Owen strolled over to handle the cash transaction, and Pierre went inside to rinse his mouth out. And when he got out to the gas pumps again, he saw he’d accidentally spit on a paper bag of sandwiches that Owen had intended to share with him. Owen got one out and painfully offered the dripping mess to him, saying, “Hungry?”
Pierre shook his head.
“Help me then.”
Owen got on a step stool and half-disappeared inside a truck on a hoist as Pierre sort of watched him, lazily holding various tools. On the garage wall was a sign that read: ANYONE FOUND AROUND HERE AT NIGHT WILL BE FOUND AROUND HERE IN THE MORNING. Owen was, for the instant, wholly absorbed in his work. He said, “Hand me those vice grips there, mon négociant.”
Yawning and guessing, Pierre handed him some gloves. A dribble of oil spattered his face from above.
Owen, seeing the gloves, said, “Yep, that’s close: vice grips/gloves. I can see that.”
Owen bent to get the tool for himself as Pierre sought something to wipe his face with. Hanging on the garage wall was a giant white towel that he used, and then he saw, to his horror, that it had emblazoned on it a bold red “N,” and below that “National Champs, 1994.” With panic, he scrubbed at the towel with his shirttail, but when he found he’d only widened the smudge, he folded and hung the memento in such a way that the oil stain would hardly show.
Inside the truck Owen said, “Romance! Young love! The hectic valences of the heart! When I see the way you two bill and coo, I question the bachelor’s life of solitude and higher purpose that my vocation as a vintner has forced me to choose.”
Pierre asked, “Which two?”
Owen said, “You two, of course. But then I think, ‘Oh, boy, Owen! Can’t you just see yourself skimping on the petit verdot because little Oweena needs braces?’”
“I am not understanding . . .”
Owen answered, “You’re in love, pardner! Whole lotta things are gonna be gettin’ by you.” Owen pulled something unidentifiable loose from the underside of the chassis and there was a disconcerting rain of bolts and washers on the garage floor. Owen got out of the engine and happily held the thing up in front of Pierre before going off with it. A hammering could be heard that seemed absurdly energetic.
Pierre walked under the truck engine and just to be doing something idly fiddled with a nut on the oil pan. Immediately the oil pan spurted a leak and he frantically tried to stop it.
Owen yelled over his own banging, “Aunt Opal told me all about it. And don’t think we humble Husker fans aren’t honored you and your inamorata chose Seldom to be hitched in.”
Pierre held both hands to the source. Black oil crawled out between his fingers and eddied over his bandaged wrists. “Hitched?” he asked. “I do not know this word.”
“Conjugal bliss!” Owen called. “The nuptial bond! The hymeneal rites of summer!”
“I am Confucius,” Pierre said.
Owen corrected him. “Confused, my friend.”
“C’est juste. Confus-ed.”
“Well, cold feet’s only natural,” Owen said. He hammered some more. “And we are going to cure it with one of Doctor Owen’s famous Friday-night-infantile-drinking-games-and-foods-galore bachelor parties. Hijinks, jokes, plenty of beer, and sober words of wisdom from some of the least useful guys in a workable radius around here. The whole thing’s gonna go as smooth as cruise control on a Cadillac.”
Pierre took his hands from the oil plug experimentally, and a huge gout of oil drained out over his shirtsleeves before he stuck his thumb up inside the oil pan again. Woefully, he looked to Owen. He heard something ring off and ricochet from the hammering. Owen muttered, “Oh, damn.”
20
And yet, an hour later Owen and Pierre were spiffed up and at the fairgrounds in tuxedos, Pierre’s bandages off, suavely walking past the booths and Weird Animals exhibit just as Mrs. Christiansen and Natalie had on Thursday. Pierre lagged behind to give the Afghan hound a look. Owen pulled him along and walked Pierre inside the food tent. Immediately there was utter silence from the forty tuxedoed but, truth be told, farmerish would-be wine connoisseurs and onlookers at folding tables on which wines, wineglasses, and spittoons were placed.
Owen announced, “Permettez-moi de vous présenter, Monsieur Pierre Smith, négociant extraordinaire.” Hearing silence, he offered as an aside to Pierre, “Tough crowd.”
On a front table were many bottles of homegrown Nebraska wines. Pierre rotated some of them to scrutinize their labels: Owen’s own “Big Red,” but also “Côte du Silo,” “Domaine Diddly-squat,” “Chateau Sorta-Roth-childish,” “Henrietta’s Grand Vino,” and “Property of the Googler Family.” Pierre blanched, but then Owen was escorting him up to the dais and whispering, “We’d like you to kind of walk us through how a wine tasting oughta go, just in case we haven’t been doing it right.”
“Sure.”
Owen sat. Pierre scanned a skeptical crowd as he poured the first wine into his glass and held it up in front of his face. “We first look at the color.”
All stared in a surly way.
“We do not want to see clouds, or sediment, or . . .” He couldn’t think of the word in English.
“Grape skins?” Owen guessed.