Slide - Kyle Beachy [103]
The woman appeared from behind me and took her seat again at the table. It occurred to me that any wine I ordered might be dosed with something.
“You want to know what you remind me of?”
“Yeah, I've decided no wine. I need to find this woman, and if you're not going to help me I'd like to be referred to someone who might.”
“Okay,” she said, and shifted her gaze to the valley. I looked at my shoes on the ground. I had known the plan was not going to be easy—the plan required focus and fortitude. The plan was to.
“What do I remind you of?” I asked.
“The way a dog looks at you sometimes and you know it wants something but you have no idea what.”
“Or a child,” I said. “A baby.”
She shrugged. “That's a real man thing to say. I don't mean that badly, but babies only want two or three things. The hardest part is birth. After that it all gets easier.”
“So you have kids?”
“Look at the sun,” she said. “It looks like one of those Super Balls.”
I had become distracted. I focused on the plan.
I picked up my shoes and walked to the edge of the patio. A long brick stairway led me down into the valley. Row upon row of plants. I began down one of these rows of neck-high plants, walking a strip of grass only a little wider than my shoulders. The ground was harder than I expected and felt too dry to grow anything. I almost never went barefoot, and my feet against the grass looked suspiciously like hands.
Some of the men and women here among the vines were crouched, holding shears. Others carried buckets of grapes in each hand, passing me with a steady smile and a nod. I saw a woman stop at one of the grape pickers and hand him something from out of a canvas bag. Water. I recalled the work of my most difficult delivery of the summer, unloading those bottles into the cellar with those two men in pale-blue collared shirts. I thought of their willingness to help and the diligence with which they'd worked.
The grapes hanging from vines were alive with dust. A trellis system supported the vines, anchored by stakes set into the earth at regular intervals of exactly two natural steps. I kept going. I saw a tour group coming toward me and cut across a row to avoid the sound of their crass, outside-world chatter. I smiled at two cultists who were categorically not Ian's mother, working on an irrigation system. I kept walking deeper into the vineyard and soon reached what appeared to be a perimeter of sorts, where the rows of plants stopped and a field of barely kempt grass began. Turning back, I saw the Irenia building far in the distance, along with a figure slowly making its way down the aisle. Sun perched up there like some massively dispersed searchlight. Of course it was Opal coming toward me, a propane lamp in one hand. I considered my plan and turned back to the western reaches of the property. There was activity out there; I could see tiny bodies moving out in the field, a truck approaching them from the north.
“It's okay,” she said. “You're allowed to go out there.”
Plans, what they say about them. I had hoped to find Mrs. Worpley in the Irenia building, somewhere closer to my car. Stepping into the field of grass would take me one ring farther from escape. Opal's eyes were deer eyes, wide and vague, but without suspicion.
“There has to be a leader,” I said. “Someone who sleeps with the women and runs the meetings.”
“That's a bit crass. Nobody here has to sleep with anyone unless they want to.”
With her head cocked she looked younger than I'd initially thought, and this was the sort of thing on which one could easily dwell, and there was no time for dwelling. If the sun was to be trusted, it was getting on into late afternoon.
“I need to find Mrs. Worpley You don't seem to want to help. Fine. But I have to think whoever your leader is might.”
“You're wrong. I want to help. He's out there working with everyone else. He's the hardest worker I ever met. That's the point. But he's also willing to speak. He'll answer your questions.”
Somehow I had entered into a world of assumed names or sheer namelessness. Opal this