Still Life in Shadows (22 page)

An old wooden table with benches sat by a pair of rotting logs and a holly bush laden with tiny red berries. Angie and Kiki walked over toward the edge of the picnic grounds. A few hundred yards below flowed a narrow stream with large rocks dotting the edge. The girls scampered down a dirt path, found an area that was warmed by the sun, removed their socks and shoes, and slowly tiptoed into the water. Giggles followed. Kiki splashed Angie and Angie retaliated. The giggles echoed up to where Mari and Gideon sat at the table.

“This is fun!” Kiki called up to the adults. “You should try it. You should.”

“Too cold for me!” Gideon chuckled as Mari made sure that Kiki was seated safely by a mossy rock. She was, her bare feet dangling into the water. Angie joined her, and Mari turned her attention back to Gideon.

“I went to visit Mama yesterday.”

“How was that?” asked Gideon.

Mari sat so that she could continue to keep an eye on her sister. “I’m worn out. She says that after she’s with me, she’s good for two weeks. That being with me gives her strength and courage.” Mari shook her head. “But I just feel sad for two weeks afterward.”

Gideon felt sorry for Mari, but he wasn’t sure how to respond. After some thought he came up with, “Is her house still the same?”

“You mean still cluttered without any room to move? Yeah.” Shielding her eyes from the sun, Mari let out an exasperated sigh. “Can you believe that she wanted me to take her to some secondhand store to buy more stuff? I asked her why. Why does she always need more?” Mari stood as though the action gave her the strength to confess her next feelings. “I asked her why she would let these puppets keep her from us. I asked her if she loved us. I went a little crazy with the questioning.”

“Did she have answers?”

“Only the same ones she’s been giving all along. She is happy surrounded by mounds of stuffed puppets. They bring her joy.” Mari faced Gideon. “Joy!” she spat the word. “I dream of having a normal mother who gets joy from seeing her children happy. Not some diseased mother whose lifeless toys are more valuable than her own flesh and blood.”

He wondered what to do. Should he stand and go over to her, caress her back, tell her she was strong and he admired her?

His mind was filled with questions, too. What made people hoard? Why couldn’t hoarders stop their insane behavior? Pushing the questions aside, he concentrated on what he could say to Mari. But before he could come up with the right thing to say or do, the girls returned, laughing about how a fish tickled their feet as they dipped them into the chilly water.

Kiki opened the ice chest and removed a can of Sprite. She offered one to Angie. “I’m so thirsty.” Surveying the containers of food stacked at the end of the picnic table, she piped, “And as hungry as five pirates.”

“You’re always hungry,” said Mari. “Kiki can eat whatever she wants. I’m envious.”

“My medicine makes me hungry. That’s what Dr. Conner told me.”

Gideon helped Mari spread the meal onto the table. She had packed everything they needed—plastic knives, spoons, and forks, plates and napkins with little rosebuds, even miniature shakers of pepper and salt. From the grocery store, she’d purchased turkey sandwiches, potato salad, macaroni salad, soda, and chocolate cookies.

They all gathered around the table as Mari offered a prayer. As they loaded up their plates, Kiki said she wished it was warm enough to swim.

“Where would you swim?” asked Mari.

“That stream down there.” She jerked a thumb to indicate where she’d just been.

“I wouldn’t let you,” said Mari. “It’s too shallow to swim in.”

“You’d be swimming with the fishes,” said Angie. “They’d be tickling you with their fins.”

Kiki laughed, drank too quickly from her soda, and coughed. Sputtering, she said, “I bet I could swim faster than those fish.”

Angie bit into her sandwich and then reached for a cookie. “I never get cookies at home,” she said. “Mom tells me they’ll make me fat.”

Kiki said, “Nothing wrong with being fat, is there?” She turned to Gideon. “Are you a fisherman? Do you want to harpoon a fish for our dinner?”

Gideon laughed and was glad when the others joined him.

This was like family
, he thought. He hadn’t felt so connected to people, especially not to people of the opposite sex, for years. He only wished that Moriah were here. Moriah had enjoyed picnics and often took bits of food outside to eat while seated in the weeping willow tree. Once Gideon caught him with a whole loaf of oatmeal bread. As his brother sat in the tree pulling off morsels for himself to consume, every once in a while he would toss out a few for the nearby birds.

“Why did you leave Pennsylvania?” Kiki suddenly asked as she scooped potato salad onto her plate.

Gideon wiped his mouth with one of the napkins and then placed
it in his lap. The question was not one he expected. He was enjoying a picnic in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on a rare warm day in November. Did it have to be ruined by a visit from the past? He tried to let the question go unanswered by changing the subject and saying, “This food is really good. Thanks, Mari.”

“Why?” Kiki was not going to let her question be pushed aside.

Gideon wiped his mouth again and said, “Lots of reasons.”

The evening air was cool, the shed door cold and hard. Gideon placed his ear against it and thought he heard a whimper, like the sound of a calf when she was hungry.

“Tell us. We’ll listen,” said Mari.

Gideon decided that he could summarize what had caused him to go. He wouldn’t need to tell every detail, just enough to give them an idea of why he knew it was time to leave. He wouldn’t mention anything about the boy in the shed. Simplicity had its time and place.

Clearing his throat, he crossed his legs and then uncrossed them. “Well, I suppose I’ll tell you then.” He forced a smile and wondered why he felt the need to smile at all. This childhood tale was not at all humorous. His father was a rough man, demanding, and as cold and hard as the shed door.

The evening air was cool, the shed door cold and hard.
It was interesting that the first line from one of his writing assignments still rang clearly into his thoughts as though he had written the words only today.

Steadying himself on the bench, Gideon placed one hand on the wooden slats beside him. It was almost as though if he let the memory plague him, he might slip off the wood.
No shed story
, he repeated in his mind.
Tell something else.

Kiki eyed him, waiting to hear. Mari gave him her full attention as Angie said, “Is it a hard story to tell?”

His mouth was dry. He stood and reached for a can of Pepsi inside the ice chest. They all listened as he popped open the tab, the fizz the only sound that followed. He would have to start before then, before
he stood outside the shed door. Gideon took a gulp of Pepsi and gave in to his audience.

“My father is a farmer. We have apple orchards, corn and wheat fields, some chickens and Jersey cows.”

“Sounds peaceful,” said Angie.

Gideon wished he could say something like, “It was too peaceful and calm, and I was getting bored,” but for some reason, he found no ability to tease. And so he continued, telling them about how his father had a fence that surrounded the orchard across the road and how every evening, they locked the gate. “There was a shed, too, where we stored our tools.” And bags of fertilizer, he wanted to add, but perhaps that wasn’t so important to his audience. Those bags were, after all, not etched in this dismal memory.

Angie asked what a buggy was and Gideon explained. She said she thought she’d seen a picture of one in a history textbook. “I think they would be fun to ride.”

“Me, too,” said Kiki.

Continuing with his story, he wondered how much of it he could handle telling. He thought of that fateful night. Could he describe what had happened? Should he even try?

But all three faces were eagerly waiting.

“My father noticed that someone was in the apple orchard. He said he heard a noise, something that wasn’t right. He had this ability to know when someone was lying or trying to pull the wool over his eyes. He took me with him to investigate. In the dark of the night, it must have been around eight o’clock, we walked from our house to the orchard as quietly as we could. The gate was open, and we went into the orchard, using the light of the moon and a small kerosene lantern as our flashlights. My father stopped at the trunk of one of the trees. He pointed up and when I looked I saw a young boy. He might have been ten or eleven years old. He was sitting in the tree eating apples. Father commanded him to come down from the tree. He did. Then my father
forced the boy—he was a skinny kid—over to the shed. The whole way, the boy complained that Father was hurting him and Father kept telling him to shut up. Father had him by the scruff of the shirt.”

“Like a mother cat carries her kittens?” asked Kiki.

“Exactly.”

“But the kittens aren’t hurt,” she added.

“That’s because the mother cat is gentle,” said Gideon. “My father was not.”

“What did he do to the boy?” asked Angie.

Gideon realized that he had to tell the rest of the story now. He’d come this far and his audience was expecting it. Well, if he was going to let them know what happened, he needed to sit. Slowly, he sat back on the bench, a piece of wood that felt just as hard and cold as the shed door. “My father locked this boy inside the shed.”

“Locked him?” Kiki repeated the words three times before Mari said, “That’s enough. Let Gideon continue.”

“Yes,” said Gideon. “My father locked him inside the shed. He told him he deserved to be punished for trespassing and for stealing apples.”

“I’d be scared,” said Angie. “I hate the dark with all its creepy shadows.”

“Me, too. I’m scared of the dark. So scared,” said Kiki.

Angie leaned in closer. “What happened next?”

Gideon looked at his hands, knowing that what he was about to reveal was grimier than any mechanic’s fingernails. He hoped his voice didn’t quake, although his hands were. “Father went back to the house. He ordered me to go, too. I could hear the boy crying inside the shed, but I obeyed and went back to the house with my father. I couldn’t stand the thought of that boy locked inside the shed all night, though. His wails echoed in my ears. So I went back to the shed about an hour later and unlocked the door.”

The scene from that night would never fade. Countless times the actions that followed played in his mind like a somber melody. And in that one writing class he’d taken, he’d recounted the entire scenario.

“Are you all right?” he asked. There was no reply, so he tried again. This time his voice was more than a whisper. “Are you all right?” The autumn wind circled his head, ruffling his mass of brown curls. He opened his mouth to ask if the lad would like a bowl of soup when he heard footsteps rounding the corner. His hands shook and his legs froze, even though he knew he must run before his father caught him.

“There was a large bolt on the door; no key was needed,” Gideon said to the three as their expressions encouraged him to continue. “I pushed the door open, and there was the boy, his face stained with tears. He was so afraid. ‘Run home,’ I told him. Just as I said that, we heard a noise. It was my father! He must have heard me leave the house. He had a large branch in his hand.” Gideon stopped. This was as far as he could go. He’d have to end the tale here.

“Did it hurt?” asked Kiki.

“What?”

“The branch.”

Gideon leaned back and raised his face toward the sky. Composing himself, he waited. He said, “Yes. Father whipped the boy and then me.”

Silence loomed and Gideon wished someone would say something to break it. Soon he heard his own voice. “I still have a scar.”

“On your bottom?” asked Kiki.

“Yes, on my bottom.”

“Did the boy run home?”

“No, Father locked him in again and took me home, yanking me by my arm. I was sent to my room and told to go to bed. I had a hard time sleeping. I was in so much pain.”

“Did you tell your mama?” asked Kiki and was about to ask the question again, but Mari gave her a look that silenced her.

Gideon continued, “The next morning I woke around two because people were looking for the boy. They must have knocked at all the front doors on our street. The boy’s parents had no idea where he was.”

“Was he Amish?” Kiki asked.

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Did they find him?”

“Yes. Sometime after they came by to see if we had seen him, Father released the boy from the shed and told him to go home. But Father warned him that if he said a word about what happened he would tell his parents that he—the boy—stole his tools. Apparently, someone had broken into the shed and taken my father’s tools the week before.”

“Did you ever see the boy again?” Angie asked.