Crossing the Grapevine: An excerpt from Bloodvine

By Aris Janigian

ANDY WAS SO BUSY, by the time he stopped long enough to notice, it had been three, going on four weeks since he’d been out to the farm. He was pulling down three hundred bucks a week from the hauls, enough to tide them over for a few months. With the winter vegetables turning to seed, his only other option — which wasn’t an option — was to haul freight across state. Andy got to thinking about the second truck sitting in the yard. With some work he might get it up and running so that come February they could either lease it or get someone to haul for them, working toward a small-time trucking outfit that might eventually grow into something.

It rained all day. The sky was so smoky with clouds that it was dark as dusk at noon. The way the clouds were setting up this time, high and packed tight as sandbags, Andy suspected he might get rain all the way to Los Angeles. A more intelligent man would have stayed home, tuned into a ballgame that night, Andy said to himself as he tossed the tarps over the load. But I’m not an intelligent man, Andy thought, I’m a fucking ox. With the forklift driver on one end and Andy on the other, they squared the tarp over the top, crossed the ends, dropped corner irons and a couple of v-boards — to play it safe — and tied it all down, neat and snug. They walked back up to the loading dock.

“Pretty enough to put beneath the Christmas tree,” Andy said. “Ain’t it?”

“Not goin’ nowhere, that’s fer sure.”

From a distance, through the rain, a howl.

“Sounds like some wolf,” the forklift driver said.

It ebbed, then came again.

“Don’t it though?”

Except they were in the middle of the city, where no wolf was allowed. The men narrowed their eyes and searched the dark anyway.

“Damnedest thing,” the forklift driver said.

“Yeah, well, I’ll see ya.”

“I’d keep my eyes open tonight.”

“Just hope it don’t hail.”

“Road’ll get slick as green onion then.”

“There’s when you just pull over and let it pass.”

“Cold enough though.”

“Just about.” They judged from the steam that dribbled out of their mouths. The forklift driver went for a cigarette.

“I’ll have one of those, if you please,” Andy requested.

The driver tapped one out for Andy, then one for himself. They stood there, edging forward, their hands cupping the flame. They looked like two men about to bless one another. On the asphalt, the rain seemed to swarm. Andy took a fat suck on the cigarette. The driver took a suck on his own. For over a minute, they quietly smoked. Andy was touched by the gentlemanliness of the moment, touched by how two men who hardly knew each other could observe a measure of silence, as though out there was something bigger than either of them alone, both of them put together.

“Well, I’ll be getting on,” Andy said.

“Good luck to ya,” the driver said.

“’Preciate it. Somehow, tonight, I think I’ll need a little luck.”

All the way to the Grapevine summit the road sizzled with rain. From all the racket in the cab, Andy plugged his ears with toilet paper. At spots the rain came down in buckets on the windshield, blurring the road. Just outside of Pixley, Andy was forced to come to a near stop. The runoff was so heavy the shoulder had given. Mud had flooded the road. Berms had already formed. In the headlights he could see tumbleweeds, branches. Give it a beaver, a deer, and you’d have yourself a bona fide creek. The site looked staged. He crossed the spill slowly, almost carefully, queerly respectful of this scene that had set itself up so innocently, spontaneously, this scene where nature was pathetically reclaiming a portion of what civilization had stolen from her.

Just before the Grapevine, the rain stopped and the temperature plunged. Andy pulled into the truck stop, cut the engine and waited for the gas guy, who was standing inside the station, to come out. After a minute or so, it became apparent that neither man was going to commit before the other. When the gasman saw it was Andy, he came to his senses and rushed outside. Andy climbed out of the cab to give the guy moral support. Cash in hand, he watched the numbers spin like a slot machine into which he’d dropped some serious money. “Cold” was the only word exchanged between them.

When Andy jumped back into the cab, he felt his bones holler from the cold. The stick was so freezing it hurt, and he gasped from the trauma when he grabbed it. He pulled out and headed up the mountain, nudging the truck slowly forward, maybe ten, then fifteen miles per hour, in low gear. The transmission rasped and the engine growled and the whole truck shook as it climbed. A few miles upgrade the cab started to warm, and he could feel himself come back to life. It occurred to him that he’d nearly forgotten about the load back there. He recalled a story one of his ballplayers, Big Freddie the Injun, had told him about how his ancestors initiated their boys into the tribe by charging them with the delivery of a sealed sack to a distant place. In this sack was something precious that was the boy’s to keep when he’d reached his destination. A scout trailed the boy to make sure he didn’t die, or cheat. The sack, nearly as heavy as the boy, took three days and everything the boy had, and more, to deliver. The scout met him at the designated place and told him he’d done well and that now the contents of the sack were his. The boy took his knife out, cut the rope and reached into a sack of stones. His reward was the perseverance he’d learned. Nothing else. As Andy passed Gorman, he asked himself, Is the broccoli back there my sack of stones?

The road was getting icy now, and Andy could feel the tires scrabble for the asphalt, the truck now and again lurch, and he began to see veins of snow, and as he climbed up higher, clumps of it on the side of the mountain like napping lambs. He took the road slowly, aware all the while of the danger and the oily blackness and slickness of the road and the ravine on one side of him that was as merciless as it was deep. The truck churned on, and a little past the summit there was a clearing in the sky and clouds drifted across the swollen moon, and the light was so velvet and heady that Andy rolled the window down for a few minutes to feel the luminescence, to take a gulp of it.

He felt the road slope down and he shifted gears and let the truck descend at its own momentum. Gradually, stars appeared and boulders shone and he could tell, by the way the tires hugged it and hummed, that the road was dry. It was a little past five o’clock in the morning and in the valley below there was a spattering of lights. He was going to be late. Andy fumbled for a pack of smokes in his shirt, fished one out with his lips, exchanged the pack for the lighter, and flicked the metal hood back. The flame was jumping in front of his nose when he touched the brakes and noticed that the truck didn’t respond. He waited a couple of seconds, took a suck on his cigarette and pushed a little harder.

The truck was going fifty, picking up speed. Andy started to pray and pump the motherfucking brakes. The awesome magnitude of the truck heading headlong and blind like some avalanche down the hill struck him as beyond the scope of any initiation, Indian or no. He pulled on the hand brake. White smoke blew up from the wheels, the back end skidded, and Andy thought, This is it. He released the brake. The back end squared but at the cost, it seemed, of the truck’s speed doubling. His heart hammered in his chest. There was no runaway ramp and if he downgeared he’d dump his transmission on the asphalt. His only hope was to pull right and work his high beams to warn the cars in front of him. He was full of hysterical fear, like in a nightmare. He asked God to take care of his wife and then he heard a siren blast. When he leveled his eyes in the rearview mirror, red and white lights streamed all over the road. He rolled down the window and waved his arm in big circles and honked for the cop to pass him, but the bastard just kept nipping at his ass. He could see he was closing in on a couple of cars at the bottom — two, three miles away — and the truck was starting to jump at spots, and he knew, if he was forced to swerve to avoid a car, he’d flip over. All at once the cop punched into the right lane and roared across and pulled out in front of Andy. Andy thought he saw the cop signal “okay” with a hand. In the darkness he couldn’t tell for sure. He knew the degree to which they remained connected in that dark would determine if he came out of this thing dead or alive. Fuck the broccoli. Andy saw the red taillights of a car veer to the right, and both he and the cop zoomed past it like it was parked. He allowed that the truck was driving him, not the other way around. The cop was pulling away gradually, and Andy wondered whether this meant that the cop had given up and was making to get the hell out of the way himself. And then, in a split second, he stopped wondering. It’s yours, Andy, he told himself, your life lies with you. Forget the cop, forget God, luck, nature or machine.

The way he told it, it was just at that moment that the truck started to fall in line. Of course, they were on level ground — that fact couldn’t be overlooked. But still, Andy could feel himself connect with the road right through the guts of the motherfucking truck. The load that was jumping around back there settled down. Even his fear, it seemed, settled down, no longer caroming around inside of him. He watched the road, he watched the speedometer, he wasn’t even thinking about the cop.

When the truck had slowed down to thirty, Andy shifted to fourth, then third, pulled off onto the shoulder and rolled the truck to a near standstill. He came to a stop fifty feet from an off-ramp and shut the engine down.

The cop was backing up toward him, lights still streaming in a thousand different directions.

Andy sat in the cab for a few minutes, confused. He had no idea where he was. Only the fact that he was alive was obvious. Light started leaking from behind the mountains. A few cars swooshed by. The whole world seemed unbearably at ease.

He saw the cop start out of the car and run toward him.

“You all right, pal?” The cop was shaking.

Andy nodded his head.

“Must’ve lost your brakes. I never seen nothin’ like that.”

Andy shook his head. “Me neither,” he spoke, but in fact thought that language couldn’t reach what he was feeling. He lit a cigarette. He could feel his heart pump, he could see his hands tremble. He puffed on his cigarette, stared at it, dimly aware of the smoke that caressed his chest. He felt he should be crying, screaming, something. The cop waited, one foot on the step, a hand ready at the door. Andy took inventory of his body: his hands hurt, so did the back of his head. And neck. The muscles in his legs, his lower back were stiff.

When he finally stepped out of the cab, he looked back up at the grade first thing to get an indication of what he’d just gone through, which seemed at once to be still happening and utterly remote.

“Steep,” he said.

“As hell.”

He marched around the truck, dragged his eyes up and down and across the load. Not a bin had shifted, not a knot had come undone.

In the periphery of his vision, Andy saw the cop reach for something in his coat pocket. On what grounds, Andy wondered, might he arrest me?

“Here.” The cop pushed a whiskey flask at Andy, with all the seriousness of a man paying back a debt long overdue.

He took a swig and handed the flask back politely, with a nod of gratitude.

The cop took a swig too, another, and with a finger, twirled the cap back on, an expert.

Whiskey burned like a fire inside of Andy. He wanted it to burn brighter still.

“If you don’t mind.” Andy pointed to the bottle.

“Keep it. What do you got back there?” the cop asked.

“Broccoli.”

“Broccoli?”

“Son of a bitch, isn’t it?”

“Really is.”

“Have yourself some. Much as you want. Take a bin. Whole damn load, if it’s your pleasure. Merry Christmas.”

Excerpted with permission, from Chapter 26 of Bloodvine, published by Heyday Books in the new Great Valley Books collection, an imprint devoted to the literature, arts and culture of California’s Great Central Valley.

The writer: A second generation Armenian-America, Aris Janigian was born and raised in Fresno, California. Now a professor of Humanities at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, he returns to the Fresno area to work as a grape packer and shipper. He is, with April Greiman, author of Something from Nothing. Bloodvine (March 2003) is his first novel.

Notes from the author

The set up for this excerpt: Andy Demerjian returns to Fresno after six years away at college to continue farming the forty acres of vineyards that he and his half-brother, Abe, inherited. This would be in the late 1950's. Abe is married to a darkly superstitious woman named Zabel, who resents Andy for having left at all, and considers his return as an intrusion on her family life. After a disastrous year farming, Abe, a G.I., secures a government loan to keep the farm afloat, but to maximize the loan Andy signs over his half of the farm. Once title has been transferred, Zabel begins to undo her husband's ties to his brother, arguing that the land was never Andy's to begin with. When Andy marries, the rift between the brothers grows. Andy, perhaps sensing the devastating turn of events that will come next, takes up hauling produce from Fresno to Los Angeles as an alternative source of income.

Inspiration for Bloodvine: This book is based upon a tragic and real episode in my father's life. I wrote this book because I loved my father, and wanted to tell the story that he never got around to telling for himself.

Recommended reading: Willian Saroyan best captures the experience of Fresno Armenians, a people living in exile, and who hope to resurrect in the Central Valley something of the land, the tempo of life, and customs that they had lost. In addition, two other books brilliantly bring to life the Armenian community in Fresno: Mark Arax's In My Father's Name, and A.I. Bezzerides' Thieves Market.

On my nightstand: For pleasure, I am presently reading the Gary Young’s extraordinary trilogy of poetry titled No Other Life; and for my work as a professor of philosophy, Stoic Philosophy, and Epicurus by J.M. Rist.

Favorite bookstores: Booksoup in Los Angeles; Bodhi Tree Used Book Store in West Hollywood and the Midnight Special in Santa Monica.

Up next: I am writing a work of fiction based upon the Los Angeles Riots.

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