Empty Mile

by Matthew Stokoe

  I gave her back the keys to the Datsun and left her staring at the blue flame of the heater, her fingers playing restlessly across the material of her shawl.

  CHAPTER 29

  I spent the night listening for cars, expecting a cavalcade of them to come thundering across the meadow at any moment, carrying cops and a warrant for our arrest. But the night passed undisturbed and when I woke the next morning I lay for a while daring to hope that we might have escaped the warehouse fire undetected.

  It was a Saturday. Marla at home and no Plantasaurus work-what little we had left of it. I thought I was the first one up but when I went out onto the stoop Stan was sitting in a patch of sunshine wearing his Batman costume. He had his eyes closed behind the mask and didn’t realize I was there. His face was turned to the sun and his right hand was closed in a loose fist on his knee. Slowly, as I watched, he brought his hand up and I saw that his fingers were wrapped around a large brown moth. He pushed it into his mouth and started chewing, scrunching his face as he forced himself to eat the insect.

  “What are you doing!”

  He swallowed and shuddered, then opened his eyes and blinked and looked emptily at me.

  “I don’t know, Johnny.”

  “Jesus, Stan… Look, dude, don’t worry about last night. Jeremy Tripp deserved it. It’s not something you have to feel bad about.”

  “Why’s everything going wrong? I used to be happy, then all of this bad stuff happened. I don’t understand it, Johnny.”

  I could have told him it was just the way life was, that the bad came along with the good, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. Everything bad that was happening to Stan could be traced back to one event-Marla and me fucking in the forest for Bill Prentice. I couldn’t have foreseen that it would have such disastrous consequences, I hadn’t done it with the thought of hurting anyone at all, but still…

  “Everything is going to be okay, Stan, I promise. I don’t want you to be frightened or upset about anything.”

  “But there’s nothing behind things anymore, not like there used to be.” He looked at me then as though he had suddenly realized something. “Is this how you feel, Johnny? Am I like you now?”

  By the middle of the morning Stan had changed out of his costume but he still had about him the air of someone who had been profoundly stunned. Rosie joined him on the stoop and the two of them spent a long time staring vacantly at the meadow.

  In an attempt to distract him from his misery I reminded him that we hadn’t investigated our secret river yet. He seemed to have lost all interest in it, but after I’d talked for a while about gold and how much money we could make and how the whole thing would be a huge adventure, he roused himself a little and agreed to accompany me on an expedition to find out what the buried riverbed held.

  “And maybe, Johnny, if there’s a lot of gold, maybe I could pay Jeremy Tripp back for his warehouse.”

  Over the years my father had accumulated all the basics necessary for amateur prospecting: shovels, wire-mesh graders for sieving out stones, even a modern aluminum sluice. We’d brought this gear with us from the old house and kept it now in the shed behind the cabin. Stan and I loaded ourselves with a couple of pans, a shovel, a mattock, and a grader and were just coming back around to the front of the cabin when I realized that my plans for the day would have to be radically rethought.

  Marla and Rosie were standing close together on the stoop looking up the slope of the meadow in alarm. I followed their gaze and saw, at the top of the track that led down to our cabin, a red E-type Jaguar sitting motionless against a background of trees.

  Stan made a small whimpering sound and dropped the pan he was carrying. “Johnny…”

  “It’s okay. He’s probably just here to see if we can lend him some plants.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Why don’t you take Rosie and show her how to pan for gold? We really need to find out what’s in that riverbed.”

  I handed my pan to Rosie. Stan stayed staring worriedly at Jeremy Tripp’s car.

  “Go on, Stan. It’ll be better if it’s just me who talks to him. I’ll come and get you when he’s gone. Don’t worry about anything, it’s going to be all right.”

  Stan picked up his pan and tugged unhappily at Rosie and the two of them set off down the meadow. I went and stood beside Marla on the stoop. A minute later the E-type rolled down the track.

  When Jeremy Tripp got out of the car I felt Marla flinch. He stepped onto the ground in front of the cabin as though he were taking ownership of everything around him, us included.

  “Log cabin… Very rustic, but don’t you worry about fire?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Really? I have to tell you, it’s of some concern to me. You really don’t worry about it?” He gazed off down the meadow. Stan and Rosie were just entering the trees. “Smart move sending your brother away. I expect he doesn’t cope well with stress. Shall we go inside?”

  Without waiting for an answer he climbed the steps and walked past us into the cabin. Marla looked dull and white and I felt a cold hand close about my stomach. For a moment neither of us moved, then we turned and went inside.

  Jeremy Tripp sprawled on the couch. Marla took a chair as far away from him as possible and I stayed standing. Jeremy Tripp smirked when I didn’t sit down.

  “Standing won’t do you any good, John. All that stuff about sitting with your back to a window, having your chair higher than the other guy? It’s all pointless if you don’t have the goods. There are only a few things that really allow you to dominate an exchange. Money is one of them. Knowledge is another. Strutting around the room usually means you don’t have either.”

  “What do you want?”

  “There was a fire at my warehouse last night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Surprised? So was I. Fire department says it was arson. That got me thinking, as you might imagine. The target’s a warehouse full of plants. There’s another plant company in town whose business I’ve pretty much annihilated, run by someone less than kindly disposed toward me.”

  “Just because I have a plant company doesn’t mean I started the fire.”

  “I’m not saying it does. You’re probably not stupid enough to do something so obvious.”

  “Okay. Good. So what’s this about?”

  “You’re not stupid enough… but your brother is.”

  I felt the cold hand around my stomach tighten. “Stan’s not capable of doing anything like that.”

  “Anyone can do anything if the circumstances are right, and it’s been a tough old time for Stanley. Business going down the toilet, losing your house… If you don’t have a strong mind these things can push you over the edge. It’s just a guess, of course, but I’d say Stan’s mind is a long way from strong. Finding out his girlfriend likes to pose for nude photos can’t have helped, either.”

  “That was a fucking evil thing to do.”

  “Was that what happened? He saw the photos and lost it? Went on a rampage with a can of gas?”

  “You’re insane.”

  “But close enough to the mark.”

  “You don’t have any proof at all that that’s what happened.”

  “Do you really think I need any?”

  “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  “John, when I go to the police and tell them I believe Stan set fire to my warehouse they’ll take him in for questioning. Proof won’t come into it because two minutes after they sit him down he’ll have told them everything himself. You know he will, there’s no way he could stand up to being questioned.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To make the community a safer place. We can’t have people running around setting things on fire.”

  “You mean prison? Are you fucking joking? We’re talking about Stan here. It would destroy him.”

  “Do you think I care about that?”

  “This is about you and me and Marla and Gareth and that fuck
ing video. Don’t bring Stan into it.”

  “Maybe you could persuade me not to.”

  “I already asked you what you want.”

  “Cancel your lease on Bill’s warehouse and move out. I want to buy the land.”

  “But we won’t be able to run our business.”

  “You’re hardly doing that now. And I want this land, as well.”

  “What land?”

  “This land, here.”

  “Are you joking? Why?”

  Jeremy Tripp shrugged. “Because you have it. You’ve got to understand, I’m honor bound to take everything you have. You and that Gareth twerp and your slut here.” He pointed his chin at Marla.

  “The fire was just what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “You made a mistake. You should have looked after your brother better.”

  “How do I know you won’t go to the police even if I do what you want?”

  “You don’t. But what choice do you have? I’m saying I won’t tell anyone. What are you going to do, fail your brother again by not even trying to save him?”

  Giving up the warehouse didn’t bother me much, Plantasaurus was on its last legs anyhow. But Empty Mile was a whole other matter.

  “I’m waiting, John.”

  “The warehouse lease I can cancel as soon as I get ahold of Bill. But the land will involve a lawyer. I’ll need a few days to arrange it.”

  “Just as long as you don’t dilly-dally.” Jeremy Tripp stood up. “And now, to seal the bargain, I’d like your girlfriend to take care of me.”

  “Take care of you?”

  “Blowjob.”

  “Fuck off. She doesn’t work for Gareth anymore and she’s not whoring herself to you.”

  Jeremy Tripp looked at me like I was insane. “Your brother will go to prison. At the very least a psychiatric institution. Do you think he’ll ever be the same again? Do you think you will, knowing you could have saved him from it?”

  I hated the idea of Marla going down on Jeremy Tripp, but it was the lesser of two evils. She would be a little more damaged because of it but she would still be Marla after it was over. Stan, though, most definitely would not be Stan if he was locked up for any length of time.

  Of course she knew what I was thinking, or saw it in my face. She sighed and dropped to her knees in front of him and unzipped his fly. Over her head, Jeremy Tripp winked at me.

  “Someone’s got some sense.”

  I couldn’t watch and went to stand at the end of the room where the sink and the counter ran across the rear wall. When I got there I glanced over my shoulder. Jeremy Tripp’s back was toward me, buttocks clenching, hands wrapped in Marla’s hair. I turned away and braced myself against the counter, wishing the earth would open up.

  When Jeremy Tripp started to make grunting noises my gaze wandered across the counter to the sink. To a large kitchen knife lying there waiting to be washed. I reached out and closed my hand around the brown wood of its handle. And then I turned and started quietly back across the floor.

  Tripp had been taking his time but he wasn’t far away now and his hips were driving at Marla in hard thrusts, making her gag. I held the knife out in front of me. The distance between its blade and Tripp’s back was not great, maybe fifteen feet. I watched it narrow as I moved forward, this space that was all there was between the life and death of a man I hated.

  Part of Marla’s face was visible past his right hip and she watched me with one eye.

  I wanted to plunge the knife into his back and twist it. I wanted revenge for what he was doing to Marla, for what he had done to her in the past. I wanted revenge for the destruction of my brother’s hopes. I wanted this threat to our lives gone forever.

  But I couldn’t do it. Halfway across the floor I stopped. For a moment I just stood there, pointing the knife at him. Then I turned around and walked back to the sink and stood looking blankly out of the window above it, listening to the sound of Jeremy Tripp ejaculating into Marla’s mouth.

  Later, when he had gone, Marla brushed her teeth and stood at the sink and stared out the window with me.

  She had done things like this before. She had been a hooker and had sex with men she didn’t know, she had been made to service Jeremy Tripp by Gareth, and she and I had performed in the forest for Bill Prentice. So going down on Jeremy Tripp that day wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done. But it had happened in her home, and it had happened soon after Gareth had forced a similar experience on her.

  I knew she didn’t want to talk about it but I felt I had to say something.

  “Thank you.”

  It was inadequate, I knew, but I thought anything else would sound self-serving.

  Marla lit a cigarette and slowly pinched the flame of the match out between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t flinch or make a sound. When she had smoked the cigarette she turned to me and said in an overly controlled voice, “Are you going to give him what he wants?”

  “It won’t make any difference. He wants to destroy us, asking for the warehouse and the land is just another step along the way, but it’s not the end. All his attacks so far have been personal. He throws you out of your house, he fucks you in front of me, he poisons our plants, he sets up a competing firm, and for Gareth he’s wrecking the chances of a road to the lake. None of this is about getting anything material, it’s about revenge for Pat. And it’s not going to stop while any of us are still functioning. He’s going to tell the police about Stan whether I give him the land or not.”

  “So?”

  “Fuck, I don’t know…”

  “You do, Johnny. I can see you thinking it.”

  “You mean kill him? Do you think I’m that kind of person? Do you think I could actually kill someone?”

  “What do you want me to tell you? That I’d be all right with it? Is that what you’re waiting for?”

  “I’m not waiting for anything.”

  “Because I am okay with it, Johnny. I am.”

  “I couldn’t do it. I tried with the knife and I couldn’t.”

  “I’m okay with it, but you have to know it’ll always be with you. You’ll never get rid of it.”

  “I said I couldn’t do it!”

  “But you’ve thought of a way, haven’t you?”

  Marla’s voice was worn through with sadness. She ran her fingers over the back of my neck and without feeling it my legs buckled and I hit the floor with my knees and stayed there, holding her to me, my face pressed against her stomach, crying into the rough cotton of her shirt.

  Later, I made a phone call to Gareth and then I went down to the river to tell Stan and Rosie it was safe to come out. In the corridor of less strongly growing trees that we now knew to be the course of the old riverbed I found that one of the holes my father had dug to take his samples had been enlarged to a small crater about five feet wide and waist-height deep. The walls of the hole were dark brown soil but its floor was made of something else, paler and more granular, a mixture of sand and gravel-unmistakably riverbed material.

  There was nothing about it to indicate that it was laced with gold. But it was there, the bed of an old river, visible, touchable. Real. Until now it had been a blur on a photograph, the dream of a desperate man. But not any longer. I felt something tugging at me, skirting my reasoning mind, going straight for whatever part of me it was that wanted to believe in miracles.

  I continued through the trees to the river. Stan and Rosie were sitting on the bank beside a pile of excavated dirt. They were holding hands and their backs were toward me. They seemed to be doing nothing but staring at the bright water that moved in front of them. Stan’s shovel lay on the ground near him, next to the gold pans.

  When they heard me approaching they turned and for a moment I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Both of them had something smeared on their faces. Against the glare of the water it looked dull and dark and I thought at first that it must be mud. But as I stepped closer I saw it was something else. Stan and Rosie had c
overed their faces with a slurry of water, crushed moths, and concentrates.

  The mixture was almost dry and as their faces moved small pieces of it fell away. One of Stan’s hands lay closed in his lap. He raised it toward me and opened his fingers. A damp mound of concentrates lay creased in the center of his palm.

  “Dad was right, Johnny. We only had to do five pans to get this.” He scraped the mix of black sand and gold dust off his hand into one of the pans beside him. “Dad never found so much in just five pans.”

  I knelt and examined the concentrates. Without refining them properly it was impossible to tell exactly what proportion of gold they contained, but there was so much color there, so much dull yellow in the black sand, that it looked to me like Stan had panned at least an ounce of gold. It might be that not all of the buried river was so impregnated with wealth, but it showed that at least where Stan had dug it was very rich indeed.

  “What do you have on your face?”

  “I didn’t want anything to go wrong with getting the gold. I don’t want it to be like Plantasaurus. Rosie was helping me. Has Jeremy Tripp gone?”

  “Yes, he’s gone.”

  “He knows it was me, doesn’t he?”

  “He was just asking questions.”

  “Johnny!”

  “Yes, okay, he knows, but it’s going to be all right.”

  “How can it be all right?”

  “I fixed things.”

  “How?”

  “I just explained how it was all a bad mistake and you didn’t mean to do it. He understood.”

  Stan looked at me for a long moment. “You promise, Johnny?”

  “I promise.”

  He glanced at Rosie and let out a heavy breath.

  Gareth and I met at the Black Cat café in Back Town. It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was empty. We took a booth on the other side of the room from the counter. Gareth looked across the table at me measuringly.

  “I’d like to think this means we’re going to be friends. You asking me out for coffee and all. But I wonder if there isn’t a little more to it.”

  “How are things going with the road to the lake?”