8. Nimble
nimble
In the yellow kitchen, Nimble did the dishes.
That was what you did when staying over at someone’s house and the owner of said house had just stumbled off to bed.
He’d gone to sleep, trusting Nimble entirely or being too out of it to care.
Either way, Nimble wasn’t about to break that trust, no matter what had been done to him by anybody else.
While the storm grew and the wind hurled bits of snow against the windowpanes, Nimble washed the green dishes with care, dried them, and put them away.
Then he wiped the table and swept the floor, and he finished up by putting the three pill bottles on the kitchen counter, where Morgan could easily find them if he needed them.
For all the pills were so small, they’d done a number on Morgan. He didn’t seem like a guy to be stupid with pills, but maybe he’d gotten distracted.
Not that any of this was Nimble’s problem, right?
In the morning, surely the snow would have stopped.
Soon a train would come through and he’d be headed west all on his own, there to settle on a warm beach to watch sunsets, leaning back on his hands, his bare toes curling in the sand, waiting for his real life to begin.
In the meantime, it was nice to pad around barefoot doing small things. He left the light on over the stove but turned off the light on the landing before heading into the dark parlor.
The apartment was filled with heavy, dark furniture, which, if it had belonged to the recently deceased Aunt Oralee, was entirely fitting.
Old furniture, Jadeite dishes, a stove that had seen better years, an avocado-green fridge that would last forever.
A wooden floor with scratches, as though the area on the second floor that was now an apartment had once been a warehouse that stored heavy boxes and equipment.
Morgan was the only thing out of place. Nimble had seen a pair of city boots in the bedroom, and loafers with tassels.
Morgan limped, had a knee brace, and walked with a cane, so the slip-on sneakers he wore made sense. As did the stack of new sweatpants and T-shirts, a practical uniform to fit Morgan’s current way of life.
Morgan hadn’t spoken of his aunt with any real affection, so maybe he’d not known her well. At the very least, though, he’d come up to Montana for her funeral, so that said something about him. A loyal nephew, if nothing else.
He’d been nice enough to let Nimble stay the night, though Nimble doubted that the decision was sensible.
It wasn’t anything he himself would have done, that was for sure.
While riding the rails, if someone new showed up to occupy a vacant corner of a boxcar, Nimble slept with one eye open, always.
And here Morgan was, trusting that Nimble wasn’t going to rob him blind.
Which Nimble wouldn’t. He was going to get some rest and then be on his way. The only trouble was that now that he was alone, the parlor dark except for the one light he’d turned on, on a side table next to the couch, he wasn’t sure he could relax.
The storm seemed louder now that the house was quiet, and Nimble stood by the couch, listening to the low moans, the high-pitched shrieks that rattled the windows. Which had to be single-paned to let in that much sound.
As he went over to peer out, he could feel the cloud of cold coming off the thin glass. Aunt Oralee must have been quite hardy not to feel the chill. That or she’d been too poor to pay for an upgrade.
He turned off the small lamp and crawled onto the couch, pulling the quilt up to his chin. Enjoying the feel of the clean cotton on his toes, on his forearms, the soft sink of the cushion beneath his cheek as he rolled onto his side.
Even with the lights off, a glow shone through the window. He should have pulled the shades down, but hadn’t.
There was a certain stillness beneath the howling of the storm, and Nimble knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He was used to the motion of the train, the rock-rock-rock sensation that accompanied every moment, awake or asleep. The clack-clack-clack of the trucks on the rails.
The few times he and Blue and Star had slept in ditches or abandoned motels or even, once, a treehouse, the lack of movement had been at odds with the muscles beneath his skin. He’d grown used to being lulled into sleep like a baby in a cradle.
Now, though. This was madness. The couch was just too soft. Nimble sat up in the dark and listened to the wind.
The other thing, at the edge of his realization, was that he was no longer used to sleeping alone. Back in his parents’ house in Lawndale, sure, he’d had his own room, albeit a small one. But the rest of his family had been nearby.
After a year of sleeping in boxcars tangled up with Blue and Star in a tumble of shared warmth, trying to sleep alone created a maze of complaints in his head and a strangled feeling that left him stubbornly awake.
He needed to rest. That much he’d learned while being on the road. You had to rest to make it through the next day. So, without much thought, he slid off the couch, grabbed a pillow and the thick quilt, and lay down on the floor.
There he made his small bed, with half of the quilt under him to protect him from the scratchy wool rug and the other half over him to keep him warm.
The presence of Morgan, heavily asleep in another room, would also keep him warm. Because even though Blue and Star were gone, Nimble wasn’t entirely alone.