Page 48 of Before We Say Goodbye
Only as the end of the decade drew near did things start to fall apart. I simply couldn’t take Otis’s ego anymore. Fueled by the growth of Lost Souls and the adulation he was receiving from the wine world, his newly found confidence had risen to the pitch of cockiness. He’d begun traveling and was wined and dined around the country by distributors begging for his business. On a trip to New York, he sold wine to Kevin Zraly at Windows on the World, the new restaurant on top of the World Trade Center. Kevin told him that he was making the best wines in California. Just like that, Otis felt he had made it. If only he would have taken the time to enjoy his success, but he wasn’t satisfied.
“They could be better,” he always said of his wines.
He was an addict chasing the next high, and he became swept away by the notoriety, spending entirely too much time on the road. I kept telling him that his family needed him, that his farm needed him, that it would soon detect his absence, but he didn’t listen. Carmine remindedOtis that the best fertilizer is a farmer’s footsteps, but Otis had decided he knew everything and didn’t need anyone’s help. Between his growing fame, our growing financial security, and the wear and tear he was putting on his body, he’d lost his way.
Otis still cared for the farm, but he’d spread himself so thin that he couldn’t give it the love it needed. He’d work his tail off during harvest, barely sleeping, then take any consulting job he could, as people now offered him ridiculous money for his opinions, and then he’d race off to the airport to further the reach of our empire. He was the Napoleon or Alexander the Great of wine, unwilling to be satisfied until his wine ran from the taps of every household in the world.
Though we paid off a few investors, there was still Lloyd.
Lloyd, Lloyd, Lloyd.
I never told Otis about all the blatant passes he made over the years. Lloyd would corner me and say, “What do you see in Otis? What about giving us a chance?” I’d ignore him. What else could I do? He owned nearly half our company, and he was not someone with whom we needed to go to war. Otis would have lost his mind if he knew the specifics of Lloyd’s pursuit, so I hid it and kept deflecting.
I must say, however, there were times when I wanted to rub Lloyd’s interest in Otis’s face, tell my distracted husband that if he wouldn’t pay attention to me, then I knew someone else who would.
Finding my anger, I swung my arm through the air and made contact with my grieving husband’s pipe, knocking it to the ground by Amigo’s feet. The lit tobacco spilled out. Otis and Amigo both looked with golf ball eyes at it resting in the grass.
When he picked it back up, I smacked it out of his hand again. I was getting the hang of things.
Scrub, scrub, scrub. Amigo hated the bathtub, but he’d gotten into some sheep poop and needed a bath. Otis massaged the soap into him and dirt caked the porcelain.
The phone rang again, and Otis knew it was his assistant winemaker, Brooks. What was Otis to say? That he didn’t give a bloody shit if the vines were wilting, or if all the wineries were up in arms once again. Whatever the fate of Red Mountain, he had nothing left to give.
Once he had the coyote pup dried off, Otis poured himself a scotch and sat on the back deck, journal in hand. As if he’d fallen into a time portal, the falling sun took him right back to Sonoma and where he’d left off with his pen. He knew exactly what he’d write next.
There was one man who drove me even crazier than Lloyd, and that was Ledbetter the Bedwetter.
Chapter 13
Jeweled Boots and Bedwetters
As the eighties broke, Rebecca fell in love with music that Otis did not understand. Joan Jett, the Clash, Hall and Oates, Rick Springfield, the Go-Go’s, Journey, Air Supply. He felt like an old man listening to his kids’ music—a sixty-year-old trapped in a thirty-year-old’s body. Before too long, he’d feel the same thing when his kids were headbanging to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana; and forget about it when Michael got into his rap phase. That was when Otis knew he’d been left behind entirely.
Besides, who had the luxury of listening to music anymore? Growing wine was a matter of life or death, especially now that zinfandel had lost favor with both the critics and drinkers. Cabernet sauvignon was all the rage, and Lloyd suggested they graft every last zin vine to cabernet.
Needless to say, that hadn’t sat well with Otis, and he’d drawn the line. “Till the day comes when Burgundy starts grafting syrah onto their pinot noir rootstocks, I will not pander to wine trends, Lloyd. Our farm is meant for zinfandel. You can’t just plug any variety into the ground and expect great things.”
“Fair enough,” Lloyd had said, proving to Otis that he was in control now. As he should be. After all, he was the flipping winegrower.
Camden and Michael, both spawns of Satan, spent most of their time swatting and screaming at each other, and in turn Rebecca spent most of her time screaming at Otis, telling him, “It wouldn’t hurt if you played the bad guy every once in a while. You show up after a long trip and act like Uncle Otis, the fun guy who always wants to play, never scolds.”
“Are you kidding me, Bec? Don’t you see how they look at you? You’re their hero.”
She didn’t understand how much it took to keep the winery growing. She had a brilliant business understanding but remained stuck in the seventies mindset of “it’s all good, man.”All gooddidn’t sell shite for wine. Forget mind over matter. Otis had proved that it was his determination that had created their reality, not her woo-woo Ouija board sessions with Sparrow.
Besides, she’d taken on more than she could handle—especially considering her bozo parents and brother were barely contributing at all. To their credit, they’d go through phases where they showed that they did actually have beating hearts. Marshall had his good spells where he slowed his drinking, took a job, and behaved like a grandfather, telling a story or perhaps tossing a ball to the boys.Occasionally, Olivia would swing by with candy or even offer to watch the boys while Bec took a rest. On rare visits, a not necessarily sober Jed would chase the kids around the living room in the wheelchair, and he’d smile as if he was actually happy for a change.
Bec had stopped complaining to Otis, as it only reinforced his argument that she needed to quit giving so much of herself to her family to make up for her perceived abandonment, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from playing intermediary and therapist, and giving them money, the latter of which was an epic sore spot between Otis and her.
In addition to carrying her family and running the business, she’d also decided to homeschool the children, as she felt sure she could give them a better education, at least in their earlier years. She’d always loved the idea of homesteading, where the children contributed to create aself-sufficient lifestyle. They had their morning chores, cleaning their rooms, feeding the sheep, collecting chicken eggs, cleaning out the coop, and then they sat with their mother at the dining room table for lunch, working through their various studies. She was a good teacher, and both kids learned to read by age five.
Meanwhile, in the vineyards, Otis had upped their wine production, and all the new vineyards had finally come to maturity. Bec had told Otis that he’d planted too much, joking in a not-funny way that if he didn’t slow down, he’d be dropping new vines into their bathtub. He admitted he’d planted every possible patch he could, but the demand was high. He had to seize their good fortune!
Lost Souls had become a viable product, and Otis happily bought out smaller investors and paid dividends to the rest. Though they’d had a few arguments when Lloyd had tried to micromanage decisions in the fields and in the cellar, the two men were getting along. Lloyd was proud of Lost Souls and had done his share to spread the word, putting bottles in the hands of important sommeliers, tastemakers, and journalists around the world.
Lost Souls Ranch reached its peak after seven years of incredibly hard work. The stone house stood two stories high. They’d re-created so much of what he loved about Carmine’s farm. Now sheep and chickens grazed in the rows. Never once had Otis sprayed a single chemical. Though he’d had his learning curves, the vines thrived, pushing out stunning fruit.
Otis and Bec’s room looked east over the oldest vineyard, and there were few days when Otis didn’t lift himself out of bed, smile at his bride curled up naked under the sheets, then peek out the window at the tangerine sun rising over their centennial vines and think that he’d finally done it. He’d cracked the code.
