Chapter 9
In order not to compromise Madge Fryburg's reputation, I crept out of her little bungalow at about two in the morning, via the backyard, and made my way down the alley to the corner, whereupon I turned up and walked along the sidewalk jauntily as if I were out for a insomniac stroll, got into my Thunderbird and pulled away as quickly as I could. One thing that is so unusual in California and especially in towns like Fresno, that you're very often likely to be stopped by a cruising squadcar and asked to identify yourself and, even though they are satisfied that you're not a burglar or a rapist, they'll still ask questions to find out whatever made you want to use your legs. Fortunately, there weren't any squadcars in the vicinity.
I lit a cigarette and I thought how much had happened in this short span of twenty-four hours since I had said goodbye to my cute little nurse in San Francisco, asked my boss at the real estate office for about two weeks in which to be with my dad and clean up any personal matters that might arise from our reunion. I was ready to phone him Monday and kiss the job goodbye for at least a while. And I guess I was going to have to kiss my little nurse more than an au revoir kiss, too. Unless, of course, she felt like commuting weekends down to Fresno, or I could arrange doing the same thing myself in reverse.
But right now, her charms had begun to grow hazy and almost indistinct, after the torrid hours I had spent in Madge Fryburg's bed. She had been insatiable and uninhibited. She had given herself to me with an almost savage joy, as if somehow she were punishing herself for having remained continent so long. And she hadn't told me any bedtime stories about her bedtime history either. All she'd said was that she wasn't a virgin. But she wasn't a whore either. It had been a kind of catharsis for us both, in which she had obviously tried to forget something, and I had almost gratefully enjoyed her embrace to put aside the thought of what I'd lost in the way of a straight-shooting, hard-nosed old son-of-a-gun who had really loved me more than I had ever deserved or that I had ever been able to show I appreciated. It was all a little mixed up, just like my sentences, I guess. But I think Madge Fryburg had understood what I was feeling.
This would be as good a time as any to go visit the property I had just inherited, mortgage and all. I drove down M Street, made a right-hand turn up Divisidero, and drove north for about ten miles, then cut off the freeway at Mulaheney Drive and headed west towards the Venturi Vineyard.
The night had grown a little cooler, and the moon was still beaming down. It was peaceful out here. Here was where life really meant something, putting something into the earth and having it come up, replenishing the age-old cycle, and I began to understand my father's love for the soil and for the wine which came from the grapes, the wine of life, the wine which was drunk in joy and in pride and to commemorate happiness or even sorrow. We Italians have a naked shamelessness to our emotions sometimes, even when we're Americanized as I was. And as I sat out there parked in the Thunderbird, my body relaxed and my mind lulled by the passionate fire with which Madge Fryburg had purged me, I began to feel a little more grateful and humble.
I could see that there had been a lot of developments since I'd left Fresno five years ago. There was another vineyard next to ours, and the boundary was a tall stone wall about eight feet high. It was a good piece of land, too, and I wondered how my father had ever let it get away. If he'd been prosperous, he would certainly have taken an option on it, and not let some stranger sit side by side with him and try to produce those good white grapes which gave the Pinot Chardonnay he was always after. In fact, my practiced eye determined that Dad's next-door neighbor had probably as much acreage as he had.
I started up the Thunderbird again and moved towards the wall, because I thought I discerned some of those vines on which the white grapes were flourishing. You need a lot of things to produce a good crop of grapes anywhere in the world. Good soil, the right amount of rain, plenty of judicious pruning, and first of all you have to know what kind of grapes to plant and how to get the best yield and what to put into the ground to give them that special tang which, after fermentation, makes for a truly great wine. Much of it is an act of God, some of it is just a little commonsense, and then there's the element of luck. You take California sherries, for instance. When they first came out, they were raw and sweet and so full of alcohol that you could get drunk on them, as on a cheap muscatel. Now they're getting a little more subtle, and one of these days they'll be just as good as what comes out of Portugal and Spain.
Well, maybe coming back to Fresno wasn't really getting out of my league after all. I'd been selling real estate in San Francisco, and this was real estate that belonged to the Venturi clan in the town where I was born. Maybe there was a meaning to it. I owed Dad enough to find out and also enough to try to solve some of the problems which had been plaguing him on his deathbed.
Then I heard a noise, a strange noise which sounded like a crack of a branch, but it was followed by a muffled whimper. Then it came again, a sharp crack and then the whimper. Something very fishy was going on, and it was on my side of the wall. From the road, our property was segmented off by strong steelwire fencing, not quite six feet high. I got out of the Thunderbird, put my hands on the top of the fence, and dug my sport-shoe toes into some of the small holes trying to get myself a footing. I managed, and I wasn't too badly out of condition-though I was just a little bit tired from all the gymnastics I'd been performing horizontally on Madge Fryburg's bed. I landed on the other side with a thud, which thoroughly woke me up, and then I crouched down and made my way in the direction of that strange combination of sounds. I heard them again, a little more distinctly this time. They were farther off towards the west, down along the last row of vines just on the other side of the wall which separated Dad's acreage from his neighbor's.
The sounds kept getting closer and closer and also faster and faster as I crept like a Commando out on a mission against the Nazis. There were a couple of shade trees planted right by the wall, and that's what sort of obscured my view. And then all of a sudden I saw what had been making those strange noises.
One of the thick-trunked shade trees was about midway down the long row, going right smack up against the wall. A burly, black-haired, rather squat man stood there with his back to me, and his right hand was lifted in the air and it held a flexible switch, apparently broken off from one of the small branches of the shade tree. Directly in front of this guy and bound to the trunk of the shade tree, was a youth. He was wearing jeans which were almost skintight, work shoes, white woolen socks, and his shirt had been ripped down from the neck to the waistband of the jeans, with the torn folds wrenched apart to expose the entire back. It was slim and pale white, and there were ugly welts all over it from the neck to exactly where the tight band of the jeans bit into the slim waist. The youth's arms had been wrapped around the treetrunk, and probably tied at the wrists on the other side which of course I couldn't see, gave the illusion that the poor guy getting his licks and not his kicks was embracing the improvised whippingpost.
From his build I judged him to be rather young, in his late teens, maybe; he had closely cropped sandy-colored hair, and his head was bowed and a part of his face was pressed right against the treetrunk. But that's not what was keeping him from crying out under those whistling cuts of the switch in his assailant's hand; because now I could see a dirty white handkerchief tied around the sufferer's neck, which could mean only one thing: a gag.
With a grunt, the burly fellow in front of me lifted up the switch and brought it down hard, in a vertical slash from the neck almost to the waist. The youth's body seemed to jerk and stiffen under that brutal slash, and an angry red line immediately appeared upon the pale white flesh. This time the muffled groan was very loud.
I straightened, and I tapped the whipper on the shoulder. With a vicious oath in Italian, the immediate translation of which was that I must have been born out of the womb of a diseased hyena spawned in hell's lowest cavern, he whirled round and raised the switch against me. His face was just as ugly as what he had been doing. It was a bulbous nose, with many red pores, which suggested that he was overly fond of the stuff that came out of the grapes growing all around him. He had piggish little black eyes which squinted, a swarthy complexion, thick sensual lips, and a dark stubble of beard along his jaws. He had big ears too, and a narrow forehead.
"Gently, friend," I told him in Italian, "Know whom you're hitting before you make a mistake."
"Per Bacco! And who in the name of God are you to tell me, Tulio Verduga, what to do in my own vineyard?" he growled.
I stood my ground, even though that was a pretty heavy switch and he had it raised high over his head and his wrist was quivering with impatience to bring it down across my face. "Your vineyard?" I echoed with a sarcastic little smile. "I was under the impression this belonged to the Venturis."
"And so it does, you meddling pig," he snarled at me. "And you are trespassing. I am the foreman here. And who are you? Speak up, unless you want what your friend here is getting."
The figure tied to the shade tree seemed to shiver and to press himself even more tightly against the rough bark. And he didn't turn his face back to see who had tried to save him. That was all right. Maybe he was embarrassed, at being naked to the waist though we were both of the same sex. But my business now was with this Tulio Verduga, because that was the name my father had pronounced on his deathbed as a bad Italian, his own foreman of whom he wasn't quite sure. After old Jacopo had died, my father had to take what he could get, and it hadn't been too good a choice, if Tulio Verduga's behavior towards me was a criterion.
"I happen to be Carl Venturi," I told him. "Put that switch down and tell me what the devil you think you're doing treating a young kid like that!" I gestured towards the welted back and shoulders of the sufferer.
"You mean you are the son of Marcantonio Venturi?" Tulio Verduga exclaimed, and in his squinty little piggish eyes there dawned a light of grudging respect.
"Marcantonio Venturi died yesterday afternoon in his house, and I was there," I told the foreman. "This vineyard is therefore mine and you work for me, I believe."
"That's true, padrone," he lowered the switch now and grinned ingratiatingly. "Ah, in the midst of life there is always death, is that not so, Signor Venturi? But I was protecting your father's interest, padrone. I caught this one trying to trespass. We had had some problems with the white grapes, Signor padrone."
It was curious how humble and fawning he was all of a sudden. I guess he hadn't bargained for me, figuring that I was safely away in San Francisco and that I had been on the outs with my father and probably wouldn't show up, at least not here in the vineyard. "I'm glad to hear that you're looking after my father's interests," I coldly told him. "But I don't think that on his worst-tempered days Dad ever took a switch to the bare back of a kid, just for trying to steal a few grapes."
"It's not exactly like that, Signor padrone," Tulio Verduga whined, rubbing his hands as if he were a pawnbroker. Then he turned and gave that welted back a quick nervous glance before he looked at me again and went on, forcing a deferential smile to his thick moist lips, "You see, Signor padrone, this one was actually trying to get away with a cutting. I was making my rounds, and I heard a noise, and then I found this one here with a knife and a little plastic envelope. I wanted to know what it was all about, and I got an argument. So I decided that a good lesson was in order, Signor padrone."
"I tell you what, Verduga," I said. "Why don't you go back to your house wherever it is, and I'll see you at the office Monday morning bright and early. I want to do a lot of talking about the property. I just came in yesterday from Frisco, just in time to talk to Dad before he died. And I guess I'll be taking over for a little while, anyhow. If you're the foreman, you're answerable to me."
"Si, Signor padrone, of course," he assured me. "You need have no fear about any trouble. Everybody around Fresno knows that those who trespass in vineyards belonging to others deserve to be punished, and it is not always the police or the jail we send them to. I shall say prayers for your beloved father, Signor padrone. Why do you not go to bed, for the hour is late and you surely must be mourning your beloved father?"
His sudden touching solicitude for me didn't ring true at all. I had the feeling he wanted to get rid of me in a helluva hurry. I pushed him aside and I walked up to the tree, "Not so fast," I said to him. "I prefer the modern methods of calling the police if something serious is going on. Then you've got legal witnesses. This way, you take the law in your own hands and you might start a blood feud. You don't even know who this person is, and he might be working for the fellow who owns the vineyard next to ours. I'll take care of this, Verduga. You get back home, and that's an order!"
I saw him clench his fists for a moment, and his face turned dark and ugly. Then he bowed his head, and in a very humble and obsequious voice, agreed: "You're right, of course, Signor padrone. I will see you Monday then. My God grant your worthy father a place among His angels, for truly Marcantonio Venturi was a righteous and good man."
Then he turned and made his way back down the row of vines till he reached the fence, turned to my left and disappeared from view.
I scowled when I looked at that pale white back again. It looked awfully frail, and some of the cuts were bleeding. Now, me, I like to spank a girl's pretty bottom, you understand, and get myself worked up for a good fucking. But I don't go for the brutal sadism bit, and I don't like to see skin broken and blood flowing from anybody. As an esthete I don't like it because it leaves permanent marks and damages beauty. You just want to warm a girl's bottom nicely until she's crying and squirming nicely and getting awfully hot inside her pussy so that she can take you on and make it up to you for the trouble she's caused that brought about the spanking in the first place. That's something else again. But this was deliberate and vicious cruelty, and I wasn't even sure it was called for. So I fumbled in the pocket of my slacks and I found a jack-knife, and I went around the tree to cut the wristbonds, that's when I dropped the knife and stared and gaped like a fellow who has just seen the Empire State Building for the first time in his life after coming out of a little hamlet in the backwoods of Tennessee. Because the "fellow" tied to the shade tree with a backfill of welts was a girl!