Empty Mile

by Matthew Stokoe

  “I guess we’ve got to start somewhere.”

  And I, of course, figured that all my Christmases had come at once.

  “Where would we do it?”

  “He knows a place back in the forest. He wants it to be outdoors.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I said I’d ask you. He said he’d pay two hundred dollars. But you know we totally don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m afraid I need the money too badly. Absolutely. In fact there’s no way I could possibly turn down two hundred dollars right now. Not at all. No sir.”

  Marla nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  The air in the forest was so humid it seemed to push back at me and the buzzing of cicadas made my head swim. What we were doing was crazy but I couldn’t stop myself. The heat and the insect noise and the throb of sexual desire had combined within me to a kind of fever that made me want to race through the trees, to be wherever it was we were going, to be inside Marla right then, that second.

  The place Bill led us to wasn’t far into the forest, but it was well screened and it was unlikely any nature-loving hiker would stumble across us. Behind a large boulder on which some delinquent teenager had splashed red paint there was a shallow dish-shaped hollow that was shielded around three-quarters of its circumference by a wall of trees and shrubs. As we entered it I was aware we were probably only a few minutes away from the place Marla and I had first made love.

  Marla avoided looking at Bill or me. We had brought our things from the lake and she rolled out a towel in the center of the hollow. Bill sat a few feet away. I did my best to pretend he wasn’t there.

  When Marla had finished with the towel she stood beside it, her arms straight at her sides as though she had no desire to make any further movement. I realized that she was scared.

  Bill watched us like nothing else existed. His hand was between his legs, squeezing his crotch.

  “Do you want us to, like, just start?”

  Bill nodded. “Yes, please. And take all your clothes off.”

  I stepped close to Marla and held her. For a moment she didn’t respond, then she lifted her head and looked at me sadly and whispered, “This shouldn’t have been our first time.”

  I kissed her. And with that kiss I tried to pull us into a dark cocoon that would hide us from the man who sat watching. For a moment it worked, for a moment we were lost in each other. But then his voice came again.

  “Take her clothes off.”

  I knew, even as I began undoing her bikini top, that I should stop this, that she was uncomfortable, unhappy, that the honorable thing to do would be to just give Bill his money back and tell him we’d changed our minds. But I didn’t. I couldn’t let go of this opportunity. I wanted sex, there was no doubt about that, but what drove me more to peel away Marla’s swimsuit was a raging emotional greed, the need to be close enough to her again to begin fixing the piece of my past that belonged to her.

  We got down to it, there in that warm hollow that like a lens seemed to capture the heat and concentrate it about us. When I entered her, despite being watched, despite the tawdry circumstances of the act, I felt an immediate and overpowering sense of relief. She had let me close to her. And if she could do that then surely there could be no further barrier to becoming a couple again. In Marla, too, I sensed a relaxation of spirit, as though she had wanted to clear this hurdle every bit as much as I.

  This letting-go of hers, though, didn’t last long. At some point she shifted under me and I saw that she was looking over my shoulder at Bill. I turned my head. He was standing, pants around his ankles, masturbating as he watched us. It didn’t surprise me. In fact I had assumed he’d do exactly that, but it seemed to disgust Marla and she went stiff and kept her eyes closed until we were finished.

  Bill left as soon as it was over, just buttoned his pants and walked quickly away. I thought about yelling after him to look out for bears, but I didn’t. Marla and I sat there silent and naked and watched him go. When he was out of sight I turned to her and forced a laugh.

  “Well…”

  I wanted her to laugh too, but she did not.

  We got dressed and made our way back through the forest holding hands and not saying anything.

  In the parking lot Bill Prentice was waiting beside his SUV. He waved for me to come over. Marla let go of my hand and went to wait by the pickup. Bill had the lease papers for the warehouse ready for me to sign-one year with the option to renew for two more, a reasonable yearly fee, three months up front, the rest in monthly installments. I signed them against the metal of the car’s hood and prayed that this venture with Stan would not turn out to be too disastrous.

  CHAPTER 9

  I stayed the rest of the weekend at Marla’s place and by the end of it she had agreed to a permanent relationship again. Even though our exhibition in the forest had played a role in this reconnection Marla seemed haunted by the episode.

  “Sometimes, I can’t believe what we’re capable of. The things we do… it seems like we’re programmed to destroy ourselves.”

  “Forget about it. It was a crazy afternoon, that’s all. We’ve got to leave the past behind us.”

  Marla looked at me skeptically. “I really don’t think you’re made that way, Johnny. But what choice do we have? You want to be with me and I can’t live without you. We’ll have to go through it until it all falls apart again.”

  “It’s not going to fall apart. There’s nothing to say we can’t have a great life together.”

  She smiled sadly. “We’ll see.”

  About eleven o’clock on Monday morning I got home to find Stan in the kitchen sitting at the table eating a large bowl of cereal and reading a comic book.

  “How come you’re not at work?”

  “’Cause Dad wants to take us somewhere. He said it was a big surprise. I called Bill, it’s okay.”

  “What sort of surprise?”

  “I don’t know, Johnny, that’s why it’s a surprise.” Stan pushed the cereal box toward me. “Have some breakfast. Nutrition’s important. And guess what? Bill’s leaving the key to the warehouse with the girls at the counter. Can we go check it out after?”

  “Sure, you bet.”

  “Awesome!”

  Stan got up and stared shunting around the room like a train, chanting, “Businessman, businessman, businessman…”

  Half an hour later my father came home. He was carrying a flat package wrapped in brown paper. We followed him into the living room and watched as he tore open the wrapping and lifted out a framed black-and-white photograph about two feet long. He set it on the back of the couch so that it leaned against the wall.

  Stan bent forward and examined it. “Is it around here?”

  “Yes, not far.”

  It was an aerial photo of forested land. The dark line of a river curved in from the right of the frame and made a pronounced bulge around what looked to be some sort of rock spur. Trees lined both sides of it. In the upper half of the photo they were unbroken, but below the river there was a patch of cleared land. On the bottom right-hand corner of the picture a serial number was imprinted and the image itself looked slightly grainy, as though it had been blown up from a smaller print.

  “Did you go up in a plane and take it, Dad?”

  My father laughed. “Not me, Stan.”

  “Are you going to put it on the wall?” Stan sounded dubious.

  “I was planning to.”

  “You should have gotten something with colors.”

  “This is a special picture. What do you notice about it?”

  Stan squinted hard at it, then stepped back and blinked his eyes rapidly. “Whew, that made me dizzy. It’s just a river, Dad. Is it the Swallow River?”

  “Well done. See anything else?”

  “Yikes, you’re going to make my head spin round. I can’t see anything. Ask Johnny.”

  “It’s just trees and a river to me too.”
/>
  My father smiled and looked at the photo and shook his head as though he couldn’t believe his luck.

  “Come on. We’re going for a drive.”

  We left the house and got into my father’s car. As we rolled out of the driveway Stan put on a pair of mirrored aviator shades and tied a patterned silk handkerchief around his neck.

  The place my father took us to was called Empty Mile. Once we were out of Oakridge it was about a twenty-minute drive, the last few miles of it along a single winding lane of blacktop known only as Rural Route 12. Along the sides of this road dusty wooden poles supported an old electricity feed that served isolated dwellings erected over the years by a handful of families who preferred a more reclusive lifestyle. Neither tourists nor townsfolk had any reason to come out this way-there was nothing to see here that couldn’t be seen closer to town or in more scenic surroundings. The only sign that the area was inhabited came from occasional boards, hand-painted with family names, that marked the entrances to unpaved trails.

  At one of these my father turned off the road and onto a track that was just two tire furrows worn in the earth. We drove along this through sparse forest until we emerged at the top of a wide meadow of deep grass that sloped downhill for several hundred yards. My father stopped the car and we got out.

  The trees we’d passed through were behind us and to the left and ahead of us also the meadow was bordered by forest. On our right the land rose in a steep rock wall about seventy feet high.

  In the top left corner of the meadow there was an old wooden house that needed paint. It was set off the ground and had a short flight of steps leading up to a roofed veranda. A beaten-up orange Datsun was parked beside it and in an unfenced garden washing hung on a line.

  On the opposite side of the meadow from this house, about halfway down the slope, there was a much newer log cabin. This too had a stoop along its front and there was a large rainwater tank and a small shed out back.

  Stan lay down on the grass. He rolled over a couple of times, then stood up and brushed himself off. My father was wearing a suit as he almost always did. He had his hands in his pants pockets, his jacket hooked back behind his wrists.

  “What do you think, boys?”

  Stan looked perplexed, trying to figure out what answer my father wanted. “It’s not any good for rolling.”

  “What about you, Johnny.”

  “Nice spot. Are you marketing it?”

  “I own it.”

  “Really?”

  “Closed the deal today.”

  “The whole field?”

  “Most of the meadow and on down through those trees at the bottom. The Swallow River runs on the other side of them and that’s where the property ends. That log cabin comes with it too, but the house over there is on a separate title.”

  Stan ran his hands nervously through his hair. “Oh boy, Dad. Oh boy.”

  “What’s the matter, Stan?”

  “Are we moving here?”

  “No, we’re not moving.”

  “But you bought a place with a cabin.”

  “We’re not moving, Stanley. Don’t worry.”

  Although I didn’t share Stan’s nervousness about moving to a new house I could understand his confusion. The piece of land my father had bought appeared to have no other use than as a place to relocate to. It had nothing going for it as an investment. It was too far from town and too isolated to subdivide and sell off in property lots. And as something to do with the tourist trade it was also a washout. Pretty and peaceful as it was, it had nothing that anyone would spend time traveling to see.

  My father strode off across the deep grass. He swung his arms as he went and there was a jauntiness to his step that seemed put on, as though this man who had so much difficulty with his feelings was making a deliberate attempt to communicate his happiness to us.

  We entered the trees that lined the bottom of the meadow. They grew thickly at first and there was grass underfoot, but after about ten yards the ground became dusty and the trees weaker and thinner and more widely spaced. My father stopped here and looked around as though he had no interest in continuing to the river. He scuffed at the dry earth with the toe of his shoe then walked a few yards to his left to a small hole someone had dug in the ground. Stan and I waited for him to start moving again but he seemed lost in a daydream, looking at the hole and nodding to himself. Stan cupped his hands and raised them to his mouth. He made a noise like static on a radio.

  “Earth to Dad. Come in.”

  My father lifted his head and chuckled and started walking again. Twenty yards further on the trees ended and we stepped out onto the bank of the Swallow River.

  After the Swallow passed under the bridge at the southern end of Oakridge it ran through ranks of quartz-bearing hills until it joined the middle fork of the Yuba. It was nowhere near the size of famous Gold Rush rivers like the American or the Feather, but it had been well known as a river that was consistently rich along its length. We stood now on the inner curve of a bend in its path where the water ran shallow and wide. To our right, looking upstream, I could see the ragged end of the meadow’s rock wall sloping down through the trees to the edge of the riverbank.

  Stan looked knowingly back and forth along the river. “I know where we are, Dad. This is your photo, isn’t it? This is the river in that photo.”

  “Correct, Stan.”

  “I thought so! Cool.”

  I knew my father didn’t have the kind of money to go around buying land for the heck of it and it crossed my mind that after a lifetime of financial failure, of looking after Stan single-handedly, he might finally have succumbed to some sort of mental illness.

  “What are you going to do with this place, raise crops?”

  My father tapped the side of his nose. “You’ll see, John. You’ll see.” He took a deep breath and clapped his hands. “Remember this day, boys.”

  We followed him back through the trees and up the meadow to where we’d left the car. As we came level with the wooden house I heard Stan draw his breath in sharply. Two people were sitting on the stoop in the afternoon sun. One of them was the girl from his dance class. He tugged my sleeve and whispered, “It’s Rosie!”

  The girl saw Stan and lifted her hand in a weak wave.

  “You better go over, dude.”

  “But what am I going to say?”

  “You talk to her at dance lessons, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “Will you come with me?”

  My father was a little way ahead of us. He turned when he heard our conversation. “You two go over for a few minutes, if you want. I’ll wait in the car.”

  The boards that made the steps up to the stoop were bare and worn soft with age. In the sun they gave out a faint papery fragrance that dried the back of the throat. Rosie was standing now. Beside her in a bent-wood chair was a thin woman of about seventy. Her gray hair was long and held by a pencil in a slowly collapsing bun and though her skin was sun-singed and deeply wrinkled, her eyes still held a sharp brightness and it was not hard to see that she had been good-looking in her youth. A light crocheted shawl lay across her knees and her fingers pushed a small collection of crystals absently back and forth across it.

  Rosie rocked gently from side to side and watched Stan. She was barefoot and there was dirt between her toes. She wore the same faded pink shift as she had when I saw her last.

  The woman smiled at us and said hello. Stan coughed uncertainly.

  “Um, I’m Stan. I go to dance lessons with Rosie.”

  The woman nodded. “Yes, Rosie told me about you. I’m Millicent Jeffries, Rosie’s grandmother.”

  Stan raised his hand quickly at Rosie. “Hiya, Rosie.”

  Rosie shifted on her feet as though she was tired and said, “Did you come specially?”

  “I didn’t know you lived here.”

  Millicent squinted across the meadow. “Is that your father over there?”
r />   Stan nodded. “Yeah, he just bought the land.”

  “Oh, I know him. He should have come and said hello.”

  Rosie held her hand out to Stan. “You can come inside if you want.”

  “Is it okay, Johnny?

  “Sure, not too long, though.”

  Stan and Rosie went into the house and Millicent gestured for me to sit on the chair next to her.

  She picked a small glass ball from her lap. Its surface had been cut with triangular facets and as it rested on the flat of her palm small rainbows quivered against the dry skin of her wrist and across the woollen shawl that covered her knees. She moved her hand a little and smiled as the rainbows danced.

  “Look at that. You’d never think there was all that color just waiting inside light, would you? And all you have to do is look at it a certain way. Beautiful, don’t you think? My Rosie mentioned your brother. She likes dancing with him. Is he a little slow?”

  “He had an accident when he was young, but he isn’t slow.”

  “A little… different? Rosie is a little different too. Only it wasn’t any accident that did it to her. Life just knocked her around until she couldn’t see any joy in it anymore. She’s lived with me since she was nine. She supports herself now cleaning people’s houses.”

  “What happened to her parents?”

  “Her mother was a heroin addict. In the evenings, after she’d had her fix, she liked to sit on the windowsill to catch the breeze. They lived in an apartment building and one night she just fell out. Rosie saw it happen. Her father wasn’t the sort of man who could see through to the other side of things so he started drinking and about six months later got in his car and never came back.”

  She set her crystals and her shawl on a small table beside her chair and stood up.

  “Some folks might have reservations about someone like Stan and someone like Rosie starting up a friendship. They might say it’s bound to end unhappily. But you get to my age and it seems like happiness is only ever temporary anyhow. So if they can pretend for a little while that they aren’t so different from everyone else, I’m just going to be happy for them.”