The Vineyard

Oh, look at the moon, April thought quietly to herself. 

The soft warm breeze felt nice. The full moon made the vineyard an interweaving patchwork of light and shadow. 

She leaned back on the bench and stared up at the stars.

Late July evenings are the most incredible...

Her mind wandered.  

 

"You should be happy to know that have I made the big decision," Lou told her. She could remember his words as though the conversation had just happened five minutes earlier.

"The big decision?" she asked. 

"Yes. You know." He glared at her in mock exasperation, smiling at the same time. "About what should be done with me. My remains."

"Oh, right. Of course."  

After a rather tense and awkward pause, he asked, "Don't you want to know?"

"Not really," she answered. "I mean, not right now. Not now."

"You're going to have to know eventually, and soon. You agreed to be in charge of everything." Though he was maintaining a cheerful veneer, she yet detected a slight tone of peevishness in his voice. 

"I know. Just not right now, okay? Later, maybe."

That was a Wednesday afternoon in early September. That day particularly stood out in her mind because a terrible storm struck suddenly as she left the hospice and headed home. She remembered it as so gothic and surreal. The sun was bright and the sky was a wash of clear blue when she left, with not a cloud in sight. But gray clouds suddenly converged and a terrible wind began just a few minutes after she began her commute. The television news later reported that evening that the winds had accelerated up to 80-100 miles per hour at the storm's peak.  

The rain eventually became so heavy that looking through the windshield was like looking through a liquid kaleidoscope; she could barely make out what was five feet in front of her car. She slowly pulled it over and gently steered it into an open space she luckily spotted on the side of the street to wait for the rain and wind to subside.

She could make out a man and a woman walking by her on the sidewalk just after she parked her car, stooped over and struggling against the fierce wind. It took her a moment to realize that they were an older couple, perhaps in their sixties or seventies. They had no umbrella. The old man had removed his jacket and did the best he could to shield his wife from the sheets of rain bearing down on them. April was just about to roll down her window and shout at them that they could take refuge in her car, but they were suddenly embracing one another. Amidst the torrential downpour, the elderly couple started kissing. Then they dodged through the front door of a café. 

 

Gazing across the vineyard, amid the chirping crickets and cicadas, she asked herself if she really saw them kiss. Perhaps her memory was playing tricks on her. Romanticizing the moment.

 

One morning, April had stopped by to see Lou at the hospice before she went into work. She had grabbed a couple of donuts and coffee at a little shop that they used to love to go to some years before. A nurse had just finished checking his vital signs when Lou granted her admittance in reply to her knock on the door of his room. 

"Carla here was just making sure I'm still alive," he said. "Thanks, Carla." April could hear a thick strain of bitterness in his voice. The nurse brushed by April and hurried out through the door. The expression on her face was that of deep frustration. 

"Bitch," muttered Lou after the nurse left his room. April shot him a stern and quizzical look. "They have no bedside manner here. This is a place where people come to die and they have all the bedside manner of Joseph Mengele."

There was a long and awkward silence before he finally said, "Well, come on in. Sit down. You brought coffee and donuts--pour moi?"

"I stopped at Café Amour. Haven't been there in ages." She handed him a coffee. He sipped. 

"Ah, just the way I like it," he said. "Black. And bitter. Like my soul." He attempted a smile. "So what brings you to the dyin' place at this fine hour of the morning?"

"I was just on my way to work, and I just wanted to stop in and see--"

"You know, you really don't have to do all this, April," he blurted out. 

"What are you talking about?"

"This--stopping by every day. Visiting with me. Bringing me coffee and donuts. I mean, come on."

She hated it when he got like this. She made an attempt at deflection. "So I got a chocolate-frosted and an eclaire. Which would you like? You get first choice."

"I'm not hungry. The coffee should be enough for me at the moment." He gave her an icy glance before he looked away, sipping his coffee.

She understood why he so often degenerated into these surly moods. She knew she wouldn't exactly be a barrel of rainbows if she was dying from a particularly aggressive form of cancer that seemed to strike out of nowhere. 

"You should really eat something."

"You should really stop using me to work out whatever emotional shit you're trying to work out here."

She was stunned, but not surprised. Those kinds of statements came with the mood. "I don't know what you're alluding to, exactly," she said to him. 

"Oh, for Christ's sake, April." He fixed his gaze right on her eyes. "You feel bad because you turned me down when I asked you to marry me, and then, boom, a few months later I find out I have cancer."

"Um, look--"

"No, just let me finish. It's OK, April. You don't have to feel bad about it. It is a scientifically proven fact that rejecting a proposal of marriage does not cause cancer for the person who proposed, m'kay? They have found absolutely no linkage whatsoever, according to the literature. Nobody's obligated to accept anyone's marriage proposal. I mean...I appreciate the visits, but all this...coming almost every day...on your way to work, on your way home from work...bringing coffee and donuts...It's not necessary. You're already doing enough by agreeing to tie up my affairs once I shed the ol' meatsuit here and shuffle off this mortal coil."

She just looked at him for a long moment. She reflected on their relationship--stretching all the way back to their college days--in a matter of a few seconds.

"Oh, for fuck's sake! I'll just come right out and say it--fucking leave, OK? I want to be alone right now. Go. Get out of here!" She looked around, confused, unsure of what to say or do. "I said, go, goddammit!"

She turned around and left his room, just in time, so he couldn't see the tears falling from the corners of her eyes. 

 

She thought back to the first time they had come to this place. Lou had found it online by pure chance. They were looking for a getaway for a very long weekend, and neither of them had ever ventured up to the far northwest corner of Illinois before. A Chicago businessman owned the cottage, kept his own little vineyard there just beyond the back yard. He bottled his own wine, which he sold to only a few shops in the area. He was a wine lover and it was simply a hobby for him. A labor of wine love. 

The cottage overlooked vast swaths of farmland. Lush, rolling green hills for as far as the eye could see. The pictures of the area Lou and April had found on the web barely prepared them for how truly breathtaking the scenery was. They almost felt as though they had traveled all the way to Ireland by simply driving a few hours out of the city. 

The little towns in the area all seemed frozen in time, like Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade paintings come to life. They had quaint little shops on their main streets, and art galleries that ran the gamut from the classical to the postmodern. Lou and April made it their top getaway destination from that point on.

Lou had proposed to her there. That was their last trip together.

It was getting late. She had no idea what time it was. She shifted on the little bench that was situated before the vineyard, watching the morphing shadows and moonlight as the vines danced a little in the warm humid breeze. She brought her knees up to her chin, closed her eyes, and she let the breeze wash over her face. It felt so comforting, as though it were gently caressing her. When she opened her eyes again she saw him standing right in front of her. Lou. Alive. In the flesh. At least it seemed so to her. The moonlight revealed all the features and contours of his face she had known so well.

"Thank you for taking care of everything for me," he said. "You did just as I asked of you. You cremated my remains and scattered them in the garden of the house where I grew up."

"You're welcome. Your sister wasn't crazy about the idea but I convinced her that your parents would have been very moved."

"Well, Joy's a bitch. That's all there is to it."

"Be nice. She agreed once I talked to her." 

"That's why I needed you to take care of things. Joy would have totally shit on the whole idea."  

They regarded one another quietly in the moonlight for a long moment.

"I miss you," she said, finally. He had no answer.

"I love you," she said a moment later. "I always have."

He smiled at her. Then he turned around and walked into the vineyard. He disappeared into the shadows and moonlight.    

The Hunter (with apologies to Anton Chekhov)

It is a seductively hot day. There isn't a single cloud to be spotted in the sky. The sun-bleached grass looks depressed, dreary. Perhaps there will be rain soon, but it seems as though it will never be green again. The forest is still, quiet, perfectly motionless. It's as if the trees are bearing silent witness.

A tall, thin man of about forty to fifty years of age in a plaid red shirt, army green camouflage pants, and knee-high boots nonchalantly saunters into the clearing and down the trail. To one side, there are the green trees of the forest, and to the other side, stretching all the way to the horizon, is a golden ocean of ripe wheat. He is sunburnt and sweaty. A blue baseball cap sits on his blondish-gray head as if it were a crown. A large leather bag hangs over his shoulder, a dead goose residing within it. The hunter carries a double-barreled shotgun. He squints his eyes at his old, thin dog as it sniffs the ground and bushes. It is so quiet...every living thing is taking refuge in the shade, away from the heat of the midday sun.

The hunter suddenly hears a woman's soft voice calling his name.

Startled and perturbed, he turns around. In front of him, as if having suddenly materialized from the air around him, is a pale, red-haired woman, about thirtyish. She holds a scythe with a long, polished wooden handle that glistens in the sun. She smiles, almost bashfully.

"Well hello, Penelope," replies the hunter, slowly putting down his rifle. "What are you doing here?"

"The women from town are working out here, so I'm here with them. I'm the hired help now."

"Hmph," the hunter quietly grunts. He turns away from her and slowly continues on down the trail. Penelope follows him. They wander on for a few minutes or so.

"I haven't seen you for such a long time," she finally says, breaking their mutual silence as she gazes tenderly at his back, admiring the slow, graceful movements of his shoulders. "You stopped by the cottage for some water on Easter Sunday, and we haven't seen you since. Of course you were drunk. God only knows how you even managed to walk. You cursed me, smacked me, and left. I've been waiting for you to come back ever since. I've been looking and looking and looking out for you, but I suppose you couldn't be bothered to come back just once."

"What would I do with myself at your place?"

"There's nothing for you to do there, obviously, just, anyway...there's the household...things that need...that need...looking after. You're the man of the house, after all. Why, just look at you, you've shot a goose! Here, why don't you sit down and take a rest?" Penelope laughs like a smitten schoolgirl as she looks up at the hunter's face, with her own face radiating pure joy.

"Sit down? Sure, why not?" asks the hunter indifferently. He sits down on a stump between two saplings. The old dog slowly lays down beside him and lowers his chin to the ground, his sad-looking eyes fixed on Penelope. "Why are you standing?" the hunter asks Penelope. "You should sit, too."

Penelope sits some distance away in a patch of grass. She is almost ashamed of her happiness in this moment, covering her smile with her hand.

"If only you'd come once, just once, just one little time," Penelope says wistfully.

"What would be the point?" The hunter heaves a sigh and wipes the sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "There's no reason to screw around with you for a couple of hours, get you all hot and bothered. And a little piece of my soul dies with every passing hour I spend in that godforsaken town, you know that. I'm spoiled rotten. I like a nice firm mattress to sleep on, a cup of freshly brewed, piping hot coffee, and nice, quiet conversation. I want to have all the good things of life, and that town is drowning in poverty and filth and meth-heads. There's no way I could live there another day. If they passed a law that said I had to live with you, I'd blow up the whole town or kill myself. It's just the way I am, can't help it."

"Where do you live now?" Penelope asks.

"At the Ivins place. They let me live in their coachhouse, I furnish fresh game for their dinner table. Mr. and Mrs. Ivins are big on keeping their food as local as possible."

"That doesn't seem very dignified, Mr. Good-Things-of-Life. Trudging around the woods, killing animals for another man's table. That's what most men do for fun, but here you are doing it for your living."

"You don't understand," says the hunter, gazing thoughtfully at the sky above them for a moment. Then he looks at her, right into her eyes. "You couldn't ever possibly understand who I am, what kind of a man I am. To you, I'm a crazy, lost soul, but everyone else knows that I'm the best damn shot in at least three or four counties. Even the rich fancy people like the Ivinses know that. There's even been a story published about me in a sportsmen's magazine. Nobody can ever even hope to match me toe-to-toe when it comes to hunting. And if I don't want to have anything to do with your towny ways, it isn't because I think I'm better than everyone else. It's just that I've never known anything else but guns and dogs since the day I was born. Take the gun out of my hands, and I suppose I'll just grab a fishing pole and do nothing but fish for the rest of my life. Take away the fishing pole, and I'll just start hunting with my bare hands. Of course, I traded horses for awhile. I went around to all the county fairs whenever I had some spare change in my pocket. You've seen it yourself, when any of these farm boys fall in with horse traders or hunters, it's good riddance to the tractor and combine. Once a restless man's soul gets the taste of freedom, there's no way he can ever forget it. It's like when a rich kid goes off to the city to become an actor, or some other kind of artist, he doesn't want to try his hand at anything else. He doesn't want to try and run some company, or become some kind of muckity-muck in politics--"

He notices a small, lonely tear trailing down Penelope's cheek.

"You just don't understand."

"I understand," she quietly answers.

"Then why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying," says Penelope as she turns away so that the hunter can't see her tears. "I'm not. It's just...it's just that...you could spend at least one day with me, one little, frickin' day. It's been twelve years since we got married, and...and...I don't think there's been a single day of love between the two of us, not one."

"Love," mumbles the hunter as he lifts the cap off his head and scratches his scalp. "That's impossible. We're husband and wife in name, but that's about it. You think I'm some rootless, aimless wild man, and I find you a simple woman who doesn't understand anything. We're a fine couple, aren't we? I'm Mr. Footloose-and-Fancy-Free and you're...you're a, uh...you're a...farm laboring...peasant woman of some kind. I fancy myself a master of the hunt, and you feel nothing for me but pity."

"We got married...in a church. Before God and man and everybody!" sobs Penelope.

"Not so fast, Penelope. You've left out a few details, haven't you? Go give Judge Platt a big hug and a kiss and thank him for this situation. He'd always been jealous that I was a lot better shot than he could ever hope to be, and so he took me out and got me drunk. And one thing led to another, and it turned into a thirty-day bender, of course, as can sometimes happen. A man lost in the bottle can be talked into all sorts of things. He can be talked into converting to a religion he's never heard of before, or getting married, even. And so out of the sheer spite of his envy, he married me, the best shot in five counties, to you, a...a, uh...a, um, cow girl, or...whatever it is that you are. You could plainly see that I was falling down drunk, so why the hell did you go through with marrying me? You're not a slave, you could've said no! Of course, a farm girl is awful lucky to snag a great hunter for a husband, but you should've thought a little bit more about what you were getting yourself into. Well, anyway...go ahead and suffer and cry. It's all just a big joke to the judge, but go on and sob your face off. Go beat yourself in the head with a hammer if it makes you feel any better."

A moment of stone silence passes, as if a quiet angel is flying by.

The hunter and his dog suddenly notice three or four ducks flying overhead. The hunter's eyes follow them as they trail off into the distance, slowly shrinking into a cluster of little specks over the horizon.

"How are you making ends meet these days?" asks the hunter as he turns back to Penelope.

"Between the field work and a little babysitting here and there, I manage to get by," she answers.

"Well...good," replies the hunter.

Another quiet angel passes. The faint sounds of women singing from off in the distance can be heard now, even in this oppressive heat.

"They say you built a new cottage for Alicia," says Penelope. The hunter is quiet. "I guess that would mean--"

"I suppose that's just the way it goes for you, eh? You've got yourself a new cross to bear now. Anyway, I think we've said all that we can say to each other. Time for me to get back on the trail." The hunter stands, stretches a little, and slings his rifle over his shoulder. "Always got to remember to stay on the trail. Just have to remind myself from time to time."

"When are you coming back to town?" she asks quietly.

"Doesn't matter. I'd never walk into that town sober, and it's no good for you when I'm drunk. I'm an awful drunk. I get so angry."

"Good-bye."

The hunter slaps his ball cap back onto his head and whistles to his dog, who lazily rises on all fours. They go on their way. Penelope stays right where she is and gazes at his back as he walks on down the trail. She admires the movement of his shoulder blades as he lazily saunters off. She feels the sadness fill her eyes and tenderly caresses her arms as her eyes stroke the long, lanky figure of her husband. For a moment it seems as though he feels her gaze on his back; he stops and looks back at her. He says nothing, but judging from the look on his face, it seems to Penelope as though he wants to say something. She meekly walks up to him, her eyes begging for him to finally say whatever it is he has to say.

"This is for you," he says, handing her a wad of bills, which she takes into her hand almost robotically. He quickly turns away and resumes his walk down the trail, the dog at his heel.

"Good-bye, husband!" she calls out.

He and his dog continue to walk down the long and winding path. She remains standing where she is, perfectly motionless like a marble statue, and closely studies his every step. Soon, the redness of his shirt seems to merge seamlessly with his camo pants, and then not long after that he can barely be seen, the old dog virtually indistinguishable from his boots. Only the blue of his cap can be seen now. Then he suddenly makes a sharp turn in a distant clearing and fades from her view.

"Good-bye," she whispers. She hoists herself up on her tiptoes in a last ditch effort to at least see the blueness of his cap one last time.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Richard Pevear's and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of Anton Chekhov's short story "The Huntsman," originally published in 1885, served as the guide and template for this newly updated version that I offer here. Their translation appears in Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, copyright 2000 by Pevear and Volokhonsky.