, ignoring my shocked expression. “We also need to create some artificial wind. If we get the two tractors out there with the sprayers and turn the regulators on without opening the nozzles, that ought to work.”

I had never actually seen anyone burn tires, though I’d read about them being used as alternative fuel at cement kilns and paper mills. Hector and Manolo took care of the fires, dumping diesel fuel on the tires and then throwing lit books of matches at them. César and Jesús manned the tractors and sprayers, turning on the regulators to create high-pressure fans with enough force to blow your clothes off six rows away. Quinn and I stayed clear in the Mini, monitoring the sensors as we had done the night before.

It didn’t take long for everything inside the fire ring—including us—to be coated in a viscous cloud of black smoke. As the orange flames licked the blue-black sky, the tractor headlights cut white swaths through the gritty darkness and silhouetted the rows of nearly bare vines twisted like supplicants. The overpowering stench of burning rubber filled the air as the tires sizzled and dissolved. We could have been in hell, except for the cold.

Funny thing was, tonight I didn’t feel the frigid temperature. The urgency of what we were doing, keeping the fires stoked and the sprayers aimed at the vines to prevent the grapes from freezing, crowded out everything else in my mind. We worked feverishly, mostly in silence.

By the end of the night, I had soot in my lungs, my nostrils, and under my eyelids. It penetrated my clothing and coated my skin. Quinn and I looked like a pair of coal miners. We were checking thermometers in the Chardonnay block when he said, “I wonder who else was out here besides us last night.”

“Any ideas?” I asked. “Who do you think did it?”

He looked away. Then he said softly, “In a way I feel like I did. I should have made sure that stuff was put away. I’m sorry, Lucie, I really am.”

Apologies didn’t come easily to him. My anger melted. “It’s okay. It happened. There’s nothing we can do about it now. But I feel the same about being responsible. The only time we didn’t lock something in the chemical shed…”

“Dammit, after I finished talking to Chris when he showed up with the helicopter I should have gone back and moved those canisters. Instead I went home and crashed for a few hours because I knew it would be an all-nighter. I was beat.” He sounded beat now, too.

“Kit said whoever killed her would have found another way to do it,” I said. “This wasn’t an accident. Someone really went after her.”

“I didn’t like Georgia, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. I hope the cops nail whoever did it,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“Hey,” he said after a moment. “Look at this.” He shone a flashlight on one of the thermometers.

“Twenty-eight degrees,” I said. “Colder than last night.”

“I know. But look at the grapes.”

I looked. “Nothing’s frozen.”

He smiled tiredly for the first time all night, his teeth gleaming white against gritty black skin. “At least we got something right. I think we pulled it off.”

“Thank God. How much longer do we have to keep the fires going? That smell is revolting and we’re almost out of tires.”

“Probably another hour. Until around five.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. You’ve been limping the past hour. You need to get off that foot.”

“I have not been limping. I’m fine.”

I stumbled and his arm tightened around me. “Don’t argue, and get back in the car.”

I obeyed while he went to talk to Hector. He was right about my foot. The skin was scraped raw where the deformed bones had rubbed against my heavy mud boots.

As Quinn predicted, we stopped burning tires by five, meaning the small pyres died down well before the sun came up. By six the heavy smoke had become a grimy haze, and by seven-thirty the dirty-gauze filminess—the last vestiges of what we’d done—had evaporated completely. Only the piles of steel belts and a few smoldering ashes gave any clue to what had happened in the dark.

The windshields of Hector’s pickup and the dump truck César had borrowed were ice-coated, but inside the firewall perimeter nothing had frozen. Quinn paid Manolo, César, and Jesús double overtime from a thick envelope of cash in the El’s glove compartment and they left, tired but slapping-each-other-on-the-back happy.

“Go home and get some rest,” I said to Hector. “We’ll clean up from the fire tomorrow. I mean, today. I mean, later. God, I’m tired.”

“We also got to take the plastic tarps off those new fields,” he said. “Ought to be done today.”

“Get some sleep first,” I said. “You look exhausted. We’re all exhausted.”

He touched a sooty hand to his heart. “I am old, chiquita,” he said. “I am worn out. This is work for a young person. It is time for someone else to take my place.”

“No one can take your place, Hector. Go on, now,” I said gently. “We’ll talk about it another time.”

Afterward I said to Quinn, “I can’t imagine who could possibly replace him. He’s the memory of the vineyard. Our living history.”

We were in the Mini again, heading over to the north block of Chardonnay, which was near my house. Along with a late-flowering block of Pinot Noir, these were the only other vines on that side of the farm. Last night we had agreed that we would concentrate our efforts on the southern vines.

“We really don’t have the manpower or the equipment to cover two locations this time around without the helicopter. Those vines need to be replaced, anyway,” Quinn had said. “They’re not producing much anymore. If we lose the fruit, then so be it. I know we killed ourselves to save it the night before, but what are you gonna do?”

I pulled off Sycamore Lane onto the north service road. In the distance, the vines glittered and sparkled. It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been frost. I downshifted and stopped next to a row marker, cutting the engine.

For a long moment we stared silently out the window at the frost-covered posts and vines. “Hector’s right,” he said. “This is work for someone young. It’s backbreaking, you know that.”

“Maybe we can keep him on somehow—”

He cut me off harshly. “Oh, for God’s sake. What is it about you Virginia folks, anyway? You’re always living on your memories. Mosby…the damn Civil War…you talk about that stuff like it happened yesterday.”

“We do not—”

He was in no mood to listen. “You do so. Hell, half the Romeos spend their weekends parading around in Civil War uniforms reenacting the battles on the same damned battlegrounds. I hate to break it to you, but you lost. The South lost. Why do you have to go over and over and over it, like picking at a scab?”

Either his passion or our body heat was starting to steam up the car windows. He rubbed a small circle in his window with the side of his fist and said without looking at me, “Let Hector go, Lucie. You gotta write your own chapter. Everyone else had their day. Now it’s your turn. You changed your house after the fire. Now it’s time to change the vineyard. It doesn’t have to be preserved as a shrine to your mother.”

As speeches go, it was a long one for him, but clearly something that had been festering. With the clinical precision of a surgeon he had just cut open my life to expose my family’s proud heritage like it was dead tissue that needed removing. Unlike me, he’d come to Virginia to forget his past. I often thought he was trying to shed his memories as a snake sheds a skin. Mine made me who I was. Eli was right that we hadn’t always had an easy time of it after our mother’s death, dealing with Leland’s gambling habits and his errant ways. But I couldn’t stay on at the vineyard without finding a way to fuse the past and present together.

“What you don’t understand about me…about Virginia…the South,” I said, “is that we aren’t mourning the past, we’re honoring it. You make it sound like I’ve got cobwebs in my hair and roots growing from my feet. It’s not like that at all. If you’re a Southerner you’re not talking about geography. You’re talking about a way of life. We’re polite, we respect our elders, our families are important. We have values and traditions.”

“Yeah, well, I have those things, too,” he retorted. “But it doesn’t stop me from moving ahead. I want to do things differently. Break some rules. Experiment. I can’t do it if you’re going to stay mired in keeping everything as it was in your mother’s time.”

“Do we have to have this conversation now?” I asked. “I’m exhausted and filthy. I need a shower and my bed. Why don’t we continue it some other time, okay?”

He shrugged. “Sure. And no point getting out of the car, either. Look.” He pointed to grape clusters, lost to the freeze, that hung limp and shriveled on the vine.

“We saved what we could,” I said. “That has to be good enough.”

I dropped him back at the vineyard parking lot by his El Camino. “See you in the morning,” he said, then smiled faintly. “God, I’m beat. See you whenever.”

“Thanks for everything,” I said.

He reached out and swiped my sooty cheek with a sooty finger. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. “You look good in black. Suits you.”

“Very funny.”

I had almost fallen asleep when I realized that perhaps the remark about me wearing black had only been half joking. It was the color of funerals, of death, and of the past. The perfect color for someone who clung to old memories and couldn’t let go.