Isn't It Romantic?

“Too manys they hang on one vine. She has only the few nutrients to give.” Abruptly but expertly, Pierre began snagging grape leaves away. “And you are letting the canopy grow too thick. You are keeping the sunlight off the grape clusters.”

“And that’s why they’re so hard and tannic?”

Pierre, agreeing, tore off more leaves. “The shade is bad for. The grape mold he likes the humid and da

rk.”

Owen, joining in the harvesting, asked, “You think we have prospects, though?”

Working ahead, Pierre said, “I don’t know this . . . prospeck?”

“Hope,” Owen said.

Pierre picked a pliant grape and bit into it, shutting his eyes as he tasted the tones and inflections of its juice. He was studious, doctoral, then impressed. “We have hope.” Tearing away more grape leaves and then looming sunflowers, he finally opened up the vineyard enough that he could accidentally view across the water the saddled horses Shep and Ida as they minced their way down to Frenchman’s Creek and drank with equine delicacy. Higher up the hillside, in the loam and shade, Dick Tupper was snapping out with great earnestness a picnic blanket that seemed as red as passion and Pierre’s erstwhile fiancée was looking on with fondness, her loose hair softly rippling like Frenchman’s Creek on a sultry August wind.

23

Imitating prestidigitation, Dick reached deep into his picnic basket and produced two baguettes, any number of cheeses, ripe strawberries and pears, a Château Latour 1992, and Tiffany glassware and plates. “Wanted you to feel right at home,” he said. Including all of nature in his widened arms, he said, “Chez Richard’s.”

Natalie knelt with him on the blanket, sinking into the soft cushion of grass. “J’aime beaucoup les pique-niques.” (I like picnics very much.)

“I have somethin’ I wanted to show ya.” And from the picnic basket he pulled out a zip-locked bag. Inside it was an old journal that he opened as carefully as an Empire butter-fly’s wings before handing it across to her. With a waiter’s screw he twisted out the cork in the Château Latour as he said, “Journal that the Frenchman kept when he was trapping yonder, once upon a time. Had it handed down to me from my great-grandfather. Mrs. Christiansen read it to us in school.”

Natalie read aloud, “Je suis heureux de . . .”

“Afraid you’ve got the advantage of me,” Dick said.

Natalie translated: “‘I am happy to flee an old, tired world, its stomach sour with spite and corruption. In this land I feast on sunshine and wind, wide horizons I cannot reach, skies so full of stars they are on fire. With joy I feel the teeth of ice, the scourging rain, the sun that sears my skin into copper.’”

She was touched. She turned a few pages. While Dick poured wine for her, she translated, “‘My lust was once like weather—fleeting, insistent, little understood. In this wilderness I have density, quiet, and meaning. Here I am never alone. At night the wind tells stories. Nor do I lack for books when I can read the changing plot of the skies.’” She paused. “It’s beautiful.”

Dick surveyed the wide countryside of his residence. “Yes, it is.”

She handed the journal back to Dick but he wouldn’t have it. “I’d like you to keep it,” he said.

Cherishing it against her chest, she said, “Oh, merci! Merci beaucoup!” She hesitated. “Mais non! It is too precious. An heirloom. You have kept it in your family for so many years.”

“Kinda like to keep it there. In the family, I mean.”

She understood his implication. She was perplexed.

With some embarrassment at his forwardness, Dick settled onto his elbow and observed her. Natalie demurely declined her head and considered the open palms that were so passive in her lap, as if they were inked with questions that required immediate attention. A stone was nagging his side and his free hand scoured underneath the picnic blanket to find it and toss it toward Frenchman’s Creek.

They heard a tell-tale whimper from Pierre.

Natalie got up with consternation and saw Pierre’s linebacker build and his wetly see-through Jockey briefs, water swiftly rushing around his ankles, holding his hurt head and weakly smiling in his shame at trying to spy on them. She asked, “Es-tu blessé?” (Are you hurt?)

With sudden energy Pierre tore at some fledgling willow trees near the horses. Heavy dirt clods were attached to the roots. “Weeds everywhere!” he said. “I have been taking down them.”

“High time someone took care a that,” Dick said.

Pierre had no idea what to do with the saplings so he pitched them to the side and hit Owen. They heard a groan from him as he stood from his hiding place, also in his sop-ping underwear and not a pretty sight. Owen penitently smiled and said, “We’re just cleaning up.” And then he foremanned Pierre. “Looks like we’re about finished here, mon frère.”

“C’est vrai,” Pierre said. (It’s true.) And he scowled at his fiancée. “Nous avons fini.” (We are finished.)

Owen and Pierre sloshed back to Owen’s vineyard.

Natalie faced Dick and knew that all that was about to be said—the hurtful I cannot, the healing Wish I could—was at the moment impossible to bring up. “We have to talk,” she said. “But not here.”