O Allah, Halajan mouthed silently along with the men, forgive her, have mercy on her, give her peace and pardon her. Receive her with honor and make her entrance spacious. Wash her with water, snow, and ice, and cleanse her of her faults like a white garment is cleansed of stains. Requite her with an abode better than her abode, with a family better than her family and a spouse better than her spouse. Admit her into Paradise and protect her from the torment of the grave and the torment of the Fire.
As they continued with their supplication, Halajan’s eyes wandered to the brown hills rising from the edges of the cemetery, and the houses that seemed to grow from the craggy rock, their windows offering a daily dose of mortality to the inhabitants within. At the far edges of the burial grounds, she could see little clusters of blue moving in packs—burqa’d women visiting their deceased. Still there was no sound; no talking, no weeping among the graves that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Suddenly all the sorrow she’d been holding inside came rushing out in a sob. She quickly turned her face away and coughed into her hands to cover her blunder. When will it ever end? she wondered as the anguish pumped through her veins, this madness that has taken so many from those they loved, and who loved them, this insanity that rips families apart and turns devout men into instruments of evil? And for what? If there was a larger purpose for this, it was a purpose that Halajan failed to see.
It wasn’t until she calmed herself a bit and brought her focus back to the scene that she saw him, standing there to her left, with his crisp green-and-white chapan and blacker-than-black beard. She’d seen those dark eyes with no end before, in the coffeehouse. And now, just as they had then, those eyes caused a chill to climb from the base of Halajan’s spine right up to the top of her head. Her knees suddenly buckled, and she fought the temptation to sit, for she could not afford to draw the slightest bit of attention to herself. There was no mistaking who he was. Zara’s father must have noticed Faheem as well, as Halajan could have sworn that for one split second her eyes connected with his in a shared solace, before they both quickly turned away.
Halajan placed a rock of her own to mark Zara’s grave. Then the girl’s father and the others left as swiftly as they had arrived. Halajan remained behind, until the last mourner was gone from sight. It was then that she finally allowed herself to fold into a pile on the hard ground, the strain of the day and all that had led up to it rushing in with the rallying cry of a tribal drum.
31
“Hey, Skyrider, don’t forget the ones we put way over in the corner.” Joe stepped back into the middle of the barn as more plastic bins came tumbling down from the hayloft above. They’d started early today, and for good reason. Joe had almost forgotten how much work there was to be done to prepare for harvest, it had been so long. Today’s plan was to hose down the bins that would be used to hold the grapes after picking, and maybe even clean the fermenters, too, where the grapes would sit and bubble until they were ready to be put to sleep in their barrels. Hopefully he’d succeed in convincing the girls to take on the chore of washing, so he and Sky could start concentrating on testing the crushers to make sure they still worked after sitting idle in the barn for so long. “Is that all of them? Are you taking a nap up there or what?” he yelled up to the loft.
“Jesus, Joe. You’ll be waking them up in Seattle.” Sunny stood just inside the barn’s doorway, coffee in hand, her messy brown hair streaked with yellow from the morning sun sneaking in through the gaps in the worn wooden roof.
“Well, aren’t you a beautiful sight,” he said, taking in her new denim work shirt, the crisp cargo shorts and the spotless work boots fresh from their maiden voyage across the lawn.
“It’s the latest in barnyard chic. You like?” she asked, pirouetting and ending with a bow.
“You’ve never looked lovelier.” In fact, Sunny did look lovely. There was a glow in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes that Joe had never witnessed before, and a pep in her step that made him feel as though she was ready to take on the world.
As if she had read his thoughts, Sunny put down her cup and rolled up her sleeves. “What’s next?” she asked, looking around the barn for something to do.
“When Sky is done we will go say hello to the grapes.”
“Okey-dokey.” Sunny joined him at his side and squatted down onto her haunches, a move that Joe marveled at as he lowered himself with a groan onto an overturned barrel. “You know, Joe,” Sunny said as she picked at a loose strand of straw by her foot, “never in a million years did I expect to be this happy about being saddled with this heap.” She pointed her chin toward the house. “Who would’ve thought?”
“Ogni cosa ha cagione. Everything has a reason.”
“Not that I’m saying I’m staying, mind you.”
“Whatever,” he laughed, using that marvelous response he had learned from the kids. It came in so handy so much of the time.
“I’m just relieved about the harvest and all. That I’ll be here, that we’ll all be here, that it will happen no matter what. You know.”
“Fair enough.” What he really wanted to ask was exactly where she’d thought she was going to be rushing off to so quickly, before she’d made up her mind to at least stay through harvest. And after the harvest? What then? But he knew better than to push. Whatever Sunny decided to do or not do, she was going to have to believe it was her own idea. That was one thing he’d learned from his fifty-six years with Sylvia.
Sky jumped down from the loft and brushed the dust from his jeans. “Where’s Kat?”
“I just woke the two of them up,” Sunny answered. “They’ll be out soon.” She tipped the remaining coffee into her mouth as Joe hauled himself up from the barrel.
“Well, as they say, chi tardi arriva, male alloggia.” He pivoted on his walking stick to face the barn door. “The early bird catches the worm. Time’s a wasting!”
The morning dew clung to the grass and weeds carpeting the paths between the vines, which hung heavy and low to the ground. Joe took the lead, his snowy head swiveling from side to side as they marched up and down the aisles.
“What are we looking for?” Sunny called out from the rear.
“Company, halt!” Joe held his walking stick high in the air. “Okay, here is your first lesson. The most important thing a winemaker needs to know is when to pick. Too early? The wine will taste sour. You must use patience,” he said, looking directly at Sunny, who rolled her eyes at him. “But if you pick too late? Too sweet. You’ve tempted the fates, and they will not give you a second chance. It’s like all else in life. Timing is everything.”
“Now a lot of it, it comes from in here,” he said, patting his gut. “But there are also other tricks you can use to know when the time is right. First of all, do you remember the color and size of these babies when you first arrived, back in April?”
“I don’t even remember there being any grapes when I got here.”
“Exactly my point! They start out tiny and green, like pale little peas. You can barely see them.” He plucked a dark purple grape from its stem. “And now? A thing of beauty. But appearances aren’t everything.” He punched through the thick skin with his thumbnail. “You see this?” he asked Sunny. “Not ready. What we want is for it to be plump and juicy.”
“Who you calling plump and juicy?” she asked with her hand on her hip.
“Very funny. Now pay attention.”
“And, may I ask, why are the insides of that grape white and not pink? I thought you said we were making a rosé.”
“Tell her, Sky,” he said with mock exasperation, and turned to continue to walk.
“Well, actually, all grape juice starts out white. It’s the contact with the skin once it’s crushed that gives a wine its color.” He turned to follow Joe.
“Hmm, what do you know,” Sunny said, joining them both.
Two rows down, Joe stopped again. “And then there are the seeds. We can learn a lot from even the tiniest of them. Here we have,” he
said as he squeezed some pulp from its casing, “some little green seeds. Now is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Jeez, Joe, you would have made a rotten teacher. How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“Logic,” he said, tapping her head with the stick. “Green is still good. Now if the seeds were to be brown, they’d be cooked, and so would we. You have to get them when they’re just right. And now we taste.” He popped a whole grape into his mouth and chewed, gesturing for Sunny to do the same.
She closed her eyes and scrunched her nose, as if expecting the worst, and took one dainty bite. And then another, and another, until the first grape was gone and she was reaching for more.
“Don’t eat up the profits!” admonished Joe.
“Oh my God, they’re just so sweet and yummy.”
“Well they’ll be even better in a bottle.”
Sunny shook her head. “I think they’re too sweet for wine, Joe. Maybe we should be making jelly.”
“Already an expert. No, not too sweet. We need them to have some sugar for it to turn into alcohol. Capisce?”
“I get it, I get it.”
When they returned from the vines, Layla and Kat were up by the barn parked on two kitchen chairs they’d dragged out from the house, their feet resting on an upside-down bucket and their faces angled toward the sun. Kat’s black-and-white ponytail sprouted from the top of her head like a fountain, and Layla wore her head scarf like a shawl, loosely draped over her head and shoulders, providing a shady little tent for the sleeping cat across her lap. Both girls had their eyes closed against the morning brightness.
“Rise and shine, you slugs.” Sky kicked the bucket out from underneath their feet with his leather boot. “There’s work to be done, women!”
“Don’t you ‘woman’ me, you jerk.” Sky leapt back as Kat swatted in the air. Sunny laughed, but couldn’t help but think of Jack and how they used to tease each other just like that.
The girls followed Sky into the barn to help carry the bins outside. Sunny helped herself to one of their chairs and patted the other for Joe to settle. They sat in silence, watching as a cruise ship crossed the horizon.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Joe said, his eyes still trained on the water.
“Just a penny? They gotta be worth a lot more than that.”
“I will be the judge of that.”
“Well I’ll give you a dollar’s worth, for free.” She bent to loosen the laces on her boots. “Here’s the thing,” she said, straightening back up in the chair. “I was just thinking about Candace, and how she ends up being right about so many things, and how that kind of pisses me off, but not really.”
Joe laughed. “And what was she so right about this time, that makes you so angry, or not?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Everything. Like with Layla, from the beginning she seemed to know how good it would be for her to stay here with me. Who knew? I know nothing about kids, especially teenagers. But she seems to be doing okay, right?”
“Better than okay, if you ask me, which I suppose you are. Although I do think we might have a little problem on our hands sooner or later, with that crush she has on Sky.”
Sunny raised her arms to the sky. “Why do I seem to be the only one who didn’t know about this?”
Joe shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just saying.”
“And I’m just asking. But back to Candace. The way she orchestrated that maneuver in Kabul? Brilliant.” And it was brilliant. Sunny marveled at the way Candace had, from afar, staged the mock funeral, the burial of the rice-filled shroud and all. Everything had gone exactly as planned, with Faheem there to bear witness to the end of his story with Zara. Last she heard the girl was still in Kabul, in hiding, and that her family had gone west, back to Herat, to the home they had left when the Taliban took control of that city eighteen years earlier. As an added layer of protection, great pains had been taken to make it seem obvious to Faheem that the grief they felt from their daughter’s death was what was now driving them away from Kabul. In fact, he was told they were leaving Afghanistan altogether, to go east through Pakistan, with hopes of eventually joining other family members living in Ireland.
“You know, Joe? Sometimes I wish I could be more like Candace.”
“What, with that yellow hair and those boots up to here?” Joe brought his hand up to his waist.
“No, not that.” Although she couldn’t deny her envy of Candace’s looks, even though she, herself, had dropped a few pounds since her friend left, which she wished was something Candace could be here to see. “It’s more about the way she sees herself, the way she sees us, as a couple of tough girls who know what they want, who can waltz right into a situation and make things happen, who can fix things and make them right. I know that’s who she is, but I’m not sure it’s who I am. I just wish I could live up to her expectations.”
“Are you talking about any particular situation?”
“Well, yes, and no, I guess. The big thing is really more the part about knowing what you want, and committing to it. I know I used to be like that, but I don’t seem to have it in me anymore, maybe since Jack died, or maybe even since we left Kabul. Candace never seems to question where she is, or what she is doing. And to top it off, she’s helping a boatload of people. What the hell is wrong with me?”
“There is nothing wrong with you, kiddo. How are you feeling right now, right here, today?” He opened his arms wide, as if to hold up the entire place for her consideration.
“You mean besides confused?” She paused to take in a whiff of the lemongrass that had popped up around the south side of the barn. “Pretty good.”
“You are happy here, right this second?”
“I guess so.”
“So, be honest with me, and with yourself. This isn’t such a bad place, is it?”
Sunny found herself unable to disagree. Yet another thing Candace had been right about.
“Then what is the problem?”
“I don’t know, Joe. It’s just that sometimes, when I think about staying here forever, I can’t breathe.”
“Who said anything about forever? Haven’t we talked about this before? You think it’s like a horror movie, where the island won’t ever allow you to leave?”
“Well, kind of.”
Joe ignored her answer. “And if it’s breath you want, you’ll need to stop all that running around for enough time to catch it. Get those ants out of your pants and sit still for a while.”
“But here? Even you didn’t want to be here when you first came back. And now look.”
“I had my reasons. But like the Buddhists say, if our mind is peaceful, we shall be happy all the time, regardless of external conditions. And, by the way, you don’t think you’ve been helping people as much as Candace has? Just look around you.”
Sunny turned toward the squealing coming from behind her, where Layla was brandishing a flowing garden hose, a smile as wide as the Sound itself plastered across her face. Sky laughed as Bear leaped and bit at the stream of water as it squirted skyward before showering down on Kat’s head.
Joe chuckled. “You said that is the big thing. And what is the little thing?”
“Well, maybe I’m being childish, but it’s the whole thing with Rick. I feel like it’s unfinished business, though I know the place is mine and all that. But really, he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with what he tried to do, am I right? Candace and I talked about it while she was here.”
“Well, you know what they say. I fatti sono maschi, e le parole femmine. Deeds are fruits, words are but leaves.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning just what it says. Don’t just talk about how you want to be more like your friend Candace, about how you don’t want to have unfinished business. Finish the business. Jump in there and do something to make things right.”
“But it’s not like I’m saving the world or anything. I just want this guy to feel a little pain for the way he tried to use every
thing good about Jack for his own greedy schemes. He just sat there and lied straight to my face! More than once! I can’t tell you how badly I want him to pay for what he did. Is that wrong?”
“So let’s do that.”
“What? You’re not going to quote me some stupid saying about revenge? Don’t tell me you don’t know any.”
“Oh, I know plenty. But revenge quotes? They’re really not so good.”
By the end of the day, after a long lunch outside under the trees, a plan had been hatched. Sunny walked down toward the water to make her call. Rick answered after the first ring.
“Sunny! How’s everything?” he asked in a syrupy voice.
“Fantastic, and you?”
“All good. All good. Any news for me?”
“Well, Rick, as a matter of fact, there is. I’ve thought a lot about what you’ve said, and I’ve realized you’re right. I’m going to keep the house.” Sunny bit her lip to keep from laughing at the silence on the other end of the line. “You there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” Rick cleared his throat. “So at the price we talked about?”
“Sounds more than fair to me. Still good with you?”
“Well,” he sputtered a bit, “even though I’d be practically giving my half away, I’ll go with it. For Jack.”
Sunny suddenly had to fight the urge to throw the phone down and stomp on it. Instead she put on her sweetest air. “That is so kind of you, Rick. Really.”
“So how soon can we make this happen?”
She could hear the hunger in his voice. “Well, here’s what I’m thinking. I’ll need a little time to come up with the whole amount, but if you’re open to it, I could give you, say, ten thousand as sort of a deposit, or whatever?”
Rick hesitated for a moment on the other end. “All cash?”
“Yep, all cash.”
“This week?”
“If you say so. How about I meet you at The Dirty Monkey around six o’clock on Wednesday?”
“Sounds good.”
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