Moon Over Manifest (26 page)

“Hey,” I said in my regular voice. “The handwriting.”

“What about it?” Ruthanne said.

“I knew a lady once, Miss Leeds in Springfield, Illinois. She could tell all manner of things about people just by the way they tapped out their messages on a telegraph machine.”

“So you can tell who the Rattler is just by looking at the handwriting?” Lettie asked.

“No, but just like telegraphing is different from one person to another, handwriting is too. See here?” I pointed to the note. “See how these letters are straight up and down, plodding across the page? And at the end of each word, the last letter trails off like it’s giving out its dying breath.”

“Why, you’re right,” Lettie said in admiration. “So we should go door to door and ask everyone to write the same words as on this note and we’ll see whose matches up.” Lettie paused. “But how are we going to get everyone to write it down?”

I answered before Ruthanne could jump on her. “We won’t have them write
these
words. They’ll write something else.” My mind was racing. “Anybody seen Billy Clayton today?”

“He’s over at the school yard. Sister Redempta’s got him fixing the fence he ran into on his bike.” Ruthanne perked up an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because Hattie Mae’s having a contest. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

T
he town was abuzz about the recent “mix-up” with the newspaper. Billy Clayton loved a good prank and had been happy to deliver the 1918 newspapers that had not made their way to the basement.

He said there wasn’t anything worth reading in the current papers anyway. Everyone knew that these days there wasn’t much news and most of it was bad. So, for the time being, we waited to see if anyone would respond to the contest announcement.

Hattie Mae was excited about the idea. It was true that we wanted to know more about Manifest back in the day. We just didn’t mention, even to Hattie Mae, that we were particularly interested in who might have the same handwriting used in the note telling us to “leave well enough alone.”

I stood at the sink in Miss Sadie’s tiny kitchen, wrapping
an assortment of exotic tea leaves in a worn piece of cloth. I tied a string around the neck of the cloth and dangled the tea bag into a pot of boiling water on her cookstove. Waiting for the tea to brew, I gazed out the window, watching the clouds churn and roil high above the neat rows of Miss Sadie’s garden that in fact had come to feel like my own. Those seeds of all kinds—carrot, pea, squash, pumpkin, onion—rested just beneath the surface. I had touched each one, planted each one in rows. Removed and replaced every bit of dirt just so, in hopes that they might take root in this place.

Those seeds. My seeds. Maybe they were wondering, as I was, if this would be the day rain would come.

I looked at the shed, still locked and dark. As the rich, spicy aroma from the teapot filled the kitchen, I found myself wondering if this would be the day Miss Sadie would tell what she had brewing inside her.

Then I felt her presence behind me. There was less idle talk each time I came. It was as if she had fewer words in her and the ones she had were the story. I pulled a stool over to her and she rested herself on it, leaning an elbow on the cabinet.

There was plenty I wanted to ask her. I wanted a conclusion to the story. I wanted to know about the skeleton key, the last remaining memento from the Lucky Bill cigar box. I wanted to know where Gideon fit into all of this. Why he was never mentioned in any of her stories. But I knew from experience that Miss Sadie told the story in her own way and in her own time. I was afraid that there were parts of it still simmering in her that she might never share.

In the silence of Miss Sadie’s kitchen, I thought of Gideon. I wondered about his story and why he had
retreated so far into himself, where I couldn’t reach him. Why had a cut on my leg been such a big deal? I knew I’d gotten very sick. But I got better. I remembered the way he’d looked at me. I had just turned twelve and he said I was growing up into a young lady. True, “young ladies” were not often found living on the road, traveling from town to town and job to job. But wasn’t it more important that we were together? I wondered where Gideon was and when he would come back.
If
he would come back.

Miss Sadie studied me, trying to read my thoughts. But I kept her out. She had her secrets and I had mine.

Suddenly, the kettle whistled, and for the life of me it sounded just like a train whistle blowing in the distance.

Miss Sadie’s voice was husky as she began.

“The Santa Fe steamer chugged into town—three days early.…”

T
he people of Manifest emerged cautiously from their homes and headed toward the depot. When Arthur Devlin himself stepped off the first passenger car with Lester Burton and the county medical examiner in tow, they knew the quarantine was over. But how?

Devlin gestured broadly. “You see, Dr. Haskell, they’re in fine health, wouldn’t you say?”

Dr. Haskell pushed his glasses up on his nose and squinted at the lot before him. Shady, Hadley, Mama Santoni, Mrs. Larkin, and others. “Well, in order to end an official quarantine, I’ll need to examine them and—”

“And as soon as you pronounce my miners of sound mind and body, I’ll expect them back to work within the hour.”

Devlin made a show of brushing off unseen dust from his suit. “Ahh, Eudora. This must have been an awful
experience for you. I’m sure you would never have taken part in such a charade if you’d known. Now that it’s over, perhaps you would enjoy dining with me this evening in Pittsburg.”

Mrs. Larkin was uncharacteristically flustered by the attention of Devlin and the suspicious looks of the people in the crowd. “Well, Arthur, I—”

“Now, Eudora, you turned me down years ago, but I’d hoped you’d learned your lesson. I hate to say it but your husband was a chump. Always working on his books and numbers. What kind of life is that? You know as well as I do, Eudora, that we are both meant for things greater.”

“Mother!” Pearl Ann Larkin cried, stepping off the train. She rushed up, throwing her arms around her mother. “Manifest has been all the talk at Kansas University. When I found out they were letting trains back in, I rushed straight home.”

Devlin was disgruntled by the interruption but took Mrs. Larkin’s hand and kissed it. “I see you are occupied. Perhaps another time.”

Devlin ordered double shifts for all the mine workers. No exceptions or you’d be fired. Of course, this meant that production of the elixir stopped. Dozens of full bottles remained in the abandoned mine shaft, because no one could get away to sell them. Sheriff Dean kept one eye on Shady but kept the other on Jinx, like a cat waiting for a mouse to steal a piece of cheese so he could devour both at once.

October 1, the Day of Reckoning, found a ragtag band holed up at Shady’s place: Shady, Jinx, Donal MacGregor,
and Hadley Gillen, along with Callisto Matenopoulos, Olaf Akkerson, and Casimir Cybulskis. Mrs. Larkin, who liked to have her nose in everything, was conspicuously absent. Those present all stared at the wad of cash splayed out on the bar. “All this for nothing,” said Donal. “There’s a rat in this town who’s been feeding information to Burton and Devlin and I say it’s high time we found out who it is.”

“We’d all like to know,” said Shady, “but right now we’ve got bigger problems.” Hadley counted the money first, then Shady, and finally Donal. No matter who counted, it always added up to $740.

They stared at the money as if they could mentally conjure another $260 before the court hearing at noon. Then they heard a car pull up. In one swift movement, Shady pulled a lever and the portion of the bar with the money sank and was covered by an identical shiny piece of wood, which blended in perfectly with the rest of the bar top. All was quiet when Lester Burton walked in.

Swaggered
was a better word. He came in like he owned the place. “You know they’ll blame you for it,” Burton said. “The double shifts and docked wages, all because of your fancy scheme. And here you are, sitting nice and cozy, probably counting your money.”

The others looked up in surprise.

“Oh, you didn’t know I knew about all that, the so-called elixir, nighttime rum runs. It took a while, but for the right price, someone’s always willing to talk. In fact, get the right rumors started and folks might get the idea that it was one of you who told me what was going on—just so’s you could keep the money. I imagine a good tar and feathering wouldn’t be out of the question.”

“As if anybody’s had time to pluck feathers,” Jinx muttered to Shady.

“You got something to say, boy?”

Jinx didn’t answer.

Just then, a stranger walked in, carrying a briefcase, looking decidedly out of place. Burton regained his composure and leaned on the bar. “While I’m here, Shady, I’ll have a shot of your finest. For medicinal purposes, of course.”

Shady poured him a glass and slid it across the bar.

The stranger, a young man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and bow tie, set his briefcase on the bar and asked Shady for a glass of water.

“Water?” Burton scoffed. “Why, haven’t you heard about the miracle whiskey made right here in Manifest? Drink up, son. What’s your pleasure?”

The man wiped his brow with a crisp white handkerchief. “I’ve heard, but I’m here on business, not pleasure.”

As Shady handed him a glass of water, the man looked at it as if he might check to see if the water was up to code. Then the stranger opened his briefcase and pulled out a glass vial of white powder. Under the curious stares of the men and Jinx, he poured the powder into the glass of water and watched it fizz and foam. He raised the glass to the light streaming in through the window, giving it his full attention. He pulled a small notepad from his jacket pocket and jotted down some notations, all the while looking back and forth from the pad to the glass of water.

“Where do you get your water?” he asked Shady with an air of authority.

“Who’s asking?” Shady countered with a bootlegger’s dose of suspicion.

“From the spring just fifty yards west of here, isn’t that correct?”

Now Shady was unnerved. If the stranger had already been to the spring, he’d been uncomfortably close to the whiskey barn. They had planned to take down the stills before the quarantine ended, but hadn’t got the chance.

“That’s the one.”

Burton looked at the man with great interest. “What kind of business might you be in, son?”

“Government.” The answer was curt, as if he didn’t need to explain himself to the likes of Lester Burton.

“Well, before you go poking around these parts anymore, I think we need a little more information.”

“Then perhaps you should take it up with the state board of health. Word has gotten all the way to Topeka that there’s something very interesting about this springwater.” He poured a small amount of water from the glass into the empty vial and replaced the rubber stopper. Again, he held up the vial to the light, giving it a flick with his finger. He studied the cloudy water and made another notation in his little book. “Hmm,” the stranger mused. “Very interesting.”

“What’s very interesting?” asked Burton.

“Is there a mine near here? A vein of some metal ore?”

“Yes, just a little farther west than the spring.”

“That would explain a great deal. I hear you’ve had a lot of sick folks in this region whose condition improved.”

Burton’s curiosity was piqued at the mention of the mine. “I happen to be the pit boss of that mine and I have
a right to know what’s going on. Why would the government want to know if there’s metal in the water?”