Night Harvest Cuvée Rouge

Vonda N. McIntyre

All day, heat waves rose from the valley and the golden hills. But autumn had arrived: as soon as the sun set, the heat began to ebb. The last sliver of the sun vanished beneath the horizon. I washed my face, sponging away the salty dry sweat. The cold sweat of nerves replaced it.

Through the long twilight, the other hunters gathered at my house. They drove up in jeeps with bright extra headlights, in pickups with floodlights along the roofs. They came from Yolo, Woodland, even Sacramento. I hoped the game warden didn’t notice the gathering.

Most autumns, the hunt is just me and a few local friends. But this year the heat had lasted into fall. The herds were so big, the conditions so perfect — the rains were late; and tonight was the dark of the moon — that we needed more people for a good chase. But if the warden noticed the vehicles, the lights, he might figure out what was going on.

He might come to the house, hang around, warn us that he was keeping an eye on us without even saying anything. He’d notice the shotguns, but never mention them.

We’d have to call the hunt off if the warden stopped by. Then we’d know it was too risky. But he also might hide out in the fields and wait for us to come, then arrest us while we tried to carry away the evidence. It depended on which he wanted more: to protect the herds, or to put good arrests on his record.

Is it worth the gamble? we asked each other. One after another, we decided that it was.

Darkness overcame the twilight. I turned off the lights in the house and went out onto the porch. The Milky Way arched from horizon to horizon. It was the only illumination. The other hunters joined me, and we waited for our eyes to get accustomed to the dimness. I passed out the shotgun shells, which I had filled and loaded with my own hands.

We left the dogs at home. Tonight was a night for a silent hunt. We would surround our quarry and surprise it. We wanted it fat and sleepy, not panicked and run half to death. We got in our vehicles and caravanned down the driveway, headlights dark, conversation stilled. We were all too keyed up to talk. Even the engines were quiet.

We turned onto the highway.

The road gave way to a gravel lane, then to a humped track. We bumped along, climbing higher, until the trees ended at a field on a hillside. A perfect hunting ground. The vehicles peeled off, left and right, circling the meadow and parking behind the sparse trees, headlights aimed inward.

We slipped the shells into our shotguns.

Then we waited.

The stars wheeled overhead. Midnight approached. A breeze brushed through the open windows of my pickup, rustling the vines, carrying with it the heady scent of our prey. I concentrated on listening, and I heard the stealthy steps. My heart pounded so hard that it drowned out the sound, but that didn’t matter any more. It was too late for the prey to escape.

I shouted at the top of my lungs: “Now!”

I jerked the headlight switch. All around, bright lights sprang on as my fellow hunters heard my command and leaped to comply.

Harsh illumination drenched the field, terrifying and paralyzing our prey. In clusters, they froze, their eyes reflecting the beams toward us. The light caressed our prey’s white-hazed, deep purple coats. They were fat, their flanks round and sleek, filled with life.

I threw open the door of the pickup and jumped to the ground. I knelt, aimed, and fired. The shotgun stock pounded against my shoulder. After my first shot, the others aimed and fired too. The field was a cacophony of shotgun blasts, muzzle-flash, gunpowder smoke.

Our quarry fell without a sound.

We ran out onto the field, quickly gathering our catch before its life-blood could run out into the earth, throwing it into the vats in the backs of the pickup trucks. My hands turned royal red; it would take days for the stains to fade.

Finally the trucks were full and only a few bits of skin and flesh remained on the ground. We drove away, pushing our vehicles too fast for the terrain, still expecting every second the bright red and blue flashes of the warden’s car, or the chilling blast of helicopter rotors above us.

But the warden never came. The hunt was successful. We returned to my house and carried our catch into the basement.

Later, when I pulled the cork from the first bottle of the night harvest, I discovered just how successful the hunt had been. The fragrance rose from the wine like a cloud of incense and the deep ruby color reminded me of the light reflected from the flanks of our prey. The taste was maroon velvet, spiced with oak.

Some people prefer to strain out the grape-shot before they drink the night harvest, but I never do. I like the element of risk, I like squeezing the last swallow of wine between my teeth and tongue to filter out the few tiny lead pellets swept from the bottom of the bottle with the pouring.

It was a vintage year.

oOo

First Published in Odyssey #4

Copyright © 1998 by Vonda N. McIntyre

Reprinted October 2008, www.bookviewcafe.com

www.vondanmcintyre.com