Valley Fever (31 page)

I ate toast and grapes. I ate this almost every morning for breakfast, or else a soft-boiled egg I could slurp from its shell in the car.

“You never even see the right matches,” I said. “Hold back on the two and there is a jack underneath.”

“You should be living your own life far away from here,” she said, sweeping all the cards together to shuffle them again.

I planned to phone Felix on my way to the warehouse. But the morning was brisk and cool. Everything I needed to do from Dad's truck I could do walking along the San Joaquin. I followed the gravel drive to the end of the yard, down the terrace, past the Wilson-funded rejuvenated swimming pool, past the sad patch of our squandered tennis court. The river was low and swampy and green, with willow scrub and reeds overtaking the bank.

Our grapes grew for a quarter mile north, where they met the Ellison property. The fruit had been picked two months ago at least, because these vines by the house were favored, they were part of our home's landscape, and Miguel tended them as if they were his own. These were the Thompsons we'd been using to chill our vodka since June, fruit packed by Sarkisian in Fowler and shipped as table grapes all over the country. These grapes were just a very small part of the farm's income, and because of the grape glut, that income had been even smaller.

I walked and kept walking and took a right through Walter's almonds, which looked just fine—no black, no shriveling. There had been a lot of hyperbole about Walter's almond disaster at the beginning of the summer. The almonds would be all right. Fewer than usual, maybe, but you prepare for that kind of bad luck. You save, you buy insurance, you get bank loans. Walter would be harvesting those nuts any moment now.

I crossed the near-empty canals and the farm roads and the morning warmed up and I headed toward Felix's driveway, the same walk I had taken every day when I first came home. I walked in from the road, and through the puffs of dust I could see his truck parked beside the tiny house, everything white and polished.

Felix had a harder time telling me no in person. He had stopped answering his phone when I called.

“I thought a lonely farmer like you might want company at breakfast,” I said.

“I could have had ladies here,” he joked, clapping my shoulder, ushering me in through the glass-paneled side door off the carport. “And I do want company! I always want your company.”

Uncle Felix's tidy little kitchen smelled fresh and waxy, like a display kitchen or a kitchen for dolls. Felix never ate anything at home. His refrigerator, I knew, was empty but for bottled water and white wine and possibly an open can of condensed milk. He put the kettle on and took a jar of instant coffee from the cupboard beside the sink.

“Where's Debby?”

“Debby's got work,” he said. “She knows I get agitated during harvest.”

I liked Debby fine, but somehow I felt loyal to Mother's hostility. “That's sensitive of her.”

He said, sincerely, “She is sensitive.”

Felix's house buzzed with the sound of old appliances and a churning air conditioner. His quiet, lonely house could be so loud.

“Why'd you come?” he said.

“I was walking.”

“It's good to see you here in my kitchen again. You haven't been walking here so much. I'm old, you know. I need friends.”

“I've been working,” I said. “It's harvest time.”

“Harvest is especially when I need friends,” he said.

His house was so cool, chilly enough to need a sweater, well insulated in spite of it being an old farmhouse.

“I want the black grapes off the vine,” I said.

“Black grapes are coming off the vine. You have twenty thousand acres, Ingrid. You can't do it all at once.”

“The cabernet. The cabernet is what I'm worried about, although you're letting all the red sit out there too long, even the colorinos.”

“It's not ready.” He tipped a teaspoon of coffee powder into a mug advertising American Grape Harvesters. He poured the water in slowly, watching it, stirring. “You like sugar, don't you?”

“But it is ready. I've tested it myself. From various places in each of the vineyards.”

“Sugar and milk, right?”

“They're already harvesting in Merced, Uncle Felix. Merced. I'm not stupid, I know things. Do you think I am so dumb?”

“Do you think I am?”

“That's why I'm confused,” I said.

“Where is your father? He's not giving me a hard time.” Then he said, gently, “Don't push me on this, Ingrid.”

“What's the point of paying the premium if you're going to let them hang?”

He smiled. “They'll weigh less.”

“Don't joke.”

“I'm not joking.” He handed me the mug and sat across the speckled Formica tabletop, his smooth, stubby hands folded in front of him. The table, I think, had been left in the house when he inherited it.

“What is the point of buying Dad's good grapes if you're not going to harvest them at their peak, Uncle Felix? What are you doing?”

“I'm making wine.” He spoke to me so patiently, patronizingly, as if speaking to a disappointed child.

“But you're buying these for the flavor.”

“I don't make these decisions.” The lie was plain, and we both knew it was sitting there between us. “I'll leave the call to my field guy.”

I couldn't breathe. My chest seemed to fill with water, my whole body stiff with something between anger and fear. I watched steam come off the top of my coffee. When I looked at him, he looked back directly, anticipating a response. I couldn't open my mouth even to sip from the promotional mug. He waited. He had these enormous hazely turtle eyes, lonely eyes you could trust, if you didn't know whose they were. Already, at eight in the morning, he was wearing his blue cashmere sweater vest and his work boots.

“Daddy loves you. He trusts you.”

“I trust him.”

“But you've tricked him. You've lied to us.” I felt my face go red and hot. I willed myself not to look upset.

“I never lied to anyone.”

“Your field guy? You're leaving it to your field guy?”

“If you think that's a lie, you'd better get out of this industry.”

I eased the mug of coffee into the center of the table, away from me.

He stood up. “I was going to Salazar's for breakfast,” he said. “You want to come? I don't think you've been to Salazar's.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“This is business, Inky.”

“I don't understand this kind of business.”

“Well,” he said. “You'll learn.”

He leaned against the dry, polished sink.

“You have the money. Just pay Dad the money!”

“If I honored all my contracts during a glut like this, I would have been out of this business a long time ago.”

“Dad is your friend.”

“I've never had a better friend,” said Uncle Felix. “He found morphine for Jane when the doctors wouldn't prescribe her pain medication.” He looked at me. “Do you remember that?”

I remembered. Dad had appealed to Dr. Epstein, the orthopedist, when Jane's idiot oncologist wouldn't give her palliative drugs. “Dad is excited about this new thing, this new wine you keep talking about.”

“He's right to be excited. He knows that.”

“But, Felix,” I said, “who else believes in you like that?”

Felix laughed. He came over to thump me on the back. “I don't need anyone but Neddy to believe in me like that.” He took his car keys from the counter. “Come on to breakfast with me.”

“I'm not having breakfast with you.”

He said, then, “You be sure to tell your mother about our conversation. You be sure to tell her Debby thinks she's a delight.”

“Is that why you're doing this?”

“Talk to your mother about friendship, if you want to have a conversation about friendship.”

I may have managed to say “All right.” I did manage to get up from the speckled Formica table. My hands went numb and tingly, as if from cold. Later I remembered that moment as if I had been floating above it, watching myself get up from the table and pass Uncle Felix at the sink, the swishy sound of the kitchen door as I opened it to leave.

*   *   *

There was extra juice all over the valley. The wineries had all the cab they needed this late in the season. No one was calling up to find who had nice cabernet. Even wineries who might have loved to get Dad's juice at an excellent price were now full up, I knew.

Too afraid to call Dad and too ashamed to call George, I phoned Miguel.

“Yes,” he said. “I thought this was happening.”

“Thought what was happening?”

“I thought,” he said. “I had thoughts. I had thoughts about Griffith not wanting the grapes.”

“Why wouldn't they want these grapes? The whole point was these grapes, this new wine project. Right?”

I could hear Miguel's deep chest wheeze through the scratchy mobile phone connection. I could hear his stony face and his hands swipe his jeans with the dark stains on the thighs. “I knew when Felix contracted to pay too much. I knew then, in the spring.”

“Knew what, Miguel? In the spring.”

“Ingrid, I knew he would not buy these grapes. I know you love this man, Ingrid. He is close to you.”

“Miguel.”

“But you are not close to him. Come see me, come to the house.”

“Tell me now.”

“There is nothing to tell. Come to my house.”

“If I drive this car I will kill someone.”

Marianela gave him instructions from the background. Marianela shouted in Spanish, in paragraphs. Miguel said, “Your uncle Felix doesn't want just one crop, Ingrid. He wants the whole thing.”

“He wants what.”

Marianela picked up an extension. “You come over, Ingrid. No one listens to us.”

“I'm listening now,” I said.

“Your father has no eyes,” Marianela said.

I said, “What whole thing?”

“He wants all of what Jefe has.”

My instinct was to run away as long as I could run.

Marianela said, “You have your own life, little one. You don't want any part of this business.”

“Let's call a crew and pick it anyway,” I said. “They're too ripe to let sit one more day. Don't you think?”

“I think so,” he said. “But we have to pay the crew.”

“Uncle Felix will have to honor the contract or else we'll just sell them somewhere cheap.” I knew we wouldn't be able to sell the grapes anywhere else, no matter how cheap.

He said again, “We have to pay the crew.”

“That's fine, we have the money to pay the crew.”

“Cash?”

“You want me to bring cash?”

“I think the crew is going to want cash this time.”

“Why cash?”

“Or else don't call the crew.”

“I don't think Dad's ever paid cash, Miguel.”

“They haven't been paid for a while, Ingrid. They won't come without cash.”

“Since when haven't they been paid?”

“All this season. I tell them it's coming, but they won't come to work again unless I promise them cash.”

“I'll bring the cash.”

I carried the news home with me.

*   *   *

Mother and Dad sat at the kitchen table, drinking tall brown glasses of sun tea shiny with condensation. Dad so rarely got out of bed these days. Mother rubbed his chest with Vicks VapoRub in the mornings when the cough was thickest and again last thing before bed, to help him sleep. In between, he sweated, propped up in bed by pillows from the living room sofa, with folders and books piled at the table next to him. There were some days he'd spend so long vomiting that Mother would check him into the hospital just to get IV fluids and to make sure he'd keep the medication down.

Now, before I opened the screen door, I could see them laughing and leaning back in their chairs, as if this were a last strong effort made by each of them to save something.

“Tell Miguel they're getting a check,” Mother said, handing me an envelope damp with the impression of her fingers. She waved it toward me. “They can take the check or they don't have to work.”

“I think he meant cash, like cash,” I said.

“Your father has never written a bad check in his life.”

“I'm not the one concerned about the check, Mother.”

Dad said, “They don't mean cash, Inky.” The wet glass of sun tea had made a puddle in front of him. He had withered this summer, more than just the weight he'd lost. His bones, somehow, seemed delicate. It was good to see him smiling at the table.

Mother said, “Is it nice to be home, Ingrid?”

“You mean home right now or here in general?”

“Both,” she said. A small plane flew over the house, interrupting the country quiet. She filled a glass with ice and poured tea from the jar on the counter. “Here.”

“Yes.” It was a true thing to say. “And I'm glad Dad is with us in the kitchen.” This time of year, in the past, Dad would come home to sit in the kitchen with his clothes smelling of ripe fruit. The whole kitchen would smell like caramel.

“Sit,” Dad said. “There's no place to go in a hurry. Believe me.”

I sat. The three of us watched water pool around our glasses. The sound of the plane trailed off. When I lifted my glass to sip, water drained down my wrist to my elbow and soaked into my white cotton button-down.

“What do you think?” Mother said.

“What do I think about what?”

“What do you think will happen?” she said.

“To what?” I said.

“I'm just talking. I want to know what you think.”

“I don't know,” I said.

She said, “Do you think we should go get margaritas at Zapato's?”