Page 107 of Before We Say Goodbye
With the cheapest bottle he could find in hand—a twist-top, barely quaffable, savagely nonsustainable cabernet sauvignon from the grocery store, Otis reluctantly walked beside Rebecca through the neighbor’s cherry trees to the trailer. Though they’d never met the owner, Otis had seen a team tend to the trees their first year. Strangely that same team hadn’t come this year, and the cherry trees looked malnourished.
A Honda Accord with a dent in the door and a truck with a camper bed were parked crooked in the gravel drive. The trailer had seen better days. It was white with brown trim and raised up on concrete blocks. Several extension cords came from underneath, clearly how they powered their amplifiers. A rotting set of wooden stairs led up to a dirty door with a diamond-shaped window. A tarp hung off one side and connected to two poles, providing shelter for a cooler and grill. There was no landscaping whatsoever.
“Anyone home?” Bec called. They stood about twenty feet from the door.
A barefooted man in jeans and a sleeveless Megadeth shirt pulled back the door. Likely in his early twenties, he had short ash-black hair and gauges in his ears. A big wiry beard came down to his chest.
“You’re trespassing,” he said in an alpha voice.
“I told you,” Otis muttered to Rebecca.
Brave Bec stepped forward. “We’re your neighbors. The Tills. We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you before.” She held up the tray. “We baked you cookies.”
“We? I didn’t bake them cookies,” Otis said under his breath.
The burly man descended the steps. “That was nice of you.”
“I’m Rebecca, and this is Otis.”
“Vance Mason.” He had a backwoods kind of accent, what you might expect from a rodeo rider. They all shook hands, and then Vance took the tray of cookies with another thanks and set them on the steps.
He crossed his thick arms. “By the looks of it, you’re growing grapes.”
“That’s right,” Bec said. “Moved up here last year from California.”
Vance let a grin surface. “Coming to the promised land, aren’t you? Everyone talks about the grapes. That’s what my brother wanted to do. Rip out all these cherry trees and plant grapes.”
“Wanted?” Otis asked.
Vance looked past them to the trees. “Yeah, he died last winter during a training exercise off the coast of Maine. He was a NavySeal, about to discharge. Wanted to learn how to make wine. He left me the place.”
In that moment Otis couldn’t have felt more like a jerk. Now he understood why the trees had been neglected. He lifted the bottle, wishing he’d grabbed something more substantial. “If you’re a wine guy, we brought you a bottle. Plenty more where that came from ... if you like it.”
“I don’t know the first thing about wine, but we’ll find a good use for it. Thanks.” He took the bottle from Otis’s hands.
“Vance!” came a loud male voice from inside. “You’re missing it.”
“I’m coming!” Back to Bec and Otis, he said, “We’re watching the WSU game. Anyway, good to meet you. Thanks for the gifts.”
“You guys staying awhile?” Otis asked casually.
“Until it’s too cold. We don’t have heat in there.”
Otis made a quick prayer for an early winter, as Rebecca said, “Let us know if you need anything.”
Once they were out of earshot of the trailer, Otis said, “Don’t say it, please.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Lesson learned, okay?”
Rebecca took his hand.
A week later, Otis and Rebecca hiked up to the Hedgeses’ property. They sat around a table in front of a château that approached completion. Their view was unparalleled on the mountain, offering unimpeded looks at the treeless Rattlesnake Hills and the great Mount Adams off toward Seattle.
Anne-Marie expertly opened a bottle of Taittinger Champagne with a saber—a long-held tradition—and they toasted to the future of Red Mountain. Soon the conversation moved to wine and stayed there.
Buzzing now from the lovely bottle of Champagne, Otis couldn’t help himself. “We met our new neighbors. You might have heard them partying last night. Up past midnight blaring metal music. Do you even know what metal is? I wish I didn’t.”
