Miracle Read Free Page A

with the other workers. One of the manager’s assistants drove a tractor to the end of the rows. On a long, flat trailer behind it sat several wooden crates taller than Amy’s head. From the end of the trailer another assistant handed out big white buckets and sharp shears to each grape picker.
    Amy took hers and walked down the rows, absently searching for a good spot to start, as if any one spot were different from the next. Her mind was devoted to recreating her daydreams, not deciding which grapevine to attack. She decided to begin where she’d left off yesterday.
    She set her bucket down and went to work, vaguely listening to other people chatting to each other while her hands moved carefully among the leafy vines sagging with clusters of purple-green grapes. And she began to fantasize.
    The beautiful red-headed slave is working in the vineyards of a Roman nobleman. He
comes
along; he notices her and falls in love at first sight. She is obviously brave as well as beautiful. He tries to talk to her. She won’t answer. He is fascinated. Finally he carries her away and sets her free. Then they make love. Amy grinned to herself. She could easily spend the whole day thinking up dialogue for this scenario.
    A snip here, a snip there. Two hours had passed. The slave was excellent at her work. She trimmed stray leaves and twigs from each handful of rich, bursting grapes and dropped the ripe bundle into her bucket with graceful
movements of
her hands.
    When the bucket was full she carried it without a sign it was painfully heavy to the trailer and dumped the contents into one of the wooden crates. Then she went back to the row and began all over again, kneeling by the vines, her bearing regal. Anyone with the sense to notice would see that she was extraordinary and didn’t deserve to be a slave.
    Her concentration was so complete that several minutes passed before she realized some workers had moved close to her spot and were whispering loudly among themselves.
    “Where’d Beaucaire find
that
guy?”
    “He looks like he just came off a three-day drunk.”
    “Bet he’s one of them Cuban fellers from over at Gainesville. Next thing you know, Mr. Beaucaire’ll bring in a whole bunch of those sorry shits who’ll work for a dollar a hour, and we’ll be out of a job.”
    “Nah. He’s not Cuban. They’re all swarthy and short. He’s kinda swarthy, but I bet he’s six-four if he’s an inch.”
    “Look at him! He can barely stand up! Ten to one he falls flat on his grapes any second! And then Beaucaire’ll jerk a knot in his tail.”
    Fascinated by the descriptions, Amy looked up. The others were watching someone far down the row of trellises. She craned her head to see the man.
    In the years that followed she would always remember that moment. She would relive it as if watching a movie inside her mind, the colors and sounds extraordinarily vivid, the dramatic impact staggering. He stood perhaps a hundred feet from them, outlined by a nearly tangible solitude, very still, studying a cluster of grapes crushed in one big fist. He was tall, with an elegant kind of brawniness to his body. Amy stared. His mystery excited her imagination.
    Grape juice ran down his arm. There was weary anger in the set of his shoulders, and remnants of violence in the way he clenched the pulpy mass of burst fruit. Juice dripped onto his bare, dirty feet. His white T-shirt was stained with sweat down the center and under the arms; his baggy, wrinkled pants were an ugly green color soiled with red clay at the knees. They hung low on his hips as if about to fall off. Only a loosely knotted tie-string kept them from slipping.
    He wore no hat, and his thick, charcoal-black hair was disheveled. Dark beard stubble shadowed his cheeks. His eyes were covered by unremarkable black sunglasses, but his face, making a strong, blatantly masculine profile, was anything but unremarkable.
    He slung the grapes to the ground, staggering a little as he did.