Chapter 24 Neighborly Disturbances
Neighborly Disturbances
Otis weathered the news well and found gratitude that they didn’t lose more.
He and Bec expected to face new challenges, but he couldn’t have imagined such a jarring winter.
Nevertheless, the pruning went well, and the entire mountain celebrated when budbreak came in mid-April.
This was a farmer’s life, fighting from year to year.
Camden and Michael were both thriving. Cam had landed his dream job as a biologist for the National Park Service.
Though he was based in Denver, he spent a lot of time on the road, visiting parks all across the US.
On weekly calls from his University of Washington dorm, Michael told them he was exactly where he needed to be.
His love of football had never died, and he always squeezed in some talk about the Huskies games.
“Have you met anyone?” Bec asked one day, failing to hide how important his answer was to her. “Not a girl, I just mean friends. Have you found your people?”
“Yeah, Simmons and I hang out. He’s pretty cool.” Simmons was his roommate. Otis and Bec had first met him when they’d moved Michael in.
“And classes?” Otis asked.
“Guys, I’m fine. I love it here. I gotta go, but I’ll call soon, okay?”
In May, Rebecca went to Bali for a month of torture.
Well, yoga and silent retreats, same difference in Otis’s opinion.
He began to replant the vines they’d lost with the help of his new crew.
He hired Chaco, a man with a silver front tooth who admitted to having a sordid history back in Mexico working with cartels, but he’d cleaned up and tended vines for fifteen years in Washington State.
Chaco brought with him his team of hard workers, who understood the land and were entirely open to farming without chemicals.
Otis invited all the employees to taste wines, and he’d talk about his latest philosophies, how this was far more than a cash crop, that wine was life, and that he expected them to treat the vines and wines with reverence. In return, he would pay them well.
It was after one of these meetings, one week into Rebecca’s trip, when Otis saw Vance coming up the road. He hadn’t seen him all year and had hoped that it might be a quiet vintage, sans the sounds of the band from hell.
“Shit,” he said, scratching his head.
“ Quién es ese ? ” Chaco could speak English but knew Otis could understand him in Spanish.
“ El diablo , ” Otis said.
That night Otis sat on the back deck, Rosco at his feet, and lit a pipe, something he’d recently taken up.
He felt a certain need to have a little extra fun while Rebecca was gone.
Usually he’d take Mondays through Wednesdays off drinking, but while she was away, he’d abandoned restraint and was drinking a handful of special bottles from deep in the cellar.
He’d already enjoyed two glasses of a 1975 Trocken riesling from Egon Müller , and he’d just poured himself a stellar glass of a pinot noir from Coche-Dury. By God, it had some panache. He smacked his lips in delight. Even Vance couldn’t get in the way of the glory of a well-made Burgundian wine.
The second glass tasted even more delightful, and he stepped inside to grab some tasty treats.
A neighbor had recently gifted Otis a cut of salmon that he’d caught and smoked himself.
Turned out to pair wonderfully with the pinot noir, and Otis fell into a joyful state of bathing in the setting sun on the back deck.
Later, he’d grill a steak the size of his head, because Rebecca had been threatening to go vegetarian again, so he better take advantage while she was away.
Then came the sound of approaching vehicles. Rosco raced to the rail and let out a deep bark. Coming up behind his dog, Otis saw several cars driving entirely too fast along the shared gravel road—a line of morons who wouldn’t know Barolo if it rained down upon them.
“Slow down, you ingrates!” Otis yelled, tobacco smoke rising from his lungs.
Of course, they couldn’t hear him; their ears were clogged with bad music and poor taste. More bozos arrived, and within thirty minutes it had turned into a full-blown party at Vance’s. A fire roared, smoke rising high into the big sky. Forty bohemians partied like it was their last night on earth.
Let it be said that Otis enjoyed a good party.
How many festivities had he supplied with wines over the years?
Still, this was different; these hooligans were threatening the sacred terroir.
What if they threw out cigarette butts or shat in the rows?
They were all a bunch of rabid raccoons.
They might as bloody well walk into the Sistine Chapel and shoot fireworks!
A good bottle and a half in, Otis decided to investigate further.
He was slightly wobbly, but it was a good buzz, one that only Burgundy could bring.
“When done right,” Otis asked as he meandered his way into Vance’s property, “what would a Red Mountain wine do to a man? I suppose I don’t quite know yet.
” By gods, Bec would kill him if she knew what he was doing now, slipping back to his old self, but it wasn’t that . .. not exactly.
It was simply that this land would be their swan song, their last ode to life, and how could he do that with this blubbering fool and his band of weirdos arriving just as the vines began to reproduce?
One hundred yards from the bonfire, Otis became stealthier, sneaking from cherry tree to cherry tree, peering around trunks to get a better look.
On the other side, a line of cars and trucks were parked along the gravel road.
Everyone gathered around the giant fire.
By God, it was May. They shouldn’t be having a fire now.
Warnings were already out. Besides, they were surely the kind of people who’d burn Styrofoam and plastic, zero respect for Mother Earth.
It was past midnight, but it seemed the party was in its infancy. The scantily clad ruffians held Solo cups in their hands and made a commotion worthy of Vikings pillaging a village.
Vance had a funny-shaped guitar strapped around his neck and was adjusting a microphone. The drummer tested the high hat. A bassist with hair that fell past his shoulders began to toy with a groove that shook the land.
“Dear Lord,” Otis said at this aural travesty.
He watched in bewilderment as these beasts broke into a song with no discernable melody, barely a rhythm at all, only a smashing of notes at a volume unsuited for human ears. The other guests began to bob their heads, which turned into banging their heads and screaming as loudly as they could.
Otis clutched his chest, recalling the feeling of when he’d burned his phylloxera-infested vines so many years ago.
What he should do was sneak over and yank out the plug that was feeding the electricity to these devilish noises.
Before he could act on it, though, a dizziness came over him, and he leaned on one of the malnourished trees to steady himself.
From where did these people come? From Benton City? Or Richland? From the bloody depths of hell? They were surely the devil’s outcasts, humans blinded to art, to humanity.
If only Bec could see. She would understand his indignation and the associated punitive thoughts.
The next morning Otis marched over to visit Vance. He barely noticed the colors of the sunrise, the birdsong, or the cool morning air. He was a man on a mission to defend his vines.
The leftovers of the party made Otis’s own hangover even worse.
Most of the guests had left at some point in the night, but a couple of men had passed out under the stars and were stirring as Otis approached.
Smoke rose from the leftovers of the fire.
Solo cups, cigarette butts, and liquor bottles littered the clearing.
A keg that was surely empty lay on its side. A rabbit shot into the sagebrush.
“Hello?” Otis called, reminding himself to be affable—not in an I-brought-cookies sort of way, but more out of self-preservation. Vance was larger and younger and could wipe the floor with Otis’s body.
He climbed the wobbly wooden steps and rapped on the trailer door. “Hey, Vance, you around?”
A minute later, the door pulled open, and a shirtless Vance stood there looking even more hungover than Otis felt. He didn’t have a six-pack, but his physique suggested that he bench-pressed tree trunks and did burpees with small cars strapped to his back.
Otis cleared his throat. This wasn’t about reprimanding the man; it was about appealing to him. And not getting knocked in the mouth. “I wondered if we might talk for a moment. Man to man, as they say.”
“Man to man?”
“Neighbor to neighbor.”
“It’s early.”
“It’s late for ag country,” Otis corrected. “I just need a few moments of your time.”
Vance stepped down from the trailer, his heavy boots knocking up the dust from the ground. He stretched and looked out over the property. “I’m assuming we’re bothering you?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. You know, I’m a winemaker. No stranger to a good party, but ... heavy metal music, vehicles coming in and out at all hours, guns shooting off ... it’s a bit much for me, especially after midnight.”
Vance raked his fingers through his beard. “Isn’t that why we live out in the middle of nowhere, so we can do what we want?” He fired up a cigarette and waved at one of the guys who’d slept outside.
Otis wondered how Thomas Jefferson, who had done wonders for the American wine market, might appeal to Vance. “You mentioned your brother was a wine guy.”
“I don’t know if he was a wine guy, but it was always his dream.”
“Mine too. Mine too.” Otis almost slipped through a time portal, thinking back to that first day he came upon Paul Murphy’s ranch. “The thing is ... I play Ravel to my vines.”
“Ravel?”
“The French composer. And Puccini and even Pavarotti. I’m sure you know Pavarotti, right?”
Vance shook his head.