Still Life in Shadows

by Alice J. Wisler

  “What else can you tell me about him?” Nate’s eyes looked into Gideon’s.

  “He’s in hell, so you don’t have to preach about him being safe in heaven,” he said.

  Nate cocked his head, his lips tightly pressed, puzzlement lining his middle-aged face. “Hell?”

  “You know that if you leave the Amish communities, hell is your only friend.”

  “I have heard that.”

  Of course he had. He was in Harrisburg, home to hundreds of Amish. He had to know their beliefs.

  “Do you really believe that God came to save only the Amish?”

  “What?” Gideon wondered what Nate was getting at.

  “Does God care only about the Amish?”

  “Well, no …”

  “So if I were to die—as an Episcopalian or Presbyterian or Methodist or even someone without a denomination—God wouldn’t consider me for heaven?”

  Gideon wondered where this conversation was headed. He rubbed his temple. A headache was about to brew; he could feel it.

  “I think we have to avoid denominations. We find security in them. Some prefer the way the Baptists worship, some the services of the Methodist. Others, especially around here, the Amish. But the real key is when we look to the Bible.”

  “It is?”

  Nate opened a Bible that was next to his phone and flipped through a few pages. When he stopped searching, he read, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.”

  Gideon cleared his throat. Was this some sort of code?

  Seeing his confusion, Nate smiled. “Whoever. Whoever believes will be saved. There are no denominations or communities described within Jesus’ words to His disciples.” He read another passage. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

  “But Moriah wasn’t living a life of belief. He was out of his mind.” Gideon hated to have to admit this, but it was true.

  “And from what you told me on the phone last night, at the time of his death, he’d let drugs steal from him. But when he came here as a boy, he was seeking God.”

  Gideon wanted to believe that his brother had looked to God because, at this point, that thought gave him comfort.

  Nate closed his Bible and laid it back on his desk. “Now,” he said, picking up the pen and pad of paper. Easing out of his chair, he stood and walked over to Gideon. He pulled up a chair and sat. “What are some of the characteristics about Moriah that you want me to say?”

  Gideon realized he’d been slouching. He was in a pastor’s office; he supposed protocol was to at least sit up straight. He looked at the blank paper, crisp and white. What positive traits did he have to share about Moriah with Nate? His mind clouded with words like womanizer, thief, deceiver, and addict. He should have let Kiki and Mari attend this meeting with him. They would be able to supply some decent characteristics about Moriah.

  Nate broke into his thoughts. “Was he funny? I think I recall his laughter. He seemed to be easygoing. Would you agree with that?”

  Gideon ignored the question and quickly asked, “How often did he come here?”

  “He attended our youth group a number of times. Apparently he arranged for someone to pick him up at the convenience store a mile from your house, and then when the meeting was over, he got a ride back to your house.”

  “My parents?”

  “I don’t suppose they ever knew.”

  Gideon let a smile escape from his puzzled expression. The next thing he knew, he was laughing. He had snuck out to come to the youth group meetings here, too. Moriah was so much like him.

  “He looked up to you.”

  “I let him down.” A shadow now brushed across Gideon’s eyes. No more laughter. Guilt had him clenching his hands together, and a shot of remorse rippled through his veins.

  Gently, Nate said, “Moriah was responsible for Moriah.”

  Gideon lifted an unsteady hand near the pastor’s face, fingers erect, a hand that spoke the language of “Say no more. Stop.” He wanted the pastor to cease his spiel. What did he know of his and Moriah’s relationship? Let him, Gideon, feel the guilt. He needed to be the guilty one—someone had to—and he would take the blame.

  The pastor saw Gideon’s hand and nodded.

  Grateful to have won this battle, Gideon rose to his feet. There was nothing else to discuss. Suddenly, he just wanted to get this day over with and head back to Twin Branches. He reached out to shake Nate’s hand. “I’ll see you soon,” he called over his shoulder as he made his way to the office door. “Two o’clock. It’s the orchard on Pike Level Road. A mile from the Stop and Serve convenience store, two miles from the Swartz’s Furniture Store.”

  “I’ll find it, don’t worry. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind, but I did two things.”

  Gideon stopped. Turning to face Nate, he asked, “What did you do?”

  “First, I called.”

  “Called?”

  “I asked around for help to dig the grave. Interesting thing is, seems your people have beat me to the punch.”

  Confused, Gideon asked, “My people?”

  “Your friends. Moriah’s friends. Always amazes me how fast the Amish grapevine works. I made a call and the next thing I knew, some man had arranged for a group to dig the grave.”

  “Jeremiah,” said Gideon, certain it must be him. “I grew up with him.”

  “And the other thing I did …” Once again, the preacher paused. “Well, I knew you’d most likely forgotten how solid the earth gets in these parts in the dead of winter.”

  Gideon felt defeat spread over him, certain the next words from the pastor’s mouth wouldn’t be anything he wanted to hear. How could he have forgotten how the snow made the ground as hard as bricks? How would the men be able to dig a grave?

  “Don’t worry, Gideon. It’s all taken care of.”

  “How?”

  “There’s this thing called a frost dome. One of my church members works at a cemetery in town. When I told him about your coming up here to bury your brother, he said you would need a backhoe to break the ground. I didn’t think the Amish would approve of machinery like that.”

  Gideon knew his father wouldn’t. Graves were to be dug by the sweat of the brow.

  “Three days ago he took that frost dome to a spot by the weeping willow—with your mother’s permission. Not sure how your father felt about it, but … well, anyway, this contraption is a tin structure heated by propane. It heated the earth and made digging possible.”

  “A dome? Those things people put over plants?” Gideon had seen one of these on his walk to work.

  “Yes, but a propane tank is attached so that it warms the ground.” Nate smiled. “It was the perfect solution.”

  Amazed by this kindness, Gideon tried to find words. “You thought of everything.”

  The Amish grapevine. The phrase made Gideon smile as he pulled in at the inn where Mari and Kiki waited to ride with him to the orchard. There was an ongoing joke that even though Amish were without modern devices like the Internet and phones, they still managed to get messages across the communities to each other. He hadn’t even wondered how he would dig a grave under the weeping willow—he hadn’t thought that far ahead—and yet, his community had come to his rescue. When Mari and Kiki hopped into the hearse, Gideon teased, “Kiki, you won’t have to dig Moriah’s grave by yourself after all. I heard Moriah’s friends did that for us.”

  “I want to meet his friends,” said Kiki. “I bet some of them are pirates.”

  “Please don’t ask them if they are,” pleaded Mari, turning to the backseat to give her sister one of her be-careful-now looks. “Just observe, okay?”

  “Sheesh! Yes, ma’am, I will be good.”

  As they drove east of Carlisle toward Pike Level Road, Gideon felt his stomach churn as it often had before a test in school. He passed the Brenneman home, noting
three rocking chairs on the porch as well as a stack of firewood, bundled like a present. Next was the Baumbergers’ large two-story and then an English farm, clearly still English, for in the front yard was a satellite dish. The farmlands in-between looked just as they had when he’d left them, the pastures dotted with cows. Fifteen years and nothing had changed here.

  He parked the hearse parallel to the fence around the orchard.

  “Is this it?” asked Kiki, her face pressed against the window. “Where’s the weeping willow tree?”

  He couldn’t help but look across the road at his own childhood home. The barn and silo seemed smaller than they had when he was a boy. Briefly, he watched for movement from the house, expecting to see a family member. The house was still.

  When they got out of the car, a man made his way briskly toward them. Gideon recognized him immediately as Jeremiah. He’d grown into a man of over six feet and yet still had those same rosy cheeks from boyhood. Gideon wondered if he still cried often. As a kid, he was teased for being a crybaby.

  “Gideon,” breathed Jeremiah. He embraced him tightly. “Gideon.”

  Gideon tried to avoid the tears in his friend’s eyes. He introduced Mari and Kiki to him and then opened the gate to the orchard. Anxious to see whether or not the ground had been dug for the coffin, he made his way toward the weeping willow. The others followed him.

  The tree had grown into a large gangly presence. Its bare branches rose up and out like the ribs of an umbrella. As the lower limbs swayed, Gideon noted a shovel with a wooden handle propped against the trunk.

  To the left of the tree were simple white stones, blemished from time. These were Miller graves. Gideon expected to see a hole dug for Moriah’s coffin in front of the tree, facing the homestead. But the grave was behind the tree, looking out over the pond. It doesn’t matter, he thought, as he surveyed the deep crevice and the mounds of dirt cast over to its side. What’s dug is dug. Even so, he’d pictured burying his brother closer to the other markers, not behind them.

  As though noting his puzzlement, Jeremiah started to speak. But right then, Kiki, with her gloved hand on the tree trunk, cried, “His name is here! Moriah’s name is here!”

  Jeremiah nodded, gave Gideon a slight smile, and said, “We saw that. We felt his grave should be on the side of the tree where he carved his name.”

  About four feet up from the base of the tree, crudely itched, was Moriah’s name.

  Gideon ran a finger over the bumpy letters. He wondered how old his brother had been when he’d done that and which tool he’d used. Somehow, touching Moriah’s name now made him feel closer to him.

  With Jeremiah’s help, Gideon lowered the brown coffin out of the hearse and placed it on the ground. The words to the old tune, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” sprang into Gideon’s mind. They weren’t appropriate for today, Gideon told himself. Moriah had been heavy, wearing on him, causing him sleepless nights and worry. But how he wished Moriah was still capable of doing those things. I’ll take his antics, he wanted to say to God. Just give him back to me. Please.

  Although Kiki insisted that she could help carry the coffin, too, Mari simply told her to trail behind the men. Gideon and Jeremiah then hoisted the coffin and carefully walked it into the orchard until they reached the foot of the weeping willow. Gideon pulled a muscle in his left arm. He massaged the spot while Mari left to park the hearse a little closer to the side of the road. The road was narrow, and she was afraid an oncoming car would have trouble getting around it. Gideon wanted to tell her that cars rarely passed by. Carriages drawn by horses were much more common in this town, and he doubted they would have any difficulty getting around the hearse.

  “We miss you,” Jeremiah said to Gideon, his voice as somber as his dark coat. “I have eight children now. How about you?”

  “Not married.”

  “You will one day.”

  Mari buttoned her coat against the wind that had picked up and was moving brooding clouds across a violet sky. It seemed the sun was losing its strength, and real winter temperatures were taking over.

  “What time is it?” asked Gideon, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. Surely Pastor Nate should be here soon.

  “Ten till,” said Mari with a glance at her watch.

  Looking up, they saw a young man cutting through the field toward the orchard. As he opened the gate, he waved at them.

  “Is he one of Moriah’s friends?” Kiki asked.

  He approached them, his strides quick and purposeful. Without any introduction, he made his way to Gideon who was studying a worn marker, uneven in the ground. Waiting until Gideon acknowledged him, he then stood with his back to the others and whispered, “I heard.”

  “What have you heard?”

  With a glance over his shoulder, he stepped closer. “You help others.”

  “Yeah, well, my brother died.” So much for helping him.

  “I knew your brother.” He said the th like a d, like many Amish when they spoke in English. “We were friends. We used to smoke together behind the mini-mart.” His expression showed that he wasn’t sure whether or not this was the proper place to make such a statement.

  Kiki and Mari huddled together while Jeremiah joined the men, greeting the young man. “Good afternoon, Lowell. Nice to see you today.” To Gideon, he explained, “Lowell helped dig the grave.” He shivered beneath his coat. “There were about six of us out here working from Thursday on.”

  Gideon wondered if he’d thanked them for their thoughtfulness. “I appreciate that. I heard someone brought a frost dome.”

  Jeremiah grinned. “I got the task of asking your parents if it would be all right for the man from Covenant Church to set up the dome and two propane tanks. Your mother told me we had her permission.”

  Gideon didn’t ask what his father had said about the situation. He had no idea if his regulations permitted such a device.

  As Gideon shifted his glance from those around him toward the landscape a distance in front of him, he nearly gasped. Over by the edge of the field on the other side of the fence that surrounded the orchard, stood his mother. She was wearing a long black dress, and a black cloak. The hood to the cloak covered her bonnet and hair. Beside her stood his three sisters. He searched for their spouses; he’d heard all of them were married and that each had children. But no men or children were gathered with them. At the sight of his family, Gideon’s heart pounded like the engine of a car. He felt the urge to race over to them, but his legs were like pillars, stiff, grounded.

  Kiki tugged at Jeremiah’s sleeve, asking why his coat held no pockets and where his gloves were. Jeremiah explained that the people in his community didn’t wear gloves due to their plain dress code.

  “We have a dress code at my school,” said Kiki. “We can’t wear spaghetti straps.”

  As the two talked, Lowell once again vied for Gideon’s attention. This time he stood in front of him, blocking the view of his family. “Can I go with you?”

  Not sure he’d heard the young man’s words over his own heart, Gideon asked, “What was that?”

  Lowell looked Gideon in the eye. “I want to go with you.”

  Gideon noted his clean-shaven face, the freckles across the bridge of his nose, the blue of his eyes.

  Intensity filling his voice, Lowell said, “You could pick me up behind the mini-mart on your way back to your home. North Carolina, right? Are you leaving today? I can meet you anytime.”

  “What’s your surname?”

  “Baumberger.” He paused to adjust his straw hat that had become lopsided on his head. “I could leave with you tomorrow if you aren’t going back until then. Mr. Miller, I want to go with you. Please, sir.”

  “Lowell, what do you like to do? What are you good at?” Surely this man had some ambition besides just wanting to escape this countryside. Gideon thought of the safety that lay within this community. When there was no risk, how much easier life could be. If only Moriah had stayed here
and had had no desire to see what was on the other side of bonnets and buggies.

  “I want to work in a grocery store and run the electric cash register.” He smiled. “Eventually, I’d like to go to college and teach.”

  When Jeremiah came over, Lowell resumed silence. His face seemed to plead, Please don’t mention a word of what I said to anyone.

  Gideon nodded at Lowell, his way of indicating that he knew how to keep silent.

  As the wind rattled the bare limbs of the weeping willow and the surrounding apple trees, Gideon once more cast his view across the field. Who was that man now beside his sisters and mother? Oh! He’d know that stoic stance anywhere. There was no demut or humility in his posture; he was as arrogant as he’d always been. Cry, Gideon wanted to yell out at him. Cry, or at least come over here!