Easy to Like (25 page)

“Yeah?'

“Is that experience any less
pleasurable than you'd have drinking a glass of . . . what
was it . . . Dettori?”

“No. Yes. Dettori is a bad
example.”

“Why?”

“Its simplicity is too complex.”

“I remember the look of pain on your
face as you drank it.”

“Yeah?”

“You said it was beautiful.”

“Yeah?”

“Don't be a snob, Elliot. Maybe simple
pleasures are the best of all.”

“Even if I agreed with you, which I
don't, what difference would it make?”

“You could irrigate, throw in a few oak
chips, and make a nice Zin. With some of the other grapes it might even be a
little different. And as the Grenache and Counoise get older, you could sell
that fruit to some idealistic new guy in the 'hood.”

Elliot couldn't think what to say.
Bonnie needed to fill the silence.

“You're chasing this thing that's
really of interest to very few people. Not that that's not a noble thing, but
unless you are doing it at its best . . . Rather than
failing at doing something great, why not just do something good for a bunch of
people? What is wrong with making a few dollars making people happy?”

“Put a Zebra on the label, call it
‘Zebra Zin'?”

“That's actually pretty cool,
Elliot.”

“It was Walt's idea.”

“And you could always keep trying to
make that wine you imagine on the side.”

“Like a hobby?”

“Exactly.”

“Bonnie, you've been so good to me over
the years, so patient.”

“Thanks. Don't put off looking for
someone for too long. You were always a Canadian, Elliot, no matter how many
years you spent down here.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's not an insult, Elliot. You cling
to things, good things that aren't working out, hoping they'll get better.
Americans are quicker to change to the winning team, they forget any allegiance
they had to the old squad. I mean, don't you still have a king?”

“A queen.”

“'Nuff said.”

The trick was to get the grapes
from the vineyard to the winery quickly and with as little handling as possible.
Not only were the Mexicans faster at picking the grapes than Elliot, their fleet
hands did less damage. Each time Elliot looked up, the distance between him and
the hired pickers had increased.

By the end of the first morning,
Elliot's soft hands were bloody and sore; his secateur-wielding right was now,
in the midst of the first pass at the Grenache, numb and swollen. His lower back
was rusted rebar. He dropped to his knees and leaned backward to stretch. The
early-morning sun was low and honey coloured and special delivery to Locura
Canyon. There was camphor on the wind and orange rind and sage in the dust. God
had a tumultuous relationship with this land, shaking it, baking it, burning it,
and then, because it was so damn sexy, so irresistible, kissing it.

The pickers started singing “La
Adelita.”

En
lo alto de la abrupta serranía
acampado se
encontraba un regimiento

They'd seen Bonnie coming, bringing them water
and coffee and sweet, sticky buns. They were having a bit of fun, as if Bonnie
were Adelita, the revolutionary heroine of the song.

y
una joven que valiente los seguía
locamente
enamorada del sargento.

To bottle all this, thought Elliot.

Elliot had fallen asleep in his
clothes. His cellphone was in his shirt pocket, which was bunched near his chin.
The ringtone entered his dream: an alarm of some sort at the Broadcast Centre,
and he couldn't get Hazel to leave her desk because they would have to escape by
means of a plunge into the atrium. The vibration, felt in his lips, he took for
electrocution, which woke him with a start. He smelled burning toast. Jesus, was
he having a stroke?

“Hello?”

“Elliot, it's Walter.”

“Yes, Walter?”

“You watching TV?”

“I try not to.”

“Cops are trying to get into the
Faranista compound, shots have been fired. There's a tank coming now, with one
of them dozer blades attached to the front. What do they call those things?”

“Trouble?”

“Guess so.”

“This is . . . Why
is this . . .”

“No, I'm calling to remind you to check
the temperature of the Cunny. It was getting hot.”

“Right.”

“I've found if you open the bay doors
on the west of the building and the garage door we use for the tractor, air
races right through the place, and tonight, where it's so
windy . . .”

Elliot heard a distant
umph
.

“. . . it shouldn't take
long. If it stays up over eighty-eight . . . Shit! There's been
some sort of explosion at their compound. It was just on television.”

“I sort of felt it here. At what
temperature should I start to get alarmed?”

“Ninety. It's like a horse, you've got
to hold on. It's alive, remember; it's not a machine. I swear when the Grenache
fermentation got stuck there two years ago it was because the yeasts committed
suicide. You can take all the measurements you want, you've got to look in there
and size it up. That's why I prefer just opening and closing doors to any
cooling process, it doesn't . . . Uh-oh. Shots.”

“I hear something. Is that what that
is? That's gunfire?”

“That's gunfire.”

“So, ninety degrees. I'm on it.”

“Call me back if there's anything
weird. I'll be up watching this shit go down on TV.”

Elliot went to the garage. The tractor
was an antique that Miguel somehow managed to keep going. It was parked
alongside the vineyard's one truck, a 1989 two-ton Ford that urgently needed to
be replaced. If this was a hobby, it was sure an expensive one. How many people
with whom he worked at the CBC had ever signed the front of a payroll cheque
instead of the back? None, he guessed. There was no one to catch you if you fell
here stateside. Maybe Bonnie was right — maybe Elliot's wine dreams were a
delusion. He could have sold the land high in the boom years — he'd bought it
for nothing — but he'd hung on. This vintage was finally going to produce a
terrific wine — but was it too late? Without Bonnie to run interference, would
he be forced to throw himself at the mercy of the bank, let them have it all? He
would sooner do that than sell to the General.

He opened the garage doors. It was
blowing hard. The brittle leaves were rattling on the vines.

That was the American way: you strove.
Despite the mythology, few made it. It was a tougher society than Canada's; it
was Darwinian. Was it any better in the end? Had it created any more? Maybe not.
Canada was probably a “better” place, more humane. There was less excitement
north of the 49th but there came a time when one had had enough excitement. He
set out for the other side of the building.

At first the vats of fermenting
Counoise had filled the building with bready aromas; tonight other perfumes were
coming on, a mix of fresh and stewed raspberry and, indeed, violets.

The bay doors had been installed to
facilitate shipping and deliveries, but they were rather larger than necessary.
When they swung open, they developed a good momentum. The air was cooler here
than inside the winery, but it was still a hot night. Elliot climbed onto the
bottom rail of the big door and let it carry him for the last course of its arc.

So brightly illuminated was the
Faranist compound it was visible to Elliot for the first time. It was like a
Tuscan fortalice. It was closer than he'd thought, just two hilltops away. How
far? A mile? He'd definitely thought it was farther.

Tackatackatackatacka
. The terse spittle of gunfire. Nothing like the
movies. Automatic weapon, repeating firing, a machine gun. How far would a
bullet from one of those things travel? Was he in danger of being hit by a
stray? The bullets of the rifles they used for hunting moose back in
Newfoundland could travel more than two miles.

He was startled by a pair of deer
bounding out of the vineyard, doubtless driven by the noise at the Faranist
redoubt. They disappeared into the darkness. Peering into the gloom, Elliot
thought he saw more of them out in the vines. Something was moving around out
there, but he couldn't be sure. Coyotes?

He went back inside to check on the
fermentation.

There was a steady burble inside the
concrete vat. Bubbles were fighting through the floating cap of grape skins, but
with less fervour than the day before. The stuff was giving off a powerful
fresh-fruit smell; it was lip-smacking. The wine this year would be
irresistible; sips of it would compel you to fill your cheeks to indulge
completely in the taste. He loved this Counoise, even if it was from illegal
root stock. The contents of the tank were at eighty-nine degrees. Wasn't that,
in effect, ninety? He heard another thud from the direction of the Faranist
compound as he dialled Walt.

“I love this Counoise,” Elliot
said.

“Holy fuck, Elliot, can you see what's
going on from there?”

“What's going on?”

“The Bread Heads must have had a fuel
storage tank or something buried outside because there was
this . . . Shit, man, there's another one. I think they're
blowing themselves up.”

“The Old Testament has that effect on
people . . . Now the Counoise, I checked and it's —”

“Elliot.”

“Yes, Walter.”

“They've started a pretty big fire down
there.”

“It's their apocalypse, they want to do
it up right. You can't have a modest, low-key apocalypse. It's driven deer up
here.”

“Go have a look and call me back.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Elliot took the stairs down to the
winery's main floor. The still distant prospect of what the blend might be was
starting to excite Elliot the way it had Walter. In every vintage to date, the
blend had been forced on them as a way of minimizing damage. Now, if the
Mourvèdre came in as well as all the other varieties, they would be working with
impeccable ingredients. There was temptation to fashion a tête du cuvée, a
premium wine composed of the best lots. But this went against Elliot's belief
that it was somehow a cheat, or mere marketing or pretence, to produce anything
other than a bottle labelled “red table wine.”

He walked outside.

There was an intermittent wall of flame
stretching from the Farinists' hilltop all the way to the next promontory to the
north. Even from this distance Elliot could see how the wind was feeding it.

His cellphone rang.

“Holy Mother,
Walt . . .”

“Are we insured against this?” said a
voice other than Walter's.

“‘We'?”

“The investors in the vineyard. Last
time I checked I still had a piece.”

“Who is this?”

“You wouldn't fuck my wife. That didn't
look good.”

“Mr. Silverman?”

Something flickered in the vines. In
his peripheral vision Elliot caught a spark and heard the pop of an old glass
flashbulb on a Brownie camera.

“Present.”

“‘Are we insured against
this' . . . What's ‘this'?” Elliot's confusion was
cascading.

“There's been a fire down here. Started
during the siege of the Faranist compound. Is this not on the Canadian
news?”

“The Canadian
news . . . I'm not following you,” said Elliot. Oh — right.
Silverman thought he was still in Toronto! Elliot could smell the chaparral
burning, smell creosote and the vapours of hot sap.