The Sweet Spot

by Heather Heyford

  “Kept up with me all day. Then she refused to take the cash I handed her after we closed out.”

  Hank imagined the apron with the Sweet Spot logo tied around Jamie’s slim waist.

  “You can’t let her do that. She’s a guest. We’ll give her a partial refund on her trip.”

  “You read my mind.”

  Ellie fingered her napkin. “Too bad Jamie doesn’t come from around here. She’d be a real asset.”

  Hank’s knife clattered to his plate. “Jamie Martel is a paying guest. From the other side of the country.”

  “She grew up on a farm.”

  He got up for more coffee. “A dairy farm.”

  “She kept her own vegetable garden. You know what they say. ‘You can take a girl out of the country. . . ”

  “Vineyard work is out,” he said, sitting down again, taking a careful sip from his mug. “Suckering and shoot-thinning are skilled labor.”

  “Not the vineyard. But she could help out with the stables and the tasting room.”

  “She already has a job. She’s a teacher. Remember?”

  “Last I knew, teachers didn’t work in the summertime.”

  “Grandma. Do you hear yourself? The woman is here for two weeks. She’s not looking for a job. She’s got a round-trip plane ticket and, probably, big plans for the rest of the summer.”

  He grabbed a fourth slice of toast from the plate and reached for the butter dish.

  “Might be worth us paying the fee for changing her ticket.”

  “Seriously?” he asked around his mouthful of toast.

  “You don’t want to wait too long. I know she just got here, but the sooner you ask her, the more wiggle room she’ll have to change her plans.”

  Hank wiped his mouth, laid his napkin by his plate, and scraped his chair back. “I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.”

  Ellie threw her hands in the air then. “You’re probably right. You do whatever you feel’s best.” She pushed back from the table, too, and replaced the milk in the fridge. “I was only thinking out loud. Like you said, though. It would never work. I’m just an old woman. What do I know? You’re the one with the fancy business degree.”

  But Hank knew Ellie. She’d planted the seed. And she wouldn’t be satisfied until it sprouted.

  “What about tonight? You got the quartz ground to where you want it?”

  “Horns have been steeping since last night. Pit’s dug. You picked out the wine?”

  “Over there, in the bag.” She pointed to what looked like a heap of burlap fabric beneath the coat hooks by the back door.

  “Maybe Bailey’ll show up yet,” he grumbled as he slapped on his cap and headed out the back door.

  * * *

  The stars were coming out as Hank made his way back to the house, covered in a fine layer of dirt and smelling like wood smoke from burning a pile of pruning debris.

  “How do the grapes look?” asked Ellie. She was rocking in her chair on the back porch with Homer at her feet. From there she had a panoramic view of the fire along the bank of the pond and beyond that, the vineyards.

  “The plants are budding out like gangbusters, thanks to the rainy spring. I walked through several blocks, removing suckers and buds from the trunks. Easier to do it now than later.”

  “It keeps you in touch with what’s going on out there, too. Are you seeing many bees?”

  He nodded. “A few.”

  “I saw a good number when I was weeding my herbs. And my peonies have buds on them.”

  He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “Think I’ll go in and call Bailey one more time before it gets too late.”

  “I see Bill,” said Ellie, squinting toward the guests lined up on log benches, finishing the tail end of a song. “Who’s that other guitar player?”

  “Must be a guest. You know how it is. When they read about the sing-alongs on the website, lots of guests bring their instruments with them,” replied Hank without looking, one hand already on the doorknob.

  “Looks like a woman.”

  At that moment a creamy soprano voice swirled into the clear evening air, and he glanced over his shoulder toward the campfire.

  “Who hasn’t searched for a life of her own?

  To find a new place, a new setting, a new home?

  Who knows what it’s like to chase a dream?

  To find the woman she was meant to be?”

  “I believe that’s Jamie,” said Ellie.

  Following the first line, Hank’s hand had fallen from the doorknob. His feet carried him of their own accord to the edge of the porch.

  The firelight brought out the gold highlights in Jamie’s hair. He watched her lips, full and ripe, as she mouthed the words to her song.

  Even the kids had stopped elbowing one another.

  “Wow, she’s good.” Some nights, when the temperature near the ground dropped before the air above it, sound waves refracted upward, so that anyone on the porch could hear every word that was said at the campfire. That was Brynn, talking to her friend sitting next to her on the log. The two teens lived nearby and helped Ellie bus breakfast tables during the summer. Brynn often returned to the Sweet Spot later in the summer evenings, toting her guitar, though Hank had yet to hear her play.

  The song ended to a smattering of applause and whoops. Jamie smiled and began tuning up for her next number.

  “Thought you said you were going in,” said Ellie.

  “Huh?” He’d forgotten all about calling Bailey, and Ellie sitting behind him. “Oh.”

  In the failing light he thought he saw the faintest hint of a smile cross Ellie’s face.

  He headed back to the door. “See you at midnight.”

  * * *

  Around ten, Jamie thanked her audience and stood up to find her guitar case, when the two teens who had been paying rapt attention came up to her.

  “Can I see your guitar?” one of them asked shyly.

  “Sure.”

  The girl handled it with respectful admiration. “Wow.”

  “I see you’ve got your own. How long have you been playing?”

  “Not long.”

  “Yes, she has,” her friend chimed in. “She’s been playing ever since I’ve known her. She’s just embarrassed to play in front of people.”

  “Have you had any lessons?” asked Jamie kindly.

  “Some.” She looked at the ground. “My teacher moved away, though.”

  “That’s too bad. Have you checked online? You might find some lessons there.”

  “I’ve seen some. But it’s not the same as real life. You don’t get any feedback on what you’re doing wrong.”

  Despite the late hour, Jamie sat back down and patted the empty space next to her. “Have a seat. Let’s see what you can do.”

  “Me?” She shrank back.

  “Yes, you.”

  “See?” said the girl’s friend. “This is what always happens. She carries that dumb guitar around everywhere she goes, but whenever someone asks her to play it, she won’t do it because she’s too chicken.”

  “I can’t help it! I just don’t like to play in front of people.”

  “All she does is play in her room,” said the other.

  “Look around,” said Jamie. “It’s only us now. Everyone else is gone.”

  “But you’re this supergood musician.”

  “How do you think I got that way? By playing. The more you play in front of people, the easier it becomes.”

  Reluctantly, the girl sat down and brought her guitar onto her lap. She started out haltingly, but once she got going, Jamie saw what she’d kept hidden.

  “You have potential. What’s your name?”

  She grinned and looked into her shoulder. “Brynn.”

  “Me and Brynn work for Miss Ellie, bussing tables,” said her companion. Sometimes we come back here to the campfires in the evenings.”

  “Tell you what, Brynn. I also teach music. Here’s your homework assi
gnment. Sometime in the coming week I want you to play that song you played for me, for someone else, just to start getting comfortable with it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, so softly Jamie could barely hear her.

  * * *

  Despite Hank deliberately slowing his pace, Ellie was huffing and puffing by the time they got to the center of Block Five.

  The moon was so bright he could easily see her chest rising and falling.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” she said.

  “I told you, you don’t have to come. Or, we could take the golf cart.”

  “It’s a job for two people. As for the cart, no sense waking the guests.”

  “Why? Afraid they’d think we’re crazy?”

  “If we’re crazy, so is every other vintner in the Willamette Valley. And half of them in Europe.”

  She was right, of course. There wasn’t a vintner Hank knew who hadn’t adopted hyper-organic methods these days.

  “Joe Bear likens it to the Three Sisters crop rotation, practiced for eons by his people,” she continued.

  Joe Bear managed a motorcycle dealership down in McMinnville. He wore a do-rag and a black leather vest, was a ceremonial leader, and as unlikely as it seemed, Ellie’s closest friend.

  “They plant corn, beans, and squash together, but at different times. The corn stalk supports the bean vine; the beans, being a legume, improve the soil; and the squash leaves provide shade to the other plants. Eating all three in the same meal provides a complete, meat-free protein.” She sighed. “There is so much I want to teach you yet.”

  “I wish Bryce would buy in a hundred percent,” said Hank. “He doesn’t think raptors and peppering to control rodents works.”

  “He’s coming along,” said Ellie. “Last full moon he helped me burn morning glory runners and spread the ash around their burrows.”

  “If it weren’t for Dad promising Bryce a job for life, I’d have given him his walking papers by now.”

  “Think long and hard before you do that,” Ellie said. “You’d be going against your father’s word.”

  At times like these, as hard as Hank tried, he still felt like an apprentice.

  Delilah’s voice came back to him from just yesterday. There must be a million things you’d love to do, things you’d be really good at.

  Maybe Delilah was right. What might his life look like now, if he hadn’t spent the past however many months busting his butt to keep the vineyards running, squinting over profit and loss statements, and staying up late to enact some neo-pagan agricultural ritual? He could be piloting a 747 or be part of a search-and-rescue crew.

  He wondered if there would ever come a time when he felt like he owned the Sweet Spot, instead of it owning him.

  He knelt in the moonlight between two rows of vines, by the pit he had dug earlier, and reached out his hand.

  Without speaking, Ellie handed him the first of two dozen long, curved horns packed with ground quartz.

  He inserted it into the ground, point up.

  They repeated the process, their shadows moving with them eerily across the ground, until the pit was filled.

  “Last one,” said Ellie. “Ready for the wine?”

  He nodded and she withdrew two bottles from the burlap sack. Carefully, Hank laid them on their sides among the horns.

  “When I think of how many thousands of years people have been doing this, going all the way back to ancient times. It’s more than just a sacrificial rite. When it comes to storing wine, the finest climate-controlled cellar can’t compete with the earth. Still, dark, and a constant temperature. I’d be all for fermenting all our wine underground if it was practical.”

  He stood up and brushed his hands together. “See you at the equinox,” he told the wine.

  “God willing,” added Ellie.

  He shot her a look. He might not feel fully invested in the Sweet Spot, but the thought of drinking the wine from these symbolic bottles without Ellie was too much to bear. “Don’t talk like that.”

  Ellie tossed in a handful of dirt. Quickly and efficiently, Hank finished the job with his shovel.

  After the pit was filled in, he scattered a handful of clover seeds across the soil. Clover improved the soil, kept down the weeds, and provided pollen for the bees and grazing for the sheep.

  “There,” he said, lifting the handles of the wheelbarrow as he turned to go. “Sleep tight.”

  Chapter Ten

  “There’s sloppy joe in the pan on the stove, and I made more sugar cookies,” said Ellie the following day at noon when Hank came in for lunch. “And you can quit wondering about Bailey.”

  “She back?” he said hopefully over his shoulder.

  “Not back. Gone. I made some inquiries. She bought an old Airstream and headed south. Probably crossing the border into Mexico as we speak.”

  Hank dried his hands and tried to absorb the news. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Seth Thompson. Who else?”

  If there was such thing as a town gossip, Newberry’s head postal clerk was it. Hank shook his head.

  “Seth heard it from Denise at the pharmacy, who heard it from her brother-in-law.”

  “Bailey always talked about dropping out and taking off to see the country.” But then, everybody daydreamed. Most of the time, their dreams didn’t come true.

  “I never thought she was one to ride the river with. She had a spotty employee history before she came here, remember? Anyway, Nelson’s wife called.”

  “Oh, boy,” said Hank, spooning sloppy joe onto a bun. Poor Nelson was probably going stir-crazy. Everybody knew his wife drove him nuts.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Not good. Leg’s infected. She had him at the doctor Friday and they got him on antibiotics to try to clear it up. But we shouldn’t expect him back directly.”

  “Par for the course, lately.”

  “I know you were hoping to have him back sooner than later.”

  “Nelson’s got to take care of himself,” Hank said, setting his plate down. “I’ll post a help wanted ad tomorrow.”

  “You think any more about asking Jamie if she wants to help out?”

  Hank winced. “Not that again.”

  “What’s it hurt to ask? All she can do is say no.”

  “Mark my words, that’s exactly what she will say.”

  “You never know till you try. We can scrape by another weekend. But what about next week? Could be days before you get any kind of response to your ad. Jamie can hit the ground running.”

  “Fine. If you think it’ll work.”

  Ellie grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll go put a bug in her ear right now.” She got up and went out to the dining room.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jamie stepped gingerly through the swinging door. She looked from Hank, still seated at the table, to Ellie, wiping the range. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “Sit down, why don’t you,” said Ellie, pouring from the bottle she and Hank were drinking from. “Here you are. A nice glass of Riesling.”

  Jamie pulled out one of the four chairs, followed by Ellie.

  Hank cleared his throat. Might as well get this over with. “Grandma says you were a big help while I was gone. Want you to know I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What are your plans for the rest of the summer?”

  “I have a summer job at a bookstore that starts the day after I get back. And some intense planning to do for next school year. Oh, and I also have to find a new apartment.”

  “Sounds like you’re pretty tied up.” He raised an eyebrow at Ellie as if to say I told you.

  But he should have known Ellie wouldn’t give up easily. “You’ve heard we’re shorthanded,” she said.

  “Nelson, and Bailey.” Jamie nodded, still looking perplexed.

  “We just got news that Nelson will most likely be out the full six weeks that the doctor ordered,” said Ellie. “That takes us rig
ht up to August.”

  It had to be dawning on her by now, why they’d called her back here.

  “You’re interested in wine, you know your way around a horse, and you pitch in without being asked. Most important of all, you’re well-liked.” Jamie’s hand rested on the table. Now Ellie placed her hand atop it. “I know it’s asking a lot, and we’re probably way out of line for asking. But what would you think of staying on for a while? The pay’s no great shakes, but we’d be willing to at least match what the bookstore pays. You’re exactly what we need around here. Someone who can float back and forth from the winery to the stables.”

  She blinked. “I’m not sure . . .”

  Hank saw his chance. “We understand if it’s a no.”

  Jamie rose, paced slowly to the sink, and then turned around to face them. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to decline.”

  Hank waited for the inevitable relief to wash over him. So then why did his heart fall into his stomach with the weight of a ten-pound hammer?

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  “I can’t,” Jamie repeated for emphasis, her mouth twisting with regret.

  Hank knew that look on Ellie’s face. She was racking her brain for a go-around.

  “I have to get back to Philadelphia,” said Jamie.

  “Like I said, I have a summer job. And I have to get ready for the fall. It’s going to be a lot of work. A ton of preparation.”

  “You really love the city, don’t you?” asked Ellie. A new tactic, as Hank had both hoped and feared.

  “I really do,” she said with emphasis.

  “What is it that means so much to you?”

  “Well . . . my students, first and foremost. Do you know how hard it is to get those kids to show up for rehearsals, when basic daily attendance is way below that in the suburbs?”

  Ellie grinned. “Sounds like you’re one of those lucky people who’s truly found her calling. But what is it about Philadelphia in particular that makes you so anxious to go back?”

  In anticipation of what she would say, Hank bit into a sugar cookie, recalling the wealth of things Denver had on offer. Four major sports teams. Its advanced flight-training center geared specifically for airline pilots. Three hundred days of sunshine a year.