Chapter 14 Pac-Man and White Zin #3
“Jack over at the farm shop. The brake disc for the Mahindra isn’t in yet.”
October used to be the month when Otis shone, when he felt the wolf howl within him.
During October 1984, he had moments, especially with his boys, when he did feel okay, like life was almost normal, but right now, he was walking his vines, talking to them, and pleading that they take root and yield grapes that could make a worthy wine sooner rather than later.
Lost Souls Ranch was a sad affair during the harvest. With two-thirds of the vines standing only a few inches tall, there were barely any berries to take in.
Otis had been forced to let half his staff go, as money was tight and there wasn’t as much work to do.
He’d committed to some purchased fruit grown north a few miles, but even the idea of making terroir-less juice hurt him.
Otis Till was not a bulk winemaker, the kind of businessman who sells juice to churches for communion, or that off-loaded jugs to grocery stores.
He’d built a name on his farm, and he didn’t want to lose that reputation.
The worry ate at him. He was thirty-two and could very well be steering his family into a place from where they couldn’t recover. Sure, they could sell their land, pay back Lloyd, and live off the rest while he found another means of income, but they’d put so much into it.
The sound of the bell rang out over the fields.
Otis looked back toward the house. Was it already ten? Rebecca had given him a hard time—in a soft Rebecca sort of way—for taking so long to report yesterday, so today he hustled and tried to shuck all the worry clinging to him.
One year of recess, and he and his boys had done about everything imaginable.
As he came up the hill, he saw Mike and Cam tossing the football.
They were that age now where they loved playing ball more than anything.
Otis didn’t quite understand sports, American or English, but he’d occasionally sip some whiskey and cuddle up with his boys to watch the San Francisco 49ers run up and down the field.
He found it curious, these men tossing balls up into the air and being paid so much to do so.
Nonetheless, he’d decided to learn for his boys’ sakes. “Recess has commenced!” he called, stretching out his arms as he came up the hill to the lawn.
Cam smiled and slung a spiral in his direction. Otis made a play for it, but it fell through his hands. Needless to say, Addison Till had not thrown him long balls back in London. Or in Montana, for that matter. Otis picked it up and slung it back as best as he could.
“That’s not a spiral,” Cam said, catching Otis’s ugly toss. His son jogged toward him. “I told you, you have to hold it by the threads.”
Otis took the ball. “Like this?”
“That’s it.”
“Go long.”
Cam took off down the long gravel drive and then twisted at the last moment. Cam caught it perfectly. Who would have thought he’d raise two sports boys? But wasn’t that the way the world worked?
Mike didn’t have the athleticism that Cam did, but he had the determination. He joined in, and they stood in a triangle, tossing the ball back and forth. “So what’s your mom teaching you today?”
“Math.”
“Math? That’s great. Every winemaker must be a mathematician. Just this morning, I was using division and multiplication. What I want to know is which one of you will work in the lab and which one will work in the vineyards.” He already knew the answer, but he let them sort it out.
“I’m doing both,” Mike said. “Like you.”
“Yeah, your mom says I work too much. The duties would be best split.”
“I’m working the vines,” Cam said.
Otis agreed. The kid liked the outdoors more than anyone he’d ever met.
“Would that be okay with you, Mike? I see you as more of the man in the lab, the one making the calls in the cellar. The fermentation artist. Typically, that means you’d go out and sell too.
Go see the world, dine in some of the—what’s wrong? ”
Mike had caught the ball but hadn’t thrown it back.
“I don’t like to think about you not being here.”
“Oh, I’ll be here.” Otis approached and lifted up Mike’s chin.
“I’ll be on the terrace with your mother, sipping lemonade.
Believe it or not, there will be a day, likely decades from now, when I want to step back, watch you boys do all the hard work.
Besides, you’ll both have a couple of sprogs running around.
I want to focus on being a grandfather. Who else is going to teach them to throw spirals? ”
“You can’t throw spirals,” Cam said, grabbing the ball from Mike.
“Fair point.” Mike’s shoulders were still slumped. Otis pulled him in. “Don’t worry. Your mom and I aren’t going anywhere for a long time.”
A tear fell down his cheek. “I hate dying.”
“Hey, why are you even talking like that?”
He raised his gaze, his eyes dull with heartache. “Mom said that Bubbles won’t live as long as us.”
Otis felt his son’s pain. “Yeah, that’s true. Dogs have shorter lives, but death isn’t a scary thing. I’d like to think that, in some ways, it’s just the beginning.”
“What does that mean?”
Otis knelt and wiped Mike’s face. “We can’t know what’s out there, but something tells me this little life we’re all living here on earth is only a small part of the plan.
” He sounded like Rebecca, but he really did believe it.
“In the meantime, that’s why we must work hard to do something special. Because our time on earth is limited.”
Once the boys returned to their schoolwork, Bec and Otis sat on the terrace to catch up. Otis sat in his favorite wrought iron chair, which faced up the hillside. “I’m worried about money, Bec. I see our little guys so happy here. Thriving. I don’t want to lose the ranch.”
“We’re not going to lose the ranch.”
“Do you really believe that or are you just saying that to manifest it?”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
Sometimes he wanted to explode when she refused to validate his fears. “You know what I mean. There’s reality, and then there’s you saying what you want to happen. Back here on earth, I’m looking at logistics.”
“We did it once, we can do it again.”
“I’m worried that those days were short-lived, that .
.. I feel like a fraud. For a minute there, we had it figured out.
Was it all an illusion? What if our fruit doesn’t taste the same?
What if people don’t believe in me anymore?
What if our distributors don’t want the new wines when they come online?
There are new players in town now. Napa is taking over.
Hell, people are even buying Oregon wine these days. Can you believe that?”
The phone rang inside. A minute later, Cam called, “Dad! It’s Paul.” Otis pushed himself up and went into the kitchen. The boys hovered over their books at the table.
After a hello, Paul said, “You know Ledbetter’s in town, right?”
Otis almost dropped the phone. “What?”
“Yeah, he came by to taste my wines. We’re all doing dinner at Hamilton’s tonight, a bunch of winemakers. Want me to see if I can get you in?”
Otis could have cried. He felt exactly the way he felt during lunches in the cafeteria as the new kid in Bozeman. Three hundred cowboys and cowgirls and one lonely English bloke with a funny accent.
“Nah, thanks, though. Have fun and tell everyone hello.”
Otis set down the phone and stared at it for a while. Never had he felt more like a fraud.
Otis hated lying to Rebecca, but she was keeping far too close an eye on him.
The whole recess thing wasn’t the end of it.
She seemed to always be watching when he refilled his glass of wine or if he got a second helping of food.
It was her bloody fault for learning how to cook so well!
Either way, it was not like his body showed evidence of overindulging.
He was still in fine shape. He had a bit of a belly, but good God, all he’d done on the road for years was eat and eat and eat.
Foie gras for breakfast, a big fat burger for lunch.
Why wouldn’t he order the bone-in rib eye for dinner?
Truth was, he knew to keep certain things from her. Like a man of days of old who left his village to fight enemies or to hunt for meat, it was best he do his work and not speak of it afterward.
Tonight he drove away from Lost Souls Ranch with the excuse that he was going to meet Carmine. She loved the man, loved how the old Italian had the right things to say, so she wouldn’t think twice.
In reality, Otis beelined it straight to Sonoma Plaza. He slid his truck into a spot a block down. Stepping out, a small part of him thought, Nothing good will come of this. Get back in the truck.
A larger part of him screamed, Oh, c’mon, don’t be a coward!
The maleficent Otis won, and he marched down the sidewalk till he reached a polished front window with Hamilton’s printed in gold letters. It was the best steak restaurant in the valley, certainly Otis’s favorite. They even had his wine on the list.
He pressed his back up against the wall and took a guarded look inside.
It didn’t take him long to locate a table filled with Otis’s competition.
Sam Bedwetter sat at the end, in the middle of telling a story.
He looked even more smug than he did in the cartoon drawing of him that always accompanied his repulsive writing.
There must have been ten men there, and twenty open bottles, everyone’s hard work from the previous harvest. Bedwetter spun a red wine in his right hand while telling a story that must have been funny as hell, because every winemaker there laughed like he was Johnny Carson.
Otis pulled back out of sight.
Of course, there was something else at play.
Bedwetter held the keys to the kingdom. More and more, people were letting critics tell them which wines were good.
People sought out the wines that Bedwetter mentioned in his articles.
Same with the new fellow in Maryland, Robert Parker, who scored wines with a number.
Why were Americans so impressionable when it came to wine? With music, people liked what they liked. Same with food and even art. But wine had become intimidating in recent years. Maybe because so many had lost access to it during Prohibition. They didn’t grow up with it the way Europeans did.
Otis looked again. Paul, with his hair pulled back into a ponytail, sat next to Bedwetter and kept touching him on the arm.
Almost as if they were best friends. Otis loved Paul, but how could Bedwetter find Paul’s wines more intriguing than that of Lost Souls?
Actually, Otis knew every winemaker at the table.
They were all decent men, but their wines weren’t any better than Otis’s.
Excuse him for saying so. His thinking was presumptuous, but it was true. He knew the methods of these men, and in comparing them with his own, Otis made truer wine. Of course, Bedwetter didn’t know that because he didn’t know a thing about Otis and his practices.
He wasn’t sure what to do. There was one empty chair at the table. Had that been destined for him? Not that Bedwetter had asked him. Paul had asked. Want me to see if I can get you in?
No. Otis didn’t want to be squeezed in. He wanted Bedwetter to invite him with a handwritten plea delivered with a goddamn coat of arms on the letterhead.
Bedwetter should be begging to hear Otis speak of his farm and his wines and his miraculous climb to fame.
Who else had their wines in the World Trade Center and Delmonico’s? None of those guys.
He pondered what Rebecca might say, knowing she’d tell him to race back to his truck and get out of there. But this was his department. She oversaw the boys and the rest of the farm. The vines and wines were his.
He smoothed down his trousers and readied to enter.
He’d pop in and pretend like he was taking a seat at the bar.
And, oh, I didn’t realize you guys were here.
Ah, Ledbetter. Nice to finally meet you.
Who knew what would happen from there? Otis might offer to buy a bottle, or perhaps present a nice uppercut to the jaw.
Or a jab in the abdomen. Then he’d say, “No, thank you, I don’t care to join.
Just here for a filet and a glass of a taut Haut-Brion. ”
Every step he took threatened to take his breath away. He opened the door and readied for war.
Then he saw a man coming out of the restroom, and he froze.
The gorgeous Lloyd Bramhall was wiping his soft wet hands on his pleated khaki pants.
That empty seat was his. How had Lloyd not mentioned that he was in town or that he’d also been invited to join Bedwetter for dinner?
Of all people, Lloyd knew exactly the issues Otis had with the writer.
It did make sense that Lloyd would be invited, what with Paul there, but still . ..
All these thoughts came in a rush a second before Otis started to turn away and make a run for it. It was too late, though.
Lloyd caught his eye and said, “Otis!” Loud enough for others to hear. Loud enough for the whole table of winemakers to hear.
Otis spun around and darted out the door.
He didn’t look back as he passed the large glass windows that he knew were filled with the gawking eyes of the other winemakers.
He wanted to turn around and face them, but it was too late now.
All he could do was disappear. He raced back into his truck, clamoring for the keys.
People in the plaza were laughing, pushing baby strollers, licking ice-cream cones, tossing Frisbees.
They couldn’t possibly know the wine wars being fought out here.
As he backed up, he saw Paul standing outside of the restaurant with his hands held high, looking at him. His friend waved for him to come back, but Otis did the only thing that occurred to him. He offered a middle finger of defiance, and then spun away in a trail of dust.