He kept his promise, showing up every Monday without fail through the Christmas holidays and into the New Year. At first their conversations were stilted, polite, perfunctory, but gradually their old affection and fondness and the habits of their long, shared history wore down the wall she had hastily built between them. They chatted fondly over cups of coffee at her kitchen table; he brought apricots for the children and city directories from places he traveled to on ranch business for her. If she sometimes felt a sad yearning for him or let her thoughts wander to what might have been, she admonished herself for entertaining such dangerous, careless ideas and put them aside.
She had wanted desperately to forget that illicit, fleeting moment in Lars’s embrace, to put it behind her, to be a good and faithful wife from that day forward.
She had yet to discover how utterly impossible that would prove to be.
In the cabin later that evening after putting the children to bed, Rosa showed Lars the newspaper Mrs. Phillips had given her. She gnawed the inside of her lower lip as she watched him read, his expression growing stormier with every line. “John’s still locked up,” Lars said quietly when he finished. He folded the paper and tossed it onto the sofa.
“On racketeering charges,” Rosa pointed out, bending to pick up the paper, determined to keep it out of the children’s sight. “And for how long?”
Lars took her by the shoulders and fixed her with a steady gaze. “If he’s found guilty, he could be locked up for years,” he said, with reassuring certainty. “And if some other technicality crops up and he’s released on account of it, he still has no idea where we are. He doesn’t even know where to begin to look. You’ll only make yourself sick from worry if you keep on like this.”
Rosa knew he was right, but she could not completely banish her fears.
As the weeks passed, Mrs. Phillips saved several newspaper clippings for Rosa, but none mentioned John, so she assumed he remained in prison awaiting trial. She was struck by the realization that John had almost certainly never returned to the adobe after his arrest. He would not know that she had taken the strongbox with the deed to the farm and all their other important papers when she fled. She imagined her kitchen under a layer of dust and wondered if a generous neighbor had come by to harvest the rye fields and feed the livestock in John’s absence. Perhaps her brother had. It pained her to think that Carlos needlessly mourned his nieces and nephew, and maybe even his estranged sister. She wished she could send word to him that they were safe, but the risk of discovery was too great.
Rosa and Lars and the children fell into the familiar, comfortable rhythm of farm life, school, and weekly visits to the doctor. Nils and Rose had become essential members of the household, although Rosa noticed that Dante and Giuditta, perhaps unconsciously, kept some tasks within the family. No one but themselves and their three eldest children ever entered the winery unescorted, and Dante carried the only key to the tall double doors, which were always locked, in his pocket. Every Thursday, Dante and Dominic—and Vince too when school wasn’t in session—set out early in the morning to make deliveries and returned just in time for a late supper. Although Lars offered to accompany them, they assured him they were so used to working together that they could manage fine on their own. “At least let me help you load the truck,” Lars said, determined to prove his worth to his new employers. Dante replied that if anyone had to stumble out of bed an hour before sunrise and shoulder heavy loads, it ought to be Dominic and Vince, who had all the stamina of youth and none of the responsibilities of parenthood, and therefore could manage on fewer hours of sleep. “I guess when Mabel has her baby, I’ll offer again,” Lars told Rosa privately, and she suspected they would gladly accept his help at that time.
On other occasions, at the end of the day when the supper dishes were washed and put away and Rosa and Lars sat on the back steps watching the children climb the walnut trees or play on the banks of the creek, Lars expressed other doubts. “It doesn’t add up,” he would say, shaking his head. Wine grape sales had been poor that year, as carloads of fresh, plump, ripe fruit, in perfect condition when the train departed the station in Santa Rosa, arrived at the markets in New York utterly worthless, having spoiled at their destination when repeated delays prevented them from being unloaded—or so the brokers insisted, dubious claims the Cacchiones had no way to verify. Tourists occasionally stopped by, wanting to buy lunch or fresh eggs or walnuts or prunes, and Giuditta always sold them what they wanted, but fewer travelers had passed by as Christmas approached, and Rosa couldn’t imagine Giuditta earned very much from their modest purchases. “I can’t figure it out,” Lars said, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “At this rate, they should have gone bankrupt years ago.”
Paradoxically, Lars’s doubts offered Rosa a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the Cacchiones had misjudged their financial circumstances. Perhaps they were not as close to bankruptcy as they believed. Years before, when Rosa had first begun working as the bookkeeper for the Grand Union Hotel, she had found an error in Mrs. Diegel’s receipts that had spared her from overpaying her creditors several hundred dollars. If Rosa went over the Cacchiones’ ledgers with the same painstaking scrutiny, she might discover a hidden windfall in their accounts.
But Giuditta graciously refused her offer. Rosa persisted, promising that she would keep whatever she discovered in the strictest confidence. She wouldn’t alter a single line of the vineyard’s accounts, but would instead make her notes lightly in pencil in the margins so that Giuditta or Dante could look over them before she made any changes to the original records. Still Giuditta refused, pleasantly but with a decided firmness that made it clear she did not want Rosa’s help.
Rosa pretended that she understood, but the rebuff stung. Either Giuditta didn’t believe Rosa was up to the task, or she didn’t trust her. Either way, it didn’t bode well for Rosa’s future with Cacchione Vineyards—not that Rosa expected to stay forever, or to move up in the company as Mrs. Diegel had always promised her she could at the Grand Union Hotel. Perhaps the Cacchiones were interested only in Lars’s knowledge of apricot cultivation and had found work for Rosa as a diversion. Perhaps they didn’t really need either Rosa or Lars, but had kept them on out of obligation to Dr. Reynolds, who had saved their lives during the influenza epidemic.
Lars thought she worried unnecessarily. “All this means is that the Cacchiones don’t want you to see their books.”
“Why not?” Rosa asked. “Why wouldn’t they? I’m honest, and I could help them.”
Lars admitted he couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation except that he and Rosa were mere employees, and new employees at that, and the Cacchiones ran a family business with family secrets. In time, Giuditta might trust Rosa enough to accept her help with the books, just as Dante might allow Lars to help with the weekly grape deliveries.
A few days before Christmas, the two eldest Cacchione brothers rose even earlier than usual to load the truck for what was expected to be one of the largest deliveries of the year. The truck was long gone by the time Rosa and Lars walked to the residence to begin their workday. Rosa spotted tire tracks in the yard, which had been softened into mud from the previous night’s rain showers, and the narrow traces of the carts the brothers had used to haul the bushels of grapes from the old wine cellar, which Rosa had heard the Cacchiones mention but had never seen for herself. Out of sight of the house and yard, it lay an eighth of a mile beyond the newer, modern winery and was accessible only by a narrow, overgrown footpath. Although Dante’s father and grandfather had once stored all the wine the vineyard produced in the old cellar, Dante used it only to keep surplus grapes chilled until they could be sold.
That day, Dante, Dominic, and Vince had not returned from their rounds by the time Rosa and Lars went home at the end of the day. That was not unusual, so Rosa thought nothing of it as she prepared supper for Lars and the children and took care of her housekeeping chores before putting the children to bed and climbing wearily beneath the cov
ers herself.
She had been asleep for an hour, perhaps two, when a pounding on the door woke her. She leapt from bed, snatched up her robe, and fled into the front room, her heart racing, her imagination darting wildly. Lars reached the door first, and when she joined him she discovered not the police or gangsters or her husband on the doorstep, but Dante.
“The truck broke down a mile up the road,” he said grimly. “We need your help unloading it. We could use both of you, if you can leave the children alone.”
“Give me five minutes to dress,” Lars said.
“I’ll come too,” Rosa said, stopping by the kitchen to scrawl a note for Marta before hurrying off to the bedroom to change. Within minutes she, Lars, and Dante were in the car rumbling over the rough path from the cabin to the road, where Dante gunned the engine and sent the car hurtling forward into the night. As they jolted along, Rosa reached for Lars’s hand, and when his eyes met hers, she knew he too wondered what needed to be unloaded with such haste at that hour of the night—empty fruit crates? It made no sense.
Before long, they spotted the Cacchione Vineyards delivery truck pulled over by the side of the road. The front was jacked up on the driver’s side and a punctured tire lay on the ground nearby. Giuditta was already there with the wagon, holding the horses’ reins as Dominic and Vince heaved something into the back. As they approached, Rosa realized that they carried small wine barrels and jugs, apparently empty but still a bulky, cumbersome load.
Without sparing time for explanations, Dante parked the car and joined his sons, transferring empty wine barrels and jugs from the back of the truck into the wagon. Lars and Rosa fell into place beside them, and when the wagon was full, Giuditta chirruped to the horses and rode off toward home. Everyone else stayed behind to fill the back of the car with the few casks that remained, and just before they squeezed into the seats and sped off after Giuditta, Vince snatched a worn tapestry bag from the cab of the truck and locked the doors.
No one spoke on the drive back to the vineyard, or when they arrived and joined Giuditta in carrying the empty casks up the hill and into the old wine cellar, where the walls were lined with large barrels like the one Dante had tapped at the harvest dance. As they raced back and forth between the wagon and truck and cellar, Rosa saw enough to understand that even if she had time to spare for a thorough search, she would not find a single grape in the old cellar, unless she counted the crushed liquids that were aging into wine in the hundreds of neatly arranged barrels filling every available space in the cool darkness of the cavern.
The Cacchiones were bootleggers.
Chapter Six
After the last empty cask was stashed in the old wine cellar and the door locked and bolted, Giuditta shivered in the cool night air and offered to make them something to eat while they sat in the warmth of the kitchen and talked. “The boys are exhausted,” Dante said, shaking his head. “Explanations can wait until morning.” Lars took Rosa’s arm and led her along the narrow, overgrown trail to the yard, where they parted ways with the Cacchiones and continued carefully down the vineyard path to the cabin.
They went inside, and Lars shut the door behind them and leaned heavily against it. Their eyes met, and Rosa saw her own bleak uncertainty mirrored in his.
“Maybe there’s a logical explanation,” she said.
“There is, and I know it,” said Lars grimly. “They’re selling wine.”
“I meant a different logical explanation.” One easier to accept, one that exonerated them of all wrongdoing.
Lars sighed and ran a hand over his jaw. “They’ll have all night to invent a good story.”
But Rosa didn’t want a reassuring lie. She wanted the truth.
In the morning, Rosa saw Marta and Ana off to the school bus stop before walking with Lars and the younger children to the Cacchione residence. Giuditta met them at the kitchen door and beckoned them inside, as she often did, for a cup of coffee before beginning the day’s work. As Rosa and Lars helped themselves, Giuditta treated Lupita and Miguel to fresh milk and bananas fried in honey and sent them off to play with her younger children. When Dante came in from his morning chores, he greeted Rosa and Lars with a nod, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the head of the table with a sigh of resignation. Giuditta took the chair at his right hand; Rosa and Lars sat down across from them and waited.
Dante was silent for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the cup resting on the table before him, his tanned, weathered hands encircling it for warmth. “What can we do to persuade you not to turn us in?”
“We’re not going to turn you in,” Lars answered for them both, although they had not discussed it. “We’re in no position to judge you. It’s none of our business how you run your affairs.”
“It is your business now,” said Giuditta. “We’d hoped to keep this from you, but now you know, and if we’re caught, you could go down with us.”
“We’ll say we knew nothing about it,” said Rosa.
Dante regarded her skeptically. “Even under oath? Even if your testimony against us is the price you have to pay for your own freedom?”
“I—” If Rosa were locked away as John was now, and all she had to do was tell the simple truth of what she knew to be released and reunited with her children…If the moment came, she did not know what she would do.
Dante nodded as if her silence confirmed his fears. “The less they know, the better,” he said to his wife.
She touched him gently on the forearm. “They already know enough to ruin us if they want to. Nils says they aren’t going to turn us in, and I believe him. Since they’ve learned what we do, they might as well know why.”
The Cacchiones had resumed selling wine only out of necessity, Giuditta explained, not avarice, not willful disregard for the law. Their luscious, vibrant wine, the result of years of toil and patience, was the family’s most valuable asset, second only to the land itself. The law required them to pay taxes on their sixty acres regardless of how much or how little it had profited them in a given year. They were required to buy an annual permit to store the wine they were not permitted to sell. They could not earn enough to pay those expenses by selling walnuts and prunes and lunches to infrequent tourists. If they hadn’t resorted to bootlegging, they wouldn’t have survived.
“I sell wine. I’ve always sold wine,” Dante broke in. “As a winemaker, I was a man of dignity and I won the respect of other dignified men. I earned a decent, honorable living. The politicians who made the laws forced me to abandon my livelihood—not only my profession but my very way of life. They’ve never met me. They’ve never visited Sonoma County. They know nothing about wine, this magnificent gift of God and nature and man working together in harmony. They care nothing for the families whose lives they’ve devastated. They care only about winning their next election and pleasing the influential people who can help them stay in office.”
The Cacchiones had never abandoned winemaking, at first because they believed Prohibition would be repealed eventually and they would need to have mature wines ready to sell, and later, because they could not afford to stop. When Lars had examined the padlocked wire fencing in the wine cellar and noted that it was hardly an impenetrable barrier, he had been entirely correct. In the far corner, partially concealed by the water-filled barrels, Dante and Dominic had exploited a weakness in the enclosure, creating a low, narrow passage at the bottom just large enough to roll a wine barrel through. They filled the smaller casks and growlers with mature vintages, then refilled the empty barrels with new wine and wrestled the barricade back into place. It was a truckload of these casks, not crates of wine grapes, that Dante, Dominic, and Vince delivered to San Francisco each week, bribing the car ferry’s fire security officers so they could cross the San Francisco Bay unimpeded.
The daylong, hazardous journey to the city and back demanded constant vigilance, as federal Prohibition agents patrolled the city streets and the back roads of the countryside searching for bootlegg
ers and smugglers. Until they unloaded their illicit cargo at various hotels, restaurants, and speakeasies throughout the city, they were in jeopardy, hunted by officers and gangsters alike. One summer evening gangsters masquerading as federal agents had hijacked them just north of Petaluma. They were driving south when suddenly two sedans pulled out from a side road and blocked their way, forcing Dante to slam on the brakes. Three men in dark suits brandished guns, ordered Dante and his sons out of the truck, and declared them under arrest. The Cacchiones complied and stood with their arms raised above their heads on the side of the road, expecting to be slapped into handcuffs and hauled off to prison, but instead two of the men returned to the sedans, the third climbed into the cab of the truck, and all three sped away, leaving the Cacchiones staring in stunned bewilderment after them. The truck was later found abandoned outside of San Rafael, its entire cargo missing. When the officers who contacted the Cacchiones and helped them recover their vehicle asked why Dante had never reported the theft, Dante lied and insisted that he had, blaming the lack of a police report on misplaced paperwork.
The incident left the Cacchiones shaken, but they did not, they could not, forswear bootlegging. Instead they changed their schedule so that they left home in the morning and caught an earlier ferry into the city, but although this allowed them to avoid gangsters, it risked exposing them to more scrutiny by the police. They had to buy the silence of an entirely new shift of fire security officers so they could cross on the ferry, and they had to find new customers willing to accept deliveries in broad daylight. Although they took every precaution to avoid the attention of Prohibition agents, they lived under the constant threat of discovery, and the strain upon their nerves was almost crippling. That was why, when the delivery truck broke down the night before, they could not have waited until morning to unload the empty casks they had collected from their customers. If a police officer or Prohibition agent—or for that matter, a curious tourist or suspicious neighbor eager to profit from a reward—happened by and peered into the truck, the Cacchiones would have been undone.
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