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  Red Mountain

  Boo Walker

  For Red Mountain, a place that found me when I needed finding.

  Table of Contents

  I Chapter 1 A Coyote without a Pack

  Chapter 2 The Lost Art of Chasing Dreams

  Chapter 3 From the Womb to the Grave

  Chapter 4 The Woman with Secrets

  Chapter 5 The Survivors

  Chapter 6 The Unique Boy

  Chapter 7 A Red Mountain Dinner Party

  Chapter 8 Craving Love

  Chapter 9 Heartbreak Loves the Lover

  Chapter 10 You Can’t Run from Dying

  Chapter 11 A Tale of Two Fathers

  II Chapter 12 Margot 2.0

  Chapter 13 The Music Maker

  Chapter 14 The Coyote Gets Caught

  Chapter 15 Filling in the Missing Years

  Chapter 16 The Challenges of Transformation

  Chapter 17 Who Else Knows?

  Chapter 18 The Now Girl and the Forever Girl

  Chapter 19 Holding Hands and Stepping into the Darkness

  Chapter 20 Margot and the Shaman

  Chapter 21 Emilia Shaves Her Head

  Chapter 22 Cody, the Australian Shepherd

  Chapter 23 The Harvest Party

  Chapter 24 A Woman on the Mend

  Chapter 25 The Cooking Club

  Chapter 26 Letting Go of Rebecca

  III Chapter 27 Go Get Him, Brooks

  Chapter 28 Margot 2.0 Slips Back into the Tub

  Chapter 29 Look Who’s Back

  Chapter 30 The Days after Losing

  Chapter 31 The Jenga Tower

  Chapter 32 The Battle Inside

  Chapter 33 The Ugliness of Infidelity

  Chapter 34 A Man on the Mend

  Chapter 35 Shot to the Heart

  Chapter 36 The Laws of Gravity

  Chapter 37 Regret Is a Dangerous Bedfellow

  Chapter 38 Red Mountain, the Tiny Island

  Chapter 39 The Police Station

  Chapter 40 Otis and the Angry Neighbor

  Chapter 41 Stuck in the Middle of You

  Chapter 42 Forgiveness Is a Black Hole

  Chapter 43 The Storm Is Over, Right?

  IV Chapter 44 Holidays and Misgivings

  Chapter 45 Brothers in Arms

  Chapter 46 All Together Now, a.k.a. the Thanksgiving Spectacular

  Chapter 47 Hope Like a Light at the End of the Tunnel

  Chapter 48 A Revelation of the Senses

  Chapter 49 Too Many Passengers on Board

  Chapter 50 The Concert for Épiphanie

  Chapter 51 Stage Presents

  Chapter 52 A Miracle and a Gun

  Chapter 53 Here’s Mommy!

  Chapter 54 Sometimes Surprises

  Chapter 55 The Real Me

  Chapter 56 A Mountain of Love

  Also by Boo Walker

  Acknowledgments

  About Boo

  I

  What shall we say, shall we call it by a name

  As well to count the angels dancing on a pin

  Water bright as the sky from which it came

  And the name is on the earth that takes it in

  We will not speak but stand inside the rain

  And listen to the thunder shout

  I am, I am, I am, I am

  -John Perry Barlow

  Chapter 1

  A Coyote without a Pack

  Late September, Washington State

  Under the light of a wide-eyed moon, Otis Pennington Till strolled into his syrah vineyard, puffing on an unlit briarwood pipe. At sixty-four, and despite a lower back still tender from lifting a wine barrel earlier in the year, he moved with a fair amount of grace.

  Not too far away, the coyotes called up into the moonlit big sky night, their howls and yelps disturbing the calm of Red Mountain. He could hear the uneasy baas of his flock of Southdown sheep stirring in the pasture below, and he knew his huge Great Pyrenees, Jonathan, was on high alert.

  “Baa back to you, friends!” he shouted with a faint British accent, the leftovers of his London childhood.

  Kicking aside a tumbleweed with his work boot, Otis plucked a few grapes from one of the ten-year-old syrah vines and put them in his mouth. He closed his eyes, and as the skins burst between his teeth, the juice coated his tongue. He hoped to be overwhelmed by the complexity of the fruit, the mouth-watering acidity, the velvety tannins, the elegance. But the nuances he’d grown used to tasting in ripening Red Mountain grapes didn’t treat him tonight.

  For a couple weeks now, Otis had been struggling with his sense of smell and taste. When he first noticed the symptoms, he chalked it up to a cold or a hiccup of growing old; perhaps a result of too many hours spent with his tobacco pipe as of late. But his condition was getting so bad that he might be incapable of making wine this year.

  Otis spat the seeds to the ground like he was spitting in his opponent’s face. He cast his pipe into the dust, cursing.

  Trying to wrangle his anger, he filled his lungs with the cool, clean air and gazed at the harvest moon, the bright orange eye of the night. “Please don’t take my wine away from me,” he begged. “It’s all I have. You might as well kill me now.”

  Otis tossed his tweed cap to the ground. He removed his cardigan and plaid button-down shirt, his boots and trousers and the rest. Naked, he stood tall and proud. Chill bumps rose on his arms. He lifted his hands in the air, as if ready to catch a star. He drew his right hand to his face, kissed his palm, and blew that kiss up towards the heavens, up towards the rest of his family—his sons and wife. “I could be joining you sooner than later, my loves.”

  Lowering to his hands and knees, he looked back to the moon and howled. Without a trace of insecurity, like a child, he howled. As loud as his body would let him, he mimicked the wild dogs out there, pacing in the darkness, calling out, singing their songs.

  Ahhhhhh-oooooooooo! Ahhhhhh-ooooooooo!

  Stopping to catch his breath, Otis noticed the coyotes had raised the volume of their own song, perhaps welcoming him. He could hear the higher pitch of the young ones and the deeper haunting sound of the eldest, and Otis howled even louder and with more heart.

  Ahhhhhh-oooooooooo! Ahhhhhh-ooooooooo!

  Feeling better, Otis dressed and made way back toward the house at the western end of his forty acres. He took pride in the fact that every square foot of his property was tidy. Despite the occasional strong winds that often brought trash from the road, not even a bottle cap could be found on his land. Every hose was coiled to Army standards. Weeds were virtually non-existent. You could have slept in the sheep corral or dined in the chicken coop. All his energy, all the usual precision of a Virgo that was normally channeled toward the loving and caring of other humans, Otis redirected toward his animals, his property, and his wine.

  He entered the stone home he and his wife had built and made way to the study. Most evenings, when he felt too lethargic to tackle anything constructive, he found at least a modicum of solace in gazing at the wall-to-wall shelves lined with his collection of books, all well-read, thoroughly enjoyed, and dog-eared, especially those written by English authors, like Shakespeare, George Orwell, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, and Churchill. He felt a kinship with them, even though he’d been an American citizen since his early teens.

  At the touch of a button, Art Tatum crooned from the CD player. Otis poured himself a peaty twelve-year-old scotch from a crystal decanter and carried the glass over to his recliner. Since his wife had died five years before, he hadn’t slept in their bed. He couldn’t even bring himself to lie down in it. He couldn't bear to revisit their intimate moments there—their naked bodies wrapped around one another, Rebecca stroking his hair and murmuring in her soft morning voice that he mi
ssed so dearly, their silly pillow fights and their once-a-month lazy Saturday mornings when they wouldn’t get out of bed until noon. Since she passed, he had slept on the couch or in this recliner, a beast of a chair he’d worn in so well that the outline of his body was visible in the cracked, worn leather.

  Using a letter opener that had belonged to his father, a journalist who wrote for the London Telegraph and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Otis rifled through the stack of mail. Eventually he drew out a letter addressed in large, flowery handwriting. He recognized it as being from his maternal aunt, Morgan. She didn’t believe in computers, she loved to brag, so her correspondence was by virtue of the United States Postal Service.

  Just seeing her name on the return address made Otis moan. Morgan was the Queen Bee of Montana—the belle of the ball, but Otis could handle her only in small doses. Her personality matched her handwriting—too big and forceful for her petite body. She’d outlive him by thirty years; he was sure of it.

  As always, the letter began innocuously. But Otis was wise enough to expect a surprise. He found it, and the words made him jump to refill his glass. He could hear her high-pitched voice as he re-read the end:

  I’m coming to see you, sweetie pie. What’s it been? Five years? Since the funerals? Not acceptable. Seems like you and I are the only two of our blood who are managing to survive this sometimes awful world. We should share secrets. I’ll be there on Monday. According to the lovely lady at the post office, you should get this letter on Saturday. I didn’t want to give you the time to stop me. Make sure you pick up some Folgers and half and half. You know I can’t stand that Seattle single-origin crap.

  See you very soon,

  Morgan

  Otis reached for a half-eaten bag of pork rinds and worked his way through them while pondering her intentions. He raised his eyes to the urn that held the last of his wife’s earthly remains, the turquoise vessel a gift from a potter friend in Sonoma.

  “You wouldn’t believe who’s coming to town, Bec,” he said, setting down his snack. “Aunt Morgan. She’s still trying to pair me up with some other girl.” He shook his head. “Morgan loved you so much. I don’t know why she’d ever want me to replace you.”

  No one knew Otis had kept his wife’s ashes. He’d told her brother and her best friend that he had spread her remains in their vineyard on Red Mountain, as she’d wished. But he liked having her in their home, and he wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He stared at the urn for a while, revisiting old memories—trying to focus on the happier ones. Then he bid his dead wife goodnight and returned to thoughts of his impending visitor.

  Aunt Morgan. Coming to Red Mountain. What a disaster. She’d been hinting at this trip for months now. She’d decided he was lonely and sad, and it was time he started dating again. She made him feel like he was fifteen with her overprotective smothering. And now she was coming to town.

  Involuntarily, Otis’s imagination played a series of disastrous scenarios resulting from her visit; all of them centered on his being embarrassed in front of his friends and fellow Red Mountain inhabitants. Otis knew his reputation on the mountain. He was a respected leader, a pioneer, the wisdom bearer, the godfather, the man the young winemakers and grape growers came to see. How easily Morgan could burst this persona, leaving him vulnerable and exposed, to be picked apart and laughed at by the vultures of youth. His thoughts finally faded to black.

  He woke in the chair hours later. The window faced the top of Red Mountain, which was about 1,400 feet at its highest point. The sun hadn’t quite peaked over the mountain but had brightened the night to a tarnished silver, illuminating the silhouettes of the vines running along the hills. Twenty yards out, a lone coyote—his spirit animal—stood there looking at him, white-gold eyes glowing in the early morning light. They’d met a few weeks before, in the same place.

  The two stared at each other for a long time before Otis tipped his tweed cap and closed his eyes again.

  Chapter 2

  The Lost Art of Chasing Dreams

  Rory was standing in their Vermont kitchen, wearing one of his cheesy pinstriped suits. A red tie was pulled away from his neck, his typical after work appearance. With his politician’s smile—the one Margot had grown to hate more than anything in the world—he asked, “What’s for dinner?”

  Margot raised her eyes at him from the cutting board, where a Santoku knife waited next to a pile of chopped garden carrots. “Hi, Sugar. So glad you’re home.” And with that, she took the knife by the blade and threw it at him with the expertise of a ninja. The blade embedded in his throat. She laughed, a sinister, devilish cackle as he fell to his knees and bled to death on the kitchen floor, the last gurgles of his life a symphony of joy to her ears.

  Margot Pierce reached for the glass of merlot she’d poured, sighing as she sank into the bubbles and savored the last moments of her daydream. Taking a bath in the early afternoon had become a ritual. So had imagining how she’d kill her ex-husband.

  He had been the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the father of her only son, the man who tracked her down after seeing her in Crazy for You on Broadway in New York, put a ring on her finger, and dragged her back to Vermont. The man she’d left her promising career behind for: Rory Simpson. Just his name disgusted her now.

  How unlucky she was to have been Margot Simpson, even temporarily. The name had invited an exhausting amount of teasing in comparison to the matriarch of The Simpsons. She’d changed her name back before he’d even signed the divorce papers. The bastard. The man whose affair was exposed by a journalist who managed to capture images of Rory’s cock in his secretary’s mouth—a slutty little whore named Nadine—a news story that made its rounds internationally and made Margot the most pitied woman in America.

  These kinds of daydreams—admittedly disturbing as they were—had kept her from going insane since she left him. She attempted to keep each fantasized murder civil by only using objects found in the kitchen. It was the one rule to her cathartic game. One day, she’d have to quit killing him and move on to something else. It couldn’t be healthy. Maybe she needed to see a therapist, but she didn’t have time right now. She had a business to get off the ground, and things weren’t off to the best start.

  In a way, she had to appreciate his infidelity. Her half of his money had allowed her to move to Washington to realize her greatest dream: opening an inn and farm sanctuary. The inn was already being built, but the associated hemorrhaging of cash was starting to threaten the possibility of the farm sanctuary, a place where abused and neglected farm animals could live out their lives.

  Since childhood, she’d been a protector of all living things, not even letting her friends squash a bug in her presence. Philippe, her rescued three-year-old terrier mutt, was curled up on the cool tile floor against the wall. His wiry gray hair and royal gait made Margot think he belonged at the feet of Queen Guinevere while she held court. Margot spoiled him accordingly.

  She’d bought her home and the land for the inn before she’d moved out to Red Mountain, but she couldn’t yet purchase the adjoining ten acres for the sanctuary. At this rate, someone else might swoop in and buy the property out from under her. Every time she drove by, she wanted to grab the “For Sale” sign and put it in her trunk.

  The inn was supposed to be open by now, but delays in construction had held up the project. Her contractor, a man she was learning to distrust, had assured her he’d be finished by September 1. Now, she’d be lucky to open the doors by June. And she’d be even luckier if she wasn’t painfully over budget. That’s what I get for trusting someone, especially a man, she thought. If her contractor wasn’t careful, she’d be daydreaming about him in the bathtub, too. She had no shortage of kitchen weapons in her arsenal.

  She dressed and went downstairs, Philippe following closely behind. Her home stood on the lower part of Red Mountain, below Col Solare, a winery owned by St. Michelle and the Antinori family. She’d bought the house from a Microsoft couple who’d built it on
ly five years earlier. She never knew why they left, but the house was everything she ever wanted. It wasn’t very big, but she didn’t need much space for herself and her son. The white stucco and red roof, that Santa Barbara kind of look, fit so perfectly with the desert climate and the vines that ran in rows as far as you could see in every direction.

  The Microsoft couple had done an exceptional job inside, too, sparing no expense on fixtures, appliances, and the little details. Due to the escalating nature of real estate on Red Mountain and the seller’s market they were in, Margot paid top dollar, but she believed in her purchase. Red Mountain was only beginning to show its potential. One day, people would compare the area to Yountville or Calistoga.

  She heard a car door shut and walked out the front door. Her seventeen-year-old son, Jasper, was getting a backpack out of his car. The sight of him brought her so much joy. Though Jasper hated her to say it, he was the most adorable boy, or man, she’d ever seen. He was barely 5’8”, weighed maybe 150 pounds, and had this baby face that made her want to gobble him up. He’d attempted to hide his youth by growing a beard, but the effort was so patchy that it somehow only enhanced the cute factor. He had exceptional taste in clothes and took great pride in his dress.

  Today, he was wearing a pair of red John Fluevog brogue shoes with dark jeans and an ironed white button-down shirt. And he’d been the one to iron it! His brown hair was shaggy and he wore glasses with thick rims. She’d offered him LASIK but he had no interest. He liked looking sophisticated. His beat-up wool fedora rarely left his head. The whole look especially worked when he got on the bench behind the piano, which is where he had spent the majority of his life. He had this kind of budding-jazz-star look, “the mad scientist on the ivories,” as one of the college recruiters trying to poach him had said.