Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

Except Jacob, naturally, was on about something. “Look at all this old machinery and shit they have on display out here. Like they need to make this place seem more real ? Like… oh, well now we use giant machines to plow our fields and squeeze our grapes, and our bottles are made for ten cents apiece in a factory in Mexico, and our corks are made of plastic… but we’re in touch with our heritage, gosh durn it!”

George looked over at Sara. She looked annoyed again. He felt a heat rising up all around his temples, the warm suffusion of his wine-buzz beginning to feel like real drunkenness, and he shot Jacob a cease-and-desist look. George reached for Sara, wanting suddenly to kiss her deeply and blot out their friend’s forever blathering, but she eased him off before he could do more than peck her quickly on the lips.

“Here it is! Shellacked, of course, to preserve that rusty veneer forever and ever! In a hundred years I wonder what people will stand around staring at, thinking it’s so quaint and authentic? Oh, look at that cute little cellular phone! Look at that funny hybrid car! Just imagine how hardworking and pure-hearted people must have been back then!”

“Christ. Do you have to be such a snob?” George shouted. This came out a bit meaner than George had intended.

Jacob returned the sentiment. “Do you have to be such a wet blanket?”

George was about to reply when Sara tried to grab his hand. “Come take a walk.”

“He thinks because he got one poetry prize, he knows better than other people.”

“I do know better than other people,” Jacob snapped. “Most people can’t do math in their heads, much less write a poem.”

Ordinarily George would have backed down. He knew there was no getting Jacob to apologize. It was just his nature. But George’s head hurt and he knew there was nothing left between him and the inevitable evening spent cleaning someone else’s house.

“You know you don’t get a medal on your deathbed for having been right most often. You just lie there alone because everyone you ever loved hates your superior guts.”

His friend held up his hands to call for peace. George couldn’t remember a time Jacob had ever backed down before. Irene stood up and pulled her phone back out of her pocket again, walking around with it stretched out toward some phantom signal. George was finally about to ask Irene who she was texting when Sara, finished with her cheese, took George’s keys from his jacket and walked over to the driver’s side door without a word. She leaned twice, sharply, on the horn to announce that they were moving on.

• • •

The final stop was Lenz Winery, and it seemed pleasant enough from the front — wide swaths of brown vines being forced to grow straight up, and a building with huge oak doors that hung invitingly open. Inside were a half dozen other visitors, milling about the long bar in the back and wandering off occasionally to sample chutneys, mustards, and vinegars that were displayed along the walls. George bought five tastings for the group, and soon a white-bearded man was easing a bottle over each and pouring out a perfect mouthful of something the color of sunlight. He and Irene both took sips and swished them around in their mouths.

“We’re supposed to taste ginger and apricots,” Sara read.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jacob said, downing his tasting in one gulp.

“It says it right here,” Irene said, pointing to the card in Sara’s hand.

“They just make that stuff up to make it sound fancier,” Jacob snorted. “Wine is wine.”

“Well, it doesn’t taste like any Chardonnay I’ve ever had before,” Sara said, leaning over the counter to catch the man’s attention. “I want to ask him how they do that.”

“Oh, like he’s going to tell you the truth,” Jacob scoffed, before wandering off to admire some salami hanging in a nearby display.

“This one’s wonderful,” Irene said, reading the card, “‘Tastes like bluegrass with notes of honeysuckle and hominy’? Well. I don’t know about that, but I like it.”

George took a sip and was inclined to agree. He was about to suggest they buy a bottle of it when he noticed Sara nudging the silver spittoon toward him.

“This is so good!” Irene sighed.

“Let’s get a bottle of it,” George said, taking another sip and pointedly swallowing.

“It’s only the second thing we’ve tried here!” Sara replied. “Let’s have the others and then see which we like the most.”

“But Irene likes this one,” George said.

“Yeah, I like this one,” Irene agreed.

“But you might like the next one even more.”

Just then Sara finally got the attention of the man behind the counter. “Why does this taste so different? I usually don’t like Chardonnay.”

“Well, you’re used to California Chardonnay,” the man behind the counter answered with a smirk. “It’s much cooler over here, so I can harvest the fruit over the period of a couple of weeks. There’s time for different flavors to develop, and we can mix them together to create a much more complex wine. California is much hotter, so they don’t have time to let the fruit mature in stages. It’s all simpler, more one-note over there, whereas here the wine’s got real complexity and sophistication.”

“Like a true New Yorker!” George quipped as Jacob wandered back over.

The man behind the counter stooped below a low crossbeam as he fetched up a bottle for George. “You’re joking, I get it, but there’s truth to it. The people are part of the wine. The wine is part of the people.”

“It’s the circle of life…” Jacob began to sing, before Irene stepped on his toe.

The man continued. “We call it the terroir .”

“That sounds fancy,” Sara said.

“It’s how we speak about the soil it’s grown in. The weather. Out here we’re surrounded on three sides by water, so that affects the vines. We get less sunshine than California, but we also get a greater variety of climates throughout the year. And we’re part of the terroir too, if you get my drift. Let’s say one year I’m standing there in the dirt in New Zealand, and the mud that’s still on my shoes from the Rhineland the year before becomes part of the next year’s harvest. We had this big brass band out here last summer during one of the weddings, and, well, those vibrations carried through the air and got into the soil and the vines. That music is in the grapes now. Everything is connected, and everything has a lasting impact, no matter how briefly it’s here.”

George felt Sara’s hand gripping his tightly as the man finished his speech. Even Jacob was silent as they toasted again. He stayed silent right up until the end, when he approached the man and asked for four bottles of the Chardonnay made from “bluegrass, hogwash, and fairy wings.”

• • •

The sun was heading down, and there was no more avoiding it. For the third time that day, they boarded the Shelter Island ferry and crossed the water. Nobody spoke as they got out of the car and faced the mess, which seemed even more humongous in the waning light.

Sara found some buckets and brooms in a hall closet and sent George and Jacob down to the basement to see if they could locate some trash bags. They climbed down the old stairs together, saying nothing, moving through the dark with George’s cell phone screen up as they hunted along the cinderblock walls for a light switch.

“There’s a pull-chain thingy here I think,” Jacob said from somewhere behind him.

George moved closer with the white rectangle of light in his hand. “Sorry,” he said, “about before. I guess I had a little more than I realized.”

Jacob grunted in what George guessed was an acknowledgment, if not an acceptance, of his apology. George could admit he had crossed the line, but there was no reason anyone had to be worried about him. He always suspected it was because none of the others had ever seen a real drunk before. George had known plenty. Bad alcoholics, back home in Ohio, at the bar his grandfather had owned and where he’d spent a few hours every day after school. Those shapeless men. Hard, but helpless, leaning low down on their stools. Nothing like him.