Sour Puss (7 page)

“Not going to be their year. In fact, it isn’t going to be their year for years.” Blair, no Orioles fan, enjoyed tweaking his former neighbor.

“Ha. You just wait,” Harry defiantly replied.

“Well, I think the Kansas City Royals will surprise everyone,” Tracy declared.

“Yeah, by being at the bottom of the barrel.” Herb paused between bites.

“Those are fighting words, Rev.” Tracy lifted his forefinger.

“Dodgers.” Alicia had season tickets for years and used to go to the games with Cary Grant. She didn’t say that, as it would have been bragging. She liked Grant enormously and one reason was he had learned baseball, no easy task for an Englishman. He also took pains to explain cricket to her, and she found she quite liked it.

“They may be a factor,” Jim said judiciously.

Once Herb, himself, reached dessert, the conversation turned to the panel discussion and terrorism in general, which they discussed for some length.

“Just think if someone contaminates the reservoirs that supply New York City. They could strike down, potentially, twenty-two million people between nine
A
.
M
. and five
P
.
M
.,” BoomBoom added to the lively topic.

“Those are obvious targets,” Alicia commented. “They’ll strike us where we aren’t looking.”

“Exactly,” Big Mim agreed. “Imagine if chemical-warfare specialists find a way to release a fungus that could make us sick? Not something that would kill immediately but something that would make people sick. It would incapacitate the sick, tie down the people caring for them, and damage the economy, too.”

Harry added her two cents. “That’s what was so fascinating about the panel: how common the types of fungus are that infect wheat, corn, grapes even. All of these could be used.”

“Terrorists would use grapes?” Tazio’s eyes widened.

Jim answered Tazio. “No, but let’s say wheat becomes tainted. It passes on to humans. That’s a one–two punch. But let’s suppose our enemies are far more subtle than that. Let’s say they infect hay, grass, crops. Cattle eat them. The meat becomes dangerous, and Americans consume huge quantities of beef. Meanwhile, thousands and thousands of cattle are eating poisoned grasses before the sickness can be traced to the source.” Jim took a deep breath. “Now you have humans, cattle, medical people, and crops being destroyed or rendered useless for a time. You get the idea.”

“I do. Become a vegetarian.” Susan broke the mood of worry.

“Right. Drink wine, not water.” Blair held up a glass.

9

A
fter the luncheon, back at the farm, Harry walked through the quarter acre she’d planted with Petit Manseng, a grape used in Jurançon, perhaps the most famous of the white wines of southwestern France. She’d planted the rootstock herself in November, which would allow root growth over the winter. She planted each bare root eight feet from another. Her rows were also eight feet apart. She really wouldn’t know until the growth spurt in high spring whether she had correctly spaced the vines.

She kept to the golden mean of spacing for grapes and hoped she was doing right by the Petit Manseng.

Naturally, as this was the first year, she didn’t expect much. With help from Patricia and Bill and Felicia Rogan, she had settled on Petit Manseng because the small white grape stayed on the vine longer than most other types. This bumped up the sugar content even as it pushed down the acidity. Jurançon, at the foot of the Pyrenees, bears similarity to western Albemarle County. That helped Harry decide. But on one-quarter acre, once the vines were established, she should produce one ton of grapes, which translated into fifty cases or six hundred bottles. One barrel of oak is the equivalent of twenty-five cases.

Watching her pennies, Harry cultivated one-quarter acre at a cost of five thousand dollars and prayed all would be well, because, for her, that was a big outlay of cash.

She begged old oaken barrels from Patricia Kluge. One of the surest ways to produce inferior-tasting wine was too much oak. Although not a winemaker, she was a country girl and a quick study.

She loved agriculture. She liked growing grapes, but the expenses preyed on her natural financial caution. Reviving the Alverta peach orchard kept her on solid ground. And she kept her mother’s pippin apple orchard flourishing. Fortunately, apples and grapes flourish with the same soil, water, sun conditions.

Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter followed her as she bent down to check the shoots emerging from the trunks. A few warm weeks, when the air reeked with heavenly fragrances from apple trees, viburnas, different varieties of scented bushes, and these babies—she thought of them as babies—would surprise everyone with their vigorous growth.

She stood up, casting her eyes over the farm. In the paddocks the foals—true babies—dozed, and her heart melted each time she looked at the horses.

The hay peeped up, spring green, a tender color promising life, nutrition.

Her two acres of various sunflower types also glowed spring green, except for the Italian sunflowers, which she’d just planted. The sun warmed the afternoon to the mid-fifties. Her ancient three-ply cashmere crewneck sweater with darning spots served her well. Harry could never throw anything out that might be useful even one more day.

Once a year, Susan, Miranda, and BoomBoom would descend upon her to throw out tattered things. Her sock drawer alone took a half hour. She’d try to hang on to a threadbare sock by declaring it could be used to hold catnip.

The cats didn’t care how they received their catnip, so long as it was forthcoming.

A car turned onto the farm road.

Tucker barked,
“Intruder!”

A curly-haired, extroverted Bo Newell showed up. “Harry. I’ll only be a minute.” He checked his watch. “It’s two-thirty, so I’ll be out of here by two forty-five.” Then he laughed.

“Do you think he has Miss Prissy in the car?”
Pewter hated Bo’s ancient cat, who was fond of travel and arguments.

“She tore up the leather upholstery in Nancy’s Thunderbird. She’s grounded.”
Mrs. Murphy related this story with undisguised glee, for Miss Prissy had ruined Mrs. Newell’s new sports car.

“Why doesn’t she just die, she’s so damned old?”

“Tucker, why doesn’t Aunt Tally die? They’re too mean.”
Pewter giggled.

“What’s cooking?” Harry asked the muscular Realtor.

“I’ve got clients from Belgium. They want me to find a farm with soil suitable for grapes. I tell you, I can’t sell land that grows grapes fast enough. The word is finally out on Virginia wine. Obviously, a lot of time the best pieces are between friends. I’m trying to keep one step ahead of Rollie Barnes.” He rubbed his hands together. “You haven’t heard of anyone getting ready to sell, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“What about Aunt Tally? She’s sitting on nine hundred acres at Rose Hill. The windows are gone in some of those outbuildings. Course, they’re stone; they’ll outlast all of us, as will Aunt Tally.”

“They look blind, those buildings.” Harry leaned over the hood of his car. “She’s not going to part with an acre. You know, Urquharts buy land, they never sell it. Now that Little Mim and Blair are going to live there after they’re married, she won’t surrender an inch.”

“Well, I wouldn’t, either.” He exhaled through his nostrils. “This couple has big bucks, too.”

“I’ll sniff around.”

“You’ve got a good nose.” Bo’s light eyes complemented his handsome features. “What do you think about Arch taking over Spring Hill Vineyards?”

“Well,” she considered this question, one Fair had scrupulously not asked. “If Rollie lets him alone, he’ll make it one of the best vineyards in the state, for starters. Arch is an ambitious man.”

“So is Rollie.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if he has the sense to leave people alone to do what they do best. Some people can’t stop meddling.”

“Big Mim.” He half-smiled. “Although, in her defense, she improves most situations.”

“And she gives out cookies.”
Tucker appreciated Big Mim’s generosity toward dogs.

“No tuna.”
Pewter sniffed.

Before she could complain more, the blue jay, who had been perched on the stable cupola, opened wide his beautiful wings, lifted off his pretty perch, and dove straight for Pewter. He zoomed within an inch of Pewter’s wide-domed skull.

“Fat ass!”
he screamed, his squawk raucous.

“Jesus Christ.” Bo jumped.

Harry jumped too. “Blue jay on steroids. He torments the cats.”

“Cats? What about me?” Bo looked skyward.

Pewter ran under the shadow of the bird, who was gaining altitude. Mrs. Murphy ran, too.

“I will kill you!”
Pewter raged.

The saucy fellow turned a graceful arc, then zoomed toward the two felines, who crouched. Sensibly, he did not go as low as his initial surprise attack. The cats leapt in the air, Mrs. Murphy higher than Pewter.

“Worthless. Worthless as tits on a boar.”
He then reclaimed his perch on the cupola, where he sang loudly to the world.
“I am the mightiest bird in the kingdom, in the universe. I fear no one.”

Harry and Bo stared up at him, his chest puffed out, his beak open. He ranted and sang. A low
“hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo”
should have alerted him, but his pride and volume blocked out Flatface’s pronounced irritation.

Awakened by his song, which was harsh to her musical ears, Flatface ruffled her feathers. She slept in the cupola. Harry had fixed it so Flatface could nest up there. She could fly through the loft barn doors, which Harry usually left open at least a crack, even in winter. Also, one side of the cupola was opened enough for her to get in and out. Silence, big talons, a frightening beak, and remarkable intelligence are the weapons of all owls but are heightened in the great horned owl.

Flatface, furious, flew out from the cupola. The blue jay didn’t hear her until she closed over him, grasping him in her talons.

“Drop him on me,”
Pewter shrieked with excitement.

“Holy shit.” Bo was mesmerized.

“Flatface lives in the cupola. I think he plucked her last nerve.” Harry breathlessly watched the drama.

Flatface, slowing, opened her wings wide and opened her talons, dropping the blue jay about six feet over Pewter’s head. Mrs. Murphy danced on her hind legs.

The blue jay, feathers scattering, plummeted toward the two awaiting cats. He managed to open his wings and pull out of the free fall just as Pewter snatched at him.

Her reward was some exquisite tail feathers.

The blue jay hurried away as Flatface flew back into the barn.
“That will shut his trap,”
she said as she nestled in her cupola.

Simon, who watched from the hayloft doors, called up,
“You showed him.”

The blacksnake, Matilda, emerged from her nest in the back hay bales—she had laid eggs in a depression next to her nest. She cast a glittering eye at Flatface, then another at Simon before returning to her place. She was old and accordingly large, as fat around as a big man’s wrist. Being a reptile, she lacked sociability. She did not, however, lack fangs, and although nonpoisonous, a deep bite from her jaws could send a human into shock. Thanks to Matilda and Flatface, not one mouse twaddled about in the hayloft. The cats might have a deal with the tack-room mice, but as far as Matilda and Flatface were concerned, one mouse equaled one hors d’oeuvre.

Matilda did say,
“Good work.”

Flatface turned her head almost upside down and winked.

Outside, the humans, cats, and dog were still talking about the blue jay’s comeuppance.

“Near-death experience.” Harry was on the side of her cats.

“I know some people who need a near-life experience.” Bo chuckled. “Like Toby Pittman. One weird dude.”

“Maybe he wears his weirdness on the outside. The rest of us wear it on the inside.”

“I hope that means you’re kinky.”

“Bo, you think about one thing.” Harry laughed at him.

“Know anything else that’s as much fun?”

“Mmm. I’ll give that deep thought.” She waited a moment. “What do you think about Arch coming here from California?”

“Hell of a deal at his age to be responsible for a large operation. But I think he came back for you, too.”

This startled Harry. “Why? Over is over.”

“For some people; not for others,” Bo wisely replied. “You know, he didn’t know you were getting remarried. You’d think someone would have e-mailed him.”

“Maybe.” Harry thought a long time. “But my experience is men don’t usually keep up with relationships. Arch’s only friend here, if you can call him that, is Toby. All his old buddies are in Blacksburg or down in Chatham where he was raised.”

Bo checked his watch. “I lied. I’ve been here longer than fifteen minutes. Must be the company.” He climbed back into his SUV, perfect for showing clients country properties. “Keep me in mind, now, if you hear of anything.”

“I will.”

He closed the door, started the engine, rolled down the window. “Damnedest thing, that owl. Isn’t that the way, though? I mean, something just hits you, right out of the blue?”