As a Thief in the Night (24 page)

"So Ruiz got you alright then, young Ezra?" Ezra turned to see his grandfather taking his gloves off and hanging up his rung of keys. He was wearing a blue work t-shirt stained through with sweat.

"Hi, Grandpa." The words were still awkward to him. "Yeah, he got me okay."

"Good then. Are you hungry?"

"No, I'm okay. I ate on the boat."

"Had a burger and fries or something, did ya?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll show you where you'll be sleeping, and you can get changed."

"Changed?"

"For work."

"Oh, right."

Ezra was led upstairs, down the hallway, through a room with an old piano in it that looked like a den, and to a doorway beside a large desk. The bedroom was long and narrow with a roof that pitched downward, the lower end right over a single bed with a sunken mattress. The only other things in the room were a dresser and a couple of artificial plants on the window sill.

"Well, it's nothing fancy," his grandfather said.

"No, it's great."

"You have plenty of work clothes then?"

"I've got lots."

"Now you're family, Ezra, but I expect you to be working hard and earning your keep like everyone else around here."

"I know," Ezra said, uncomfortable that the old man was being so forward.

"These Mexicans I got working for me might not be the smartest people, but they're hard workers."

"Will I be working with Ruiz?"

"Ruiz thinks he's pretty tricky, but you're old grandpa is on to him. I don't know why I keep bringing him back. He's the only one with a license, though I don't know how he conned them into giving him one. But I need someone to run errands for me." Apparently, Ezra had been one of these errands. If it weren't for that, I would tell him to keep his lazy ass back in Chiapas, or wherever the hell he says he's from. Now," Harold went on, "go ahead and get changed, and I'll find some place you can be of use for the rest of the afternoon."

After he had put his work clothes on his grandfather walked into the vineyard with him.
  He showed him the cellars and the show room and introduced him to Edward, the winemaker, a short man with a bald head and square glasses who seemed to be very involved in whatever it was he was doing in his lab. Ezra walked out among the grapes behind the old man, between the rows of vines that went on and on, and finally ended at a wooded area off in the distance. Harold Mignon was still very healthy and blessed with a fortitude that many unconscious and insensitive people are. His gait was strong and purposeful. Ezra stared at his back as the smell of his grandfather's Brylcreem drifted back at him. Patterns of sweat showed through his t-shirt and Ezra looked them over and smiled at how tightly the shirt was tucked into the back of his pants.

On their way they came across three or four of the vineyard workers and Harold stopped and unceremoniously introduced him to them as his grandson. They smiled warmly and broadly at Ezra and shook his hand. During summer, he explained as they walked, he took on a smaller group of about twenty-five workers, to help with trimming, weeding, and spraying if it were necessary. At vintage, in October, many more would be there. In a few places the old man stopped, examined a vine that apparently troubled him, and pulled off a few shoots. "Do you see this, Ezra? If we let the canopy grow too much, it won't let the sun get at the grapes. It takes away nourishment."

Ezra nodded compliantly. "I used to help Elsie with trimming."

"So you already know something about making good wine," said Harold.

"A little, I suppose. Elsie, Sarah, and Olyvia used to talk about it a lot. The way things were when they were growing up here."

"Is that right?" Harold asked, still only mildly interested. "And what did they have to say?"

"Mostly, it was about all the stuff they'd learned," Ezra lied. "Sometimes they talked about the Mexicans and how everyone was friends and ate and danced together."

"Well, we had a lot of good times back then, I suppose."

"Do you still eat together?" Ezra asked. He was already pretty sure about the dancing.

"No, that was when your grandmother was still alive. She used to take care of all of that."

"Oh," Ezra said, thinking it best to drop the topic. He found it odd that his grandfather could talk about the past like that and never mention his mother. The thought brought a bit of anger that settled in his chest. After they reached the trees, Harold turned around and looked down the row of vines they had just walked along. "This all needs to be trimmed," he said, pointing down the endless corridor of plants.

Ezra's eyes opened wide behind him. "Okay," he said, but was doubtful that the row would ever be finished.

The old man handed him a pair of pruning shears and started to walk away.

Ezra did not begin right away and looked doubtfully at the work ahead of him. He was tired and did not feel like doing it. "Say," Harold said, turning, "are you wearing a watch?"

"No, why?"

"You can finish up around five. Yamilla will be making dinner down at the house."

"Oh."

Harold Mignon stood still for a minute, thinking to himself. Then he walked back toward Ezra. "Here, you can keep mine with you," he said, and undid the silver clasp at the back of his watch.

"It's okay, Grandpa. I can just come and check."

"No need for that," he said putting it in the boy's hand. "Just keep it in your pocket so it doesn't get dirty."

At five o'clock he was barely half done with the row. His back and knees hurt and his pants were dirty. There were hundreds of rows, and acres and acres of vines. "This is bullshit," he said to himself. It wasn't possible that this was done, manually, for the entire crop. In the distance he saw the heads of several of the migrant workers. They popped up for few seconds among the vines, performed tasks he could not quite make out, and then disappeared again into the sea of plants. He checked the watch for the tenth time that hour: exactly eleven seconds past five. Wiping his face clean on his t-shirt, he set off toward the house. He felt the eyes of the workers on him as he walked. It felt like a strange attention, but it was not unwelcome. The sun was low in the sky, and when he reached the end he looked back down the row on which he'd been working. The part of it he had completed looked cleaner, groomed, set apart by his labor.  Ezra looked at his work with a sense of satisfaction that he had not felt while doing it. "I did that," he said, surprised at the pleasure he derived from it. Then he walked into the house for dinner. Behind him, among the fine and twisted bodies of the fruitful vines, and the falling sun, the Mexicans continued their work.

He had imagined that everyone else was wrong. Of course he had heard his aunts talk of their father as unknowable, distant, and cruel. He had listened to hushed conversations about being smacked down flights of stairs, beat back into closets, and intimidated into prolonged silences.
 

But surely they must have lacked sensitivity to the situation, to the nuances and necessary points of pressure and happiness in the old man's personality, things that he, with open eyes, would not miss. Yet, Harold Mignon
was
cold to him; he
did
ignore and dismiss him. At dinner, with the exception of a few grunts that served as answers to the questions he was asked, and flat inquiries about school, he barely spoke to Ezra. His grandfather ate heartily and with a clear conscience, drank a single glass of wine and two glasses of water, and then unceremoniously excused himself from the table before Ezra was done eating.

After he was finished he walked into the dimly lit living room. His grandfather sat in one of the armchairs reading the
Globe
and
Mail
. A cup of steaming tea sat on the table beside him.  Ezra liked tea, but none had been offered to him. The old man eyed him over the top of the paper, adjusted it, and then continued reading. Ezra walked over to the pictures he had been studying earlier. He wanted to hear his grandfather say his mother's name. "How old are these, Grandpa?" he asked, looking at them closer. Harold continued reading for a moment. Ezra looked over his shoulder for an answer.

"Older than you," he said without looking up. Ezra looked back at the pictures then began to make his way around the room to the other artifacts. "You got all that work done, did you?" the old man asked in such a way as to make it plain that he did not appreciate the boy's hovering.

"About half the row."

The old man looked up over his paper again. "Well, that won't do, will it?" Ezra stared at him dumbly. "The Mexicans finish four or five rows a day." He did not know what he was supposed to say. The old man went back to the
Globe
. Ezra stood there uneasily for a moment.

"You remember where your room is, Ezra?"

"Yeah," Ezra said awkwardly, "I think I'm going to go to bed early."

"That's probably best."

He was unsure whether he should disturb him again by saying goodnight. He did not, and only looked longingly at the black TV screen as he quietly left the room. It was the only one in the house, and turning it on was out of the question.

It was too early to go to bed, but he settled into his room anyway. As he was undressing he heard the phone ring downstairs. It rang four, five, six times, but no one answered it. Again the shrill rattle repeated itself, as if a contest of wills had broken out between one that was determined to be heard and those who would not acknowledge the voice. Ezra was sure his grandfather was still sitting in his chair reading the paper. It might be Elsie calling to check up on him. Why didn't he answer?

The next two days were much the same.  He worked in the vineyard from early in the morning until five o'clock. The only difference was that he brought his Walkman with him so he would not be so lonely. He put it in his pocket when he left the house, so his grandfather would not see it. Out in the fields he listened to his tapes. He listened to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. This made the day go by faster and seemed to help him keep his anxieties at bay. Part way through the second day his batteries died so, at lunch, before the old man came in, Ezra stole the ones from the television remote control.

On the third night he lay, feeling foreign and isolated, on his bed. He stared at the slanted roof above his head. It had been very hot during the day and he was on top of his blankets in just his underwear. In some ways, he felt like being away from home gave him less control over things. Restless, he got up to open the window. The latch was stuck, but he used his pocketknife and managed to pry it open. He pushed the window up and the fresh air felt good on his bare skin. Sticking his head out he looked around and saw a fire burning through one of the windows of the worker's quarters. He paused and listened closely to the barely audible sound of a guitar. Two men stood outside of the open front door, talking. The tips of their cigarettes darted back and forth as they moved their hands. He looked over at the dark outline of the tree, the one from the old photograph of his aunts and mother on their swings. Tomorrow night, he decided, he would go to listen to Ruiz play his Spanish guitar.

"Tonight you will come and be part of our company," Ruiz said when Ezra spoke to him the next day in the vineyard.

"The others won't mind?" Ezra asked.

Ruiz smacked Ezra with the back of his hand. "They are all very curious about you."

"About me? Why?"

"Many of us have worked for Mr. Mignon for a long, long time. But I am the only one who had ever met anyone from his family, and I have only met his daughter Sarah. We all think he must be very sad."

"Oh."

"So they all wonder about you, my friend. Perhaps tomorrow you will even be able to take a woman, eh?"

Ezra smiled back at Ruiz.

"But not Maria. She is a diseased whore."

"I don't think I even know who she is."

"That is best," Ruiz said thoughtfully. "Ezra, tell me now, do you know what all great guitarists know about guitars?"

"No, what?"

"That they are really women. A guitar, but especially a Spanish guitar, is really a woman, and a man must learn to play it as he must learn to hold and touch a woman."

"Is that so?"

"Indeed, it is."

"So which does he learn to play first?"

"If he is to be a good guitarist, he must learn to play the instrument first."

Ezra nodded. "What time should I head over?"

"It doesn't matter. We stay up very late."

The walls of the living quarters were very thin. As Ezra approached, just after dark, the walls glowed with the light of the lanterns and the fire inside. Music and loud voices pressed outward into the silent vineyard. He looked back at the house through the few large trees in the yard. A few lights were still on but they were not welcoming. His grandfather must still be reading the newspaper. Not sure if he should knock or not, he paused for a moment outside the door.

The knives flew end over end, and then stuck firmly into the dartboard, their handles still shaking on contact, and the two young men who had thrown them rushed to see who had come closest to the center. One measured the distance with his index finger. It was close, and a playful shoving match began, until, seeing that Ezra had come inside, they stopped and quickly pulled the blades out. The sound of warm music and the smell of fire and drink filled the large, open space. Several sets of bunk beds, some with colorful blankets, and some with what must have been the standard set, lined three of the four walls. At the foot of each was a trunk where the workers could keep their possessions. A simple fireplace and chimney stood against the far wall and the entire center of the room was filled with scattered fold out chairs and long, collapsible tables. Ezra saw Ruiz sitting in the corner with a red guitar in his lap, beside a younger man with a guitar that looked slightly different. Another one sat beside them, tapping on a pair of drums with open hands, and laughing. The people around them listened without looking and sat in small groups drinking and smoking. On one side of the room a group of men had cleared some space and they were passing a soccer ball back and forth and trying to keep it in the air. There was only one child, a boy of maybe eleven, who had found a big exercise ball somewhere and was performing a feat of balance that Ezra could hardly believe was not the center of everyone's attention. The boy was standing on the ball with both feet, teetering back and forth a bit, with his hands up in the air. A big muscular man sat, thoughtful and disinterested, on a stool just across from him. No one else seemed to notice.