Chapter 1: Prunes
In the early years of the 1980s:
Jeremy Barnes rested his bulk on a boulder nestled like a petrified dinosaur egg to one side of the steep, sloping vineyard. A giant yellow Cat had ripped the oval stone from the ground a dozen years before and cast it aside. And despite all the changes wrought on the landscape over the years, the stone in naked defiance had not budged an inch since its rude awakening.
Barnes leaned forward on his nest and picked up a handful of pebbles and pale dirt and let them sift slowly through his fingers. Focusing from the falling dust deeper and deeper into the panorama beyond, he slowly pulled back his heavy frame and gazed upon the valley below. A rolling scape of lush, trained grapevines stood in stark contrast to the scorched golden hills around him. From his high vantage point, the vineyard looked to him like sliced green fog.
Prunes. Prunes were once all that grew in The Valley. Small, black, wrinkly prunes had been the cash crop for his father. Prior to drying, they hung plum-like from trees fit to produce the fruit — scraggly, knarled trees, not the least bit symmetrical. Once a year the trees bore their stone fruit with a grudge, and then dropping it only after a hard shaking. With the ugly little fruit, Jeremy’s late father had built a mildly successful ranch in one corner of The Valley.
Jeremy remembered sitting near this same spot as a child and looking out over The Valley one crisp spring day. In evanescent pageantry, the prune trees had covered themselves with sweet, pale-pink blossoms. He recalled thinking, even at such a young age, that when prune trees were in bloom was the only time all year that they didn’t look pathetic.
From the time of his first childhood memories until he was a young man, the sight of his father had been as consistent as that of the sunrise; they kept regular company. If Jeremy wasn’t in the orchards, he was one step over and two behind The Old Man. Propping the crutches under the deformed arms of those frail trees, disking the soil with the old one-banger tractor, organizing the pickers, second-generation Italian Americans that, during those years, evolved into newly arrived Mexicans — all was done in the shadow of The Old Man.
The last days with his father still rekindled painful memories for Jeremy. For weeks The Old Man had seemed preoccupied, worried. Jeremy rode into town with him for an unscheduled check-up at the doctor’s office. Afterwards, they had stopped in at the shop of the town cobbler — a friend of his father’s — where The Old Man proudly said that he had passed his physical with flying colors. That night Jeremy’s father died in his sleep of a massive heart attack.
Jeremy remembered his mother bursting into his room shouting in a terrified voice, “Help him! Save him! He’s dying!” And what his mother said next he didn’t know, for she spoke hysterically in Italian, a language she had barely spoken in their home. Jeremy had run into his parents’ room and sat on the edge of their bed. He lifted up his father in his hands. Blood trickled from The Old Man’s mouth and nose, even from his right ear. And despite his mother’s pleadings, he did nothing to save him; there was no need to try. And today, Jeremy didn’t know why he always called him The Old Man, or why he always remembered him as one. His father was only 60 when he died — two years older than Jeremy was today.
Suddenly Jeremy had been without his authority figure, his mentor. He was authority. He had been terrified of the unexpected responsibility. As the sole descendant, Jeremy assumed complete control of the expanding ranch during the last years of World War II. His mother, a second-generation Italian American, had no desire to rule the roost. And unlike many of the neighbors’ sons, Jeremy had not gone to the Pacific during The War. He had been the only child, and the Government had decreed that he was too valuable to leave the ranch — the armed forces needed prune juice. So Jeremy’s contribution to the war effort had been making sure that American GI’s had regular bowel movements.
A morose laugh snuck out of Jeremy. Only recently he had read a long account of the events leading up to the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The one detail from the article that had stuck in his mind was an Enola Gay crew member’s description of his usual breakfast on the days leading up to Ground Zero. It had included a big glass of prune juice, probably from Jeremy’s prunes. For some time after reading of the atrocious effects of that first A-bomb, Jeremy had felt a perverse tinge of responsibility for the event.
He often wondered if he had a natural inclination toward guilt and depression.
