Moon Over Manifest (2 page)

F
irst things first after jumping from a train: you needed to check and make sure you still had what you jumped with. That was always easy for me, because I never had much. Gideon said all you needed was your traveling pack and a good head on your shoulders. I had both, so I figured I was in good shape.

Heading for a grove of trees that looked half alive, I found a creek. It was only a trickle but it felt cool and clean on my face and hands. Now I could face the preacher I was to stay with for the summer. How my daddy ever got hooked up with a preacher, I can’t say, as he’s not a churchgoing man. Apparently the preacher had taken in a wandering soul now and again, and Gideon had been one of them. In any case, Pastor Howard was expecting me and no amount of dillydallying would change that fact.

I hunted up a good fence-running stick and rattled it along the first fence I came to. Gideon and I found that sounds filled up an empty quiet. When I was younger, we spent many a walking hour singing, making up rhymes, playing kick the can. Now the sound of stick on fence carried off into the trees, but it didn’t fill the emptiness. For the first time I could recall, I was alone. Maybe I’d try the rhyming. Gideon would start with a line and I’d come up with another that rhymed. The clatter of the stick provided a nice rhythm for the rhyme running in my head.
I wish I had a penny and I wish I had a nickel. I’d trade ’em both in for a coffee and a pickle. I wish I had a quarter and I wish I had a dime. I’d buy a stick of gum before you could tell the time. I wish I had an apple and I wish I had an orange—

I realized I’d rhymed myself into a corner with
orange
when my stick came to a gate. A wide wrought iron gate that had every manner of doodads welded right into it. Forks, kettles, horseshoes, even the grate off an old potbelly stove. Looking closer, I ran my fingers over the black iron letters sitting along the top of the gate. The letters were kind of crooked and a little uneven but they looked to read
PERDITION
. Now, Gideon and I had been to enough church services, hoping to get a hot meal afterward, that I’d heard the word a time or ten. Preachers used it. They told people to give up their evil ways or follow the devil straight down the path to perdition.

Why somebody would want that word welded on their gate, I can’t say. But there it was. And weeds wrapped their way up through the ironwork, daring you to enter. And there was an actual path. Beyond the gate, leaves and dandelions
lined a long grassless swatch of ground all the way to a dilapidated old house. The paint was worn off and the porch swing hung crooked, like it was plumb out of swing.

Surely no one lived there. A train car or a shantytown by the railroad tracks seemed a more welcoming place. But one of the front curtains fluttered. Was someone watching? My heart beat like a bat’s wings. For the time being, I was content to stay off that Path to Perdition. The town wasn’t far ahead, so I put my stick to the fence and continued walking.

This time I did my rhyme in a quiet voice. “
I had a little cat and it had a little kitten. I’d put it in my lap wherever I’d be sittin’.
”

There was a break in the fence but another started up again around a cemetery. Gravestones stood in the wispy grass, seeming to watch me go by. The hair at the back of my neck prickled as the ground crunched behind me. I stopped and looked back. There was nothing but blowing leaves. I moved on, clattering my stick as the trees grew thick around me. “
I had a little dog and his name was Mike. I always let him sit wherever he’d like.
” The branches clawed at me and I stumbled on a tree root, landing hard on my knee. It was the knee that had gotten cut a couple of months back. It had scarred over, but the stretched skin felt like it was still working at keeping things together. I massaged it a little and brushed the dirt off.

There it was again. Maybe not a sound, but a movement. I held my breath, listening to the quiet, then continued toward lights at the edge of the trees. “
I once had a horse and his name was Fred. He ran all day, then—
”

Another loud crunch behind me, then a man’s voice.

“He dropped dead.”

I
swung around in the dimming light. A man stood holding a pitchfork as tall as he was and only slightly thinner. Everything about the man was thin. His clothes, his hair. Even his scruffy whiskers were sparse on his face.

“Is this yours?” he asked.

At first I thought he meant the pitchfork. Then I saw the compass dangling from his fingers. I checked my satchel in a panic. The outside pocket had torn open when I’d fallen.

“I’m Shady Howard. You must be Gideon’s girl.” I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. He handed me the gold compass. I hung it around my neck and tucked it into my shirt. “When you didn’t get off the train, I thought you might be making your own way into town.”

He said it like he had jumped from a train or two himself. With his worn plaid shirt and brown pants that had been stitched and patched, he looked the part.

“Are you related to Pastor Howard? The preacher at the First Baptist Church?”

“There’s folks that call me Pastor Howard. But you can call me Shady.”

I kept my distance, not knowing exactly what he meant. “Do they call you that because you
are
the preacher at the First Baptist Church?”

“Well, that’s a kind of interesting story.” He started walking, using his pitchfork as a walking stick. “You see, I’m what’s called an interim pastor. Meaning the old one left and I’m just filling in till they can get a new one.”

“How long you been filling in?” I asked, thinking maybe he hadn’t had time to order his preacher clothes yet. Or shave.

“Fourteen years.”

“Oh.” I worked to put on some manners. “So you weren’t in the church business when my daddy was here?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Well, I’m Abilene. I’m twelve years old and a hard worker,” I said, like I had a hundred other times in as many towns. “So, I guess you got the letter my daddy sent telling y’all I was coming.”

Mind you, I don’t really say
y’all
, but it’s usually best to try to sound a bit like the folks whose town you’re moving into. Never being in Kansas before, I wouldn’t know for sure, but I imagined they said things like
y’all
and
up the road a piece
and
weather’s coming on
.

“Are you hungry?” Shady asked. “My place is just up the road a piece.”

There it was. Funny how people who know exactly where they are can talk so much about directions. I guess those who
don’t, just keep moving straight ahead. You don’t need much direction for that.

“No, sir.” I’d had only a hard-boiled egg on the train, but I was here under his hospitality and I didn’t feel right asking for food so soon.

“We’ll just head into town, then, as I need to pick up a letter.”

There would still be daylight enough to take a look around town. As we began to walk, Gideon’s stories came back to me in flashes, like views between the trees from a train window. People bustling in and out of colorful storefronts with bright awnings over the windows. Unusual-sounding names painted on the doors.
MATENOPOULOS MEAT. SANTONI’S BAKERY. AKKERSON FEED & SEED
.

Walking in step with Shady, I tried to conjure up something smooth and sweet from those stories, but looking around, all I could muster was dry and stale. Up and down Main Street, the stores were dingy. Gray. Every third one was boarded up. The only awnings left were torn and saggy. There wasn’t an ounce of bustling to be had. Just a few tired souls holding up a doorway here and there.

But then, hard times are a penny for plenty. They call it a Depression, but I’d say it’s a downright rut and the whole country’s in it.

There was a big gingerbread-like house sorely lacking in paint. A proper-looking lady sat quietly in a rocking chair on the porch, not having the life in her to rock. The barber, leaning against his shop door, stared as I passed. A lady in the grocery store fanned herself as a little dog yapped through the screen door. From some of the glares I got walking up the board sidewalk, I figured these folks would rather suffer
through hard times on their own than have a stranger come in to witness their misery.

We didn’t slow down at the post office. “I thought we were picking up the mail.”

“Not mail. A letter. From Hattie Mae at the newspaper.”

“Hattie Mae Harper? Huckleberry Queen of 1917?”

“She’s Hattie Mae Macke now, but that’s her.”

At least there was something familiar in this town. I wondered if Hattie Mae had kept up her “News Auxiliary.”

The
Manifest Herald
newspaper office was about centered on Main Street and we walked into a holy mess. Newspapers were stacked two and three feet tall. A typewriter sat on a cluttered desk, its keys splayed open with some scattered on the desk like it tried to spell
explosion
and the explosion happened.

“Shady? That you?” a woman’s voice hollered from the back. “I’m just getting ready to close up. Thanks so much for coming by to pick up—”

A large woman came out from the back room, her hair in a frazzled bun. She caught sight of me and her hands went to her face. “Well, aren’t you a little darling? You must be Abilene.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My, but you do look like your daddy.” She pressed me to her warm bosom and I felt her catch her breath. When I looked up at her again, her eyes were wet. “Would you like a soda pop? Of course you would. You go right on back and get yourself a nice cold bottle. We’ve got Coca-Cola and Orange Crush. Take your pick. And there’s a couple of sandwiches in there. One’s cheese and one’s meat loaf. You help yourself, now, and don’t tell me you’re not hungry.”

“Okay,” I said. I started to make my way through the maze of newspapers. Those sandwiches sounded good.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess. Uncle Henry insists on saving all these old papers but my husband, Fred, is finally going to build a storage shed out back, so I’m trying to get them organized.”

“I’ve had your very first ‘News Auxiliary’ my whole life,” I blurted out.

“Oh, my heavens. How’d you get ahold of that piece of antiquity?” She laughed and her body jiggled.

“Have you been writing that column all this time?”

“You mean all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres? Yes, I suppose I have. And thanks to the Depression, I’ve also been promoted to copy editor, typesetter, and coffee maker extraordinaire.” She laughed. “Say, if you find yourself with any spare time, you could come and help me if you’d like. As you can see, there are plenty of old newspapers that need to get put in order. If you like reading ancient history, you might find it kind of interesting.”

I nodded, thinking that I
would
find that interesting.

“Now go get your pop and a sandwich, sweet pea. And help yourself to whatever newspapers you want. Uncle Henry won’t mind giving them away to someone who actually wants to read them. And that’ll be all the fewer I’ll need to sort through later.”

I found the pop chest easy enough and picked out an Orange Crush and the meat loaf sandwich. There was a built-in opener right on the side of the chest. Shady and Hattie Mae were talking about how hot it had been and how there wasn’t even a hint of rain. I gobbled down half the sandwich and let my hand run over one stack of newspapers after
another. I felt like I was floating in a cloud that was passing from one year to another in no particular order. 1929—
STOCK MARKET CRASHES
. 1927—
BABE RUTH HITS 60 HOME RUNS IN ONE SEASON
. 1927—
CHARLES LINDBERGH FLIES SOLO ACROSS ATLANTIC IN
33½
HOURS
.

Then a particular year caught my eye. 1917—
BONE DRY BILL MAKES ALCOHOL ILLEGAL IN KANSAS
. That was the same year as Hattie Mae’s first “News Auxiliary.” That was when Gideon had been in Manifest. My heart picked up speed. I didn’t really expect to find Gideon’s name in the headlines, or anywhere else in the paper, for that matter. But I might come to know this town a little better through the articles and stories. This town where he had spent time as a boy. This town where he’d chosen to send me.

“You find yourself a soda pop, sweet pea?” Hattie Mae called. “Do I need to come and rescue you from that bottomless pit of newspapers?”

“Coming,” I called. “You sure it’s okay if I take a couple papers? Something to read while I’m here?”

“Go right ahead.”

I thumbed through a stack of papers and chose the only two I found from 1917. July 16 and October 11. I tucked the papers into my satchel and went back to the front room.

Hattie Mae was talking in a hushed voice to Shady. Her face looked a little drawn and worried as she whispered, “Shady, she needs to know—” but she perked up when she saw me.

“Just listen to me, yammering on. You’ve had a long day, sweet pea, and you need to get refreshed for the last day of school tomorrow.”

That must’ve been what I needed to know.

“School?” I sputtered on my last swallow of orange pop. “But it’s summertime.” I looked pleadingly at Shady. “Don’t folks around here have to be bringing in the sheaves or something?” He gave me an apologetic look, as if he thought the same.

“We just figured you might like to meet some of the kids before they scatter to the four winds for the summer,” Hattie Mae said.

I wondered who “we” was and how many of them I was up against. “But my daddy will be coming to get me before school starts up again,” I said.

Then I saw Hattie Mae and Shady glance at each other kind of uneasy. They exchanged a look that made me feel a little wobbly and off balance, like I was standing in a train that took an unexpected curve. But I was probably just tired from my travel.

Hattie Mae put her arm around me. “Now, don’t you worry. You’ll be just fine.” As she squeezed me tight, the phone rang. “That’ll be Fred. His sciatica is acting up and he’s home with the boys. You know how men are. When they don’t feel good, the world comes to a standstill. Here’s the letter that needs fixing.” She handed Shady a key from the typewriter. “The
R
won’t type at all, and the
L
keeps getting stuck. You can take the whole thing if you want. I’ve got tomorrow’s column done, so I won’t be needing it for the time being.”