Beaujolais

The Sequel To Pretty Little Love Song

For Lauren, Ashly and Linda


Beaujolais

by p.l.carrico


"During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days."
Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C.Fields) in My Little Chickadee (1940)


It was 3 am at the Seattle bus depot. The occasionaly opening of the depot doors let in a humid Puguet Sound autum wind.
There was an atractive blond, maybe thirty five, waiting and rocking back and forth to an internal rythm. Sam took a second look at her as he passed her. She was still atractive, but in a weather worn way. Her hair was wild and confussed. Her clothes were old. She gripped a suitcase with a ring covered hand. Most of the rings were blackened worn silver. The suitcase she held with two hands crossed infront of her. It made her hands white with the exertion. Her nervousness seemed to come from prepetual motion, not meth or a guilty concious.
As Sam waited to get the attention of the clerk at the ticket counter, he wrote what he needed on a scratch pad. Medford Oregon was his destination. It was a 600 mile trip. An older woman read his note, then took fifty of his last one hundred dollars. Sam grimaced a thankyou smile. The depot was empty, dirty and poorly lit. Sam sat. The prospect of another bus ride, then weeks of homelessness tired him. This time the town would be familiar though, he had lived some ten years in Medford before his sudden move to Toppenish Washington some eighteen months earlier.
“Hello, Sam,” the woman said with a nervous, but playful air.
A jolt of confusion shook Sam. He squinted up at the woman’s face trying to recognize her. She had pale, colorless eyes, very disticnt, but very foreign. He would have recognized her face had he known her. Anyway, Sam didn’t know anyone in Seattle. Sam breifly worried he was confused about where he was, as he had been in the past while in the middle of a good bender.
“Your name tag...” she began to explain.
Sam blushed and looked down. He took it off. It was from the AA meeting that caused him to panic and decide to get out of town. Sam’s voice box had been blown away by a shot gun a few months back. He suffered extensive wounds to his neck, throat and jaw. He was airlifted from Toppenish Washington to a Seattle hospital and saved. Due to blood loss, he spent close to a month in a coma. Fortified by tube feeding and a no alcohol diet, he recouperated wordlessly in a hospital room he shared with a rotating cast of characters who either told him their life stories, or he witnessed the strangers tragic ugly familes akward visits. It was barely more entertaining than the five TV stations his tiny bedside TV got.
One of the ridiculous things he learned about hospital care is each doctor tells his patcient they have a low chance of survival. The first few times Sam heard a doctor tel lsomeone this, Sam became sucked into the drama of their survival. Once Sam realized doctors are largely assholes like cops, and they have political and professional motivations for their condemnations, Sam became apathetic to it all, the lives and deaths of patcients in his room. Most were Vietnam era vets, dying as the result of habits that had sustained them through life. Sam imagioned visitng patcients with a mobile bar and cigarrete cart. The joy he’d bring would easily out weight the morphine drip.
Sam flapped his hands, trying to indicate he couldn’t speak. This seemed to scare off the woman, she turned and sat a comfortable distance away from Sam.
It was the AA that finaly made him crack. AA was required for the halfway house he had been staying at after being released form the hospital. It was a form of torture. Sam rode his inability to speak for as long as he could, but the damn college graduate kid leading the group bought a large pad of paper for Sam to write on during th egroup when it was his turn to relate the twelve steps to his life. With shakey hands, Sam misspelled the circumstances of his life infront an apathetic audience. It was worse than humiliating. The scrawlings then sat on the easel and mocked Sam for the rest of the group. The last group he had tried to explain the circumstances surounding his shooting, but he couldn’t find the right words, turning the group into a sick version of Pictionary. Having his former lover’s name shouted by strangers nearly made him cry, and crying was a new hideous messy chore involving bloting fluid leeking from his tracheotomy. Sam had quietly excused himself from the meeting, walked from dingy store front near the airport to downtown. It has taken five hours.
One thing the psycitrist had said at the hospital had made sence, “Think about the future when you are low.” Seeing no future in Seattle, Sam decided to return to Oregon. he’d try to escape the meth and gohsts of what he truely beleived had been his one chance at love.
Sam looked at the crumpled name tag in his hand. It read, “Hello, my name is Sam.”

“I’m going to sit next to you,” the woman said, putting her bag above the seat. “I’ve taken this trip a few times and I have found you are best off finding a person that doesn’t smell bad and sit next to them, no matter how empty the buss is. The buss could fill at any stop with some nasty people, I hope you don’t mind,” she said.
Sam shruged. He adjusted his collar to conceal the hole in his neck.
“Don’t worry, I won’t talk your ear off.” She smelled flowery. It was late summer and Seattle smelled musty. She smelled like life. Sam realized Medford would be warm and the the smells of the orchard harvests would ride in from the country side with the breezes. He looked forward to his return. Pumping gas at an all night gas station seemed like a death sentance reprieve. He hoped he could find such a job despite his disability.
“Where did you get your name,” the woman said, producing a blank book of hers and a pen.
Sam wrote, ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’
The woman threw her head back and laughed. “My name is Naidiene,” she said. She then sunk down into her seat and closed her eyes. A few people scurried onto the bus before it pulled out of the depot and snaked through the vacant city and found the freeway South.
Sam drifted in and out of conciousness. Nadiene’s shoulder had come to rest on Sam’s. The sun began to light the horizon along the freeway as it hugged Puguet Sound. The bus halted at small town buss stops and gradualy filled. In Spokane the bus nearly filled with Mexican men, many of them wearing big straw hats. Solemly they filled the seats.
It was dawn when they reached Portland Oregon. The city was waking it’s self up. Sam noticed Nadiene’s ticket sticking out of her book. Itread, ‘Carson, California,’ so Sam decided to let her sleep through the hour long lay over. He tried to doze while suporting her increasing slumping weight on his shoulder.
When the bus pulled out of Portland, it was packed, hot and loud. Nadiene didn’t stir. Her mouth was wide open. The lumps under her eye lids shot back and forth. She seemed to be in an impossibly deep sleep.
The buss found the freeway again and make it’s way South out of town. Traffic in th eoposite direction was stopped, restles people sipped coffee cups and chatted on cell phones in the cars around them. Off to work in Portland.
An hour later they were in Salem. Sam had to pee. After the buss stopped, he carefuly proped Nadiene back on her seat and stepped over her. The buss bathroom was as pretty as any public bathroom could be. In the polished steel mirror, Sam aranged his colar over his scared neck, took several moist towelettes, then returned to his seat.
Nadiene stirred as Sam stepped over her. She produced an avocado from her purse and without speaking cut it open, removed the pit and offered Sam half. Her cold eyes were unfocused. Sam thought that if life were an endless buss ride, as it often seemed like it was, he’d prosper. After they had consumed the messey green meat, Sam offered her a towlette.
“Wow, I’ve never met a man who travels with moist towelettes,” she said, cleaning her hands, then thoughtfully polishing the blackened silver of her rings. Sam couldn’t explain he had just got them. Nadiene reached into her purse and produced a bottle of pills. She found the right ones, and offered one to Sam. “Xanax, want one?”
Sam took his. Knowing the pill was in his system calmed him before the pill had a chance to. They both slumped into their seats and soon were asleep.
Sam dreamed of Ellie. She was packing her bags. Sam was nude in the bed of her fifth wheel trailer. He wanted to ask her where she was going, but couldn’t speak. She looked long and hard at him, her small hands on her tiny hips. She looked away for a moment, then took her bag and left. It was horrible. Sam opened his eyes wide and tried to remember where he was. The buss had traveled far while he slept and he remembered all over Ellie was dead and nearly a year and a thousand miles sepperated them. The high sun ment nearly another day was over. He remembered the AA refrain, ‘One day at a time,” and wanted to fight.
“Bitch, there aint no power higher than me when I’m using,” a black man had said at one of the meetings. The irony was lost on everyone.

Sam carefully stepped over Nadiene as the buss pulled into the Medford depot. Feeling rested and calm, he looked up and down the street. It was a warm dry late summers day. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk. It seemed initialy the town had changed much in his absense, but really he had only known the town before in relation to his routines. The bars, the gas stations and what they once meant to him now seemed distant and ridiculous. He felt ridiculous. Ridiculous people expirienced Medford on foot. Sam stopped at a fast food resturaunt to escape what felt like the watching eyes of the street.
He wrote, ‘small coffee,’ on his little notepad. The young man at the counter was hesitant to take or look at the paper. They stared at eachother in a kind of stalemate for a while. Finaly, Sam mouthed the order.
“Oh, I thought you were robbing me,” the kid said with a stonner giggle.
Sam took his coffee to a table with a newspaper. he scanned the help wanted adds. It seemed all the available jobs were looking for someone with, ‘good communication and customer service skills.’ Sam briefly considered applying as a tellemarketer, then shooting himself th efirst day on the job as a kind of cosmic joke. He smiled at this thought. he regretted tearing his name tag off, as it was a sign of his disability. Disability was a word beginning to reoocur in his mind. Thoughfully, he folded the paper to the front page.
There was a ful lcolor picture of a young girl in soft focus, the type of photo taken at a highschool prom. Irene Porter has been missing for three days from her Medford area home. Her family was the owners of the upscale winery, the Porter Estates. Police has acsessed her on-line social network pages and found what they described as, ‘suspicious and disturbing activity.’ Recolecting his own youth, Sam remebered little that he had done which an outsider wouldn’t consider to be, ‘suspicious and disturbing.’ Kasey Porter, Irene’s mother was aparently in hysterics over the whole thing as her photo showed her displaying a bottle of wine like a prize 4H pig with a concerned look on her face. Irene’s high school friends had been holding candle light vigils at the winery every night since her disaperance. It all looked fantasticly un-real. Sam read every word and forgot he was nearly broke and homeless for a while.
Sam returned to the help wanted adds and made mental note where the gas stations hiring were located. Before he lost his courage and resolve, he washed up in the bathroom, then strode confidently out into the day.
Handing the completed aplication to the manager at the first gas station, Sam realized he had no way of comunicating that he had no phone number and if the man were to hire him, it would have to be right there, right then. The man took the application and returned to work. Sam stood, flustered for a while, then walked away.
his second try, he attached a note to the top of th eapplication briefly sumerizing his condition. The woman who took the aplication read the note, nodded solemly and walked away. Sam decided he’d return the next day to follow up. Next he applied at the fast food resturaunt he had been at earlier. As the applications were available on the counter, this was an easy process. The boy behind the counter wordlessly took the application. Sam lingered, hoping to speak to a manager. The boy made no such move, and eventualy Sam gave up and walked away. never mor ein his life had he wanted to say, ‘well fuck you.’
As the sun set, Sam found himself at the doorway of his old apartment building. In his old window with a view onto the adjastent freeway viaduct, was a flower box overflowing with tomato plants. He envied the occupants ingenuity and optomism. Sam walked further beneith the freeway to the big box retail stores. At the dollar store he bout some razors and a can of soup. he then found a recycling bin behind a closed resturaunt and lay flat on his back. Through the waning haze, the stars slowly apeared. With a hollow heart, Sam silently watched them until sleep overtook him.

Sam awoke with the dew. It was a cold morning and the carboard he had pulled overhimself in the night was damp. The sun was just begining to show on the horizon. The fast food resturaunt was busy as the Mexicans and agricultural workers ate before going to harvest. Sam bought a dollae breakfast sandwhich and watched an old man like a vulture as he read the newspaper. Finaly th eold man finished the paper, and Sam snatched it up from the table where it was left.
There were no new jobs. There also wasn’t any developments in the Irene Porter case. The paper was turning it into a photo-layout himan interest story. There was many more pictures of pretty young people crying. Sam had left his hometown half way through his Junior year of high school without notice. he doubted there were any vigils for him. Maybe a burning in efigy.
On page two was a side bar story about internet predators. Sam had heard of those who ordered meat off online catalouges. It seemed llike they constituted as internet predators. The clock on the wall read eight twenty in the morning. All in all, it was shapping up to be a perfect day to drink away.
And with that, Sam stood and went to the liquor store. There was police tape on Amy’s, the strip club, when he walked by. It seemed like most of the downtown was for lease. Sam vuagely remembered the news talking about a resession as he lay in the hospital. It was good to be walking somewhere, to have a purpose.
There was another man, dishevled, weak looking, waiting for the liquor store to open when he got there. He gave Sam a nod. He passed the time smoking as Sam tried not to watch the man for clues. Was he an alcoholic? Did he have a job?
A young pierced girl finaly opened the front door. There was loud angry music playing inside. Sam stared at the whiskeys while the other man stared at the gin. They both reached the line at tnearly he same time, the stranger went first. By the time Sam had made it outside and turned a corner, he noticed the man hoisting his bottle of generic gin with two hands like a babys bottle and pouring it down his throat. The man dry heaved, then walked on.
Sam’s first drink in six months was delicious. It cut through the uncertanty, fear and remorse, made the mornign brighter and warmed his still chilly dew soaked gut. The cheap burbon taste eased the lingering neasia from his cheap breakfast and relaxed his back. He leaned back against a broken concrete pillar that had been pushed along the Bear Creek stream bed. The water bubbled, payed a minute homage to the roar of the freeway passing over head. Sam conceived poetic thoughts and eulogies for the people he had met of the past few years, threw stones and generaly had a pleasnt morning with his thoughts.
These three things he wrote down:

Quit drinking
Fuck it
Fuck it

The second ‘fuck it’ reffered to the first, ‘fuck it,’ in that what was being fucked was the desire desire to, ‘fuck it.’ The first, ‘fuck it,’ was a kind of suicide note, the second was an expression of joy. ‘Quit drinking,’ was a joke between the creek and himself. He was going to write down, ‘become a writer,’ but the idea made him weeze and cough out a laugh. Of course he’d become a writer, what choice had he?
Sam bathed with one of his moist towelettes and staggered up to the roadway, bottle concealed in his belt. With liquid courage, he fumbled through inquiring about the applications he had left the previous day. By writing akward notes, he discovered at both gas stations their hiring manager had just left. The fast food resturaunt wasn’t hiring right then. Of course not. Sam returned to his creek side and sipped at his bottle, more melon chily this time.

Sam had drank nearly the entire fifth over the course of th eprevious day. He sat shivering in his recycling bin doing the math. At a food budget of three dollars a day, he could go on like this for maybe ten more days if he bought a gallon of whiskey. His prior expirience with benders told him his liquor consumption would go down as a good store of alcohol accumulated in his blood. The sun wassn’t yet up. He had been in this perdicament before and the feeling sof dread were familiar. The mind cumpulsively considered the notion of suicide. Rubbing his eyes and rocking back and forth, Sam considered his options, which took very little time. He could sit in his recycling bin and think about suicide, or get moving.
The trucks and cars still had their headlights on along River Drive. Sam squinted into their lights as they passed. He tucked his arms into the body of his shirt to keep warm, his bottle was snug beneith his belt, between his butt cheeks. The low liquid level sloshed as he walked.

A diesel pick-up truck stopped next to him as he walked. Sam kept his head low, but the passenger side window rolled down.
“Marco,” a man’s voice demanded.
Sam wished he could say, ‘Pollo!’
“Get in, Marco. Get in damn it. Don’t be a fag. No estar un... just get in the fucking truck.”
Sam got in. Why not? His bottle dug into his back. The truck was under way before the man driving it realized Sam was not Marco.
“What the... I’m sorry, I though you were Marco,” he said. He began to pull over and Sam opened his door. The truck didn’t quite stop rolling. “Hey, do you need work?”
Sam turned and nodded wildly.
“Well ok then. Are you legal. Umm... tengo una Social Security Card?’ he asked in broken white guy Spanish.
Sam decided to play along with the farce, and nodded, then produced his wallet and showed the man his social security card.
“Can you pick grapes?” the man asked.
Sam nodded.
The man eccelerated back into traffic.

Sam stalled by retying his shoes and adjsusting his collar while watching the othe rmen pick the grapes. It seemed simple enough, cut the big clusters, drop them into a bucket, when the bucket filled, empty it into a bin at the end of the row. There were two men to a row, and the other man in his row eficiently lept out into a big leed on Sam, but soon Sam found his own pace.
Some hours passed and as they finished rows, they were assigned new ones. The sun rose and hunger began to rock Sam’s body. Though he wasn’t sure what he was eating at first, he found the grapes to taste like normal table grapes. Emboldened, he ate as many as he could when no one was watching. They restored him. It was a good feeling to work outdoors but he was weak. Months in bed after month of drinking had taken it’s toll on his body. He saw shooting stars when he knelt to pick up his bucket. It must have been noon when they finaly ran out of rows of grapes to harvest. The men, mostly Mexican, dispersed to their trucks and drove away. The man who had initialy found Sam put a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“You don’t talk much. Can you work tomorrow?”
Sam nodded afirmatively.
“You can see the vineyard we are harvesting tomorrow from here,” he said. He had a gray mustache and sunglasses Sam could see his reflection in. “Pay day is every Friday. 5am ok?” The man shook Sam’s hand to supervize the loading of the bins onto a trailer.
Sam walked in the direction of town along the rows. His knees seemed to want to give out. Once he reached a road, he knew he had to lay down. There was a tractor facing the road with a ‘For Sale,’ sign in it’s window. The tires of the machine were flat so it seemed like a safe place to lie next to. Sam crawled halfway beneith it and fell asleep.

It was dusk when Sam woke. He was hungry. leaving his nearly empty bottle of whiskey behind, he began to walk towards town again. The road met the highway, cars passed rapidly next to him as the highway had no real shoulder. Soon he came to a thrift store closed for the night. Someone had dumped a donation at the front steps of the place. Sam rifled through the pile of things and found a coat, blanket, shirt, pants and a pair of gloves. It seemed like a fortune. With his booty wrapped in the blanket, he walked on until he found a gas station. He found some canned soup, and a cheap pink digital watch. Watching girl carefuly as she rang up his purchases, Sam felt at home near her. She seemed sad beyond her years. maybe se was eighteen. It made Sam feel happier, somehow. As she scanned the items, she said, “building a bomb, I see. the old soup bomb.” Sam nodded.
Now Sam had exactly thirty eight dollars and twenty five cents.

Two men were talking to Sam’s boss as he approached. They had driven a dark blue sedan into the grass along the grape vine rows. Sam’s boss montioned Sam over. Relucantly, Sam walked over. He hoped he smelled all right.
“Hello, I am officer Harlan, this is officer Dutch. We want to ask you a few questions about your where abouts. Is that ok?”
Sam felt like Zeppo Marks, making broad facial expressions to express his intentions.
“Rylan, your boss, says you haven’t been working with him very long. Where were you before that?,” Officer Harlan asked. He had on a pollo shirt and kahkis. He looked like either a carsalesman or a police officer, both people Sam had much dealings with in the past, and little subsequent respect.
Sam pointed North, to indicate Seattle. Both Officers looked at the sprawling retirement complex on the hill to the North. When they looked back, Sam shook his head. He motioned for a pice of paper. Officer Dutch, a fat man dressed in concealing larger clothes, tore out a piece of paper form his notebook and and handed a pen to Sam. Sam wrote, ‘Seattle.’’
“And you can prove this?” Officer Harlan asked.
Sam wrote, ‘St. James Memorial Hospital.”
“One quick thing, can I see some identification,” officer Harlan said. Sam produced his wallet. He hande dthem his expired ID. The officer copied the information down, “Is this address current?” he asked. It was a Medford address, and explaining he was homeless seemed like too much trouble, so Sam just nodded.
The officer’s car was stuck when they tried to drive off. The wheels had come to rest where an irigation line had leaked causing the ground to liquify. Rylan’s entire crew put their filthy hands all over the sedan to push it free. It was obvious most hand intentionaly put their hands in th emud to make a perfect hand inprint on th eback of the car.
When the work resumed, Sam noticed no one would work a row with him and there were many sidelong glances in his direction. If his questioning was related to disapearance of the Porter kid, that meant the cops didn’t know a damn thing if they were questioning him a week after her disapearance. Also the way the Mexicans were reacting to his being questioning meant they played a roll in the whole thing. Sam figured they had all been interviewed, maybe harassed and some feared any investigation into their legal status in the country. Or maybe something was known. It didn’t really mater though, none of it had much to do with Sam. He worked harder that day, fortified by sleep and food.
They were each given checks that day when they had filled the flat bed trailer with bins of grapes. There was a line of men waiting to get their check so Sam lingered by the bosses truck. In th ebed of his truck was an empty coffee cup and the days newspaper. The missing Porter girl was still page one news. Now there was a fiftythousand dollar reward for informaiton leeding to finding her. This changed things slightly.
Sam’s check was for one hundred and eighteen dollars. He tucked it in his pocket and walked towards town to cash it.

Sam’s fortune now approached one hundred and fifty dollars. It was heavy in his pocket. He figured if he worked a full week picking grapes he could afford a pay by the week hotel room by the highway. Or he could save for a week or two more and get a trailer in a park somewhere. He decided to let the rain decide. Should it rain, he’d abandon his bed behind the tractor and get a room. If it didn’t rain for days, he’d save for the trailer.
At the dolalr store he bought personal heigine products, socks, a hat, a bag of cheap razors, some plastic bags to protect his belongings from the dew and a more rugged pad of paper to carry with him to comunicate. It had pictures of unicorns on it, but it fit in his pocket and closed tight against the elements.
Walking home in the heat, Sam noticed off the highway a few hundred yards an irigaiton canal. He cut across an orchard and followed the shallow stream to a dam where it was being drawn out to irigate a feild. Seeing no one in his imeadiate proximity, he stripped and bathed in the water. He felt better than he had in years, clean, sober and physicaly tired.
Finsihing bathing, he tried to get back in his clothes, but realized how bad they smelled. He washed them in the slighty murky water, wrung them out thuraly and put them back on damp. A few feet away form the pool, the late august sun had dried his shoulders already.
A doctor in Seattle had tried to train him how to use a squak box to allow him to speak again, but the two times the docotor visited him in bed with the device, it’s batteries were dead. This was a relief as soon after waking up, Sam had quickly grown fond of the idea of living a life of silence. As he walked along the cannal, he heard every bird, the traffic on the road near by, he knew if it was a 4 cylinder car, a diesel truck or a gas v8. There was a lot in the world to hold his attention. These things were growing louder than his thoughts, and he liked it.
Making his bed at dusk behind the tractor, Sam was chilled by a cold wind. Looking up he noticed the sky had no clouds. Though the day had been hot, the night would be even cooler as there were no clouds.

The stars were briliant. The dew had froze on the outside of Sam’s blanket like a layer of wax. Checking his watch, Sam saw he had hours until it was time to meet at the vinyard to pick. To regain body heat, he decided to walk to the gastastion for a warm cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwhich. The 4am traffic was sparce as he walked to his destination. Passing a bar a painfuly familiar smell came from the open doors of the place, the sweet smell of beer, smoke and people. Inside th ebar he could see a man mopping. There was country music playing. Sam imagined th epainful lonliness of sitting at a bar stool, and remember who once sat next to him. He walked on.
By the powerful light of the gastastion florecants, Sam read the news paper. The police had elluded to the possibility of a vagrant knowing something about the case. This gave Sam a cold chill. Sam wondered if the story had gone to press before or after his encounter with the policemen. Also the national media had become interested in the case. There was a picture of the Porter Winery surrounded by the satelite trucks of national cable news stations.
A man deliberately walked into the gastation. Through heavily slured words, he tried to buy a pack of cigarettes. The clerk politely handed them over. The man was too drunk to work the debt machine with his card. With his forearm he cleared all of the candy jars, lighters and small things for sale off the counter in disgust, took his cigarettes and walked out to his car. At first he opened the door on the wrong side of the car. Realizing his error, he walked around to the correct side of the car, but failed to close the passenger door. He peeled out of the parking lot, the momentum of th eacceleration slamming th epassenger door.
Sam helped the clerk clean the mess from the floor. For a moment, they scanned the floor for items that may have fell, then it dawned on the clerk to dail 911 to report th edrunk driver.
As Sam walked along the highway home, he passed the car with it’s nose in a ditch. As it was a dark sedan, it was camoflouged to the passing drivers. The drunk man was gone.

Ryland wanted everyone to pick faster. He even picked a couple of rows. He sped walked through the crew, swearing. Quickly they had stacked eight tons on grapes on the trailer behind his pick up. The large Mexican man who usualy rode with Ryland and the grapes at the end of the morning never arived that day, making Ryland nervous.
“Hey you, can you drive a forklift?” he asked Sam.
Sam nodded yes, assuming driving a tow truck was somehow similar.
As Ryland and Sam rode together, Ryland spoke aloud, mostly to himself, “eight tons, fifteen hundred a ton... twelve grand? Two grand labor... Merlot grapes aren’t ripe, Movedere grapes aren’t ripe, syrah grapes... that’s half the fucking harvest. That’s half the fucking harvest. Fucking frost. It was like nintey degrees yesterday and it fucking frosts?”
Sam recognized their destination. They made a right off th ehighway into the driveay of an elaborate white mansion. There was a cable news satalite truck parked outside the tasting room next to the mansion. They drove past the mansion and down through a few rows of grapes to a large old barn. Peering in through the large doors of the barn, Sam saw maybe ten looming tanks and thousands of barels stacked against the walls. Sam hopped down off the truck and stretched. Ryland walked briskly back towards the mansion calling behind him, “Get those bins off th etruck and weighed.”
Sam looked around. There were two forklifts parked outside the barn. Sam decided to be confident and deliberate with the forklift, make believe he drove the things in a different way than they were acustomed to. Then he might get away with learning to drive it as he went.
The thing started up like a car and had a simple transmition. Experimenting with the levels, he found he could control the up and down movement of the forks easily. There was a side to side lever, and a tilt lever as well. He drove the forklift to the trailer slowly and slid the forks under the first bin. He then raised it into the air. This was kind of fun. He then drove the bin into the barn.
A small woman with gray hair montioned him forward, through the barn and out the otherside to where what looked like conveyor belt sorting table and a huge tank on it’s side stood. The woman directed him to drop his load on a a gray pad. He negotiated his load down onto the pad, the woman made note of a number that apeared on a small screen on the wall.
“Stack them over there,” she pointed at a bare spot against the wall. Sam soon became more cinfident with the forklift and mastered his task. Driving the forklift seemed like something Sam was born to do. Or at least he thought so untill he backed over a tube, causing it to burst and pulse wine out onto the floor. The woman with the gray hair didn’t notice, and Sam couldn’t make a noise, so he scrambled off the forklift and followed the line to the large tank that was on it’s side. He found a valve and shut it off, then looked back to see if the wine had stopped spilling. He was suprised to see the forklift approaching him, he must have left it in gear. He scrambled back into the cab of th evehicle and slamed on th ebrake in time to stop it from puncturing the side of the tank with the forks. He took a deep breath and backed the forklift out of the barn, paked it and walked back into barn to try to explain to the woman what had happened. Sam found her in a side room that looked like a lab.
“Hello,” she said looking up from a long line of test tubes.
Sam motioned for her to follow. He gestured at the broken line and large red stain.
“You turned it off?” she said, dashing towards the tank. Discovering he had, she seemed relieved. “Thankyou, the entire press could have emptied,” she said. Sam was relieved she didn’t seem to blame him for the accident. “That would have been a real tragety,” she said. She was a naturaly atractive woman, she wore no makeup and wore her gray hair like a badge. There was a kind of kindness in her voice. Her hands were stained red with wine. She glanced back at the lab distracted, Sam moved to take a line off the wall to replace the one he had drove over. “Thanks,” she said and trotted back to the lab.
The lines linked together with simple gaskets, and Sam quickly had it replaced and pumping again. It writhed on the floor as wine refilled the line.
Ryland returned and spoke to the woman for a while. Sam fidgeted and looked at al lthe equipment. Th esounds form th epumps made their conversation inaudible. Ryland abruptly jogged away. The woman approached Sam
“Hello, my name is Lauren, I am the winemaker here. Ryland said you might want to work for me.”
Sam shrugged, then smiled.
“Well, the frost means we have to bring in as many grapes as possible. Otherwise we loose them for good,” she said this with a tired tone. “With what happened here, I don’t know what you know, it’s been hard to keep help. I usualy have a crew but the people from the newspaper scared them away. And now with the reward people are being harassed. Well. You’ll see. I have hopefuly twenty tons of grapes comming in tommorow, and an probably another ten today,” she began leeding him around the barn.
“We sort the grapes, if they’re red grapes mostly we put them in these bins. You’ll need to punch down the grapes a couple of times a day. The white grapes we sort then press right away. Some time this week we’ll be getting twelve tons of Pinot Gris, which means a lot of cleaning the press, which is wet work. Right now I’m pressing Chardonay, which is being pumped into that tank,” Lauren pointed up to a looming stainless steel tank. It gurgled as the wine pumped into it.
“Do oyu think you are up to it?” she asked. She had jade and amber jewlry in her ears and around her neck. Sam was truely impressed with her natural beauty. He shuffled his feet and avoided eye contact. He shrugged again, then nodded.
The next ten hours Sam spent standing on next to the sort table pulling out leaves, earwigs and any thing he saw other than grapes. It was tedious repedative work and often his mind reverted back to reliving harder times in his life. He tried to only think about the future. Eating the grapes kept him fed and hydrated, and the hard work passed the time at an acceptable pace. By the time Lauren dumped the last bin of grapes on the table, it was past 10pm. Sam felt a little loopy with fatuige.
After being sorted, the grapes were dumped into the press, which looked like a tank on it’s side. Apparently inside there was an air bladder, expanding and crushing the grapes. Lauren spent a great deal of time standing next to this machine, adjusting levels, and causing the big tank to rotate and groan. The cloudless night had long ago sucked the heat of the day away and both of their breaths were visable. Sam wandered over next to her. She faked a smile.
“This is going to be a long harvest she said, and pushed a big red stop button. “are you ready for this?” she said, handing him a shovel. She pulled a lever and a door slid open on the press. “I need you to get in there and clean it as best you can. Theres a preasure washer against the wall. Watch out, the water is scalding hot. I have to ad sulfur to the juice,” she said and walked away.
Sam poked his head in the tank. It smelled thickly sweet. There was a mass of crushed grapes the size of a car laying in the bottom of the tank. He began to shovel it out.

It was midnight by the time the tank was clean. Sam was soaked through. At first he tried to avoid getting wet, but it was futile as shooting the washer in the tank caused water to reflect everywhere. Soon he was intentionaly drenching himself to keep warm. Sam wondered what he’d do that night to keep warm. He had read death by hypothermia wasn’t bad, soon you halucinated you were warm. He stood apraising the work he had done with his arms tucked into the body of his shirt to keep warm.
Lauren appeared behind him, “Can you be here tomorrow at eight Am?” she asked.
Sam shrugged a yes.
“Good. First thing we need to run ozinated water over everything and start sorting and pressing again. Thankyou. See you tomorrow.”
Sam walked through the barn towards the road. He had no idea what to do with himself. He doubted he’d survie a night by his tractor. He thought about writing Lauren a a note explaining his predicament, but his note pad was soaked through. A familiar smell made him pause. To the left of th ebig barn door was an industrial water heater. Th esmell was the mildew beneath it. Sam glanced behind him to see if Lauren could see him. He then snuck into the space between the water heater and the wall. The metal outer casing was warm, and a copper pipe running along the wall was too hot to touch. Sam waited breathlessly as Lauren walked through the barn turning lights off. She then paused by the front door and made a call on her cell phone.
“I hired someone to help, he seems capable. I hope he isn’t scared off. I can’t wait to quit this place. This is ridiculous. The whole family is so busy looking worried for the cameras... I mean I liked Irene, but I think she’s in Mexico or something. What ever. I just don’t care. I know. We can’t afford it. What if we didn;t pay the mortgage and saw what happened...” she turned off the last light and lowered the big barn door behind her.
Sam sighed in releif. He set his watch for a 7am alarm, put his sopping clothes on the hot pipe, found some card board and slept next ot the big groaning water heater. He slept deeply, thuraly exahsted.

Lauren rolled open the barn door at ten before eight. Sam was dry and dying of hunger. His whole body ached from the akward positions he had held for so long that defore sorting the grapes. he waited for Lauren to open the back barn doors to the crush pad where the press and sorting table stood, then poped out. Unable to get Lauren’s attention, she jumped when she finaly noticed him.
“Hello. You scared me. Did you sleep last night?”
Sam shrugged.
“What was your name again?”
Sam looked uncomfortable.
“That’s right. You cant talk. Do you happen to have some ID on you? I need to get you in the payroll system. Ryland said he’d drop your last check by today or tommorow. I guess you didn’t have much to say about the whole thing, did you. I don;t mean that like... I mean to say nobody really asked you if... well I’m glad to see you back.”
Sam produced his still soggy wallet and careful peeled his social sexurity card from the back of an old credit card. He handed it with his lisence to Lauren.
“Sam?” She asked, putting the ducuments on a clip board. “I’ll have this back after I copy them. Did you get by the reporters ok on the highway?”
Sam nodded.
“The police are searching a feild by the higway. They think a vagrant may have burried something in a plowed feild by there. There was a helicopter from some news chanel over head. Did you see it?”
Sam shook his head no. Apperently he was the prime suspect, which made him grin. Maybe the police found out about the murders in Toppenish Washington and his roll in a violent confrontation that caused him to loose his voice. The sherif there probably still held a grudge against him, though he was cleared of any wrong doing. Or maybe the police were just looking busy. Probably just looking busy. Police often were hard at work at looking busy, Sam had found in his travels.
“Irene, the girl they are looking for, wasn’t exactly the perfect kid. She worked here sometime, but she obviously drinking all the time. I confronted her on it once. There was fresh puked up wine in the toilet. She was staggering. I couldn’t get her fired, she was the daughter of the owner, you know,” Lauren seemed to be speaking nervously to make up for Sam’s silence. “Randy, Irene’s brother will be around today. He’s a cranky guy. he rpobably wont even talk to you, but if he asks you to do anyhting, do it.”
After punching down the twenty some bins of grapes, Sam was even more hungry than before. He was happy when the grapes started to arive and he could shove the fruit in his mouth as he sorted. Randy appeared and operated the forklift. He didn;t aknowledge Sam, but kept the grapes comming at a constant stream. It was 2 pm before Randy disapeared and Sam foudn himself with no one around telling him what to do. Sam lay flat on the crush pad stretch out his back and to soak up the sun. It felt very good. Distantly Sam heard the gentle sound of a woman’s voice, singing in Spanish. He rolled his head towards the sound. Down hill from the barn were rows of grapes and a loan figure was harvesting. Sam sat up and watched her for a while. Soon he saw Randy approach her from behind, walking slow and stealthily. He seemed to roughly tackle her, causing Sam to rise to his feet and watch. The sounds of laughter caught his ears, and he sat back down. She resisted Randy, pointing towards the mansion and the parkinglot, probably indicating the TV cameras might be watching. Randy seemed disapointed and began walking back towards the barn. Sam quickly faced away.
Randy resumed loading grapes onto the table and it was another four hours until Sam had time to step down and stretch. The singing girl was talking to Randy in hushed tones in barn. Sam peered at them from behind a bin of grapes he pretended to to be punching down.
It seemed obvious Randy wanted sex. Though Sam couldn’t hear the words they were saying, the pleading tone was familiar. The girl kept walking one step away and Randy kept catching up to her and hugging her. Sam caught the girl’s name as Randy plead. Carmen. Carmen looked to be about sisxteen, which seemed scandelous as Randy must have been twenty five. Sam stepped backout side to catch some more sun before it set.
These people probably all thought themselves in the eye of a huricane of drama. It was no more than Sam had seen. He wondered what Ellie would make of all this. She’d probably be bored and disapointed in Sam. She’d have them in a cheap motel, eating fast food and watching TV all night. She’d take long steaming baths in the tiny hotel tub and talk to him from the bathroom. After work, she’d have stories about the people who pissed her off during the day. His smile felt good on Sam’s face. He didn’t feel alone.
Randy broke his daze by uncerimonously dumping a bin of grapes on the table. Obviously, he had blue balls.

The next morning the barn doors flew open earlier than Sam had expected. He squinted at his watch. It was 6am. Peering from behind the water heater, Sam saw Kasey Porter, the owner of the winery walk in followed by a camera man and officer Dutch. Sam carefuly slid his clothes back on, trying not to make the cardboard rustle.
“It’s good to get out of the cold. Is there an over head lightyou can turn on?” the camera man asked. “You are going to hear Katie ask you a question through this little speaker on my hip. Just look right into the camera and answer the questions. They’re doing the weather now, I’ll turn it up.” The camera man fumbled with a box on his hip.
“In the great Pacific Northwest they’re seeing early frosts, causing havoc on the orchard buisnesses. Which is also the setting for our next story. A distrubing and saddening story about a missing Oregon teen. And vie sattalite we have the missing girl’s mother, Kasey Porter. Thank you for comming on the air and talking about your tragety,” the speak blared. Kasey Porter perked up and assumed a very concerned look. She was a natural infront of a camera.
“Good morning Katie,” Kasey said.
The speaker on the cameraman’s hip continued, “So as we understand it your daughter Irene has been missing for five days now. We all have been riveted by the investigation. Thank God recent searches have come up empty, leaving you with hope. You have offered a reward for any information leeding to finding her where abouts?”
“Yes Katie. My husband I are offering fifty thousand dollars for anyone with any information that leeds to reuniting us. This is Irene’s favorite time of year, Autum. See, we have a Beaujolais festival here at the winery. We have a big fire and pass around glasses of Beaujolais,” Irene never studdered. Sam imagined he’d be nervous on camera. Then he remembered he couldn’t speak anyway. he could flip off the camera.
“Beaujolais?” the speaker asked.
“It’s a fresh young harvest wine. It’s a tradition in France to make this fun wine and have a party. This year we hope to have the best party ever to celbrait the return of our daughter,” Kasey said.
“Yesterday a gossip entertainment television program leeked pictures from your daughter’s internet social networking website. Can you confirm the autheticity of these photographs?” Katie, who ever the hell she was, seemed to have asked a question that caught Kasey off guard.
“Well, I can;t confirm they are reall. I think privacy is important...”
“Though these photos may provide some clue as to your daughter’s lifestyle,” katie said via the speaker on the cameraman’s hip.
“All I can say is, if the person who abducted Katie is watching, please bring my daughter home. Please,” and with that Kasey handed back her microphone to the camera man. He turned off the speaker on his hip. Officer Dutch seemed disapointed he didn’t get to say anything. He didn’t move from the ridgid pose he had held during the interview. Kasey wordlessly left the barn, the camera man followed, checking his equipment as he walked. Officer Dutch stayed. He began to walk along the tanks, reading the labels on them. Sam tensed up, not wanting to have to explain why he was hiding behind th ewater heater.
The cell phone on officer Dutch’s hip rang. He answered, “Hello? I have no idea. I haven’t seen the pictures. No. Well. What do they look like? Really? Shit. Yeah, I’ll be there. Can we get a judge to get us accsess to her account?” Ok, I’ll be right there. I don’t think a bumb would have acsess to the internet... well yeah. I’ll check the library sign up sheets for computer usage under the name Sam Waters.”
Officer Dutch hung up his phone and walked briskly out of the winery. Sam lay back agains tthe heater. His clothes were still warm. On the basis of his history and a bad reputation in another state, Sam had found himself in the middle of a crock of shit. Again.

In a storage area behind the bathroom, Sam found a backpack full of women’s toiletries. It looked like a bride’s emergency touch up kit from a wedding that took place on the property years ago. In the bathroom, Sam took a whore bath in the sink. He shaved with a pink disposable razor, put on deoderant from a pink stick and brushed his teeth with a travel toothbrush. The transformation was striking. He went from a crazy looking bum to a semi presentable mid thrities laborer. It was almost like being in disguise.
Feeling more human, Sam paced and tried to think, walking the length of the bathroom over and over again. He wished he could speak to draw out thoughts from the din of opinions in his head. Sam had an instinctual dislike for the law, going back to his teen years. The stupidity of being on the suspects list slowly filled him with anger. He could turn himself in for further questioning, but that would proably eat up days and he’d loose the job at the winery. Which was another thing. If the police were making it clear he was a suspect, why hadn’t lauren turned him in? Could he wait for the case to resolve itself? That wouldn;t work because as the police allways said, most missing person cases if not solved in the first 72 hours, go unsolved. Which means they give up, no doubt.
Also there was the wall of guilt, not far from his concious thoughts. If he poured his passion and anger into this mystery, maybe he could let go some of his grief from his previous life. If he solved this mystery, he’d have fifty thousand dollars to buy a single wide somewhere, maybe go to comunity college. As he paced, he traced the scar and hple in his neck. He was growing used to it. He’d do his best to find out where Irene went to. he’d do it to piss of the cops, to make Ellie proud and to get his life back on track.
To kill time, Sam decided to familiarize himself with the winery. Lauren wasn’t due to appear for another hour. hell, maybe there was some clue laying out in the open. In the small lab area, Sam looked at the chemicals and instruments on a table by the sink. The symbols meant very little to him. he picked up a manual on wine making. It was an amzingly intracate process. He scanned the pictures. They made him thirsty.
Next Sam walked along the tanks and read the labels. The largest Tank, maybe two stories tall, was labeled Beaujolais. There was a valve at the bottle of the tank. Sam walked back to the lab, got a wine glass, and returned to the tank. he imagined at this point in the ferminatation, the wine was still just juice, and that would give him a good morning boost. Delicately, he nudged the valve a little open. It began to drip a light red color. He nudged the valve a little more. A fire hose like current of liquid shot out, shattering the glass in his hand and shooting across the floor. Sam closed the valve and ran to find a mop. he hosed the spilled fluid into a near by drain, all the while one eye on the barn door hoping to not get caught. He then hosed down muchof the floor to make it apear as if he was just mopping on his own accord.
Looking up, Sam noticed a cat walk above the tanks. He thought it would be interesting to see the winery from a birds eye view, so he climbed the ladder leading up. Exerting himself on an empty stomach caused him to see starts, and the vertigo from his increasing height made him neaseous. He felt like he just barely made it to the top.
From the height of the top of the barn, he saw the entire winery. The rows of barrels were maybe twenty deep, and six high. Sam imagined an earth quake or catastrophy causing all the barrels and tanks bursting at once and swiming in the wine. What a glorious way to die. The Beaujolais tank seemed full of whole grape clusters, where as the other red tanks were full of berries removed from their stems. Another fantasy crossed his mind, just jumping down into the grapes. Maybe with Ellie. Just crawling around in the thick messy juice. He could have easily lowered Ellies thin little body down, then jumped in after her. They’d have a great time.
Above the lab was a lower roof. The room of the lab and bathroom was build into the body of the barn. The pitched roof made a dark concealed area. Sam hopped down off the catwalk to this second floor. He thought maybe he could sleep there one night if work ended with him not soaked to the bone. Peering into the darkness he realized someone had already had this idea. There were blankets there. Sam pulled them out into to hte light. They were nice blankets, pink. They smelled nice, like a woman. There was more. A a plastic tube rolled out of the blankets and nearly fell to the floor of the barn. He picked it up and examined it. he turned what looked like a lid on the end to open it. This caused it to vibrate. It was a vibrator. Sam quickly put the blanket and sex toy back. he smiled, almost embaraced.
“Hello?” A voice called from the door of the barn. Sam froze.

The voice was calling to him. It was a man’s voice, calling from directly bellow now. Sam looked over the edge down at the source. A man with a gray beard looked up at him. “Is Lauren here?”
Sam shook his head.
“Has she been in yet?”
Sam put up one finger to indicate he’d be right down. As he climbed back on the catwalk, he wondered if the man knew about the nest he had found. Sam guessed he’d find out. perhaps it was Lauren’s place to sleep late nights. He couldn’t fault her for having creature comforts. As Sam climbed down the ladder, the man continued.
“I had some time before going int othe office and I was hopping to taste my Cabernet Sauvingon. Lauren wants it to hold in a bin longer, but I am worried about bachteria,” the man said.
Sam already felt more respectable clean shaven. This man must be some sort of client of the winery. He had a nervous, almost nerdy way of talking.
“My name is Mortimer,” he said, extending his hand to Sam once Sam was backon the ground. Sam shook his hand, the man’s hand’s were as soft as any Sam had ever held. He wore a colalred shirt with a vest over it, the kind a college proffessor would wear.
Sam gestured and mouthed words to indicate he couldn’t speak.
“I see, burning the candle at both ends. Harvest season, I know. I’ll just grab the theif. You are taller than me, can you get a taste for me?” Mortimer grabed what looked like a turkey baster from a hook on a near by wall. He also picked up a plasitic cup from a stack resting on one of the pumps. Sam plunged the baster in the liquid of a bin Mortimer was looking at. By putting his thumb on the end of a hole at the top of the baster, Sam captured some of the liquid, then released it into the cup in Mortimer’s hand. Sam was impressed in ability to execute this action without his hands shaking. More proof the medicine doctors prescribe were poison. The further he was from the hospital, the stronger Sam felt.
Mortimer sipped the liquid, sucked air through it, gargled with it, then spit it out. He then passed the cup to Sam. Sam mimicked Mortimer’s actions, only he didn’t spit.
“Habit, spitting. I guess at this stage there is no alcohol in the wine yet,” Mortimer said.
Sam nodded agreement.
“What do you think? Has it set long enough?”
Sam nodded agreement.
“Exactly. Exactly. This cold storage of grapes in unnecasary I think. Esspecialy in Cabs.”
Sam nodded agreement.
“Are you new here? It thought Lauren needed help. Kasey is so busy. Lauren needs help. So you agree it’s time to add yeast?”
Sam nodded agreement.
“Well, could you tell Lauren what we discovered? I have to get back to my office. I hope to taste with you again. What was your name?”
Sam drew on the side of the bin with his finger the three letters of his name.
“Sam?”
Sam nodded.
“Sam I am?”
Sam smilled broadly. This guy wasn’t too bad.
“Well, good luck with the harvest today and relay our message to Lauren.
Mortimer walked out of th ebarn and got in his car. Sam recognized it as one of those new imported hybrid motor cars. The car soundlessly rolled into action and began to back up. Sam decided Mortimer had nothing to do with the bed he found above the lab. Using the ‘theif,’ as Sam had learned the turkey baster like thing was called, he got himself another cup of juice and watched Mortimer begin to drive away. A black SUV appeared from nowhere and blocked Mortimer from leaving. Sam choked on the juice and moved towards the barn door to get a better look, slinking along the barrels to hide as he went.
Another black SUV appeared behind Mortimer’s car to box him in. At gun point, Mortimer was extracted from his car by four men in black jumpsuits with FBI insiginia on their jackets. He was cuffed and stuffed into the back of one of the SUVs. both SUVs then quickly drove away.
Within thirty seconds, a mob of media photographers and cameraman surrounded Mortimer’s car. Aparently the feds had a different suspect in mind.

Sam sat on the floor behind a row of barrels and marveled and the ridiculous nature of his situation. He was stuck in a winery, wanted by the local police, and to make matters worse, he was starving. If he left, he would loose his job, a job he was growing to like and if he left he’d loose any chance of unravelling the mystery. He began to doubt his ability to do anything about his circumstances and considered the inevitability of his incarceration. At least that way he could eat some lousy prison food.
Lauren finaly arived. She was being asked questions by a reporter, which she was ignoring. She rolled the barn doors closed behind her, though the questions continued through the metal of the door. She swore and shook her head and walked towards the lab. Sam stood to meet her, happy the barn doors were closed.
“Hi Sam. I want to talk to you,” she said and walked into the lab.
Anyone telling anyone they wanted to to talk to them used to be an omen of bad news to Sam. But his new found lack of speech also made him feel powerfull. More often than not in conversations, people just talked at eachother. Sam had the advantage of knowing th eperson he was talking to knew they were being listened to. Thus people tended to be deliberate in their speech and obvious in their intentions and deceptions. Sam followed Lauren into the lab, confident he didn’t smell and his teeth were clean. He felt strangely in charge.
Lauren had pulled up two kegs and set them a few feet apart. Inbetween she had set down a fast food bag and two cups of coffee. The smell was wunderfull. Sam played it coy. He sat and crossed his legs. Lauren waved her hand at the food she had brought, “dig in,” she said. After a day of eating fruit, the food was lovely and warm. The coffee was imeadiatly inspiring.
Lauren swallowed some food, wiped her mouth, then began, “So, my father was a fucker. He smoked through my childhood and in ym twenties he had an operation for throat cancer. The end of his life he couldn;t speak. He refused to use one of those boxes. As he lay dying I was going to therapy. I uncoverd an ugly memory about him, he used to get in bed with me when I was very young. Well... it’s ugly. The thing is he was meaner and uglier when he couldn’t talk. His eyes were more cruel. I don’t see that in you,” Lauren finished for a moemnt and sipped her coffee.
“So I don’t think you had anything to do with the disapearance of the girl.” She produced a newspaper. On the cover next to a picture of the mansion was his drivers license photo.
Sam took the paper and read the front page. Siting no new evidense, the local police had begun a manhunt for Sam. There was a brief summary of his involvement in the Toppenish Washington killings, no mention of the internet pictures Sam had learned about that morning. The next day’s paper would probably include a piece about Mortimer. Sam wrote across the top of the paper, “I didn’t do it. I was in Washington.”
Lauren nodded. “Ryland said he met you the day after she disapeared. If you did it, you’d never come work here. Any way, I have an entire harvest to get through and no crew. I’d like to keep you,” she said.
“I want to stay,” Sam wrote.
“Kasey Porter says I owe her threehundred thousand dollars because I hven’t met wine production quotas two years running. Two years running there has been an early frost in the rogue valley. She’s trying to push me out. The paychecks shes been giving me say ‘loan,’ on the memo line. I have a mortgage, bills, health insurance to keep going. If I can make it to the Beaujolais festival, I’ll quit and take you with me to Brook Heaven Wineries,” Lauren proposed. “By then Irene will have shown up again and everythign will have blown over.”
“Who is Mortimer?” Sam wrote.
“He’s a custom client. Did he stop in?”
“He was arrested,” Sam wrote.
“Really,” Laurens said with a sad grin and fell silent.
“What?” Sam wrote.
“He talked to Irene. He said something about her on-line profile,” Irene said. “It just seemed so creepy for a man to say that. Especialy one his age.”
“Are there any big weird secrets here?” Sam wrote.
Lauren settled back on her keg and thought.
“What are the big weird secrets here,” Sam wrote.
“I’ve worked a few events up at the mansion, those are disgusting as you could imagine. They get drunk and pretend they’re not. They argue and pretend they’re discussing something. I’m sure they’ra all unfaithful. Let me think. I mean it’s the typical crap that I’m sure you can imagine.” She sipped her coffee. “The paper said you were in gun battle up North. Trying to find the killer of your son?”
Sam nodded, grimaced trying not to remeber. The police not wanting to admit wrong doing claimed the case was yet unresolved. He was probably a person of interest still, but as it was over a year ago his leaving Seattle didn’t raise any red flags. It had been over a year since he’d seen Ellie. He had a young grandson somewhere up there. It occured to him the FBI might be looking for him too if the murders in Toppenish and Medford were linked. It would be a mater of time before he was incustody at this rate.
If Ellie were there the first thing she’d have done is collect all the information she could before doing any leg work. She’d probably have drug him to the library. “Do you have a computer?” Sam wrote.
Lauren produced a laptop. It came to life on Sam’s lap. He pecked into a search engine, ‘Irene Porter, missing girl, pictures.’ The site that came up showed pictures of her taken at arm’s length in her underware. She was in a kitchen. She was dubbed, ‘The Internet Pin-up victim.
“That’s the catering kitchen at the mansion,” Lauren said.
Sam frowned and thought. . The vulgar parts of humaan nature, more often than not, were the tip of the ice berg. And since Mortimer had known of these kinds of pictures, he probaly had seen far more and far more revealing. Sam assumed for the time being Irene was a kind of amatuer porn star. This broadened the suspect list greatly. It also meant she could be alive somewhere being tortured. It was an interesting thought. It broadened the suspect list to a billion people though.
“Was Irene smart?” Sam wrote.
“She was. She had that ugly girl intelegence. She could get what she wanted,” Irene said.
Sam went to a local news website. There were pictures of Mortimer being arested outside the winery. There were also pictures of a warrent being served at Mortimer’s house. Computers were being removed form his house.
“Does Randy know who I am?” Sam wrote.
“I doubt it, I doubt he cares. All he cares about it trying to have sex with Carmen. I think he’s doing that meth,” Lauren wrote.
The possibility of Irene being killed by her older brother crossed Sam’s mind. There was a an areal picture of the winery taken fifteen minutes earlier, right after the arrest of Mortimer. Somehow it wasn’t weird to be in th emiddle of a national spectacle. In fact it gave things less meaning. The agony of everyday existence was far more terrifying than a pervert or too in rural Oregon. If it’s a suprise there are perverts in rural areas, you are a fool. Indeed it was becoming a guiding pricipal to assume the worse of everyone, then prognosticating for the vile things people do.
Sam looked at Lauren. She sipped her cofffee and leaned into the computer screen. Sam couldn’t quite guess at Lauren’s motives yet.
As if on a guilty cue, she stood. “Well, there’s a lot of wine to make. Tomorow at three Pm there’s a tasting in the winery. It should be interesting as two of Irene’s teachers are clients here. It is probable her killer will be there if it wasn’t done by a wandering bum.”



Carmen appeared at the sorting table. Though Sam had had never met her before, but she seemed distant, more so than the average human ought be. She had on a small golden cross that dangled over the grapes as she reached across for things to pick out. A picker’s stray glove passed right before her eyes on the table and she didn’t pick it out of the grapes. Stealing glances, Sam percieved a person with a great decision on her mind. It’s look people have on their faces before an attack of hayfever.
Randy seemed meniacle with the forklift. He banged the table when he dropped the grapes, eccelerated so that the tires screetched. Lauren avoided the scene, running tests on bins on grapes, keeping her head down as she walked. Everyone seemed to be exhibiting trapped behavior. It seemed ridiculous. Sam decided it was a good day to be drunk.
At lunch time the barn emptied. Sam glimpsed the media mob just outside the barn door as they closed the door behind them. Sam got a large five gallon bucket and approached a tank with a tag indicating the juice within was a year old. He captured the violent blast of wine emited from the valve in his bucket then went to his corner behind the water heater. He felt like a toddler lifting the mighty vessal to his lips and sipping. It was an unspeakable mess when he accidentlyinhaled the wine into his lungs. He cleaned up and drank again.
Everywhere he’d been, in everysituation, be he traveling, staying put, laughing and drinking, or gritting his teeth and staying sober, he and everyone around him felt trapped. The obvious alternative was suicide, which was a kind of weird joke in it’s self. It was a joke to sit ther ebehind his water heater and try to see the world through a missing teenage girls eyes, though it was the only real clue he had. Everything the police had fit their agenda, ‘stop the homeless meth heads.’ The feds clues led to their desire to, ‘stop internet predation.’ A young girl would see all this wine making, keeping airs, and see boredom. More likely than not she just got on a bus and got the fuck out. He had three theories to disprove now.
Carmen, Randy and Lauren returned seperately from their lunches. They assumed their positions and resumed the sorting of the grapes.
Later in the day while doing punchdowns in the bins of grapes, Sam watched Lauren sip at the juice form the big tank marked Beajolais. Sam had never sipped alcohol in his life. His expiriences with wine usualy as the result of a last resort. It was odd watching Lauren spin th eliquid in a large glass, sniff it, suck air through her teeth and gargle the fluid. Was there a correlation between being a good auto mechanic and a wine conesuir? Sam stopped and stared thoughtfuly.
“This is a tricky wine. Technicly it’s easy. You just take a light red grape and let it sit for three weeks in a tank, pull out the stopper and drink it. It’s easy, but alot can go wrong. This wine is two weeks into fermintation. It’s finishing off. It has to be ready for the party next week, the Beaujolais festival. I can;t believe they’re going to still have it,” Lauren said when she noticed Sam watching.
Sam looked interested.
“It’s a tadition to make a Beaujolais at the end of the harvest and drink it raw and young. It’s been a tradition at the Porter Wineries for over ten years. It’s a distinct, fruity young flavor. I hate it,” she finaly said, and spit the wine out on the floor.
The day finaly wound to a close. Randy watched Sam clean the press. He had a distant look in his eye. Carmen scrubed the floors of the crush pad and winery with a white powder. After Randy and Carmen left, Sam wrote a note for Lauren. “Can I stay here tonight?” it read. He showed it to her.
She shrugged and waved goodbye, locking him in.
Sam elected to sleep by the water heater again, thoug hte thought of a blanket up in the corner where he had discovered the vibrator seemed enticing. He’d preserve that area should it prove to be a clue. He poured himself a fresh bucket of white wine and settled into his corner. He disrobed and hung his clothes to dry.

He had a terrible waking dream. He had the sensation Ellie was laying next to him on the winery floor. She was weeping because she didn’t want to be dead. Her low sobbing turned into loud wailing. Sam tried to turn and comfort her, but couldn’t move. It was a horrible futile feeling. The weeping grew louder and louder until Sam jolted back into conciousness to discover the weeping was real. One light was on near the lab. Trying to discretetly and silently stand, Sam put his entire arm in his wine bucket, then upturned it. The wine soaked the carboard he had been sleeping on.
Shakily Sam stood and krept along the back wall of the winery behind the barrels. He dared not creep to close, but from a safe distance he could make out Carmen sitting on a keg, crying. Randy paced around her. They said nothing for a long time. Randy stopped pacing, then loomed over her with arms crossed, as if resolute in a decision. They remained like this for what seemed like an eternity. Randy finaly walked briskly away, out of the winery, slamming the door behind him. Sam hid and watched Carmen slowly stop weeping. She put her hands on her stomach. This quieted her. She then followed Randy out into the night.

Sam’s watch read Five AM when the winery doors opened again. Sam recognized Officer Harlaan and Officer Dutch when the lights kicked on. They were follew in by several other officers in uniform carrying cases and intrusments.
“We got until 9 AM to perform this warrent. We don’t want to appear as if we are harrassing the Porter family and just maybe if we find anything we can get it out of here before the light of dawn. We don’t want the circus the FBI caused when they arrested the pervert,” Officer Harlaan said.
The officers set up equipment and talked amungst themselves. Sam knew if he were caught he’d end up in jail, probably for years during a ridiculous trail. Quickly he put his clothes back on, leaned the stil lsoaking carboard against the wall and crawled to th eback of the winery. An officer began walking towards him with a flashlight and camera, taking random pictures as he walked. Backed up in the corner of th ebuilding, Sam knew he had a matter of minutes to find an escape. If he ran, he’d be caught quickly in all probablility. The officer paused by where Sam had been making his bed and took some pictures, then stooped to take a sample of the liquid on the floor. Without thinking Sam began to climb the stacked barrels. They swayed slightly as he scampered up, but maintained a silence.
Out of breath from his climb, Sam tried not to pant. The hum of the florecant liughts becoming brighter above seemed to mask the sounds he was making. A top the barrels he would be seen once the officers investigated the catwalk and the area’s above the lab, so Sam stradled two stacks of barrels and ducked. Once his heart stopped violently beating and he regained his breath he crane dhis ears to hear what they were saying.
“Everything is so fucking clean,” said a voice Sam remebered as being Officer Dutch’s. “Everything could be clean because they are a clean running buisness, or there was a deliberate clean up... I mean we can send swabs fro mthe drains in the floor, but this Oxycarbon powder they use to clean the place probably destroyed everything.”
Sam’s legs began to cramp after an hour of pertching in his akward hiding spot. The stress of maintaining th eposition was making him shake. The stack of barrels he was on began to sway slightly. It was excusiating. He wanted to yell out.
“Here we go,” Officer dutch said from a distance.
Sam peeked his head up from behind the barrel. The officer’s were begining to congregate above the lab by the bed Sam had discovered the day before. Silently they took photos of th escene, then collecting the blanket and vibrator. The officer’s were erily quiet as they worked.
Sam realized his finger prints were on the vibrator and they had probably too colected his finger prints from his camp behind the tractor near the feild they had investigated. That vibrator was really going to fuck him in the end, he thought. He wondered whose DNA they would find on it. That wouldn’t be known for weeks. If it was Irenne’s they’d know relatively soon as they must have had a DNA profile for her already. Either way, his prints putting him in the winery with an obect like a vibrator was some real damning evidence. Sam knew he had a matter of hours before the new evidence would percolate to Lauren and his temporary home would become a trap.
The officer’s taped off the area above the lab and removed their new evidence. Sam hung there between the two rows of barrels from what turned out to be three hours by the time the last officer had left and Lauren came in. Sam crept down behind her.
“You are still here?” She seemed tired and apathetic to the search. She took out a binder filled with documentation on each wine she was making. This made Sam feel relieved. “We have a few tons comming in today, then we have to return that big stack of empty bins out side to the vinyards we got the grapes from. We’ll do that after the sun goes down so there wont be so many camera crews.” She produced an envolope for Sam.
The envolope contained a check for over sixhundred dollars. Quickly an escape plan formed in Sam’s head. Under the cover of night, he’d cash the check at an all night check cashing place and get back on a buss to either Seattle to reestablish his alibi, or just somewhere East. Strart fresh with a new name. It would have to be that night. Him receiving a payroll check would be discovered once the detectives investigated th ewineries financial records. He’d work the day as usual, then leave that night.

The sorting went quickly with Randy and Carmen helping. They both avoided eachother and were more focused on their work. They had finished sorting all the grapes brought in by growers by five that afternoon. It made matters easier that Randy unloaded the grapes form the trucks. Sam hid in the bathroom when the growers elected to linger.
“Well, lets load the truck and get those bins back to the growers,” Lauren said.
Sam froze. He knew working out fron of the barn would cause him to be discovered, no doubt there was a mugshot circulating of him in the papers. Sam looked to Lauren for help. She averted her eyes from his gaze. Sam wondered if she suspected him, or just didn’t care anymore. Randy opened the big barn doors to the driveway. As he did, the media perked up and recorded him as he got on th eforklift and began stacking bins on a flatbed truck. Sam needed to buy some time.
The sorting table was at an upward slant so that the grapes traveled up hill into the top of a bin. At the top of the table above the bin, one was fifteen feet in the air. Sam waited for Lauren to be near, he then began cleaning the top of the sorting table. It swayed beheith him as he pulled stray grapes out of the cracks and holes in the devise.
“Becareful up there,” Lauren said while adding some sulfur to the bin beneith him. Sam intentionaly slipped and flopped headfirst into the bin.

It was a brief fall. When he hit the bottom of the bottom of the bin he felt no pain. It was almost pleasant to land in shallow grapes. The flash of white light indicated he had stuck his head quite sharply, though. The cold feeling on his face indicated he was submerged in the grape juice. Listlessly trying to breathe he realized he was drowning, upsidedown and wedged in the liquid. He felt the cold juice gurgle in the hole in his neck. He fought with his arms for a while, trying to right himself but he forgot which way was up and which way he was trying to struggle to. He bagan to just violently thrash, the involuntary motions of a drowning man.
Light filled his eyes and Sam realized he was laying on the crush pad pad. He violently coughed and sputered. Carmen and Lauren had managed to tip the bin over and pour it out. Gagging and coughing didn’t fully restore his ability to breathe. His tracheodimly made hideous gurgling noises as Lauren and Carmen stared at him.
“Should I call 911?” Lauren asked no one in particular.
Sam shook his head no and struggled to his feet. The grapes and juice flowed form his body. He stagered into the bathroom and hacked and choked into the sink. Lauren watched from the doorway.
Sam nursed his injuries for the next three hours. He refused medical attention, saying he’d be ready to work again in a few hours. He lay on the floor in the lab going over his plan in his mind. After dumping the bins to the wineries, he’d cash his check and hit the road. He decided on a state like Wyoming, or North Dakota. There he could blend in and be forgotten. He felt so tired, but a few days on a bus would restore him. Busses were dry and warm. This time he’d escape for good.

The sun finally set and as if on cue, Sam stood up to get back to work. He was still mostly soaked in grape juice. The sugar made his inner thighs chafe as he stood. Lauren suspected that he was either drunk or stalling, she looked at him skepticly. She handed him the punch-down-stick and indicated he should punch down all the bins before they left to return the bins. Sam was happy to stall further. He took his time plunging the devise through the caps formed on the tops of the masses of fermenting grapes. The more time that passed, the greater the likelyhood of his escape. When he had finished all the bins on the winery floor, Lauren gustured for him to climb the cat walk and punch down the grapes added to tanks that week.
The Beaujolais tank had a cap on it with a valve gurgling away. Sam peered down into the vat of Merlot grapes. Leaning over the edge, he thrust his punch down devise deep into the grapes. Doing so made him rember just how tired he was. Plunging again into the grapes, he imagined a vast steak diner. That would be his first priority when he got out of Oregon, getting a rare steak somewhere. He pictured the plate of food before him, blood trickling out of the seared slice of meat. He cut into the steak and raised a pice to his mouth.
Sam slowly came to. The rafters of the ceiling looked like the ridges on the top of the inside of a mouth. He was laying on the floor of th ecat walk. Lauren was leaning over him. She smelled like vanilla. It reminded him of too many things to pick any one out.
“I should have warned you, the wine emits carbon dioxide when it ferments. Are you ok?”
Sam took a moment to think about his health. He felt neaseus and tired. His head ached like a champagne hangover. He looked around him fo rthe steak he had been eating. His confusion melted when realized the steak was a dream. He had fallen into the wine again. It was thick, sticky and warm on his face.
“You are not having a good day, are you?” Lauren said.

The air was thick and humid. You could smell a comming rain. Randy grabbed each bin with the forklift and raised it into the air for Carmen to hose down. He then set it on th ebed of a flatbed truck where Sam shoved it into place and tied it down. By the time they were finished, thunder rolled through the valley.
They all crawed int othe cab of the truck. It was a huge old International truck. Sam had worked on many of them years ago, but they had slowly been disapearing. The passenger door didn’t work, so to get in, they had to slide across the vinal seats through the driver’s side. Sam tried to not touch Carmen and get the sticky juice on her. By the light of th edashboard, Sam looked at Randy’s and Carmen’s faces. They both seemed distant. Their tall heavy load of bins shifted noisily with every bump they went over.
Randy knew his way to the vinyards where the bins came from. In the dark, Sam and Randy lifted the bins down by hand, one by one. With a flash light, Randy checked the sides of the bins to make sure they had made it to the right place. As they lifted the last bin of the back of the truck at hte last vinyard, it began to rain. The water cut the grit and sugar on Sam’s face and felt good. He couldn’t wait to see the car’s headlights in the rain passign by his buss window. He was almost free of Medford again. What a stupid idea to come back. Sam grinned as he got back into the cab of the truck. Though he’d not known Lauren, Randy or Carmen long at all, he felt nostaglia over his leaving. He liked harvesting wine. He wished them both well.
Once the truck was rolling again, Randy reached across Carmen’s lap and opened the glove box and got out a gun. He held it on his lap, not looking at Carmen or Sam. Carmen stared at the gun. Sam remembered his door didn’t open and shook his head. Randy was probably going to take him to the authorities. The fucker had waited until all the heavy lifting was done, then decided to do it. It was a relief, on one hand. He’d get a shower, a meal and a bed that night after the interogation. Sam hoped he was going to the FBI instead of the local police. Sam’s every encounter with local police from when he was a teenager had been a joke. The amature theatrics, the masculinity, just the sheer cornyness of it all.
Richard Jameson in Toppenish used to pick him up for drunken disorderly conduct, just to have a captive audince for his speeches. At least Sherif Jameson usualy had a good bottle of whiskey with him.
They drove through the down town. A cruel irony led them past the buss station. A few men were standing out front, smoking. More than ever Sam wished he could speak again so he could say, ‘fuck.’
They passed under the freeway viaduct, near Sam’s old apartment. It was almost a tour. Behind the seat was a case of wine. All the bottles were opened and re-corked. Maybe the left overs from some party. Sam reached for a bottle causing Randy to swerve at point th egun at Sam’s head. Sam smiled, the continued to get himself a bottle. With the gun pointed at his temple, Sam took the cork form the bottle with his teeth and drank. Carmen uttered a low scream which rose steadily in volume until it was a shriek. The hellish sound distracted Sam from his gag reflex and he was able to down nearly a whole bottle in one chug.
Randy muffled Carmen by pushing his forearm into her face with the arm he was point the gun at Sam. Sam dropped his bottle and made a show of putting his hands up. Though this was probably the first time Randy had held a gun to someone, this was by no means the first time Sam had been threatened with a gun.
Deliberately sam got another bottle. This one he drank more slowly and looked out at Medford at night. At a stop light they passed a cop. Sam raised his bottle to the cop, but the cab of the truck was so dark, he knew he was unseen. In jail he knew he’d not be able to drink. The trail would go on for months, maybe a year. Regardless wether he was found guilty or not, the whole thing would bea bummer. Maybe this time afterwards Sam would go through with AA. Find his higher power. Sam drank to that.
Pssing the local police station was a relief. He’d be handed over to the FBI. Sam had never had much of an interaction with federal procesutors. In Toppenish after both his gun battles, he was in the hospital while the investigation surrounding the circumstances of the shootings he was involved in were cleared up. Everyday was an adventure, Sam thought. The second bottle seemed spoiled. It was a white wine. He had to force each drink down.
Sam glanced quizicaly at Randy when he passed the last itnersection on StageCoach Road. He seemed to be headed towards the hills. The rain fell heavy on the windshield. Carmen was moaning low. Sam now wishe dhe hadn’t drank so much on an empty stomach. Especialy if he were to be excecuted. He’d have prefered his last moments on earth to not be filled with ridiculus thoughts. Sam decided to stare at Randy. Maybe he could annoy an anser out of him.
It worked. “Listen. When I stop the truck, I want to you to get out and stand by the road. The police are going to pick you up,” Randy said.
“What are you doing?” Carmen asked.
“This is the the guy. He killed my sister. This is the sick fuck,” Randy said through his teeth.
“How do you know?” Carmen asked.
Randy was silent again. It didn’t make sence. Why bring Carmen and why meet the law on a gravel road in the rain? Things weren’t looking good. Sam thoughtfuly sipped his bottle. Carmen looked at him with worried eyes. Sam shrugged and offered her the bottle. She quickly looked away.
Soon they turned off the road. The headlights of the truck lit up what looked like a small gravel quary. There were no other cars there. As Randy opened the truck door, a wave of warm rainy air filled the cab. Sam’s skin was crawling with syrupy stickiness. He hoped he’d get to linger in the rain. Randy backed out of the truck, gun aimed at them. See, he was aiming the gun at them, not just Sam. Randomly Sam remebered a TV investigative report where they said statisticly most pregnant women are murdered by the fathers of their kids. This was a gloomey Thought.
Carmen too was realizing the gun was aimed at her as well. Delicately she slid towards the door of the truck. She glanced back at Sam. In the low light of the dashboard Sam saw the glint in her eye. Sam imagined throwing his bottle at Randy, but in the cramped space of the truck cab, it would be akward. It would more resemble a toss and as Carmen was between the two of them, Sam worried she’d be shot first. Sam nodded that Carmen should get out. With a growl through the hole in his neck, he gurgled out the first words he’d spoken in almost a year. It was a hellsih sound, “I’ll kill him.”

Carmen dropped out of the truck. Randy backed away from her so he could cover Sam and her at the sam time. She winced as the rain fell on her face. Sam slid towards the truck door, pausing to slowly reach for another bottle.
“Leave it,” don’t fucking touch it,” Randy barked.
Sam moved slowly and ignored him. He like dthe idea of making him wait in the rain as he lingered in the dry truck. He uncorked the bottle with his teeth and drank. It was a red wine this time, which made Sam thankful. He had a nice little buz going. He slid out of the truck.
“Stand over there,” Randy yelled, pointing to an area directly in the headlights of the trucks. Sam put one finger up to indicated, ‘one second.’ He then uncerimoniously unzipped his pants and started urinating while leaning on the truck door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Randy said, trying to point the gun more adamantly at Sam. Sam took a swig from his bottle.
“Where are the police?” Carmen said. This caused Randy to point the gun at her. “Why the fuck are you point the gun at me?”
“Stand over there,” Randy said, pointing again at the spot in the headlights.
With one lob, sam heaved the bottle at Randy, hitting him square in the forehead. The bottle didn’t break, but it made a hollow ring as it bounced off his face. Randy fired a shot wildly into the dark and Sam tackled him.
Months in a hospital bed, followed by near prepetual starvation had made no fighet out of Sam, he quickly realized as Randy easily over powered Sam’s attempt to wrestle the gun away. In the dark and rain neither man could see what they were doing and they grabed and groped at each other.
Randy was quickly ontop of Sam. One shot rang out. Sam wondered who was hit. Following Randy’s arm with is hand, Sam found it was a stray shot and Randy was sitting up to shoot down on Sam’s head point blank. Sam grabbed at the gun and another shot rang out. This time Sam felt a powerful burn in his right hand. He held on as tight as he could. He could feel the gun rotating above his head to take aim at his face. With Sam’s good hand, he traced the form of the gun. He felt a six bullet champer. Probably 9mm. Three shots down, the odds were getting better. As the gun was nearly aimed at Sam’s face, he jerked the gun as best he could. The shot rang out and exploded in the rocks next to Sam’s right ear. The word became quieter and gentle ringing took over. Almost like being underwater in a pool.
Again Sam felt the Randypulling the gun back over Sam’s head. This time Sam decided to let Randy aim of a split second. The gun cam eto rest pointed down on Sam’s head. Sam again jerked. He heard half a gun shot this time. Deciding he was not dead, Sam surmized the bullet exploded next to his left ear this time.
With one bullet left, Sam stopped struggling. Randy would shoot him, then have none for Carmen. It was an almost corney thought, but laying there in the mud, Sam felt so tired. It had been months since Ellie had died, it had been years since he had been a sober stable person. Hell, it was his fualt Ellie was dead. Had he never met her, they’d never have gotten into all the trouble. She was such a small, fragile thing with a wild, powerful and sexual mind. She was so skinny too. It was almost uncomfortable to lay with her in bed. Her elbows were hard and pointed and her boney feet were cold. He wondered what her last thoughts were. She had spoken a lot of leaving Toppenish and starting over somewhere on the coast. A quiet town. Sam knew it was stupid to think he’d be with her in eternity. But living seemd like an eternity already. The idea of his head blown off seemed like a logical tonnic for the fatuige he felt every day.
Randy was breathing hard. He straightened up, the gun trained on Sam’s face. Through his distant thoughts, Sam saw the sillohette of Randy rise and disapear into the the rain. Sam ran his hands over his face. Though he’d not heard the final shot, he assumed it had happened. Randy must have thought he had Killed Sam. Sam sat up, bewildered. He looked around. There was no sign of Carmen or Randy. He stod and looked around the quarry. He was alone. He jumped into the truck and tore back out onto the main road. At first he heade dback towards town, peering into the rain. He put the bright beams on and tried to see into thenight on either side of the road. After a short drive he decide dthey must have gone the other way. Sam slamme don the brakes and spun around. A few yards past th eentrance to the quarry, his lights iluminated randy standing in the middle of the road. He was maybe thirty feet away. Randy glanced back at Sam and fired his gun. Sam followed with his eye the aim of the gun to th esid eof the road to see Carmen crumble.
Randy managed to leap to the side of the road as Sam accelerated towards him. Slamming on the brakes caused th etires to lock and skid in the raid and Sam went over the edge of the road and down the side of the mountain, end over end. The moment the truck stopped rolling Sam fumbled with the door. He was upsidedown now. The door wouldn’t open. He began kicking maddly at the glass. It finaly broke. In the blackness outside the window, Sam found branches to pull him self out with. Soon he was back up on the road and walking back. There was no moon, and the rain made it impossible to see anything. The rininging in Sam’s ears was deafening.
Catching a glimpse of movement on th eground, Sam noticed struggling bodies on the ground. Randy was ontop of Carmen, savegly beathing her with his fists. With all his might, like a pro football kicker, Sam kicked Randy in the side with all his might. Randy rolled off Carmen, stood and with one lunge, punched Sam square in the face, flattening him.
Sam staggered back to his feet to see Randy back ontop of Carmen, punching at her belly and face. Her smal white hands put up a flailing vuage protest in the night. Sam again kicked Rany with all his might, but he felt the blows he could deliver were lessening in strength. This kick barely nudged Randy. He again stood and punched Sam square in the face, causing him to go down.
The blackness was comfortable and Sam had to fight the urge to sleep as he stood again. He kicked Randyagain, trying aim for his balls. Randy again stood and Punched Sam in the face.
This time Sam couldn’t move. He watched Randy stand over him. Randy looked into th echamber of his gun. He then turned and walked towards the pick up. The lights of the pick up glowed from the side of the road. There must have been more bullets in the glove box. Sam tried to concentrait as Randy walked away. Everytime Sam blinked, it felt like a lovely little nap. It was the exact same feeling as falling asleep at the wheel. Half of him was filled with terror, the other half was just so dam sleepy.
Sam crawle don his hands and knees towards Carmen. She was disfigured. Her nose was flattend and her lower lip torn open. One of her eyes opened and saw Sam. Grabbing her by the sholders, Sam drug her off the side of the road and down the embankment. He knew her flesh tore with every sharp stone and branch, but the only escape Sam could imagine was down into the blackness.
Soon they came to the bottom of the slope and found themselves in moving water. Carmen held onto his arm with both hands. They lay and waited.

Perring up back at the road, Sam saw the beam of a flashlight scanning the surroudnings, down the embankment, then up the road. Randy was franticly searching for them. The beam jogged down hill and disapeared, but it quickly came back and jogged up the road. The beam scanned up the slope of the hill, then turned and surveyed the embankement they had crawled down. Sam and Carmen cowered low into the rushing water. Sam found and griped a Cantipole sized rock in his hand.
Randy made his way down towards them, scanning with his flashlight as he made his way. The light passed over Sam and Carmen, but did not stop. Randy crossed the stream less then ten feet upstream form them. Sam began to rize, rock in hand, but Carmen pulle dhim back down. Randy made his way back up the other side of the ravine for a while, his flashlight dimming with time. For a while he seemed to rest. He seemed to make to return to the road, not searching any longer. He recrossed the stream and crawled back up the hill. He disapered as he made it back to the road, but th ebeam of the flashlight was still visable.
Lightening stuck the hillside maybe a quarter mile away and in the brief flash, Sam could see Carmen writhing. An eternity passed. The occasional lightning strike showing Sam Carmen’s pain. Something was deeply wrong in her belly area. Sam took his rock and crawled back up the hill towards the road. There still remained a faint glow from Randy’s flashlight, though as Sam stood upright on the road now, he realized the flashlight was layingon the ground. Taking no chances, Sam muster the last of his adrenaline and and rushed where it looked like Randy was sitting and waiting. Kicking the side of Randy, Sam noticed Randy didn’t respnd. Picking up the the flashlight and aiming it at Randy, Sam saw he had shot himself. Randy looked as if he were coddling a child in his lap, or maybe a baby bird. It was his gun.
With the last battery power in Randy’s flashlight, Sam did his best to help Carmen though her misscaraige. Both of their grips on reality slipped and they did what they had to do. The water from the stream rushing around them was a blessing. Then stone faced, they both cried crawle dback up the road and staggered back towards town. By dawn they made it to a closed gas station with a pay phone. Sam called 911 and lef the reciever hanging.
Sam’s and Carmen’s eyes lingered on eachother’s for a while, then Sam turned and walked away.

It was a warm morning and by the time he had walked back to downtown Medford, Sam was dry. There was no trace of wine on him and his hearing was beginging to return. The city was clean and fresh smelling. The wind brough with it the smell of wet dirt and ripe fruit for mthe orrchards surrounding Medford. Before going to a check cashing store, Sam looked a this reflection in a a shop window. He black eyes were symetrical. He had no choice but to try to get out of town. Luckily his wallet and pay check were sealed in a zip lock bag and unaffected by the rain. He cashed his check with little dificulty. The fat woman behind the counter barely looked at him. He took his thick dry wad of cash and put it in his wallet. He then walked over to the buss depot. On the ticket counter was a pictuyre of the Misula Montana bus station. Aparently it had been recently renovated. Sam pointed at it.
“Do you want one for Misula?” the man at th ecoutner asked. Sam nodded yes.
Sam slept the entire way back to Portland, Oregon where he switched busses. Headed East on I-84 out of Portland, sun set on the wide columbia river. By night fall they passed the turn to Toppeneish and plunged deeper east, up the rockies. Sunrise found the bus pulling into Boseman Montana. Thought not at his destination, Sam stood and got off the buss. He walked down the avenue until he found himself a tiny dive bar. He sat on a bar stool and ordered a beer and three pickled aggs.
“Get in a fight?” the bartender asked as she presented Sam with his first meal in days. He nodded yes. “Mind if I watch the news?” she then asked. Sam wanted to scream no.
On cue the cable news station did a documentary recap of the Irene disapearance mystery. Sam shook his head in disbelief, but watched. It was comming up on three weeks since her disapearance. The many leeds the authorities had pursued hadn’t led to anything. The recent apparent suicide of Irene’s brother Randy further baffled investigators as he Randy had kille dhimself during an attempted double homicide. It was at first assumed the person who fled the scene of the suicide was the vagrant and prie supsect in Irene’s Porter’s disaperance but Randy’s suicide and Cermen Riviera’s version of events made it seem as if Sam was just accidently involved. This had not stopped the FBI form putting Sam as the number three most wanted man in America.
A panel of pundits then argued the case. A criminal psycology proffesor from some East Coast university wanted the police to look further into the man arrested on child pornography charges. Aperently he was obsessed with pornagraphic pictures Irene had taken of her self and posted o nthe internet on a fetish site devoted to food and sex. The sexual nature of the attack on Carmen Riviera made the reporter in a bad blue suit want to pin the murder on Randy Porter as part of an inscest cover up. Either way, it all looked bad for the winery which planned on having their Beaujolais festival as planned. Sam hat a pickled sausage and wondered if Boseman was the town for him. The bartender oblidged his inability to talk and wasn’t offended that he ordered by pointing. This could be his new haunt. For a long time he stared at nothing in paticular.
“Want another egg, honey?” the bartender asked.
Sam realized he had been staring at the eggs floating in the vinegar. He tried to laugh out loud. Looking at a paper, he saw he had two days to get back to Medford before the Beaujolais festival. He nodded yes, paid his tab and left the bar nibbling o nhis egg.

It was a long lonely bus ride back to Medford, filled with self doubt. There were no oblidging people with sleeping pills to quiet Sam’s mind. If Sam’s huntch were wrong, he decided it wouldn’t be bad to return and face the music anyway.
Sam walked the highway to the Porter Winery. The bus had arived in Medford with exactly one hour for him to get to the Beaujolais festival. The air was decidedly colder. During his brief absence, Medford had fallen headlong into fall. He aproached the winery throug hthe vinyard. There was solem music playing at the many atendees were dressed in black. Everyone had with them a wine glass full of the Beaujolais. Occasionaly people walked up to the large tank and help themselves to another glass.
Sam took a deep breath and walked right into the midst of the people. Everyone fell silent as he was recognized. Kasey Porter, the deceased and missings mother recognized him and screamed. Sam began unscrewing the large racking valve on the Beaujolais tank. A man Sam didn’t recognize tried to stop him. Sam pushed him down and continued to open the tank. Wine began to pour out onto the floor as he cracked the seal. He nearly had the valve open when a a woman in a black dress produced a taser form her purse and shocked Sam. He fell to the ground. Anothe rman sat on him.
“Call 911,” someone screamed.
“Close the tank!” another in the croud cried.
Stuggling to maintain sight of the tank, Sam barely saw a bystander trying to close the tank back up. But the fool was turnign th evalve the wrong way. The valve blew open and a torrent of wine and grapes shot out onto the floor. Amidst the grapes and wine was the bloated, but preserved body of Irene porter.

In the hysteria that followed the discovery of the body, Sam literaly got the shit kicked out of him. He lay on his side in the vile juice as random men in black pants and sports jackets kicked him. It was a quiet painless ordeal. It was just hard to breath. Sam didn’t defend himself from the blows. Order was finaly restored by the woman with the taser. She also had hand cuffs. It seemed as if she were some sort of undercover agent. She screamed at the party goers to go back outside of the winery.
“You are contaminating a crime scene,” she yelled.
She was a good looking broad, Sam thought as she tried not to touch the wine everywhere. She proped him up agains the tank and cuffed him to one of the legs. Her legs were strong and as Sam slumped down to the floor again, he saw up her dress. She produced a cell phone form her purse and called for back up. Many of the peopel from the party were in such a hurry to escape the corpse laiden wine, they sumpled and fell into it. There was much dry heaving and gagging. Sam focused on the officer in the black dress to try to keep concious. Exploring his mouth with his tounge, he flet his jaw was badly broken. His body was begining to hurt again and he had to fight the impulse to drink the wine on the floor. It had been years since Sam had had a mixed drink with ice in it, Sam thought. What a good time it would be to sit with a beautiful woman like that cop and have a mixed drink at a bar. Low light, maybe some prezles. As he watched the cop, she slipped and fell to one knee. She shuddered and stood up again quickly. She had ninteen fifties pin features. Very pretty. Sam passed out.

Handcuffed to his hospital bed, Sam thought it was funny his jaw was wired shut. He could barely use it anyway. Sam found Perry Mason on his little hospital bed TV. The morphine was making him very comfortable. The Perry Mason episode was the only origional Perry Mason filmed in color. The cars were beautiful.
“My name is officer Elizebeth Morgan.”
Sam looked up to see the woman who had arested him. She was in uniform now. It may have been th emorphine, but she was gorgeous.
“I would like to speak to you. You are entitled to a lawyer if you want,” she said.
Sam shrugged.
“I took the case over from the Medford PD. I don’t know if you heard the officers working on the case before were fired for selling the movie rights to their story.”
Sam soundlessly laughed.
“I found the sign in sheet from the Seattle AA meeting the day Irene disapeared. You are no longer a suspect.”
Sam looked thoughtful. He began to suspect he had lost his grip on sanity. He tried to not look at the TV, but he couldn’t help himself.
“So it’s an accidental death for Irene Porter.”
A comercial break freed Sam attention to consider officer Morgan. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail. She had silver hooped ear rings.
“You could have called the police and had them check the tank,” she said with a note of disgust.
Sam shook his head. The image of that wonerful mixed drink came back to mind. Maybe a Manhattan with a cherry. With a jolt, a though occured to him. He found a pad of paper on the table next to him. “I want my reward,” he wrote.

Sam had attained a cult status during he hospital recouperation. He was profile din the local papers, his role in this case and his exploits prior. He was arainged on obstruction of justice charges, but they were dropped when his court appointed lawyer threatened to show case the local police departments ineptitude. The city decided Medford had had enough negative press and threw the charges out.
Sam was wheeled out of the hospital in a wheel chair to a rainy Novemebr day. His leg was in a cast and his jaw was still wired shut. He did have a medical issue straw, and he was hell bent on using it. The orderly asked him if he’d be ok alone, Sam nodded and began hobbling toward town.
A man in a mini van full of kids stopped and offered him a ride. He took it. The kids stared at his cast and wired face. With hand motions, Sam directed the van to a hotel at the base of the freeway viaduct. Sam shook th eman’s hand and hobbled his way into the hotel bar. He poitned at the Jameson bottle and a lovely young lady poured him a stiff shot. Sam thoughtfully sipped it through his straw.