“I thought he might have come over to your place,” Gideon explained. “He came here and we had a nice meal, and then he just walked out.” He wondered what else he should tell Luke. Should he let his coworker know that Moriah had taken his truck? That he, the Getaway Savior, was at the end of his rope, frustrated over what to do about a brother he couldn’t keep in line?
In a low voice, so low it was almost a whisper, Luke said, “I think he’s into drugs.”
Gideon sighed. So Luke knew. Here he’d been trying to hide, to cover up who Moriah had become, and Luke was already aware of Moriah’s illegal behavior. Letting his guard down, Gideon moaned, “What can we do? What can I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where does he go when he leaves my place? Where does he sleep? Or eat?” Gideon didn’t expect Luke to have the answers; he just wanted to voice his concerns.
“I’m not sure.”
“If you see him, give me a call, will you?”
Luke said he would be sure to do that. “Gideon, you know meth makes you paranoid and crazy.”
“Yes,” said Gideon. “I’ve researched it on the Internet many times, each time hating what I read.” Remembering that it was still Christmas, Gideon said, “Sorry to bother you. I hope you’re having a Merry Christmas.” He assumed Luke would want to get back to spending time with Ashlyn, so he wrapped up the call. “Bye—”
“Wait!” Luke’s voice was sharp in his ear. “I did see him two weeks ago at Walmart. He was so hungover and out of his mind, he didn’t even recognize me.”
“He’s in a bad way,” agreed Gideon.
“Skinny and he smelled like …”
After a few seconds Gideon supplied the description. “Beer, sweat, and moldy onions.”
“That would be about right. That’s when he told me he was snorting meth.”
“He admitted that? Because today he said he’s fine.”
“Of course—he thinks he’s fine and that it’s others who have the problem.”
Gideon felt his stomach twist as the horror of Moriah’s condition became more real to him. When he hung up the phone, he sat on the sofa, staring at the Christmas tree with its blinking lights and dangling baubles. His Christmas cards, strung along his wall, announced their seasonal messages of joy and peace, but he felt none of those blessings.
At midnight he wanted to go out and search for Moriah, but he had no vehicle to drive and he was too tired to walk.
26
Gideon wondered if he’d ever see Moriah again. Their last exchange of words on Christmas day still rang in his head like a resounding gong. He was sweeping the shop for the fifth time when Ormond said, “Are you looking for buried treasure?”
Gideon rested his hand on the broom handle. “Am I overdoing it?” Although temperatures had dropped this January day, sweat glistened on his brow and neck.
“This place has never been cleaner. Take a break,” Ormond advised.
His words reminded Gideon of his first year at the auto shop when Gideon was fresh from Amish country. Gideon pushed himself to work as hard as he could, dedicated to sweeping and dusting in addition to helping with carting quarts of oil from the storage room. Desperate to please, Gideon had hoped Ormond would praise his long hours of labor. But after careful observation, Ormond did not offer any compliments about the fifteen-year-old’s work ethic. Instead he said, “Take it easy, boy. You work too hard.”
“Really?” His father had never told him that; he’d always made Gideon believe he had so far to go, he’d never achieve any accolades.
“Yes, you are making my head spin. A boy your age ought to be enjoying life. Go have fun.” At the time, Gideon wondered if he knew how.
Today Gideon’s mind was racing, wondering where Moriah was and calculating how long it had been since he’d seen him. Had it really been twenty-five days? There had been no call from Henry to say that Moriah had wrecked his truck or been caught without a proper driver’s license. In the restroom, Gideon studied the bags under his eyes. He felt a cold coming on; his throat was scratchy. He’d better buy some Day Quil. Silently, he prayed, God, let me find him. Wherever he is.
When he walked to the Laundromat, he was sure his prayer was answered. A large black sedan raced past him and in the passenger’s seat was a man with long blond hair. Gideon’s steps halted; his heart quickened. Could it be Moriah? But before he could catch the license plate’s numbers, the sedan took a left at the corner and sped away. Gideon sprinted, hoping to catch a glimpse of his brother again. If he could just get his attention, he’d ask if he was okay and beg him to go to the Narcotics Anonymous group that met at the Episcopalian church on Third Street. He’d get him a sponsor, get him cleaned up, get him whatever it took. Then they’d go hunting together, play pool. But there was no sign of the car anywhere now.
Gideon stood motionless on the sidewalk. A woman pushed past him with a child bundled in her stroller. He apologized for not moving out of her way. He’d been caught up in some sort of trance, unaware of his surroundings. Recalling that he’d been on the way to the Laundromat, he turned and headed in that direction, eyeing the street as he walked. A car slowed, but it was a dark blue Ford, and inside sat an old man in a tweed hat. Gideon continued to watch the road. Suddenly, he stumbled into an electric pole; the pain of the impact seared his forehead. Feeling foolish, he concentrated on walking carefully, ignoring the street and its vehicles.
He’d seen Moriah. Wasn’t that enough for today?
At the Laundromat, he bought four Baby Ruth bars to take back to the shop. He knew Kiki was fond of chocolate, even if it did make her stomach gurgle. She’d be coming to work in about an hour, and a chocolate bar would surely add to her spirits.
When he looked at his reflection again in the shop restroom mirror, he noted the swollen bump on his forehead. Seated at his desk, he placed a cold bottle of soda against it, hoping to alleviate the nagging pain.
Kiki breezed in, chattering about how she’d heard it was going to snow. She wanted to make sure that everyone had gloves. “Do you have a nice warm pair?” she asked Luke. “I got a red pair for Christmas.”
Luke, who was under the hood of Hiber Summers’s Volvo, said he had gloves, but from the way he said it, Gideon felt he was just trying to appease the girl.
“What color are they?” Kiki stood beside the car.
“What? Uh, um … orange.”
“You have orange gloves? Orange?” Kiki’s insistence made Gideon wonder if she denied that Luke actually owned a pair of that color.
“No, um … yeah, black.” It seemed Luke doubted the orange pair, too. Taking out the dipstick and wiping it with a tattered cloth, he said, “Yeah, my gloves are leather and black.”
“Black, now that’s more like it for a man. For a man. A man shouldn’t have orange gloves or pink ones. And never bright green gloves. Unless he’s an elf.”
“I wish they made gloves that wouldn’t bother my fingers,” said Ormond as he flexed the fingers on his right hand. “I have a couple of pairs somewhere in my house, but the truth is, I don’t like the feel of gloves against my fingers.”
“What’s wrong with your fingers?” asked Kiki.
“Arthritis.”
Kiki followed him to the coffeepot. “Angie said that her grandma rubs her fingers with IcyHot every night.”
“Really? Is that what Luva does?”
“Every night. She wears gloves to bed, too.”
“Gloves, now why would she do that?” He poured a mug of coffee.
“I think it keeps the IcyHot from getting all over her sheets. Angie said that her grandmother’s arthritis pain has gone away.”
Ormond looked doubtful. “Never did like the smell of IcyHot. I don’t think anything that foul smelling could bring any relief.”
As Ormond stirred sugar into his coffee, Kiki asked if he wanted her to cart the pile of accumulating cardboard boxes to the Dumpster. The stack was against the storage room door, some flattened
and others still in their square forms.
“Gideon usually does that,” said Ormond. “But he’s in another world today.”
“I heard that,” said Gideon as he pressed the bottle onto his head, hopeful that the pain would eventually lessen.
Kiki chimed in, “If you put a cold compress on each temple and then massage your forehead, headaches disappear …”
“I heard that four ibuprofen taken with water would do the trick, too,” Gideon said as he stood to look for some medicine.
Kiki clutched at two of the flattened boxes with her gloved hands. Immediately, she dropped one. Sighing, she secured the cardboard pieces under her arm. “I’m going to take these boxes out of here for you, Gideon.” Slowly and awkwardly—looking like she was walking barefoot over a bed of pinecones—she made her way outside the bay doors toward the Dumpster.
Gideon was going over some paperwork at Ormond’s desk when Kiki rushed into the shop through the open bay, her steps hard against the floor. He heard her gasp and Luke cry, “Kiki, you okay?”
As she raced toward Gideon, something about her expression made him jump to his feet. “What’s the matter?”
“I—I saw—saw …”
He reached out for her, fearful that she might fall.
But she turned, making her way once again toward the bays.
He followed her, Ormond close behind him.
She only got to Luke’s bay, her face pale. She steadied herself at the trunk of the Volvo.
Seeing her wild eyes, Ormond took off for the fridge, bringing back a bottle of orange juice. “What is it?” he asked, approaching her with caution. He uncapped the bottle, handing it to her.
But Kiki wanted nothing to do with the orange juice, turning from Ormond to lean against Gideon, her breathing labored.
Gideon put an arm around her waist. If she fainted, at least he would catch her and keep her from falling to the floor. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What did you see?”
But her breath only came out in guttural spurts.
Luke said, “Do you want us to call your sister?”
Kiki managed to shake her head. “Don’t …” Clutching Gideon’s arm with both of her hands she said, “I saw … I saw … a …”
“What did you see?”
“Was it a mouse?” Luke asked. “They love living inside the Dumpster. We used to put rat poisoning around.”
Kiki’s fingers pressed into the fibers of Gideon’s shirt. “Oh, tell me it isn’t so.”
“What is it?” Gideon took her by the shoulders and tried to make eye contact. “Tell me.”
She avoided his eyes.
Gideon tried again. “Kiki, what did you see?”
“A finger.”
“A what? Where?”
“At … at …” She covered her mouth, choked. “Dumpster.”
“Where did you see the finger?”
“I said at the Dumpster.”
Ormond and Luke exchanged confused looks. Ormond muttered, “What in the Sam Hill is she talking about?”
Gideon ushered Kiki into his office and helped her to his chair. “Wait here. I’ll go check it out.”
Beside the Dumpster were the two cardboard boxes Kiki had gone to throw away. The dirty green metal sliding door was partially opened, something leaning near it. Gideon stepped closer. What could she have meant? A finger? Is that what she’d said? Once he’d seen a mouse climbing over the opening and was embarrassed that it scared him so much that he hated going to toss anything in the Dumpster after that. About that time he’d suggested mousetraps, and when they didn’t work, Ormond bought d-CON baits. Gideon inched closer so that his face was parallel with the door.
Immediately, he saw it. Resting against a stack of flattened boxes, barely visible due to the sunless day, was a human hand, an index finger sticking out of the sliding door.
He yanked the door to open it completely so that he could get a better view. Then he stopped, paralyzed for a moment. Bile rose in his throat. No, no, this couldn’t be! With a sprint to the garage, he rushed to the storage room. He grabbed the ladder and carried it outside. Propping it against the Dumpster, he climbed until he was higher than the metal compartment. He made himself cast his eyes downward.
Moriah’s eyes were open, hollow with fear. Crusted blood stained his army-green cotton shirt.
Gripping the ladder, Gideon fought to stay on the middle rung.
Kiki was now behind him. “Do you see it? Who does it belong to?”
“Take her inside!” Gideon shouted as both Luke and Ormond came after her.
He couldn’t look any longer. His stomach twisted and jerked like a car sputtering out of gas on a rocky road. Stepping off the ladder, he turned from the Dumpster as his last meal spewed from his mouth.
“What is it?” Kiki demanded. “Who does that finger belong to?” Quickly, before anyone could stop her, she bolted up the ladder. “No! No! No!”
Wiping his wet mouth with his hand, Gideon tried to stand straight. “Take her inside!”
He wished that Ormond would listen, would take her inside, away from this horror. “It’s not him! Say it’s not him!” Her voice escalated as Luke lifted her up and carried her into the shop.
But Gideon couldn’t lie, as much as he wanted to. For inside the Dumpster lay a dead body, stiff as a board and caked with blood. Every inch of him seemed to be bloody. Bruises—the color of moldy cheese—spread across his chin and sunken cheeks.
“I’ll call the police,” Ormond said.
Gideon wiped his mouth again. For a second, he thought of climbing the ladder again and letting himself fall off, onto the hedges by the fence. When he came to after that, surely this scene would be erased. He’d be in bed, grateful that this day had only been a nightmare.
Gideon made himself look at the body again. The wide, lifeless eyes … searing his mind like a hot iron … the mouth that broke so easily into a smile … clamped shut. Upon closer observation, he saw that the jeans and shirt were torn in places and soiled with not only blood but dirt. “Moriah,” he cried, agony draining his voice. “Moriah,” he repeated. “Please, wake up.”
Surely this was a nightmare. Gideon pinched the skin on his arm. He squeezed harder and felt the pain. Taking a swallow of water, he waited. Any minute now, he’d awaken. He’d be in his bed and all would be fine. He’d enter the living room and find his brother on the sofa, sleeping like a baby, a light snore escaping from his nose.
He saw his mother, dressed in one of her dark dresses, her hair bound inside her bonnet. He saw her face when she was distressed and imagined how destroyed she’d be to know that her youngest child was dead.
When he thought of his father, all he heard were the words he had been trying to escape all his life. Can’t you ever do anything right? You can’t even keep your brother safe.
Slumping onto the floor, Gideon felt his chest expand into his throat. He muffled his first sob, but let the next ones out in loud, escalating cries.
The sensation to throw up again evaporated, and a new one took its place. Guilt.
He was at fault. He’d let Moriah die.
27
How could he be dead? It is a lie! Even though she’d seen the body, cold and lifeless, Kiki wanted to believe that it had not been Moriah’s. She clutched Yoneko until her nose itched from the puppet’s fur. She wanted to go home, to her real home, with Mama. Mama would rub her shoulders and buy her ice cream. Mama would—
Kiki tugged at Yoneko’s red collar. Mama was ill. Mama was not able to care for her. Why couldn’t she get that through her head?
Gideon said Moriah was ill, too. He had an addiction. Mama’s is hoarding stuffed animals, but Moriah’s was drugs. She’d heard of cocaine and marijuana but did not know as much about this drug called meth. And she—she, Kiki Yanagi—thinking she was doing Moriah a favor, had hidden a package of this drug for him.
Kiki didn’t feel like watching Rescue Animals this afternoon. Her mind kept going back to
tidbits of conversations she’d had with Moriah. Sure, he could be irritable—the way she got sometimes—but most of the time, he’d been nice to her. She remembered how his hand felt on top of her head, the way he smiled at her. “I love him,” she had said to the mirror in her room.
He was dead.
Was it okay to still love someone who was dead? Was it acceptable to say, I love you, Moriah?
Kiki stood slowly and was glad that the blood did not run from her head and make her dizzy. She looked out the window where she’d seen Angie and others playing in the shadows in the yard next door. She wished Angie was outside now. She’d join her. Angie was not to be feared because she was a friend now.
Still Life in Shadows Page 19