“Love you too, Pop.” She slammed the door behind her and strode down the concrete steps. She jammed her straw hat into a carrying case on the back of her battered little motorcycle. Seconds later she was flying down the graveled drive between oak trees and laurel bushes. Once on the pale gray ribbon of two-lane she pushed her face into the wind and let it whip the tears out of her eyes.
Rolling green pastures and small farms flashed by her in the morning sun. Straight, slender pine trees flanked the road. Tacked here and there to the pines were hand-lettered Bible verses, for sale signs for chicken houses, and notices that read Jesus Saves. In these parts hope was built on Jesus and chickens. She and Pop didn’t fit in very well. They had settled here only because Maisie had inherited five acres and a chicken house.
She guided the bike up a side road to a grand brick entranceway flanking a new asphalt drive. A carpet of magnificent, emerald-green lawn made it look like the driveway to an elegant home down in Atlanta. On one side the brick wall held a beautiful scrolled sign. Maison de Savin Vineyards. Welcome.
Acres and acres of vineyards stretched under the rising sun, their trellises filled with lush foliage. Rose bushes decorated the ends of each row, and the grass between the rows had a froth of tiny yellow wildflowers. A dozen varieties of grapes grew here in the Georgia soil, just as they did in France, the winery manager said.
The de Savin people had bought land here a few years ago. Everyone had been curious about a French firm purchasing property in the middle of the Georgia hills, until a company representative had explained that the soil and climate were perfect for growing grapes. The local preachers had been a little perturbed by the idea of a winery, but after the place was developed everyone felt awed more than anything else.
On a crest at the center of the fields sat a magnificent chateau of pink and gray stone, with turrets, a gabled roof, and heavily ornamented casements. Behind it was a low concrete building, where the wine was made. The château was just for show. Right now Mr. Beaucaire, the winery manager, lived there. Someday the château might be turned into a restaurant and wine store. Amy viewed the fairy-tale scene with the reverence of a peasant.
After parking her bike at the back of the winery building, she put her hat on again, then went inside a narrow door to the office. The other grape pickers were there, two dozen or so, black and white, young and old, every kind of person from fresh-faced high-school and college students to grizzled locals, hands gnarled by years of farming. Amy thought it exciting to be part of the vineyard’s first harvest; she liked telling people that she was working at a French château. Plus harvest work paid well, though the season was short. It had started a week ago and would end early in September.
Around her people were slipping on gloves and hats for eight hours of hot work. Like most of the younger workers, Amy took a bottle of suntan lotion from her purse and smeared some on her arms and legs, where her fair skin showed freckles along with a deepening tan. The shift started at six-thirty and ended at two-thirty, when the sun was nearly unbearable.
Feeling shy in the crowd, Amy hurried to put her lunch away. In the refrigerator, containers of boiled ham and turnip greens sat next to cups of yogurt. Her lunch box contained candy bars, apples, and crackers, foods that didn’t require her to spend much time in the kitchen, where Pop tended to lurk at night, drinking and complaining. It also contained a much-read copy of The Hobbit. She liked adventure and fantasy.
Amy clipped a plastic water bottle to her belt. As she deposited her purse in a locker along one wall she smiled at everyone who caught her eye, but avoided talking. She’d spent her whole life fading into the background, the safest place to be.
“Allons-y! Let’s go!” Mr. Beaucaire gave them all a bored, patronizing look and waved an arm toward the door. Middle-aged with snowy white hair, he had a commanding presence even in brown work pants and a safari shirt. He wasted no time on chitchat and hardly ever spoke directly to one of the temporary workers. Around him Amy was as silent and obedient as a garden tool that could be replaced without a second glance.
She traipsed along with the crowd, enjoying the good, clean morning as best she could, considering how the day had started, She was used to feeling tired and a little depressed; most of her life she’d been isolated from other people by invisible barriers of shame. A few years ago Pop had been busted for driving under the influence. The joint in the Buick’s ashtray hadn’t helped his case, and he’d served a few months in the county jail.
The gossip at school had made her feel even more alone. Sometimes she had nightmares about someone finding his plants inside the house. Having friends was impossible, because friends asked too many questions and wondered why she never invited them to visit. Only Charley Culpepper was content to accept her excuses, and sometimes she wondered if that was what made Charley so attractive.
Amy entered the vineyards with the other workers. One of the manager’s assistants drove a tractor to the end of the rows. On a long, flat trailer behind it sat several wooden crates taller than Amy’s head. From the end of the trailer another assistant handed out big white buckets and sharp shears to each grape picker.
Amy took hers and walked down the rows, absently searching for a good spot to start, as if any one spot were different from the next. Her mind was devoted to recreating her daydreams, not deciding which grapevine to attack. She decided to begin where she’d left off yesterday.
She set her bucket down and went to work, vaguely listening to other people chatting to each other while her hands moved carefully among the leafy vines sagging with clusters of purple-green grapes. And she began to fantasize.
The beautiful red-headed slave is working in the vineyards of a Roman nobleman. He comes along; he notices her and falls in love at first sight. She is obviously brave as well as beautiful. He tries to talk to her. She won’t answer. He is fascinated. Finally he carries her away and sets her free. Then they make love. Amy grinned to herself. She could easily spend the whole day thinking up dialogue for this scenario.
A snip here, a snip there. Two hours had passed. The slave was excellent at her work. She trimmed stray leaves and twigs from each handful of rich, bursting grapes and dropped the ripe bundle into her bucket with graceful movements of her hands.
When the bucket was full she carried it without a sign it was painfully heavy to the trailer and dumped the contents into one of the wooden crates. Then she went back to the row and began all over again, kneeling by the vines, her bearing regal. Anyone with the sense to notice would see that she was extraordinary and didn’t deserve to be a slave.
Her concentration was so complete that several minutes passed before she realized some workers had moved close to her spot and were whispering loudly among themselves.
“Where’d Beaucaire find that guy?”
“He looks like he just came off a three-day drunk.”
“Bet he’s one of them Cuban fellers from over at Gainesville. Next thing you know, Mr. Beaucaire’ll bring in a whole bunch of those sorry shits who’ll work for a dollar a hour, and we’ll be out of a job.”
“Nah. He’s not Cuban. They’re all swarthy and short. He’s kinda swarthy, but I bet he’s six-four if he’s an inch.”
“Look at him! He can barely stand up! Ten to one he falls flat on his grapes any second! And then Beaucaire’ll jerk a knot in his tail.”
Fascinated by the descriptions, Amy looked up. The others were watching someone far down the row of trellises. She craned her head to see the man.
In the years that followed she would always remember that moment. She would relive it as if watching a movie inside her mind, the colors and sounds extraordinarily vivid, the dramatic impact staggering. He stood perhaps a hundred feet from them, outlined by a nearly tangible solitude, very still, studying a cluster of grapes crushed in one big fist. He was tall, with an elegant kind of brawniness to his body. Amy stared. His mystery excited her imagination.
Grape juice ran down his arm. There was weary
anger in the set of his shoulders, and remnants of violence in the way he clenched the pulpy mass of burst fruit. Juice dripped onto his bare, dirty feet. His white T-shirt was stained with sweat down the center and under the arms; his baggy, wrinkled pants were an ugly green color soiled with red clay at the knees. They hung low on his hips as if about to fall off. Only a loosely knotted tie-string kept them from slipping.
He wore no hat, and his thick, charcoal-black hair was disheveled. Dark beard stubble shadowed his cheeks. His eyes were covered by unremarkable black sunglasses, but his face, making a strong, blatantly masculine profile, was anything but unremarkable.
He slung the grapes to the ground, staggering a little as he did. Then, wielding a pair of razor-sharp clippers so swiftly that Amy gasped with fear, he snipped a smaller cluster of grapes and shoved it into his mouth. He stripped it with one ferocious tug of his teeth then slung the empty stem over his shoulder.
“A cocky drunk, ain’t he?” someone muttered.
Amy gaped at him. The others chuckled. At any second Beaucaire would come thundering down the aisle of trellises and raise hell. It would be spectacular entertainment.
What would the newcomer do next? For a man who was dirty and apparently soused, he had an aura of graceful arrogance. But then he went to a trellis post and leaned there heavily, resting his head on one arm. He no longer looked imposing. Fatigue seemed to drag at every muscle of his body. Amy clenched her hands, feeling a misfit’s sympathy for another misfit but wanting to scold him for making a fool of himself.
She didn’t dare. He looked dangerous—his hands were big-knuckled and dirty; ropy muscles flexed in his forearms. He wore his solitude like a shield. He swayed and stared fixedly at the ground, as if searching for a place to fall.
“Here he goes,” a man near Amy said gleefully. “Right on his face.”
But after a moment he dropped his clippers into a bucket and shoved himself away from the post. Staggering, he headed for a wooden crate that sat at the far end of a row. When he arrived there he disappeared around the corner.
Amy waited breathlessly for him to reappear. He didn’t.
“Go get Mr. Beaucaire,” someone said. “That guy’s behind that crate either taking a nap, puking his guts out, or pissing on a rose bush.”
She swung toward the others. “No! I’ll go see what he’s doing. Don’t say anything to Mr. Beaucaire. I mean it!”
Everyone stared at her. It was the first time they’d heard her speak in full sentences. She was shocked by the outburst, herself. “I, uhmmm, I b-bet he’s just sick.”
“Well, Lord have mercy. We finally heard Olive Oyl make more than a squeak.”
Everyone chortled. Amy was mortified. Her voice humiliated her when she forgot to restrain it. People laughed at her behind her back; all through school her classmates had made fun of her. She clamped her lips together and ground her teeth as if she could crush whatever it was that made her sound the way she did. She dreaded getting a job where she had to talk. She stayed awake at night worrying about it.
But now she shoved embarrassment aside and hurried toward the crate, her heart in her throat. Behind her a woman called, “You leave that feller alone! We’re gonna go get Mr. Beaucaire!”
Amy kept walking. Maybe she sympathized with all the ne’er-do-wells of the world, or maybe she was an expert on mean drunks. But she felt that there was some good reason for this man’s problem.
Uncertainty pooled in her stomach. Slowing down, she crept up to the crate and stopped to listen. She heard only the rustle of grape leaves as the hot wind stroked the vineyard. Tiptoeing in the brittle grass, she sidled up to the crate’s back corner and peeked around.
He lay on his back. He had removed the T-shirt and stuffed it under his head as a pillow. His hairy chest held her attention as it rose and fell in a slow rhythm. His hands lay beside his head, palms up, dirty and stained with grape juice but graceful-looking nonetheless.
She stepped forward in silent awe. He slept, but there was nothing vulnerable or relaxed about his face. His mouth remained shut and firm. Above the black sunglasses a frown pulled at his brows. Up close he looked younger than she’d expected, perhaps no more than thirty.
She shifted from one foot to the other, gazing at his sleeping form in consternation. Maybe it would be best just to leave him to his fate. She bent over and sniffed. The scent of his sweat mingled with the sweet aroma of grapes, red clay, and a faint antiseptic smell that puzzled her. She knew the smell of booze and pot; neither was present.
Reassured, she knelt beside him. She removed her sunglasses and tucked them in her shirt pocket. Her hand trembling, she reached out and touched his shoulder. “Hey. Hey, wake up.”
A jolt of awareness ran through him. He lifted his head and froze. She jerked her hand back. His eyes were hidden behind the glasses, but she felt as if he were scrutinizing her angrily. She fumbled with the water bottle on her belt. There was nothing else to do except blunder onward and hope he didn’t yell at her.
“You gotta get up,” she urged, holding the bottle toward him. “You’ll get fired if you stay here. Somebody went to tell Mr. Beaucaire. Come on, have a drink of water. You’ll be okay. Get up.”
When he neither moved nor replied, her nervousness gave way to exasperation. “Don’t be a j-jerk! You look like you need this job! Now take a drink of water! Uhmmm, Habla usted ingles? Si? No? Comeon, that’s all the Spanish I know! Say something!”
“I would rather listen to you say something. You say quite enough for both of us, and I like your voice.”
She stared at him, mesmerized. His English was excellent, but accented. The accent was not Spanish, though she couldn’t identify it. His voice sank into her senses—rich, deep, beautiful. Fatigue made it hoarse, but the effect was unforgettable.
“Here,” she squeaked, thrusting the water bottle close to his mouth. “This’ll make you feel better.”
He let his head rest on the wadded shirt again. Exhaustion creased the sides of his mouth. “Thank you, but no.” He raised a hand and pushed the bottle away. “I need only to rest.”
She didn’t know why, but she was desperate to keep him out of trouble. He must be too tired and sick to think straight. “You’re gonna get fired!”
“No, I assure you—”
“Take a sip.” Amy stuck the long plastic tube between his lips and squeezed the bottle hard. He tried to swallow the jet of water and nearly strangled. Shoving the bottle away, he sat up and began coughing.
A stream of melodic non-English purled from his throat, and she didn’t have to understand it to know that he was disgusted. She clutched the water bottle to her chest.
As he finished he whipped his glasses off and turned a stern gaze on her. Dread filled her chest, but she was too stunned to do anything except stare back. No one would call him pretty; in fact, his nose was blunt and crooked, his cheekbones jagged, and his mouth almost too masculine. It was a tough Bogart mouth, and the effect was heightened by a thin white scar that started an inch below his bottom lip and disappeared under his chin.
But all that made him handsome in a way she’d never encountered before. And his eyes, large and darkly lashed in the tough face, seemed to have been inherited from a different, more elegant heritage.
“Are you … you’re not one of the regular workers,” she said in confusion.
“No.”
“Are you sick or something?”
“Or something.” His expression was pensive for a moment. “I am only tired … just tired.… It will pass.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry to pester you.” She started to rise. He clasped her arm.
“Don’t leave. I didn’t mean to chase you away. Here. Give me the water. Perhaps you’re right. It helps.”
While she watched in amazement he drank slowly from the bottle. She spent an awkward moment gazing at the silky movement of muscles in his neck and chest. He lowered the bottle and studied her some more. The skin around his lips was tight and pale
. He blinked in groggy thought, then handed the bottle back. “You make me feel remarkably better. Merci.” His mouth curved in a private, off-center smile that erased all sternness from his face.
Amy caught her breath. Her shyness returned like a smothering blanket. Merci. He was French. Maurice Chevalier. The Eiffel Tower. Paris. Tongue kissing. “Don’t pass out, okay? Bye.” She leapt to her feet.
“A moment, fair rescuer. Do you always conduct yourself this way?”
“W-what way?”
“You leave without accepting the gratitude of your—”
“Mon dieu!” Mr. Beaucaire strode around the corner and stopped with his hands on his hips. He glared at Amy and she began to shrivel. “I didn’t hire you to flirt, I hired you to pick grapes.”
“I’m s-sorry. I was only—”
“You’re worthless! You take advantage of good wages and waste my time.” He scowled from her to the young man, then back to her. “My vineyard is not a place for you to make a social life. I won’t have you sneaking off to play. Do you want to lose your job?”
She gasped. “He wasn’t feeling good, but he’s okay now. And I just came over to give him some water!”
“I was young not so many decades ago. I know how you girls think up excuses—”
“Pio, non.” The man on the ground spoke with a low, authoritative tone. “Enough.”
Amy felt desperate. “Please don’t fire us.”
“Fire us?” Mr. Beaucaire asked. “Who do you think is at fault here?” He pointed to her fellow troublemaker. “Him?”
“No!” She nodded toward the man who was now impatiently rising to his feet. “Look at him. He’s … he’s pitiful. And he’s French, like you. Give him a break. And I was only trying to help.”
“Trying to cause trouble, you mean. Trying to ingratiate yourself!”
“Pio, arrêt.” The younger man’s voice boomed with command. He rose to his full height, towering over both her and Mr. Beaucaire, who looked up at him with surprise.
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