Here With Me (16 page)

“It’s almost a 45-acre-foot pond.”

“How much water is that?”

“An acre-foot of water is about 325,000
gallons. So, maybe fifteen million gallons.” Arturo made a sweeping
motion with his hand. “We have drains in these hills and we capture
every damn drop of water that falls. When the grapes are processed
in the fall, we recycle all that water, too. Water never goes to
waste. I make sure of it,” he said proudly.

In the car, coming up to Melody’s
grandmother’s, he’d seen the big rigs out in the fields, irrigating
the crops. “Then you spray it on the grapevines?”

“No. Some vineyards still spray. But it can
make your vines mildew. We have irrigation hoses that take the
water to the fields and then drip lines buried into the ground that
spread the water to the root of the plants.”

Arturo walked to a small building at the edge
of the pond and when he opened the door, George could hear the pump
running. Arturo checked the gauges and appeared satisfied. “It
looks okay. We’ll check it again later.”

They closed the door and retraced their
steps. “Now what?” George asked.

Arturo walked over to the truck and opened a
big toolbox that took up most of the back. He handed George what
looked to be short-handled snips. “We need to join the men. They
knew to go directly to Lot D. The vines are loaded with buds. Too
many, in some cases. They need to be thinned out so that the buds
that remain get the sun and air they need.”

By ten, his shirt was drenched with sweat and
his shoulders ached. But it felt good to work again, to have a
purpose as simple as plucking off shoots and leaves. He’d just
reached the end of one row and was rounding the corner to work his
way down another path when he heard the sound of men’s voices.

They were speaking loud and fast in what he
assumed was Spanish. It was frustrating that he couldn’t understand
a word of it. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a fist
hitting flesh. Nobody needed to explain what that meant. He took
off running, and found two men grappling in the dirt, blood
dripping from both their noses.

He grabbed the closest one by the back of the
shirt and yanked, hauling him back several feet. Then he stepped
between the two men.

“Stop it,” he yelled.

He didn’t know if they understood English but
both men stayed where they were. He could see that they were young,
probably just in their early twenties. Both had dirt in their dark
hair and blood on their shirts. He looked at their eyes, expecting
to see anger, and saw only fear.

Arturo came running around the corner, almost
skidding to a stop. His eyes took in the scene and he spoke quickly
in Spanish to each man. Both answered Arturo without ever taking
their eyes off George.

George waited until there was a pause in the
conversation before interjecting. “What’s going on here?”

Neither of the young men answered. George
looked at Arturo.

“They fight over a woman,” Arturo said, his
tone disgusted.

George waited but Arturo didn’t continue.
“And. . .?” he prompted.

“She works in town at a hotel. She and
Pedro,”—Arturo gestured at the man on George’s right, —“made use of
one of the rooms last night.”

There was a rapid burst of Spanish from the
man.

“At her invitation,” Arturo added.

To which the man on George’s left spat on the
ground.

That made it clear enough. No doubt the man
on the left had spent a night or two as well in one of those rooms.
“These two ever get into it before this?”

“No. Pedro and Rafael have worked side by
side for three years.”

George untied his bandanna, unfolded it, and
wiped the sweat out of his eyes. “Tell them to get back to work and
to settle this on their own time.”

Arturo looked down at the ground. “You need
to know that Mr. Louis has a rule that anybody caught fighting gets
fired.”

Now George understood the fear that he’d seen
in the men’s eyes. But he also understood that men had been
fighting over women since the beginning of time and that it wasn’t
likely to change soon. “Then I suggest that nobody tell Mr. Louis
about this. Let’s get to work.”

At straight-up noon, the men stopped working
and piled into the back of the pickup truck. Arturo and George took
the front, with Arturo driving. It took less than ten minutes to
get back to the homestead. Arturo was quiet until they pulled into
the driveway. He stopped the truck, pulled the keys, and turned
toward George.

“That was a decent thing you did,” he
said.

“What would happen to them if they lost their
jobs?”

“Their families would suffer. Señora Song
pays her workers fairly. They would not find another job like this.
There are not many vineyards like this one.”

He was starting to realize that. “Arturo, if
a man wanted to buy land here in this area, what would it
cost?”

Arturo looked surprised. “You thinking of
buying?” he asked.

“Just curious,” George said.

“Land like this, known for producing a
quality grape, has recently sold for a hundred thousand dollars an
acre.”

George had been doing arithmetic since he was
six but he was coming up with one big number in his head. “That
would mean that two hundred acres would run twenty million
dollars?”

Arturo nodded. “Got that in your pocket?”

George shook his head. He couldn’t fathom
having that much money.

“Don’t feel bad,” Arturo said. “Not many do,
except for people who don’t know anything about grapes but they’ve
made their money in computers or maybe the stock market.”

Computers. Stock market
. He didn’t
have a clue what Arturo was talking about.

“They’re the dangerous ones,” Arturo
continued on, “because they’re used to having their own way. All
they think they have to do is snap their fingers and order the
grapes to grow.”

George shook his head and reached for the
door handle. “Not many want to trim vines?”

Arturo shook his head. “Señor, I think you
are one of the few.” He motioned to the porch. “Maybe your wife
waits for you?” he asked.

George saw that Pearl and Melody were sitting
side by side on the porch swing, gliding gently back and forth.
Melody wore a light green shirt that hugged her body with a white
skirt that showed her legs from the knee down. She wore the same
shoes she’d had on yesterday, the ones that showed her toes.

She stood up and extended her arm to her
grandmother, helping the woman out of the swing. Arm in arm, the
two of them came down the steps toward him. When he looked at Pearl
Song, he knew how strikingly beautiful Melody would be in her later
years. Strong bones, clear skin, proud stature. It was an appealing
combination.

When they got close, Pearl waved to him. “How
was your morning?” she asked.

He made a valiant effort to stop staring at
Melody’s knees. “Good. We spent most of our morning in Lot D.”

She smiled. “Oh, the Cabernets.”

Yeah, that’s what Arturo had said. Not that
George knew one kind of grape from another.

“Those are my favorite,” Pearl added.

He thought she sounded a bit wistful. Melody,
apparently hearing it as well, turned her head to look at her
grandmother. A gust of wind caught her hair, whipping it across her
face, and his arm was half-raised before he remembered.
No
touching
. He lowered his arm and put his hand in his
pocket.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I didn’t
even hear you leave this morning,” she said, looking at him.

Good. Then maybe she hadn’t seen him standing
over her, staring like some fool. Not wanting to dwell on the image
of Melody in bed, he said, “What are you ladies up to?”

“Just enjoying the day,” Melody said. “Do
you. . .uh. . .happen to have a few minutes that I could talk to
you?”

Had he done something terribly wrong in the
vineyard? Had word already made its way back to the main house? He
looked at Pearl but her posture was relaxed. It was just Melody who
seemed tense. “Of course,” he said.

She grabbed his free hand and as hot as his
skin had been under the full morning sun, her touch was warmer
still. She must have felt it, too, because as soon as she’d led him
around back of the sprawling house and through an arbor that was
covered in fresh-blooming wisteria, she dropped his hand. The
garden was an abundance of color and life. There were white daisies
and orange black-eyed Susans and big yellow sunflowers. There were
purple phlox and bright pink zinnias.

His mother had taught him to love flowers.
He’d grown up twenty miles east of Bluemont, North Dakota, in a
place where most everybody had grown their own vegetables. His
mother had done the same, but what she’d really loved was the
flowers in her garden. When neighbors had come round for a visit,
they’d always found themselves in the garden, picking a bouquet or
digging up a plant to take home to their own garden.

He’d worked those flowers from the time he
was old enough to pull weeds and deliver water. And he’d told his
friends he hated it.

Then later on, practically in the dead of
night, he’d planted flowers in the small garden behind his and
Hannah’s house. He’d told everyone once they started to grow that
they were Hannah’s flowers, that he was just tending to them to be
helpful. Hannah, who thought flowers were a waste of time and
energy, had gone along.

He loved them. Loved watching them poke out
of the hard ground and reach up for the sun. Loved watching them
bloom and then lose their luster, only to bloom again.

“This is a pleasant spot,” he said, not
wanting to sound too interested.

Melody drew in a deep breath. “I know. Don’t
you just love flowers?”

“I do.” It came out before he could stop it.
He looked at her to see if she was embarrassed for him but she
didn’t even seem surprised.

“When I left home for the first time,” Melody
said, “the first thing I bought for my apartment was three big
flowerpots. I had a little deck off my living room and every night
I would sit out there, close my eyes, and smell the flowers. It was
like I’d brought a piece of home with me.”

“It sounds nice.”

“What’s your favorite flower?”

In all the time he’d been married to Hannah,
she’d never once asked him that. “I guess there’s nothing that
smells much prettier than a lilac bush in spring.” He had several
outside his back door at home.

“Very true.” They walked another thirty feet
before she spoke again. “Come over here; there’s something I want
to show you.”

She led him past bold pink flowers on strong
stems that were almost her height and then past a wide patch of
what looked like wild orange lilies. She stopped suddenly and said,
“This is my favorite part.”

He could see why. It was a pool of water,
maybe thirty feet long by twenty feet wide with a waterfall at one
end. Blooming lily pads floated on the water and purple hyacinth
bloomed along the edge. Small fish, every color of the rainbow,
swam near the surface. All in all, it was one of the prettiest
things he’d ever seen.

“My mother had been working on the design of
it before she was killed. Grandmother finished it in her memory.
When I was living here, there was hardly a week that went by that I
didn’t come back here. It’s the one place that I always felt safe.
Loved.”

His heart ached for the young girl who’d
suffered so. “Perhaps that’s why your grandmother finished it.
Maybe she knew you needed this place.”

She blinked quickly and he knew that she was
holding back tears. “You’re probably right,” she said. “She’s
always known me better than anyone else.”

It was the second time she’d said something
like that. It might be true but it begged the obvious question. "If
your grandmother knows you that well, how is that she didn’t know
you weren’t truthful about having a husband?”

She didn’t look surprised. Instead, she
pointed at the bench that sat at the far edge of the pond. “May we
sit? My back hurts.”

That scared him. “Should we get back? I could
carry you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Hoping for a
hernia?”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’m fine, really. I’m sure it’s
from being in the car for so long yesterday. This last month I’ve
noticed that if I sit too long, my back aches.”

It was probably true what his mother had told
him—that if men had to have the babies, there would be none. He let
her lead him over to the bench and he waited until she sat. Then he
lowered himself down, making sure their thighs were a foot apart.
The
no touching
rule applied here, too.

“At first,” she said, “I thought Grandmother
was very suspicious and I was just waiting for her to push back, to
force me to come clean. But she didn’t. When she started asking
that we come home for a visit, I came up with all kinds of excuses.
You were traveling for work. I was working extra shifts. You had
the flu, I had a cold. Then, when I told her I was pregnant, I told
her that I just didn’t feel good enough to travel.”

“She could have come to see you.”

“I kept waiting for her to say exactly that.
Over the years, she’d been to visit me several times. When she
didn’t suggest it, I thought it was because she was worried about
the vineyard. We had very heavy rains here in late December and
early January, to the point that most of the vineyards were under
water. Because the vines were dormant, I think most everyone
thought they’d come out of it all right but I knew it was still a
worry. Now, because I know about the cancer, I think she not only
wasn’t feeling up to making the trip, she was busy thinking about
that.”

He studied the fish in the water for a few
minutes. “You said that first night on the beach that legitimacy of
a child was very important to your grandmother. Why is that?”