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I opened the gate, prepared to chase the old hound if he took off, but he didn’t. He seemed to have settled into the routine and the knowledge that he was safe with us. It didn’t take long. There was the expected wildness when letting a dog loose for the first time or two, but after that he was docile and happy to just be unleashed and uncaged.
Reaching into my pocket, I found a dog biscuit and held it out to him. He happily and gently pulled it out of my grip with his teeth and chewed on it a second before swallowing. It was no normal biscuit. Derek had made it out of leftover food, pushed together in a mold and ground up with breadcrumbs, then frozen. Each one was a different flavor with different stocks and meats involved, and Joker had already learned their delicacy was worth obeying my commands.
Smiling for the first time in a while almost hurt my cheeks. It had been a rough little bit of time since I got that email, and I simply wasn’t happy about it. My brothers would say that was an understatement. I’d been a bit of a pain in the ass since then.
As Joker and I made our way toward the first row of vines, Alex ducked his head out of the back door of the offices and saw me. He froze, like a deer in headlights, realizing that I was too close to not say anything to, and had to wait for me to get closer to avoid just shouting over the distance. Joker saw him and picked up a little speed, jogging over to him to get a head rub. When I got there, Joker circled back around me, and Alex put on a big, fake smile.
“Morning, buddy,” he said.
I grumbled something resembling a response. His smile faltered a little.
“Still, huh?” he asked.
I nodded. There was no elaboration needed. “Still” was a reference to the attitude that I had already caught flak for from my brothers. I had been an outright dick to them, and they had let me know it. After a few days of being snippy, they cornered me in the vineyard to let me know that they were simultaneously worried about me and sick of my shit. It would have been funny if it weren’t happening to me.
“Well, I’ll let you get to it,” he said, backing away and nodding as he shut the door between us. I didn’t bother with a response to that.
When the door was closed, I was sure it was going to be the only human-to-human interaction I was going to have that day. Everyone else was going to steer clear of me, and that was not a problem. If I could spend the entire working day hanging out with Joker, then I was fine with that. Humans sucked.
I had to focus on getting through the malaise soon. There was only a week until Danica was going to come back to the vineyard, and I was going to have to face her being there, not continuing our relationship, and then her walking out of my life for the last time. I was as much looking forward to seeing her as I was frustrated and angry with the circumstances.
I went out into the field and sulked while I did my job. I might have been acting childishly, but it didn’t matter. When I got close enough to clocking out time, I just left. I didn’t go in to write down my time or say hi to anyone. I didn’t even pick up lunch or dinner from the restaurant. I just rolled out, headed home, and avoided any and all interaction with people.
I repeated this routine for the next few days. The only time I spoke or talked to anyone, it was Joker or Simon, and neither of them seemed terribly upset by my attitude. Even the volunteers, usually so peppy and excitable, full of questions and suggestions and experiences to share, avoided me. I tried not to take it out on them as much as possible. I didn’t yell at them or snip at them the way I knew I had with my brothers. They were volunteering, and we needed the help. Pissing them off was shooting the entire vineyard in its collective, metaphorical foot.
But that didn’t stop me from being unusually quiet and gruff. I knew I was being a bit of a jerk, but hopefully they wouldn’t hold it against me when I got through my current situation. At least the vines were doing well, and some of my experiments were working out. All of the improvements Danica had suggested were being implemented and working quite well, which only seemed like salt in the wound. All of her suggestions were great. All of her requirements were reasonable. I wanted so much for her to come back, be impressed, and then we could move right from the professional stuff to the personal.
