Sweet, Sweet Wine

by Jaime Clevenger

  Riley downed the last of her coffee and stood up, reconsidering the idea of going for a run. “It really doesn’t matter at this point, does it?”

  “I think it does. You aren’t ready to start something with anyone, straight or otherwise.”

  “There’s no harm in flirting.”

  Sharon shook her head and pushed open the door. She paused, balancing the platters and water pitcher with practiced ease. “I think you need to be alone. Try it for a little while anyway. The last thing you need is to get involved with another woman. And stick to the easy hike today. The rains might pick up this afternoon. I don’t want to worry about you up on the Peak.”

  Riley stuck around in the kitchen long enough to clear the sink. By the time she returned to the cottage, there was no sign of Ana. She thought of waiting until she returned from her run, but she couldn’t come up with an excuse to have another conversation. She stood in the doorway of her side of the cottage, pondering what to do next. The room was cramped and made her long to be outside. There was a narrow walkway between the double bed and the dresser and an old woodstove stood in one corner while the nightstand took up the other corner. The door to the shared bathroom was on the same wall as the bed, and Riley now understood why Sharon had warned her that the plumbing was in the wall behind the headboard. She doubted anyone could sleep through the noise of the shower.

  She considered her options. For the first time in months, she had no real agenda. If she’d had more time to plan, she would likely have jumped on a plane headed for France or maybe Costa Rica. Instead, with only two days’ notice, she’d called Sharon. The last vacation she’d taken alone was in college. Since then, she’d always had a girlfriend’s company when she traveled.

  Riley pulled out the trail map that Sharon had given her and glanced at the circled hikes. She recognized the Grade, easily visible from the cottage window and marked by the brown gouge cutting in a straight line up the side of the mountain. Dark evergreens covered the terrain on either side, giving the trail the look of an abandoned ski run even though it was clearly much too steep to be one. She changed into her hiking boots and tucked the map into her cargo pants’ pocket along with her wallet and phone.

  Riley took the winding main road through downtown Catori, testing her Honda’s old brakes frequently for a good number of tourists. The entire downtown took up only four or five blocks. Storefronts filled with mountain resort kitsch and tie-dye apparel fought for space among pubs and restaurants, none of which seemed to target a local crowd.

  When she got to the trailhead parking lot, Riley found it poorly marked but filled to near capacity. She pulled her Seattle Seahawks ball cap over her short hair and felt a twinge in her shoulder. She owed the sore muscles to the crush she had developed on the woman who led the group lifting class at her gym. For the past few months, she had managed to shift her work schedule to start appointments an hour later to fit in morning workouts. Mostly she had used the class as an excuse to leave the house early. Lisa wasn’t a morning person, and since Riley had finally come to terms with the fact that Jen was more than Lisa’s friend, she could hardly face Lisa at all, let alone in the morning. The weight class had, however, done good things for her abs and back, something that was useful in her line of work. Over the past few weeks, though, she’d pushed her limits. The coach had finally noticed and intervened. By then, however, Riley had lost the desire to flirt with her. Convincing Lisa that their relationship was over had taken too much energy. The weight routine was a good outlet for stress and had helped her fit into her favorite pair of 501s, but that was all.

  Sharon had claimed that rain was predicted for every evening that week, but there was only a weak breeze, and a cloudless sky framed the mountains in a blue that left the eyes to wander in search of something more interesting. Pikes Peak, a grayish-purple rock slab that was too large to appreciate in the lens of her iPhone when she snapped a shot, loomed close and cold. Most of the surrounding mountains were softened with evergreens, juniper and a gravelly red soil that crunched underfoot. On the northern edge of the vista, ridges of dusty brown claimed the skyline. A fire the year before had left scarred hills thousands of acres wide. Riley trained her gaze on the Peak, not the burned hills in the distance or the closer green slopes.

  The Grade was aptly named, if nothing else. There was little else to consider about the trail other than the grade itself. Railroad ties were arranged into stairs reaching upward to the summit in a number that seemed never-ending. A seasick feeling rose in her stomach when she turned to get a look at the view about halfway up. The range stretched out in a flat line of fading browns and darker blues as far as the eye could trace the horizon, disrupted only by a cluster of red rocks jutting skyward. Riley had walked arm in arm with Lisa along the paved paths between those red rocks a year ago. She even recalled bits of their conversation: they’d discussed the name of the place—Garden of the Gods—and wondered if the plural had been intended, if whoever had named it had believed in more than one omniscient being. Somehow, that discussion and the entire day, in fact, had ended without a fight. So much had changed since then.

  Riley shifted to the edge of the path to make passing space for a stream of joggers. She had already caught her breath, but she wasn’t going to let herself race to the top. Some in the group grinned or even nodded their heads in a greeting, others grimaced or had the same set gaze as the determined faces on folks struggling on Stairmasters back in the gym. One couple came up clad in matching yellow road bike racing uniforms, chatting all the while. As they neared her spot, Riley noticed the woman hesitating as she placed weight on her left knee. She wasn’t limping, but she was clearly uncomfortable. Riley guessed she had an old injury to her meniscus or her ACL, or both. As soon as this thought passed her mind, she chuckled. She couldn’t make it even one day out of the clinic without work thoughts springing up to distract her. She let the bikers get some distance up the hill before she fell in line behind them. Row after row of railroad ties, each cased in soil with the same texture and crunch as Grape-Nuts, drew her attention back to the trail.

  * * *

  “I volunteered us both for a work crew up in Williams Canyon. You can save the Peak for a clear day.” Sharon said the next morning. She handed Riley a plate holding chunks of cantaloupe. “You know, you missed my frittatas. They ate every last bit. Tomorrow is omelet day. You really don’t want to miss my omelets.”

  “You make a mean omelet too?”

  Sharon nodded.

  “So you signed us up for a work crew?”

  “The work crew helps with flood mitigation work on the burn scar. And don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of exercise. Besides that, the view is amazing.”

  Riley sat down at the center island in the kitchen. She took a bite of the fruit. “It barely rained last night.”

  “But tonight it is supposed to pour. You won’t have time to make it all the way up and back without getting caught in the storm. I doubt you even thought to pack a jacket.”

  “Sometimes you sound like my mom, Sharon.” Riley wanted to ask about Ana. She hadn’t seen her since yesterday’s breakfast. Somehow, despite their sharing the cottage, she had missed her coming and going and there had been no late-night shower.

  “You missed Ana,” Sharon said, guessing Riley’s thoughts. “She liked my frittata. She also asked about you. I told her you were lazy and were probably going to sleep through breakfast.” Sharon finished loading the dishwasher and then went to work on the pans in the sink. “We need to leave in an hour to make it to the meeting site. Mind picking us up sandwiches at Cheddar’s?”

  Riley wanted to ask if Ana had said anything more, but Sharon didn’t seem to be in the mood to chat. Cheddar’s was the café down the road. “There’s no arguing out of this work crew thing is there?”

  Sharon shook her head. “It’s possible I don’t want you getting yourself in over your head climbing the Peak alone. The weather isn’t right for it, Riley. Not today. Save that
for another day.”

  Cheddar’s was on the main drag through town, three blocks down from Sharon’s bed-and-breakfast. As Riley walked there, she saw that the clouds had cleared and the sun had burned off the morning’s mist. From this vantage point, the Grade was easily visible on the nearest green mountain slope and, behind it, Pikes Peak. North of this were the burned mountains. To the south, all of the mountains were green. The canyon where the town lay seemed to be the dividing line between the two sets of mountains. Squinting, Riley could make out hundreds of blackened tree trunks stabbing the charred land. Now that Sharon had suggested it, the idea of working on the mountain slope on a beautiful sunny day was appealing.

  The previous summer had been inexplicably hot and dry. When the fire started, Sharon had been evacuated along with the rest of the town. She’d stayed in Denver with Jeanette for a few days and had been glued to the news. Though the fire had spared the town, it had decimated thousands of acres and burned with such heat that only scarred trunks remained. The burned area was something Sharon talked about often. The fire had scarred more than the hills.

  Riley entered the café and the man at the counter waved and nodded as if they were old friends. Sharon had talked about the owners of the café enough that Riley felt as if she knew them.

  “Weathermen are about as likely to get it right as a coin toss,” a customer was saying to him.

  “And I think it’s fifty-fifty with that river any time it rains.” The man at the counter was short and balding, like his partner, who was at the sink cleaning dishes. Sharon was friends with the pair and recommended the café to all of her guests, she’d told Riley, on the sole premise that the owners were gay. “It depends on whether the clouds get stuck over the burn scar.”

  The customer nodded vigorously. “All of the sandbags in the world won’t help if a storm really opens up on the canyon.”

  Earlier in the summer, before the grass had reseeded the burned land, monsoon rains had started. Sharon said that the rains had been a daily occurrence since then, mostly falling as a light rain for an hour or two every evening. One night, however, the rains had pelted down on the burn scar, and the creek, which usually flowed like a lazy snake through the center of town, had swelled to a rushing river. When it overflowed its banks, several homes and businesses flooded. Less than a month later, though, there was no evidence of that flood. The damage had been minimal, and the town had been quick to clean up the debris. But every new rainstorm was a possible disaster in the making. Sandbags were still propped up in doorways in the downtown section near the creek, and Sharon had said that there was a general fear of a repeat flood whenever clouds collected over the mountains. Sharon’s place was well above the flood zone, but she knew every business owner near the creek by name.

  Riley ordered two sandwiches and chips to go and dropped her change in the jar labeled “Catori Flood Relief.”

  The man at the counter nodded his thanks, handed over two tightly wrapped sandwiches and pointed at the rack of chips. She tucked the sandwiches and chips in her backpack.

  “You’re staying with Sharon, aren’t you?” the man asked.

  Riley had never lived in a place where everyone knew everyone else and found it a bit unnerving. She nodded.

  “I’m Scott.” He smiled. “Sharon called earlier and said she was sending you. Riley, right? I forgot to tell her that I’ve got a new cookie recipe. She buys two dozen from me every day and passes the cookies off as her own to the guests.” He paused to point to the cookies lined up on the cookie sheets behind him. “Anyway, I’m calling these cookies Firemen’s Oatmeal Chunk Cookies. Can you ask her if she minds if I send these instead of the usual chocolate chip this afternoon?”

  “I’ll ask. I doubt Sharon will mind.” She held the door open for a customer and then stepped outside, waving to Scott as she left. His returning smile made her realize why Sharon had stayed in Catori after Cherie’s death. There was something to be said about living in a small town.

  A group of twenty or so volunteers were standing in the parking lot outside the fire department when she arrived. Riley approached the woman who appeared to be in charge. She was in her late fifties and had short, spiky gray hair. She wore a green forest ranger uniform and was holding a clipboard.

  “First-time volunteer?”

  Riley nodded.

  “Waiver forms,” the ranger said, handing over two forms and a pen. “In case a log rolls down the hill and crushes your leg.”

  “How optimistic.”

  “I used to say, ‘in case a log rolls down and kills you,’ but my boss asked me to soften the verbiage.”

  Riley grinned and took the offered forms. “I’m Riley Robinson. Sharon McBee wasn’t able to make it.”

  The woman glanced at her list and then looked up at Riley. “Sharon isn’t on my list today. But I do have a Robinson.” She jabbed her finger at the name and squinted at Riley. “That’s you?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. I guess there was a mix-up with Sharon’s name not getting on the list. Anyway, she isn’t coming, so it doesn’t matter.” Sharon had told Riley that she’d had one guest shorten his trip by a day and then a last-minute reservation call that morning so she had to stay home to clean. Now Riley wondered if she’d ever planned on going at all.

  “Sharon’s already put in three days on this project. As much as I like to have her on my crew, she’s done her time. It’s nice of her to send an able body in her place.”

  Riley wondered if the ranger was hinting that Sharon was more than an occasional volunteer interest of hers. The women were about the same age, and she knew Sharon liked the rugged mountaineer look. She could easily imagine a mutual attraction. “What exactly are we going to be doing?”

  “Pick out a hard hat and finish up with those forms. We’ll give everyone a briefing on the drive up.” The ranger pointed to one of the two vans in the parking lot. “Find a seat on that one. Half of the group is going with me and the other half is going with Andrew. I’m Deb.” She stuck out her hand. “Sharon’s told me some about you already, but I won’t pretend to know any secrets.”

  Riley followed the group when the time came to load onto the van. She watched Deb closely, wondering what level of relationship Sharon had with her. It was just like Sharon to not mention anything. They drove on the highway a few miles north of town and then turned off the road at a sign marking a closed trailhead. The hills were steep and scorched trees stuck out of the soil indiscriminately. In a few areas grass grew, but most of the soil was barren. The ranger hopped out of the van and unlocked a chain securing a barricade. She got back in the van and then continued driving up a windy gravel road for a half mile or so. She parked the van and then stood in the aisle to address the volunteers.

  “The other crew is going to spend the next two hours raking debris and reseeding. But you lucky folks get to drag logs. We’re going to plan out an erosion barrier on this hillside”—she paused to point out the front window—“and then we’ll drag the logs that were cut over there”—she pointed to another hill—“into position. We’ve got a ditch that the crew from last week dug that has to be sandbagged in case you’re interested in that job as well. After two hours, we’ll switch with the other crew and you can tell them how much fun it is to drag a log up the side of an unstable hillside. Take breaks to drink plenty of water and watch your footing. I don’t want to deal with any broken limbs today, all right, folks? Now, let’s have some fun.”

  When Deb finally called for a lunch break, Riley sank right down on the log she’d been dragging. Scott, the guy from the café, laughed out loud. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m exhausted.”

  “You’re sitting on a log perched halfway up the side of a ravine on a slope with nothing but rocks to slow you down if that thing takes off.”

  “But I’ve got a good view.”

  “Your eyes are closed,” he countered.

  Riley opened her eyes and smiled over at Scott. She’d
been paired up with him for the past two hours and had learned more of the town’s juicy gossip from him than she’d ever heard from Sharon. Scott was convinced that people viewed him as a therapist who also happened to own a café. His partner, Oliver, was keeping the café open at the moment so Scott could work on the flood mitigation.

  “Hey, I bought two sandwiches from this awesome café and my friend bailed on me. Want one?”

  Scott smiled. “I brought three-day-old cookies that were too old to sell and bruised apples. Sounds like a picnic.”

  “What about your new recipe? Those firemen cookies. I want one of those.”

  Scott shook his head. “I brought an old batch. Ginger snaps.”

  After a short rest to catch their breaths, they trudged over to the van, found Riley’s backpack and Scott’s bag of cookies and ate together without a word. Deb passed out donated bottles of Gatorade and radioed the other ranger to discuss the details of the planned job switch. A few minutes later, she clapped her hands and scooted everyone back out on the hillside. “The other crew is running behind and hasn’t stopped for their lunch break yet, so we’ll keep working on the erosion barrier for another half hour and then make the switch.”

  By the time Deb signaled the end of their workday, Riley was thoroughly covered in dirt and soot. Her blue jeans were a blackish gray from mid-thigh down and her white T-shirt was a filthy brown. She followed Scott into the van and closed her eyes as soon as she sat down. Scott jostled her awake when they reached the fire station. Dark rain clouds had collected over the past hour, and a light rain spotted the van’s windshield. Deb was shaking hands with the volunteers as they filed out of the van.

  “Come by the café tomorrow and I’ll pay you back for the sandwich. I’m making gumbo for lunch tomorrow.”