Chapter 23 Present Day
PRESENT DAY
OSCAR
Dennis Hoshed reassured Oscar that no one would bother his car after he’d parked under a large shade tree and opened the windows with Buki looking at him with trepidation.
Sitting down with the owner, Oscar understood the man was all business and little humor, and surprised that he’d take the time to meet with him.
He offered Oscar a glass of wine, but when Oscar declined, he poured two mugs of coffee from behind the bar, and they sat at a table in the back near the windows overlooking the pond.
Oscar took a sip of coffee and watched families of Canada geese swirl the water as they ducked under the surface, bathing themselves. This year’s goslings swam close around their protective parents.
“Damn things make a mess around here,” Dennis said. “More bird crap than we know what to do with. Harder to get rid of, than the Hoshed bastards,” he quipped. “Multiply about as fast.”
Oscar shot a shocked look at the man; not sure this conversation would go well. The man took a ball cap from his head and slapped it on the table. His graying red hair and sun-freckled face lit with anger.
Oscar thought he understood, after all. His entire life he’d suffered in silence from his father’s indifference and grown angrier and angrier.
Fortunately, kendo had tempered much of it.
A practitioner learns quickly to deal with it, or they won’t survive a match.
When a sparring partner strikes hard with the shinai, it’s not personal.
It hurts like heck, yes. But each strike brings a lesson learned.
But why this man lashed out at him seemed weird. Oscar decided to fight back with kindness. “What an amazing place you have here,” he offered.
“Yeah, plan on keeping it that way.” The man leaned closer.
Oscar didn’t flinch.
Instead, he looked out the window and said, “The university I went to had problems with an exploding population of geese. Someone had the brilliant idea of floating swan decoys in the pond. Apparently, swans are territorial and aggressive to the geese. Wasn’t a perfect solution but worked pretty well.
” He looked back at Dennis and smiled. “Not so sure how well they work on bastards.”
Oscar leaned forward, thinking it was a pretty good counter strike. The man would either strike back or retreat; he hoped for the latter.
If this had been a kendo sparring match, Oscar would have gone in for the kill as the man looked away and retreated, sat back in his chair and picked up his coffee mug.
“What are you looking for, son?” he finally said.
Oscar did the same, but got distracted by a beautiful woman who walked into the wine tasting room and sat at the bar. He and Hoshed sat far enough away from the bar so that Oscar couldn’t hear what was being said, only that the bartender’s affect lifted.
The girl’s long, jet-black hair feathered down her back and shoulders.
Her blue tank top highlighted her long neck and ample chest. The expensive skinny jeans with torn knees and her red heels gave her an “I’m wealthy but I dress down” look.
Her dark Asian features were so very different from Caroline’s, and as far as Oscar was concerned, that was good.
When she looked around the room, he wondered if she looked his way. He thought she looked vaguely similar to the woman in the Land Cruiser he’d helped at the cemetery in Missoula. The evening was dark enough, and the woman was shy enough that he hadn’t gotten a close look at her.
Oscar was sure it couldn’t be the same person. Julia. He smiled at the heart she had drawn around the message she had left him. Like Doctor Jō said, “There will be many fishes in the sea.”
Dennis interrupted his thoughts after he’d followed Oscar’s look at the girl. He grinned and said, “Easy son, she looks out of your league.”
Oscar stared into his coffee mug. It wasn’t easy being kind.
Dennis shook his head and laughed. “Yeah, you’re a true Hoshed.
Spittin’ image of ol’ man Jean-Maurice Hoshed.
There was a real playboy, loved spreading his seed and the legs of the women who would take it.
It’s why I’ve had to fight so hard to keep the place.
Get in line, kid. Who knows how many of you bastards are out there.
I’ve had to beat them off with a stick and a whole hell of a lot of lawyers. ”
Oscar sighed. It wasn’t worth fighting him or being nice to him. The man was an ass.
“So which one are you from?” Dennis pressed the issue.
“Look, Mr. Hoshed…” Oscar considered his words carefully.
“I’m not here for any other reason except to find out about my heritage.
In fact, I just recently found out that I carry Hoshed blood in me.
I really didn’t ask for any of this. Sounds like you’ve had to fend off some folks trying to get their piece of the pie.
I know you don’t know me. I’m not even sure I know myself…
maybe that’s what I’m doing here. But I want nothing from you.
I just thought I would stop by and see if I could learn something about my lineage.
” Oscar put down his coffee mug and stood. “Sorry, I wasted your time.”
Dennis stood up with him. “Okay, okay. The missus tells me all the time, I need to stop being such a butt-hole,” he said by way of apology. He grabbed his ball cap off the table and put it on his head. “Why don’t you let me at least give you a tour of the place?”
* * *
Dennis Hoshed was a working man’s boss. As big a jerk as he was when Oscar met him, it was clear he engendered respect and affection from his employees.
They kept the entire winery immaculate, from the grounds to the stainless-steel tanks that fermented the grapes, to the perfectly arranged wine barrel vaults—every barrel lined up within a fraction of the others.
The floors and walls were spotless. Surprisingly, Dennis introduced each employee by first name, telling them that Oscar was a long-lost relative.
Whatever antagonism that Dennis had for Oscar had evaporated.
“So, who is your father?” Dennis asked as they walked down the stairs to the underground wine vaults.
Oscar huffed. “As of a week ago, that was a straightforward question to answer. I just found out that a guy up in Big Fork, Montana, is my biological father…Pat Hoshed.”
“Can’t say I know that name.” Dennis scratched his beard.
“He’s an artist…pretty well-known in Montana,” Oscar shrugged, feeling a little odd to be defending the man. “His dad died in Vietnam. William Hoshed, his grandfather raised him.”
“Oh, I’ve seen that name. Would have been early 1900s vintage?” he asked. “Thankfully, no lawsuits or claims from that family line.”
“Yeah, like 1925. Fought in World War II—Purple Heart and Bronze Star.”
As they reached the barrel vault, the temperature cooled.
“Wish I could tell you who William’s mother was.
” Dennis shook his head. “Could have been Chinese or Japanese for all I know. Jean-Maurice seemed to have a leaning toward that. All his pups came out either like me, redheads, or dark hair Greek gods, like you. But we all seem to have the same strong chin and chiseled jaw.” He stroked the beard covering his.
“I’m probably your dad’s generation, so I suppose that makes me your cousin or uncle of some kind.
Maybe your monkey’s uncle,” Dennis chuckled.
“Just don’t expect me to be your rich, generous uncle. ”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Oscar felt comfortable enough to tease back.
In one of four underground vaults, two men stood over an oak barrel that they had pulled from a massive rack—five high and at least thirty barrels in length on both sides of the room.
“Mister Hoshed, you mind giving this a taste?” a worker holding a long glass pipette-looking instrument asked. The man inserted the two-foot-long glass tube through the hole of the barrel, withdrew some wine, and let it fill the wine glass the other man held.
Dennis took the glass, swirled the red liquid, and held it up to the light overhead. As if inspecting a rare ruby, he turned the glass one way and then the other, swirled it again, then held the glass over his nose and mouth and inhaled deeply, at last taking a small sip.
He held the glass out to Oscar, who tried imitating Dennis’s motions as best as he could. He took a sip and handed the glass back.
“What do you think?” Dennis asked.
Oscar shrugged and thought about making up something, but felt the stares of the other men. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a wine connoisseur.”
“Are you sure you’re a Hoshed?” Dennis gasped, making the employees laugh. He looked at the two men and said seriously, “Two more months in the barrel.”
Oscar followed as Dennis walked to the stairs and took two steps at a time.
“You run a tight ship.”
“You have no idea. The wine business is a fickle mistress. That wine you just tasted is one of the finest in the world—our Hoshed Red Reserve. It’s been aging for over three years now.
We rarely know the quality of wine for years after we pick the grapes.
Making a living off wine is worse than the craps table. ”
They exited at a courtyard between the working portion of the winery and the fancy public space. Dennis invited Oscar to join him at a picnic table.
“Probably why I’m so sensitive when a ‘new relative’ shows up out of the blue,” Dennis apologized again.
“I guess I can understand that.”
“You said you were just passing through?”
“I’m headed to Berkeley. I’m getting my MBA,” Oscar said, leaving out the part about teaching kendo, possibly because of the comment Dennis made about his great-great-grandmother, who could have been from Asian descent. Wouldn’t that be something?
“Maybe you got your smarts from your great-great-grandfather,” Dennis continued.
“Jean-Maurice was a plain lucky bastard. He started making wine when he emigrated from France in 1918. Prohibition hit two years later. Should have bankrupted the guy, but the wise old coot started marketing his wine as sacramental wine for the church. He was friends with the local feds, liberally greasing palms, and because of the Volstead Act, the government allowed a handful of wineries to operate within the law for ‘holy wine.’ Both Jean-Maurice and the feds made a bundle, while everyone else had to shut down for thirteen years.”
“Crazy.”
“I guess the nation found religion during prohibition. The demand for sacramental wine grew by 800,000 gallons in two years,” Dennis chuckled.
“Do you know why our great-great-grandfather would have emigrated from France?”
Dennis raised his eyebrows, and Oscar wasn’t sure if it was how he’d phrased the question by putting them in the same family line, or the question itself.
He was relieved when Dennis answered, “Man, that’s a good question.
I guess I’m so busy running the place, I don’t stop to think like that.
I know he came over in 1918, near the end of World War I.
I just assumed things weren’t so good in France during that time. ”
“Yeah probably.”
“Got some legal papers showing he changed his name at Ellis Island, so he didn’t sound like he come over.
A lot of guys did that. I think the name was ‘Hoschedé’,” he tried to say.
“I think the French said it ‘aw-shed-DAY’,” Dennis minced, then, returning to his natural tone, he said, “That became ‘ho-SHED’ which always makes me laugh—probably have to raise our prices if we said the fancy French name.”
“For sure.”
“Why don’t you come to my office, and I’ll show you ol’ great-great-grandfather’s picture. He watches over me at my desk.”