Chapter 5: The Vendetta
Jeremy rose for the first time during their conversation, stretched, and sank down next to his rock, imitating Bobby.
“I’ve never been much of a religious person, Bobby, but I believe I’ve passed down some of the moral tenets to you boys that I learned in a backsliding Catholic’s home. And Janie has done her part in exposing you to the ideas of the Presbyterians.
“But I’ve never been much of a churchgoer. I think it goes back to my childhood. We’d go visit my mother’s parents at Healdsburg. They were old-school Italians. Lived in one of those gingerbread houses with olive and lemon trees in the yard. I dreaded sunset when I’d stay there as a kid, because it meant bedtime and the required Rosary. I remember kneeling with them on those hardwood floors in front of a small marble statue of the Blessed Virgin. They’d chant away in Italian — or maybe it was Latin — with their beads in their hands and candles burning in front of their idol. I didn’t understand a word they were saying because we never spoke Italian at home. The Old Man never learned to speak it, never tried to. Of course, when we all stayed there, he’d head for bed when all this got started. But he made me stay downstairs to show respect for my elders.
“I guess that mindless mumbling — what I later thought was mental self-flagellation — really burned me out on the whole bit. Yet after Daniel died, I found myself trying to find a reason or a purpose in life — and death. I read the Bible, went to church with Janie for a time, and began to read some of my philosophy books again. I was searching for an answer. And the view of God that I felt best with was not one that gave me strength or provided me with consolation. It merely gave me an answer for why God exists in our minds.”
“And that is?”
“It was Plato’s view that God and an afterlife and everything connected to ‘It’ don’t so much exist as our need for them. That an afterlife was created so the grief-stricken survivors could be given a ray of hope in their most desperate hour. It gave them a belief that there was more to human life — and its abrupt end at death — than just this. And it seems to me that Plato was saying that as long as mortals were going to create these elaborate machinations of God and Heaven, that they might as well believe in them.”
Jeremy paused to reflect on his elocution. Bobby felt an intense pride for his father, not so much for what he had said, but for the thought that had gone into saying it.
“You’re probably wondering what all this has to do with a truck full of Schloss Cellars wine killing your brother. I just wanted you to know that I’ve never really bought that whole idea. If I did have that belief in God — in immortality — I’d be armed to face my own death, and to have borne the death of my eldest son.
“But I’m an unarmed man suffering from a lack of faith. No matter how hard I tried, I haven’t been able to take refuge from my loneliness and despair by creeping into the arms of some omnipotent father-figure created by my imagination. To me God and Heaven are only an opiate for the fearful and the mourning. I had to suffer cold turkey. So I began attempting to explain the accident in my own mind. To find out why or how Daniel and that truck happened to arrive in the same place at the same time. By providing myself with a rational, scientific answer, I thought perhaps I could finally accept his death and move on with my life.”
“And?”
“The wrong approach. I regret ever opening that can of worms. All it did was provide a bitter man with an outlet for his untempered anguish.”
“What did you do?”
“First, I talked to Gregor’s son. I told you his name was Sammy. You had already gone back to school by then. Sammy was home for two months after the accident living on Workmen’s Comp. He suffered a pretty good concussion and a broken leg in the collision. I think it was a miracle that he came out of that wreck alive.
“I asked him to recall every moment of that night. What his thoughts were, what he did that day, who was at the accident afterwards — everything. He broke down when he described the wreck. I’m sure it was hard explaining it all to the father of the man he had just killed. But he was very honest with me. He said he simply had fallen asleep. I thought he felt true remorse. He sought — he begged — my forgiveness. And I told him he had it if that’s what he wanted to hear.
“He also told me that he had only been driving the long hauls up from the Central Valley for two weeks. He was pressed into service as Schloss’ long-haul truck driver after the most recent firing-spree sent their two full-time drivers packing. I later learned that the firings were made on the recommendation of their newly created ‘Cellar Supervisor.” Gregor’s kid had never driven an 18-wheeler like that further than a couple miles from Schloss property before he began the long hauls in Fred’s truck.”
“Why didn’t Fred have one of his own drivers doing that, Jeremy? I thought Tornelli was into hauling wine, not leasing trucks.”
“It seems that the newly created ‘Comptroller’ at Schloss recommended that the winery lease Tornelli’s trucks and use their own drivers as a cost-saving measure. Fred had been hauling their wine and everybody else’s in the area for years. But Schloss’ new money changer had found a Central Valley trucking firm to underbid Fred, and then he simply gave Fred an ultimatum: ‘Either lease us your idle trucks, or let them sit and earn nothing.’ A big part of Fred’s business was hauling all that cheap wine Schloss bought from Central Valley grape refineries.
“So Fred had no choice. He laid off a driver and retired his wife’s uncle, a Tornelli, who was furious. I’ve known his uncle only as ‘Grandpa’ for almost twenty years. He drove an old ’62 GMC tractor with a St. Bernard in the passenger seat — but I’m getting way off track.”
“Gregor’s kid.”
“Yeah, Sammy. He had been up since six that morning — the day of the accident — to dead-head down to one of those huge wineries in the Central Valley. A place that provides an unbelievable amount of finished wine for bottling by the big wineries up here. Sammy had got hung up loading the wine. It seems that the cellar crew down there hadn’t done such a good job of cleaning out their wine hose that morning. They found part of a trapped rat in a butterfly valve after they had loaded the wine in the truck. Gregor’s kid saw it and raised a stink, so they did some searching and found the rest of the rat — it was a monster — chopped up in the blades of the centrifical pump. But most of its guts went into the tank on the trailer.
“I admire Sammy for standing up to those people, for showing that he cared, because they tried to hush him up and gloss the whole thing over. But he grabbed a phone and called his supervisor at Schloss, the ‘Sub-cellar Foreman,’ and told him what was going on. After he had retold the tale of the rat to the four people up the chain of command, he finally was speaking to the General Manager at Schloss. So after a couple hours it was the Schloss GM and the head pencil pusher at that bulk outlet conferring on the phone. You won’t believe this, Bobby, but I’ve learned there wasn’t any screaming about sanitation procedures at the bulk outlet and no righteous indignation on the part of the Schloss GM. Instead they sat there and argued about price!”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I’m afraid it’s true. When the winery made its final counter offer for the reduced-for-quick-sale wine, it wasn’t low enough for the GM. As the voice of Schloss he refused the wine and told them to unload it.”
“We know where his values lie,” Bobby quipped.
“I remember one little footnote in Sammy’s story on that whole calamity. He said that everyone he talked to on the phone at Schloss was frantic, not about what might be in the wine, but when they’d get it. They had to have 8,000 gallons of cheap white wine made in the desert from bland Thompson Seedless grapes and the like. And they had to have it for blending that night.
“The GM at Schloss gambled on them being able to unload the contaminated wine and load another batch, and Gregor’s boy driving it back to Schloss by midnight so the graveyard shift could process it and have it ready for bottling the next day. But to do that they had to cut a few corners. And you know what they were?”
“I’m not sure I want to hear.”
“They didn’t take the time to rinse out and sterilize the stainless-steel tank on Fred’s trailer. They just pumped the rat-fortified wine out, and the new wine in. Sammy wasn’t aware of the GM’s scheme, and he told the cellar workers to stop pumping the second batch of wine so he could call back Schloss and tell them what they hadn’t done. He thought he’d blow the whistle one more time. The GM jumped on the phone and began shouting at him: What the hell was he doing, who did he think he was, what authority did he have to stop them from pumping. The GM told him to get off the phone and mind his own business and just drive. And he did.
“Six hours later Sammy was ten miles from Schloss when he fell asleep. He’d had a long day and a pretty exciting one at that. He told me he was really tense on the drive back, because he didn’t know if he was in for a hero’s welcome for his first phone call, or that of a fired worker for his last. He did know he was exhausted.” Jeremey paused for a moment, exhausted himself from retelling the story. “Hell, you know the rest, Bobby. When Sammy dozed off that night the truck didn’t drift left to the median. It had to go right, onto the shoulder – where Daniel knelt changing the tire on his car.”
Jeremy sat quietly for a long time. Bobby thought he told the story in the complacent tone of one who had gone over it many times.
“Bobby, I’ve ‘what-if’d’ this thing to death. ‘What if’ Gregor’s kid hadn’t been negligent – yet it was an accident. ‘What if’ the truck didn’t have a tendency to drift right – it can’t be the truck manufacturer’s fault. ‘What if’ the rat hadn’t been in the wine – those two wouldn’t have been on the same patch of road at the same time – so was it due to some cellar worker’s sloppiness? ‘What if’ Fred hadn’t leased them a truck – but how could he have known?”
“He couldn’t have.”
“No, of course not. What I came up with was probably the most tenuous ‘what if’ of all. And that was: ‘What if’ Schloss didn’t ship that crap wine up into our valley? My ranch, my grapes, and my son would still be thriving entities in my life, And with that decided, I set out to build my case – “
“Now wait a second, Jeremy. I took torts my first year, and we went over and over the theories of negligence and compensation. I can’t believe my own father feels that his son’s death was directly attributable to the dubious business practices of a winery sitting at the other end of this valley. In your hypothetical case, there’d be a motion for non-suit. The judge would throw it out. Ignoratio elenchi!”
“Bobby, I’ve already told you I was firing on five cylinders back then. There was one reason or another for dismissing all the others from the burden of the blame. I thought Schloss and some of those clowns in Schloss management were the ones with dirty hands. Dirty hands that they held behind their backs when they’d talk to me.”
“Did it come down to you having a confrontation with them? I haven’t heard about one.”
“Yes and no. They are well aware of my vendetta, but I think they’ve been more concerned with covering their own tracks than to risk speaking out against me in public.”
“Are you on good terms with them now?”
“Considering what I’ve done, a definite ‘No!’”
“This is fascinating. I want to hear all about this while you’re in a fit of remorse. Who helped you build your case? Bring Perry Mason out of retirement from his orchid ranch?”
“Show some respect or I won’t tell you any more about the dark side of your father.”
