Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

She had done things like this before. She had been a hooker and had sex with men she didn’t know, she had been made to service Jeremy Tripp by Gareth, and she and I had performed in the forest for Bill Prentice. So going down on Jeremy Tripp that day wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done. But it had happened in her home, and it had happened soon after Gareth had forced a similar experience on her.

I knew she didn’t want to talk about it but I felt I had to say something.

“Thank you.”

It was inadequate, I knew, but I thought anything else would sound self-serving.

Marla lit a cigarette and slowly pinched the flame of the match out between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t flinch or make a sound. When she had smoked the cigarette she turned to me and said in an overly controlled voice, “Are you going to give him what he wants?”

“It won’t make any difference. He wants to destroy us, asking for the warehouse and the land is just another step along the way, but it’s not the end. All his attacks so far have been personal. He throws you out of your house, he fucks you in front of me, he poisons our plants, he sets up a competing firm, and for Gareth he’s wrecking the chances of a road to the lake. None of this is about getting anything material, it’s about revenge for Pat. And it’s not going to stop while any of us are still functioning. He’s going to tell the police about Stan whether I give him the land or not.”

“So?”

“Fuck, I don’t know…”

“You do, Johnny. I can see you thinking it.”

“You mean kill him? Do you think I’m that kind of person? Do you think I could actually kill someone?”

“What do you want me to tell you? That I’d be all right with it? Is that what you’re waiting for?”

“I’m not waiting for anything.”

“Because I am okay with it, Johnny. I am.”

“I couldn’t do it. I tried with the knife and I couldn’t.”

“I’m okay with it, but you have to know it’ll always be with you. You’ll never get rid of it.”

“I said I couldn’t do it!”

“But you’ve thought of a way, haven’t you?”

Marla’s voice was worn through with sadness. She ran her fingers over the back of my neck and without feeling it my legs buckled and I hit the floor with my knees and stayed there, holding her to me, my face pressed against her stomach, crying into the rough cotton of her shirt.

Later, I made a phone call to Gareth and then I went down to the river to tell Stan and Rosie it was safe to come out. In the corridor of less strongly growing trees that we now knew to be the course of the old riverbed I found that one of the holes my father had dug to take his samples had been enlarged to a small crater about five feet wide and waist-height deep. The walls of the hole were dark brown soil but its floor was made of something else, paler and more granular, a mixture of sand and gravel-unmistakably riverbed material.

There was nothing about it to indicate that it was laced with gold. But it was there, the bed of an old river, visible, touchable. Real. Until now it had been a blur on a photograph, the dream of a desperate man. But not any longer. I felt something tugging at me, skirting my reasoning mind, going straight for whatever part of me it was that wanted to believe in miracles.

I continued through the trees to the river. Stan and Rosie were sitting on the bank beside a pile of excavated dirt. They were holding hands and their backs were toward me. They seemed to be doing nothing but staring at the bright water that moved in front of them. Stan’s shovel lay on the ground near him, next to the gold pans.

When they heard me approaching they turned and for a moment I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Both of them had something smeared on their faces. Against the glare of the water it looked dull and dark and I thought at first that it must be mud. But as I stepped closer I saw it was something else. Stan and Rosie had covered their faces with a slurry of water, crushed moths, and concentrates.

The mixture was almost dry and as their faces moved small pieces of it fell away. One of Stan’s hands lay closed in his lap. He raised it toward me and opened his fingers. A damp mound of concentrates lay creased in the center of his palm.

“Dad was right, Johnny. We only had to do five pans to get this.” He scraped the mix of black sand and gold dust off his hand into one of the pans beside him. “Dad never found so much in just five pans.”

I knelt and examined the concentrates. Without refining them properly it was impossible to tell exactly what proportion of gold they contained, but there was so much color there, so much dull yellow in the black sand, that it looked to me like Stan had panned at least an ounce of gold. It might be that not all of the buried river was so impregnated with wealth, but it showed that at least where Stan had dug it was very rich indeed.

“What do you have on your face?”

“I didn’t want anything to go wrong with getting the gold. I don’t want it to be like Plantasaurus. Rosie was helping me. Has Jeremy Tripp gone?”

“Yes, he’s gone.”

“He knows it was me, doesn’t he?”

“He was just asking questions.”

“Johnny!”

“Yes, okay, he knows, but it’s going to be all right.”

“How can it be all right?”

“I fixed things.”

“How?”

“I just explained how it was all a bad mistake and you didn’t mean to do it. He understood.”

Stan looked at me for a long moment. “You promise, Johnny?”

“I promise.”

He glanced at Rosie and let out a heavy breath.

Gareth and I met at the Black Cat café in Back Town. It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was empty. We took a booth on the other side of the room from the counter. Gareth looked across the table at me measuringly.

“I’d like to think this means we’re going to be friends. You asking me out for coffee and all. But I wonder if there isn’t a little more to it.”

“How are things going with the road to the lake?”

“Oh, I think me first, Johnny. I saw a thing this morning that for some reason made me think immediately of you. Swinging by the Plantagion warehouse on my usual paranoid route to get a glimpse of Viv, I happened to notice there’d been a fire. I bet Jeremy Tripp isn’t too happy with you.”

“What would that have to do with me?”

“Fires don’t start themselves.”

“He’s not very happy with you, either. Marla was at a meeting at the town hall where he and Vivian petitioned the council against building the road. They said they weren’t going to stop until they had enough signatures to shut it down.”

“That cunt. Why doesn’t it surprise me?”

“Do you have any idea who Jeremy Tripp is?”

“A rich asshole who stole my woman and who’s busy fucking up what’s left of my life.”

“He’s Patricia Prentice’s brother.”

Gareth blinked and looked blankly at me as though he hadn’t understood.

“He’s Patricia Prentice’s brother. He’s seen the video and he knows you shot it. He thinks all three of us are responsible for her death and he’s not going to let up on any of us till he gets his revenge. The way he’s going after me is by attacking Plantasaurus. He bought Marla’s house and kicked her out of it. And he’s working against the road to get at you.

And he took Vivian, of course.”

“And there’s the fire, of course.”

“What about the fire?”

“Johnny, if we’re leading up to what I think we’re leading up to, there’s no room for bullshitting each other. You’ve got him on your ass about that fire. It’s too fucking coincidental that we’re here the morning after it happened.”