Empty Mile (33 page)

And for my part, there was no way I could ever work alongside Gareth again. We had reached a point where the dreadful partnership could not continue.

Toward the end of the morning I put on a heavy coat and went down to the river. I found Gareth working one of the sluices, his face set and angry.

“Johnny. Glad you could finally get off your ass.”

“I’m not here to work.”

Gareth leaned on his shovel. “What?”

“I want to move on. I don’t care about the gold anymore. I want to sell the land to a mining company. You can have half of what we get for it.”

“No fucking way. We are not selling. Those guys’ll pay us a fraction of what it’s worth, you know that. They’ll see us coming and fuck us in the ass without even thinking about it. No, we’re going to keep on mining just like we’ve been doing. And you’re going to behave yourself, and Marla’s going to come out of the fucking cabin and say hello to me once in a while. In fact, Johnny, while we’re on the subject, there’s a whole lot more Marla could be doing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Given our history, how we all started off together and how we’re all together again—”

“We’re not ‘all together again.’”

“—how we’re all together again, I think we should share Marla. I have a share in the land, dude. I should have a share in the woman.”

“Are you fucking insane?”

“Gosh, I hope you haven’t forgotten that piece of pipe.”

“Gareth, we are not sharing Marla. You’re not getting anywhere near her.”

“Well, you’re angry now, you’re not thinking clearly. But I’m telling you, Johnboy, tomorrow I’m coming a courtin’.” Gareth smirked at me and lifted a shovel of dirt and began sifting it into the sluice.

On my way back to the cabin I collected Stan and Rosie from their trailer. If it had been anything else I would have tried to keep Stan out of it. There was no need, after all, to load him with worries that he could do nothing about. But I knew we could not give in to Gareth and opposing him would have serious consequences for all of us. It seemed only fair, then, that Stan should be included if his future was at stake as well.

Marla, Stan, and Rosie sat across from me in the living room. Marla and Stan looked worried. Rosie stared at her lap.

I told them what Gareth wanted and explained that his leverage to make it happen was the threat of having me arrested for the death of Jeremy Tripp. Stan looked ashen and began squeezing his knees with his hands, trying not to cry. It occurred to me then, too late of course, that he would now feel not only responsible for making me kill Jeremy Tripp, but also for the fact that Gareth might send me to jail for it.

“Don’t worry, Stan, we’re not giving in this time. We have to stand up to him or this will go on forever.”

Stan spoke in a kind of croaking whisper: “But Johnny, I don’t want you to go to jail.”

“I’m not going to jail. I don’t think Gareth will really tell the police.”

Marla snorted incredulously. “What makes you think that?”

“He’ll have to explain how he got the pipe and that’ll make him almost as guilty as me.”

“He’ll send it in anonymously, you idiot.”

“Then I’ll tell the police about him, same thing. And anyway, I think there’s more to it. I think in a weird way he doesn’t want to be without me, without you. He needs his toys to play with.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I don’t know, but we have to at least try to get out from under him. If we don’t, this kind of shit is going to keep on happening.”

Marla made a gun with her thumb and forefinger and fired it at the side of her head. “My way would be better, Johnny.”

Even though, if my planned opposition to Gareth failed and we were forced to capitulate, Marla would be the one suffering most at his hands, I was more worried right then about Stan. I felt powerless to do anything for him, to get past his unhappiness and help him in some way. Out of desperation, I asked him to camp out with me that night. We had often gone camping as kids and I was hoping that memories of those times and the closeness of just the two of us together outdoors would help him shed a little of his guilt.

It was no great expedition, just a tent and some food and a hike in the afternoon, up to the top of the spur that bordered the meadow—the same hike we’d made when I’d checked my father’s aerial photograph against the landscape.

We pitched our tent twenty yards back from the collapsed end of the spur. There was still an hour of daylight left when we were done and we prepared a fire for later then sat wearing sweaters and coats, gazing at the view. The hills ran off to the distance in broken ranks, their upper slopes copper-gold in the lowering sun, the valleys between them in shadow, filling with mist as the air cooled.

It got cold enough for us to start our fire pretty soon, and while there was a little light left in the air we made a dinner of sausages, beans, and bread rolls. Stan became quiet as evening fell and when we were finished eating we sat close to the fire and there were long periods of silence between us. I was hoping he would open up, that the hard shell of his depression might crack a little. But between our sparse bursts of small talk he stared into the fire and said nothing.

We had a gas light set a couple of yards out from the fire and moths were battering themselves against its bright frosted glass. I went over and caught a few and gave them to him in the plastic bag our bread rolls had come in.

“If you don’t have any moths, how are you going to bring the power across?”

Stan took the bag from me and held it up to the fire. For a moment he watched the moths crawl around, then he handed the bag back to me.

“I don’t want them. I don’t want to bring any more power across.”

“Why not?”

“Everything’s too wrong.”

“Won’t the power fix it?”

Stan breathed in and out and shook his head.

“Look, Stan, you lit a fire when you were angry. And you did it because Jeremy Tripp did something bad to Rosie. That’s all. Everything else has nothing to do with you.”

“You’re going to go to jail.”

“I’m not going to jail, I told you. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Stan turned away from me and stared into the fire. “It is, Johnny.”

“Stan—”

“It is.”

We were cold that night in the tent. We lay in our sleeping bags fully clothed and breathed steam against the close nylon walls and I told Stan all the stories I remembered from our childhood, all the tiny, normal events we had shared as brothers growing up in the same family. I wanted him to laugh, I wanted to bring back to him the memory of how it felt to be carefree. But rather than remind him of the good things in his past my stories seemed only to make him more aware of what he no longer had.

In the morning there was frost on the ground and Stan and I stood beside the remains of our fire as the sun picked out the land around us in clear yellows and blues. For a short time, after the interruption of sleep, Stan was able to watch the scene about him without reference to the sadnesses which were currently undoing his world. He stood and looked and breathed and he was still and I saw the soft bravery which I so much associated with him return to his eyes.

“Johnny, don’t you think it would be better if you could just live like this? If all you had to do was cook your dinner and sleep and be in the forest and you didn’t have to do anything with other people?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Stan nodded. “Yeah …”

He walked off to the end of the spur and sat there, knees hunched up to his chin, staring out at the landscape. I relit the fire and made coffee and cooked pancakes. I expected Stan to come when he smelled the food but he didn’t move and when I called to him he turned his head and smiled and called back, “I’m just going to sit here, okay?”

He sat for a long time. So long that I had to busy myself packing up the tent and the rest of our things. I knew this time was good for him and I left him alone with himself as long as I could, but we had no more food with us and I was getting anxious about being away from Marla, so eventually, around midday, I had to tell him it was time to go.

He came back from the edge of the spur and looked at the packed-up camping gear.

“We should run away, Johnny. Get Marla and Rosie and another tent and just disappear in the forest where Gareth can’t find us.”

For a moment he stood looking about him, then he sighed and reached down and started picking up pieces of our gear.

When we got home Rosie was sitting in front of the trailer, listening to the soft music they liked to dance to. She had been waiting for Stan’s return and stood when she saw him, her head down as always but her hand out for his. Stan took it and kissed her and led her into the trailer. As he passed the portable stereo he turned the music off.

After they had gone I stood looking at my cabin, at the space in front of it, at my pickup and Marla’s car, at the track that led up to the road … and I couldn’t help the uneasy feeling that Stan’s desire to run away from it all made an awful lot of sense.

CHAPTER 35

T
he next day, in the morning, the world for the four of us at Empty Mile started to fall apart. Five, if you count Gareth.

Marla and I were on the stoop, waiting for him to arrive and begin work on the river. Stan and Rosie had come over for breakfast and were sitting inside the cabin at the kitchen table. Stan was picking at a plate of fried eggs and Rosie, who didn’t eat breakfast, was drinking black coffee.

I felt frightened and resigned and energized all at the same time. I don’t know if I thought there was any chance that the morning would end successfully for us, but I knew that what I was about to do was something that had to be done, something it would have been wrong not to do.

When Gareth climbed out of his Jeep and saw Marla a smile broke across his face and he made a pistol with his hand and cocked it at me.

“Dude, what can I say? This means so much, that you two would do this for me. I can’t tell you how fucking relieved I am that we’re not going to have any trouble about it.”

He held his arms out for Marla to come to him. She looked at him tiredly and shook her head.

“Jesus, Gareth …”

Gareth frowned and glanced uncertainly at me. “Dude?”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“Johnny, come on, man. Don’t fuck around.”

“You’re not getting Marla.”

“We were clear on the consequences?”

“Go tell the cops. Do whatever the fuck you want. I’m not putting up with this insanity any longer. This is the end of it.”

Gareth looked at Marla. I saw that she was staring at him, her eyes dark and hard, as though willing him to leave us alone. Gareth held her gaze for a long moment, then turned back to me.

“Know what I think? I think you’re bluffing. You don’t think I’ll go through with it, do you? But I have to tell you, Johnny, Marla was mine before she was yours and this is where things get made right.”

“You don’t share people, you fucking psycho. Just go down to the river and mine your gold.”

“You took away the only chance I had to be happy. My one fucking chance! Why didn’t you find someone else?”

Gareth was shouting now, almost crying, his face straining and red.

I heard Millicent’s front door open. She waved at us as she came down her front steps but by the time she reached the bottom some of the tension surrounding Gareth and me must have communicated itself to her because she paused and stood watching us.

“Do you know what you do to the people around you, Johnny? You fucking destroy them. Marla, your brother … Well, you’re not going to do it to me. I’m going to get what I want. And if it means taking you out, that’s what I’m going to do. You fucking asshole.”

Gareth turned and reached for the door of his Jeep. I heard footsteps behind me, someone coming out of the cabin and onto the stoop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of gray and black as Stan, wearing his full Batman suit, rocketed past me, down onto the bare earth in front of the cabin. In his hand I saw the ugly black shape of Marla’s revolver. It was so incongruous a sight that for a second I was unable to process what I was seeing. Unfortunately, a second was all it took for Stan to raise his arm and pull the trigger.

He’d moved so quickly that no one had had a chance to call out or say anything and when the gun fired, it fired in a place where no other noise existed. Our small world was split by the gargantuan sound of gunpowder igniting, of explosive gasses jetting from the barrel’s opening, of a bullet moving across a few short yards, from the gun’s chamber to the middle of Gareth’s back.

For a moment it seemed that the intensity of the sound would freeze the scene, that we would be forever left staring at a three-quarter view of Stan with his arm extended, at Gareth thrown against the door of his Jeep, at the smoke in the cold air and the fine spray of blood on the car’s side windows.

But then the sound was gone and Stan lowered his arm and dropped the gun and Gareth slid down the side of his car and fell backwards onto the ground. There was a long smear of blood on the Jeep’s door. In it, a few inches below the window, a small round hole marked the bullet’s exit from Gareth’s body. Across the meadow Millicent wailed weakly.

Stan stood staring at what he had done, his body rooted to the ground, a rapid tremor playing over his arms and chest and head. I went to him and put my hand on his arm.

“Stan …”

“You can’t go to jail, Johnny. You just can’t.”

I felt so complicit, so responsible for what had happened, that I could think of nothing to say to him and we stood there in silence until Rosie, who had seen the shooting from the doorway of our cabin, came down and took Stan’s hand and led him across the meadow to Millicent. When they got there all three of them went quickly up the steps and into the house.

Marla came to me long before Stan and Rosie had finished crossing the meadow and she and I stepped close to Gareth and looked down at him. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood and more of it welled steadily from a torn cavity in the center of his chest. His bladder had let go and the crotch of his jeans was dark.

Marla slid her hand into mine and I heard her breathe quietly to herself, “At last …”

But Gareth wasn’t dead yet. His eyes had been half closed but they opened fully now and he coughed a mouthful of blood over his chin and spoke in a wet choking voice that made me think of a room filling with water.

“Looks like Einstein’s fucked himself up again.”

“Not as much as he’s fucked you up.”

Gareth laughed and choked and spat out more blood. “He’s going to go to jail for killing me to protect you from something you did to stop him from going to jail in the first place. I think you call that irony.”

He stopped for a moment and fought for breath. I noticed there were small bubbles forming in the pool of blood that had collected on his chest.

“Aren’t you going to call 911?”

“No.”

“They might be able to save me.”

“Honestly? I don’t think so.”

“And that’s okay because I killed your father, right? Well, I’m going to leave you with a little present. You too, Marla—you most of all. And if you’re smart, Johnny, you’ll do the right thing with it.”

Marla squatted so that her face was only a foot from his and hissed, “Don’t!”

“It’ll always be there between you if I don’t.”

“You promised.”

“Dying’s kind of a free pass. Johnny, get down here too, it hurts to talk.”

I squatted next to Marla. For a moment Gareth closed his eyes and gathered his strength. On the other side of the meadow I heard an engine start and a car pull away. When Gareth opened his eyes again the light had gone out of them and they were starting to look fixed and dull.

“Okay … I did fix the brakes on Ray’s car, same as Tripp’s. But I didn’t kill him. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have tried again, I just didn’t have to—”

I glanced at Marla and saw that she was watching me and crying.

“—because Marla did it for me. But you have to know, Johnny, it was an accident. It wasn’t her fault …” He paused and blinked rapidly several times. “And that pipe, I got rid of it weeks ago. Kiss my dad for me.”

Gareth tried twice to take another breath but couldn’t do it. The wound in his chest fizzed nastily. And then he was dead.

I stood slowly and looked down at him, at the now-cooling body of a man I had known for more than ten years—a friend I had robbed of the woman he loved, a friend I had made my enemy. So many years ago …

How could I have foreseen that his desire for Marla would one day lead my poor damaged brother to commit murder? There was no way, of course. Even so … even so, it seemed to me that I should have known.

Marla had her head in her hands; she wasn’t crying for Gareth, though. There was now a fresh horror in our lives demanding to be dug from its grave and examined. But I was terribly conscious that I had to go to Stan. Killing Jeremy Tripp had been something I could only just support. For someone like Stan, the most innocent of people, the act of murder would tear his soul to shreds.

I lifted Marla to her feet and began to pull her across the meadow toward Millicent’s house but she hung back and took her hand away from me.

“Johnny … Johnny …”

Her face was blotchy from crying and she stood in front of me unable to speak, her mouth twisting.

“Marla, come on. I need you with me.”

For a moment she didn’t move, then the briefest flicker of hope crossed her face and she held my hand again and ran with me, up the meadow to Millicent’s house.

When we got there I saw that the Datsun was gone. Millicent came to the door when she heard us on her stoop and the sight of her chilled me. That she was there meant someone else had driven the car away.

“What happened? Why did Stanley shoot that man? Is he dead?”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. They went into the bedroom for a minute, then Rosie got the keys and they took the car.”

“Didn’t they say anything?”

“Not a thing. Except Rosie stopped on her way out, just here by the door, and put her arms around me and told me, ‘Thank you.’ What for, I don’t know, but she hasn’t hugged me like that more than three or four times in her life.”

I called Stan’s cell phone from Millicent’s stoop but he didn’t answer. Marla and I ran back down the slope and got into the pickup and charged out of Empty Mile.

We went straight to Old Town first and then, when we didn’t find them there, doubled back to Back Town. With each street we checked I felt an increasing sense of foreboding. Marla tried Stan’s phone constantly but it went straight to voice mail.

Near the town hall a thought struck me and I accelerated past the remaining stores and headed out to the Oakridge commercial precinct. If Stan was being eaten alive with guilt he might go to the place he most closely associated with the beginning of that guilt.

But when we got to the Plantagion warehouse there was no sign of the orange Datsun. I got out of the pickup to look around just in case. The warehouse was locked up and deserted. Through the window I could see all the office furniture was gone. It seemed that whoever had inherited Jeremy Tripp’s estate had closed the business down. I made a circuit of the building but there was no sign Stan had broken in anywhere. When I got back to the pickup my cell phone was ringing. Stan—his voice dreamlike, as though while he was speaking to me he was looking at something of beauty.

“Hi, Johnny—”

“Where are you?”

“It’s okay.”

“What do you mean? Stan? I want you to go back to the cabin right now.”

“Rosie and me talked about it. And you mustn’t be sad, Johnny, okay? You mustn’t be sad.”

“Stan! Get back to the cabin now. Put Rosie on the phone.”

“I had to shoot Gareth.”

“I know you did, and it’s okay. I’m not angry with you.”

“I know that, Johnny. You’re never angry with me. You’re the best brother in the world.”

“Stan, please. Where are you? What are you going to do?”

I heard my voice break and though I knew I was crying I couldn’t feel the tears on my face or the tightness in my throat. My perception had narrowed to only the voice against my ear and the dreadful visions flying through my head.

“I love you, Johnny, and I know how you tried to make things good for me with Plantasaurus and the gold and you let me marry Rosie and you took care of me. And I remember all the times we had together, since you came back and before that when I was a kid. I remember them all and I’m going to take them with me. Just like when I drowned and came awake again. The first thing I saw was the sky and it was so deep and blue, and then I saw you looking down at me and you were so worried and I thought how much I loved you and even when you were gone I never stopped feeling that way. Don’t forget, Johnny. Don’t think anything else.”

“Stan, I’m not going to think anything. We’ll talk about it at home.”

“You should wear my costumes, Johnny. Sometimes when you put them on it feels like things can’t hurt you so much.”

“Stan, please … You’re not going to hurt yourself, are you? I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you. Promise me.”

“I’m going to take you with me in my heart. I love you, Johnny.”

The line went dead. I dialed him back immediately but there was no answer. Marla put her hand on my thigh.

“Where is he?”

I shook my head and was about to tell her I didn’t know, but then it hit me—the only place it would make sense for him to be.

“The lake.”

I threw the pickup into gear and began the race to get to Stan before he did anything to himself.

I drove fast. I took the shortest route I knew—out the other side of the precinct and along the narrow road we’d taken the night Stan set fire to the Plantagion warehouse. It took me fifteen minutes at high speed to reach the Loop and another two from there to get to the start of Lake Trail.

I had to take it slower from here because of the road. Everything in me screamed to go faster, but the one time I tried it the rear wheels lost traction and the pickup slid dangerously on a bend.

Two hundred yards from the end of the trail we found the Datsun. It had gone off the road, fortunately on the uphill side, and ploughed sideways into a tree. The passenger side was heavily dented. I stopped the pickup and ran to it, but it was empty. There was a small amount of blood on the dash in front of the passenger seat, but nothing that suggested serious injury.

We raced up the last short stretch of trail and flew out into the sunlight going way too fast. I had to wrench the pickup into a hard left turn and hit the brakes to avoid careening over the grass and onto the beach. Marla and I jumped out and scanned the lake and the land surrounding it.

I didn’t know where to look, what part of the place to scour for a sign that Stan still existed. The world around me was a frantic series of snapshots, shuddering as I turned my head, impossible to assimilate. I felt as though some dazzling light shone into my eyes, allowing me to see only the edges of what I looked at. But then my brain caught up and all the images smashing at the air around me slammed into place and I was able to see what was happening at the lake that day.