Chapter 22: Harvest Day

The first light came up pink over the Cabernet rows, and forty people stood in the dirt with clippers and plastic bins, waiting for me.

I had a pair of curved clippers, a canvas hat and a headlamp that kept sliding down my forehead.

"Cut above the cluster, not through it," the foreman said, standing at my elbow. "Hold it like an egg."

I cut it, and a heavy blue-black cluster dropped into my palm.

It was cold with dew, and smelled like grape juice and earth.

Forty people cheered.

I put the bunch in the bin, and my eyes stung, which was ridiculous.

"Now do the rest," said the foreman. "Four hundred acres."

"It's twelve."

"It feels like four hundred by noon."

By seven, I understood what he meant.

My back ached, my fingers were sticky to the wrist, and a wasp had tried to get into my sleeve.

Up the row, Chandler was hauling a full bin to the trailer, red in the face, with his sleeves rolled up.

The girl from the tasting room worked beside me and kept up a murmured commentary on everyone.

"He's the one who dropped a whole tray yesterday," she said, tipping her head at Chandler. "He said sorry to the tray."

"He's learning."

"I like him better dirty," she said. "He used to look like a lawyer."

I laughed so hard I cut the wrong stem.

At nine somebody said "Morning, boss" from the next row.

I looked up.

Malcolm stood three vines down, in an old canvas shirt and a pair of clippers he had obviously owned for years.

"Who put you in my row?" I said.

"The foreman. He said you'd given orders."

"I did not."

"He said you'd given them with your eyebrows."

The old man was examining a vine very carefully, thirty feet away, with a grin he couldn't hide.

I looked at Malcolm for a long moment.

"Cut where I cut," I said. "Don't talk."

"I never talk in a vineyard."

"You've done nothing else for three weeks."

"That," he said, "was a different kind of vineyard."

By noon we had the whole block.

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