-
A Swiss Vintner in the Land of Muscadines
- Northwestern University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
91 A Swiss Vintner in the Land of Muscadines Autumn, 1882: A Letter to His Brother in the Old Country It’s Sunday morning on St. Mary’s Mountain, the Ozark sunrise a wet watercolor of pink and blue, a hawk’s call the harshest sound. Last year, I crossed the swamp without a solitary dollar to rustle in my palm, and now I stand on my own wine-growing ground, a thousand feet above the valley’s hardwood bottomland, patchwork fields of sorghum cane and whitening cotton, the silver slither of the river. Twining through my cloud-hooded woods are wild whiskery vines bearing grapes called muscadines, “musky dimes” in local speech, some as big around as a five franc piece. Their shiny skins black and dotted, they’re like little candied planets, night-coated and flecked with stars. After a punishing summer, only here and there have I found a shriveled one, what they call a “mummy dime.” Honeysuckle, akebia, and other floral immigrants strangle trees, but muscadine goes easy on its host, tendrils clinging tightly then lightly before they rot off altogether, fresh growth braceleting the branch further upward. 92 This is musky dime time, the cool of autumn blowing in. Ozarkers gather dimes by the basketful. Careless of stains, boys hold their shirts out to bag them. I found these grapes September a year ago. When I walked into the woods, their musky smell came over me like memory somehow mine though not yet made. A young man and woman were laughing, eating from a loaded vine. Playing coy, she ran away, dashing under high trees, her scarlet hair aflicker, muscadines squelching under her bare white feet. He caught her in a tumbling kiss, their lips doubtless tingling from the acid of the grapes. Pure sin to watch, I know. I must be shriven soon. But could you have looked away when he kissed her purple-blotched feet? Glad boy bandits came yowling past me, chucking dimes at one another. One boy, a grape whirring toward his head, made a mad leap for a muscadine rope and swung across a ravine. They called a truce and ate themselves weary, tongue-threshing, spitting seeds and skins. My curious hand tendriling the silver-smooth wood of muscadine, I didn’t think of jelly, hull pie, candied skins, not even wine. All asizzle with boyhood, wanting nothing but a taste, I shuffled through the leaves and plucked a pretty one, dropped it sun warm in my mouth. [44.223.40.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:54 GMT) 93 When I bit, it gushed on my tongue and slid loose down my throat. I tasted all the musk and sugar of ripening night, of a wild girl rolling through the ticklish weeds alone. Down to skin, I tongued its inner lining for the sweetest juice and tenderest flesh. For muscadines, so thick and tough the hulls, our grape dance needs emphatic feet; it might not work at all. We’ll see. Did you catch that “we”? Tell me something, brother. Are you at home at home? Unfolding Europe on my desk tonight, I tried to dream away the distance, but looking at that wrinkled map, varicose with rivers, I could say “Old World.” Come. I invite you with a quill a hawk wafted my way. If you’re vacillating, hold this paper to your face and smell: I’m using the blood of muscadines for ink. ...