Valley Fever (24 page)

“Have some artichokes,” he said. “Finish your wine.”

“I mean it, Uncle Felix. I'm not happy.”

“My girl's not happy?” he said. He gave my shoulder a pat. “I'll follow you out after lunch. Eat those artichokes. They came from Castroville this morning.”

*   *   *

“Uncle Felix, you can see the burn from here.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

I drained a grape into my little refractometer and showed him the sugar, at 26 percent far too high. “We could do a larger sample, but I don't see the point. These need to be picked right now, tonight.”

He pinched a grape between his thumb and forefinger for the feel, the color and texture. Then he took another from the vine and ate it. “Who's the field guy out here?”

“I haven't met him.”

“How long you been checking these vines?”

“Just a couple of days.”

“You don't know my field guy?”

“You don't have to be out here longer than a couple of days to see these grapes need to be picked.”

“Where's your dad?”

“Dad has a cough. He doesn't feel well.”

“Your dad doesn't stay in because he has a cough.” He ate another Fiesta off the vine.

“Listen. Uncle Felix. I love you, but I'm picking these grapes tonight. If you don't want them, don't take them, but then I'm not selling anything to you. None of it.”

“That's not how it works, Inky.”

“Don't make me show you I'm serious, Uncle Felix.”

“You don't have to show me anything. I'll call your dad and speak to him.”

“Daddy's sick.”

“Too sick to talk?” He looked truly surprised, truly concerned. “What kind of sick?”

“You can call him, but he's going to tell you the same thing. Pick now. I've discussed it with him. He agrees and he's put me in charge.” This was a lie. If I had told Dad I planned on picking the Fiestas and was threatening to pull out of the contract with Felix, he would have banned me from the business altogether. Dad didn't pull out of contracts, he didn't pick grapes without authorization from the buyer's field guys, he didn't make the kind of threat I was making. This was why Dad had a reputation for being such a swell guy; it was why he was in trouble now. I didn't know then exactly how much trouble.

Felix pulled the phone out of his shirt pocket. “Evelyn,” he said. “Let me have Ned. You know Inky's out here trying to call shots?”

I waited, grateful Mother had answered the phone. It dawned on me, in that hot moment at the end of the vines off Avenue 14, that Mother may have orchestrated all of this. She knew I couldn't bear to see those grapes burn on the vine. This is why she'd told me to go to George with questions. Dad would have told me to wait on these Fiestas, to wait, wait, wait for the field guy. Dad would do anything to avoid a conflict. There was no way Mother was going to put him on the phone. I waited.

Felix rang off. “Listen,” he said to me, “let me talk to my guy. I'll call you tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” I said. “I'm going to have Miguel call a crew. These grapes needed to come off the vine last week.”

He laughed the kind of affectionate laugh you give a mischievous child. “You couldn't sell these grapes anywhere right now.”

“I'll go to Mello, Felix. Do you think they'll take this juice if I promise them the cab?”

“Oh, Inky. All right. Don't get upset.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I was waiting for the sugar.”

I looked at him.

He said, “You're right, they're past where they need to be.”

“Why are you giving me bullshit about your field guy? Do you think I'm an idiot?”

He laughed his kind laugh again. “No one thinks you're an idiot.”

“Next we'll have to talk about the Thompsons. Don't make me do this every time.” I hugged him, his soft blue vest. His neck was wet and sour with boozy perspiration. He smelled so familiar; the comfortable, yeasty smell I had known since I was small. I hugged him with both arms, relieved there had been only the threat of a rift. “Don't make me get nasty. I love you.”

“No dove dinner for you tonight,” he said.

“Oh, I'm going to the dove dinner.”

“You going to supervise a harvest from the dove dinner?”

“Too hot to pick before midnight,” I said. “And they don't need me. I have to eat. I have to make sure those vultures at the club know they can't have Dad's land.”

He laughed again and nodded. “You're something,” he said, and opened the truck door. “What can I pay you to come work for me?”

“This is an act of love, Uncle Felix. Love!”

“I remember love,” he said. “It makes you do stupid, stupid things.” He got in the truck.

 

18.

On the first of every September, the Masterson brothers would shoot between thirty and sixty birds, and those birds would get served at their season-launching dove dinner. Lean years, a person could measure his social worth by whether he got an invitation to eat a dove.

“Lucky you,” said Anne. She stood at the stove, eating the crispy corners from a pan of lasagna Mother had baked earlier.

“Don't eat the best part,” I said.

She said, “But you get delicious yummy doves. Just think of it.”

The dove dinner had always been men only. Mother had a lot of complaints about Bint Masterson, from the yellow Ferrari he drove to the rumors that he'd hit Clara in the face to the fact that he'd spent only six months in jail for what was a much more substantial tax evasion, but his no-women policy for the dove dinner was at the top of her list. This year, Mr. Masterson had asked Dad to bring me along. I don't even eat dove.

Anne said, “And you get upset that I'm eating two bites of lasagna.”

“The crispy part.”

“It's the part I like best.”

“It's the part everyone likes best. Sometimes it's like you don't even listen to what you're saying.”

She turned away from me, back to the stove. “You should be nicer to me,” she said.

As we left the house I said to Dad, “Is this invite because you all think I'm moving back here to run the business? Are they trying to suss me out?”

“You don't know these guys,” he said. “You should meet them.”

“Are women invited now? Am I going to be the only one?”

“You don't count as one of the women, Inky.” He said it as if this were something I should be proud of.

“Do I count as one of the men?”

“Oh, Ingrid,” Dad said. “They just want a pretty girl around, and they can get away with inviting you.” No one but my father ever called me pretty. The curse of the plain girl is that you can get her to do just about anything by using the word
pretty
. This works even better if the plain girl has an older sister who is always called beautiful.

“I don't know that I want to be thought of as one of the men,” I said.

“You're not one of the men,” Dad said. There was, in Fresno, and maybe everywhere, a positive glamour in being the farm daughter, and even more in being the daughter who leaves. You don't even have to be pretty. Fresno is so full of irresistible ugliness.

“It's going to make the next couple of months easier on you if you get to know these guys.”

“Months?” I hadn't thought of my tenure here in terms of months. I had been thinking more like days, more like until the end of next week. Even when I thought that I might stay through the entire harvest, I had never thought of time in terms of months. “Months,” I said. “You make it sound like my whole life.”

Dad smiled, and I could see he felt just too sore to outright laugh. “I remember when months felt like my whole life, too,” he said. In the past week, he had been out of the house only for doctors' appointments, but tonight, for the annual dove feast, he put on his white linen shirt and his lace-up dinner shoes and his blue blazer with the gold buttons that Mother had bought thirty years ago, maybe in the eighties, from Hiller's in Sausalito.

“Anne's wedding was the last time I saw you dressed up,” I said, getting into the passenger seat of Mother's tiny black Jaguar.

“You're never here for the dove feast,” he said.

*   *   *

The club was closed for dinner on Mondays. A long table had been set up in the dining room along the wall of glass overlooking the river and the golf course and the droopy willow trees and the rich squares of peach orchards and vines and red barns in the distance. Mr. Boschetti, the almond grower, had brought a platter of his home-hewn gorgeous melty prosciutto, and I parked myself beside it with a glass of white wine that tasted like water. Half the men in the room must have been in financial trouble. More than half.

Everyone I know wants her white wine to taste like water. That is something I should have already mentioned.

That prosciutto pig had eaten nothing but Boschetti's tree-fresh almonds its whole life. The flesh was sweet and nutty. I ate more than was polite. I had the urge to drink more than was polite, too. All these farmers in their durable dress shirts gave me an unmoored feeling of homesickness. I had no place to be homesick for.

Mr. Boschetti, red with wine and conviviality, delighted by how much I loved his ham, pulled up a chair and sat down right next to me. He said, “I don't know anyone in the valley who's not real happy to see a daughter in the truck.”

“Thank you.”

“That's not a compliment. That's just a fact.” He folded a slip of prosciutto. “Have I told you about my son's girlfriend?”

“No,” I said, my mouth full. He had told me about his son's girlfriend twice before, of course.

“She cut the fat off!” He looked around, as if the gods should be as incredulous as he was. “She left the fat on the plate!” He shook his head as one shakes one's head when there is only sorrow. “And then she asked for more,” he said. He nodded the nod of knowing he was speaking to someone who understood his plight. “She asked for more to take home.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, holding a piece in each hand.

“I think she's the one, too,” he told me softly, with regret. “I'm going to be stuck with an idiot.”

That evening, contrary to my expectations, no one treated me like a novelty. I kept waiting for the standard snide remark about the big city, a comment about being a girl driving Dad's truck. That evening, everyone was generous with his welcome, everyone seemed glad to see me. This was, of course, a reflection of how glad they were to see Dad.

“Did you hear about Bill Lewis?” Mr. Masterson asked us.

“What happened to Lewis?” Dad said.

“He shot Emory, the florist.”

“I read about that in the paper,” I said, a ribbon of prosciutto tucked inside my cheek like chew.

“What do you mean, shot Emory?” Dad said.

“He got tanked up in the Grill, you know how he gets,” Mr. Masterson said. Mr. Masterson was like a high school bully all grown up and successful and still acting like a high school bully. “Remember when he leapt across the table and tried to strangle Matheus?” Before their divorce, the Mastersons lived across the street from us. One summer, maybe the only day Anne and I had ever seen the ice-cream truck on our remote farm road, its bells ringing the suburban neighborhood tune we never got to hear, we took twenty dollars from Mother's purse and sprinted out to Avenue 7 to catch the ice-cream man. We had waited for him for years. We got there and, of course, Mr. Masterson was there with his sons. “I'll buy the girls' ice cream, too,” he said to the vendor. Quite arrogantly, we thought. We hadn't stolen that twenty dollars for nothing.

“Oh, that's all right,” Anne had said casually, as beautifully as an eleven-year-old can say “That's all right.”

“I know it's
all right
,” Mr. Masterson said. He was angry, sarcastic. “Just be a lady and accept it.” He stood over us like a beast. We did, of course, accept the sno-cones, primarily out of fear. But by the time we got back to the house and felt safe enough to open them, they were already formed into hard balls of ice. Whenever I see Mr. Masterson, and sadly I see him every time I return to Fresno, I can think of little else but how nasty he was to Anne that day, buying us ice cream. How old does a man have to be before he doesn't compete with an eleven-year-old girl?

“I don't know,” said Dad to Mr. Masterson, trying to remember Lewis strangling one of the Matheus brothers (both of whom deserved to be strangled, in my opinion—I began to feel more and more sympathy for the late, beleaguered Bill Lewis). Dad never remembered gossip. It was one of his personal and professional failings.

“Did you see the cop car waiting outside the gate?” Mr. Masterson said. We had. “They'll be cracking down on us now. Better not drive home after three or four drinks.”

That night for dinner I was seated next to a land broker called Chris who had an orange tan and a rope belt. He had been drinking vodka, not the white wine that tasted like water. He was only slightly older than I was, but the years of sun damage had given him tight skin and deep crevices where a smile could have been. “Everyone loves your father,” he said.

“He's terrific.”

“What do you mean terrific?” he said. “You're supposed to hate your father.” His pants had little lobsters stitched into them, which was more than just slightly out of place in the Central Valley. He wore a coral polo and loafers with no socks and the whole look was embarrassing, with the farmers and doctors and insurance salesmen in their boots or lace-up dinner shoes and the short-sleeved linen shirts their wives had bought for them marked off triple at the discount clothing store in the Riverbend shopping center. This Chris obviously didn't realize: in the old Fresno crowd, the less you seemed to care about your wardrobe, the richer and more important people thought you were. He wasn't from around here.