Chapter 18 | The Fisherman’s Way
The heat had changed. This was not the honest heat that ripened grapes and browned shoulders, but a heavier kind that pressed down over the terraces—thick, damp, unmoving. By midmorning my hair clung at my neck, and the air between the rows grew close, the vineyard holding its breath.
Still—things were better.
That was the strange part.
Baruch arrived before sunrise for once, grumbling, clearly unimpressed with the hour. He carried two extra coils of rope without being asked and dropped them beside the shed with unnecessary force.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he muttered when I glanced his way. “The earth doesn’t wait for your moods.”
“I wasn’t surprised,” I lied.
Lavi was already out in the upper rows, barefoot despite my rules, humming softly as he dragged a basket behind him like he owned the whole hillside.
He paused near Baruch, hoisted a brimming basket of grapes with exaggerated effort, and declared, “I’m stronger than you!”
Baruch snorted without looking up. “Stronger than an old man, are you? That don’t account for much.”
“You’re not that old,” Lavi shot back.
Baruch’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was nearer than I’d seen in a long time.
I found myself watching them—Baruch’s rough hands moving with steady competence, Lavi’s small body hovering near him like a bird that had decided, against all logic, that the old man was safe.
Abba sat beneath the fig tree with the ledger open, the sun catching the white in his beard. He squinted at the figures, then at me.
“You only counted the jars once,” he said.
“I always count the jars.”
He hummed. “You used to count them twice.”
I hesitated. “Once seemed enough.”
His gaze lingered on me a moment longer, something like approval softening the lines of his face.
I turned away before he could say more. But there was something about the vineyard that felt… lighter. The ground itself seemed to sense we were finally working together instead of against each other.
I was tying off a line near the third terrace when Lavi called out, “Talia?”
His voice had a different edge—less bright, more cautious.
I turned. “What did you do?” I asked, teasing.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I didn’t do anything. Just come look.”
He held up a leaf.
At first I saw only dust on his fingers. Then the underside caught the light, and I felt my stomach tighten.
A pale fuzz clung to the veins like fine ash—white-gray, almost delicate. But there was nothing delicate about what it meant.
I took the leaf from him and rubbed my thumb across it.
The fuzz smeared.
My eyes swept the row in front of us. The leaves looked green from a distance, but up close… some edges curled faintly, the plant trying to protect itself. A few clusters hung tight and hard, their grapes small, their skins dull instead of plump.
The air here was too still.
Too trapped.
I lifted another leaf and found the same dusty bloom underneath.
“Mildew,” I said quietly.
I called Baruch over and held the leaf out to him. He turned it in his thick fingers, squinting.
“Hmmm.” He scratched his beard. “Happened years ago. But this—” he glanced along the row, lips thinning—“this is spreading faster.”
“And if this is another boy scheme,” Baruch added, turning slightly so his voice carried, “I want it known I was nowhere near it.”
Lavi gasped, feigning offense. “It wasn’t me!”
Baruch raised a brow. “That’s what you said last time.”
“That time it was me,” Lavi admitted, then hurried to add, “But this time it’s not.”
Baruch shook his head and gave Lavi a light shove with his shoulder. “If you could scheme up mildew, I’d be worried what else you could do.”
Lavi flashed a rotten grin, and we all laughed at that.
Then the laughter thinned, and the weight of the leaves in my hand returned.
This wasn’t the kind of mildew that came after rain and disappeared with sun. This was the kind that crawled quietly, feeding on shade and moisture and the places where air could not reach.
Heat and stillness—a dense canopy.
Vines tied too tight. The way I had always done it.
I moved down the row, pulling leaves back, checking clusters. The mildew was the worst where the growth was thickest—where I had pruned hard and bound tighter, forcing the vines into neat, obedient lines.
Neat, precise, controlled—and suffocating.
I swallowed, then turned toward the lower terrace—the section James had insisted on loosening. The rows where, against my better judgment, the ties had been eased and the canopy left less compressed.
The Fisherman’s Way.
I walked faster than necessary, Lavi and Baruch following.
As soon as I stepped into those loosened rows, I felt the difference.
A faint breeze slid through the leaves instead of dying at the edge. Sunlight reached deeper, dappled across the soil. The ground smelled warmer here, not wet-stale.
I checked a leaf.
There was mildew—yes. It had touched this section too. But it was lighter, less set in. The fuzz did not coat the veins as thickly. The leaves weren’t curling as much. And the fruit—the fruit was still holding.
Not perfect, but better.
I stood very still, leaf between my fingers, and tried to make it mean anything else.
Coincidence, slope angle, shade patterns—anything.
But my mind supplied James’s voice, clear and unmistakable.
Trap the air, and they choke.
Baruch shifted beside me, then spoke plainly, as always.
“The ones with space held.”
Lavi looked between us. “So… we should do the rest that way?”
My mouth opened to say something sharp.
To say we do not change our method because a fisherman made a suggestion.
But the vineyard did not care what I preferred. The vines didn’t respond to pride. They responded to what kept them alive.
I exhaled slowly. “We’ll cut out what’s infected,” I said, hearing how steady my voice sounded. “We’ll thin the canopy. We’ll strip the worst leaves, burn them. And then we re-tie.”
Baruch blinked once. “Re-tie?”
“Looser,” I added, the word tasting strange.
Lavi’s face brightened, the kind of delight that would greet figs falling from the sky. “Like James did!”
“I didn’t say anything about James,” I snapped automatically—then regretted it when Baruch’s mouth twitched again and Lavi tried, and failed, to hide a grin.
Baruch looked toward the loosened rows, then back to me. “Call it The Fisherman’s Way if you want,” he said. “Or call it not choking your plants. Makes no difference to the vines. If it works, it works.”
My cheeks warmed. “It’s not his way. It’s—” I stopped, because anything I said would be a lie dressed as logic.
Baruch gave a small shrug, my pride no more than another task to him. “We’ll need more rope.”
“Should we ask James to help?” Lavi offered, too innocent to know he’d tossed a spark into dry brush.
“No,” I said too fast. “No. He’d be too busy congratulating himself to tie a proper knot.”
Baruch made a sound—half cough, half choke—like the laugh tried to escape and he caught it by the collar.
Lavi didn’t even bother trying. He bent forward and let it out, bright and loud, clutching his stomach as the laughter took hold.
“Congratulating himself,” he gasped. “Talia, you’d have to bring him water and say, ‘Thank you, oh mighty fisherman, for teaching the vines to breathe!’”
“I would rather drink lake water after the nets have soaked in it,” I shot back.
That did it.
Baruch’s shoulders shook. He turned away, busying himself with the rope, but the sound that came out of him was unmistakable—rough and surprised, like he hadn’t meant to make it.
Lavi pointed at him, eyes wide with delight. “You laughed!”
“I did not,” Baruch grumbled, but he was fighting the corners of his mouth now, and losing. “Go on, keep talking. Maybe I’ll start dancing too.”
Lavi nearly fell over again.
Even I—Adonai help me—couldn’t keep my face straight. The laugh that left me was small, but it was real, and it startled me more than mildew ever could.
The vineyard had been full of suspicion and sharp edges for so long I had forgotten what it felt like when people spoke without flinching.
When laughter didn’t feel dangerous.
~
We worked the next hour stripping infected leaves, cutting clusters that had already shriveled, tossing the worst into a basket to be burned. The smell of crushed greenery rose around us—sharp, bitter, alive.
It should have been discouraging.
Instead, it felt like action. Like there was something we could do.
By late afternoon the sun sat lower, and the heat eased just enough that my skin stopped prickling. I stood at the terrace edge and looked across the rows—some tight and suffering, some loosened and holding, the difference plain as a lesson I hadn’t asked for.
Looser is better. Breath.
I bent and watched a leaf that had fallen near my sandal—green, whole, untouched by mildew. It rolled once in the dust, then lifted.
Not like a bird.
Like it had been caught.
It began to spin in a small circle, faster and faster, skimming along the ground before rising in a sudden upward sweep.
My gaze followed it before I could stop myself.
Then I noticed the horizon had shifted.
Over the ridge, dark clouds were forming, too heavy for an ordinary evening. The air at my skin cooled in a way that didn’t belong to sunset. Somewhere in the rows, the birds that had been chattering all day went quiet, the sound ending at once.
Baruch noticed too. He straightened, squinting toward the ridge. “That’s a bad color.”
Lavi stepped closer to me, pressing into my side like he used to. “Is it going to storm?”
I stared at the clouds, at how quickly they were gathering, how the light beneath them looked bruised.
“I don’t know,” I said.
But my body did.
The vineyard, with its loosened leaves and its newly moving air, seemed to lie in wait for what would come next.