Still Life in Shadows (29 page)

“You need sleep.”

He forced his eyes opened. “No, no. I want to hear you tell me what happened. Again.”

“Okay. This is what I know. Tamara admits that both Reginald and Moriah were at the cabin where the meth lab was. She said there was an argument over her. Moriah stood up to Reginald, claiming that he was dating Tamara and that Reginald needed to get out of the cabin. Reginald told him to get lost. Moriah—much too high from meth, according
to Tamara—punched Reginald in the jaw. Reginald hit him back, called him a bunch of derogatory names. There was a big fight, and then Reginald just pulled his gun out of his back pocket and shot Moriah in the chest. Tamara is a witness, and two others who were at the cabin said pretty much the same thing. Reginald’s been brought in and he confessed he killed Moriah.”

Gideon felt the heat rise in his face. “But they think Moriah deserved it. You know, he was with Reginald’s girlfriend.”

“I don’t think so at all. Deep down they know Reginald let his temper get the best of him. He’s guilty. They’ve all seen how he can be. It’s just hard because at one point, Reginald was well thought of.”

“Why?” Gideon had never seen any good in the loud man who flung around racial slurs.

“Well, he’s one of them. He’s raised here. I told you that before.”

“Are you getting exasperated, Mari?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve had to repeat yourself a lot over the last few days.”

“That’s okay. I know your brain has to be fuzzy.”

He sighed.
Yes, it was.
His brain seemed to be covered with a heavy morning fog similar to the kind that shadowed mountain peaks.

Hours later, when he laid down to rest his eyes, he finally fell into a deep sleep. In his dreams, Moriah was alive, healthy, whole.

W
hen Angie Smithfield’s father told him that there was such a thing as a particle board coffin, Gideon said he’d take it. The coffin weighed sixty pounds when empty and was held together with hinges and a plastic clasp. The inside was laid with a blue cotton cloth, not silk or satin. A coffin like this was more like what he’d seen used on the farm to bury family members. Nothing fancy, nothing ornate. A plain box for plain people. This coffin resonated with him, with those roots he thought he had long buried.

O
n Friday morning, before the sun had a chance to peek over the Smoky Mountains, they set out. Seated in a black hearse, rented from Angie’s parents’ funeral home, Kiki, Mari, and Gideon headed to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

As Kiki said, “A promise is a promise.” That weeping willow was calling Moriah’s name.

Mari had asked Amos and Della to run the tearoom for a few days, and willingly they agreed they could handle the job. When Gideon asked Ormond if he could have some time off, Ormond said, “Well, it’s about time you realize you need to take a break from the shop. Of course!” Then he handed Gideon some folded bills. “For gas and food and whatever else you need,” he said. Lifting his arms to encircle Gideon, he gave him a tight hug and muttered into his shoulder, “I hate this for you. Hurry back.”

When Gideon counted the bills, the total came to eight hundred dollars.

As planned, Mari had picked up the hearse last evening and parked it in front of her house. In the morning, she drove to Gideon’s apartment complex to pick him up. Gideon opened the door to the black shiny vehicle as Kiki greeted him from the backseat, her left hand holding Yoneko. “Good morning. Hurry inside. It’s cold.”

Formal drapes made from a tan velvet-like material hung in arches around the back windows of the hearse, reminding Gideon of old movie theater décor. The words to an obscure children’s song sprang into his thoughts.
Did you ever think when a hearse goes by that you might be the next to die?

Mari said, “We put our bags in the back. You can open it.”

Gideon walked to the rear of the hearse and opened the back. He tried to avoid looking at the coffin that was lying on the right side. Seeing Kiki and Mari’s luggage, he placed his duffel bag by them. He had a sudden image of that bag. He’d carried his things inside it the last time he’d been in Pennsylvania. That had been fifteen years ago when he was determined to leave his life there … for good.

Gideon shut the door to the back of the vehicle and made his way to the passenger seat. “I never realized hearses have backseats,” he said.

“They usually don’t,” said Mari, the streetlights casting their orange glow to her face. “I asked for this one. It’s a little longer than the other two the Smithfields have. Angie’s mom said it is a one-of-a-kind vehicle.”

Kiki waved a box of blackberry Nutri-Grain bars at Gideon, asking if he’d like one. “They’re blackberry, which is your favorite, right?”

Gideon said, “No, thanks.” His stomach was queasy, and the thought of a sweet fruit bar was not enticing to him right now.

Mari waited for him to put on his seat belt. As she pulled away from his apartment, he wished it was any other day. He remembered the day he got his wisdom teeth out, just two months after his nineteenth birthday. The pain had been agonizing once the Novocain wore off. He’d take that day again, over today.

“This car is cool,” said Kiki as she pressed a button to lower her window. “And Moriah is in the very back. Did you see the coffin, Gideon?”

“Yes.”

“He’s riding with us.” She pressed the button to close the window and then stretched out on the backseat. “Did you see him?”

“Kiki, that’s enough.” Mari’s voice was stern.

“I’m just asking a question. Sheesh!” With that she curled into a ball, cuddling Yoneko. She’d brought a light blanket, and she pulled it over herself, muttering until she got it the way she wanted it.

“She doesn’t get out much,” Mari said. “She’s a bit excited about the trip.”

It’s not every day you get to ride in a hearse
, thought Gideon.
I suppose that could constitute a reason for being excited.
In Carlisle, when a horse-drawn carriage with a pine coffin in the back rode by, he never knew how to feel. Other children must have had trouble knowing how to react as well, and many decided that a silly rhyme was the best way to express the morbidity of the moment. As he thought of black carriages and a world that had been removed from him for over a decade, the words to the children’s song rehearsed themselves through his mind.
Did you ever think when a hearse goes by that you might be the next to die? And the worms crawl in and the worms crawl out …
He’d belted that song out once after first learning it, and his mother, appalled, asked where he’d heard it. “From the English, of course,” said Father, not waiting for Gideon to explain. For Father, the English represented all that was uncouth. The truth was, Gideon had heard it from Esther, his older sister. But he knew better than to squeal on her.

Leaning back in the passenger seat, Gideon closed his eyes as the heat from the vent flowed throughout the vehicle. He tried to block out all thoughts and just concentrate on the lull of the car’s engine. Yet his mind went back, way back, to the writing course he had taken at the community college. He had written about the lyrics to the ditty and about his father’s reaction. The assignment had been to write about a memory of a song from childhood and the one about the worms crawling in and out had been his choice. “My sister liked poetry,” he’d written. “She had an ear for picking up lyrics. One day, when in town on family business, a hearse rolled by and two young boys started to chant. Later I guess she felt safe sharing the song with me. From early on, she knew I could keep my mouth shut, and so I was often privy to things she said she would never tell our parents.” At the time he wrote the piece, recalling his relationship with Esther had made him nostalgic, but he brushed that away and instead thought of his father. The image of the man always kept him from the feel-good memories of hearth and home.

By six-thirty, the first ray of sunlight lit the highway. Hours later, he watched the sky turn dark with clouds and felt that the sky mirrored his mood. The hearse rose and fell on the road as one mile turned into hundreds and questions circled through his mind.
How could I have let it come to this? What am I going to do the rest of my life, knowing I was not able to stop my brother from his demise? How can Moriah be dead?

Each time Mari stopped for a bathroom break or to get juice so Kiki could take her meds, Gideon wanted to believe that the three of them were just headed on a little trip together. Happy and having fun, just like other people did. Perhaps when they passed a McDonald’s he’d buy
them all milkshakes. Or a slice of apple pie. Then they could slurp and laugh and play a game like finding license plates from each state. Mari sang in the choir; maybe she could sing one of her favorite hymns.

But each time he stepped back into the hearse, he knew he couldn’t escape the truth. He was going home to bury his brother.

And he kept reminding himself that he’d never planned on going back home. Ever.

A
t the BP station where he pumped gas into the hearse, he saw his first windmill towering to the left of a nearby winding road. As he strained his eyes, he saw a white barn. The scene flooded his senses with emotion—his thoughts raced back to what seemed like yesterday. He recalled the birth of Moriah as he had huddled animatedly with his sisters, waiting to hear whether Mother had delivered a girl or a boy. He’d prayed for a boy. Three sisters were enough. He jumped when he felt a hand on his arm. Mari was unmoved by his reaction. Like a pillar of strength, like the courage that he needed, she stood beside him. Her hand stayed on his arm, warm in spite of the breeze that had picked up and was ruffling his hair.

“Need anything?” she asked.

He shook his head, swallowing the lump that had lodged into his throat.

“I’m getting some coffee. Want me to see if they have green tea?”

He wondered if he’d ever be able to drink a cup of green tea at Another
Cup again, if he’d ever laugh again with Mari. He wondered if he’d be able to get through another Christmas without thinking about the gift Moriah gave him when Gideon was eleven. Moriah had wrapped a piece of wood in a handkerchief. The wood was to be used to build a pirate ship.

It was at the BP station that he looked through the backseat window and saw the day’s edition of the
Twin Star.
Mari watched as he opened the door, bent over, picked up the paper, and then placed it back on the floor by Kiki’s discarded green-laced shoes. Kiki, wrapped in her blanket, didn’t notice; she just continued to sleep and snore.

“You should read it,” Mari encouraged.

“Is there anything in there about Moriah?” He didn’t want to read about how Reginald and two others were involved in his brother’s death. Whoever had written that article from a few days ago had gotten so many of the facts wrong; they’d made it sound like Moriah was such a lowlife that his death was welcomed, even justified.

Mari gingerly took his hand. “It’s okay. The piece is a good one. Ashlyn wrote it.”

Gideon knew that Luke thought the world of Ashlyn, but she was the sheriff’s daughter, and Gideon wondered if she was influenced by her father and what he said about the town’s politics and ideology around the dining room table. Part of Gideon still felt that the majority of the town wanted to believe that he, Gideon Miller of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was guilty of Moriah’s death.

Mari handed him the paper, but he brushed it away. “I can’t. Not today.”

“Well, it’s here when you are ready.” Folding it, she put it by her sister’s shoes and shut the door.

I
t was five when Mari drove slowly past the Welcome to Carlisle sign. He asked her to stop and when she did, he scrambled out of the car, stood to the side of it, and waited. He could taste the sour juices of his stomach inside his mouth. Clutching the top of the hearse, he waited
some more, hoping that the late-afternoon wind would calm his nerves. The muscles in his torso contracted, the pressure sharp throughout his abdomen. He exhaled slowly, his knuckles white and rigid.

Nothing seemed to help. No amount of breathing in and out or even casting an eye toward the sky relieved him of his pain or the face that kept plaguing his vision. He saw his father’s face, anger lining each surface. He couldn’t do it. There was no way he could face his father after this. “Let’s leave. Let’s get out of here!” he said to Mari as he stumbled back to his seat.

“Leave? We can’t.” With empathy in her eyes, she said evenly, “We are supposed to be here, Gideon. This land, this town, it’s yours as much as it is anyone’s. Moriah wants to rest here.”

He shivered and drew a breath. He was glad that Kiki was still asleep in the back. He watched her curled body, covered in her coat, the blanket slipping to the floor. Her head rested against a pillow; her puppet-cat peeked out near her face, like a guard on duty. Although she was sleeping, he knew just what she’d say to him had she been awake. “You have an obligation.” She would add, “Moriah trusted that you would bury him by that tree. You have to.”

Have to. Have to.
He let the two words rumble inside his head.