“Stan-”
“It is.”
We were cold that night in the tent. We lay in our sleeping bags fully clothed and breathed steam against the close nylon walls and I told Stan all the stories I remembered from our childhood, all the tiny, normal events we had shared as brothers growing up in the same family. I wanted him to laugh, I wanted to bring back to him the memory of how it felt to be carefree. But rather than remind him of the good things in his past my stories seemed only to make him more aware of what he no longer had.
In the morning there was frost on the ground and Stan and I stood beside the remains of our fire as the sun picked out the land around us in clear yellows and blues. For a short time, after the interruption of sleep, Stan was able to watch the scene about him without reference to the sadnesses which were currently undoing his world. He stood and looked and breathed and he was still and I saw the soft bravery which I so much associated with him return to his eyes.
“Johnny, don’t you think it would be better if you could just live like this? If all you had to do was cook your dinner and sleep and be in the forest and you didn’t have to do anything with other people?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Stan nodded. “Yeah…”
He walked off to the end of the spur and sat there, knees hunched up to his chin, staring out at the landscape. I relit the fire and made coffee and cooked pancakes. I expected Stan to come when he smelled the food but he didn’t move and when I called to him he turned his head and smiled and called back, “I’m just going to sit here, okay?”
He sat for a long time. So long that I had to busy myself packing up the tent and the rest of our things. I knew this time was good for him and I left him alone with himself as long as I could, but we had no more food with us and I was getting anxious about being away from Marla, so eventually, around midday, I had to tell him it was time to go.
He came back from the edge of the spur and looked at the packed-up camping gear.
“We should run away, Johnny. Get Marla and Rosie and another tent and just disappear in the forest where Gareth can’t find us.”
For a moment he stood looking about him, then he sighed and reached down and started picking up pieces of our gear.
When we got home Rosie was sitting in front of the trailer, listening to the soft music they liked to dance to. She had been waiting for Stan’s return and stood when she saw him, her head down as always but her hand out for his. Stan took it and kissed her and led her into the trailer. As he passed the portable stereo he turned the music off.
After they had gone I stood looking at my cabin, at the space in front of it, at my pickup and Marla’s car, at the track that led up to the road… and I couldn’t help the uneasy feeling that Stan’s desire to run away from it all made an awful lot of sense.
CHAPTER 35
The next day, in the morning, the world for the four of us at Empty Mile started to fall apart. Five, if you count Gareth.
Marla and I were on the stoop, waiting for him to arrive and begin work on the river. Stan and Rosie had come over for breakfast and were sitting inside the cabin at the kitchen table. Stan was picking at a plate of fried eggs and Rosie, who didn’t eat breakfast, was drinking black coffee.
I felt frightened and resigned and energized all at the same time. I don’t know if I thought there was any chance that the morning would end successfully for us, but I knew that what I was about to do was something that had to be done, something it would have been wrong not to do.
When Gareth climbed out of his Jeep and saw Marla a smile broke across his face and he made a pistol with his hand and cocked it at me.
“Dude, what can I say? This means so much, that you two would do this for me. I can’t tell you how fucking relieved I am that we’re not going to have any trouble about it.”
He held his arms out for Marla to come to him. She looked at him tiredly and shook her head.
“Jesus, Gareth…”
Gareth frowned and glanced uncertainly at me. “Dude?”
“It’s not going to happen.”
“Johnny, come on, man. Don’t fuck around.”
“You’re not getting Marla.”
“We were clear on the consequences?”
“Go tell the cops. Do whatever the fuck you want. I’m not putting up with this insanity any longer. This is the end of it.”
Gareth looked at Marla. I saw that she was staring at him, her eyes dark and hard, as though willing him to leave us alone. Gareth held her gaze for a long moment, then turned back to me.
“Know what I think? I think you’re bluffing. You don’t think I’ll go through with it, do you? But I have to tell you, Johnny, Marla was mine before she was yours and this is where things get made right.”
“You don’t share people, you fucking psycho. Just go down to the river and mine your gold.”
“You took away the only chance I had to be happy. My one fucking chance! Why didn’t you find someone else?”
Gareth was shouting now, almost crying, his face straining and red.
I heard Millicent’s front door open. She waved at us as she came down her front steps but by the time she reached the bottom some of the tension surrounding Gareth and me must have communicated itself to her because she paused and stood watching us.
“Do you know what you do to the people around you, Johnny? You fucking destroy them. Marla, your brother… Well, you’re not going to do it to me. I’m going to get what I want. And if it means taking you out, that’s what I’m going to do. You fucking asshole.”
Gareth turned and reached for the door of his Jeep. I heard footsteps behind me, someone coming out of the cabin and onto the stoop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of gray and black as Stan, wearing his full Batman suit, rocketed past me, down onto the bare earth in front of the cabin. In his hand I saw the ugly black shape of Marla’s revolver. It was so incongruous a sight that for a second I was unable to process what I was seeing. Unfortunately, a second was all it took for Stan to raise his arm and pull the trigger.
He’d moved so quickly that no one had had a chance to call out or say anything and when the gun fired, it fired in a place where no other noise existed. Our small world was split by the gargantuan sound of gunpowder igniting, of explosive gasses jetting from the barrel’s opening, of a bullet moving across a few short yards, from the gun’s chamber to the middle of Gareth’s back.
For a moment it seemed that the intensity of the sound would freeze the scene, that we would be forever left staring at a three-quarter view of Stan with his arm extended, at Gareth thrown against the door of his Jeep, at the smoke in the cold air and the fine spray of blood on the car’s side windows.
But then the sound was gone and Stan lowered his arm and dropped the gun and Gareth slid down the side of his car and fell backwards onto the ground. There was a long smear of blood on the Jeep’s door. In it, a few inches below the window, a small round hole marked the bullet’s exit from Gareth’s body. Across the meadow Millicent wailed weakly.
Stan stood staring at what he had done, his body rooted to the ground, a rapid tremor playing over his arms and chest and head. I went to him and put my hand on his arm.
“Stan…”
“You can’t go to jail, Johnny. You just can’t.”
I felt so complicit, so responsible for what had happened, that I could think of nothing to say to him and we stood there in silence until Rosie, who had seen the shooting from the doorway of our cabin, came down and took Stan’s hand and led him across the meadow to Millicent. When they got there all three of them went quickly up the
