Moon Over Manifest (24 page)

There was a new kind of hush as folks took their first bites and savored the sweet fluffiness of it. For a moment they all seemed lost in their own private enjoyment of the cake. Then I opened my big mouth. “Hattie Mae,” I said, “this here angel food cake is so good it could’ve won first prize in a baking contest.” If I’d stopped there, everything would’ve been fine. But I went on. “I went to a county fair one time where they had a baking contest. They gave big blue ribbons for first prize. Did they ever have a fair like that in Manifest?”

Everyone stopped eating and stared at me. I put my fork down and tried to swallow the too-big a bite I’d taken. “I mean, doesn’t every town have a fair like that?” There was another pause, during which the only sounds were forks being placed on plates while glances passed back and forth.

“Yes, honey,” Hattie Mae said, rescuing me. “We had a fair like that once. It was a long time ago.”

There followed a most painful silence that hovered like hot, moist air before a big rain.

“There
was
a baking contest, as I recall,” Mr. Koski said. “Mama Santoni got first prize. She was my neighbor and often brought over some bread or pastry for me to sample. She said she needed a man’s opinion.” He smiled at the memory. “I can tell you I was always more than happy to oblige. She was the best baker in town.”

Mrs. Dawkins raised her gloved hand. “Oh, now, that’s where I’ll have to disagree. My dear friend, Mrs. DeVore, God rest her”—she nodded in deference to Ivan—“made the most delicious French cookies. Now, what were they called, Ivan? Those buttery cookies your mother made?”

“Galettes,” he replied with humble pride.

“Yes,” Mrs. Dawkins said, “the most delicate little waffle cookies. They nearly melted in your mouth with a cup of hot tea. Do you remember the lovely teas we had back then?”

And so it went.

Story upon story. Remembrance upon remembrance. It was as if these memories were contained in a painful wound that had been nursed and ignored in equal measure.

I found myself listening with my eyes as well as my ears, noting the slight movements. Mrs. Dawkins folding her lace handkerchief and placing it on her lap just so. And Mr. Cooper, the barber, stroking his mustache the same way Miss Sadie had described his father, Mr. Keufer, doing.

It was interesting piecing together fragments of stories I’d heard from Miss Sadie. Noting what had changed and what had stayed the same. But for some reason, these stories all made me sad and more than a little rankled. It rankled me
that everyone in this town had a story to tell. Everyone owned a piece of this town’s history. Yet no one mentioned my daddy. Even when Gideon had been here, he hadn’t really been here. I couldn’t find much of a sign of his ever even having set foot in Manifest, let alone having left an impression.

I knew I could ask this roomful of people about Gideon. But I’d already asked Shady and Hattie Mae. And of course Miss Sadie. I’d gotten nowhere. I’d be hung if I was going to drag it out of them.

It also bothered me that I didn’t have a story. “Telling a story ain’t hard,” Lettie had said. “All you need is a beginning, middle, and end.”

But that was the problem. I was all middle. I’d always been between the last place and the next. How was I supposed to come up with a story for Sister Redempta or even a “Remember when …” to reminisce on with somebody else? But then, I wouldn’t be here when school started anyway, I reminded myself.

Having gotten a little lost in my own pitiful thoughts, I suddenly realized that the room had grown quiet with that kind of Quaker anticipation—waiting for the next Friend to speak. All eyes were on Mrs. Evans, and her eyes were on me. I felt myself get stony cold inside under her gaze.

“Did you know,” she said, quiet but steady, as Hattie Mae took her hand, patting it like a sister, “that my daughter, Margaret, was the president of the 1918 Manifest senior class?”

I didn’t know that Mrs. Evans had a daughter. I’d thought of her only as a statue on a porch. Until then, I’d never heard her speak, and I was surprised by her voice. I’d expected it to
be sharp and tinny. But it came out quiet and soft, like velvet. And her words carried something sweet and precious.

“She and Dennis Monahan tied, so they drew straws and my Margaret won.”

What had happened to her daughter, I wondered. But the way she spoke and the way everyone else listened, I knew better than to ask.

Mrs. Evans looked at me, waiting, expecting me to say something back.

I found I wasn’t rankled anymore. “That’s real nice,” I said. And I meant it.

A
fter the Sunday-night service, folks said their goodbyes and thank-yous. Shady sat down heavily in one of the pews. It seemed that the evening had taken a toll on him.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “That was a good service, Shady.”

“It was,” he agreed, but didn’t say more.

“Seems like everyone in this town’s got a story to tell.”

Shady nodded. “I believe you’re right about that. The Lord himself knew the power of a good story. How it can reach out and wrap around a person like a warm blanket.”

I thought it over. He was right. I just wished my daddy’d wrapped me up in that warm blanket instead of leaving me out in the cold.

I wouldn’t ask Shady about Mrs. Evans’s daughter.
Not that night, anyway. But I knew how I could settle my mind about it. There was just daylight enough to run the stretch of woods over to the cemetery next to Miss Sadie’s house.

I started at one end and worked my way down a row of graves and then another, reading each name carefully, expecting but hoping not to find Margaret Evans. Then I saw big block letters engraved in a heavy granite stone.
EVANS—JOHN, DEVOTED HUSBAND AND FATHER. 1868–1926.
I knew that it was Mrs. Evans’s husband, as her name was on the tombstone next to it with her date of birth, and her date of death left blank. But there was no Margaret.

I was relieved. It didn’t solve everything, like why Mrs. Evans spoke the way she did about her daughter, and why Hattie Mae had held her hand, but I could rest easy knowing that there was no Margaret Evans buried in Manifest. She was probably married and living in Joplin or Kansas City with children of her own. Maybe Mrs. Evans just missed her. I hoped so.

It was dark as I turned to go back to Shady’s. Miss Sadie’s wind chimes jangled in the hot breeze. For some reason, I felt my scar and thought of Miss Sadie’s painful, oozing leg. I walked to the welded iron gate and stared down the Path to Perdition, unable to move. Unable to go in and check on Miss Sadie, and unable to turn away. I was paralyzed with the need to tend to her and ignore her in equal measure.

Then, from the shadows on the porch, she spoke to me, beckoning from her darkness to mine.

“It was a dangerous game we played.”

I opened the gate. “What? Faking a town quarantine?”

“No, what we did in addition to that.”

I sat on the top step, my back against the porch rail. “What could be more dangerous than a fake quarantine and a town-sponsored bootlegging operation?”

“Hope …”

W
ord of the miracle elixir had spread well beyond Manifest before the quarantine began. Mrs. Larkin hadn’t been the only one whose fever and cough had improved because of the medicine, although most of the folks whose symptoms had improved were the men who met up with Shady at the old abandoned mine shaft just outside of town to purchase their deep shaft. These were the same men who preferred to drink away their fever and chills. Usually they just woke up with a whopping headache on top of their other ailments, but one after another was rising from a long night of cold sweats and raging fevers feeling like he had come through a rough storm.

If it had been left to the men, the miracle elixir would probably have gone unnoticed. They would have chalked it up as just one of the well-known perks of a few stiff drinks. And since Velma T.’s elixir was something relegated largely
to newspaper advertisements and jokes, people would have been none the wiser. The wives and mothers were the ones who found the brown bottles stashed away under pillow and bed. The women, who had been nursing these men in their infirmity, wondered how they’d suddenly improved while others lingered in the sickness.

The women sniffed the bottles and knew that there were other ingredients at work in that liquor. Menthol, castor oil, and eucalyptus among others. They gave the medicine to sick children and parents and took it themselves when fevers and coughs grew worse. The coughs, fever, and chills went away. The mystery elixir worked. But the bottles emptied. And with more loved ones getting sick and word spreading of an even worse strain of influenza heading west from Chicago, Indianapolis, and Des Moines, those wives and mothers were determined to protect their families.

The directions were simple. Follow the railroad tracks heading west of Manifest. Where the tracks curved south, they were to veer north into the woods. There, between the hackberry tree and the pin oak, hidden by numerous weeds and shrubs, was the entrance to the abandoned mine shaft.

By the beginning of September, Shady and Jinx made their first trip of the quarantine in the dark of night, the elixir bottles resting in the hay of a wheelbarrow. From the in-ground hiding spot, they waited for the sick and weary to come. And they did come. Worn and worried faces; men, women, and children who came with baskets and money. They received their brown bottles in grateful silence and gave what they had. Some dollars, some coins. A few brought only empty bottles for the next person to use.

One woman, pale and thin, handed Jinx a bundled-up
red handkerchief. He felt the rattle of grains inside. “It’s mustard seed,” she said through the gaps between her teeth. “Good for hot packs to clear the lungs.”

Jinx nodded and handed her a bottle. He remembered the pungent smell of the mustard pack his mother had used on him when he was a child. The memory was seared into his chest. A few people in Manifest had succumbed to fatigue and mild flu symptoms. They’d all been working around the clock. Maybe a hot pack would do them good.

“Thank you,” Jinx said, looking up, but like a ghost, she was gone.

More came as the night wore on. Jinx nearly fell asleep during a lull. He had hardly slept for days. Perhaps that would explain why he thought he looked into a familiar face as he held out another bottle. It was a man’s. There was a coldness to the face, and a smile, but not a friendly one. Then the man was gone. Was it Finn? Was it anyone? It happened so quickly Jinx couldn’t be sure, but the bottle was gone.

Jinx retreated into the protective earthen walls of the shaft, waiting for his heart to stop racing. He thought of the last time he had seen that face. How it had looked up from Junior Haskell’s lifeless body and said, “You killed him.”

“You okay?” Shady asked.

“Yeah. I thought I saw someone I knew once.” Jinx shook his head. His mind swirled like a dust devil, conflicting memories chasing each other in circles.

“Someone you’d rather forget?”

Jinx nodded.

Shady moved into the opening, placing himself between Jinx and whatever or whoever might be lurking in the darkness as time crept on.

It had been a while since the last person had passed through. The birds began chirping as they did just before light. Without a word, Shady and Jinx hid the empty bottles and various other gifts of payment in the hay of the wheelbarrow and headed back into town, both tired and on edge. They walked in silence for a time; then they heard a creak.

“Out for your morning constitutional, gentlemen?” It was Sheriff Dean. Leaning against an old picket fence, he whittled casually on a small piece of wood. The sheriff never violated the quarantine by venturing into town, but he apparently did venture from his house once in a while.

“No, sir, Sheriff.” Shady took off his hat and patted it nervously against his leg. “A brisk walk would be nice, but we’re out, uh … you see, we’re …”

“We’re on a mission of mercy,” Jinx answered.

“Mission of mercy, you say?” Sheriff Dean eyed the wheelbarrow but kept a safe distance. “That wouldn’t involve doling out alkyholic libations, would it?”

“No, sir.” Jinx reached into the wheelbarrow and pulled out the red handkerchief the old woman had given him. “Mustard seed.” He rattled the grains. “Velma T.’s working on some hot packs to help clear the lungs. She asked us to find some of the herbs she needs. You can look for yourself,” Jinx offered. “There’s even a couple of mustard packs in here that helped a few people sweat out their fevers and chills.”

Sheriff Dean leaned back, apparently not wanting to risk contact with a sweaty mustard pack. He crossed his arms over his belly and narrowed his eyes at Jinx. “You know, there’s a fella been seen hanging around these woods, camping down by the river not far from my house. He fits
the description of one of those runaways the Joplin authorities are looking for. I saw him myself from a distance but he moved on quick enough. Only thing is, he’s supposed to be one of a pair.”

Jinx and Shady didn’t comment.

“Causes me to wonder why this fella would be coming around Manifest. Maybe he’s looking for his better half.”

“Maybe,” Jinx said.

“If you see a stranger around, you’ll let me know.” Sheriff Dean stepped to the side, studying Jinx from a different angle. “Course, you’re somewhat of a stranger yourself.”

Jinx stayed put.

“Truth is,” Sheriff Dean continued, his sharp knife peeling away layers of wood, “as I believe I mentioned before, the sheriff from Joplin happens to be my brother-in-law and he’s not too bright. If he let some ne’er-do-wells get away, that’s his own fault.” He stopped whittling and checked the blade against his thumb. Then he looked straight at Jinx. “But this is my town and I make the rules here. I’ll be watching you.” He paused to let his point sink in. “See that you stick closer to town. We don’t need the influenza spreading to the outskirts.”

“Yes, sir,” Jinx and Shady answered. They waited for the sheriff to leave, but he leaned back against the fence and whittled away at his block of wood. With a nod, Jinx and Shady continued on their way back to town. The sheriff wasn’t just keeping watch. It was a downright vigil.