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7. Imperial
- University of Nevada Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
< 67 = s e v e n # Imperial In the late afternoon, when the hot sun broadened over the Santa Clara Valley, Paul Tourneau drove down from Beau Pays to retrieve his son. As the road passed through the outlying blocks of vines, he automatically looked for signs of trouble in the green foliage. In his mind, the vineyard was always at risk. This time of year, he was watching for the gray blotches on leaves that might mean mildew, or yellow spots caused by leafhoppers, or the red mottling from spider mites, or the metallic brown scabs that could be left by feeding thrips. Even from the cab of the dusty Ford truck, he scanned the mantle of leaves, and turned his full attention to the road only after he’d crossed the bounds of the vineyard. Tourneau thought that Gill would be returning home just when he was most needed. The vineyard had two mortgages laying over it, and the costs of making fine wines during Prohibition had exceeded income for several years. He found ways to get some wine to market, but the best wines remained unsold, aging in bottles lying on their sides in the cellars blasted deep into the heart of the hill. The first mortgage dated from the phylloxera outbreak. Tourneau, in the 1907 replanting, had remade the vineyard. He came to look on the diseased and dying vines as a sign that he could begin again, and that the vineyard he envisioned upon the blank fields was in fact new and entirely his. The new vineyard had a specialty in sparkling wines. He planted a dense nursery field from cuttings of Pinot noir and Chardonnay and Cabernet, and when the native rootstock took hold, the nursery field provided the grafts he needed to establish his chosen variety in each section. He was able to pay the mortgage down but not off after he began to sell sparkling wine in 1912. The first years of Prohibition, the years following 1919, were good for < 68 = Tourneau. Home winemaking was still legal. Each household was allowed to make two hundred gallons of wine for home use, and fresh grapes were in demand in Chicago and New York. Prices were strong, rising from ten dollars a ton to one hundred or more a ton in 1923. Tourneau was able to sell his poorest fruit for a profit, and make fine wine from his best grapes. Under the Volstead Act, he could make as much wine as he wanted, but it was illegal to sell except under certain conditions. He sold some to the archdiocese of San Francisco. Monsignor Roig i Verdaguer, a Catalan who could not live without wine at every meal, had helped arrange this. Tourneau also had a license to sell medicinal champagne, and he sold his sparkling wines through pharmacies under doctors’ prescriptions. It was during these years that he began to gaze toward the intermediate hills that strung along to the north, halfway between the cultivated orchard land of the valley floor and the high crest forested with redwood. He named them the chaine d’or, the chain of gold, because he knew that each hilltop had the same soil and weather as his own land. And he thought about his son Louis attending the University of California at Davis, studying viticulture , then returning home to help him plant new vineyards there. The second mortgage came in 1926. Many growers, in Napa or the Central Valley, had grafted their vines over to heavy yielders when Prohibition had come, the big immigrant varietals like Mataro, or Alicante Bouschet, or Aspiran noir. These grapes yielded more than four tons per acre, and had thick skins and shipped well. Some growers even shipped table grapes as wine grapes, because they gave juice and color. Vineyard acreage in California doubled. Prices fell in the glutted market, and Tourneau could find no buyers for his small, late-ripening grapes. But he refused to graft over his vines. He called the immigrant varietals pagadebitos, debt-payers, and he said to Louis, “I’d rather put my arm in a fire than graft over my Pinots, or my Chardonnays.” Tourneau sold grapes locally, sold champagne and sacramental wine, but he was forced to go again to the bank and encumber the land with more debt. Some bootleggers approached him, seeking a way to sell his wine, but he refused to deal with them. He felt that once he did business with them, they would have power over him and would extend that power into every aspect of the vineyard. And the agents of the Prohibition Bureau, who had put the bottled wine under bond, would notice any large shipments. He was forced to keep many thousands of bottles of fine wine in his cellars, stacked high [52.90.235.91] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:29 GMT) < 69 = in glassy labyrinthine walls, waiting for the end of Prohibition when they might be brought to light. Tourneau worked longer hours after Gill left, driving himself and allowing Sophia to coddle the five-year-old Louis. When Prohibition began, a year after the war ended, he hoped that Gill might return to help against this new threat. But as harvest followed harvest, Tourneau’s thoughts of Gill grew low and dormant, breaking out oddly when he drove down the rutted road that clung to the hillside, or when he looked out over his chaine d’or, the land he coveted. And he always ended his thoughts by telling himself what he’d told Louis. Gill had made choices. He didn’t think of Pascale, didn’t think at all of her death and Gill’s reaction to it. He knew, as soon as Sophia stood in front of him, that he would go to fetch Gill. Sophia always wanted to rescue the bird with the broken wing, or feed the fawn whose mother had been shot. He rose from his chair after Augusto and Louis left, and put his arms around her, and told her of course he would bring Gill back to the vineyard. She praised him with her eyes, as though he had already brought him home in celebration. He loved that look of hers when it came. He felt she had renewed him when she married him, given him a second chance to get things right, and that look told him that all was well. Tourneau drove through San Natoma, skirting the iron-fenced town square and taking the route north toward Jacobsen’s ranch. Several people in town recognized his truck and raised their hands as he passed, and he gave a half wave in return. The truck was new, and he had the winery name stenciled in fancy script on both doors. beau pays winery. He was proud of the truck, proud to have the name painted on the sides. It was a small gesture of defiance toward Prohibition. He didn’t deal with bootleggers, he had nothing to hide. During the town’s Blossom Festival, earlier that year, he and Louis drove the truck in the parade, and filled the truckbed with barrels of wine draped with flowers. Every year that Prohibition stayed in force, every vintage that was crippled by the laws, was like a year taken from his life. How many vintages would he know as a winemaker? Thirty? Forty? And already nine had been stunted, their true product hidden and untouchable. Tourneau had recently been diagnosed with fatty liver by Dr. Ribeau, one of the doctors who wrote prescriptions for medicinal champagne. He had complained about an uncomfortable swelling on his upper right abdomen, and the doctor was able < 70 = to feel that the liver was harder and stiffer than a normal liver would be. The causes for steatosis—fatty liver—were obesity and excessive alcohol consumption , and it could be a step on the way to cirrhosis. Tourneau decided the doctor must be mistaken. Still, he felt his upper abdomen at times when he was all alone, felt the hardening organ, felt that he was fifty-five. He drove along the edge of Jacobsen’s orchard, tried to spot the group his son would be in. Mostly Mexicans, from what Louis said. There were several groups dragging buckets under the low spreading branches, but all he could see were the jeans and shirts of stooped pickers, their faces tilted at the ground. He turned the Ford onto the ranch drive and parked with two wheels in the dirt. Jacobsen hadn’t planted cypress along the drive to his house like some. Too cheap. He wanted fruit from fence post to fence post. Tourneau began to trudge out to the nearest group of pickers. He hated to think of Gill doing this work. In France, Tourneau had done stoop labor, drifting with the harvest after the vineyards in Burgundy were stricken with disease and his own father had abandoned the family, until he stowed away on a ship bound for America. He didn’t want his son to have to do the same. He wondered what it would have been like if, while he’d been working under the prune trees near Agen, his own father had reappeared. What if his own father had discovered him bent in the orchard and lifted him up? What if his own father, bright as the sun, had offered him a place, a vineyard, a life? Wouldn’t he have thought it a miracle? @ The morning after he’d been recognized in San Natoma, Gill stepped up to grab a bucket from Bull Jacobsen, and he felt the younger man’s eyes rest on him, distinguish him from the rest, appraise him. The sun was low in the east, and the orchard trees cast cool, long-merging shadows over the plowed earth, and the pickers were anxious to begin before the heat set in. But first they had to gather in a ragged half circle around Bull, who stood above them in the back of the pickup truck and handed out buckets and directed groups to various parts of the orchard. Gill took the bucket from Bull’s beefy hand and nodded at him. He knew he was easy to pick out, the only white working with a group of Mexicans, and he was sure the word had gotten around that he was working on Jacobsen’s ranch. Joey would tell everyone who came into the gas station. Gill stepped back and joined Miguel and the others. Bull began shouting out directions, and as a group they walked swiftly out to the day’s work. [52.90.235.91] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:29 GMT) < 71 = Every time Bull came by their group, loading up full boxes, dropping off empties, punching cards for credit, Gill noticed him pause. He didn’t stop picking to make eye contact. Gill didn’t know what Bull might want from him, but he didn’t think it would be anything kind. The day was good. They were finishing the second picking of a section near the edge of the orchard, and the fruit lay scattered on the ground, and they filled their buckets steadily. The first picking of a section could be lean, with only the sun-favored fruit from the tips of the branches ripe and fallen. The second picking was the richest, while the third and fourth grew successively more meager, the fruit scarce on the uneven ground. It was this fact that caused growers to offer a harvest bonus, to keep pickers from jumping to a better-paying field before the last fruit was in boxes. In the late afternoon, Gill found himself working trees with Miguel, each sweeping the ground on opposite sides of the trunk, meeting at the rough line where the fruit was picked clean, and moving on to the next tree. Gill heard Miguel sing or hum quietly from time to time, a folk song called “El Quelite.” Gill knew the song, even though only snatches were audible from Miguel. It was a song of longing for a town and a small plaza and friends left behind. A truck rumbled by on the road alongside the orchard, and Gill looked up from his work. He saw the words beau pays winery painted on the door of the truck, and he stood to watch. The truck turned left, down the lane that led to the Jacobsens’ ranch house. Gill crouched back down and grabbed at some prunes. “Don’t you wish,” he said, “that after a day’s work you could drive your truck and just be at home?” “Where?” Miguel continued to grasp three or four prunes at a time with each hand and drop them into his bucket. “Milagro Park?” “No. Michoacán.” Miguel grunted as he crab-walked forward. “Sometimes I wish that,” he said. “Mexico is my country, güero.” They both stood up and emptied their buckets into a box marked with a P, just filling it. Then they went back to the unpicked ground. “Would you go back home if you could?” “Perhaps,” Miguel said. “If I could live in peace.” “Still war in parts of Mexico.” “Yes. We hear about this all the time.” < 72 = “But even without that,” Gill said, “Francisco might still want to stay here.” “I know.” Miguel was already picking again, the prunes pinging faintly into the bottom of the galvanized bucket. “I know, and knowing that is like having an arrow pass through my side.” Gill began to pick as well. He heard Miguel again begin to hum “El Quelite.” @ The first group of pickers that Tourneau came across were teenagers, sons and daughters of families in the area, earning pocket money and school clothes money. Some of them were picking slowly, and others were sitting on upended boxes, having decided that it was late in the day and they had made enough for now. They stopped their chatter when Paul Tourneau neared their circle. He asked them where there was a group of Mexicans with one white man working, and a boy pointed toward the section farthest from the ranch house. “Way over there,” he said. Tourneau continued walking, and he heard the voices behind him jump excitedly. The group they had pointed out was much more active. The pickers stooped under the trees, elbows pumping as they scrabbled in the dirt, buttocks sometimes level with their heads. They all looked alike, working with their faces to the ground and their shirts and jeans coated with dust. He couldn’t tell which one might be Gill. As he walked over the plowed earth to the row of trees nearest the road, the pickers began to stand up one by one, stretching with palms in the smalls of their backs and elbows flared out. They turned toward him, Mexican faces, except one a little taller than the others. Tourneau stopped for a moment, looking at his son’s face, half-scarred, caved in, thickened with waxy tissue and one eye looking a bit inward. “Hi, Papa,” he said. It was Gilbert’s voice, Tourneau was sure, Gill’s voice from that broken face. “Hello, Gill.” Tourneau tried to look at that face calmly, tried not to show shock or disgust, but it was impossible. That face, which was half his face, was half-scourged, punished beyond recognition. He began to shake his head. “Look at you,” he said. “Look at you.” [52.90.235.91] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:29 GMT) < 73 = “Look at me?” Gill asked. “What have you done to yourself?” Tourneau spoke with a great gasping sob, in a voice he himself did not recognize. “Nothing.” Gill brushed dirt from the front of his shirt and the knees of his pants. “I haven’t done anything to myself.” “Why don’t you get your goods together,” Tourneau said. “We’ll throw it all in the back and drive to Beau Pays.” “Drive to Beau Pays,” Gill said. “Just like that.” “Sophia is making dinner for you right now,” Tourneau said. “A feast, I’m sure. And we’ll open up some Oeil de Perdrix.” He half turned to go. “Come,” he said. “Viens, fiston.” Javier and Francisco had already gone back to work, clean-picking the next tree in the row, and Gill stood motionless on the naked soil, his halffull bucket at his feet. He’d thought about this moment, thought about Beckwourth ’s offer, five grand, and how the first step would be to return to the vineyard. But now he saw the pity in his father’s face, heard the unbearable sense of magnanimity in his father’s voice, and he did not move. “You haven’t changed,” Gill said. Tourneau turned back. “You really think you can come here and snap your fingers,” Gill went on, “and I’ll go with you. You must think a hell of a lot of yourself.” “What do you mean?” “You come like you’re doing me a goddamned favor. And I’m supposed to be grateful.” “You don’t need to be grateful,” Tourneau said. “But you could recognize that I came for you.” “I recognize you, all right. I recognize that you want me to come and work and jump at the sound of your voice. I recognize that you want everything forgiven, everything forgotten.” “What needs to be forgiven?” Tourneau asked. “What needs to be forgotten?” “Nothing.” Gill turned away from Tourneau and picked up his bucket and walked to the next tree. Tourneau followed him, stood over him as he crouched and began to gather fresh-fallen fruit with both hands. “What needs to be forgotten,” he demanded again. “Nothing. You’ve already forgotten everything.” “Gill, I’m offering you a place, a home.” < 74 = “A place in your home, that’s nothing of mine.” “It’s more than you’ve got now. It’s not my fault you’ve been gallivanting around.” Gill laughed. “Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing. Gallivanting around. And it’s not your fault. Nothing is.” “So you want to stay here, picking prunes off the ground?” “It’s good enough for some.” “You want better for yourself than this,” Tourneau said. “I know you do. And I want better for you.” Gill stood and carried his bucket over to a harvest box and poured in his prunes, and evened the pile with his hands so that the box looked nicely full. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I do want better for myself. But I don’t want it to come from you.” “You’re making a mistake, Gill.” “Then it’s a mistake I make.” He turned back to picking. Tourneau stood silent for a moment, looking at his son’s wiry back, the bones and sinews working under blue denim. Then he trudged back to the vineyard truck. The sun was disappearing behind the Coast Range, gradually extending its shadow over the orchard as he opened the door and turned over the engine. Tourneau knew that Sophia would not understand why he was returning alone. He was sure that she had prepared foods that Gill used to like, dishes he would not have tasted in years. She would have the vineyard house open and glowing, a beacon on the hill. Even though he had done nothing wrong, he wondered what he would say when Sophia came to the door and asked, Where is he? Where is your son? @ Gill continued to pick furiously until he knew that Paul Tourneau was out of sight. Then he sat back onto the ground, the half-empty bucket between his ankles, and closed his eyes. Miguel’s rough hand squeezed his shoulder. “We’re quitting now, Gilberto . All the pickers are finishing up.” Gill started. “Are the boxes topped off?” “You can top them off with your half bucket,” Miguel said. “You’re a picker, a good one, one of us.” Back in New Chicago, Gill ate silently and then went up to the ghostly second floor where he had his bed. Ana had asked him what was the matter, but he just shook his head and said nothing. Upstairs, he sat in front of the [52.90.235.91] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:29 GMT) < 75 = window that faced south. It was dark night, but he knew the direction in which the vineyard lay. At that moment, he didn’t feel like a picker among other pickers, one of the Pulidos. Despite the press of Miguel’s hand on his shoulder and his kind words, Gill felt separate and distinct from them, and also separate from his father. Alone in the crooked bedroom, the shapes of haunting and nightmare emerged behind him, red and incendiary, setting piles of tangled vines on fire and casting shadows of monsters. The next morning, when they again stood in a half circle around the ranch truck for directions, Bull Jacobsen asked them if anyone was going to pick a ton that day. “How about it?” he shouted. “Forty boxes make a ton. Who’s going to make it?” “I can,” Miguel said in English. “Good. Hope so.” He pointed to rows of trees near the edge of the orchard. “Just start on those rows.” “Hey, Stanley,” Gill said. “Call me Bull.” “Okay,” Gill said. “Bull. How about we work on those rows closer to the house, where the other pickers are? We might could make a ton if we were on those rows.” Bull frowned. “Those rows aren’t ready for second picking yet.” “Yeah?” Gill looked over, peering. “Looks like there’s plenty of fruit on the ground to me. You wouldn’t be saving those rows for somebody else because they’re Imperial prunes, would you?” “What makes you think that?” “Maybe we’re not white enough to pick Imperials?” Miguel shot a look at Gill. “No servirá para nada,” he said. “Ya lo sé,” Gill said. He knew speaking out would do no good. But he knew the world to be unkind, and he wanted now to see it bitterly confirmed . Bull jumped down from the truck bed in front of Gill. He was taller and broader than Gill, and he was smiling. “Daddy told me to watch out for you. Said that anyone who had fallen in the world was bound to be a troublemaker.” “I’m just asking for a little fairness,” Gill said. “If we’re good enough to pick your fruit, we’re good enough to pick all your fruit.” “Anybody wants to make trouble, I just ask if they want to box.” Bull put his hands up near his face, ducked his head from side to side, and shuffled sideways. < 76 = “Come on,” he said. “I need to get in some sparring. ‘Winner, by a knockout —Bull Jacobsen.’ I heard you’re a war hero, how about it?” “You want to fight a war hero?” Gill put up his hands. “Okay. Good. And if I knock you down, we pick Imperials. Deal?” “Sure,” Bull said. “Sure.” Miguel and Javier and Francisco stood back from the two, forming a small ring. Rosarita walked away and turned her face while the two men began to circle each other. Gill held his fists up near his forehead, to deflect any shots. Bull outweighed him by some forty pounds, and had arms several inches longer. He was laughing, shooting left jabs and keeping Gill at a distance. Gill faked his head left and right, but always found Bull’s left fist standing him off. He had training as an infantryman, but he had never boxed. He shuffled right, away from the jab, and protected himself against any head blows. Bull closed in after a minute of dancing and followed a jab with a right hook to Gill’s ribs that staggered him back and blew the breath out of him. Then he stepped back to let Gill recover, wanting to make the fight last longer. “War hero,” he taunted. Gill felt a knot squeezing against his ribs. He breathed deep, trying to loosen the pain, still shuffling right. He saw Bull in front of him, his broad white face grinning. The favorite son, the one who had his place, the face of all Gill suddenly hated and desired. When Bull closed again, Gill lunged to the left, inside his guard. Bull tried to tie him up, but Gill shot his right knee up hard, buried it deep into Bull’s groin. The larger man gasped and doubled over. Gill pivoted and caught his cheekbone with a hard right elbow. The skin broke, and blood ran down his cheek. Then Gill plowed into him with his whole body, and Bull went to one knee. “War hero knocked you down,” Gill said. He turned and left, striding toward the highway. Miguel and Francisco watched him go, then turned to help Bull up off the ground. Bull winced as he took small steps into the truck and drove off. Miguel, without a word, led Francisco and Javier and Rosa toward the rows near the road, where Bull first told them to go. He knew that going to [52.90.235.91] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:29 GMT) < 77 = pick Imperials was out of the question. Bull’s promise that they could pick Imperials if Gill knocked him down meant nothing. One hour later, the truck roared back into the orchards where they were picking, and Pieter Jacobsen rumbled out and stood, wide-legged, looking around fiercely. He wore overalls, broad and whitened with wear in the seat and knees, and he stood with his hands apart until he spotted the Pulido group and advanced on them. “Where’s Tourneau?” Jacobsen still had a slight accent from Norway. “Where is that bastard?” Javier stood up and moaned. He walked stiffly toward Jacobsen, moaning and growling deep within his throat. Jacobsen backed off two paces. “Who is this lunatic? Don’t any of you speak English?” Francisco ran to Javier’s side and wrapped an arm around his chest, hugging him and stilling him. “I speak English,” Francisco said. “I speak as well,” Miguel said. Javier moaned and leaned forward against Francisco’s arm. Jacobsen looked at him. “By the Christ, what kind of a bughouse is this?” “Just pickers,” Miguel said. “Just pickers, Mr. Jacobsen.” “Well, where’s that bastard Tourneau?” “He left,” Francisco said. “Where did he go? Is he coming back?” Francisco looked over at his father. Then he said, “We don’t know.” “Tell him not to bother coming back,” Jacobsen said. “And he don’t need to bother trying to find work on any of the other ranches around here. I’m calling and telling them all about him.” He backed up to the door of the truck, watching Javier wave his arms and groan. “You tell him,” he said. Then he quickly opened the door, climbed in, and shut the door behind him. Francisco released Javier, who roared at the truck as it drove off. ...