Chapter 5 Wine Country #2
“That guy there, Lloyd Bramhall. He’s my ticket.
His family owned half of San Francisco at one point, textiles, real estate.
Now he’s just having fun. I somehow talked him into investing and helping Sparrow and me buy land.
Now we owe him a tremendous amount of money, and he owns my soul, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Look at them. Those are my vines now ..
. my winery. An impossible dream coming to life. ”
Otis looked at Paul with admiration. “You lucky bastard.”
“I know. Are you ready? Let’s put you to work.”
With rock ’n’ roll blasting, someone sprayed off Otis’s feet with a hose—as if that were enough to sanitize them—and then he climbed into a tank loaded with fresh grapes.
His feet sank in, and he felt the berries and their stems press into his flesh.
The luscious scent he’d first encountered on the highway was even stronger now, a drug in and of itself.
A smile rose out of him that could have blasted the clouds out of the sky, and he began to stomp those grapes, first little by little, and in minutes he was dancing, this non-hippie all of a sudden a free spirit with wings.
He was not only smiling but laughing, a maniacal burst because he’d found something meaningful that he could pursue.
Was that even possible in the matter of a few minutes, a life changed, a world turned over?
Damn right it was. Otis felt at one with these people and this place.
If only Rebecca were here.
By God, in one year, 1969, he’d had the two most impactful moments in his life. The time Rebecca sat next to him on the bus, and this day, October 15, 1969, when the wine bug sank its teeth into him, and its blood stained his feet.
“Nineteen sixty-nine,” he said, looking out over the Sonoma hills. “The year of Otis.”
He said it again, uncaring who heard. “The year of Otis!”
Then, for the second time that year, he opened his mouth and howled like a wild dog.
Awhooooo! Awhooooooo!!!!
That evening, Otis and Rebecca drove back to the city. He hadn’t said a word about his experience. Today was about her; his revelation could wait. He’d returned to her family’s house with a gift bottle of wine and had been as kind and civil as he could.
Empath that she was, Rebecca certainly noticed that something had shifted in Otis, though. She’d smiled when he returned to her parents’ house. “What’s gotten into you?”
Otis suspected the rest of the family was wondering, too, probably assuming that he’d slipped off to find a joint. It was far more than that.
As soon as they got on the highway, Otis said, “You didn’t tell me that your dad pushed you.”
“I know, I know. It’s the only time it ever happened.”
“Still, a father can’t push his daughter. What happened?”
“It was a pretty bad fight. He’d just kicked my brother out of the house—for like the tenth time.
‘You’re not my son anymore,’” she said, mimicking a drunk Marshall.
“‘Go get a life!’ The same stuff he’s been saying for years.
He was always disappointed in Jed, but especially because he was still living at home. ”
Rebecca took a long breath. “I got in my dad’s face, told him he was a useless drunk. Maybe a few things even worse. My mom was begging us to stop. He pushed me. Slammed me against the wall.”
“ What? Why didn’t your brother do something?”
“He’d already left.”
Otis looked at his reddening hands gripping the steering wheel. After a string of curses, he said, “I don’t blame you for running away. You don’t need to be around that.”
“Yeah, well ... I pushed him back, for the record.”
“Good.”
She faked a smile. “Trust me, he’ll never do it again.” Otis decided to let it go, for now.
“Anyway, I have to tell you something, and I’m afraid.”
“You should never be afraid to tell me anything.”
A tear escaped her eye, and she looked away. “I need to move back home. They’re broke. My mom can’t work as many hours now that she’s helping Jed. And they need me. She says I was always the strongest of them, and I guess she’s right.”
“I see.” In the silence Otis tried to paint the rest of the picture. He didn’t want to ask whether he was still a part of her future.
Bec turned back to him and put a hand on his thigh. “I don’t want to lose you. Could we make it work while you’re still in Berkeley? We’d have to.”
Her words came as sweet relief. “Yes, of course. For a moment there, I thought you were—”
“Don’t even say it out loud. I have never been surer of us. We won’t be that far from each other. Under an hour with the Richmond Bridge.”
“I don’t care if we’re separated by a hundred hours and fifty bridges.”
She laughed despite her tears. “Me either.”
He couldn’t let it go, though. “But they’re not healthy, Bec. You don’t owe them anything.”
“This isn’t up for discussion. Maybe I don’t owe them anything, but they’re family. As screwed up as they are, they’re still my family.”
Otis bit his tongue. How could he argue? He had to support her. “Okay, then. Well, I might have some business up there before too long anyway.”
Her brow furrowed. “Business?”
“What if I told you I think I’ve found what I want to do.” He couldn’t stop his lips from curling into a smile.
“What?”
“Take a guess. Nothing to do with writing.”
She scrunched her forehead. “A car mechanic then?”
“Um, no.”
Her eyes darted around, seeking another guess. “A chef?”
“Wine,” he said, feeling it in his bones, hearing the call of the grapes.
“What do you know about wine?”
“Exactly nothing, but ... I had some sort of awakening earlier. I think I know what I want to do with the rest of my life.” He gleefully shared the details, about meeting Sparrow and Paul, and stomping grapes.
“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” It was the first time she’d really smiled in two days.
“I can’t even describe, Bec, what happened to me up there. The only thing missing was you.”
“What about your journalism degree?”
“I don’t know! Why would I need it? I might have to transfer to UC Davis. Or drop out.”
Her mouth straightened. “You’re not dropping out.”
“It’s your fault.” Otis changed to the slow lane. “A purple bus, a pretty girl, and the whole world shifts from black and white to Technicolor.”
He leaned over her and kissed her, tasting their lives together, tasting exactly what courage and faith and partnership could do to a man.
He helped Rebecca move to Santa Rosa three days later, and as he left, something told him he better not make saying goodbye a habit. She could disappear as easily as she’d come into his life.
Thankfully, he’d always been good with money and had saved every dime his aunt had paid him for working on the farm.
First thing he did was buy a black-and-bronze Honda motorcycle that had some good life left in it.
The bike allowed him to see her every chance he got, but it didn’t take care of the bigger problem: He no longer wanted to write for a living.
The first draft lottery took place on December 1, and though Otis wasn’t eligible due to his age, watching it with the barbecue guys wrenched a deep pit in his stomach.
If he dropped out of Berkeley, he’d soon become eligible, but Berkeley had become a slog.
He made it through the first semester with mostly A’s, though he’d barely squeaked out a B in physics.
Decent grades or not, Otis could not have cared less about getting a degree.
He would close his eyes in class and see grape clusters dangling from vines.
At home for Christmas, his father had given him an earful for the lone B and his lack of extracurriculars. What about the debate team, the school newspaper? Good grades aren’t enough these days. Yeah , Otis thought, wait till I tell you what’s really going on, Dad.
Otis didn’t mention Rebecca or his newfound love of wine, but back in the city in the first couple of months of 1970, he couldn’t stop imagining a different scenario.
Still, his father’s voice rang in his ear, warning him off chasing daydreams. Voices echoed from his family tree, telling him the same.
Was there any substance behind this wine thing anyway? Between classes, while seated along the shore of Strawberry Creek, the waterway that ran through Berkeley, he pondered his awakening while also looking for any indications that he’d misread this abrupt about-face in his life.
Otis had fond memories of his mother’s garden back in London.
They’d had a first-floor flat with a small courtyard that she’d packed with flowers and vegetables.
He would lean against the brick wall and watch her work and ask endless questions, desperate to understand how a seed could sprout into a plant, or how humans had discovered which fruits and vegetables were edible, or how a flower could detect the sun and grow toward it.
Seeing the vines at Murphy Vineyards had reignited his enthusiasm.
To think a vine could bear fruit that would lead to wine was almost more than he could process, especially once he considered Paul Murphy’s words about how each year and each piece of land created different qualities in the grapes.
The idea took farming to a new place. Wine production was the ultimate confluence of art and science, an intersection that called to Otis like a gesturing hand appearing out of the fog.
He’d adored so much about the farm in Montana: his mother’s much-larger garden, the steady howl of the coyotes at night, the fresh cream and milk, the early mornings where the rest of the world slept as he completed his chores, the constant challenges: a broken fence or tractor, an animal that needed special care, even a door that wouldn’t open.
The list never ended, and he enjoyed doing his part and learning how to tackle anything that came his way.
His aunt and her team of workers had been good about teaching him, showing tremendous patience to a young teen who had far more questions than answers.
But Otis wasn’t a Montana boy. He didn’t love raising cows, only to send them to slaughter.
He wasn’t a cowboy. Forgive him for saying so, but he wasn’t a big Johnny Cash fan.
He didn’t favor going to the rodeo, or playing pool and sipping on suds.
He’d been an outsider, and that was why he’d moved so far away.
Perhaps he was a California man. He could have his nature there but produce something with more appeal—a product with sophistication.
One thing was for sure. He found the idea of farming vines and making wines far more exciting than sitting hunched over a desk like his father stabbing at a typewriter. He had too much energy for a sedentary life. That all seemed clear now.
Was his dream worth giving up on college and facing the wrath of Addison Till, though?
Did he need to be in that much of a rush?
If he abandoned his current trajectory, he’d risk becoming the first Till in recorded history to not have done something important.
Even if he did become someone in the wine world, that likely wouldn’t mean much to his family anyway.
“I believe in you, Otis,” Bec said one day in February. They were strolling to the café in Santa Rosa where she’d taken a waitress job. “But I’m not going to be the one to tell you to drop out of school. That’s your decision.”
“You have a sense of these things, though. Am I crazy?”
“I don’t know. To take a risk and chase something more appealing? I’ve never known anyone with ambition like you. Maybe that’s all it takes. Before I met you, I didn’t even know I should have something to aspire to.”
He wished someone knew the answer.
As Bec strapped on an apron and took her first order of the day, Otis mounted his motorcycle and headed to Murphy Vineyards to ask for a job.
“I’ll do anything, Paul.”
“Mr. Otis Till, bitten so badly by the bug that he’s willing to risk it all.
You sound more like me every day, brother.
” He fired up a joint and took a hit. “If you want to join the fellas and prune, that’s fine, but that’s all the work I have for you right now, and it doesn’t pay well.
I guess that’s where it all begins. That’s how I started. ”
“Pay me what you can. I just want to learn.” Otis took a long pull off the joint, then looked out over Paul’s vineyard of naked vines that would soon produce leaves and grape clusters, an army of soldiers readying for the next vintage. “I can’t exactly explain it, but this is where I belong.”
Paul let out a grin. “I know the feeling. Something tells me you’re up for the task.”