Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

In a way this was a blessing because it prevented him from seeing the real direction the business was taking. I’d done some calculating and though we were just about covering costs now, we were still a long way from the total number of customers we needed for the business to be financially stable. This probably wasn’t unusual for a new company but the rate at which we were acquiring new clients was beginning to fall. If our rate of growth slowed further, or some catastrophe struck and we actually began to lose clients, long-term survival would not be possible-we couldn’t go on indefinitely running an enterprise that didn’t pay us a wage.

It was late afternoon when Bill Prentice pulled up outside the warehouse. The day was warm and we had the doors open a little for air. When Stan saw the car he jumped up from the planter he’d been working on and called out happily, “Hey, Johnny, it’s Bill.”

He went to the doors and yanked them apart. Bill stood in the opening, staring into the warehouse.

Stan gave him a mock salute and said, “Hiya, Bill, long time no see.”

For a moment Bill didn’t register him, his eyes were locked deeper inside the building, on me. I hadn’t told Stan about the confrontation Marla and I had had with him outside the Black Cat café and Stan frowned as he followed Bill’s gaze, trying to figure out what was going on. He turned back to Bill and waved a hand in front of his eyes.

“Hey, Earth to Bill.”

Bill Prentice looked at Stan then and nodded tiredly. “Hello, Stan.”

If Stan had been a puppy he would have bounced. He grabbed Bill’s sleeve and pulled him over the threshold. “Look at the place, Bill. Check out all the plants we’ve got.”

Bill pulled his arm away and looked grimly around the warehouse. I could see Stan was hurt but he tried to hide it and ran over to where we’d stacked the empty planters and the sacks of potting mix.

“See how we have it organized? All neat. I told you I could do it.”

Bill closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as though he was fighting off a headache. “Yes, Stan. I see what you’ve done.”

The overhead lighting in the warehouse brought out the hollows of his cheeks and the bags around his eyes. He’d lost weight and the linen jacket he wore was loose on him, but there was more to the way he looked than just the loss of a few pounds. He seemed somehow to have fallen in on himself, as though some dreadful cancer or parasite was eating him from the inside out.

Stan cleared his throat and grinned nervously.

“Seen any more bears, Bill?”

But Bill was not there to reminisce. He pulled two sheets of folded paper from inside his jacket and held them out to me.

“I want you to leave. This will cancel the lease agreement. You can just go, you won’t be liable for anything. You’ll get back all the rent you’ve paid.”

“What!” Stan screwed his eyes up and shook his head rapidly from side to side. “What? This is our place! You said it was. You said-You said-Johnny, what is he saying?”

I took the papers and skimmed them. Two copies of the same document, confirming that we agreed to cancel our lease on the warehouse. Bill had already signed in the space next to his name. While I was reading he turned to Stan and his face softened a little.

“I’m sorry, Stan, but I need the warehouse back.”

“You said we could use it.”

“That was before Pat died.”

“But we need it. I’m a businessman now!”

Bill took a breath and let it out. “Stan, things go on in this world that are complicated, things you can’t understand.”

Stan looked as though he’d been slapped. Bill saw it, started to speak again, then fell silent.

Stan put his hands on his head and looked at me. He was lost. He’d thought of Bill as his friend and now this friend wanted to wipe out his business. I handed back the papers.

“You want to sell the property, right? Someone made you an offer but they don’t want tenants.”

“I want you out. That’s all.”

“We have this place for a year with right of renewal for two more if we want it. We’re not leaving.”

Stan stepped quickly to my side and held on to the sleeve of my shirt. He pointed toward the doorway and shouted, “This is our business! This is Plantasaurus! You better go.”

Bill looked surprised at the outburst. For a moment he did nothing but blink, then his face flushed and his lips compressed. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, it was so beyond anything I might have expected, but as we stood there it became apparent he was struggling not to cry.

It only lasted a moment, then it was over and his face was still again. His eyes, though, glistened under the light. When he spoke it was to Stan.

“I just want to finish things. I want an end to it, that’s all. It’s not about you.”

He turned and walked out to his car and drove away. Stan sat down on a sack of potting mix, put his hands on his knees, and started rocking back and forth.

“My head feels like it’s going to burst open. Do you think that can happen, Johnny? Are there things that can make your head explode?”

“No, but I know what you mean.”

“But your brain’s strong, you can hold things in. My brain’s not like that. What if one day something happens and I just can’t stop it?”

“Stan, your head’s not going to explode.”

“I wish Bill hadn’t come around. Why is he so upset?”

“It’s a huge shock losing your wife. Sometimes people flip out.”

Stan took a matchbox out of his jeans pocket and pushed it half open. The moths inside moved sluggishly about. He breathed warm air on them then lifted the box and pressed the open part of it against his forehead. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he looked vaguely dissatisfied.

We finished up at the warehouse and went home. Stan was worn out from the scene with Bill and soon after dinner he went upstairs to his room. I sat in the kitchen and wondered if rather than declining customer numbers, it was going to be me who destroyed Plantasaurus. Unless Bill actually did have some sound business reason for wanting us out of the warehouse, the explanation for his visit that afternoon had to be his strange hatred of me. And if that was so, it wasn’t a situation I could allow to continue. Plantasaurus was too important to Stan for me to be the cause of any threat to it.

I brooded on the problem until the sky outside started to darken. Stan had told me that when Bill closed down the garden center after his wife’s death he had also moved out of the house he’d shared with her and relocated to a cabin in the mountains. At around 8:30 I went upstairs to Stan’s room and asked him if he knew where the cabin was. Fortunately, the garden center staff had had a team lunch there at the beginning of summer and Stan was able to give me directions. I told him I’d be back in a hour or two and headed off in the pickup to find out what, exactly, Bill’s problem with me was.

The cabin was in the hills northeast of Oakridge. The country there was higher and craggier than that closer to the Oakridge basin and in daytime the views could be spectacular. A single thin lane of blacktop climbed through this area. Occasional trails twisted off it to small weekend homes built by those for whom the scenery nearer town was not quite overwhelming enough.

It was night now, but the sky was clear and a three-quarter moon made driving easy enough. The start of the trail that led to Bill’s cabin was marked by a boulder that had been painted white. From there, Stan had said, it was a couple of hundred yards. Bill’s cabin was the only one on the trail.

I made the turn and parked just past the white rock and killed the engine. I didn’t want Bill to hear me coming and do anything which might prevent my planned visit-lock his door against me, pretend he wasn’t home, arm himself with a weapon…