Page 20 of Before We Say Goodbye
Otis looked at Paul with admiration. “You lucky bastard.”
“I know. Are you ready? Let’s put you to work.”
With rock ’n’ roll blasting, someone sprayed off Otis’s feet with a hose—as if that were enough to sanitize them—and then he climbed into a tank loaded with fresh grapes. His feet sank in, and he felt the berries and their stems press into his flesh. The luscious scent he’d first encountered on the highway was even stronger now, a drug in and of itself.
A smile rose out of him that could have blasted the clouds out of the sky, and he began to stomp those grapes, first little by little, and in minutes he was dancing, this non-hippie all of a sudden a free spirit with wings. He was not only smiling but laughing, a maniacal burst because he’d found something meaningful that he could pursue. Was that even possible in the matter of a few minutes, a life changed, a world turned over?
Damn right it was. Otis felt at one with these people and this place.
If only Rebecca were here.
By God, in one year, 1969, he’d had the two most impactful moments in his life. The time Rebecca sat next to him on the bus, and this day, October 15, 1969, when the wine bug sank its teeth into him, and its blood stained his feet.
“Nineteen sixty-nine,” he said, looking out over the Sonoma hills. “The year of Otis.”
He said it again, uncaring who heard. “The year of Otis!”
Then, for the second time that year, he opened his mouth and howled like a wild dog.
Awhooooo! Awhooooooo!!!!
That evening, Otis and Rebecca drove back to the city. He hadn’t said a word about his experience. Today was about her; his revelation could wait. He’d returned to her family’s house with a gift bottle of wine and had been as kind and civil as he could.
Empath that she was, Rebecca certainly noticed that something had shifted in Otis, though. She’d smiled when he returned to her parents’ house. “What’s gotten into you?”
Otis suspected the rest of the family was wondering, too, probably assuming that he’d slipped off to find a joint. It was far more than that.
As soon as they got on the highway, Otis said, “You didn’t tell me that your dad pushed you.”
“I know, I know. It’s the only time it ever happened.”
“Still, a father can’t push his daughter. What happened?”
“It was a pretty bad fight. He’d just kicked my brother out of the house—for like the tenth time. ‘You’re not my son anymore,’” she said, mimicking a drunk Marshall. “‘Go get a life!’ The same stuff he’s been saying for years. He was always disappointed in Jed, but especially because he was still living at home.”
Rebecca took a long breath. “I got in my dad’s face, told him he was a useless drunk. Maybe a few things even worse. My mom was begging us to stop. He pushed me. Slammed me against the wall.”
“What?Why didn’t your brother do something?”
“He’d already left.”
Otis looked at his reddening hands gripping the steering wheel. After a string of curses, he said, “I don’t blame you for running away. You don’t need to be around that.”
“Yeah, well ... I pushed him back, for the record.”
“Good.”
She faked a smile. “Trust me, he’ll never do it again.” Otis decided to let it go, for now.
“Anyway, I have to tell you something, and I’m afraid.”
“You should never be afraid to tell me anything.”
A tear escaped her eye, and she looked away. “I need to move back home. They’re broke. My mom can’t work as many hours now that she’s helping Jed. And they need me. She says I was always the strongest of them, and I guess she’s right.”
“I see.” In the silence Otis tried to paint the rest of the picture. He didn’t want to ask whether he was still a part of her future.
Bec turned back to him and put a hand on his thigh. “I don’t want to lose you. Could we make it work while you’re still in Berkeley? We’d have to.”
