Alone, he followed the winding road out of town, when suddenly the pavement ended, turning into a dusty logging-trail-type passage through dense forests of redwoods and tall pines. Several times the GPS lost a map grid entirely, and he heard the stiff female voice utter “recalculating” so many times he finally turned down her volume. This indicated it was a private road, and not one maintained by the county.
He saw the first evidence he was on the right trail when he spied a chipped and crooked hand painted sign that read:
Wine Country Wet N Wild.
The sign had been attached to a large fallen and burnt out tree stump, but had gotten loose, and the directional arrow pointed down. Since there was no other turnout, Derek continued on the same trail, his Hummer kicking up a small tornado cloud of red dirt.
At last he came to a dense forest and carefully maneuvered around the many charred stumps and massive old trees that showed evidence of fire damage from seasons past. The light was nearly gone from view, the trees were so dense and tall. Finally he came upon a tall iron gate, resembling the entrance to a small fortress. He’d seen some of these on deployment in Somalia in the outlying areas controlled by warlords. Of course, it was missing the hanging human bodies and real severed heads. But something dark and sinister loomed in front of him, and it wasn’t welcoming.
He had to exit the Hummer to reach the intercom. A chill went down his spine as he heard a large roar from a lion, followed by trumpeting from several elephants. It could have easily been a dinosaur from the famous adventure movie.
“Hello?” he spoke into the box. “Anyone there?”
The scratchy answer was not audible.
“Excuse me? This is Derek Farley. I have an appointment to see Mr. Gerson.”
Again, static from the box was unintelligible. He walked to the gate, then observed the signs it was charged with an electrical current, so he didn’t touch it or try to push it open. From far away, he thought he heard a Jeep motor, but it was drowned out by the sound of a stampede, getting louder by the second.
Out of nowhere, a herd of nearly ten huge red long-horned buffalos stormed past the gate, one of them hitting the fence beyond causing a spark that flared nearly a foot. The stumbling buffalo scrambled to his feet and joined the herd as it thundered off. The ground stopped shaking.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but this was not it.
A green Land Rover came into view, painted with a jungle theme and covered with the Wet N Wild logo. Out jumped a burly man nearly Derek’s height, but almost a hundred pounds heavier, hair growing from his ears and around his neck, with forearms like a thick animal pelt. He resembled a six-foot troll from a children’s book, minus the curved lower teeth. As the man came toward him, Derek noticed the large hunting rifle strapped to his back and the KA-BAR kept in place with a thigh strap. He was searching all around him as he traveled the dozen or so steps to the gate entrance. Using a hand-held device, the gate opened inward.
Above the grinding and squeal of the metal hinges, Derek was shouted instructions.
“Leave your Humvee here and come with me, Mr. Farley.”
There was no extending of hands for a shake. The nervous Mr. Gerson removed his rifle and with his back to Derek, scanned the brush and trees behind his Land Rover.
Derek did what he was told, stashed his duty bag in the locked compartment under the second seat of his Hummer, keeping his pistol in the clip at his back, the jacket flap covering it. He was glad he’d brought his firearms, but hated to leave his other two behind in the locked case. With his vehicle locked, he entered the compound.
Gerson turned and quickly sized him up. Derek was a couple of inches taller. The man gripped his rifle in his left hand and then extended his right for a shake. “Horace Gerson. I’m the owner of this place.”
“Derek Farley. Nice to meet you.”
“So you were a SEAL?” Gerson said as the gates noisily closed behind them.
“Yessir. Who told you that, may I ask?”
They heard more thunderous pounding of hooves, which put Gerson on alert. He motioned to the Land Rover, and was inside the cab first. Derek looked for a seat belt and found none. Gerson immediately revved the engine and sped off, doing a quick turnaround to the heavily brushed trail he’d come from.
“They run through here all afternoon.”
“They? You mean those red buffalo?”
“Cape Buffalo. The most dangerous animal around. I had one get loose one year, and he destroyed three homes about a mile away. Killed three goats, a dog, and plowed through a metal barn without even getting a headache. Deadly, especially when mad.”
“I see. What did you do?”
“He got a tranq. Had to hire a fuckin’ crane to load him up in a gravel truck and bring him home.”
“I’ll bet you were a celebrity that week.”
Gerson grinned, obviously reminiscing pleasantly on the activity of the past. “You pick your battles here in Wine Country. Not much excitement, I guess. So that was a red letter day.”
It was obvious Gerson was an adrenaline junkie, and it reminded him of some of his buds on the Teams.
“They mate year-round, and when they’re running, well, they just run is all I can say, and they look for things to crash into.”
“Sort of a game,” Derek shouted over the sound of the engine.
“I guess you could call it that. Working out their aggressions, I’d say.”
“Well, what makes them mad?”
Gerson laughed. “Life.”
Derek knew some people like that. He smiled, and Gerson caught it.
“You ever been big game hunting?” Gerson asked and eyed him carefully.
“Nope. I don’t have the stomach for it. I’ve done enough killing overseas.”
Gerson extended his right hand. “I completely agree. I could never do that to these beautiful animals. They were put here on earth by God to remind us how puny we are, and how fragile life is.”
The two men shook again. Gerson put his callused and scarred paw back on the steering wheel.
“Actually, I lied.”
“What?” Derek wasn’t sure he’d heard the man right.
“They’re hunting, just not with the same finesse you and I would do it. They just run things over as a herd. They don’t eat meat. Strictly vegetarians, but man oh man, anyone tells you plant eaters are docile and kind don’t know shit about the Cape Buffalo.”
“I see.”
“I’m going to show you something.”
Gerson turned off the trail, winding through a heavily overgrown jungle of foliage Derek was sure wasn’t native to California. “You bring all this in here?” he asked, waving to the tall plants and pointing to vines extended overhead.
“Sure did. But this whole area was heavy forest. Thick with brush. Whole place burns off every five hundred years or so. I brought stuff in from Brazil and South Africa, when you could do that. No more of it now. Had no trouble growing them here, and the animals keep down the foliage so there’s not much I have to do but keep the clearing free at the campground. We glamp around here.”
The Land Rover jerked and came barreling out of the jungle into another clearing. An electric fence with high voltage signs attached was dead ahead of them.
“You said glamp?” Derek asked.
“Glamping. You know, glamour camping. We are in the rough, but not too rough.”
“That’s a new one.”
“Just means we have air conditioning and electric blankets in the tents. It gets cold at night here.”
Gerson stopped the vehicle. He pointed to the fence. A large brown streak, approximately ten feet long, almost like a snake skin, was embedded in the fence. At one end, Derek noticed the face of a dog-like creature, but more like a cat. At the other end of the streak, a tail and one hind leg was hung up in the metal, held in place with dried tissue. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
“This is their pastime. We call this a coyote sme
ar.”
Sure as shit, it was the body of a coyote, stretched, more like smeared, over the fence wall by something as big as a steam roller.
“The buffalo did this?”
“Every once in awhile a local coyote thinks it might be a good idea to hunt here. They’ve learned to scramble, even with the electric fence, and get over the top in time, but sometimes they falter, and then they are sure SOL.”
“So you never come out here without that,” Derek pointed to the man’s rifle, which was stowed in a clip between the two front seats.
“You got that right. Yes, My .416 Remington. Wouldn’t be caught out here without it.”
Derek smiled at the coincidence. “I like Remingtons.”
“Well, the ammunition alone for this costs me nearly five hundred dollars for five rounds. I got soft points loaded in first, then the hard tips to finish them off. But it’s a small price to save your life if you need it. I hope I never have to shoot one of my animals, but if I have to, that means some human won’t get killed.”
“Ever been close to having to do that?”
“Only once. But it worked out. Good thing, too, because the rife I had at the time would be like shooting vitamins into them. And if you make a mistake and don’t drop him without wounding another one, they’ll come back and it’s payback time. They are the most lethal man-killers in all of Africa. They talk about elephants never forgetting, well, Cape Buffalo are smarter with longer memories.”
They headed back to the campground site. Gerson showed Derek the main house. A bevy of workers were preparing a meal, carrying linens and supplies to various canvas structures sitting on wood frames scattered along the perimeter of the little enclave.
Gerson ran up the rustic wood steps and into a hand-hewn beamed great room two stories high. Off to the left were a pair of offices.
“Come on up, Derek. I got some questions to ask you.”
Derek had a dozen or so of his own. Gerson took his place behind a desk with a free-form slab of some burgundy colored wood about three inches thick. There was a crack nearly a ¼” wide crossing one third of the top. His desk was littered with papers and a whole pad of sticky notes stuck all over a Thunderbolt connected to his Mac. A couple of key clicks later, and a copy of Derek’s application appeared, magnified to double the size.
“Navy SEAL, huh?” Gerson swiveled his squeaky wooden desk chair to face him across the massive pile of papers.
“Yessir. How did you know that? I started to ask you earlier. The Buffalo kinda distracted us.”
“I pay attention to the sound of the herd out for a little jaunt to route out any unsuspecting or limping coyote.” He raised his leg to show he had a prosthesis going up above his knee. “They planted my real one in Iraq, 2004.”
Derek was relieved it wasn’t from an injury with his animals.
“When that uptight little Miss Bernstein—God I’d love to fuck her senseless, but she’s been pretty clear about that.”
Derek could only imagine how Gerson would be viewed in Miss Bernstein’s eyes. Especially the hair, coming out from his shirt collar, probably from his underarms, like moss on a tree in the bayou. Derek thought Gerson was trying to look like some combination of half Grizzley Adams, and the real life legendary frontiersman, Liver-Eating Phillips, who used to roam around the West nearly two hundred years ago.
“When she told me you’d been in the Navy and blew stuff up—”
“I didn’t say stuff.”
“Oh, I get you!” Gerson grinned, showing off a gold tooth with some kind of emblem on it front and center.
Derek leaned forward and noticed it was an anchor.
“I tried to make her say it, because I just knew that’s what you’d said. I love making her talk dirty, or trying to. She doesn’t like to humor me much.”
“Probably thinks she’s encouraging you if she does.”
“Hell, Derek, she has no idea how it encourages me the more she gives me the cold shoulder. Still, in a firefight or a war, terrorists come in here, to St. Helena, she knows I’d come save her little ass any day. I’ve told her as much a dozen times.”
Derek was having a hard time keeping a straight face. This was winding up being the weirdest interview he’d ever had. “I’ll bet that goes over really well, Gerson.”
Gerson chuckled. “You can call me Horace. Cammy calls me Horrible.”
“Cammy?”
“Camilla Bernstein.” He dropped his gaze, then focused his rheumy eyes on Derek. “I served on SEAL Team 5 in the first Gulf War. There aren’t many things I could do with my leg and all that would keep the blood pumping, if you know what I mean. Women are too hard to handle, too much work. But these beasts and the campground, where I get to be the real me and set up my own kingdom, this suits me just fine.”
“I get you.”
“But I have a hard time finding people who can shoot straight and don’t get intimidated with the recoil of a long gun. Sort of means I can’t leave here, especially when there are guests or workers here.”
“I can see your problem.”
“I also will need a cook.”
“Well, I’m enrolled in the Pastry Chef module.”
Gerson stood, pulled up his pants and then combed his bushy hair with his fingers. “You help me some ten hours a week here, and I’ll make sure you get to be the best Goddamned pastry chef in the western United States, Mr. Farley. And you’ll have some stories to tell your grandkids some day.”
He grinned, and Derek tried not to stare at the anchor.
“I’ve already got some stories, Horace. But most of them I never repeat.”
The two men looked at each other for a long couple of seconds.
“Well, son, I think we understand each other perfectly well.”
CHAPTER 8
REMY WAS READING in the colorful overstuffed chair by her window, basking in the late Sunday sunlight and feeling excited about the start of the new class tomorrow morning. The window was open, and a gentle breeze blew the white filmy curtains back and forth, which distracted her and lulled her mind into a daydream.
Miss Blake’s fiancé, Dax, told her earlier that Derek had made plans to leave in the morning. She wondered if she’d have a chance to say one more good-bye. Maybe a softer one than the two times she’d turned her back on him yesterday and the day before.
The flesh-toned visions floating about her head had the hair standing up at the back of her neck and had made her nipples taught. She scooted sideways, putting her feet on the window sill, extending them through the opening since it didn’t have a screen on it. The sun felt good on her soles and on her whole body as she basked in it’s glory. She leaned her head and neck against the bolstered arm of the chair. She felt like she was floating in a glowing cloud of magic. It was similar to how she’d felt those early days being a part of Derek’s life. When everything and anything was possible.
She’d wake up at night and just watch him sleep, feeling so incredibly grateful someone so wonderful had come into her life. His lovemaking was spectacular not because of what he did or because of his awesome power and stamina, but because he wanted her to get the most she could out of their lovemaking. He was totally focused on her pleasure. That’s where his came from. It was his mission. She’d never been with a man who was so devoted to making her feel wonderful all over.
Little dark stormclouds gathered at the edges of her eyes, and they began to water as her knowledge he would be leaving began to waft into her thoughts and gray out the sunshine. She willed them aside.
With her book turned upside down on her stomach, she stretched her arms up over her ears, wiggled her toes and took in several deep breaths, and then let them out.
Just let me bask here for a few minutes longer, she said to herself. She smiled at the reference to Rhett Butler Derek had given her the day before.
“Tomorrow’s another day,” she whispered to the open window with her eyes closed.
Something dropped in her lap a
nd she opened her eyes. She couldn’t see where it was, but she was concerned it was a bug or flying beetle of some kind. All of a sudden another small black object flew through the window.
She looked at the cleft between her legs and there sat a raisin. A flying raisin!
On her way to getting up another raisin flew in and hit her in the forehead. She scrambled to her knees to look down at the street, and there he was, with a bag of raisins in one hand and his arm poised over his head, about to toss another one through the window. His shirt had ridden up just enough so she could see the veins that appeared at the tops of his pants, which he always wore low. His arm was packed and corded with muscle. His lips were pursed and eyebrows furrowed like he was really concentrating. And then everything changed when he noticed she was looking down at him.
And he smiled. She was melting like ice cream on the hood of her Grandfather’s Mustang.
She leaned back and opened her mouth, giving him a target to hit. He lobbed several in the air in rapid succession until he got the goal.
Her heart beat so hard it seemed to shake the floor as she stared down at his huge frame. He took a tentative step toward the curb, then another into the street, still looking up at her. Then another, and suddenly he sprang into a run.
She could hear his footsteps on the stairs outside as he climbed, in seconds giving a delicate knock on her steel door. It was the call to let him in. Let him into her life again. It was her choice. Her mouth parched, her hands shaking, her stomach doing flip flops, her insides boiling and her chest in a full on sweat, she made her way over to the door, extended her hand and turned the knob.
He didn’t just rush in and grab her. Derek used to do that a lot. He smiled at her, tilting his head as he adjusted his weight, hips slung at an angle, one foot crossed over the other, leaning against her doorframe. Even after the door was open, he asked permission, like in her vampire books.
That familiar way he looked at her melted all her doubts. He watched every little detail about her, studying her, absorbing her spirit, her heart and everything she had, as she lit up in flames. The images and pictures of their beautiful past, of that perfect life so rudely interrupted by the brave service he gave his country, were the backdrop to the new door opening. It was a door with possibility, and hope for some kind of a future.
St. Helena Vineyard Series: Love Me Tender, Love You Hard (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Cookin' With SEALs Book 1) Page 6