Blackbird

She dreamed again of houses. Old and in need of repair, they welcomed her even as she despaired of ever making a home of any of them. She was often alone in these dreams but sometimes she was aware of a comforting presence. It was then she would hear the clear, exuberant song of the blackbird in spring, and she would rise toward waking with that wild music in her ears and a fierce ache in her heart.

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“A house in a dream represents the dreamer,” her friend Charlotte told her. “You are seeing yourself, Mattie.”

She had chuckled at that. “So, I see myself as old and decrepit?”

“No, of course not.” Charlotte grew thoughtful, giving the cup of tea in front of her an absent stir. “I think you are lonely. This is a lonely place, and you almost never leave it. It’s hard to make a home all by yourself. You should date. It is not too late.”

Mattie had never thought of the vineyard as lonely. There among the vines, she found peace and purpose. The land spoke to her in an intimate voice, a flutter along her veins carried by the blood of the five generations of winemakers before her. Still, when she returned to the farmhouse each evening, she had to admit to feeling an emptiness there. There had never seemed opportunity for marriage or children, and the time for that had passed. She was the last of her family on the land.

“And what of the blackbird,” she asked.

Charlotte only shrugged. “It is probably a reference to the wine. Your merlot that you love so much.” She reached out her beautifully manicured hand and drew near a bottle labeled with the haunting watercolor blackbird for which the wine was named. Chant du Merle. Mattie could hear the words spoken in her grandfather’s smoke-roughened voice that had made everything sound like music. “Why else would you dream of a bird,” Charlotte said.

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In the vineyard, the late summer sun conjured the sweetness from the grapes. The fruit hung blue-black as witch’s blood, and the single blackbird fluttered to the vines to taste. Mattie watched him from where she knelt in the shade of the row.

“They’re not quite ready yet, my friend,” she told the bird. “But perhaps, for your purposes, they are perfect.”

The bird cocked his head, his eye shining down at her like an ebony star. She imagined it full of wit and humor and smiled up at him. He had no mate that she could discern and always came alone to the vines, seeming to prefer her company to that of his own folk. When she walked the rows, her hand trailing along the open green palms of the vines, the blackbird would sometimes follow. He hopped and flitted across the tops of the trellises, his shadow flying along the ground beside her.

“I envy you,” she told him. “This is the home and cathedral of my heart, and you are its jewel as much as these grapes.”

She gestured around her at the deep contentment of the earth, its loamy fragrance rising like a perfumed phantom. The vines rustled and hummed with sugary energy, drawing up the nurture of the earth, drawing down the vitality of the sun. A great wave of communal perfection swept over her, there at the navel of life in the vineyard, and all thoughts of loneliness dropped away from her. She admired the sheen of the blackbird’s feathers, a living shimmer of light and shadow cast against the blue dazzle of the sky.

“Where are your people,” she asked. She thought about the question in her own context. “I am happy here, in these elements, with you.”

The blackbird watched her, listening it seemed, before taking wing.

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They sat in rockers on the farmhouse porch, a bottle of wine shared between them. Charlotte passed her phone to Mattie with a triumphant smile.

“Look, this is David. I’ve told him about you, and he’d love to meet you. Isn’t he handsome?”

Mattie looked down at the photo on her friend’s phone. The man, David, had a pleasant smile and weather crinkles around his pale blue eyes. He wore the clothes and confidant air of an active outdoorsman. She supposed he was handsome. She put the phone on the little table between them and picked up her wineglass.

“I’m sure he is a lovely person,” she said, “but I am not interested in dating him, Charlotte.”

“Why not? He’s a successful businessman, he’s good-looking, and he loves to do outdoor things. He wants to take you kayaking. What’s wrong with him?” Charlotte’s face was flushed in exasperation.

Mattie pondered her friend’s question. She could not tell Charlotte that this man, chosen for her as if he were an item from a catalog, knew nothing of the seasonal demands of vineyards. He could have no understanding of her ties, both obligatory and emotional, to the land. He would not hear it breathing in the night nor see its joyful embrace of the day. He did not have quick, black eyes full of ancient wisdom like the blackbird. The sudden intrusion of the bird into her thoughts drew her up short. She sipped her wine and rocked on the old boards of the porch.

“He wouldn’t be right for me, Charlotte. He wouldn’t be happy here, and I will never leave. Besides, the harvest is about to begin. The merlot grapes are ready.”

Charlotte gave a little scream of vexation and launched into a passionate defense of her matchmaking skills, but Mattie was no longer listening.

I know what I want, she thought. I want a spirit as wild and deep as my own. I want the quiet communion with the land and the elements here on my mountainside. I need the magic of this vineyard that my grandfather and his grandfather before him called out of the soil. Yes, I need the magic.

At length, as the shadows grew and the cool of approaching autumn crept about them, even Charlotte became silent and thoughtful.

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Mattie loved crush season when the workers would come with their shears and baskets to harvest the grapes. It was a busy time of long days and hard labor, but the days were so beauty-drenched that she fell into bed each night with every cell singing. Just as the workers sang the old French songs that had been sung to the fruitful vines for generations. Just as the blackbird sang in counterpoint, weaving a tapestry of harmony that depicted the vineyard and her life there. In the press room where the grapes gave up the elixir of the land, Mattie heard the ghost of her grandfather speaking - Mathilde, mon coeur, ici est le sang du raisin…

The harvesters moved along the rows, emptying their baskets into the slow tractor-drawn carts, and Mattie drifted away alone among the vines, her own basket on her hip. Her shears dangled from her hand unemployed as she wandered, soaking in the early autumn day and the sweet scent of the grapes that brought her tongue to attention. Tucked amid the grapes in her basket was a bottle of merlot, one of her best vintages, from a season much like this one. A season of rich sun, soft rain, and frisky breezes. A season of magic when she had heard the deep contented stretching of the roots and the laughing whispers of the green tendrils, when the grapes had grown fat on wild elemental abundance. Ahead of her she heard the blackbird’s song, an invitation.

There he was, her jet-colored friend, singing atop a trellis. She approached and sat beneath him on the still-warm ground and pulled from her basket a tin cup, a shallow earthenware bowl, and her bottle of merlot. The blackbird had fallen silent, his dark gaze riveted upon his likeness on the bottle’s label. Chant du Merle, the song of the blackbird. Mattie uncorked the wine and poured a measure for each of them.

“Your heart and mine are the same,” she said, setting the shallow bowl of wine on the ground near her. “We understand this place, this life as rough and sweet as it is. We have come to know one another as friends, and I would like it if we could share this harvest date. Will you join me?”

The blackbird dipped his head and sang. To her ears, it sounded like Mathilde, Mathilde, Mathilde, and then he glided down to sample the wine from his bowl. She sipped from her cup and met his eye, nodding to him in happy companionship. The magic ran along her arms, this time like a dream of the riffling breeze through silken feathers.