Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

“Don’t pay any attention to me. I get these crazy ideas and I blurt them out. I don’t mean a word I say. What do you do, John?”

Stan chirped up before I could answer. “We’re starting a business.”

“Really, Stanley? Tell me about it, I’m all ears.”

“We’re going to put plants into stores and people’s houses.”

“I know the sort of thing.”

“Hey, you could be our first customer. Is your house big?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I bet it would look better with some plants in it.”

“It might. How are you structured? A one-off start up fee and a monthly maintenance charge?”

Stan looked nervously across at me and I pretended I had at least some idea of what I was doing and answered Jeremy Tripp with a firm “Yes.”

Stan took him into the warehouse and showed him the displays we’d assembled. When they came out again Tripp told us how many planters he wanted, then he shook Stan’s hand and sat back down.

“Done deal.”

I thought Stan would burst with happiness. “Boy, this is incredible! Hey, Mr. Tripp, can I go look at your car?”

“That’s not a car. That’s a VI2 E-type Jaguar. Yes, you can look at it.”

“Wow, thanks!”

Stan bounded off to the parking lot. Jeremy Tripp watched him go.

“You two seem close.”

“We are.”

“Your brother appears to be quite invested in this plant venture.”

“Yes.”

“For the money? Because he doesn’t really seem like the money type. Tell me, is he challenged?”

“He had an accident when he was young.”

“And this is his chance to feel like he’s part of the normal world?”

“I don’t know.”

Tripp smiled knowingly. “Did you research your market?”

“What’s to research? No one else in Oakridge does it.”

“Even so, I’d be surprised if the town could sustain this kind of business. You’ll get customers, of course, the question is will you get enough of them? You have to pay for your stock, cover your operating costs, and generate sufficient profit to make the whole thing worthwhile. Juggling your income and your expenses can be tricky, John. I should know.”

“Well, we’re going to give it a shot.”

“How do you think your brother will react if that shot fails?”

“I guess he’ll come to terms with it.”

“Really?”

Stan came back from the parking lot then. “Cool car, um, Jaguar, I mean.”

Tripp’s face brightened. “Just the man! How would you feel if your plant business didn’t make it, Stan?”

Stan looked at him in surprise. His mouth trembled and he glanced at me then back at Tripp. “Don’t you want plants anymore?”

“Oh, I want them, don’t worry about that. But what if no one else does? What if no one ever leases plants from you?”

“Well, I… I…” Stan couldn’t form an answer and I saw tears start in his eyes.

I stood up and clapped my hands together and made a show of being the upbeat, busy guy who really just had to get on with his work. “Well, we’ve got a lot to do here. We can come out tomorrow with your displays, if that’s convenient.”

Jeremy Tripp just sat and smiled at me for a moment. Then he stood up. “That would be dandy.” As he turned to go back to his car he put his head close to mine and whispered, “Doesn’t look like he’d come to terms with it to me.”

After he’d gone Stan looked at me unhappily. “He’s weird, Johnny.”

“You can say that again. But guess what? We got our first customer.”

Stan made a superhero noise and raised his fists in the air. “Yeah! Plantasaurus lives!”

And though it was an exciting event, and I high-fived and clowned around with Stan, I couldn’t help wondering how the hell Jeremy Tripp had known our names and where to find us. And what he really wanted, because I was sure he had no interest in our plants at all.

My father came home that evening with presents for us. In the past his choice of birthday and Christmas gifts had been a family joke. Although he never missed these occasions the things he bought seemed either to have come from some bargain basement bin, or otherwise had no relevance to the person for whom they were intended.

As an adult I had tried to understand this seeming incompetence. He was an intelligent man, so it wasn’t that he didn’t have the ability to make appropriate choices. He was not a wealthy man, but neither was he so strapped for cash that he was prevented from buying something reasonable. What I came to suspect was that he felt the choosing of a gift that would delight its recipient, that required thinking about and searching for, was an action that would betray too much emotional involvement on his part. And so he chose instead to give gifts that were empty of meaning and maintained the barriers to engagement that seemed so necessary to him. But this evening, when he came home in a white Ford Taurus rental, his presents were nothing like that.

We sat around the table in the kitchen. The back door and the windows were open and the scent of the garden came lightly in, as though its essence had been dried and powdered and was suspended now about us, whispering of all the things summer could be. The sun was low against the rim of the Oakridge basin and the sky above the trees had turned rose with the warm dust of evening.

My father was pale beneath his sallow skin and looked tired, but it seemed that whatever made him tired had also loosened his usual restraint because he spoke easily and his movements were open and unthought. It was a magical time. One of so few across the stretch of my life where he let fall the armor of fatherhood and allowed himself to become equal to his children.

The three of us talked for a while about nothing in particular. My father told the small stories that accrete about every family, the domestic occurrences that for some reason or other take a wrong turn and become with the passage of time a trove of intimate humor. They were part of Stan and me, they were part of my father, and the three of us laughed at ourselves in them. They would have seemed boring to anyone else. To us, though, their meaning was not in their content but in their ability to make us remember that we were father and son and brother.

In one of the lulls between conversation my father cleared his throat and, looking quite embarrassed, took two gift-wrapped presents from the pocket of his jacket and put them on the table before us.

“I, ah, wanted to give you both something.”

Stan clapped his hands then frowned. “It’s not birthday time, Dad.”

“I know, but I just wanted you two to know how much you mean to me.” He spoke haltingly and I could almost feel him squirming inside. “I’ve been something of a… peculiar father and I haven’t done or said everything that perhaps I should have. So I wanted you to have something you could keep in case… well, in case you were ever in any doubt about how I feel.”

Stan and I sat looking at him without speaking. We were dumbfounded. I think in a way we were almost scared. Surely this kind of speech was something we’d only hear as a prelude to catastrophe-an impending earthquake, perhaps, or a recently pronounced sentence of death.

We opened the gifts. Mine was a Tag Heuer watch, engraved on the back with To John, from Dad . It was by far the most expensive thing he had ever given me, and more than that it was tastefully chosen. On the other side of the table Stan drew a gold chain from its torn packet of wrapping paper. He held it up to the light.

“It’s beautiful, Dad. Look, Johnny.” Stan fastened the chain around his neck and stroked it. “I love it.”

My father laughed uncomfortably. “I’m glad you like it, Stan. Do you like your watch, John?”