Page 110 of Before We Say Goodbye
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 thesedevilish 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.Andnot 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?”
