Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

“And what about you? Do you think there’s gold there?”

Marla’s question made me pause. I’d been so focused on figuring out what was going on with the land that I hadn’t really thought about whether or not I actually believed there was gold on it. I had my father’s faith in what he thought he’d found-but he didn’t have a great track record when it came to making money-and I had the small sample of gold from the assayer in Burton. It wasn’t much.

“I guess the only way to know is to dig some more holes.”

“And if you find something, then what? You can’t dig up a whole river with a spade.”

Stan chimed in, “I’ll help you, Johnny. I could dig a whole bunch of holes.”

To Marla I said, “Doing it on any sort of scale is obviously going to cost money-clearing the land, digging out the riverbed, processing the pay dirt, if there is any. And right now I don’t see how we could finance it. Maybe if Plantasaurus picks up with these new customers we’re supposed to be getting from Jeremy Tripp we could try and raise a small loan for some exploratory work. Until then it’s just us and a spade.”

Stan opened the pouch of moths around his neck and put the opening over his mouth and nose and took a few deep breaths. Then he closed it and blinked rapidly.

“We could all be millionaires. This is the power working. Hey, Johnny, do you think we could buy Bill’s garden center and open it up again? That’d be so cool. And me and Rosie could have a big wedding out there and everyone would see how great we are.”

“Right now we don’t know anything for sure. Don’t get too worked up about it just yet.”

“I need to get some more moths. I gotta get more power to make it come true.”

“Stan!”

“Okay, Johnny. Shutting down.” Stan pretended he was turning a key on the side of his head. “Brain off… But it would be cool, wouldn’t it? A secret river full of gold, and we’re the only ones who know about it!”

He went off to his room. Marla stood up tiredly. “It sounds a bit farfetched, Johnny.”

She went into the kitchen area and while she fixed herself something to eat I sat by myself turning Stan’s last words over in my head. Were we really the only people who knew about the possibility of gold on the land?

At every major turn along my father’s path of discovery Gareth seemed to have been hovering in the shadows like some dark ghost. He’d been at Millicent’s when my father first saw the journal and at the Elephant Society with my father when the lecture on how a river can change course was given. He’d even been with my father when the BLM guy explained what the aerial photo showed. And he’d been at the assayer’s, as well. It wasn’t a huge leap, then, to figure he knew just as much as my father had.

But he’d never mentioned anything more than that he’d been friends with my father, that they sometimes went to Elephant Society meetings together, and that one day he’d helped him drill a few “fence post holes.” Not a thing about any gold. Why was that? Did he figure it would make it easier for him to buy the share of Empty Mile he seemed so anxious to acquire? Or was it something else, something about his connection with my father, something tangled up in all those steps they’d taken together, that he didn’t want me to know about?

Any moves we might have made to mine ourselves some physical proof of a million-dollar mother lode at the bottom of the meadow were forgotten during the following week as it became increasingly apparent that Jeremy Tripp had lied, and I had made a dreadful mistake.

I’d been so desperate to eke out the existence of Plantasaurus for Stan’s sake that, despite Tripp’s past history of antagonism toward us, I’d acted on his promise of free plants before it had actually been fulfilled. I’d canceled the plant shipment we had scheduled and used the money instead to pay the quarterly insurance premiums that had fallen due on the business-warehouse contents, pickup, and the personal liability we had to carry in case we dropped a planter on someone.

It was only after I had committed the money to these areas, of course, that the first bubbles of suspicion began to surface. Our own stock of plants was depleted and when two days had passed and the shipment from Jeremy Tripp still hadn’t arrived I was forced to call him. He was immediately apologetic and cursed himself for forgetting. He asked if we could wait another day while he arranged a truck. I didn’t really have a choice, so I told him we could, but when I hung up I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were never going to see those plants. Jeremy Tripp was not a man to be apologetic.

Later, in town that day, while Stan and I were doing maintenance on a couple of our contracts, we saw both Plantagion vans making their rounds. It didn’t look at all like Jeremy Tripp was winding his business down.

The next day came, and the one after that, and neither the plants nor any papers to do with the handover of Plantagion customers showed up. I called Jeremy Tripp several times that week but he didn’t answer, so I called the Plantagion warehouse and spoke to Vivian. She didn’t know anything about sending us any plants and in fact said they were too busy right then to spare any. It was at that point I realized that Jeremy Tripp had never had any intention of stopping his attacks against us. The promise of customers and plants had just been his twisted way of inflicting even more damage.

Plantasaurus was in serious trouble. We couldn’t sign up any new customers, something we desperately needed, because we had nothing left to build their displays out of. And, for the same reason, we couldn’t even properly service the customers we already had. It was more than three weeks to the end of the month when our customers made their payments and we’d have some cash again to buy plants. We might get lucky and ride it out, but it seemed pretty much inevitable to me that people were going to start canceling contracts.

Stan and I did the best we could, but by the end of the second week we were starting to get complaints about the scruffiness of our displays, and at the beginning of the third, despite our promises of impending improvement and offers of reduced fees, six of our best customers in Old Town canceled and told us to remove our displays.

Carrying their planters out to the pickup felt like a public humiliation. After we’d finished at one of the places Stan sat in the cab and broke down crying. Whatever the truth of the situation, whether I could have managed the business better or whether it had been doomed from the start, I felt an overwhelming sense of failure. Not only had I not been able to stop this happening, but I was, in a sense, its cause.

As bad as the loss of customers was, though, it was not the worst thing life decided to throw at my brother that week.

That Friday he and I stayed longer than usual at our warehouse, sweeping the place out and washing down empty planters. It was a futile exercise. No amount of tidying up was going to save the business from its downward slide. Our reputation was damaged beyond repair, the number of clients canceling was increasing each day, and inquiries from possible future customers had stopped entirely. We worked on the warehouse out of some notion of pride and affection for the business-a desire not to let it die without a measure of respect.

By the time we got back to the cabin at Empty Mile Marla was already home. She was sitting beside Rosie on the couch, rubbing her back with one hand, as though she wanted to comfort her but knew a full embrace was out of the question. Rosie had her knees pressed together. Her hands were laced tightly in her lap.