Page 129 of Red Mountain Burning
Otis turned to Brooks and felt a wave of sadness. “I suppose I’ll see Brooks before any of you. Joan wants to reach Florida for New Year’s. She says she wants to cure me of my farmer’s tan.”
“I’ll have a beer waiting for you,” Brooks said.
“I’m assuming you’ll brew something with Red Mountain hops, right?”
“No question. You know I can’t shake Red Mountain entirely.”
“No,” Otis said, shaking his head. “I don’t think any of us can.”
The music from Château Smooth increased in volume, and though they couldn’t see the neighbor from the back deck, they all turned. An idea came to Otis in the same way his mother had first delivered a bite of asparagus to him as a child. He knew the green vegetable was healthy for him, but it had no appeal. Still, just as that boy had eventually taken his first bite of asparagus, Otis knew his idea had great merit.
Before he could second-guess his thought, he said, “Perhaps we should walk over there, gents. I have some unfinished business with Bellflour.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Brooks said. “I thought you were done fighting. Joan will kill you.”
“I am done,” Otis assured him. “It’s just time I apologize. No matter how different our visions for Red Mountain are, I’ve come to realize that it takes a great deal of effort and a tremendous emotional toll to start a winery. I need to at least recognize what Bellflour has done. I’m not sure I have a quiver full of kind words to say about the man, but he is as relentless as they come.”
Otis saw a quick flashback of the day he’d pounded Bellflour into the gold concrete. “I suppose I owe him more than an apology. Perhaps all of us, the Guardians of Red Mountain, owe him a welcome.”
Jake slapped his hands onto the armrests of his chair. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Remi lifted the saber off the table and held it high. “Then to Château Smooth we go.”
The four men walked through the house and out the front door. The electronic beats grew louder as the Guardians of Red Mountain hiked up the road. Though the white-stucco wall blocked the view of the pink McMansion, flashing neon lights shot up over it and seemed to dance with the music.
“That’s one hell of a wall,” Remi said as they drew near. “How tall is it?”
“Eight feet,” Otis said, thinking of the immense amount of effort he’d put into completing his vision, and it wasn’t only physical. With every block he’d stacked in the five weeks since pulling into Joan’s driveway in the Winnebago, he’d reminded himself of how lucky he was to have lived such a rich life.
Otis would have loved more time with Rebecca and their sons, but he was lucky for all the wonderful moments they had shared. And though his time working the vines might nearly be over, he was fortunate to have enjoyed so many lovely vintages. But the idea he ruminated on more than any other was thathewas the luckiest man alive to get a second chance with Joan Tobey. There was no way in hell he’d jeopardize their love again, and he’d spend the rest of his life showing her how much she meant to him. Growing honest wine was a pretty good reason to live, but to love a woman with all that you had was what life was really about.
“You put it all up yourself?” Jake asked.
“Every damn block,” Otis said proudly, knowing that wall symbolized his entire journey as a man.
Brooks jumped in. “I figured Joan would have made you tear it down.”
“Even Joan has her limits, as I’ve learned this year. I don’t think she likes looking at the Flamingo McMansion any more than I do. The pink starts to hurt your senses.”
They shielded their eyes as they came around the side of Otis’s wall and Château Smooth appeared. Though Otis didn’t dwell on the notion, he wondered how much the power company would be dinging his neighbors every month. He’d never seen more lighting in his life. The gold concrete upon which he’d nearly killed Bellflour seemed to glitter, and the palm trees they’d brought in were each lit up like statues. There must have been thirty powerful spotlights shining up toward the hot-pink McMansion. This was no Caribbean pastel pink. This pink was the same pink they use to make the pink-flamingo lawn ornaments, and he knew that fact because there were several giant ones lining the gold driveway.
Otis was okay with it, though. At the end of the day, all he could do was worry about his own property. To each his own. Wasn’t that the entire idea of this country? And wasn’t Red Mountain an essential piece of America?
He braced himself as he led the men through the white doors of the McMansion to join the packed crowd of fifty or so in the tasting room. The lights had been dimmed. Half the people swayed to the music coming from the open back doors, and the other half were straining over the sound to talk to each other.
Through the crowd, Otis saw a line of pretty women in pink T-shirts serving at the bar. What caught his eye more than anything, though, was the sheer amount of drywall that had been used in this place. He was a man of stone and concrete, and the sight of drywall made him fear for the future—a time when plastic and drywall and other cheap materials might rule the earth.
A voice in his head told him to lighten up, and he was reminded why he was here. As they moved through the crowd to the bar, he reached into his pocket and dug out his eye patch. Once he’d put it on, he turned back to his comrades. He didn’t care if they laughed at him. He didn’t care if anyone did.
Finding himself in the center of the tasting room, he raised his fists to his chest and fell into the rhythm of a pounding kick drum and a spacey synthesizer. A woman with a particularly sultry voice sang about the bitter taste of love, and Otis went with it, letting his entire body groove in ways he’d not known were possible. If only Joan could see him now.
Once they’d procured glasses of Drink Flamingo’s finest, they made their way out the back door toward the source of the music and flashing lights. It was a pool scene straight out of Las Vegas, and not the Vegas Otis remembered from his youth. This was the Vegas he’d heard about from the younger generations. The DJ stood behind two turntables on an elevated stage to the right of a very crowded tiki bar. He held one hand to a giant pair of glowing earphones while his other hand twisted a knob on his board. The pool spilled over with young people in skimpy bathing suits sipping adult beverages and dancing among neon pink and green strobe lights.
Otis lost the others as he searched for Bellflour. He passed by a line of cabanas and worked his way to the tiki bar. Several slushy machines spun frozen red and pink drinks.
A woman with a shirt that readFlamingletasked him something, but he couldn’t make out her words.
“Would I like a what?” Otis asked, nearly dizzy from the sensory overload. He leaned in.
