Prologue Stuck in the Middle #2
A sound caused him to cock his head sideways; his ears perked up like a dog’s. Before he realized it, he was sniffing, as if to detect a fire.
What bones didn’t pop, what muscles didn’t strain, as he peeled himself off the recliner?
He damn near fell to the floor, trying to get his body to work.
Almost fifty-nine and he felt ninety-five.
That was what three months of barely moving had done to him.
Forty years of hard farming, chasing animals, shoveling pomace, and shuffling barrels around, all coming to a halt, allowing his body to finally figure out the truth of his age.
Not that fifty-nine was that old, was it?
But Otis was pretty sure that one’s body gleefully presented new ailments at the start of each decade.
New places hurt; entire organs decided not to function as well as they had.
Hell, he could write a bloody book on the trials of living and dying now, all the way from his back square into the depths of his heart.
Rebecca. Cam. Mike.
All gone.
That was where it hurt the most. Forget his back. Forget his knees and the sore muscles. The real pain lay somewhere so deep there was no way to pinpoint it, a hollowness and sharpness at the same time.
The sound came again, a sort of cry. Otis had fallen asleep dressed, which was nothing new.
He pulled on his work boots and stumbled into the kitchen.
A half pot of yesterday’s coffee sat cold and stale on the counter.
He poured a mug and didn’t even bother heating it up.
He slung back enough to get some caffeine in him and then went out through the front door to find the disturbance.
The sun was high enough to offer light, but it still hadn’t poked its head up over the top of Red Mountain. Not that it would do much good anyway, as the entire mountain was a dust cloud.
He’d nearly forgotten that it was March, the month of mistrals, the heavy winds that stirred up dust devils that looked like tornadoes, but he was reminded very quickly as a cloud poured in through the door, coating him as if he were Santa Claus coming down the chimney and collecting soot.
Otis coughed and squinted his eyes and cursed, thinking of all the equipment and floors and other surfaces that would need scrubbing.
For a flash of a second, he missed Sonoma, where the climate wasn’t so harsh.
He knew he was where he was supposed to be, but it was nice to remember a time when the Red Mountain dust wasn’t coming after him.
Wait, there it was again, that cry. Damned if it didn’t sound like an animal of some sort.
Otis pulled a blue bandanna from his back pocket and tied it around his mouth to filter his breathing.
He followed the gravel road that ran up through the vineyard, squinting to keep the dust from getting in.
His team had pruned all the vines last month, the beginning of a new harvest, and the lines of them looked like young military men fresh out of boot camp.
They’d already come to life, and in not too long, they’d produce buds.
The sound again, much clearer now.
Fifty feet from the house, Otis stepped down one of the rows of the syrah block that he and Rebecca had planted.
A flash of those exciting and eager days after they’d escaped Sonoma and all that had happened came to him.
He could feel the posthole digger in his blistered hands as he jabbed the metal into the earth, making enough of a hole in which Rebecca could drop a baby vine. Those days were a new birth.
Right at his feet he heard the noise, a whimper laced in fear. Bending down, he found, curled up in a ball, a tiny trembling coyote pup, about the size of two hands. White streaks decorated his otherwise indigo-brown fur.
When he saw Otis, his oversize ears perked up, and he flashed his teeth.
“Oh, c’mon, mate,” Otis said. “You’re the one trespassing.”
The coyote pup attempted to stand, but he didn’t get very far. A bad leg kept him down.
“Where’s your family?” Even as he asked, Otis realized that he could relate better than anyone on earth. One lone dog to another. “What’s going on with your leg?” He stretched out a gentle hand.
The pup growled again.
Otis retracted at the sight of the teeth.
“We’re not going to get very far with you trying to bite me.
Trust me, I’m friendly.” He thought he might dash back to the house—if dashing was something his old body could do (come to think of it, it wasn’t)—and grab a piece of bacon to attempt to lure the poor animal.
But he worried the pup would sneak off, possibly hurt himself even more.
From what little he could see of the leg, the animal was hurt badly.
Otis tried to get closer, talking as kindly as he could. At one point the coyote stood on his three good legs and started moving away, but then he stumbled back to the ground.
The dust wasn’t letting up, but Otis took off his bandanna, hoping he might look a little friendlier. “All right, mate, we need to make some decisions. You need me more than I need you.”
More forceful this time, Otis reached over and finally got a hand on him. The pup went after him with a bite that proved somewhat harmless.
Otis grinned. “Okay, you’re younger than I thought.” His teeth had barely come in. Otis had seen rabid; this one was not. “Don’t worry, I’m the last person on this mountain you should be afraid of.”
Otis knelt and did his best to gently scoop up the animal. The pup cried as the damage to its leg revealed itself. The bone was broken below the knee.
Handling the coyote delicately and speaking in gentle whispers, Otis returned to the house, finally escaping the dust. Unsure what to do, Otis set him down on the rug in the living room. Standing on three legs, the pup looked around nervously but stopped growling.
Fetching a bowl of water from the kitchen, Otis dipped in his finger, splashing it. “It’s safe to drink. Some of the best water you’ll ever have. Well water from three hundred feet down.”
The pup sniffed it and turned away.
“Are you being finicky? Some sort of water sommelier? You won’t find better in the world.” Otis could still recall the moment he’d first tasted the water from the well they’d dug in ’94. He’d never tasted anything cleaner in his life.
Eventually the pup inched his way toward the bowl. Now that they were in the light, Otis could see the maimed leg better. He’d have to take him to the vet when they opened. What in the world was he going to do with this guy?
Later that morning, Otis returned from the vet holding a much cleaner and happier coyote. The vet had issued feeding instructions and given the little guy a painkiller and bath and wrapped his foot in a cast. With a cone around his neck, the pup lay glazy eyed and groggy in Otis’s arms.
“What do we do now, little one?” Otis carried him into his office. “Shall we watch a show?” Otis had never kept a television in his office until recently. He’d moved it in from the bedroom.
As he thumbed through stations, he asked, “What am I going to call you, amigo?”
The pup barely opened his eyes, even when Otis nudged him.
“No opinion whatsoever? Somehow I doubt that. A name means a great deal. It must speak of one’s strength and character, no? How about Amigo? That seems to fit well.”
A silence ripe for an ambush of the heart filled the room.
“You know, Amigo, you really came to the wrong bloke if you’re looking for pampering.
I’m all out of everything. Cupboards are as bare as my soul.
” A memory seized him, of seeing tire tracks in the snow, realizing Bec and Mike had gone out into the blizzard, the agony of trying to get a hold of them.
The lifeless faces of his wife and second-born son at the morgue had burned into Otis’s brain, and he would never stop seeing them. He never wanted to stop seeing them.
Otis sighed as he stroked the coyote’s back. The poor dog had found the worst man ever to rescue him. He couldn’t even rescue himself.
That night, the coyotes howled with a longing that reverberated within.
Otis was no stranger to the desert dogs that he’d first met in Montana as a boy.
He’d felt a connection with them since his family relocated to the US, and when he’d first howled as a teenager—at Bec’s encouragement—he’d released emotions that had been trapped in his chest all his life.
As their calls came piercing through the night, both Otis’s and Amigo’s ears perked up.
Amigo maneuvered well enough with his leg in a cast and jumped up on the back of the couch, which pressed against the window.
He didn’t howl back, but he longingly stared into the darkness.
“The vet says you need a month. They’ll still be waiting on you.” Otis hoped so, at least. Letting him out now would be a death sentence.
Amigo pawed at the window and opened his mouth, as if he might howl back, his way of saying, Mama, I’m in here! , but only a whisper of air came from his lungs, barely enough to cause a whistle.
Heartbroken, Otis scooped him up and tried to comfort him, but Otis knew better than anyone that only your loved ones, only your family, could offer the comfort they both sought. Only your loved ones could teach you how to howl.
In the morning Otis drank his coffee with Amigo on his lap.
Though the news disgusted him, he watched anyway and cursed under his breath at life and all the kooks lucky enough to still be alive but not acting that way.
He didn’t count, of course, as he’d already been sentenced to death.
No man should ever outlive his children.
On the way to retrieve a second cup, he was passing by a shelf of books when one came tumbling down at his feet, nearly striking his toe. “What in the ...?” As he bent down to pick it up, he realized that he’d been attacked by the fancy leather journal that Bec had given him after Camden died.
He picked it up and stood in slow motion, remembering exactly the conversation he’d had with Bec.
Joan Didion’s book on grief had inspired her to attempt to write her own way through the loss of their son.
She’d toiled away for months before burning what she’d written.
Of course, Bec had done better than Otis in the aftermath of Cam’s death, and in true Bec form, she had tried to lift Otis along with her.
He’d been annoyed when she suggested he start writing his memoir. “A memoir?” he said with a contorted mouth like he was eating a fried cricket. “Who would want to read my memoir? What would I have to say anyway?”
“Um, you were a writer when I first met you. Just like your father. It could be good for you.” She had a seemingly endless well of patience for him and ignored his negativity as she placed a kiss on his lips. “It’s not about the product; it’s about the process.”
“I assure you I will never write a memoir.”
She pulled away but still kept a hand on his chest. “Then call it something else. A diary.”
“A diary? What am I, a twelve-year-old girl?” In a mocking and exaggerated British tone, he said, “Dear diary, the wines don’t taste the same anymore. Quite frankly, I want to tie my ankle to a cement block and jump into the irrigation pond. It’s a terrible vintage anyway.”
Bec let out her own dramatic sigh. “You’re beyond impossible. Also, I’m far older than twelve, and I still write in my diary.”
“But you’re . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Elevated. Introspective. Hopeful.”
She finally turned, saying over her shoulder, “For God’s sake, Otis. Just call it a journal. Or a notebook. Quit making such a fuss. Pick up a pen and see what happens.”
He realized the kindness of her gesture and how much of an arse he was being.
He chased after her and kissed her forehead.
“Thank you, my dear. I’ll see what I can do.
” To himself, he thought, And why not, with all the time I have on my hands?
The vines these days, they grow on their own. The wines make themselves.
Back in the present, Otis breathed into the empty feeling he had inside and peeled open the journal.
The spine cracked. Of course, he’d never written a word.
With the bitter taste of having failed at her assignment, he returned the book to the shelf and continued into the kitchen to get his coffee.
Back in the office, Amigo was happily waiting and leaped toward Otis at exactly the wrong time, knocking the coffee all over the chair.
“Aye, aye, aye, dog,” Otis said, watching the coffee drip down the leather. “You must be more careful.” He was proud of himself for not losing his temper, though perhaps he’d lost the last of his tempers somewhere in the haystack of grief.
On to the third cup of coffee, he returned to watching the news with Amigo cuddled up on him like a bloody Havanese.
While the talking head spoke about a crime spree in Seattle, Otis found himself looking back at the darned journal, sitting up there taunting him and testing him and eyeing him as if he had some sort of responsibility to it.
He turned up the volume on the television and tried harder to focus, but his eyes kept going to the shelf.
Bec’s voice echoed in his ears. He repeated her words in a mock tone fit for a four-year-old. “It’s not about the product; it’s about the process.”
Otis fought off the idea for another few hours, but he eventually pulled the journal off the shelf and sat at his oak desk and tracked down a pen. As Amigo curled up at his feet, he said into the air, “You see, Bec. I’m full of surprises.”
He wondered where to begin.
“Just write, you buffoon.”
Something clicked inside, and he felt his hand and the pen moving, almost without his instruction, almost like the way his hand had moved the first time he and Bec had toyed with a Ouija board.
The letters collected on the page, forming words and then sentences, slowly dragging Otis back through time.
Everyone has a moment in their lives that changes everything. For me, it was when a hitchhiking hippie princess squeezed in beside me on a crowded purple bus traveling east from San Francisco. From the moment I set eyes on her, I was thunderstruck ...