“We didn’t make the video. We don’t deserve anything. And Stan sure as shit doesn’t deserve to be punished. We have to stop Tripp doing anything else.”
Marla snorted. “He’s going to do whatever he wants.”
“Not if we take away his reason for doing it.”
“We can’t make him un-see the video, Johnny. We can’t make Pat be alive again.”
“I know that. But we can tell him we didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Good luck.”
“I have the brackets.”
“Like that’ll convince him.”
“It will if you tell him Gareth made you set the whole thing up.”
“I really don’t want to do that.”
“Why the hell not? We tell him about Gareth and Gareth becomes his target, not us.”
“Gareth’ll go psycho.”
“Gareth’s already psycho.”
“And he can tell the council about me whenever he wants. I’m not going to risk my job, Johnny. It’s the only thing of my own I have left.”
“Gareth said all that blackmail shit was over.”
Marla looked at me sadly and shook her head. “Nothing’ll ever be over with Gareth until someone kills him.”
“Well, you saw what happened to that rabbit. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“It’s not a joke, Johnny.”
I saw in her eyes how frightened she was and for a moment I had a flash of something inside her, as though behind her face there stretched a huge dark sea of experience, an expanse of past events that I knew absolutely nothing about.
“I know it’s not a joke. But unless you’re going to go out and buy a gun this is the only hope we have of getting Jeremy Tripp off our backs. Who knows what he’s going to do next? We have to give him Gareth. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to.”
Marla looked at me for a while without saying anything, then she turned over and pulled the covers up around her.
“Marla?”
“I’m going to sleep.”
I tried a couple more times to get her to respond, but she stayed silent and kept her back to me.
In the morning I got up early. The sun was coming in through the window and I was still tense from trying to figure out what was going on with Marla, why she wouldn’t support me about Gareth and Jeremy Tripp.
The door to Stan’s room was open and his bed was empty. I went outside and stood on the stoop and looked across the meadow. The sun had been up for a little while but the air was still cool from the night. From Rosie and Millicent’s house the almost subliminal sound of a radio threaded its way through an open window. It was tuned to a classical station and swelled or diminished as currents of air moved across the long grass.
Movement down at the bottom of the meadow caught my eye. Stan and Rosie were just disappearing into the corridor of trees that separated the land from the river. I would have left them alone to pursue whatever adventure Stan had dreamed up for them, or whatever lovemaking they might be snatching at the start of the day, but before the branches closed around them I saw that they were both carrying towels.
I stood there for several minutes wondering what this might mean. Water, a towel, Stan… In the end I stepped off the stoop and started down the meadow.
I entered the trees at the same point as Stan and Rosie and walked toward the river. As I neared it the stronger light beyond the trees made it possible to see through to the bright glitter of water. The shapes of two people moved there but they were hazed against the backlight and I could not make out what they were doing. I walked the last few yards softly and stopped, hidden by a bush where the riverbank began.
Stan and Rosie stood holding hands on a large flat rock that jutted out into the slow-moving water. They were both naked and in the morning light their bodies were luminous against the dark green of the leaves on the far bank. His, smooth and full and rounded, standing on solidly planted feet. Hers, very thin, back curving so that her chest and stomach seemed to be what was left after a larger body had been hollowed out. Both of them were very pale, though their arms and necks were brown from the summer.
There was a small sound of water moving, but along the whole length of Empty Mile the river was too broad to move quickly and I could easily hear what my brother and Rosie said to each other.
Rosie stood with her arms straight down by her sides and stared at the light on the water. After a while she said, “You don’t have to.”
“Johnny will keep feeling bad if I don’t.”
Stan inched forward until his toes curled over the edge of the rock. Rosie let go of his hand, took a step forward, pivoted on one foot, and fell backwards into the river. She rose spluttering a second later, wet and shining, rubbing her dark hair. The river was just below her waist.
“I hit my head.”
Stan started running on the spot, breathing heavily through his mouth. Rosie lifted her hand toward him. Stan stopped running and bent his knees. He took a breath and squeezed his eyes shut and froze.
From the water Rosie said, “It’s okay.”
And Stan leapt from the rock into the river.
He sank to his chest and immediately pushed himself upright, eyes and mouth wide open as though the water was so cold he couldn’t get his breath. He stayed that way for a moment, shocked into immobility, then his body relaxed and he smiled and smiled and smiled and ran the flat of his hand over the surface of the water.
“Wow.”
He looked at Rosie.
“Wow.”
Rosie looked down at herself and stroked drops of water from her breasts and said with her head bent, “The water rushing by takes your thoughts away with it.” She lowered herself until the water was up to her neck. “Your hair’s not wet.”
Stan moved so that he was in front of her and crouched down until he too had only his head above the water. He took a deep breath and pinched his nose and with his cheeks puffed out went under completely. Rosie did the same and for several seconds I could see only a patch of disturbed, coiling water where they had been. When they came up again I thought they might start laughing but they did not. They crouched in the river with the water moving about their shoulders, saying nothing, their eyes on each other. Stan reached out and touched the side of Rosie’s face.
I crept backwards until I was safely out of sight, then I turned and walked away and when I’d gone far enough I started to run, driving myself forward so that the branches of the trees tore my clothes and scratched my skin. When I was in the meadow again I stopped, panting, and in the sunlight and the space did the best I could to hold myself together.
What I had witnessed had been a monumental leap forward for Stan, of course, and I felt good that he had carved this achievement from the granite face of life. But there had been a terrible side to it too. Because he had not leapt into the water to overcome some damaged part of himself, but to overcome me and the guilt I felt, a guilt, it seemed, which was beginning to infect him with my own unhappiness.
I trudged back up the slope of the meadow. It wasn’t until I was almost at the cabin that I noticed Gareth’s Jeep parked beside my pickup.
In the house Marla sat stiffly on a hard wooden chair in the middle of the living area. Across the floor from her Gareth sprawled on the sofa. When he saw me he straightened impatiently as though I’d kept him waiting.
“You’re up early, Johnboy. Tendin’ them hogs?” He clapped his hands and sat forward. “Right… I’ve been thinking about our conversation in the Mother Lode. I think we need to clarify where we all stand.”
As he said this he shot a look at Marla and I saw her sag. Then he looked at me and winked.
“Shouldn’t take long. Stand up, Marla.”
I’d been poised just inside the front door and I took a step into the room. “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t order her around.”
Marla stood up. She stared emptily at the floor and wouldn’t look at me. I tried to catch her eye.