Chapter 23 The Elder Vine #3
“I know.”
Otis topped off their glasses. “Do whatever it is that fills your cup, but don’t move on without me. I want us to grow together, you know?”
“We will. I’m in love with Red Mountain, too, and I want to be a part of its evolution, to help grow this community. I share in that dream with you, and I’m excited about getting into the tasting room. Can you believe we’ve never had one?”
“It will be a new—”
Gravel crunched in the distance, a foreign sound at this time of night. Headlights followed, a vehicle driving up the shared road past their farm. More headlights, another car—no, two more. All moving in the same direction.
“What’s going on?” Otis asked, standing up and approaching the railing. He imagined his feeling was similar to that of the Romans when the Visigoths invaded their land.
The cars came to a stop outside the single-wide trailer on the orchard land that abutted the northern side of the Till property. Otis had briefly met Henry Davidson and his family on the other side, but he’d not come in contact with anyone from this property.
Car doors shut. A few raucous voices rose into the night. Yellow lights illuminated the trailer.
“I have a bad feeling,” Otis said, recognizing a tingling in his chest.
Rebecca didn’t say anything, and he knew she felt the same way.
A racket rose out over the land the next evening while Otis and Rebecca were preparing dinner: coq au vin. Otis had never heard anything so excruciating in his life. A moment ago, pure bliss, the very marrow of the universe humming through his land. Then ...
Thrashing metal.
After tearing off his apron and stomping through the house, Otis slid open the back door and poked his head out.
“What in God’s name is going on over there?” Turning back to the house, he said, “Bec, I may lose my mind right now!”
“What’s wrong?” She stopped cooking as she picked up the noise herself. Her shoulders slumped. If Otis was reading her correctly, it wasn’t the sound that bothered her. It was that she could tell that trouble was imminent.
Bec followed him out onto the porch, the racket shaking the land, disturbing the baby vines working to take root. Otis took the binoculars off the hook and looked north to their neighboring property, a hodgepodge mess of cherry trees.
Near the single-wide trailer that had stood empty for so long, a fire blazed.
Behind it, three men attempted to make music in what looked like a band practice of sorts, though it sounded more like their attempt to wake the dead.
The drummer pounded on his instrument with rage.
A bassist thumped a beat that vibrated the planks of the deck.
The guitarist—clearly Beelzebub himself—played with so much distortion there was barely any separation between the notes.
This wasn’t music at all, this was ... torture.
Tears pricking his eyes, Otis offered her the binoculars. “See for yourself. We’ve worked too hard to ...” His words fell off.
Once she’d gotten a good look, she said, “They’re playing some music. It’ll be over before too long.”
“Playing some music? That’s not music, Bec. That is the symphony of the devil.”
“God, you’re dramatic, Otis. I bet Michael would love it.”
Otis cringed at the memory of the Metallica poster Mike once had on his wall.
What had Otis done wrong? What had he done wrong?
The poster had hung beside another featuring an on-the-edge-of-risqué photograph of supermodel Carmen Forrester.
He should have ripped them both off the wall, but Bec had insisted they choose their battles.
Considering his difficulties, she’d always given their youngest more slack than Camden.
“Okay, I’ll admit that I’m not up on the latest trends, but—”
“That’s an understatement—”
“This is not music, Bec. More importantly, they are ruining our peace. They’re disturbing our babies out there who are far too young to endure such racket. From Puccini yesterday to this?”
“I think your vines can handle it.”
Her tone suggested he was being absurd, and he didn’t like it one bit. “Can they, Bec? I’m going to call the police.” He started inside.
“The police? Honey, we’re in ag country. There aren’t any noise ordinances.”
“Then I’ll take matters into my own hands.”
She didn’t laugh; she cackled. “What does that mean? Take matters into your own hands. Are you going to go beat them up?”
“I don’t know, but you’re making light of the situation.”
Bec tugged his arm, forcing him to peel his stare away from the travesty. Holding his cheeks, not allowing his eyes to wander, she said, “Let them be. We’re in a different land now.”
He slumped in surrender. “I know we can’t expect everyone out here to show respect for the wines and vines, but lines must be drawn.”
“Maybe we should make them cookies and walk over there. Apparently they’re going to be here for a while.”
It was Otis’s turn to cackle. “Cookies? By gods, woman, you’re funny sometimes. Could we sneak a little rat poisoning in them? Now, there’s an idea.”
“In no way is that funny, Otis. And is it by God, or by gods, because you come off as not knowing whether you’re exclusive to one or a polytheist?”
“Depends on the day, my dear. How about a scoop of laxative?”
The music stopped, and a soothing quiet washed over the mountain. A stillness rose up Otis’s spine. “Ah, you hear that? I feel like someone was drowning me.”
Otis drew in a deep breath, sucking in the oxygen of silence.
“There you go, Otis. Let it go.”
Less than a minute later, the devil’s orchestra started up again. Otis broke away from Rebecca and rubbed his face and then pulled at his hair. “I can’t. I just can’t. I’m too old for this shit.”
“Too old? You’re in your forties. Please stop being such a drama king.”
“Drama king? I don’t think you’re hearing what I hear.”
“I do but choose to be okay with it.”
“Oh, here we go with the”—he gave air quotes—“ choosing. You can’t always choose. Well, maybe you can, but I can’t choose to ignore this commotion. I can’t choose to—”
Bec placed a hand on his chest. “I’m going to return to the kitchen to finish cooking.”
“How could you possibly cook while they’re tearing a hole in the sky?”
She ignored him. He turned back toward the neighbors, then raised his hands and stared up to the moon. “Are you enjoying yourself? Crushing my soul, torturing my vines. Am I not wanted here? Is that it? The coyotes beg to differ.”
The following afternoon, Bec stood at the door with her ginger cookies—Otis’s favorite—displayed on a tray and covered in plastic wrap.
“Don’t give them all of those. Come on. Did you leave any for me?” He poked one. They were soft and warm.
“Yes, you have a couple on the counter in there.”
“A couple? They get an entire batch?”
“ And a bottle of wine. Go grab something nice from the rack.”
His chest began to cave in. “They’re not wine people. Please don’t waste a bottle on them.”
Rebecca stomped on the hardwood floor. Actually stomped! “Otis, they are our neighbors. You want community, it starts with neighbors. Not everyone can be like you. Find the common ground.”
“Common ground? The only common ground is that we breathe air. It stops there.”
She stared at him till he broke.
With the cheapest bottle he could find in hand—a twist-top, barely quaffable, savagely nonsustainable cabernet sauvignon from the grocery store, Otis reluctantly walked beside Rebecca through the neighbor’s cherry trees to the trailer.
Though they’d never met the owner, Otis had seen a team tend to the trees their first year.
Strangely that same team hadn’t come this year, and the cherry trees looked malnourished.
A Honda Accord with a dent in the door and a truck with a camper bed were parked crooked in the gravel drive.
The trailer had seen better days. It was white with brown trim and raised up on concrete blocks.
Several extension cords came from underneath, clearly how they powered their amplifiers.
A rotting set of wooden stairs led up to a dirty door with a diamond-shaped window.
A tarp hung off one side and connected to two poles, providing shelter for a cooler and grill. There was no landscaping whatsoever.
“Anyone home?” Bec called. They stood about twenty feet from the door.
A barefooted man in jeans and a sleeveless Megadeth shirt pulled back the door. Likely in his early twenties, he had short ash-black hair and gauges in his ears. A big wiry beard came down to his chest.
“You’re trespassing,” he said in an alpha voice.
“I told you,” Otis muttered to Rebecca.
Brave Bec stepped forward. “We’re your neighbors. The Tills. We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you before.” She held up the tray. “We baked you cookies.”
“We? I didn’t bake them cookies,” Otis said under his breath.
The burly man descended the steps. “That was nice of you.”
“I’m Rebecca, and this is Otis.”
“Vance Mason.” He had a backwoods kind of accent, what you might expect from a rodeo rider. They all shook hands, and then Vance took the tray of cookies with another thanks and set them on the steps.
He crossed his thick arms. “By the looks of it, you’re growing grapes.”
“That’s right,” Bec said. “Moved up here last year from California.”
Vance let a grin surface. “Coming to the promised land, aren’t you? Everyone talks about the grapes. That’s what my brother wanted to do. Rip out all these cherry trees and plant grapes.”
“Wanted?” Otis asked.
Vance looked past them to the trees. “Yeah, he died last winter during a training exercise off the coast of Maine. He was a Navy Seal , about to discharge. Wanted to learn how to make wine. He left me the place.”
In that moment Otis couldn’t have felt more like a jerk. Now he understood why the trees had been neglected. He lifted the bottle, wishing he’d grabbed something more substantial. “If you’re a wine guy, we brought you a bottle. Plenty more where that came from ... if you like it.”