Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

Through all this time the gold mining continued, and every minute Gareth was at Empty Mile I was conscious that I was in the presence of my father’s killer. We spoke only when our work demanded it, and at the end of each day I left the river with Stan before Gareth was quite ready so that we would not have to walk back across the meadow together.

It was bad enough being near him, but what galled me more was that I knew I was too weak and too scared to do anything about it. Despite Marla’s urging, and the eye-for-an-eye appropriateness of it, I knew I didn’t have it in me to pull out a gun and murder him. The best I could do was make barbed references to my father’s death, to wonder aloud as we worked on the river exactly how he had died. Gareth ignored me for a while. Eventually, though, I did it one too many times.

Gareth was loading dirt into the sluice at the time. When I spoke, he stopped working and stood glaring at me, clenching his fists so hard his arms shook. Stan was sitting close to us on the riverbank, resting, but he stood when he saw what was happening.

I was glad to see Gareth so angry, but the pleasure didn’t last long. Because Gareth killed it by beginning the process which would eventually destroy my brother.

“You’re an ungrateful prick, Johnny. I wanted to be your friend. I saved your life when those assholes were going to cut you, I saved your whole fucking world when Jeremy Tripp wanted to tear it down. I could have said no when you wanted help with him. I could have made you give me all of this land. What did I ask for? A third. And now I have to suffer this? Even though I fucking told you I didn’t do anything to Ray I have to put up with, ‘Oh, I wonder how he died,’ ‘Gee, I wish we knew where the body was.’ Get it through your head, whatever happened to Ray, it wasn’t me.”

This seemed to me such an obvious lie that I spoke without thinking. “You tried to stop him getting this land. I’m supposed to believe you just gave up after your video didn’t work? Bullshit. You killed him.”

Stan screamed and my stomach turned cold as I realized what I’d done.

“What? Johnny! What!” He grabbed his head with both hands and turned it rapidly from side to side. “My brain’s going to burst!”

I tried to calm him, but he was too far gone to respond. He stopped shaking his head and started to paw the ground with one of his feet like a bull getting ready to charge. His fists were balled and spit flew across his lips.

“You’re a bad man, Gareth. You fucking shit bastard!” Stan raised both fists above his head.

Gareth lifted his shovel and held its blade out in front of him. “Careful there, Einstein-”

Stan shrieked: “Don’t call me Einstein! I’m going to smash you!”

“No you’re not, Einstein , you’re going to stand there and calm down. I told your brother and I’m telling you, I didn’t kill your father. But there’s a killer here all right.”

Gareth looked at me and his eyes glittered and I felt the world fall away from me. I knew what was coming. I took a step forward but Gareth pointed the shovel at me and shook his head.

“You can’t win this one, Johnboy.”

Stan shouted at him, “I hate you!”

“Stanley, you remember Jeremy Tripp? You remember how you burned his warehouse down?”

Stan was thrown by this sudden change of subject and shamefaced puzzlement replaced his anger. “Yes…?”

I tried to stop Gareth, to talk over him and drown him out, to beg him not to do this. But he just waited until I stopped, then carried on.

“Why do you think you never got in trouble for that?”

Stan looked uncertainly at me and I felt my heart breaking. I knew that nothing could ever be saved after this.

“Because I didn’t mean to do it. Then he had a car crash and died.”

Gareth nodded. “Yes, he did have a crash, didn’t he? But you know what? It didn’t kill him. He still died, though, because Johnny was waiting where he had the crash and when he saw he was alive, Johnny got a big hunk of metal pipe and smashed his head in with it.”

“No!”

“Yeah, he did. Maybe one day I’ll show you the pipe. It has blood all over it.”

Stan moaned and started crying. “Johnny…”

He reached out for me like a small child and I held him and he cried against me. And though nothing more needed to be said, Gareth said it anyway.

“And you know why he had to do that? He had to do that to stop Jeremy Tripp telling the police you burned his warehouse down.”

Stan lifted his head, blinking through his tears like a man trying to see through smoke, his face twisted by the horror that had this moment taken root in his soul.

“What? What, Johnny? Because of me? You had to do it because of me?”

His large body sagged against me and I stumbled and caught him under the arms and lowered him so that he lay on the ground.

Gareth threw down his shovel then and left the river. As he passed me he said quietly, “Why the fuck couldn’t you leave things alone?”

After he’d gone the only sound in the world was that of Stan sobbing. He shook against the ground and curled into himself as though some dreadful physical pain clawed at his guts. I lay beside him and tried to hold him still, tried to quiet him with words that sounded meaningless even to myself. But it didn’t work and Stan cried on and on until eventually exhaustion claimed him and it seemed that I felt his body cool and stiffen against me.

A long time after that, with nothing left inside either of us, Stan and I sat at the edge of the river and watched blankly as the water passed by, and I did what I could to sew up the terrible hole in my brother.

“Listen, Stan. Listen to me. What I did to Jeremy Tripp had to be done. He was an evil man. That doesn’t make it right but it means it’s not such a bad thing. And it didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“But if I hadn’t lit the fire, everything would still be all right.”

“No, it wouldn’t. He was never going to stop attacking us. Sooner or later I would have to have done it. You lighting the fire doesn’t mean anything.”

“But you feel bad about everything, Johnny. Even small things. And I made you kill someone. That’s the biggest thing that could ever happen to anyone.”

“Stan, honestly, I don’t even think about it.”

He didn’t believe me, of course. He sat with his shoulders slumped so that his belly ballooned below his ribs and his misery was so great it almost seemed like he might sink into the riverbank beneath its weight. He was silent for several moments and then, without turning his head to look at me, asked what I’d meant when I’d accused Gareth of killing our father.

I told him everything I’d found out, everything I suspected. He listened without interrupting and when I’d finished he didn’t speak again that day.

I walked him back up the meadow to his trailer. He moved like his limbs were frozen. He seemed to see nothing around him and several times he stumbled against a rock or a twist of grass. Rosie took him from me when I opened their door. She led him into the trailer’s dim interior and when the door closed behind them I stood staring at it for several minutes. Then I went into my cabin and sat at the table in the kitchen with Marla and told her about the latest horror I had visited on someone I loved.

Gareth had the good sense not to turn up at Empty Mile for a week. I spent the time sitting on the stoop staring at the meadow or walking the few yards to Stan’s trailer to check on him. At these times I would find him either staring blankly at some children’s show on his TV or half asleep in bed. If I tried to rouse him he would look sleepily at me and ask if I was all right before turning over and closing his eyes again. I began to think that I would have to get him psychiatric help. How I could do this, though, without the whole Jeremy Tripp issue coming to light, I had no idea. I was in a state of despair. I knew how badly Stan must feel. Anyone would bow under the weight of knowing they were responsible for driving a loved one to kill another human being. But Stan, who had so little experience with these dreadful adult emotions, who had so little ability to intellectualize justifications for action, would be crushed.