The Riesling Retribution

Chapter 8

That night I slept in my own bed, instead of in the hammock on the veranda. The last time I remembered looking at my alarm clock was just after three. When sleep finally came, I dreamed about the cemetery at Ball’s Bluff and the grave on my land. I woke when a fox began crying in the middle of the night. It sounded like someone was strangling a baby. I sat up, seeing figures in the shadows that I could not persuade myself were imagined. 

At five o’clock I quit pretending I’d sleep if I kept my eyes closed long enough, and got out of bed. The now- familiar absence of sound, like the house had stopped breathing, was a letdown. Another day without power. If we didn’t have electricity, and especially air-conditioning, restored by tomorrow, we needed to think about implementing Plan B for the weekend and our anniversary celebration. 

I went downstairs and threw out the contents of my refrigerator and freezer, unplugged it, and propped the doors open. I found a box of baking soda in the pantry and put it on one of the refrigerator shelves, hoping it would absorb the sour odors of spoiled food.

The pantry search had also turned up a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts left over from the last time Eli’s daughter, my two-year-old niece, Hope, had visited. The sell-by date had passed, which wasn’t a surprise. Brandi once called my house a living mausoleum and made no bones about how much she disliked coming here. If I wanted to see Hope, the mountain went to Mohammed. But then, Brandi didn’t much care for me, either, since she knew I disapproved of her profligate ways. Mostly I saw my niece when her mother went on a shopping spree up to New York or spent the weekend in Washington with one of her girlfriends.

I brought a foil-wrapped packet of Pop-Tarts back upstairs and started my post-tornado routine for getting ready for work. Another cold sponge bath from a bottle of water followed by rooting through the laundry basket to find my least dirty pair of jeans. Too bad I hadn’t washed my clothes before the tornado, but the previous weekend at the winery had been hectic and I’d never gotten around to it. At least I still had clean T-shirts. We’d be back out in the fields today removing debris, so whatever I wore would be filthy by tonight.

Quinn called from the barrel room as I was trying to decide what to do with my hair. The last time I washed it had been Sunday, four days ago.

“I figured you’d be up,” he said.

“I couldn’t sleep. Tossed everything in my fridge. The cupboard is officially bare. I’ll be over in a few minutes. I just need to braid my hair. It’s getting disgusting.”

“You could wash it here,” he said. “There’s hot water in the barrel room.”

I picked up a strand of light brown hair that looked and felt dirty. “Maybe I will.”

“Come on over now and you can have the other half of my breakfast while it’s still hot. I picked up two fried biscuit sandwiches at the convenience store off Route 17. Egg, ham, and cheese. And an extralarge coffee.”

I was in the middle of opening the package of Pop-Tarts with my teeth. “I can’t eat your breakfast.”

“You just said the cupboard was bare. I bet you’re down to eating whatever old stuff is still in your cabinets, aren’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“Ha! Knew I was right. Come and get it before the grease congeals. The biscuits are great, but if they get cold they sit in your stomach like cannonballs.”

“Give me five minutes.” 

I threw the pastry in the wastebasket and got my shampoo and a towel from the bathroom. If Quinn had any unclogged arteries before he reached his fiftieth birthday, someone should write about him in a medical journal. 

He was sitting on the courtyard wall drinking coffee when I arrived. I set my cane down and joined him. The early morning sky was the color of a robin’s egg and sun-gilded wisps of clouds dotted the sky. A breeze riffed the flowers in the hanging baskets and the halved wine barrels and the air was fragrant with wild honeysuckle. From here the vineyard looked serene and pastoral. Who would guess that just out of view a bulldozer sat amid enormous piles of rotting fruit, splintered posts, and trellis wire lethal as razors? 

“Gonna be nice today.” Quinn handed me a white paper bag with stains on it. 

“Looks like it.” I pulled out the sandwich, which was wrapped in more stained white paper, and opened it up. “Someone took a bite already.” 

“That would be me. It’s only one bite.” 

“You’re still hungry.” I tried to give it back to him. “I can’t take this.” 

He waved me off. “Sure you can. Trust me, I’m full. It may look small, but one of those things will keep you going all day.” 

The sandwich, I had to admit, tasted terrific. “You ever find the dodine?” 

“On the floor next to some barrels in one of the bays. I almost stepped on it. If I find out who did it, heads will roll. How’d your evening go with B.J. and the other guy?” 

“The other guy’ is a teetotaler and one of those hard-core types who want everything to be authentic Civil War era right down to your eyeglasses. Ray Vitale. He also wants to put the winery off-limits to all the reenactors.” 

“What’d you say?” 

“No way. B.J. talked to him, too.” 

“Can’t wait to meet him.” 

“Mmpfh.” 

“Good sandwich, huh?”

He passed me the extralarge coffee in a Styrofoam cup. I nodded and took a sip. Quinn liked his coffee brewed so road crews could use it to fill potholes if they ran out of tar.

“I know you don’t mean ‘heads will roll’ literally,” I said.

“It was careless and I spent a goddamn hour looking for the thing. You bet I do. Ever see anyone do sabrage?”

The art of beheading a champagne bottle with a saber. I’d seen it done once, years ago. I knew he was joking, but after what Chance had claimed last night, I wish Quinn had said straight out that it was a figure of speech.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on the men.” I crumpled the sandwich bag.

He drew his head back in surprise. “What are you talking about? Hard on the men? It’s screwup city every day now. You ought to be as upset as I am about it.”

“I am. I mean, not as upset as you are. But maybe you could just…go a little easier on them.”

The truth, it seemed to me, had to lie somewhere between Chance’s accusations of bullying and abuse and Quinn’s feeling that he was justified in being angry at sloppy work and holding the crew accountable. Hell, it was my vineyard. Of course I didn’t like all the careless mistakes and incompetent fieldwork. But if I tipped my hand to Quinn at what Chance said last night, would it be like pulling the pin from a grenade?

“Sometimes I don’t understand you.” He took the sandwich bag from me and crumpled it into a tighter ball. “Don’t you care that all these mistakes are setting us back? Costing us money? Having an impact on the kind of wine we’re able to make?”

“Sure I do, but—”

“But what?”

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. When I opened them, he was staring at me with that dark, brooding look he sometimes wore. It usually meant we were headed for a showdown.

“What if…well, maybe you could be a little less demanding of the guys. Maybe we’d get better results. You know, encourage them rather than intimidate them.”

It sounded, even to me, like I was pleading with him. His mouth hung open. 

“Let me get this straight. The reason we have so many problems in the field and the barrel room is that I scare the crew? It would have nothing to do with the fact that they’re so inexperienced they don’t know what the