Free Nightlight by Michael Cadnum Page B

vines on glistening black stakes. The road cut along hills, and looped across bridges over creeks of high water. The creeks were cocoa-brown with runoff and boiled over boulders like huge skulls.
    Paul enjoyed the drive. He had driven this part before, and dodged the occasional pothole easily. He enjoyed the drive so much he had to step on the brake and back up. “We missed the turnoff,” he said.
    This road was different. Trees whispered over the top of the car in places, and water dripped from their branches in irregular splatters. Vineyards, when they were visible, were rows of black fists in wedge-shaped parcels of land. The rare house was a plume of chimney smoke from the crotch of a hill.
    The houses grew more rare, and the hills were steep on both sides of the road, as the road narrowed, a thin paste of asphalt over rough stones. A sheep stood in the middle of the road, and Paul stopped the car, rolling down the window to say hello to it. The sheep shied away, and ran, leaping a barbed-wire fence.
    Paul turned up a gravel road, past a sign that said: McC ORCKLE V INEYARDS —T ASTING . The car lurched along the gravel, and Paul pulled into a yard plastered with wet leaves, and the debris of unharvested walnuts.
    He answered Lise’s unasked question. “This isn’t the way. I just wanted to stop for a while.”
    It wasn’t quite that simple. As he drove he found it impossible to stop thinking about the dream, and the trip seemed more and more wrong. He had to stop to rest his hands, which were numb from gripping the wheel. He needed contact with a stranger, someone casual whom he would never see again, to restore his calm.
    A gray horse watched from behind a fence. Paul walked over to the horse, telling the horse that he was pleased to meet it. The animal watched with quiet, black eyes, but when Paul tried to pat the center of its forehead, the animal flinched, and backed away.
    â€œNervous,” Paul explained, miffed.
    A figure was watching from a doorway. The figure shrank back into darkness as they approached. They consoled each other that horses around here might not see many people, but Paul knew that they must see enough people not to be easily frightened.
    They stepped into the protection of a large, aluminum-sided warehouse, and as they slipped into the building an odor like cinnamon enveloped them. Barrels lined a wall.
    â€œTake a look around,” said a voice. A figure sidestepped into light from a yellow bulb. Paul had expected a sturdy, older man. Instead he faced a thin young man, who held his place in a book with a finger.
    There was, really, nowhere to look. Stainless steel tanks gleamed among shadows, and a drain grinned in the center of the concrete floor.
    The young man touched the lip of a copper basin. A residue as dark as blood reflected the yellow of the bulb, a mustard-bright smear. The finger slipped out of the book, and the slit in the pages closed, as if forever.
    â€œTaste?” said the young man.
    â€œOf course,” said Paul, although he did not really want to taste. In this chilly dark he felt that he was being tasted, if only by salesmanship. But he put forth a hand and accepted a hock glass brilliant with a finger’s-width of white wine.
    â€œWe start with the dry, and work up toward the sweet,” said the young man. How else? thought Paul, but he sipped, pursed his lips and spat into the copper basin. It was the sort of basin typical of ambitious wineries. A bowl the size of a medieval shield, it rested on a table to receive the wine a taster might not want to swallow.
    A pause. A response was required before the wine could be named. Paul knew how to respond in a dozen ways. He knew how to charm. But what was charm but the ability to beguile, the ability to lie? Paul wanted to be honest. “Pleasant,” he said. “A little effervescence. But a little thin.”
    â€œThat is our driest wine,” said the young man.
    Paul