Page 116 of Before We Say Goodbye
“I’m afraid patience is my Achilles’ heel,” Otis said, feeding a bite of fish to Rosco, who had come up to visit with the humans for a while.
Rebecca showed her teeth.
“What? Do you have something to say, wifey?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“I’m perfectly happy owning my lack of patience. I don’t want rain now. I wanted it yesterday. I want Vance and his crew to be gone ... yesterday. I want those vines out there to be thirty years old, not little saplings with their white britches on.” He was referring to the white grow tubes that still protected the trunks of most of his vines, the sign of young vines in any vineyard.
Mike came up and threw an arm around Otis. “We give you a hard time, Dad, but you’re pretty amazing.”
Otis jutted out his bottom lip at Rebecca. “You hear that, doll?”
Mike stood back up and faced Otis. “Seriously, you’re an inspiration. I brag to everyone that you’re my dad, the great vintner Otis Till.”
“Be careful, Mike. You’re going to make an old man cry.”
“Maybe you should. I don’t tell you enough. You’ve shown Camden and me what it’s like to go after something with unbridled passion. Not only that, but you’ve also raised two fine men, if I do say so myself.”
“We both know the only reason you’refineis your mother.”
“Oh, c’mon. Don’t make a joke. I mean what I’m saying.”
Otis felt the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up. “Michael, you perhaps give me more credit than I’m due, but your words fill my heart.”
“Is that a raindrop?” Cam asked, extending a hand.
Otis looked to the sky and felt one land on his forehead. He closed his eyes and waited for another. Was this a dream? Many more came, wetting his face. Bec had always said it, so it was amazing that it had taken him this long to learn. The world had a way of making it easy on you when you quit fighting and let the current take you.
His fishing trip today—his choice to be with his boys over working—had been a rain dance.
He pushed himself up and held out his arms. “Come here, my family.”
The four of them formed a circle, arms interweaved. The rain picked up and splattered upon them.
“Everything that I do,” he said, finding their eyes, “it’s all for you three. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I will be forever grateful.” With that, he pulled them in tighter, and never had he felt more on top of the world.
Chapter 25
No Cocaine or Negronis
The young vines survived the lack of water in August 1996, and in the following months, they produced enough fruit to allow Otis to make their first true wines from Red Mountain. While the wines bubbled their way toward fermentation, and as Otis and his team executed the required punch downs and pump overs, Vance and his band of kooks departed the mountain.
“We made it,” Otis said to Rebecca one day in the empty tasting room. “Another year in the books.” Otis poured her a sample of one of the first syrahs to have gone through primary fermentation.
Rebecca swirled the glass and took a sniff, then took a sip and sucked in some oxygen. “Now that’s different, isn’t it?”
“Different? Not exactly the word I’d hoped for.”
“You know what I mean. So different from Lost Souls. I adore it. It’s robust, almost intimidating on the nose, but the body is ...”
“Yes?”
“Not as thick as I expected.”
“I know, I know. Thank God we harnessed her. It’s like learning all over again. I could have picked a few days earlier, but I didn’t want to ... I was a bit afraid.”
“What are you doing being afraid? Haven’t you proven yourself?”
