Vineyard

Even now there is a terraced hillside in the mountains, and the arbors that stripe its face are heavy with grapes, and the hillside shivers with the industry of bees. At the foot of the hill are the winery, and the storehouses, and a greenhouse which holds a stand of cane for making baskets.

And in the late summer his sons and daughters fill the baskets with grapes as they descend the terraces, so that they arrive at the winery just as their burdens become unbearable, and they crush the grapes and add to the day’s wine before returning to the top of the hill with their empty baskets to make another journey.

There is a modest house at the crest of the hill, with white shutters and a great stone kitchen where his wife sings to herself in the day, and where his sons and daughters rest in the evening on the cool stone floor. And at times, he reads to them out of his books in a clear slow voice, and teaches them to love beauty, and courage, and work. And at times, they sing songs, or play games, and sometimes he lets them win, and sometimes he loses outright.

In later life, each of his children would remember the day’s last march upward to home, and the ache of honest toil, and the dust on their feet and hands and faces. And as the sun would set the house would lean dark against the flaming sky, but the door would stand open, and the shadow of their mother would fill it, taking them in and setting them to rest.

—

And when they had lived there a year, he gathered his family to him, and they stood at the top of the hill, and he opened the first bottle of wine they had made, and he spoke a prayer.

This wine we scatter to the wind, to give thanks to God Who is everywhere, for bringing us to the land.

This wine we spill upon the earth, to remember those whose feet brought us here, and whose sweat fed the land before we arrived.

This wine we drink, to make us part of the land, that we may know its blessings and responsibilities, that we may do right by it, and it may keep us, and our children, and our children’s children.

—

In the afternoon he walked among his grapes, and he read them as carefully as a lawyer, and he prayed. His hand brushed a bee from his face, and he whispered his loves to the land, and the land took them in. His wife watched him from the window of the great stone kitchen until she could watch no more and she ran down the hill to him, with her soft linen dress gathered up in one hand, and the other outstretched for balance.

And in the winery, his children looked up through the window, and they stopped making wine and stepped outside to see him twirling her and catching her, dancing with great care and skill to a song no one else could hear, he in his linen suit and she in her dress among the purple fruit and broad greens. And, because they had not seen this before, the children looked at one another, until the eldest son broke the spell. “Well damn,” he said, “the old man can dance.”

gauche
29 Jul 05