“FUCK YOU, MOLECULES.”
Texas is vast and intimidating, like a fire-breathing dragon tattooed across North America’s back (Florida, by contrast, is the “your stupid” tattoo on the continent’s ankle). It contains multitudes; it’s a ten-gallon hat full of contradictions. For decades there have been disgruntled Texans petitioning the U.S. government to allow the state to secede from the Union. What they don’t seem to grasp is that the Lone Star State has always existed in a universe all its own.
Texas is home to Austin, one of the country’s most progressive cities, which is, naturally, the capital, because the rest of the state is just like Austin. It’s also home to some of the most barefacedly corrupt politicians, as well as its most hilarious. You might think I’m talking about Rick “Oops” Perry or George W. “Sorry About Your Country There, Buddy” Bush. I’m talking about Clay Henry, the beer-drinking goat that was mayor of Lajitas for several years in the 1970s. I’m definitely not talking about Kelvin Cletus Green, the teenaged mayor of Archer City. That kid’s going places.
Texas has executed more prisoners than any other state in the Union and boasts the city with the highest percentage of gay and lesbian parents in the United States—San Antonio. Some of the greatest entertainers the world has ever known are Texans. As is Chuck Norris. The Dallas Cowboys are known as “America’s Team,” even though every football fan in America seems to despise them. Texas has two Major League Baseball teams in Texas, neither of which has ever won the World Series.
And while you might have Texas pegged as a haven for beer-swilling good ol’ boys, in truth it is home to far more wineries than breweries. The state ranks second behind California in wine tourism in the United States.
There are over forty wineries scattered throughout the Texas Hill Country, from Austin to Fredericksburg and Lampasas to New Braunfels. Bending Branch, in Comfort, is one of the better ones and is home to the country’s first fully automated flash détente machine. Proof positive that the past few governors have given the state a bad name—not everyone in Texas is afraid of science.
Bending Branch’s first vintage was 2008 and produced eight hundred cases, according to founder and VP of operations John Rivenburgh. In 2015 they’re on track to do fifteen thousand. Of the fourteen different grape types planted on the estate, Rivenburgh and his team are most enthusiastic about Tannat, which is commonly found in Uruguay and in the Basque-influenced regions of France near the Pyrénées. Tannat is very tannic, and in the United States it has been most successfully utilized in Rhone blends at notable wineries such as Bonny Doon and Tablas Creek in Paso Robles, California. The folks at Bending Branch are banking on Tannat becoming a sought-after varietal wine. And having tasted their 2011 vintage, I believe they’re on to something.
Whether or not Tannat turns out to be a viable long-term bet boils to down to consumers’ willingness to expand their palates and try new things. I’ve found that most wine drinkers, even seasoned ones, are devoted to a handful of varietals at most. But nearly fourteen thousand types of grapes are used to make wine around the world. How many of those have you tried? Hell, I do this for a living, and I doubt I’ve experienced more than fifty.
Most of the time you don’t get to taste a bottle of wine before you buy it. Once you leave the store you’re stuck with it. So despite the massive variegation of grapes out there, people tend to go with what they know. Rivenburgh points out that more and more wineries, tasting rooms, and shops are offering tastings and by-the-glass pours, giving more people the opportunity to explore at minimal risk. Case in point: I’d never tried a straight Tannat until I visited the tasting room at Bending Branch. Now I own several bottles from a variety of producers.
John Rivenburgh mentioned he used to be a Cowboys fan, but that after Jerry Jones took over, he gave up on America’s Team. I’d like to thank Jerry Jones for doing his part to broaden the palates of football fans.
“You made the right choice,” I said. “Eff the Cowboys.”
He asked where I’m from.
“Philly?” He guffawed. “You’d have to be crazy to live there.”
You don’t know the half of it, buddy.
It took me eight days to get through Texas, and I could fill a whole book with material about the wine being made there. Shit, that might have even been this book if my brother, ex-girlfriend, mother, dad, stepfather, and dog had been able to keep their deceased/deranged/seared/amputated noses out of it.
I visited wineries from San Antone to Plains. I watched the Eagles whup the Cowboys in Dallas on Thanksgiving Day, ate at the Salt Lick in Driftwood, met a young winemaker in Elgin named Doug Lewis who I’m convinced is going to be a superstar, crashed a Victoria’s Secret model’s bachelorette party at William Chris Wines in Hye, visited Buddy Holly’s grave in Lubbock, and fell head over boot spurs in love.
Not real love, mind you, in the traditional sense, where the other person, you know, like, is aware that you exist. But make no mistake, forever more my heart belongs to a lady named Amanda Cevallos. My buddy Wheels took me to a famous music joint called the Continental Club on South Congress Avenue where Amanda Cevallos and the High Hands were headlining. Amanda Cevallos has a voice like an angel and looks like a cross between a young Jennifer Lopez and Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval. I’m positive that lusting after such a heavenly creature is a mortal sin, but dammit, if God rewound the tape and watched her sing “He Won’t Stop Leaving Me Alone” up on that stage, I’m pretty sure he’d give me a pass.
I USED TO VOLUNTEER FOR 826LA, a nonprofit organization started in the mid-aughts by author Dave Eggers. 826LA is dedicated to helping underprivileged kids develop their writing skills. It’s the sort of after-school program a lad like me might have benefited from. Instead, I learned about writing the old-fashioned way, from angry nuns who beat the fear of dangling modifiers and extraneous apostrophes into me with metal rulers and leather belts.
I can’t mention the habit-wearing hags who helped raise me without giving a shout-out to the haggiest of them all, Sister Mary Gerald. Or shout-down, I should say. SMG is definitely six feet under by now. Back when I was a fifth grader known as Titman at the Resurrection of Our Lord elementary school, SMG was a barely-living legend. A cross between the Crypt Keeper and the Wicked Witch of the West, only meaner, SMG was an absolute terror in black and white, and she gave more Philly kids nightmares than Alfred Hitchcock.
There were certain things about Sister Mary Gerald the kids found endearing. You couldn’t help but be impressed by her ability to remain upright for extended lengths of time despite a severe curvature of the spine brought on by being 193 years old. Her bony frame was a wonder to behold. An arthritic Kokopelli sans flute and fertility. She didn’t walk so much as skitter across the room like a demented Monty Python animation.
I’ve never heard a voice like SMG’s before or since. Imagine a busted muffler on a clown car driven by a banshee inside an echo chamber in hell. It was truly awesome in its sheer ability to disorient.
But the most entertaining thing about Sister Mary Gerald, as far as a group of eleven-year-old kids was concerned, was her senility. The old gal was in the winter of her life and wasn’t wearing a jacket. She was always losing her bearings and forgetting names, or where she was, or who it was she had originally meant to smack across the face with one of those gnarled old hands of hers. Who better to instill knowledge in tomorrow’s leaders?
Looking back, it’s clear to me that she was in the grips of fairly severe dementia, which is sad. In my defense, it would have been easier to feel sorry for her if she had stopped hitting us for a minute. Apparently the Catholic Church did not consider her condition grounds for removal from her position of authority, though. They couldn’t have given less of a shit about it had she been giving us all handjobs. Well, at least not until she made them. Give a shit, that is. Not give us handjobs. Father Doherty probably wouldn’t have minded, though.
The way she made them finally give a shit was Rob Willard. The kid in the class with the big furry birthmark on his neck (there was always one kid in your class with a big furry birthmark on his neck). Technically it’s called a congenital nevus, and Rob had finally, in fifth grade, after enduring six years of people making fun and pointing and petting it and naming it, gotten surgery to have it removed. I will never forget the morning he came into our classroom, just a day or two after his procedure, to deliver a note from the principal to Sister Mary Gerald. SMG snatched the slip and proceeded to spend what seemed the entirety of third period attempting to read it with her mole rat eyes and trifocal glasses. Finally, SMG looked up and waved Rob Willard away. It was unclear if she had divined the note’s meaning or not. Knowing what was good for him, he quickly turned and darted for the door. Poor bastard almost made it too.
“Wait a minute, boyyyyyyyy!” she growled. This was followed immediately, I swear, by one of those eerie piano scales that portend doom in the movies. It’s possible I was watching too much Twilight Zone back then.
The boy stopped in his tracks. The entire class sat up straight, tense with fear.
“Come over heeeeeeeeeerrrrrreeeee,” she hissed, as the sky grew dark and thunder rumbled in the distance.
Rob Willard swallowed hard, turned around, and nervously edged toward her.
“You’ve got something therrrrrrrreeee,” she croaked, as he approached, squinting at him curiously and extending a twisted claw toward the young man’s throat. He was frozen with fear. “Shameful. It’s important that a young man maintain his appearanccccccce.”
The entire class’s stomach clenched as her gnarled digits found their way to his collar. Rob Willard opened his mouth as if to say something, but just then she withdrew her hand with surprising speed. I remember thinking that she must have decided it was nothing, after all. You got lucky this time, Rob Willard. But wait. No. His mouth was still open, gasping noiselessly while the face surrounding it turned suddenly, shockingly white. Time stopped for one lurid moment, then started again, as Rob Willard clutched at his throat, a look of sheer panic on his face, and blood streamed freely through his fingers.
Sister Mary Gerald was holding something aloft, studying it. Scowling at it. Completely oblivious to the suffering, bloodied boy in front of her. She turned to the class and a crooked smile cut across her face . . .
“A string on his collar!” she crowed. “Dispose of this,” she said, handing Rob Willard his own neck stitches without looking at him, as though he were an abomination in the sight of the Lord. Rob ran from the room and SMG went on with the lesson as though nothing happened.
After I put this story in the book, I looked Rob Willard up on the Internet. It took all of five minutes. (Facebook be crazy.) He still lives in Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. And he’s a surgeon now. Specializes in dermatology and surgical reconstruction, don’t you know. You can’t make this shit up.
“When I went back to the surgeon who excised the nevus he said ‘that nun should be shot,’” Rob wrote, adding that he didn’t think what happened in that classroom had any long-term psychological effect on him.
“But you became a skin surgeon!” I replied. “I mean, there has to be some sort of connection, right?”
“Nah,” he said. “Just a coincidence.”
As for Sister Mary Gerald, they didn’t shoot her. Or fire her. Or take any disciplinary action as far as I know. Philly’s motto should be “It’s your fault you live here.”
826LA DIDN’T SAVE ME FROM Sister Mary Gerald, but the idea that they would have liked to made me want to help the cause. In the fall of 2010, 826LA held a fund-raiser at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. It was called “I Found This Funny: An Evening of Music and Comedy” and was hosted by Judd Apatow, the comedic thermonuclear device behind such films as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. The event featured appearances by numerous luminaries including Eggers, Garry Shandling, comedian Aziz Ansari, and singers Randy Newman, Ryan Adams, and Fiona Apple. I, of course, was happy to lend my talents as well. And as a professional boozer, there is nothing I am better at than scamming free drinks. And as folks tend to be more generous at these things once they’ve got a little Chardonnay in them, I was asked to secure a wine donation. I sent e-mails to some contacts in the wine biz, and before you could say “some people are just awesome” we had our sponsor, Bear Flag Wines of Modesto, California.
On Saturday, about a week before the fund-raiser, some friends took me out for an extended brunch because apparently that’s what friends do when you’re a few weeks removed from tragically losing a younger brother. My friends wouldn’t leave me alone, frankly. And there seemed to be a direct correlation between people’s level of sympathy and the amount of food they felt compelled to try and shove down my throat. “Eat, eat! You need to eat!” It was a constant refrain. If they weren’t taking me out for meals, it seemed like someone was always swinging by the apartment with homemade lasagna or chocolate chip cookies or noodle salad. And I’m eternally grateful for that. The Road to Healing is paved with companionship and calories. And Cabernet.
I got home a little before sunset. I had a solid buzz going, and felt like keeping it that way. Elizabeth was working at the restaurant and wouldn’t be back for several hours. This was Me time, and I was determined to spend it with my most tolerable Me. Grief counselors and psychologists and oh, say, anyone who cares about you will tell you that alcohol is not a healthy way to deal with loss. Which is why I moved my home gym over next to my bar. Barbells cancel booze. That’s just physics.
Judge me if you want, but in the weeks immediately following my brother’s death, I found that Buzzed Me was easier to get along with than, say, Weepy Me or Angry Me or, worst of all, Woe Is Me. That dude was a real drag. A real American whine-o, if you will (HAW HAW HAW, kill me). So I went ahead and poured myself a generous slug of red wine, put on my headphones, and headed to the roof deck.
I’d been spending a lot of time up there, especially when I couldn’t think straight enough to read, sleep, or even watch TV. I was keeping a good lid on the freak show most of the time, but my head was in a real weird place. I had nightmares. Flashbacks. Difficulty concentrating. Irritable as a Gwar fan at a Sting concert. But up on the roof I could see the sand and the ocean, the beachgoers and boats. The infinite horizon and all its possibilities. A lot of the time back then, I felt like I was being slowly smothered. But for some reason I could breathe on the roof. I’d call it my Happy Place if there was such a thing then. We’ll call it my Least Crappy Place.
When people would come visit, I’d invite them up. Sometimes I could read worry on their faces. Other times confusion. Especially if I’d managed to crack a smile. He’s smiling? Up here, of all places? My buddy Z was the only one to come straight out and ask me.
“How do you sit up here and look at the ocean that killed your brother and not fucking lose it?”
“Dianetics, Z. How would you like to take a free personality test?”
“How would you like a punch in the head?”
“I’ll take it if it means I don’t have to eat any more noodle salad. I mean seriously, why the fuck do people keep bringing that over here? I lost my brother, not my sense of taste.”
“You got good friends is why, you ungrateful bastard.”
“I know,” I said and collapsed into a ten-foot-deep puddle of tears.
Thinking about my friends and how good they were to me? Guaranteed waterworks. But I never once blamed the ocean for what happened to my brother. I have even, on darker days, entertained the notion that it saved him. Which might sound strange, because Brian drowned, and I’m pretty sure drowning is no walk in the park (with the possible exception of someone who drowns in a water park). But I’m a firm believer that there are fates worse than death. Especially when there’s heavy drinking involved. I have had a front-row seat for the demise of many drunks and addicts in my life. Some went slowly and painfully; others took people down with them. Some checked out fast and violent. But when the deck got passed to Brian, he drew Ocean. Like I say, it could have been much worse.
I’ve read numerous studies that assert drowning is one of the “easiest” ways to die, which is to say, least painful. That’s the kind of cheery literature you get into when you’re dealing with this kind of thing. But come on, the only people who know what drowning feels like aren’t around to give us a blow by blow. And even if they were they couldn’t compare it to being shot or stabbed or cuddled to death by puppies (which is, as we all know, the most adorable of deaths). Still, even though my logical mind knows it’s probably bullshit, it’s comforting to believe that Brian’s death was peaceful.
At his funeral in Pennsylvania, someone lamented that Brian’s death could have been avoided. Bull fucking shit. I’m no expert in thanatology, but I am certain the death rate for human beings is still holding steady at 100 percent. We are all of us corpses-in-waiting. The Walking Dead. Future worm buffets.
Brian was destined to shuffle off this mortal coil just like the rest of us. He just shuffled a little faster than most. Thirty-one years old and in good health (if you don’t count the alcoholism) probably sounds young to you. But he wanted a cheap thrill at 2 A.M., dammit, so he jumped off the Venice Fucking Pier. No more than a hundred yards from shore. At least that’s how far out on the pier we found his watch and wallet. Brian was six foot two and in good shape. Played sports competitively his whole life, and he was a good swimmer. Forty-nine times out of fifty that big motherfucker makes it back to dry land safely, no matter how loaded he might be. Not this time though. Not in the early morning hours of July 5, 2010, when he splash-landed right into the roiling guts of a powerful rip current that grabbed him and, with brute assuredness, took him right the hell out to sea.
My brother Sean once asked me if the authorities had given any indication of how far out the current had taken Brian before it finally let him go.
“Far enough,” I said. We left it at that.
When talking about my brother’s death, people tend to attach labels like untimely, senseless, and tragic. And it’s all those things. If you want, you could throw in shocking and unfathomable. But when I think about how he died, though, the two words that tend to come to mind are fucking and stupid.
Brian was in trouble. I’d known that for a long time. But I didn’t do anything about it. He drank too much. And sometimes when he drank too much, he did really fucking stupid things. It was obvious to me and anyone close to him that Brian was headed to one of two places: Rehab or Big Trouble. And here’s what’s fucking stupid. I chose to wait for the latter to lead him to the former. That was my fucking stupid plan. Just sit around like a fucking stupid idiot and hope he got so trashed and did something so terrible he’d have no choice but to stop getting blotto.
I did this despite knowing that all those years ago, the thing that ultimately made my dad realize he had to call it quits wasn’t drunk driving a cement truck off a bridge and losing his arm. It was my uncle—my dad’s brother—who one day threw him up against a wall and pleaded with him to stop. To save himself and his family. It was the ultimate expression of brotherly love.
Me? I opted to wait for Brian to come to that realization on his own. It seemed easier than being proactive. Don’t want to be a buzzkill, man! If I ignored the problem, I was spared the awkwardness of confronting him about it, not to mention confronting my own habits and behavior. Plus, Brian was a fun drunk. Drinking gave us a lot of good times I wouldn’t take back. I knew the party couldn’t last, but I was in no hurry to hasten last call. Brian was thirty-one. Lots of people are fuckups at thirty-one and still turn out all right. Eventually, he’d stop drinking.
And what do you know, he did. And I never even had to confront him about it.
So I’m up on the roof with my wine and the day was getting ready to call it a night, but not before it did some showing off. The sun burning a red hole through the horizon like a giant cigarette butt tossed on the Venice boardwalk.
Rumours is Fleetwood Mac’s best album. “Dreams.” “The Chain.” “Go Your Own Way.” From top to bottom, pure gold. But my favorite track from Rumours has always been “Never Going Back Again.” Lindsey Buckingham wrote it after his messy and public breakup with Stevie Nicks. It’s a simple song about complicated feelings, and it features one of the most enchanting guitar riffs ever laid down. Only a handful of songs can touch it. Jimi Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand.” Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” But none have ever gotten to me quite like “Never Going Back Again.”
Been down one time
Been down two times
I’m never going back again
The song came on in the waning moments before the sun disappeared into the sea. I closed my eyes as Buckingham picked his way through the intro.
When I opened them again, there he was. Brian. Sitting in front of me in the chair, rocking gently, and smiling. I’m not talking about an image of him, a memory. I mean, he was really there, in the flesh. Alive. Undrowned.
My Logical Brain said I’d had too much wine. Brian couldn’t be there.
“But that’s him!” I protested.
“You’ve suffered a devastating loss,” my Logical Brain said. “You’re experiencing some sort of PTSD-induced hallucination.”
“Bullshit!” I shouted.
“Well, then, you’re drunk.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“If that’s really Brian, then prove it. Reach out and touch him,” my Logical Brain said.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t do it. I was afraid that if I touched him, he would disappear. Brian seemed to understand how scared I was. He smirked as if to say, “What a pussy.” Then he gave me a reassuring nod. It said, “It’s okay, man. Let’s just enjoy this.”
The song is only two minutes and fifteen seconds long. Some people can hold their breath longer than that. I bet Brian had. No doubt he’d held on as long as he could. He was a tough motherfucker. Lindsey Buckingham wasn’t singing anymore. The guitar plucking was louder. The big finish. But wait, what’s the next song on the album? Fuck! I know this. It goes “Second Hand News,” “Dreams,” “Never Going Back,” and . . . “Don’t Stop”! Brian loves that song. It’ll soon be here. Better than before. Yesterday’s gone. And here we are, up on the roof.
But he wasn’t. I looked over and saw an empty chair.
My friend Jonathan is an actor, best known for portraying the Most Interesting Man in the World in a high-profile ad campaign for a Mexican beer. Jonathan and his wife, Barbara, were living on a sailboat in Marina Del Rey. After Brian was cremated, my brother Sean and his wife, Erin, came to visit and we all went out sailing. We took some of Brian’s ashes with us on the boat so we could sprinkle them into the ocean. Some kind of peace offering. We sailed out about two miles from where Brian made his fateful leap. Jonathan wrote down the coordinates in his logbook. I joked that when I kicked the bucket, I wanted them to chuck me in there too. Same spot. Oh, and fuck the cremation, by the way. Put my corpse in a trash bag and tie a cinder block to it. If I’m going out, I’m going out in Irish luggage, motherfuckers.
It was windy and the sea was rough that day. Sean had put the ashes in a Ziploc. That, too, seemed appropriate. None of that fancy urn shit for us Dunns. Trash bags and Ziplocs is how we roll.
Sean busted out his stash of Brian and made the obligatory joke about cutting up some lines and snorting them like Keith Richards did with his father’s ashes. Everyone laughed for a second and then got quiet. I looked around and saw us rocking in this vast expanse and the whole thing felt ridiculous. We had a bag of molecules and we got onto a bunch of other molecules and used it to float on top of some other molecules so we could put these molecules in those molecules because these molecules are supposed to be special. Then Sean dumped out the Baggie and the wind blew it back all over us. Same trick as at the river. It always looks so perfect and sad in the movies.
After we got back to shore, the most interesting molecules in the world and their wife came with me to the 826LA fund-raiser. Being around people was still a little dicey, but live music is powerful medicine and Randy Newman is a big shambling panda made of love and bourbon. At the end, Judd Apatow came out and thanked everyone in the packed theater for contributing to the cause. He encouraged us to stick around for the after-party in the lobby where they’d be serving Bear Flag wine. I felt like a contingently nonshitty human for almost an entire minute for having played a part in getting it there. Then just when I thought the lights were going to come up, Apatow said there was one more performance to go. From his neighbor. Guy by the name of Lindsey Buckingham, who walked out on stage with his guitar, waved to the crowd, and started picking out the intro to the third track off side one of Rumours. The one between “Dreams” and “Don’t Stop.” It’s called “Never Going Back Again.” Fuck you, molecules. You made me cry in front of Judd Apatow.
I LISTENED TO “NEVER GOING Back Again” several times on my trip, and each time I did I would take the mason jar with my brother’s ashes from out of the center console and place it up on the dashboard, to give Brian a view.
As the trip went on we talked more and more. Once, during one of the loneliest stretches of the journey, on the interstate between central Nebraska and Des Moines, after we listened to Fleetwood Mac I reminded him about Goal Line Stand, the game we used to play in the living room when he was four years old and I was fourteen. I’d back up and toss him a Nerf football. He’d catch it, then square up and charge right at me, intent on knocking me down and scoring.
I was ten years older and three times his size, but I never took it easy on him. So Brian rarely got past me. But he never got pissy when he was thwarted. He seemed to relish the challenge. I’d “tackle” him, and we’d grunt and growl and make all sorts of noises just like the real football players on TV. But no matter how many times he came up short, Brian would get back up on his feet, hand me the ball, return to the starting position, and give it another go. Over and over again.
The point was not to burnish my reputation as a run stopper. I was never much of a football player. (Put me in a bowling alley, though, and I was a regular Earl Anthony.) Nah, I loved Goal Line Stand as much as the kid did. Every fourth or fifth try I’d grab hold of Brian and pretend to struggle to bring him down. He’d screw on his meanest football player face, little legs pumping, arms outstretched, trying to get that Nerf football across the piece of masking tape that served as the goal line. Even then, he had a truly impressive drive. Trying to get to the goal line was better than actually making it. And then, just when Brian had exhausted every bit of energy he had trying to break free, I’d let him go.
Touchdown.
PLAINS, TEXAS, SITS ABOUT FIFTEEN miles from the New Mexico border and it’s where I spent my final night in the Lone Star State. It was December now and chilly as hell. But I spent the evening drinking wine in a barn with a bunch of farmers, and if that doesn’t warm you up, nothing will. I highly recommend the experience to anyone with an interest in doubting his own manliness. I understand that “wine farmer” might not top your list of tough bastard professions, but it sure as shit should.
I was staying way out on Neal Newsom’s ranch in the house he keeps there for guests. I was its only occupant that night, which suited me just fine. Apparently December in West Texas isn’t the high season for wine tourism. Go figure. The guesthouse is lovely and well appointed, but it is in the middle of nowhere. Actually, pretty much all of West Texas is in the middle of nowhere. And Newsom’s ranch is in the middle of that.
I parked Carl Vehicle and unloaded my stuff. On a whim, I brought Brian along. His jar was down to about a third, thanks to our visit to Buddy Holly’s grave back in Lubbock, where I’ll admit I’d been a little profligate with my spreading.
Out back of the guesthouse there was an old abandoned homesteader shack. Besides that there were no visible signs of civilization. Grazing cows dotted the landscape at various intervals. Here it is, I thought. I said I was moving to Nowhere. This is about as close as I’ll ever get. Then, being an accomplished photographer (read: I have Instagram on my phone), I went out to get some shots of the homesteader shack.
As I captured my moody, squared-off, film-grained black-and-whites, I thought about the lunatic who once lived there. What his daily routine was like, what he ate, where he crapped, the fact that this guy had lived in Nowhere back when it really was Nowhere. Maybe before it even had a name. And how he’d managed to make a living. Unless of course, he hadn’t. It’s possible this was the home of some poor sucker who’d been sold a bill of goods. Told that he’d be part of a thriving community and all it would cost would be his life savings. Then he ended up here, trying to make the best of it, before dying of an infection he got after cutting himself shaving. Shaving for no one.
Then, as I turned, I saw a giant, hairy beast, not ten feet from me. Startled, I took a step back into a depression in the dirt, stumbled, and fell on my ass. Heart pounding and flustered from the fall, I looked up to see a bunny. Okay, maybe not a bunny exactly, but a rabbit nonetheless. I came to understand that the area was populated with jackrabbits. Which, in my defense, are furry, are sort of strangely large (thanks to the oversize ears), and can technically be classified as beasts, if you’re a soft-hands journalist who’s lived in cities his entire life. For his part the rabbit just looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. Man, he seemed to say. I’m not even close to afraid of you.
Neal Newsom’s family has been farming and ranching in West Texas for generations. What began in the 1980s with three acres of Cabernet Sauvignon has now grown into 150 acres of Merlot, Sangiovese, Tempranillo, Malbec, Pinot Grigio, and more. In addition to producing their own wines, Newsom and his wife, Janice, supply grapes for a number of Texas wineries, including two of the state’s largest, Llano Estacado and Becker.
That night he invited me out to his barn—or “Barnery” as he calls it—to bend an elbow with some of his compatriots. Among the locals I met in the Barnery that night was Neal Newson’s winemaking mentor, Bobby Cox, a walking encyclopedia of grape growing with a big bushy mustache to go along with his big everything else. Imagine if Wilfred Brimley got on the juice and cofounded CrossFit. Bobby’s been growing grapes and making wine in West Texas since 1973 and is one of the state’s leading viticulturalists and winery consultants.
Bobby’s wife, Jennifer, who was also at the Barnery Summit, is what’s known as a “supertaster.” Supertasters, as the name suggests, have an extremely heightened sense of taste. And while this might sound like an awesome superpower, in practice it’s not all that fun. For supers, everything is turned up to eleven. Sugar is sweeter, sodium is saltier, and bitterness is death on a stick. Supers are less likely to enjoy alcoholic drinks, coffee, and rich desserts. But, man, is Jennifer ever aces at identifying wines. With a sniff and she can tell you everything from the varietal to what the guy who picked the grapes had for breakfast.
We sat on folding chairs around a folding table in the shadow of two large tractors. Nearby was an antique weather radar, the kind most people had in those parts before satellites and computers. Neal said he still used his old rig to control the famed Marfa lights, the mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside the town of Marfa, a four-hour drive south of Plains.
Everyone brought wine (everyone but me, that is), all locally produced. Jet and Gay Wilmeth of Tokio, Texas, brought along several bottles made at their Diamante Doble Vineyard, as well as at the custom crush facility they co-own, Texas Custom Wineworks. They’re big fans of Italian varietals and believe West Texas, with a climate similar to central and northern Italy, is one of the best places in the world to grow Trebbiano and Sangiovese.
They are also passionate about the politics of farming. According to Cox, the long-standing government subsidies for cotton farmers in the state were the main thing stopping West Texas from becoming one of the country’s preeminent wine-growing regions.
“California growers would say to me all the time, why are y’all still growing cotton? It’s a Third World crop,” Cox said. “Well, I’ll tell you why—because the government was paying folks to stick with cotton. If they didn’t, they’d grow grapes.”
As Newsom pointed out, the return on investment in water costs alone is ten times greater for grapes than any other crop. He says agricultural mainstays such as cotton, peanuts, and corn are all “horribly water inefficient.” Plus, who needs clothes and food when you have booze?
But change may be afoot. Government subsidies for cotton were halted in 2015, and the farmers I spoke with in Plains all feel strongly that West Texas has the potential to rival California, Washington, and Oregon in wine production as cotton fields give way to vineyards. “The conditions out here are just too right for it not to happen,” said Newsom. “The elevation, the hot days and cool nights, the shallow, sandy red-clay soil over limestone. These are the conditions grapes thrive in.”
Still, Newsom said it wasn’t just a matter of wanting to. Transition like that can be tough. And times are already tough enough for the farmers out there.
“A lot of folks are interested in growing grapes now,” he said. “They see it as a way to save the farm. But it won’t. Vineyards are a long-term investment. It takes eight or nine years to see a return on your money, and that’s without any bad weather years setting you back.” This for a population that’s already on the wrong end of the economic stick. “Some farmers in these parts just don’t have that much time left,” he said, shaking his head.
For those that can stick it out, though, the future could be bright. Cox noted that West Texas might not be as pretty as Napa, but it’s got Northern Cal–like potential for producing epic wine. “It’s a beautiful thing to see,” he said. “And it’s been a long time coming.”
“Plus, we’ve got Louie Gohmert here,” Newsom quipped, citing one of Texas’s more colorful (i.e., batshit crazy) politicians. “Kidding!”
The impromptu Barnery Summit went until 11 P.M. or so, which I got the impression was pretty late round those parts. I got my fair share of crap for being a Yankee. But they didn’t seem to mind being razzed for being some of the most virile specimens of American men I’d ever laid eyes on. I figured we were even.
WHEN NEWSOM DROVE ME BACK, I was struck by what a long, dark drive it was to get out to where I was staying. As the guesthouse swam into view in his headlights, it struck me this was precisely the kind of place where people get killed in horror movies. When I restrained myself from asking Neal to keep me company until morning, I felt my testosterone level rise by 30 percent.
As the last of his tire noise died away in the night, the stars felt so low I could touch them. I was struck by the profound emptiness that America still contains, as well as the incredible fortitude of the people who choose to spend their lives here. Then I heard rustling noise somewhere off to my left and scurried inside, my testosterone levels dropping to normal. Maybe a little below.
There’s nothing to worry about, I told myself. There is literally no one out here. And that means there is literally no one to be afraid of. Just go to bed, and in the morning you’ll get to see that spectacular wide open plain again and the jackrabbits will be jackrabbits again, not giant, hulking Sasquatch monsters coming to sate their savage libidos with my eyeholes.
Somehow I got to sleep, visions of Sasquatch eye-babies dancing in my head. At 2 A.M., I woke to the sound of a vehicle coming up the dirt road. Fuck. Here we go. Judgment night. In the depths of my fuzzed-out brain I envisioned a tribunal of the kind, but brutally honest folk of West Texas. It was time to pay for my sins. Not for the lust and the sloth and whatnot. That stuff don’t amount to an ant fart. Naw, son, you got to answer for what you did to people. Or, rather, what you didn’t do.
The sound of gravel under tires that had been rising suddenly stopped. I pulled the curtain, just enough to peek out the window. A pickup truck sat idling right next to Carl Vehicle, its headlights illuminating the house.
“Out here, we take care of our own. You had a baby brother to protect. Where’s he at, anyway?”
“In this jar. See, I brought it into the house so he could—”
“Lemme get this straight. Your baby brother is a pile of ashes now. Because of drinking.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re telling me you ran around like a damn fool, scratching out your stories about how much fun you were having and all the places you were going and the parties you were hosting, and your brother . . . what was his name again?”
“Brian.”
“And Brian is sat home watching you. Watching you conquer the world from a bar stool.”
“I wouldn’t say I conquered—”
“I ask you a question, son?”
“No.”
“All right, then, I’ll make a statement. You were bigger. You were the one who decided who won and who lost when you played Goal Line Stand. He mighta been four inches taller, but he never knew anyone bigger’n you.”
The pickup outside was still idling. Sizing up my estrogen-mobile no doubt. Taking stock of the California plates. Doing some kind of terrible dismemberment calculus. I wanted to be anywhere else. Hydroplaning on the Jersey Turnpike. Hearing about how the aliens in Mom’s attic poisoned her oatmeal again.
“But we’re here to discuss your real sin, son.”
“What’s that?”
“The only sin worse than not being there when he needed you.”
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“Carrying him around after he don’t.”
I heard the truck shift into gear. The rear lights came on. It was backing up, now turning around. And off it went into the night. I waited by the window a good five minutes after it was gone, but the tribunal seemed to have ended.
The next morning I went back out to the old, blown-down homesteader cabin. This time I didn’t take any pictures. It was a ruin. A relic of a time that had long ceased having a hold on the present. The person who lived there had dreams, ambitions. Their fortitude had made it possible for the generations that followed to prosper on the same land. Never in a million years would they have dreamed they’d see grapevines rising out of the clay. And they never would have credited those vines with the survival of the family farm.
Life is change. Standing still is death. At least it looks the same to everyone else. It was time. I took all I had left of Brian and poured him in a neat pile in the middle of the cabin’s ruins. He’d be safe out there in Nowhere. And if I ever needed to visit, I knew where he’d be.