Valley Fever (18 page)

Gale said, “How do you know so much, city girl?” Gale had that trace of a southern accent some have in the Central Valley, even when their families have been here four generations.

“I'm not all city,” I said, patting Dad's hand. Dad had that subtle grin on his face I know is actually a huge, wide smile. He squeezed the tips of my fingers.

Then Nick said, “Griffith take that farm manager off your hands, Ned?”

The waitress set a plate of poached salmon in front of Dad. “Take what?” he said.

“Your farm manager. Felix says that guy was destroying you.”

“Felix says that?” Dad picked up his fork but didn't eat.

“Says he brought him over to the winery so he couldn't do you any more damage.”

“You believe everything Felix tells you?” Dad said.

Harry said, “You believe anything that guy tells you?”

Nick said, “I'm just repeating what I heard.”

“Felix has a lot to say,” Dad said. “Not all of it is worth repeating.”

Every memory has a flavor, and that moment tastes like cold poached Alaskan salmon. That memory smells like cigars and grease.

“Can I eat your salmon?” I said.

Dad pushed the plate toward me. “Looks like Wabnig's filled out this year,” he said toward Gale, toward Jim.

Nick continued, “Any way you like, it didn't take long for that guy to get a position with Griffith.”

“Strong receivers, a strong running back,” said Gale. “We might do something this year.”

*   *   *

“You're right about the raisins,” Dad said later, in the car on the way back home. “But we won't work that way. We stick to our contracts.”

We had gone back to the office to get Phillip's records, which Dad now wanted to see. “I know, Daddy. I understand you. I was just talking.”

“Integrity does count, especially on the land. You can't have integrity on the land if you haven't got it in your life.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“We'll rent those machines this year.”

“Sure you will.”

“Will you help me out with that?”

“I can help you.”

He had his hands centered on the steering wheel. His mobile rang in the console, and he let it ring. “Do you think Felix really hired Phillip?” he said.

The question made me queasy. Dad never asked me questions about business, about instinct. He had been ignoring my opinions about Phillip for years. “I don't think it matters.”

“He knows he's not doing me a favor,” Dad said.

“He did know,” I said, stumbling over whether I believed this myself, “he did know Phillip was stealing from you. Everyone knew that.”

He nodded a half nod, a nod that says maybe. “I'm tired,” he said. We turned left off Avenue 7, up the gravel road that led to the house. We drove over the canal and through the always-open iron gates. The red stone of the house looked an electrified orange in the evening light, just as the architect had planned thirty years ago. Light doesn't change as a landscape can, as landscapes do.

As we approached the carport, we could see Mother in the kitchen, washing lettuce. Dad coughed and spat into the handkerchief he kept in his pocket. “All right.” He wiped his mouth. “There's a lot more dust, but this weather is good for the grapes.” His face was sweating.

Mother came to the door. “Hello, little family.” She had an honest smile, a real smile, the kind of smile we didn't see from Mother too often. She stepped toward the car and kissed Dad. “Hello, love.” She put her hand on his face. “Are you warm?”

“I'm happy,” he said. He held her, right there in the dust of the carport. The screen door swayed open.

“I've washed lettuce and sliced apples,” she said, her face tucked into his shoulder. “And we have the first of Walter's almonds. Won't that make a nice salad? Would you like a salad, Neddy?”

His cough started before he spoke. He unwound himself from her wiry body, kissed the pointy shoulders beneath her white sundress, and stepped up into the house. He coughed into the sink.

“It's the pollen,” Mother said. “Come inside.” She put her arm on my waist as I came around the car. “It makes me so happy to see you here, in this truck with your father.”

“I'm glad, Mom.”

She lowered her voice. “It makes him happy, too, Inky. Has he told you that?”

“Sure.”

“It's good to see him happy, isn't it?”

I said to her then, on the step, before we went inside, “It was Uncle Felix who hired Phillip away from Dad.”

She looked at me as if I had insulted her. “Why would you say that?”

“We were at the Vineyard and Nick Angelico couldn't wait to tell us,” I said. “He was just seething with gossip. He's a stereotypical small-town troublemaker.”

“Is it true?”

The air across the vineyards was hazy with dust. Nothing moved. “I can imagine it being true. Why not?”

She went completely still. “What is he doing?” she said. “Why is he doing this?”

“Who, Felix?”

“Felix knows Daddy needs Phillip after the harvest. He knows he needs Phillip to rent out the trucks.” Mother whispered now.

“The rentals aren't complicated. I can do that.”

“He's coming over in a bit. Isn't he? Felix?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Dad's tired.”

“Neddy?” Mother called into the kitchen. Dad had walked right through and gone to his room. “Neddy?” The dust floated around us, unsettled. The dust coated Mother's hotel slippers brown-orange. “Come in,” she said, holding the door wide for me. “It's too hot.” She latched the screen so it would stay put.

Dad lay on his bed, watching the ceiling, the back of his hand on his forehead. “Could you close the windows and turn on the air?” he said.

“One night of air-conditioning is a good idea,” Mother said.

“The pollen's heavy,” Dad said.

“Should we tell Uncle Felix not to come?”

“I just need a rest before dinner,” Dad said.

Mother said, “Call him, Inky, will you?”

“No,” said Dad. “I want to see Felix.”

*   *   *

Felix came at seven, the hour he usually did, and rang the kitchen bell. “You've got the house all closed up,” he said when I answered the door. “I thought we were conserving energy around here. Open those windows and turn off the air.”

“Nothing moves this time of year,” I said. “The air won't move through the windows.”

“Feels nice with the air on, though, doesn't it?” He handed me a bottle of wine, holding it by the neck. “This one's not cheap,” he said.

“Shall I open it now?”

“Ask your dad. What's he got planned to drink?”

“Daddy doesn't feel well.”

“I'm all right,” Dad said, coming through the dining room, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I'm just tired of being hot at night.” He had changed his wet work shirt and put on clean boots.

Felix said, “Neddy, you owe me money.”

“How's that?” Dad said.

“The change machine at the car wash ate my five dollars.”

Dad owned a coin-operated car wash between Fresno and Madera. It had been his father's idea of diversifying. He took five dollars out of his pocket and handed it to Felix. “They keep telling me they've fixed that.”

Felix fit the bill into his money clip carefully between the tens and the ones. “You want to open that?” Felix said.

“Do you want me to?” I asked him.

“What kind of question is that?”

“What kind of question is open that?” I said. “It's a demand, not a question.”

He gave me a long, mean look, a surprised look. “What kind of conversation is this?”

I said, “It's just a bottle of wine, Felix. It doesn't even matter if we drink it or not.”

He nodded his head at me, slowly. “Yes, I'd like you to open it,” he said. “If you would like to open it.”

I took tumblers out of the cabinet. There was now just the sound of cabinet doors and the squeaky twist of the wine key into the cork. I poured the wine and brought the filled glasses to the table. “Water?” I said. No one answered, so I put a bottle of water on the table. We rarely used separate glasses for water. When we wanted water, we'd finish the wine and use the same glass.

“Neddy,” Felix said, “I guess you know now Phillip came to work for me.”

“I guess I do,” Dad said.

“He came to me looking. He was going to go somewhere, and this way I could get him away from your operation sooner than later.”

“It would have been nice to have him at my operation through the harvest,” Dad said.

“Who knows all the ways that kid is stealing from you?”

“He's not done with the finances from the peach season.”

“Ned, I'm going to say something to you.” Felix folded his hands on the table and leaned forward, looking Dad hard in the eye. “I'm going to be frank now. You can't afford to have anyone stealing from you this year. I know that, and you know that.” Now he was pointing. He folded his hands again, to keep them from seeming aggressive. “I did what you weren't doing, what you needed to do.”

“Don't tell me what I need to do, Felix.”

Mother had pinned her hair into a twist and worn a bit of makeup: dark shadow in the creases of her eyelids, fresh false eyelashes, a swipe of blue-red on her lips. She wore that pretty white sundress and flitted into the kitchen, looking like an angel. “Felix,” she said, “I have the first almonds of the season. Would you like a bit of salad? We're having salad. It's too hot for anything but salad.” She kissed Dad on his crown, put her hand on his neck.

“Sure, yes,” Felix said.

“I'm so glad!” Mother said. “You hardly ever eat with us, Felix.”

I finished my wine and poured water.

“It's business,” Dad said, softening. “I know. It's just business.”

“And friendship, too,” Felix said. “I know this is rough. It's a rough year for everyone, and looks like it's getting rougher.”

“Right,” Dad said.

Felix said, “You can't have a thief like that in charge of anything in a rough year, Ned. He's been pocketing half of whatever you think you've made from those trucks and pickers. What has he told you you've made?”

“I don't know,” Dad said.

“What's the general idea?”

“I don't have a general idea. It's the beginning of the harvest.”

Felix looked at me, at Mom, to see if Dad was joking. “You trust Phillip to keep all those numbers straight, not to skim? Just tell you what you've made?”

“It's fine, Felix,” said Dad. “Everything is fine.”

“I did you a bigger favor than I thought,” Felix said, drinking half the tumbler of wine in one swig. He left sweaty fat fingerprints all over the glass.

“We allow you every license, Felix.” Mother's hand rested on Felix's thick shoulder, thin and delicate as a sparrow. It was evening and still 110 degrees outside. Inside the air was on and the house was as cool as that house could get. He looked up at her, as if waiting for something else. There was nothing else.

It was always coolest in the kitchen, because of the trellis outside the window and because of the cold, hard Portuguese ceramic tile.

 

14.

Bootsie bit into an apricot. It was so perfectly ripe, she had to slurp. A dollop of pink nectar slopped down her chin. “Such a mess,” she said, leaning over the bar sink, running water, wiping off her face. “Eat one,” she said. A bowl of them had been set out on the bar.

“I've been eating them hot off the tree,” I said.

In the kitchen, a very short sous chef sliced apricots carefully in half and layered them into ramekins. He worked with his face close to what he was doing. He wore a red bandana, and I worried slightly if this might be a bad idea for a cook with an open kitchen in a small town nationally famous for its gang activity.

There were peppers roasting and a tray of garlic baking. It was early, 5:00 p.m., before Bootsie had unlocked the front door and two hours before the first reservation. She slurped the second half of the apricot and threw the pit in the sink. Bootsie said, “I don't know how the apricots survived whatever killed all the peaches.”

“Good news for the almonds, though,” I said.

“Thank God. The almond guys are thanking God.”

“And olives, too, I guess.”

This is the restaurant-bar chitchat of central California.

I'd come right from Dad's office, where I'd spent the day with Phillip's papers, trying to work out what money we'd made from the machines, if we'd made any money at all, and sorting chemical and fertilizer records from the business with the rentals. Phillip's papers were so exhausting, it was impossible to look at them for longer than eight hours. I took an apricot so ripe it had to be held very gently.

“I guess,” she said. She rinsed her hands and wiped her mouth with a new bar towel. “Olive is a nice name for a girl.”

“My back is strong,” I sang. “My name is Peeaaches!” In New York, Bootsie and I had listened almost exclusively to Nina Simone's greatest hits, over and over on repeat for months.

“If I have a little girl, I'm going to call her Peaches. For you,” she said.

“If I have a little girl, I'm going to call her Bootsie Calhoun,” I said.

“Funny.” She filled a wineglass with club soda and poured several dashes of bitters on top. “You want a drink?”

I watched her punch the bitters down into the soda with a straw, and the whole drink dissolved into brown-red. “Oh my,” I said, realizing.

She looked at me, sipping from the cocktail straw, and then she took the straw out to chew it. “I know,” she said, chewing the straw with her front teeth, shaking her head. “I know. You're the first, but everyone's going to figure it out if I stop drinking completely.”