Carson Valley

by Bill Barich

  “That’s how it felt,” Atwater said agreeably. “I was trying to stay away from you. It’s a bad business to take up with the boss’s daughter.”

  Anna poked fun at him. “Such is the folklore of Carson Valley,” she said. “You don’t actually think that way now, do you?”

  “Sometimes I do. But for a different reason.”

  She sat up, her arms around her knees, and gave him a puzzled look. “Why is that?”

  “Well, one of these days Anna Torelli is liable to wake up, come to her senses, and fly back to New York as fast as she can. And I’ll be plenty sad.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” Anna said quietly. “That’s the truth of the matter.”

  “It doesn’t help me much, does it? I like firm ground under my feet.” As soon as the sentence was out of his mouth, he regretted it.

  “Don’t ask me for things I can’t give you, Arthur.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “My life is just beginning again.” Anna’s voice had risen, and there was some color in her cheeks. “I couldn’t stand to be fenced in. I’ve already done the marriage bit, and it nearly ruined me. Isn’t it enough that we enjoy each other’s company? I have such a good time with you.”

  “So it’s a game?”

  “No, it isn’t a game!” she said angrily. “I don’t know what it is exactly. But I do know that we shouldn’t put any weight on it.”

  He cursed himself—Atwater, you asshole! He knew much better, knew that a man couldn’t afford to wobble in front of a woman he cared about. It was useless to express any doubts. A man had to be the still point around which a woman orbited. He had to be the solid center, the one person on whom she could depend absolutely. A good woman ran from a man who pressured her.

  Anna had calmed down by the time she left. They were lovers again, but he had lost some purchase. “Did you remember that my friend Jane gets here on Thursday?” She slipped back into her raincoat, a dream disappearing. “Maybe we can all do something together while she’s here.”

  “I hope so,” Atwater said. “But my week is pretty busy. I’ve got Kimball to deal with, for starters.”

  She kissed him at the door. “You’ll do fine.”

  In the morning, submerged in his work, he was able to forget his mistakes. When he wasn’t supervising his crew, tinkering with machinery, or speeding to town for a spare part, he had to contend with sundry other unrelated distractions such as Rawley Kimball, his CV field agent, who turned up every other Wednesday at two o’clock on the dot. Kimball was a combative, flat-nosed little elf, broad of beam and sober in manner, and he always had an abundance of pens and pencils jutting out of his shirt pocket and his mangled hand concealed in a trouser pocket. His sunglasses were the clip-on kind—a detail that said it all for Atwater, although the worst of it for him, truly, was that Kimball saw himself as a messiah of modern science out to save ignorant vineyard managers from committing any crimes against nature.

  They rode around the farm in the Jeep, with Atwater in dire resistance to Kimball’s every suggestion.

  “Look here,” Kimball said, stopping him in a row of the ancient Chardonnay vines that were slated to be replaced. “With this old rootstock, you ought to be checking for corky bark virus. Have you done that?”

  “Not yet.”

  Kimball made a penciled note on his clipboard. “Leaf roll is another hazard. You ought to be inspecting for that, too.”

  “I will be from now on. Yes, sir.” Atwater struggled against a temptation to salute and utter Jawohl!

  “Have you done any sulfur dusting?”

  “I started last week.”

  “Well, pay special attention to your Cab vines,” Kimball commanded him. “Because you’ve got some real heavy foliage, and that dust is going to have a tough time penetrating through to the grapes.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Rawley.”

  “It’s no skin off my nose, Arthur. I’m here to help. It’s my job.”

  Atwater brewed a pot of tea that evening and took solace in his log.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23RD. Applied herbicide to hillside Zinfandel. Hidalgo and Antonio hoeing Cab block, lots of weeds still to get. Weather warmer, seventy-seven degrees at noon. Bloom coming on, the whole farm smells sweet. Kimball here talking about corky bark virus. I wished I could smack him in the head with a shovel and bury him six feet deep.

  He flipped to another section at the back of the log that was marked by a turned-down page. It was a new section that he had just started—the equivalent of a diary, where he jotted notes and tried to sort out his confused feelings about Anna.

  Anna here last night. Is the fucking so good because it can’t last?

  She asked me to take her on a canoe trip down the river. Talked about a raft she and her brother were going to build once. I said yes, of course. I’d do anything for her right now. Take me to Madagascar. Sure, honey.

  Why am I so nuts about her? Because when I’m with her, I forget who I am? She makes me feel good about myself, like I’m another person. Maybe she sees a side of me that everybody else misses.

  Only the brave deserve the beautiful. I read that somewhere once.

  Worry about falling into the creek, and you’ll fall into it.

  Atwater fitted a weed knife to his tractor on Thursday and made some passes through the rows of old Chardonnay, dragging the blade deep beneath the soil to cut the roots of such hardy perennials as Johnson and Bermuda grass, both nuisances almost impossible to destroy. He wished that he didn’t have such a hatred of chemical weedkillers, since the chemicals were very effective and easy to apply, but he feared that they might cause him to sprout a third ear somewhere down the line.

  Toward dusk, he saw a bright red Mustang convertible pull up at the big house and assumed that the woman at the wheel must be Jane Weiss, Anna’s friend. He watched Anna come out and hug her on the porch. He thought that she might call and invite him to join them for supper, but she didn’t. They left together in the Mustang the next day and were not yet back when he turned in. Saturday, too, they were gone for hours, and he started to feel excluded and abused, as well as ridiculous for feeling that way. Only on Monday did Anna bring Jane around to be introduced, catching Atwater at an awkward moment while he was on his knees fiddling with the weed knife and covered from head to toe with dirt.

  “This is Arthur Atwater,” she told her friend. “Our vineyard manager.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Jane said. Her voice was chirpy, and Atwater took an instant dislike to her. How dare she come between him and his lover? She had sharp features and short black hair in an unflattering bob and was not meant for the jeans she had on. “I love your ranch! Is that what you call it?”

  “You can call it whatever you choose,” Atwater said coolly. “We’re not real picky about it.”

  “Anyway, I’m having a wonderful time! I used to think of New Jersey as the West. Anna’s going to turn me into a cowgirl before I leave.”

  “She’s good in the saddle, all right.”

  “Don’t let us keep you, Arthur,” Anna said, casting him a withering glare.

  The rest of the day went by without so much as a message from her, and Atwater fell to circumnavigating his carpet again that evening. He was on a psychological roller-coaster, tolerant one minute and in an infantile rage the very next. Didn’t Anna promise that they’d do something together? Was he such a dolt that she had to exclude him from all the fun? He became convinced that she must be ashamed of him, so he spied on her until Jane finally drove off alone in the Mustang on Tuesday afternoon. Then he got down from his tractor in a rush and broke straight for the house. Anna was in the kitchen, dressed for the heat in shorts and a halter top and arranging a bouquet of gladiolus in a vase. Atwater cautioned himself not to make a scene. Instead, he would be perfectly rational and convey what was troubling him in a mature fashion, but in fact his very first sentences betrayed him.

  “Here I am,” he bayed at he
r. “Your vineyard manager. Your hired hand!”

  Anna turned to confront him. “Spare me, Arthur. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I? Isn’t that how you introduced me the other day? I’m not beneath you, Anna. I’m not your goddam servant!”

  “What would you prefer to be called?” she asked him in an ironic tone. “My boyfriend? My swain?”

  He looked at her more closely. “Are you drunk?”

  “No, Arthur, I am not, as you put it, drunk. Jane and I toured some wineries and did some tasting after lunch.”

  “You’re a little high, then.”

  “What business is it of yours? Tell me that, please.”

  Atwater kept after her. “Here’s what I don’t get,” he said, much more loudly than he intended. “Why haven’t you included me in any of your outings?”

  “Because I didn’t want to include you.” Anna spoke slowly, as if to the cretin Atwater increasingly understood himself to be. “I haven’t seen Jane for ages. We’ve been catching up. And we have business to discuss. I’ve let my end of the bookstore bargain slide. Does that make any sense to you? Or do you need it explained again?”

  “Explain it again. Vineyard managers are dumber than shit.”

  “You really are overstepping your bounds here, you know.”

  “Overstepping my bounds?”

  “That’s right. You have no claim on me. Jesus, Arthur, you’re behaving like a husband! Besides, you could have invited us to do something.”

  That had never occurred to him, of course. He felt that he had lost a crucial point. His argument was collapsing around him like so many unmortared bricks, and he had an urge to dive under the table to protect his head. “Like what?” he asked, stalling for time.

  “Oh, who knows!” Anna was shouting at him now. “Let’s see. How about fishing? Ha! Fishing would have been fucking brilliant!”

  “The steelhead run is over for the year,” Atwater said lamely. “There’s only bass and suckers to catch. But we could go tomorrow if you want to.”

  “Arthur, this has got to stop. You’re being much too serious!”

  Fully blocked and parried, he accepted his defeat. “The other night, you told me I didn’t take you serious enough.”

  “It’s seriously,” Anna told him. “An adverb. You didn’t flunk English grammar, too, did you?”

  The last brick had fallen. Atwater regarded her there in the kitchen, his noble adversary and demon lover, a beguiling half smile of victory on her lips. He swallowed the entire miracle of her with his eyes and wanted her more than anything.

  “Anna,” he said, moving toward her, “take off your shorts.”

  Her eyes were locked on his. He could feel them burning. She was testing him again, ready for any dare. The shorts dropped in a pool on the floor.

  “Your panties, too.”

  “All right.”

  “Go sit on that counter.”

  She hoisted herself and waited with her legs spread slightly, taunting him. He went to her, buried his face in her crotch, touched her with his tongue, and heard her say, “Oh, yes, that’s so good.” She came for him swiftly and eagerly, and it excited him beyond any rapture he had known. He yanked his jeans down to his knees, sat on a chair, and lifted Anna astride him, feeling the wet slap of her against his legs and her hot breath in his ear. He was transported and yet keenly uneasy at the same time, certain as he plunged into her that he was overmatched, in trouble, in love, and no doubt doomed.

  The only peace he could find now was in the fields, where his long laboring through the winter and spring was being rewarded in spades. There came a morning early in May when the growing shoots appeared to rise up in tribute, arching toward the sky in gratitude for his mindful nurturing. The shoots were almost three feet long and manic in their energy, and Atwater hiked the farm as though he owned it. He nodded at the vines and had such a renewed sense of self-worth that he decided to celebrate by buying himself some dinner at The Rib Room. He started down the dirt road at twilight, only to pass a dented Toyota hatchback parked on a shoulder, its hood up and Antonio Lopez’s head thrust into its vitals.

  “Battery’s dead,” Lopez told him when he stopped. Then Lopez began swearing, chinga this and chinga that. “And the guy I bought it from guaranteed me it would last for at least five years!”

  “A warranty’s only as good as the paper it’s written on.”

  “There wasn’t any paper, man.”

  Atwater fetched some jumper cables from the barn, but the battery wouldn’t hold a charge. The other men on the crew had already gone home, so he had no choice but to offer Lopez a lift to Santa Rosa. He drove Carson Valley Road going south and cut across toward the freeway.

  “Sears’ll be open till nine tonight,” he counseled Antonio. “Get yourself a new battery, will you? Used batteries are never worth a damn.”

  “The guy said it was new. Hey, Arthur?” Lopez asked, his attitude suddenly upbeat. “You’re looking different these days! There’s like this little glow around you.”

  “Like a halo?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The thing around an angel’s head.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” Lopez said with a laugh. “You’re no angel, man. It’s just a glow.”

  “Well, I feel pretty darn good, actually. I feel like a human being again.”

  “It’s because of love, Arthur. What did you feel like before you had some love?”

  Atwater considered the question, then laughed himself. “I felt like a dog, Antonio. There were four of us barking in my trailer.”

  When they arrived at Lopez’s house, a modest stucco bungalow with some scrawny azaleas out front, Antonio asked him in for a beer. Atwater didn’t really care for one, but if he refused it would be interpreted as a grievous insult. He had never been inside the house before and saw that it was very nicely kept and furnished with some newish furniture from Kmart. He paused before a framed portrait of a Madonna on a wall above the couch. “Who’s this?” he said.

  “The Virgin of Guadalupe,” Lopez told him. “She brings me good luck.”

  “But she doesn’t do batteries.”

  “I guess not, man.”

  They continued into the kitchen. Elena stood by the stove working a wooden spoon in several pots. Dolores was in a high chair spattering pureed green beans all over herself. She had green beans in her hair, her nose, and under her fingernails. Antonio brought out two cold Budweisers and hugged Elena, who returned his embrace, her head resting on his shoulder and an arm around his waist.

  “You see?” Lopez said genially. “This is how it’s supposed to be. The whole family is together! The wife is where she ought to be. She’s cooking the dinner in her home.”

  The statement baffled Atwater, but he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he made a joke. “My wife never cooked dinner for me.”

  Lopez looked at him with disapproval. “Maybe you picked the wrong woman, Arthur.”

  There might be some truth in that, Atwater thought. Nothing in the world seemed certain to him anymore.

  10

  There were always new people coming to Carson Valley from Mexico to look for work. They came from every state, from Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guerrero, and faraway Tabasco and Campeche on the eastern Gulf Coast, from such big cities of the interior as Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo and little towns of the Baja California Peninsula as San Ignacio with its date palms and Indian laurels and San Borjita with its ancient cave paintings of war and hunting scenes. They would traverse any obstacle on their journey, be it the Sierra Madre Occidental, the Volcanic Highlands west of Mexico City, or the Plains of Sonora because they had friends and family in California, uncles and nephews and distant cousins who had spoken to them of the glory of the vineyards and the money to be reaped by toiling in them.

  There was no single route they followed. They traveled by foot and by van, on horseback, in private automobiles, as hitchhikers and as unwanted passengers spread-
eagled on top of boxcars, they would swim if they needed to—they would do anything at all once they had set themselves the task of crossing. They were freighted with the usual hopes and dreams of immigrants, nourished on fantasies, improbable success stories, and even tales of dominion, their curiosity whetted by the sheer implacable magnitude of the country to their north and by its abundant riches, the currency that dripped from the fingers of every citizen, dollars to be had for the mere mentioning of them, an El Dorado where a man could get a job and then, with some ingenuity, find an angle that would let him return to Mexico someday as a person transformed, someone to be admired and emulated, a winner in the great sweepstakes that operated continuously and eternally just over the artificial line that was known as the border.

  So it was that Omar Perez, a boy of fifteen, stood in front of a tin-roofed shack in a dusty settlement between Zapopán and Tesistán, northwest of Guadalajara, and dutifully kissed his mother good-bye on a mild morning in May, while the roosters were still crowing. She was sobbing and holding onto him by a shirtsleeve, pinching it between her fingers and crying, “Mi hijo! Mi hijo!” with such operatic despair that the neighbors were shouting for her to stop and had even splashed down a bucket of water in an attempt to shut her up. Omar was not unmoved, but he knew that her sorrow was bottomless, part of her nature, a condition of her being. She would have wept as mournfully if he had left at the age of twenty-five, he believed, so he braced himself against her tears, broke away, and walked off with his head down, determined to make his fortune in California.

  He rode a bus into the city and then another bus to La Nueva Central, a modern transport terminal of seven mazelike buildings on the Zapotlanejo road. He almost got lost inside, but a clerk directed him to the first building, where the cheapest fares were available, and he bought a second-class ticket to Tijuana, a place he had never been before. He was more excited than wary about the prospects ahead of him, more thrilled than fearful. While he waited in the terminal, chewing gum and smoking a cigarette, he studied the scrap of paper on which his cousin Antonio Lopez had written an address and phone number in the town of Santa Rosa, committing both to memory. They had met at a big party during the Feast of the Immaculate Conception some three years ago, and Omar had been very impressed with his cousin, who, after several shots of tequila, had invited him to visit anytime.