Matthew Stokoe - Empty Mile

I bent and put my hand against the side of his face. I was not prepared for how cold he felt, how hard the bone of his skull seemed beneath his skin, but I kept my hand where it was. He was my beautiful brother, the man I had come back to Oakridge to fix. My last, lost hope for absolution.

This was the last time I would see him outside a coffin, this was the last shred of connection between us before formal process took over. I wanted to stop this headlong race, this rocketing of him away from me. I wanted to hold on to him, to not let him go, and believe that by doing so I could keep some essential part of him alive. But he was already gone and there was nothing, not a thing in the entire universe, I could do to bring him back.

When I stepped away from the body two of the dive team picked him up carefully and placed him in a black vinyl body bag. As they were zipping it up one of them asked me if I wanted them to leave his face showing. I shook my head and they closed the bag and then all of the men on the beach gathered about it and lifted it in silence and carried it gently and slowly over to the ambulance in the parking lot.

Fifteen minutes later the same pair of divers who had found Stan found Rosie. When she was laid out on the sand we went over and stood beside her. She had been a quiet, closed presence and only Stan had really passed beyond the locked façade she held against the world, but she had been a part of our lives for six months and I was as responsible for her death as I was for Stan’s. Before they closed the body bag Marla stepped forward and smoothed Rosie’s hair away from her face and arranged the collar of her dress more closely about her throat.

After that there was nothing more for us at the lake. The police would pack up, the bodies would be transported to the coroner in Burton, there would be an autopsy, and sometime later Stan and Rosie would be released for burial. I wanted to get home as fast as I could, to close the door behind me and shut out the world, but as Marla and I were walking across the grass bank to the pickup there was a shout from the two divers who were still in the water. We turned to see them waving to their command boat. They were a long way out across the lake, almost at the cliff face, and it was impossible to see what they were holding just below the surface of the water. But I had a sickening feeling I knew exactly what it was they had found.

Marla clutched my arm and we stood there on that low grassy bank, unable to move, unable to look away as a third body was pulled from the water and ferried to shore. The police, having no reason to associate us with this one, paid no attention to us and unloaded the body and laid it out with less ceremony than they had previously.

This new body was in far worse condition than Stan or Rosie. If it hadn’t been for the remains of the business suit that clung to it, it would have been difficult to identify it as human at all from where we stood. It was a white, bloated thing that curved from head to toe like the back of a whale. Where the flesh was exposed the skin was tattered and peeling. The head was bigger than it should have been and most of its hair was gone.

But Marla and I both knew who it was.

I took a step forward but Marla pulled me back. Her eyes were wide and frightened. She whispered, “I can’t do it. I’ll give myself away.”

“If they knew anything about you and him they would have come to you when it happened.”

“I know, but I can’t do it, Johnny. I can’t.”

“Okay, go home and wait for me. I’ll get a ride back.”

I gave her the keys to the pickup and kissed her quickly. She nodded but her face was ashen and I wasn’t sure she was registering anything other than the fear of being connected to Ray’s death. She walked to the pickup, doing her best to look like what was happening on the beach meant nothing to her, and drove away without looking back.

All the boats were beached now and the police and the dive team were standing in a loose circle around the body. Several of them were talking on their radios, reporting this unexpected find to their various superiors. As I approached them the Oakridge officer who had earlier suggested we wait by the rocks held up his hand and blocked my path.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to stay back.”

But I had a clear view of the body now. I lifted my hand to my mouth and gasped, “That’s my father!”

And so a day which I’d known would be long became longer. Patterson had to be called out. I had to explain to him why I was certain it was my father-how I could tell by his watch and his clothes-that I had nothing new to add to the case, that him being found there was pure coincidence as far as I was concerned and, when the question was put to me, that I did not think the fact Stan had killed Gareth meant that either one of them had killed my father.

Patterson said they’d take my father’s body to the lab in Burton to determine the cause of death and to see if there was any forensic evidence. But he told me I shouldn’t be too optimistic they’d find anything that would further their original investigation, given the length of time he’d been underwater.

They gave me a few moments alone with the body. The months underwater had erased the features from its face and left it a pulpy ball on which it was hard to define any trace of personality at all. It was a shocking sight, but I was shocked more by my own ambivalence. The sight of my father’s dead body should have broken me with grief. But it did not. As I looked at the soggy mass I felt only a puzzled emptiness, as though this body was not that of my father, but of some unknown person I had once passed in the street long ago. I wondered how it was possible for a son to feel this way about his father. But I knew. I knew.

By four o’clock it was all over at the lake. The ambulance had taken the bodies away, the dive team had packed up and gone, and Patterson had headed back to town to deal with his paperwork. The two uniformed officers were the last to leave. They walked up and down the beach for several minutes picking up small pieces of trash the other men had left behind, then one of them came over and asked where they should drive me. All day long I had wanted to be gone, away from this place, but now I felt I could not leave without a last, solitary goodbye to a site that was both the start of the guilt I carried for my brother and the end of all the attempts I had made to fix it.

I told the cop I’d make my own way home. He looked dubious for a moment, then reached into the rear of the cruiser and handed me a folded survival blanket.

“Don’t stay too long, it’ll be cold tonight.”

He gave a small salute and the cruiser pulled away.

I looked across at the bungalow where Gareth had lived.

There was smoke coming from the chimney and I knew David would be inside, alone with the loss of his son. I thought about going to see him, but I had enough pain of my own. I sat on the grass bank and wrapped the foil blanket around me. There was less than an hour till the sun dropped below the mountains and the light on the lake was softening and small insects had come out to stand trembling on the surface of the water near the shore. It seemed to me suddenly that I had been cold forever, and I was cold still, even with the blanket. I drew it up so that it covered my head and I looked out from under it at the lake.

Eight years ago I had left Oakridge hoping to outrun the guilt I felt at Stan’s drowning, but far from distancing myself from it, I had compounded it, because by leaving I had added the guilt of abandonment, of sentencing Stan to the exclusive care of my emotionally arid father. Later, too, there had been more guilt as I realized better what my departure must also have meant to Marla.