Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

I knew who he was but he was very much changed from the last time I’d seen him. Then, David, Gareth’s father, had been a physically tough man of medium height who, if you asked him, would tell you he worked damn hard three hundred and sixty days of the year. Now his legs were withered, his face was dried out and leathery, and he had some kind of scar running around the front of his neck. And he was in a wheelchair.

He rolled over to me and looked hard into my face.

“Which is hardly fucking ever. I remember you.” He stuck his hand out and we shook, then he rolled away, over to the card table, and called over his shoulder. “You know what this is? It’s supposed to be a fucking toaster. Only, the fucking Japs make ’em with parts that are so fucking weak, twelve months after you buy it it stops being a toaster and turns into a nice compact piece of scrap metal instead.”

Gareth looked sadly across at him. “You need anything, Dad?”

“Pair of legs and a lucky streak.”

Gareth tried to smile but it didn’t work. He moved to the kitchen, took two beers out of the fridge and motioned me through the back door to a patch of grass behind the house. We sat in the sun on plastic garden chairs.

“What happened to your father?”

“This place. Five years ago he sold the garage and bought it figuring he’d finally found something that was going to bring in the bucks.”

“Really?”

“It sounds stupid now, but it wasn’t then. The only thing that stops this place being a goldmine is the road-too difficult for the tourists. But the way the deal was put to the old man, it sounded like the road was going to get fixed. Know who he bought it from?”

“It belonged to Bill Prentice when I was here.”

“Right. About a year before Dad got involved Prentice was made Resource and Development Manager for the council-gets to say what bridges need to be built, do we need another set of traffic lights, etcetera. And, of course, what roads need to be built. The council has to vote on it but he pulls a lot of weight, so if he’s behind something it’s got a good chance of going through. Anyhow, time passes and old Bill strikes a cash flow problem, decides to sell the cabins. His wife’s worth ten times what he is and could easily have fixed him up, but apparently she keeps her money very separate from his little enterprises. So Bill needs a buyer, but the place is a fucking dump and no one bites. Until Dad. And what made him stupider than everyone else? Bill let slip accidentally on purpose that the council was planning to build a proper road up here. Bingo. Tons of tourists, tons of money. Dad was hooked.”

“If it was that certain, why didn’t Prentice hang on to it himself?”

“Oh, he had an answer for that. Know what it was? The council couldn’t build the road while one of their councilors stood to benefit from it. Not bad, huh?”

“But the road never happened.”

“The council changed their minds, decided it wasn’t the right time for that kind of expenditure or some other bullshit. Bill swore blind he thought the road was a done deal. Said he was really sorry. But of course he didn’t want to buy the place back and we were stuck with a property that couldn’t pay for itself.”

“And the wheelchair?”

“After a couple of years trying to keep it going Dad started to suffer from depression. They put him on some pills but they didn’t do any good. What he needed was a shitload of cash. Anyhow, along with the depression he couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know it at the time, but in some people who have bad depression taking sleeping pills can lead to a preoccupation with suicide. So the doctors wouldn’t give him anything. What he does, then, is call up some biker whose Harley he used to work on when he had the shop. Next thing you know he’s got a pile of benzos. Sure enough, a month or so later he jumped off the barn with a rope around his neck. He would have died for sure except the strut he tied it to was rotten and snapped when the rope maxed out. Dad hit the ground feet first and broke his back.”

“Hence Bill Prentice’s tire today?”

“Petty, I know, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

The cabins were set a little further back from the lake than the bungalow and from where we sat we could see along the front of the row. They looked largely unoccupied, but as Gareth finished speaking two girls in their early twenties, wearing tight swimsuits and oversized sunglasses, walked down the path from the parking lot, unlocked the end cabin, and went inside. I raised my eyebrows at Gareth.

“You do get some customers, then?”

“They’re what you’d call an external source of income.”

“Huh?”

“They’re hookers, Johnboy. We have a mutually beneficial relationship. I set up their tricks and give them a place to stay, they give me thirty percent.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Oakridge has changed while you’ve been gone. All those rich people up on the Slopes? They’re used to being able to buy whatever they want, and what some of them want to buy is sex. So far it’s meant the difference between this place going under and just scraping by.”

“They come all the way up here?”

“No way. House calls only. A guy who can shell out three hundred for a girl isn’t going to risk the Porsche on Lake Trail. It’s a niche market but there’s plenty of business, believe me.”

Gareth was quiet then for a moment and there was a calculating glitter to his eyes. When he spoke, though, he sounded genuine enough.

“Maybe you can help me out. You’re not working, right?”

“No.”

“I need a delivery man sometimes, someone to take the girls to their gigs and bring them home again when they’re done.”

“Like a pimp?”

“Like a driver. I’m the pimp.”

“I don’t think that’s something I want to get involved in.”

Gareth looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was retarded. Then his face brightened.

“Marla.”

“What?”

“Marla. You think hanging out with hookers might not be the smart thing to do if you want to get back together with her.”

“Who says I’m going to do that?”

“But you are, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Dude, no skin off my ass. Get back with her, don’t get back with her. Way too late to make any difference to me. But think about the driving thing, okay? I don’t like leaving Dad here by himself at night. It’d really help me out and it’d be easy money for you.”

While we were talking David rolled out of the house and into the barn and began working on something with a lathe. The screech of metal on metal killed the rest of whatever conversation Gareth and I might have had. Gareth stood and beckoned me into the barn. He said close to my ear, “Pretend you’re interested.”

All the benches and the various pieces of power machinery in the barn had been set at a level low enough for David to reach from his wheelchair. When he realized we were watching him he stopped the lathe and held up a cylindrical piece of metal.

“Lamp base. Got an order for two hundred. Take a look. Now that’s quality work.”

He spent a minute or two pointing out its merits and Gareth explained that his father did custom piecework for a company of architects in San Francisco. The fittings he made were top-end limited runs and couldn’t be bought in stores. I made some appropriately impressed noises but I’d had enough of Gareth by then and I leveraged this interruption into an opportunity to leave, saying I had to pick Stan up.

Gareth walked me back through the bungalow and at the front door made me give him my cell phone number.

“We gotta stay in touch now, Johnny. Hey, take a photo of me. Today is a special day. We need a record.”