Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

“It’s fantastic, Dad, thanks.”

“It should last you a lifetime.”

“It must have been expensive.”

“Don’t worry about that. I just wanted you to have something to help you remember that despite how I might seem sometimes I am very fond of you.”

We avoided looking at each other for a moment and I felt a cold sadness trickle through me. I knew his emotion was genuine, that he did feel the way he said he did. It was just that what he felt didn’t run deep enough. On that magic, memorable night I caught sight of a dreadful truth-that even at his most intimate, even when he was trying his hardest to make some statement of his affection for me, he could not cast aside that final portion of reservation that would allow him to say “love” instead of “fond,” that part of himself which still blamed me for what had happened to Stan.

Despite this defective statement of his feelings, though, I figured there probably wouldn’t be a better time to tell him about Plantasaurus.

“Um, Dad, you know how the garden center closed down and Stan doesn’t have a job anymore?”

“Yes, it’s a terrible shame.”

“Well, we’re thinking about going into business together. In fact, we already have.”

“Really?”

Stan and I told him all about Plantasaurus, about the plans we had for it and the steps we were taking. When we were finished, instead of the torrent of criticism I’d expected, instead of the lecture on how foolish and inappropriate it was to involve Stan in a business venture, he just nodded to himself and said gently, “Well, that sounds like a great idea. You boys should follow your dreams. I hope it’s a big success.”

Stan didn’t watch TV after dinner but stayed with us at the table and babbled about how cool it would be to be a businessman. Later, when he got sleepy, he kissed us both and went upstairs to bed. He held his chain out from his chest and tried to look at it as he walked.

My father took some papers from his jacket and laid them out in a businesslike way in front of me.

“I had an appointment with my accountant today to go over a few things and we talked about the Empty Mile land. He suggested that it might be better if I put it in the name of a family member. There’s some sort of a tax penalty if you own a house and another piece of property. Capital gains or something. I didn’t quite follow the ins and outs of it, but he says it will save a fair amount of money. So I wondered if you’d mind if I put it in your name.”

“The land?”

“And the cabin. All of it. It’s all paid for, you’re not liable for anything. It’s just a matter of bookkeeping.”

“You really want to put it in my name?”

“There isn’t anyone else I can trust with it. All you need to do is put your name on a piece of paper. Nothing else. I’ll still take care of everything. My lawyer drew this up. It’s a standard transfer of title.”

My father flipped through the pages. My name had been typed below several signature spaces. This was way out of left field, but it was such an expression of his trust in me that I didn’t want to disappoint him. And if it was going to help him with his taxes I could hardly say no.

“All right, Dad.”

He handed me his fountain pen, but for a moment he held on to it. “There’s just one thing you have to promise me, John, and it’s very, very important. If there’s ever a time when I’m not around, for whatever reason at all, and there’s some question of what to do about the land, you cannot sell it. Okay? If I’m not here to make the decision you’ve got to hold on to it no matter what. Do you understand?”

“Sure, Dad, I promise. I won’t sell the land.”

“Good boy.”

And so I signed the papers and then my father signed them as well. There were two copies and he told me I should keep one in a safe place and that he’d lodge the other with his lawyer.

Jeremy Tripp lived on the downhill side of Eyrie. I recognized the street immediately. It was the first of those that ran off the steep forest road after you hit the Slopes, and it was the same street on which Vivian, Gareth’s woman friend, lived.

His house was a two-story piece of modern architecture with flat off-white walls and dark smoked-glass windows that looked violently out of place against the surrounding natural beauty. A tall, precisely clipped hedge ran more than halfway across the front of the property from right to left. Tripp’s driveway led behind this and made a sharp left at the side of the house into an open garage in which his E-type Jaguar gleamed softly.

The front door was open and when we rang the bell Tripp’s distant voice shouted for us to enter. Inside, there was a wide foyer that rose the full height of the building. Ahead of us a flight of stairs led to the second story, and to our right and left corridors disappeared into the two opposing wings of the house. The whole space was covered with polished white stone and the ceiling was dotted with small inset lights that glowed golden and made the stone shine. Stan turned around in a circle, wide-eyed.

“Wow, Johnny! It’s like Disneyland.”

Tripp yelled again and we followed the corridor on our right till we found our way out onto a deck at the back of the house that held a large Jacuzzi and scattered wooden outdoor furniture. The deck looked across a gently sloping expanse of lawn that ended in a wall of forest. There was an archery target set up in front of the trees and Jeremy Tripp was loosing arrows at it from a longbow. He was a good shot and his arrows were all clustered inside its two central rings.

Stan stood off to one side and announced formally that we were ready to begin our installation. Jeremy Tripp didn’t seem particularly interested and told us to just bring the plants inside and put them wherever we wanted. His voice was brusque and I could tell Stan was a little hurt.

We went back out to the truck and manhandled the planters into the foyer one by one. While Stan fussed with the positioning of two trough displays in the foyer I hauled several of the single-shrub drum planters upstairs and looked for places to put them. Most of the rooms I checked were unfurnished but in the master bedroom there was a large unmade bed, several pieces of blond-wood furniture, and an open built-in wardrobe showing a rack of expensive men’s clothes. As I was positioning one of the planters in a corner of this room a louvered door beside the wardrobe opened and Vivian stepped out of a bathroom, wrapped in a towel and wet from a shower.

She seemed perfectly relaxed.

“Johnny, how nice to see you again.”

I pointed at the plant. “My new business.”

“Very enterprising.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say so I turned to leave.

“Johnny.”

“Yes?”

“Whatever you do is your own business, of course, but Gareth is very young. In the way his mind works.”

“I’m not going to say anything.”

“He would be upset.”

“I think he’d be very upset.”

I went back downstairs and Stan and I left the house without seeing Jeremy Tripp again. As I was about to pull out of the driveway an old orange Datsun stopped in front of the house and Rosie got out and started loading herself with buckets and mops and other cleaning equipment. Stan jumped out of the pickup and they spent a couple of minutes speaking hesitantly to each other. When they were done Stan kissed her awkwardly on the cheek. Back in the pickup he told me she’d been hired by Jeremy Tripp to clean his house once a week.

We’d done our first installation and Stan was ecstatic. On our way down from the Slopes he babbled about his plans for moving forward-distributing fliers, visiting every business in Oakridge, ordering plants from the wholesaler in Sacramento…