Chapter 13 Jeweled Boots and Bedwetters #3
Lloyd didn’t stop trying. Every few months he’d return with new opportunities, assuring them that the time to sell was now.
Otis stood firm, not even considering the higher offers that started to come in.
To Bec’s credit, she stopped pushing after that night on the couch, though he knew she’d sell in a heartbeat if he got on board.
The boys were five and nine. Camden was going into fifth grade.
All he wanted to do was escape into nature.
It had always been that way with him, and Otis guessed that he’d work the vines as he got older.
In fact, his boy could already prune with the best of them.
Cam loved being out there, playing cowboys and Indians, digging deep holes, building tree forts, chasing Bubbles up and down every hillside.
Michael was more complex. He was all heart and cared so damn much for everyone around him, even at his young age.
When Otis or Bec had a bad day, Michael would climb onto their laps and ask what was wrong.
He fared much better than Cam at school, eliciting grand reviews from his teachers.
Otis’s only worry was that he had his mother’s tendency to disappear into himself on occasion, that hidden part fighting battles only he could see.
Leaving the boys was getting harder and harder, and Otis was glad he wouldn’t have to spend the summer traveling.
He needed a break. The road was draining him.
Not that he wasn’t having fun, but it was too much fun.
Bec would have killed him if she knew the full extent of what he was up to.
Though his father wouldn’t have believed it—despite the $10,000 check he’d written the man to settle their debt—Otis had become a celebrity in the last few years.
People clamored for his wines and fought for his time.
Otis and Bec even had stalkers, wine enthusiasts who would creep by on the road and, in some brave cases, pull over and ask for a tasting.
He was on the brink of installing a gate, but for now they’d posted a big sign with painted black letters that read: We’re all out.
Of course Otis didn’t mind the attention.
He thoroughly enjoyed his jaunts into San Francisco, where the wine buyers did a double take when they saw him, comping his meals, sometimes even inviting him into the kitchen for a line of blow.
The same happened all over the country during his travels—the wine reps and managers from the distributor, the wine buyers and chefs from the restaurants, they all wanted a piece of Otis Till and would wine and dine him and drag him out until the wee hours of the morning.
Didn’t mind it? Hell, he loved the attention. Craved it even.
Thank God he had the farm as an escape. Reentry was tough, though, returning from those fast-lane trips to find Bec exhausted from running the entire ship.
“It’s your turn,” she’d say, the words that became her anthem upon his returns.
“I know, I know, but ... let me catch a breath.” Couldn’t she see that he’d worked himself to the bone out there? Yes, she’d been pushing herself, too, but he wasn’t giving her a hard time.
He’d just returned from Chicago, where he’d landed a glass pour at Gene he could barely stand it. Two-thirds of his vineyards were dead vines walking. All that he and Bec had planted, all those vines coming into their own. Even the legacy centennial vines that had once attracted him to the property had also been hit.
And the soil ... how many years would it take to bring it back to life?
Carmine had told him to get the vines out of the ground as quickly as possible, then to burn them, but Otis held on until he saw the spread, how the infestation was hopping blocks.
Now he sat behind the wheel of the tractor, bandanna on his head to keep the sweat from burning his eyes, wishing that they’d sold to Gallo when they had the chance.
Tears fell as he jabbed the front loader into the earth, and the vines began to fold over. These vines had made him who he was. These vines had bought back investors, paid for their lives.
He’d attempted to keep the news quiet, begging everyone with whom he’d consulted not to mention it, but there was no smaller world than Sonoma Valley, and by now everyone knew that Lost Souls had been hit hard.
Likely, his competitors were shaking their heads and saying he’d done something wrong while also scrambling to spray and do whatever it took to keep the lice from getting their crops too.