Dead in the Dregs (3 page)

They were quiet, brooding months. Janie resented her pregnancy, believing—quite justifiably—that having a baby was going to interfere with what promised to be her stellar career path. The silences between us were excruciating.

By the time Danny was in day care, the marriage was a lost cause. I was asleep when Janie got our son out the door and was gone by the time she picked him up. On Sundays—the only day we had as a family—I was too exhausted to notice.

One morning Janie announced out of the blue that she’d been
having an affair with a guy at work. In fact, it had been going on for months. What could I say? Whatever physical intimacy we’d known had long since evaporated. She moved out a month later. She’d been offered a job back in the Bay Area, a real promotion as head of her own research division, with serious money. And, of course, she took Daniel with her.

What seemed at first to be a trial separation turned out to be a divorce, and I followed them to California. I wanted to purge myself, to pare down, to do penance. I needed to be closer to my son, to prove something to myself and to Janie. I just wasn’t sure what it was or when I’d get the chance.

I hitchhiked down the coast as far as Eureka and found a faded pink Ford pickup that I bought for $600 and christened Bandol because its color was a ringer for a fine rosé. On the Pacific coast north of Mendocino, I spotted a ’57 Airstream marooned on the side of Highway 1 with a FOR SALE sign taped in its rear window, its aluminum skin pockmarked by the salt air, and hauled it across the Coast Range to the wine country in search of my Garden of Eden, as Woody Guthrie had sung.

An old friend from Berkeley found me moorage on a lot behind a ranch house on the eastern slope of Howell Mountain. I hooked up electrical and tied into the septic tank. I loved the trailer. It was like a space capsule hurtling through the void of my life, a monk’s cell on the wind-blasted slopes of Mount Athos. My hermitage, I called it.

Life stripped down to its bare essentials: one burner, a sink, the toilet; turquoise appliances that had peeled over time; twin beds, a table, a bookshelf; a lantern on gimbals and a ship’s clock. I was hiding out, letting the torrent of events break against the shore and wash over me. I adopted a stray tabby I named Chairman Meow, a sorry substitute for a child. It was a simple life, but I didn’t mind. You need a good dog paddle in the back eddies every once in a while.

I needed to earn a living but wanted to avoid the trendy bars and restaurants. Miraculously, I landed at the one last place in Calistoga that possessed a modicum of grit. It was a real bar with a community of regulars who’d been beating a path there for years to escape the tourists and tasters and collectors, the second-career winery owners and real estate developers who’d descended on Napa and
spoiled it since I first knew it as a Berkeley undergrad. Then Pancho, who hired me, took off one night, proclaiming that he’d had it with gringos and was returning home to spend the rest of his life with his wife and kids, his brothers and sisters, his ailing grandmother. He tossed me the keys, bellowed
¡Mucha suerte!
and disappeared into the night. A week later, when DEA agents in emblazoned vests turned up, their weapons drawn, I learned that Pancho had been dealing keys of grass across the bar and somehow managing to stay one step ahead of the law.

Suddenly I was the
patrón
of my own place.

At that point the green baize of the pool table was nearly as threadbare as my bank account. The SIERRA NEVADA PALE ALE sign, emblematic of my life, flickered as if lit by its own personal lightning storm. The solid oak bar was pitted and the linoleum torn and jagged, revealing patches of bare concrete. Like me, the place was beat to shit, and so I felt at home. Little did I realize that it would suck me in just as surely as had my previous career. If anything, I now had even less time for my kid. Though the court had granted me regular visitation, there’s nothing regular when you own a bar. Weeks and months went by without a visit. I wasn’t sure if or how I’d ever find a way back.

But I wanted to. I loved Danny. He was sweet and funny, sensitive and as smart as a whip. What I found tough to take were the looks he’d throw me: doubt, suspicion, and a mistrust born of endless disappointment. He stood on that odd cusp between childhood and adolescence where the consequences of our affections and disaffections first begin to take hold, and we both could see that a distance had crept up on us. There were moments when he’d look at me as if he barely knew who I was.

My guilt over my child was only exacerbated by the example of Frank Mulligan, whom I’d worked with in Seattle. We were an odd couple. His mom lived in Santa Rosa with his stepfather, who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A few months after I left Seattle, his stepfather died, and Frank called. He wanted to move down to keep an eye on his mother, and asked if I could find him work in the area. I told him he could split shifts with me at Pancho’s and that we’d figure it out.

I was intent on making a go of it. I knew the game, its lingo and tired rituals, so I put my knowledge to good use, drawing on the contacts I’d made while working in Seattle to assemble an offbeat collection of odd bottles for the bar—old-vine Mataro, funky Zin, the first cracks at Viognier made in California—to roll out value for friends in the biz. Soon we had a following, Frank and I.

I’d wanted to return to a life that felt real, to hit some rock-bottom authenticity that smacked of integrity, to beat a path back to my son. But all I had really done was flee my life as a sommelier to set one up in Napa, mistaking it as an escape to reality. Had I wanted to escape—really escape—I’d have been better off moving to Detroit.

The parking lot
at Norton was empty, save for an old Ducati leaning against a stanchion. The front door was locked, and I walked around back. Barn doors stood open, waiting for the tractors to arrive, and I wandered inside.

It was a mammoth structure that held the fermentation tanks, a dozen luminous stainless steel cylinders that suggested a modern dairy more than a winery, and two giant oaken fermenters, what the French call
foudres.
The wine press was state of the art.

I heard something rustle and called, “Hello! Anybody home?”

The young Frenchman I’d seen the day before stepped from behind the press. He looked startled to see me. He was tall and lanky, his head topped by a nest of brown curls, his chin dusted with an immature Vandyke. He had watery eyes and a nose that he might grow into in a decade if he was lucky.

“You’re Jean, right?”

“
Sí.
”

“We haven’t met. My name’s Babe.”

“Babe.
Comme un bébé?
”

“Yeah. Funny, huh?”

He didn’t respond, just looked at me and waited for me to explain myself.

“How’s it going, your
stage
?” I used the French word for
internship,
hoping to put him at ease.

“Fine, simple.”

“How’d you end up here?” I asked.

“Colin did a favor for the man who imports his barrels. He knows . . .” he hesitated for a second, then said, “our family.”

“Your family are
vignerons
?”

“Yes, of course.” The idiocy of the question irritated him.

“Where?” I asked.

“Nuits,” he said tersely. It was shorthand for Nuits-Saint-Georges.

“How long are you here for?”

“Just one harvest. To see how you do things.”

“And? What do you think of American winemaking?”

I could tell he was sizing me up, trying to figure out how much to say.

“Well, you know, you Americans, you make one wine, maybe two. A white and a red. Chardonnay, Cabernet.”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“And you put everything into oak,” he added.

“Not everything.” I was feeling defensive. “Some of our wines are terrific.”

“Perhaps,” he offered.

“You don’t like our style?”

“They taste fat to me—how do you say, clunky. The fruit is thick, like syrup. Stupid wine.”

“Some of them can be a little coarse,” I admitted, but it was hardly surprising that a young man from Burgundy whose family made Pinot Noir would dismiss Napa Valley Cab.

“Aggressive,
non
? Cowboy wine.” He drew two phantom six-shooters. “Bang, bang,” he said, blowing the invisible smoke from their barrels. “Even Davy Crockett makes wine.”

“Yeah, Fess Parker. Pretty goofy, huh?”

He didn’t laugh. “You are looking for Colin?” he said.

“Uh, no, actually I’m looking for a woman I met here yesterday. She was at the reception desk.”

“Carla,” he said.

“Is she around?”

“No, I have not seen her. I think she has the day off.” He turned, anxious to get back to work.

“Anybody else around?” I said.

“They are picking. But they should be here soon. Any minute,” he said, impatient to get rid of me.

“They’re probably running late. Traffic’s hell.”

We stood there in a meaningless version of a Mexican standoff.

“I must get ready for them,” Jean said.

“Sorry, I know you’re busy.
Bonne chance
,” I said, extending my hand. He took it reluctantly. “Hey, you wouldn’t know Carla’s last name, by any chance?”

“Fehr,” he said and turned, disappearing behind a fermentation tank. He pronounced it
fear.

 

I sat in
the front seat of the truck and tried directory assistance again. I struck out in Napa and St. Helena, but she was listed in Yountville. The phone rang only once.

“Where were you last night?” she said.

“Excuse me, Carla? This is Babe Stern.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I thought it was Richard.”

“You didn’t see him last night?”

“He was supposed to come straight here from the winery. I waited for hours.”

“And he never called, obviously.”

“
Ob
viously,” she said.

“Well, I’ll ask him to call you when I track him down.”

“That would be nice,” she said and hung up.

I thought I should call Janie, but I had nothing to tell her. Wilson had probably driven back to the city, but she’d said she was taking their father for a battery of tests that morning. She’d be tied up for another hour, at least.

Where the hell had Richard gone?

I wanted to wait for Colin Norton, but they’d be busy well into the afternoon, sorting and crushing, so I took my time driving back to Pancho’s. I actually didn’t have a choice, given the traffic. I loathed driving around the valley this time of year.

There was something about Wilson’s turning up that kept gnawing
at me, an element that felt out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on what had been wrong about his visit, and then it came to me. It was the first time I’d ever seen him not taste a glass of wine put in front of him.

 

As I entered
the bar, Tony was giving Danny a tutorial on using a bridge.

“Think of it as an extension of your arm,” he said. “Make your size work for you.” He set a series of balls the length of the table and had Danny move from one to the next, replacing the cue ball for each shot.

“You’re comin’ along, kid,” Tony said when he spotted me. “Stick with it.”

Mulligan just nodded and headed out the back. I didn’t have to say “thank you,” and he didn’t have to say “you’re welcome.” Debts and favors were understood, and we never kept track.

I set Danny up in the kitchen, where he had his own apron. Ernesto, the cook, gave him his regular station. He’d already mastered assembling tacos—he considered nachos beneath contempt—and Ernesto credited him with vastly improving Pancho’s recipe for black beans with the addition of port and orange juice. Where in God’s name had Danny come up with that idea?

I took my post behind the bar. If the afternoon had been any quieter, I’d have curled up on it and taken a nap.

 

Frank returned at
four on the dot, and I wandered back to the kitchen. Danny was butchering chickens.

“Another two, three months, you give him my job,” Ernesto said, smiling at his apprentice.

“Let’s go, Danielo,” I said, handing the diminutive chef’s knife I had given him to Ernesto. “
Gracias
, Ernesto.”

“
De nada, señor.
He can come cook with me anytime.”

I loved the way the old Mexican treated my son: full of patient instruction and genuine respect. I need to try it myself sometime, I thought.

As we got into Bandol, I thought about heading home but decided
to pay one last visit to Norton. I wanted to ask Colin how their tasting had ended and where Richard had gone.

“One stop,” I said to Danny. “Promise. I told your mom I’d find Uncle Rich.”

“That’s okay,” Danny shrugged.

As we ran down Highway 29, I said, “You excited about school?”

“Not really.”

“Sixth grade was one of my favorite years.” My paternal enthusiasm failed to elicit any response. “Your mother worked very hard to get you there. And it’s costing her a bundle, so I suggest you at least approach it with an open mind.”

He wouldn’t look at me. He gazed out the window and set his arm at an angle like a sail to catch the wind.

“When do you start?”

“Orientation’s next Friday. School’s on Monday,” he said out the window.

“Wow, starts awfully early, but I guess that’s the difference between private and public schools.”

He couldn’t have been less interested, a far cry from the interest he showed when we got to Norton. I’d never taken him to see a winery. By the time we arrived, the day’s work was mostly done, but the sheer scale of the place fascinated him. One of the workers was spraying down the press and floor and raised the hose to give Danny a quick squirt. Colin himself stood off to the side, talking to a Mexican guy. When he spotted us, he waved, then excused himself from the conversation.