Empty Mile

by Matthew Stokoe

  Stan opened the pouch of moths around his neck and put the opening over his mouth and nose and took a few deep breaths. Then he closed it and blinked rapidly.

  “We could all be millionaires. This is the power working. Hey, Johnny, do you think we could buy Bill’s garden center and open it up again? That’d be so cool. And me and Rosie could have a big wedding out there and everyone would see how great we are.”

  “Right now we don’t know anything for sure. Don’t get too worked up about it just yet.”

  “I need to get some more moths. I gotta get more power to make it come true.”

  “Stan!”

  “Okay, Johnny. Shutting down.” Stan pretended he was turning a key on the side of his head. “Brain off… But it would be cool, wouldn’t it? A secret river full of gold, and we’re the only ones who know about it!”

  He went off to his room. Marla stood up tiredly. “It sounds a bit farfetched, Johnny.”

  She went into the kitchen area and while she fixed herself something to eat I sat by myself turning Stan’s last words over in my head. Were we really the only people who knew about the possibility of gold on the land?

  At every major turn along my father’s path of discovery Gareth seemed to have been hovering in the shadows like some dark ghost. He’d been at Millicent’s when my father first saw the journal and at the Elephant Society with my father when the lecture on how a river can change course was given. He’d even been with my father when the BLM guy explained what the aerial photo showed. And he’d been at the assayer’s, as well. It wasn’t a huge leap, then, to figure he knew just as much as my father had.

  But he’d never mentioned anything more than that he’d been friends with my father, that they sometimes went to Elephant Society meetings together, and that one day he’d helped him drill a few “fence post holes.” Not a thing about any gold. Why was that? Did he figure it would make it easier for him to buy the share of Empty Mile he seemed so anxious to acquire? Or was it something else, something about his connection with my father, something tangled up in all those steps they’d taken together, that he didn’t want me to know about?

  CHAPTER 28

  Any moves we might have made to mine ourselves some physical proof of a million-dollar mother lode at the bottom of the meadow were forgotten during the following week as it became increasingly apparent that Jeremy Tripp had lied, and I had made a dreadful mistake.

  I’d been so desperate to eke out the existence of Plantasaurus for Stan’s sake that, despite Tripp’s past history of antagonism toward us, I’d acted on his promise of free plants before it had actually been fulfilled. I’d canceled the plant shipment we had scheduled and used the money instead to pay the quarterly insurance premiums that had fallen due on the business-warehouse contents, pickup, and the personal liability we had to carry in case we dropped a planter on someone.

  It was only after I had committed the money to these areas, of course, that the first bubbles of suspicion began to surface. Our own stock of plants was depleted and when two days had passed and the shipment from Jeremy Tripp still hadn’t arrived I was forced to call him. He was immediately apologetic and cursed himself for forgetting. He asked if we could wait another day while he arranged a truck. I didn’t really have a choice, so I told him we could, but when I hung up I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were never going to see those plants. Jeremy Tripp was not a man to be apologetic.

  Later, in town that day, while Stan and I were doing maintenance on a couple of our contracts, we saw both Plantagion vans making their rounds. It didn’t look at all like Jeremy Tripp was winding his business down.

  The next day came, and the one after that, and neither the plants nor any papers to do with the handover of Plantagion customers showed up. I called Jeremy Tripp several times that week but he didn’t answer, so I called the Plantagion warehouse and spoke to Vivian. She didn’t know anything about sending us any plants and in fact said they were too busy right then to spare any. It was at that point I realized that Jeremy Tripp had never had any intention of stopping his attacks against us. The promise of customers and plants had just been his twisted way of inflicting even more damage.

  Plantasaurus was in serious trouble. We couldn’t sign up any new customers, something we desperately needed, because we had nothing left to build their displays out of. And, for the same reason, we couldn’t even properly service the customers we already had. It was more than three weeks to the end of the month when our customers made their payments and we’d have some cash again to buy plants. We might get lucky and ride it out, but it seemed pretty much inevitable to me that people were going to start canceling contracts.

  Stan and I did the best we could, but by the end of the second week we were starting to get complaints about the scruffiness of our displays, and at the beginning of the third, despite our promises of impending improvement and offers of reduced fees, six of our best customers in Old Town canceled and told us to remove our displays.

  Carrying their planters out to the pickup felt like a public humiliation. After we’d finished at one of the places Stan sat in the cab and broke down crying. Whatever the truth of the situation, whether I could have managed the business better or whether it had been doomed from the start, I felt an overwhelming sense of failure. Not only had I not been able to stop this happening, but I was, in a sense, its cause.

  As bad as the loss of customers was, though, it was not the worst thing life decided to throw at my brother that week.

  That Friday he and I stayed longer than usual at our warehouse, sweeping the place out and washing down empty planters. It was a futile exercise. No amount of tidying up was going to save the business from its downward slide. Our reputation was damaged beyond repair, the number of clients canceling was increasing each day, and inquiries from possible future customers had stopped entirely. We worked on the warehouse out of some notion of pride and affection for the business-a desire not to let it die without a measure of respect.

  By the time we got back to the cabin at Empty Mile Marla was already home. She was sitting beside Rosie on the couch, rubbing her back with one hand, as though she wanted to comfort her but knew a full embrace was out of the question. Rosie had her knees pressed together. Her hands were laced tightly in her lap.

  As soon as he saw her, Stan began to shake. “Rosie, what’s wrong!”

  Rosie didn’t look at him.

  “Johnny, something’s wrong.”

  Marla reached out with her free hand and passed me a large brown envelope. “She was waiting for me when I got home. She had these with her.”

  Stan sat down on the other side of Rosie and put his arm around her. She pressed herself stiffly against him.

  The envelope was unsealed. I reached into it and took out a set of five photos which, from the look of the finish, had been printed on a home computer. As soon as I saw what was on them I knew I should have opened them somewhere away from Stan. But it was too late. He’d caught a glimpse of what they showed and he leapt from the couch to stand beside me. I tried to put them back in the envelope but he grabbed my wrist.

  “No, Johnny, show me!”

  I gave him the photos. Rosie was the lone subject of each one-naked, her body white, the soft tuft of pubic hair sharply dark between her legs. She stood as though frozen in the center of a large room with a polished wooden floor and white walls. A room both Stan and I knew.

  “That’s Jeremy Tripp’s house!” Stan started to wave his arms rapidly back and forth in front of his face. “That’s Jeremy Tripp’s house! What’s happening? Rosie, what happened?”

  He stumbled back to her, clumsily taking her hands. Rosie stared at her knees and spoke in a voice that was empty of emotion, as though she had been so crushed by life that she could not fully react to this latest bout of its unkindness.

  “I was cleaning the house for him, in the big room that always seems so quiet. I never see him there, but he was today. He told me to take my clothes off and then h
e took pictures. Then he went away, then he came back and gave them to me. I didn’t want Granny to know so I came here instead.”

  Stan was aghast. “He shouldn’t have done that!”

  Rosie turned her head toward him but didn’t lift her eyes. “He said if I didn’t, he’d make it so you couldn’t keep doing Plantasaurus. He said I had to show you the pictures.”

  Stan balled his fists and let out a bellow. His neck constricted and his entire head turned red. Another man might have punched holes in the walls but Stan had no experience with this level of rage and it bound him like a straightjacket.

  There was no saving the situation, but Stan was so upset I had to try to at least eliminate the possibility that anything worse had happened.

  “Did he do anything else besides take the pictures? Did he touch you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say he was going to hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “Just Stanley’s business.”

  “I think I should go get Millicent.”

  Rosie’s head snapped up. “I don’t want her to know. She’d be upset.”

  “But will you be all right?”

  “I guess I don’t feel much different than before.”

  She got up and went out to the stoop and through the windows at the front of the cabin we saw her stand for several minutes looking out at the meadow then sit on the bench against the front wall.

  Stan looked confused to the point of fear. “Johnny, this is bad.”

  “I know.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “I do, Johnny, I have to make sure I act the right way. For Rosie. I don’t want her to be disappointed. If I don’t say the right things or if I don’t do what I’m supposed to it might be something she always thinks about.”

  Marla spoke from the couch. “All Rosie wants is for you to be with her.”

  Stan looked uncertain, as though he was sure a lot more than that was required, but after a moment he went outside and sat next to Rosie. A little while later they left the porch and headed to Millicent’s house. Marla shook her head in disgust.

  “What an asshole. What does Rosie have to do with anything?”

  “He didn’t do it to hurt Rosie.”

  “Not Stan, surely?”

  “Me. Hurt Rosie you hurt Stan, hurt Stan you hurt me. Telling him that Gareth made the video hasn’t changed anything.”

  “Fucking great.”

  Marla and I went to bed early. Around midnight I was woken by Millicent banging on the front door. She was carrying a flashlight and had a shawl around her shoulders. She looked frail and worried.

  “Stan and my Rosie have gone off in the car. I heard them talking. He wanted her to drive him someplace.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to ask him but he wouldn’t say. I’ve never seen him like that before. He was angry. I think you should go after him.”

  “I will.”

  “Because he took the can of the kerosene we use for the heater and I don’t know why he would want that.”

  Marla and I left Millicent making her way back up the slope to her house. We took Marla’s car. I drove. I knew where Stan had gone. Kerosene and anger made a pretty obvious sum.

  I made it to the Oakridge commercial precinct in under twenty minutes. By that time the fire had just started.

  Rosie’s Datsun was parked in front of the Plantagion warehouse. The glass reception door had been forced open and inside, through another open door behind Vivian’s desk, I could see the warm orange of reflected fire softly hazing the air back in the warehouse proper.

  Marla and I went inside. I was hoping against hope that the fire would be small, something that could be handled, that I could put out before it caused any significant damage. But as we went through the doorway it was obvious I was out of luck. The warehouse was bigger than ours, and where ours was now bare of almost everything a plant business needed, this one was stuffed with it. Down one wall a shelving unit held stacks of planters, neatly arranged sacks of potting mix, and trays of the smaller plants that were used to dress displays. Along the opposite wall rows of weeping figs and dracaena and kentia palms stood ten and twelve deep.

  Rosie was not far from the doorway, a yard or two along the corridor of concrete floor that ran between the plants and the shelving unit. She turned to us as we came in and pointed mutely toward the far end of the building. Stan was down there, frozen in front of a section of the larger plants, watching in horror as fire tore backwards through them.

  I shouted but he didn’t move, so I ran the length of the warehouse. Stan stayed transfixed until I reached him, but when I hauled him back against the shelving unit he turned toward me and wailed. The sound went on and on as though it was something beyond physical, beyond lungs and vocal chords, was instead a wind of terror and sadness direct from his soul. The sheer uncontrollability of it frightened me and I shook him to make him stop. At the entrance to the warehouse Marla and Rosie screamed for us to get out.

  The temperature was now too high to bear and the smoke that the green leaves of the plants threw off had begun to choke us. I took a handful of Stan’s shirt and dragged him toward the doorway. Burning plants fell into our path and as the smoke became too thick to see through I felt a jolt of fear that we might not make it out. But then the sprinkler system kicked in and water fell from the roof in a solid curtain of mist, flattening the smoke, hissing against the burning plants.

  We made it to the doorway and I turned to look back. The fire was already dying. Some of the plants had burned themselves out and the rest had too little fuel left on them to fight the water for long. The wall on the plant side of the warehouse was scorched black to the height of the roof and the stock of plants was completely destroyed, but there was little chance that anything was going to reignite.

  The four of us ran from the building. Marla drove her own car and I drove Rosie’s with Stan and Rosie in the back. As we pulled away I took a last look at the warehouse. The only sign of the fire that had blazed inside it so recently was a halo of smoke around the roof. We left there quickly. If the building had a sprinkler system it probably also had some sort of alarm. I led our two-car convoy around the perimeter of the precinct and then out, away from Oakridge.

  The road we took cut through virgin countryside in a long series of twists that eventually connected with the Oakridge Loop a few miles north of our own Plantasaurus warehouse. I turned south there and headed for home. It was about the longest way you could take to Empty Mile but it meant we’d miss the Oakridge volunteer fire brigade if they were responding. And the police too, if it was that kind of alarm.

  We didn’t talk much in the car. Stan sat against Rosie, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, glasses off and the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. He rocked back and forth as much as the space in the small car would allow. He kept his eyes covered until we got back to Empty Mile.

  In the cabin we all sat around the table. I made hot chocolate but Stan wouldn’t touch his and Rosie said she didn’t like milk. I tried to talk to Stan, to somehow break the shell of guilt that was so obviously hardening about him. But he was too horrified at what he’d done.

  “Those photos made me go crazy.”

  “I don’t want you to freak out about this, Stan. No one got hurt. The sprinklers put it out. A few plants got burned, so what? The warehouse was fine-other than the smoke it wasn’t damaged at all.”

  “What would you have done, Johnny?”

  “If the photos were of Marla I would have gone crazy too.”

  “I must be out of control.” Stan lifted his hands and slapped the sides of his head rapidly and groaned. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “No one saw us. No one’s going to know who lit the fire. They’ll just think something blew out in the building and started it.”

  “But if you do something that terrible
how can something not happen to you?”

  “I told you, no one saw us.”

  “I don’t mean that, Johnny. I mean the world. Something in it sees what we do. Maybe it doesn’t see normal stuff, but something as huge as this…”

  Stan looked wide-eyed around the room. He was overtired and emotionally battered. Marla had some sleeping pills and I gave him one and put him to bed. Rosie got in with him, I was glad she was staying. Her warm body next to him would be a better comfort than any words or drug I could give him.

  When they were settled I drove Millicent’s car across the meadow to her house. She was sitting in the front room wrapped in her shawl, a small kerosene stove burning across the floor from her. The stove’s wick needed trimming and the air in the room smelled of fumes.

  I told her where Stan and Rosie had gone in the car and what had happened when they got there. And I told her as well about the photographs that had sparked it off.

  “I suppose you haven’t called the police about the son of a bitch.”

  “I can’t really do that now.”

  “Might have been a better idea than letting Stanley run off.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. I know this guy. He’d say Rosie agreed to do it. Even Rosie says he didn’t force her, she did it to protect Stan’s business. Stan and Rosie aren’t the type of people who can go up against someone like Jeremy Tripp. Believe me.”

  Millicent shook her head to herself. “That poor girl.”

  “She’s sleeping now. She’s going to be okay. She was more upset about Stan than she was about herself.”

  “You’d think if you were like Rosie or Stan life would go a little easier on you. But it doesn’t. Mostly it seems to go the other way.”