Chapter 4: Rock Bottom

April 1917

I’ve lived in America longer than I did in Scotland, but some things never leave you. New Year is one of these things and I spent the eve of 1917 in the company of a couple of Highlanders positively pickled in superstitious beliefs in the old ways. They were actually cheerful about the coming year, and I allowed myself to relax my vigilance. I should have known better!

Calum had recovered from an illness he picked up on the hill tending sheep in the previous autumn. I was able to take all the outdoor chores off his hands and he was now becoming restless. In the middle of March, he and I took a day trip into the foothills. My Gaelic had improved during the winter, so we were able to converse as we walked. By the time we stopped for food and a smoke, we’d found all but two of his flock of sheep.

At one time he had tended five hundred but now there were only twenty-four. By two in the afternoon, we had found one of the missing beasts and Calum was resigned to the other being lost – old and done, just like him, as he told me. On the way back to the cabin one of the dogs got excited and when we turned off the track, we found Bella, the missing ewe, calmly eating the thin remnants of the winter grass.

There’s a passage in the Bible about a shepherd leaving his flock to recover a sheep that had strayed and in Sunday School the minister had stressed the symbolic significance. But there was nothing symbolic about Calum’s reaction to finding Bella in good health. He had tears in his eyes when he knelt beside her and put his arms around her neck. You probably think I’m being imaginative, but I’m certain that Bella turned and nuzzled into him with a contented bleat.

She followed us down to the plateau where ten of the other sheep were already nibbling the scanty grass. All their lives, Calum has been bringing them close to the cabin during March so he can help them with lambing towards the end of May. I put out hay in the lee of the barn for our new guests before we went in to hot toddies and venison stew.

I wouldn’t say that things came to a halt in the depth of winter in the Yakima Valley, but the pace of life certainly slackened. Sheriff Ed had nothing new to report on the search for Leggett, and Ella wrote that he hadn’t been seen in Minneapolis. Margaret the new receptionist had talked to the police at great length and had given them access to the private office of the AWO. She was now getting scared that she had said too much and was considering leaving home to avoid further questions.

I hadn’t done any work on the slope I was preparing for planting vines, and I had seen nothing of Willi Fassbinder, my partner in the enterprise. There were rumours in the town about a major split between Willi and his son Erich but no news at all about Helga. The weather had been too bad to make travelling pleasant so there was nothing sinister in the lack of contact, but I was uneasy, nonetheless.

When I sailed on the Orca to Charleston, the Second Mate had warned me that a strong wind would sink us, so I spent the whole voyage scanning the horizon for signs of impending disaster. I was in the same mood now. Nothing had happened and nothing was threatening but I felt that it was only a matter of time. Morag didn’t say much but I could tell that she was unhappy because Helga hadn’t visited since Christmas.

March was a calm month with the land still very much in the grip of winter. Another couple of weeks and the wheat would be sown and life would begin again for all of us. Then at the very beginning of April we were hit by an icy blast from Washington DC: on the sixth of the month, the United States declared war on Germany. The news wasn’t altogether unexpected, of course, but we were all shocked by it.

When the Lusitania was sunk, President Woodrow Wilson claimed that the USA was too proud to fight over an atrocity. Since then, there had been strong diplomatic pressure on Germany. It seemed madness for one small country already fighting for its survival to bait a nation with the manpower and resources of America. The smart money had been on the Germans pulling back in time, but they had now pushed a reluctant people into the conflict.

The news of the declaration of war seemed to release all the tensions in our quiet valley. Willi and I had avoided any discussion on the war when we were planning and working together on the vineyard, but I was in no doubt about his pro-German views. My country is now America, but I didn’t want any Scots to be harmed by the conflict, so I suppose I was pro-British.

Morag hated the very thought of war and Calum was wholeheartedly in favour of anyone who tried to put the English in their place. The feeling in the town was lukewarm support for American intervention. The most common view expressed was that America didn’t start the war, but it was sure as hell going over to Europe to finish it. Previously neutral citizens were now openly supporting Britain and France.

This edging of public opinion towards Germany’s opponents drove Willi mad. He spent much of his time in town buttonholing anyone who would listen to argue the German case. He’s well liked and much respected, but people began to avoid him in the streets and bars. Matters came to a head outside the saloon favoured by the gilded youth when Willi came face to face with his son exiting rather the worse for drink.

Willi had stopped to look at the display nailed to the façade of the building showing an American flag flanked by the flags of France and Britain. Erich came out into the street with his four friends while his father was looking up in horror at this evidence of anti-German sentiment. Erich has blonde hair and very fair skin and I imagine his face would be flushed with a combination of drink and embarrassment. He stumbled a bit on the final step onto the road adding to the impression that he was thoroughly drunk.

It might still have passed off peacefully if it hadn’t been for Henry Porter, the most outspoken of the younger generation and a particular friend of Erich’s.

“We’re off to Spokane to join the army, Mr Fassbinder,” Henry shouted. “The American army,” he added in case there should be any doubt.

“My son Erich a German is,” the old man squeezed out through pursed lips, his English slipping in his anger. “The army of the Kaiser he will join!”

The five young men laughed and turned towards the depot, dragging Erich with them. Willi was left standing in the street just as I imagine the bull must wait after the picadors have sapped its strength for the final blow from the matador. It was a moment when the sentiment in the town towards the Fassbinder family changed.

People who had been complaining of Willi’s support for Germany remembered that it is his native land, and they began to remind each other of all the good the old man had done in the community over nearly thirty years. Suddenly, no one had a good word to say about Erich and his four closest friends. Criticism that had been muted for years began to be spoken aloud.

“There wasn’t a man in Yakima that believed these boys would enlist – or that the army would take them if they tried to,” Sheriff Ed told me later.

Perhaps it was the encounter with Willi that drove the five young men forward or it may simply have been alcohol, as it so often had been during their adult lives. They went from the saloon to the bar at the depot and then spent the journey to Spokane in the club car. Whatever drove them, they finished the day in an army recruiting office and left it as soldiers.

It was some time before anyone realised what had happened. The recruiting officer took their details and told them they would hear something in due course. Instead of being given new uniforms and sent home as heroes, they were packed off without any visible sign of their patriotic sacrifice. When he sobered up the next day, Henry told his mother what they had done. His father had died in a hunting accident when he was about five and his mother had taught school to keep a home for young Henry, her only child.

In her determination to give him everything that boys got when they had two parents, she spoiled him. He was clever at school, but he wouldn’t study, and he left with no qualifications. He worked as a clerk in the main grocery store in the town, but rumour had it that he only kept the job because the owner was sweet on the widow Porter. He couldn’t do much about it because he already had a wife at home; she’s too fat to get around but her ears are wonderfully attuned to gossip.

Erich and two of the other boys in the gang are farmer’s sons and the father of the fourth owns the livery stable beside the depot.

Mrs Porter made much of the fact that the five boys had finally come good and were setting an example of courage and civic mindedness to others in the town. At that time, in the days immediately following the declaration of war, the view popular in the press was that nothing more would need to be done. Germans weren’t stupid and they would have to surrender now that America was prepared to teach them manners; it was widely believed that not a single American soldier would have to travel to Europe.

By the time the Selective Service Act was published in the middle of May, doubt had begun to creep in. For a start, the Germans had shown no sign that they were intimidated by their new enemy; perhaps they would come to their senses when America had recruited an army. Mrs Porter was comforted by the fact that the Act excluded agricultural workers from the draft. As she said, clerking in a grocery store in an agricultural area obviously fell within the spirit of the legislation.

She had accosted me in the street a couple of days after her son and the others volunteered. I listened politely while she read me a lecture on courage and civil duty, and she finally flounced off when I offered no counter arguments. I was ready to fight but I was certainly in no rush to get myself into a situation that was totally obscure. America didn’t have enough troops when it declared war; it’s easy enough to draft men but you must clothe them and house them before you can set about training them to be soldiers. I decided to await developments.

If I could face Mrs Porter with equanimity, my encounter with Willi Fassbinder required rather more fortitude. Now the ground was drying out, I went to inspect the walls we had built to terrace the new vineyards. They had survived the winter without damage but there was one area behind the longest stretch of wall that concerned me. I had just decided that I would remove a brick and put in a drain when there was a shout.

“Get off my land!”

I turned to see Willi standing about ten feet away pointing a shotgun in my direction. I held my hands out from my body to show I wasn’t armed as I stood up slowly without any sudden moves.

“Get off my land!” he repeated giving the gun a little jerk – perhaps he thought I hadn’t noticed it!

I was raging! What is it with this family? First the daughter shoots me with a rabbit gun and now the father is pointing a shotgun straight at me. Then there’s this ‘my land’ nonsense; Willi and I have a gentleman’s agreement to jointly develop the slopes for viniculture. The one thing about him admitted even by his harshest critics is that his word is his bond!

He didn’t actually look as if he was ready to fire at me but if I went charging at him in anger he might decide to shoot in self-defence. I took several deep breaths.

“The path to the cabin starts right beside you so I’m going to walk slowly towards you.”

I kept my hands where he could see them and walked towards him trying to look cool and composed. He stood while I took two paces and then he backed away. Suddenly he swung the barrel into the air:

“I wouldn’t have shot you, you know.”

I stopped where my path turned off and just looked at him. He was haggard. There was a pause while he still held the gun but now pointed at the treetops and I stood letting the last of my temper drain away.

“What were you looking at when I came along,” he asked in a conversational tone, and I found myself explaining about the need to improve the drainage in the central section. If you had arrived at that moment, you would have taken us for old friends sharing a common interest. I looked back when I got to the plateau and Willi was still standing there with his shotgun aimed at the stars. I walked on shaking my head at my lack of discernment: I still really like the man.

That was my lowest point. From then on, I bumped along near the bottom but things gradually improved – at least it seemed like that when I could force myself to see the long perspective. After my encounter with Willi, I sat for half an hour until I could recover a supportive frame of mind towards the people that really care about me. Calum has recovered from his illness and is ready to start the clipping and dipping of the sheep before the lambs begin to arrive at the end of April. I’m worried about Morag who is taking Helga’s continued absence very much to heart.

Morag and Calum don’t attend church very often nowadays because the order of service is so different from the Church of Scotland. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, a protestant minister visits and holds divine service in Yakima. These are big occasions, especially for Morag whose father was a minister. They get dressed up and Helga sends a carriage pulled by four horses to carry them triumphantly to the church.

This year, the date of the service was approaching, and Morag had heard nothing about the arrangements. Publicly, she is serenely confident that her friend will send the carriage as usual, but I can see that doubt is beginning to nag at her. I could, of course, offer an alternative but that would risk alienating Helga still further. We all got dressed in our best clothes on the morning of the service and I was ready to run to the town to hire an automobile if the carriage didn’t put in an appearance.

Calum wears a dress shirt with a separate collar for these services and today the stud that holds the back of the shirt to the collar broke. We emptied a dozen trinket boxes onto the bed while all three of us hunted amongst old buttons and safety pins for a new collar-stud. We were so engrossed that we didn’t hear the carriage arrive.

The first we knew of it was Helga coming into the room and picking up the elusive stud at first glance. I helped Calum to get ready and when we went out Morag and Helga were standing side by side at the entrance to a vehicle that had to be seen to be believed. Whatever had been keeping them apart, I was delighted to see that they had returned to their old loving friendship.

Helga says the carriage is a barouche and was her mother’s favourite means of getting around. The seats inside are leather and the trim is gold, all looking as if it was newly delivered from the showroom.

My heart really warmed to Helga at that moment. Love comes in many guises, and it was a measure of the girl’s devotion that she would keep an antique coach in perfect condition just so two old people could travel to church in style twice a year. I said that to her as I offered a hand to help her follow Morag into the carriage; she blushed and touched my hand just for an instant, but I could feel a tingle in the spot all the way down the road to town.

The next day, Calum and I herded the sheep into a pen so we could shear them. I knew nothing about sheep so he picked out a ewe, Bella I think, and showed me how to hold her on her back with her head between my legs so that she would stay still while the shears cut off the fleece. When she returned, skipping, to the pen, he took me round behind the barn where the solitary ram lives eleven months of the year waiting to be let loose amongst the ewes. It is vital that the lambs are born as soon as the spring weather makes it safe; that way they are mature enough to survive the following autumn and winter.

The ram is half as big again as the sheep and the proximity of the ewes had given him ideas that were making him decidedly frisky. Calum sent me into the pen with this randy old fellow and when I had hold of him in the approved position, I was handed the shears while Calum leaned at his ease on the rail enjoying my struggle. In the end, I got the fleece off him although the result was decidedly patchy. My arms were aching, and I later found bruises on my legs from my ankles to my thighs.

“I could do that. Can I try Calum?”

I don’t know how long Helga had been watching but I wished her well if she tried her hand at shearing sheep! He handed her the shears and waved me towards the pen to bring out another woolly victim. I put the ewe into the proper position and let Helga take over. She held the sheep firmly and began shearing with confidence, much to my surprise. After a minute or two I picked up the spare shears and brought out another beast for myself.

Calum stood at the fence watching us while he ran the whetstone over yet another pair of shears to sharpen them. When Helga and I finished, I brought out sheep for her, for Calum and for me. Now that I was settling into a rhythm, I was finding the whole experience satisfying; it was hard work but soothing at the same time. Morag brought the lunch out to us, and we sat at the roughly planed table outdoors to eat. What with concentrating on the shears and then on the food, I don’t think we uttered a word for more than an hour.

After lunch Morag and Calum sat on the bench leaning against the wall of the cabin while Helga and I sat on the grass at their feet.

“I’d like to learn about sheep, Calum,” Helga said, speaking quietly. “I think there should always be sheep on these hills. I don’t want to live on the farm with Erich when dad goes. I’m going to come up here and make the cabin my home.”

Morag turned to Calum and began to translate but he held up his hand.

“I understand what she’s saying,” he told his wife in Gaelic. “I think being around the young ones has brought back my English.”

So, I told her that her dad and I had been discussing turning the plateau into an orchard and she wanted to know all the details. Sitting there with her face alight with pictures of the place as it would be in the future, she was more beautiful than ever. For the first time, I felt at ease in her company, seeing her as another person without the complications of being a man and a woman. When we went back to shearing the sheep we worked in harmony, not saying much but relaxed with each other.

At the end of the day, we were all tired, but we had most of the fleeces laid out in the barn. Helga and I stood side by side looking at them and she offered to show me how to card the wool. She and Morag have been preparing the fleeces for years, spinning the yarn and selling it to local ladies or knitting it themselves. She told me that what she really wanted was to buy a loom to weave fabrics.

As the light was fading, she brought her horse round and put on the blanket. I offered to bring the saddle and she told me off in her old fashion: “I’ve been saddling my own horse since I was twelve!”

“When was the last time you saddled it after shearing seven sheep? Tomorrow morning you’ll be lucky if you’re strong enough to brush your hair and you’ve probably been doing that since you were six!”

She laughed rather ruefully at that, so I went and fetched her saddle and put it on top of the blanket. She tightened the girths and climbed into the saddle.

“I’ll be back to do my share of the last six, even if my hair is un-brushed,” she said over her shoulder as she rode off into the gloaming.

Morag teased me when I went into the cabin about romance being in the air, but I explained that we had worked together as friends. There was, I assured her, no spark between Helga and me.

“Take my word for it, Ewan dear, friendship is the best possible basis for a happy marriage. When the passion is all spent the friendship carries you through.”

The next morning my hopes that I had moved away from the deepest depths of despair were thwarted. Helga brought the news that the depot manager wanted to see me urgently, so I put on my city suit and went into town leaving Calum and Helga to shear the last of the sheep. I knew the depot manager to see but I don’t think I had spoken to him, so I stopped in to see Sheriff Ed for a briefing.

He pointed to a gun lying on his desk and asked if I recognised it. I’ve never owned a gun and I know very little about them, so I pleaded ignorance.

“It’s Willi’s shotgun. He brought it in the other day and asked me to keep it because he had almost shot you with it, so he said.”

“Hardly that! He did wave it about, but it wasn’t cocked, and I don’t think he meant it anyway.”

“The problem with Willi is that he sees you as the kind of man he wants his son to be, and he can’t forgive you for it! Did you really walk up to him while he held the gun at your chest?”

“Well, I did warn him that if he wanted me to leave, I’d need to take the path right beside where he was standing.”

“Just wait ‘til he hears you’n Helga have been gettin’ cosy amongst the fleeces. He’ll be wantin’ his shotgun back while he finds the preacher”.

I gave him my most forbidding frown, but he just went on laughing so I asked him if he knew what the depot manager wanted. After accusing me of changing the subject he denied all knowledge of what was going on, but I thought he had a rather roughish twinkle in his eye.

The manager is tall and thin, and his stoop gives the impression that he is bowing obsequiously. He was forthright in what he had to say to me. Three days ago, two rail cars were shunted into a siding; they are addressed to Willi Fassbinder and are full of vegetation. I had a look inside the cars, and he was speaking no less than the truth.

One car contains around a hundred fruit trees each about four feet high and with their roots wrapped in jute bags. I dare say they had been well watered before they left the nursery in southern California where they originated but a cursory inspection revealed that the roots were drying out. Something had to be done within hours if the plants were to survive. The second car was packed with vine saplings in the same need of moisture.

“Mr Fassbinder says they’re nothing to do with him. He told me to dump them or burn them but I didn’t like to so he said that I should talk to you.”

The trouble about living in a small community is that everyone thinks they know what is going on amongst our neighbours. The depot manager had heard that there is bad blood between Willi and me and he’s afraid that he’ll find himself the bone fought over by two dogs. I smiled reassuringly and he took that as a sign that he could tell me his next bit of news.

“You can take them away, of course, but there’s twenty dollars and eighty-five cents owed to the railroad company, and it’ll cost six dollars a day while the trucks lie useless in this siding.”

It took him about twice as many words to get the story across, but I’ve missed out all the apologies he used to appease me. My mind was trying to cope with several things at once. I wasn’t happy at being put in this position by my former friend Willi, but I didn’t have the time at present to deal with that. I wanted to save the plants and that meant that I had to find a place to plant them and the money to get them from the railway cars into the ground.

When I had sent money to my brother after our mother died, my bank balance was finely judged to let me remain jobless in Yakima until after the harvest. I’d been sacked by the Union – well, technically I was only suspended – but I had come here in the first place to get a better deal for seasonal workers, and I planned to stay until I had tried my best for them. If I took every penny out of my account, I could pay the railroad charge and hire a few men to do the planting.

So far, so good. The biggest problem was that I owned not a square inch of ground. Helga had been really keen about having an orchard on the plateau so I reckoned she wouldn’t turn away free fruit trees. The quick glance I’d had at the vines suggested that I would need to find a couple of acres of meadowland if the plants were to be saved.

Promising the depot manager that I’d be back very soon, I headed for the bank and drew out all my cash. On the way back to the depot, I had a bright idea: there would be hobos and tramps in the jungle that would likely jump at the chance to earn a few bucks planting trees. As I reached the livery stables, I passed the doc coming out, so I stopped to chat. I told him my troubles, trying to make them sound manageable although detailing my problems to him made me realise how insurmountable they were. Every patch of ground seems to be owned and cultivated.

“I’ve got a paddock you could use for the vines,” the doc said when I finished my tale of woe. “I used to have six horses in the old days but now I’m using one of those automobiles so I’ve only one riding horse left. I’ve just put her into livery so I’ve a six-acre paddock lying empty.”

He took me with him to show me the field, telling me that he had always fancied owning a vineyard. He waved aside my warnings that Willi might make trouble when he recovered.

“Willi has been able to ignore the truth for years and he’s fighting mad because this war has forced him to face it. He’s an American – and that means more than just paying your taxes! His son is a flop, and his daughter could run the farm, but he can’t get it out his head that she needs a man to help her do it.

“He’s hoping that she’ll bring a husband into the family so he can teach him all the things he failed to teach Erich. Then you come along, and he thinks that you might do very well, but that Helga will run a mile if he so much as hints at that. He’s tried to find her a man before, you know.”

I left him and went back to the jungle where I hired fifteen likely lads and took them to the boxcar containing the vines. Once I’d paid the railway fee, the lads started unloading while I went and bought twenty spades that I took to the doctor’s paddock. I also booked and paid for fifteen meals in the diner and sent my team off to eat once the vines were lying in neat rows waiting to be planted. That left me with a wagon load of fruit trees to dispose of. My early confidence that Helga would welcome the arrival of an orchard was getting thinner and thinner.

I still find it hard to know how she’ll react in any situation. I was pretty sure that I could talk her round, but it might take hours – or even longer if I said something crass and she flounced off. Then there was my workforce: I had been a tramp for years and I had few illusions about the breed. If I was in the paddock the men I’d hired would give me a fair day’s work, but If I wasn’t there to supervise things would fall apart. I had hoped that the doc would be around, but he was about to go out on calls.

“Why don’t I call in at the cabin? I’d like a look at Calum, and I could get enthusiastic about fruit trees to Helga. My father delivered her so I reckon she won’t get uppity with me the way she would with you. Leave her to me.”

I knew that the doc was right – he was by far the best person to get Helga to agree to let me plant the trees - but I still felt like a coward for letting him carry my burden. I checked my pocketbook and then I went and hired a wagon from the livery stables and loaded it with all the fruit trees. I gave the sacks around the roots a good soaking, but these plants really needed to be put into soil without further delay.

I had left my team digging holes and I was impressed with the progress they had made. The vines had been sitting in the doc’s horse trough for an hour by that time and the plants were looking reasonably sprightly. While the lads finished the holes, I looked at the labels for the first time. Every plant would carry the Riesling grape and they had been grown in a nursery just north of Los Angeles.

That was when I finally lost my temper with Willi Fassbinder. I didn’t mind his childish antics with the gun and leaving the plants to die but it made me hopping mad that he had bought a difficult grape to cultivate. Starting a vineyard from scratch is difficult enough without adding complications in the grape variety. Why hadn’t the pig-headed old fool discussed it with me?

The final, and probably fatal, idiocy is to buy from a lowland nursery in a much warmer climate. We’re preparing a field near the Canadian border and more than a thousand feet above sea-level. If we can get them to survive the drying out in the railway car, the vines have a better chance of thriving in the doctor’s paddock. I must find time to pass on to him what I know about growing grapes.

We got them all planted and watered before dark, and I paid my workers. I promised them another day’s pay if they came up to the plateau next morning. They loaded the spades amongst the saplings on the wagon I had hired, and I drove off up the slope to the cabin. It was almost dark before I arrived, but Helga was still there, and it only needed one glance to tell that she was not happy.

“The doc explained that the trees would have died if you hadn’t rescued them, so I understand that. It’s just that I can’t accept a gift from a strange man.”