Page 121 of Red Mountain Burning
Till I See You Again
Eighteen days later.
Otis had been drivingtrucks all his life, but this darn thing was big. He supposed he’d get used to it after a day or two of driving, which was much more than he could say for the sound of the RV’s horn. Some knucklehead had installed a custom beep that played “La Cucaracha” every time you pushed the soft spot in the center of the wheel.
Though Otis had acted grumpy about it when he’d heard the sound for the first time, there was a ring of truth in it, and he’d known he was on the right track with buying this RV and going after his woman.
He swung a hard right into Joan’s long driveway and parked near the house. It had been one month since he’d spoken with her. Heck, one month since he’d spoken with much of anyone. Thankfully, other than his own employees, Margot and Brooks were the only ones to catch a glimpse of his recent collapse.
And what a collapse it had been. In those first two weeks post-Joan, he’d managed to let his body and house go to hell. It was a good thing Eli and the other gents had picked up his slack, for even the wines and vines had fallen from his purview. All Otis had done was stack blocks for a wall that was still incomplete.
The bad days were in the past, though. Sometime shortly after Otis had been visited by Margot and Elvis, he’d had some sort of breakthrough. When she’d returned with a giant basket of leftovers, Margot had told him about her own epiphany. Otis thought that was a good word for it.
His own awakening had struck him in the chest like a mallet. And it all started with a blind horse, a cowgirl, and an eye patch.
The day after Margot and Elvis had visited, Otis found an old leather bag and had taken it into his shop at the winery. After thirty minutes, he’d created a sharp-looking eye patch—as far as eye patches go—with a light-brown patch and a black band. He’d walked out of the shop with the attitude that people were welcome to laugh at him. He didn’t care anymore. He’d woken from his daydream and realized he wanted one thing and one thing only: Joan Tobey.
Sure enough, when Chaco and Esteban saw him and determined that he hadn’t sustained an eye injury, they laughed and called himLa Pirata de la Montaña Roja.Eli laughed even harder, asking him where he’d left his parrot. Otis smirked back. “Yo ho ho, you bozos. Laugh all you want.”
Four mornings into his eye-patch therapy, a funny thing happened. Still wet from a shower, he stood in front of the mirror with a towel wrapped around his waist and hacked away the grisly beard that had taken over his face.
After pulling the eye patch back over his eye, Otis found himself looking eye-to-eye, quite literally, with the Otis Till of his youth. In place of the old grump who’d busied himself with a million tasks and worries in order to soften the pain of losing his wife and two sons, he saw the young man who’d fallen in love with Rebecca on the way to those three wet and wonderful days at Woodstock. He saw the dare-he-say strapping young Otis who had partnered with this woman to realize their dream: to buy a farm of their own in Sonoma. He remembered how hard they’d worked to save enough money to buy their first several acres, and Otis smiled at the memory of the day when he and Rebecca had climbed out of the truck and realized what they’d committed to. Neither one of them knew anything about growing grapes, but they’d jumped in and figured it out.
That man looked deep into Otis’s one eye and wordlessly said that he wasn’t done living. There were still adventures to be had. Standing there in his towel, Otis had lifted up his arms and flexed his muscles and howled like a blooming idiot until he’d lost his voice.
As the days passed, he came to embrace the eccentricity of his eye patch, and he found that, for the first time in many moons, he didn’t give a rip what people thought about him. Another wonderful realization had struck him as he’d walked up to the winery one day. He’d stopped looking over the wall at the neighbor’s property. Whether it was the eye patch or just the sheer rawness of hitting rock bottom, Otis had broken through to the other side, and the weight of things that didn’t matter had drifted away.
The only thing that didn’t feel right was the hole in his heart. What was all this for if he didn’t have the woman he loved?
Thirty days after Joan had left him, he decided that he was the biggest idiot this side of the Cascades. There was nothing in the world—including Red Mountain—that held a candle to Joan Tobey, and he became intent on sharing his revelation with her. He didn’t know if she’d moved on or if he had a chance, but he’d spent thirty days of ups and downs working toward one big choice.
He’d give it all away if he could get her back.
What was the value of even the finest vintage if he couldn’t share it with her?
The answer to that question is what had led him to a used-RV lot, where he’d found a Class C Winnebago that blew “La Cucaracha.”
He’d also put a good deal of effort into looking good for her too. Not only had he hacked away his grisly beard, but he’d driven into Benton City to visit the barber, where they’d given him hell for his “pirate patch” as they trimmed him back to handsome. He’d laughed with them, knowing there was no better medicine in the world than the kind of laugh that nearly splits the corners of your mouth.
Sitting in his Winnebago in his best khaki pants and ironed shirt, Otis glanced at the mirror and straightened his eye patch and tweed cap. He thought he saw the younger Otis wink back at him. Then with a big fat smile on his face, he pressed down on the horn, and “La Cucaracha” rang through Joan’s neighborhood.
The sound was so absurd that Otis found himself chuckling yet again, and he realized his sides were sore from laughing so much lately. When she didn’t appear, he pressed the horn again, letting the melody of the Mexican folk song fill the air.
The door finally popped open, and Joan poked her head out.
Unable to resist, he pressed the horn again and, like the conductor of a symphony, bounced his hand to the melody.
When she allowed herself to smile, it was as if the grandest fireworks display on earth had just begun. Otis was roaring and could barely get the window rolled down on the passenger side.
“Whatin theworld?” Joan asked as the music died down.
“Hop up here. Let me show you.”
Joan pulled open the door and stepped up onto the rail. “I don’t know what to ask about first. The eye patch or the RV.”
“I would have started with the blasted horn!”
She shook her head and fixed her eyes on the steering wheel. “I don’t even know how to touch that.”
