Empty Mile by Matthew Stokoe Page B

about halfway down the slope, there was a much newer log cabin. This too had a stoop along its front and there was a large rainwater tank and a small shed out back.
    Stan lay down on the grass. He rolled over a couple of times, then stood up and brushed himself off. My father was wearing a suit as he almost always did. He had his hands in his pants pockets, his jacket hooked back behind his wrists.
    “What do you think, boys?”
    Stan looked perplexed, trying to figure out what answer my father wanted. “It’s not any good for rolling.”
    “What about you, Johnny.”
    “Nice spot. Are you marketing it?”
    “I own it.”
    “Really?”
    “Closed the deal today.”
    “The whole field?”
    “Most of the meadow and on down through those trees at the bottom. The Swallow River runs on the other side of them and that’s where the property ends. That log cabin comes with it too, but the house over there is on a separate title.”
    Stan ran his hands nervously through his hair. “Oh boy, Dad. Oh boy.”
    “What’s the matter, Stan?”
    “Are we moving here?”
    “No, we’re not moving.”
    “But you bought a place with a cabin.”
    “We’re not moving, Stanley. Don’t worry.”
    Although I didn’t share Stan’s nervousness about moving to a new house I could understand his confusion. The piece of land my father had bought appeared to have no other use than as a place to relocate to. It had nothing going for it as an investment. It was too far from town and too isolated to subdivide and sell off in property lots. And as something to do with the tourist trade it was also a washout. Pretty and peaceful as it was, it had nothing that anyone would spend time traveling to see.
    My father strode off across the deep grass. He swung his arms as he went and there was a jauntiness to his step that seemed put on, as though this man who had so much difficulty with his feelings was making a deliberate attempt to communicate his happiness to us.
    We entered the trees that lined the bottom of the meadow. They grew thickly at first and there was grass underfoot, but after about ten yards the ground became dusty and the trees weaker and thinner and more widely spaced. My father stopped here and looked around as though he had no interest in continuing to the river. He scuffed at the dry earth with the toe of his shoe then walked a few yards to his left to a small hole someone had dug in the ground. Stan and I waited for him to start moving again but he seemed lost in a daydream, looking at the hole and nodding to himself. Stan cupped his hands and raised them to his mouth. He made a noise like static on a radio.
    “Earth to Dad. Come in.”
    My father lifted his head and chuckled and started walking again. Twenty yards further on the trees ended and we stepped out onto the bank of the Swallow River.
    After the Swallow passed under the bridge at the southern end of Oakridge it ran through ranks of quartz-bearing hills until it joined the middle fork of the Yuba. It was nowhere near the size of famous Gold Rush rivers like the American or the Feather, but it had been well known as a river that was consistently rich along its length. We stood now on the inner curve of a bend in its path where the water ran shallow and wide. To our right, looking upstream, I could see the ragged end of the meadow’s rock wall sloping down through the trees to the edge of the riverbank.
    Stan looked knowingly back and forth along the river. “I know where we are, Dad. This is your photo, isn’t it? This is the river in that photo.”
    “Correct, Stan.”
    “I thought so! Cool.”
    I knew my father didn’t have the kind of money to go around buying land for the heck of it and it crossed my mind that after a lifetime of financial failure, of looking after Stan single-handedly, he might finally have succumbed to some sort of mental illness.
    “What are you going to do with this place, raise crops?”
    My father tapped the side of his nose.