The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Punch-Down

I picked up his pen.

Dex grinned, that same smug smirk from the crush pad in August when he thought he'd won.

I clicked the pen shut and set it back on his letterhead.

"No," I said.

"You don't get to say no to this."

"I just did. You want to show the auction a forgery, show them. I'll be standing right there."

I turned around.

Three men in rubber boots turned with me.

At my fence the kid said, "Ma'am, I don't have a job anymore."

"I know. Come with me."

Augie stood on his crush pad with his arms crossed and looked at the three of them for a long time.

"Can you drive a forklift without hitting anything?"

"Yes, sir," said the kid.

"He can't," said the oldest one.

"Can you punch down a cap at two in the morning without whining?"

"I've been doing it for her for seven years," said the oldest one. "She whines more than we do."

Augie looked at me.

"That's true," I said.

"Fine. My cabernet's in tanks one through three, and I'm tired." He pointed at the kid. "You. If you hit my tanks, you pay for the tanks."

So by the first week of October the cellar across the road was louder than it had ever been.

Three men from Arnott, two from Augie's crew, and a nine-year-old foreman.

My Old Block was pressed and in barrel in the back of Augie's cave, fifty-eight barrels with KESSEL chalked on every head.

On Thursday afternoon I taught Goldie to punch down.

She stood on an upturned crate on the catwalk with the steel plunger, which was taller than she was.

She pushed.

The cap didn't move.

She pushed harder, and her rain boots slid on the crate, and the oldest Arnott man grabbed the back of her overalls without looking up from his clipboard.

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