Page 38 of Red Mountain Burning
Don’t Breathe the Air
Otis slid out from under his orange Kubota tractor, wiping the grease from his hands onto a rag. Pressing up to a stand, he noticed the leaves on the vines were dancing in the wind. It blew cool against his sweaty forehead, and he welcomed a break from this surprisingly blistering May heat. With the wind at its tail, a tumbleweed was trying to break free from one of the wires holding up a post.
Hearing another tractor kick on up near the Drink Flamingo property, he looked south. A dust cloud rose like a swarm of bees around the McMansion. He shook his head in disgust. Once again, they’d neglected to spray water over the newly cleared land, and now the neighbors would be breathing dust all day.
His eyes focused in on one of theNo Trespassingsigns, and he wondered if they’d noticed the cut in the fence. Otis had done his best to fit it back cleanly, but someone would come across it soon enough and wonder if they were missing tools or parts.
Only the truth of their vineyard has been stolen, Otis mused, thinking of the pinotage vines taking root, spoiling Bellflour’s dream of making the most seductive cabernet sauvignon in the world. He hoped—oh, how wonderful it would be!—that crooked critics would give Bellflour the scores he wanted—the high nineties or even the sacredone hundred—writing some absurd sales blurb like, “Red Mountain has a new king!” or “Finally, a cabernet sauvignon hedonistic enough to make you feel guilty drinking it.”
If Otis heard another reference to hedonism in wine, he was going to bury the whole world in cotton candy and chocolate syrup. It was just wrong to want your wines to taste as oaky as Maker’s Mark.
When the critics offered their praise, Otis could finally announce what he’d done, how their new “darling of Red Mountain” wasn’t a noble cabernet sauvignon at all. It was just another factory-farmed imposter buying its way to the top with a cabernet sauvignon/pinotage blend. Otis could out everyone who’d sold their soul to the devil.
Otis figured Bellflour knew exactly how to get the scores and acclaim he wanted, practicing the nefarious art of buying and shoving his way to the top. Not that all critics had compromised their integrity, not at all. But it was no secret that there were many ways to break into the big time, and many had nothing to do with farming and producing an authentic wine true to its surroundings.
The quantity of Drink Flamingo ads was already increasing in the most influential magazines. Otis wouldn’t be surprised if Bellflour was offering Seahawks season tickets or free trips to Mexico, perhaps by private plane, to anyone willing to get behind Drink Flamingo’s Red Mountain wines. No doubt hiring big names to consult on the project was another ploy in the preparation to launch the brand.
Another key component in gaming the system would be their practices in the field and in the cellar. Who knew what they might spray to make sure their vines survived, even if that meant destruction of the habitat? Who cared about the meadowlarks and pintails or the honeybees? And what heinous crimes did they commit in the cellar: the artificial practices of chaptalization—adding sugar—or, God forbid, the addition of Mega Purple, a grape concentrate used to enhance color?
Even the less aggressive tactics drove Otis crazy. For a wine to compete well in a blind tasting among fifty other wines, it needed to have a certain element of power.Powerwasn’t always an attractive term in Otis’s mind. He preferred the delicate nuances of a balanced wine, not the diesel-fueled, high-budget Hollywood action movies that some wineries were bottling these days.
These were the thoughts that fed Otis’s nightmares.
Joan was right. Bellflour was winning. He could be miles away and still infect Otis’s brain like a disease.
Knackered by his overactive monkey mind, Otis decided to give Joan’s suggestion a shot. Though he wasn’t about to employ an eye patch, he covered his right eye with his hand, just to get an idea of what she was talking about, this balance between left and right. A bout of dizziness rushed over him. Pulling his hand away, he blinked a few times to regain reality.
“Forget that,” he said, looking down toward the house, wondering if Joan was watching him through the window with an approving nod.
Leaning against the tractor, he tried again, looking over the lines of vines leading down to the sheep. He looked beyond his flock to where the ground dipped again, eventually leading to the river. The dizziness felt more like a high, and as he settled his one eye on Mount Adams many miles west, he felt free.
“What the heck are you doing?” a voice called out behind him.
Otis ripped his hand away and turned, feeling his face flush red.
It was Brooks. “Something wrong with your eye?”
“Don’t ask,” Otis answered. He wasn’t about to tell Brooks about Joan’s newest idea.
As Brooks stopped a few feet in front of him, he glanced at the tractor and then Otis’s toolbox next to the tire. “I told you a John Deere would have been a better buy.”
“Oh, c’mon. I was just changing the oil.” Otis stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “This Kubota will outlast both of us. Tell me something good, Brooks. I’m having a tough day. The damn Flamingo crew forgot to spray water again. I can barely see through all the dust. And my back hurts like hell.”
“I wish I did have some good news,” Brooks said. “Not that I have anything bad. But I’m like you, having a shitty week.”
Otis looked up at the sun dominating in the blue. “Can you imagine how hot August is going to be this year? Forget tequila. I’ll be raising camels and building pyramids.”
“I’ll help you if I’m still around in August.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Otis asked, not liking Brooks’s tone. “Carmen giving you more trouble?”
“Carmen, Adriana. My mother. Just about everyone seems to be conspiring to get rid of me.”
The fear of losing Brooks showed itself as an ache in Otis’s chest. “You’re not really thinking of leaving, are you?” The pain cascaded down his spine and settled into his lower back.
Brooks looked up to the sky and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. Adriana’s outta here.”
“Why in the world would she leave?” Otis asked—like there couldn’t be a reason good enough.
