Saving Grapes

by J. T. Lundy

  I kissed her neck and shoulders. She grabbed the back of my head and I tried to French kiss her. Why not? I was in France and I didn’t want to disappoint. She laughed and pulled away. “You silly American.”

  I felt stupid and my face warmed. Jacqueline smiled and pulled me toward her and then French kissed me, gently moving her tongue into my mouth. I kissed her back and lost myself. We twisted and pressed together. My hand ran up her waist to her chest. She brushed it away. “We’re in the elevator!”

  I looked around, completely disoriented and surprised.

  The doors opened. Jacqueline grabbed my hand and pulled me toward her room. We stumbled inside and she fell backward onto the bed. I tried to lie on top of her but she put a foot into my chest and kicked me away.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  “Dance!” She giggled.

  “What?”

  “Dance like an American—like a cowboy.”

  “I can’t dance.”

  Jacqueline sexed me with her eyes and unbuttoned her blouse. “Dance for me, cowboy.” She pulled her skirt high above her knees.

  I gulped. At that point I could have done the cancan with Moulin Rouge’s best. I put my hands on my hips and kicked my pretend cowboy boots out left and then right. I shuffled like a square dancer to the end of the bed where I did two more mini cowboy kicks.

  Jacqueline clapped her hands and laughed.

  “Yeehaw!” I dove into the bed. Jacqueline wrapped me in her arms. We rolled and kissed, and I fell into a French dream.

  Jacqueline was right. The breakfast from room service was amazing.

  “Sixty-eight thousand big ones,” I whispered to myself. I stood with Sister Claudette at Château Dubois in the doorway of the warehouse with the vineyard’s owner, Claude Dubois. Châteaux Dubois was thirty kilometers away from St. Sebastian, and using a tanker truck was more convenient and efficient for us.

  “Monsieur Dubois prefers how we crush the grapes right away at St. Sebastian,” Sister Claudette said. “In fact, he gives us a slightly better price.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  A row of shiny steel fermenting casks loomed over us. Throughout the week, our stainless steel tanker truck had made three trips emptying our juice into his vats. We were waiting for our final tanker of juice to arrive.

  Considering the bills and prepaid expenses, after we received payment from Château Dubois, my take would convert to sixty-eight thousand dollars. I would have enough to pay the court with eight grand left over. Hammersmith could retrieve my passport, express it over to me, and I would inherit the vineyard.

  Monsieur Dubois stood in blue polyester shorts. A short-sleeve plaid shirt barely covered his barrel-like belly. “Je pense qu’il y a un problème.”

  Monsieur Dubois had the check in his hand when we first saw the final tanker delivery come rolling in. The truck was slowing down to turn into Château Dubois.

  “Oh, no,” Sister Claudette said. She walked quickly out of the warehouse. “That’s juice.”

  I saw the problem. A steady stream of juice flowed from the bottom outflow valve. The tanker truck drove up the drive. “Stop!” Sister Claudette shouted. The outflow valve flew off and dangled by a short chain. Purple grape juice gushed out, spreading on the drive like a bloody river as the truck continued toward us.

  “Oh la vache!” Monsieur Dubois cried.

  Sister Lucia drove, and Stumpy rode shotgun. They looked like they were singing and swaying to music. Matthew and Mark were perched on Stumpy’s lap, peering over the dash.

  Sister Claudette walked rapidly toward the truck. She looked like she wanted to run.

  She waved her hands. The juice stopped flowing from the valve. The truck stopped, and Sister Claudette replaced the valve cap, impossibly trying to save our juice. She walked around to the cab and opened the door. She machine-gunned some French words toward Sister Lucia and Stumpy. Sister Lucia stopped smiling.

  I opened Stumpy’s door.

  “Did you tighten the discharge valve?” Sister Lucia asked Stumpy. “Righty-tighty, remember?”

  Stumpy looked blank. He held his hand and mimicked tightening the valve. He turned his hand left, then right, and looked confused.

  I climbed on top of the tanker with Monsieur Dubois, opened the top hatch and looked inside. Only a small amount of juice coated the bottom.

  Monsieur Dubois climbed off the tanker. “This is no good. I’ll have to rewrite the check.”

  “Wait, what? No, sir, we can get more juice. Don’t change that check.”

  “That’s our last juice,” Sister Claudette said.

  I wasn’t about to give up. I needed that check. “We can sell him our private stock. There’s enough in our vat for a tanker load.”

  Both the sisters looked crossly at me. “Then there would be no St. Sebastian wine this year,” Sister Lucia said.

  “And there has been St. Sebastian wine for three hundred and eighty-seven years now,” Sister Claudette said.

  I hung my head.

  Monsieur Dubois walked toward his office.

  I looked at Stumpy. “You really burned the beans this time.”

  The dogs stood next to Stumpy. One of them growled at me, Matthew or Mark—I couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Things happen,” Sister Lucia said. “God’s will moves in mysterious ways.”

  Monsieur Dubois reappeared and handed us a new check. Sister Claudette showed it to me and I quickly calculated. My profits would be twenty nine thousand five hundred euros. I needed thirteen thousand one hundred more euros by the end of the week to pay the court sixty thousand dollars and salvage my inheritance.

  I walked toward the Citroën, feeling ambushed. I bumped into Stumpy and walked on. “If God’s will moves through you, then I’m an atheist.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I stood before Sister Lucia and Sister Claudette in their bright office. I had one week to come up with the money, and I was presenting them with a fundraising scheme, er, idea I had thought of. An industrial-looking clock ticked the seconds by on the wall. Sister Lucia smiled at me. Sister Claudette looked skeptical. The smells of the vineyard and sounds of chirping sparrows floated through the open window. “The vineyard party should be a festival for the whole town,” I said.

  Sister Lucia clapped her hands. “I love the idea.”

  Sister Claudette tapped her fingers on her desk. “And we charge money?”

  I walked across the office linoleum floor, accentuating my points like a professional pitchman. “Twenty euros a pop. But we’ll give free vineyard tours and wine tastings. And how about a tour of the abbey? Lots of folks are interested in what nun life is like. Of course we’ll have to charge for some things, like games and rides.”

  “What games?”

  “I don’t know yet, but we’ll come up with something.”

  “I could run a shell game,” Sister Lucia said.

  Sister Claudette and I looked at her with surprise.

  Sister Lucia juggled her hands moving imaginary shells. “You remember, Claudette? I was quite good at it as a kid.”

  “You’re hired.” I winked at Sister Lucia. “We can sell wine and have the market vendors sell their goods. We’ll charge them each a fee.”

  Sister Lucia practiced moving three paper clips around her desk in confusing patterns. “It will be fun, Claudette.”

  “We’ll split the profits. It will be great community involvement for St. Sebastian. We can advertise that half the profits benefit charity.” I paused and pointed at them to clarify. “That would be your profits.”

  Sister Claudette stood up and looked out the window as if searching for the right decision. “I don’t like it.”

  “Oh, please, Claudette.” Sister Lucia stood next to her sister. “There used to be festivals here all the time. We should bring back the tradition.”

  “But this is a profit-making scheme.” Sister Claudette turned toward me. “Why do you need this money so badly again?�
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  I had never really told them the truth, and I didn’t want to now. Why should they help a man in trouble with the law? “I owe my stepbrother some money. I don’t like having a personal debt hanging over my head.”

  The sisters looked at each other long and hard, silently communicating. It made me nervous.

  “Okay.” Sister Claudette shook her head in exasperation. “It’s against my intuition, but okay.”

  “Yes! Thank you, Sister.” Today was Friday. The gig would go off Monday night. My payment was due next Friday. I looked at Sister Lucia. “Round up some more nuns who know carnival tricks. We’ll have a ‘Battle the Sisters for Prizes’ area. Who could resist that?”

  I left the office and searched out Stumpy. We printed flyers, La Grande Fête du Vin, and posted them throughout the town. I wanted to tell Jacqueline about the festival. I was sure she would have liked to help out, but she had to go back to Paris to wrap things up with her job. I really didn’t know when I’d see her again; all I knew was that I wanted to.

  I placed some flyers on a table next to travel brochures at the Hotel Duras. The old lanky waiter walked by and looked over my shoulder. “Très cher.”

  “Too expensive? You think?”

  He stopped another waiter walking by and pointed at the flyer. The waiter shook his head. “Twenty euros. Bah.”

  I felt a pang of worry. I needed people to come to the festival. “How much would be right?”

  “Five euros,” the lanky waiter said. “St. Mark’s charges five euros for their festival. People like the St. Sebastian Sisters. For five euros they will go.”

  “Okay. Five euros.” I borrowed his pen and began crossing out “twenty” euros and writing “5” on the flyers. I stuck my head out the door and yelled at Stumpy tacking flyers across the street. “We gotta change all the flyers.”

  I handed the pen back to the lanky waiter.

  He refused it. “Keep it.”

  “Thank you. Thanks for everything.”

  He smiled, gave me a wink, and went back to work. I liked that old guy.

  Stumpy and I posted flyers in the town hall and talked to the man in charge of the weekly market. He made some phone calls and lined up the area cheese, sausage, and other market vendors to sell at the festival.

  Stumpy and I drove home. “It was a good day.”

  Stumpy’s head rocked to music known only to him. “The festival is going to be fun.”

  “The profits are going to be fun.”

  Monday night arrived. The sun dangled in the west, and there were three hours until it would drop for the night. The air was warm and smelled like market day from all the vendors. We had a good turnout, and the crowd grew. I collected the vendor fees and had two nuns sell tickets at the gate. I counted people coming in and I calculated that with a healthy game operation I might pull off the cash I needed from this convent carnival.

  Nuns drove tractors and pulled wagonloads of people around the vineyard for tours. Wine tastings were going strong, but sales were slow.

  The big hit, though, as I had predicted, was the ‘Battle Against the Nuns.’

  Sister Mary Margaret mowed them down at the Ping-Pong table with her long arms and power serve.

  Sisters Helga and Olga, cousins from former East Germany and Olympic weightlifters, took turns arm wrestling area farmers into shame.

  Sister Lucia flipped her shells around like a gypsy and won most of her games.

  A popular booth, which surprised me, was ‘Pick Your Penance.’ People bought tickets to reveal ‘hypothetical’ sins to a panel of nuns who would then come up with three possible penances. People could pick a penance they thought best. There were no winners other than that people received hypothetical penances to hypothetical sins. Sister Claudette worried we were breaking some church rules, but even she couldn’t resist the fun.

  Sister Claudette stood to the side of the booth and just had to pronounce her own, much sterner, penance to each sin. The lanky waiter was there, smiling at Sister Claudette, and he translated for me.

  She shook her finger at a supposed sinner. “Count your blessings, Robert, I’d have you tilling our weeds for a month.”

  “I do count my blessings, Sister.”

  Sister Claudette actually laughed. To another sinner she said, “Oh, you got off easy, Stephen Randles. You’d be on your knees saying Hail Marys until I died for that one.”

  “You’ll never die, Sister,” Stephen Randles said.

  Sister Claudette shook her finger at him. “And don’t you forget it.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Stumpy and I hustled around and made sure all ran smoothly. Every half hour we emptied the ticket cash box and brought the money inside to the office safe. Vendor sales seemed slow, which worried me because I had sort of guaranteed the vendors a minimum return.

  After the third cash deposit, Stumpy and I felt like happy circus barons. I looked out the office window. The carnival still hopped, and the gaming nuns were still proving the good Lord was on their side.

  A police car and a taxi pulled close to the front gate. Two local gendarmes stepped out of the police car. “Oh, crap. The cops.”

  Stumpy pointed with a shocked look. “And Eustace!”

  “Eustace?”

  Sure enough. My former stepbrother stepped out of the taxi. He was wearing a blue blazer, white khakis, and loafers. He looked like a yacht club member wannabe.

  My heart revved up the RPMs to Autobahn speed. “They’re going to arrest us.”

  “You think?”

  I frantically grabbed at the euros in the safe and put them back into the cash bag. “Yes, I think, and all because of your big mouth. Why’d you have to tell Laura we were going to France?” I pulled the strings taut on the bag. “Come on; we gotta hide.”

  Stumpy just stood there, maddeningly not alarmed. “Why would they arrest me?”

  “For aiding and abetting my escape from the United States. You even paid for it.”

  “Oh.”

  I grabbed his shirt at his chest and pulled. “Now come on.”

  We hurried out of the office and ran down the hall. I sprinted with the cash in hand. Stumpy tried to keep up behind me. I darted out a side door and raced across the courtyard. Luckily all the nuns were at the party and the abbey was empty. Ugh. Matthew and Mark were there. They saw us and chased. I ran into the church and held the door, waiting for Stumpy to lumber in. He finally made it with the dogs close at his heels. “Follow me.” I ran to the back and then up the stairs to the choir loft. I set the cash on a pew and opened a bottom stained-glass window air vent and peered outside.

  Matthew and Mark barked.

  “Sh!” Stumpy said and they quieted. “What are we doing?”

  “We’re hiding. I don’t think you can arrest someone inside a church.”

  Outside Sister Claudette faced off with the gendarmes and Eustace. When they were done talking, Eustace looked around with a proprietorial grin. He got back in the taxi and rode away.

  “I think that church asylum stuff is from olden times.”

  “Sh.” Sister Claudette walked into the abbey with the two gendarmes. “We’ve got no other choice. Here they come.” I lay down under a pew. “Keep quiet and think invisible.”

  It smelled dusty, and I kept rubbing my nose so as not to sneeze. We lay silent for several minutes. Nothing happened.

  “I got to pee,” Stumpy said.

  “Christ.” I crawled over aging wooden planks to the window and looked out. The nuns were cleaning up the carnival and the vendors were packing up. The gendarmes got back into their police car and drove off.

  “They shut us down. Come on.” I hurried and scampered down the stairs. I heard a thud and an “ow” come from Stumpy. I walked outside. The dogs pranced on each side of me, like I was their prisoner. “What’s going on?” The townspeople walked toward their cars. “The party is just getting started.”

  Everyone ignored me and La Grande Fête du Vin fizzle
d. Stumpy walked out of the church rubbing his head.

  “There you two are.” Sister Claudette stomped toward us.

  “We can’t shut down, Sister. I need a couple more hours.”

  “You can thank yourself that we’re shutting down.”

  Eustace and the authorities had finally caught up to me. My shoulders dropped. “Can the church grant us asylum, Sister? Will you protect us?”

  Her eyes saw me all at once, inside and out, and I felt ever the rascal that I was. “You failed to obtain a permit.”

  “The court in Kankakee wants a permit?”

  Sister Claudette stared me down and I found it difficult to breathe. “One problem at a time.” She had an angry patience about her that looked to find the whole truth. “The Duras Gendarmes wanted to see a permit for the festival. That’s why we had to shut down.”

  “I paid for a permit.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a lopsidedly folded pink paper. “It’s right here.”

  “Posted properly in your trousers,” Sister Claudette said with a sarcasm I didn’t know she was capable. “If you were here we wouldn’t have had to shut down.”

  “That other man,” I said.

  “Your former stepbrother, Eustace.”

  “Eustace.” I gritted my teeth. “We were hiding from him in the choir loft.”

  Sister Claudette looked at the bag of cash I held in my hand.

  I felt guilty. I handed her the bag. “Just keeping it safe.”

  The round sausage vendor rolled over and spoke English for my benefit through a thick mustache. “Excuse me, Sister.”

  Sister Claudette’s gaze fell on the sausage man and I felt temporary relief.

  He stammered under her stare. “The vendors were guaranteed minimum sales.” He looked around. “Sales were slow and with shutting down early we are nowhere near what we were promised.”