Moon Over Manifest (3 page)

The phone kept ringing. “I’ve got to get that, Shady. It’s so good to meet you, Abilene. You let me know if you need anything, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She picked up the phone. “Hello? Yes, I’m coming. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Just leave it there. I’ll clean it up when I get home.”

Shady picked up the discombobulated typewriter and we got while the getting was good. By then it was dark and Shady led the way down an alley off Main Street. We headed back toward the tracks and ended up at a weathered establishment that appeared to be a safe distance from the respectable part of town.

I’ve lived in a lot of places. Barns, abandoned railroad cars, even Hoovervilles, the shack towns for folks with no money, named for the president before the one we got now, who didn’t seem to know that the country was in hard times. So I was prepared for anything. Except Shady’s place.

A cowbell clanged above the door as we went inside. Pastor Howard lit a kerosene lamp and set it on a long bar top. There was a mirror behind it, a sawhorse in front with some wood clamped in a vise, and an abundance of sawdust all over the floor. To top it off, there were what looked to be pews shoved up against the wall, and the two windows had honest-to-goodness stained glass.

“Well, this is it,” Shady announced, as if that explained everything.

I looked around, not wanting to ask. It was like a jigsaw puzzle I had to piece together myself. Shady’s place appeared to be one part saloon, one part carpenter’s shop, and—could it be?—one part church.

I must have been staring at the windows, because Shady said, “The First Baptist Church burned down some years
back. The windows and a couple pews were salvaged. They’re being kept here temporarily, until a Second Baptist Church is built.”

“That why the pastor left?”

“Yup,” Shady answered. “I think his nerves were about shot by then.” He tried to gather up some papers and scraps of wood, as if there were traces of his mismatched life that he hadn’t wanted me to see. I looked at the floor. Footprints went every which way, probably from years of drinkers and churchgoers. I felt an ache in my heart that rose like a lump to my throat as I caught myself searching for a less busy part of the room. A small, still place where there might be one or two of my daddy’s footprints left.

Shady tossed a block of scrap wood into an empty waste can, causing a big clang that echoed. He looked at me kind of awkward, as if he knew what I’d been searching for, but couldn’t help me. “The outhouse is … well … outside. And there’s some cold cuts in the icebox. Would you like me to heat up some water so you can take a proper bath?”

“No thank you. I’m just kind of tired.”

“Your room’s upstairs. I hope you like it,” he said with a quiet politeness.

I wondered about Shady’s jigsaw life, but decided not to pry. Not yet, anyway. My daddy, Gideon, had a healthy distrust of most people but he trusted Shady. And so did I. “Good night,” I said, and climbed the stairs with my satchel.

There was a kerosene lamp on the nightstand but no matches. With the full moon beaming through the open window, it didn’t matter. There was a dresser with a pitcher of water and a bowl. Usually a wash required a trip to a nearby
stream or watering trough, so I felt like royalty to be able to pour myself some water and wash the dust from my face and hands. I kicked off my shoes and felt the cool floorboards shift and groan beneath my feet as if the room was adjusting to sudden occupation after being long empty. Yawning at least three times, I put on my pajamas and slipped into bed. It was cozy and soft. I flapped the sheet up and down, letting it fall gently on me like a cloud.

I was drifting off to sleep when I remembered my keepsake bag. Having already come too close to losing something that day, I decided to do what my daddy always did. Anything special and important, he’d hide in an out-of-the-way place that nobody’d find.

In a sleepy scramble I fished the flour sack, my keepsake bag, out of my satchel and checked the contents. It was too dark to read the return address on the letter, but I had it memorized. Santa Fe Railroad Office, Fourth and Main, Des Moines, Iowa. It was the closest thing Gideon had to a place of residence. I rattled the two dimes, making sure they were still there. Finally, I took out the compass box. It was empty except for “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary,” as the compass still hung from my neck. Deciding to keep the compass on me, I put everything else back into the sack.

Now where to put it? It was usually best to find a place that was either high or low. Since I couldn’t reach too high, I decided to look low. Putting my feet back on the floor, I again felt the floorboards creak and bow. Maybe one was loose enough to pull up. I took tentative steps around the room until I felt one that had a little more bounce than the others. I knelt on the floor, and with a fairly easy push and pull, the floorboard popped up enough for me to get my
fingers under it and pull it up. It would have been the perfect hiding spot but for one thing. There was already something there.

I pulled the something out, slow and gentle, and held it up to the moonlight. It was a Lucky Bill cigar box and inside were papers and odds and ends. There wasn’t light for reading, but I could tell that the papers were letters, thin and folded neat. One bigger page looked like a map. The odds and ends clanked inside the box.

“You find what you need?” Shady called from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes, sir.” I slipped the papers into the cigar box and shoved it back into the floor space. My flour sack keepsake bag fit snugly beside it. Then I replaced the floorboard and crawled into bed.

“Good night, then.”

I didn’t answer right away but I could tell he was still standing there. “Pastor Shady? How far do you think it is to Des Moines?”

There was a pause and I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong and he’d walked away.

“I can’t say for sure. But you see that moon out your window?”

“Yes, sir. Plain as day.”

“Well, Des Moines is a lot closer than that moon. Fact is, I bet a fella in Des Moines can see the same moon you’re looking at right now. Doesn’t that just beat all?” His voice was shy and tender. “I’ll be right down here if you need anything. Will that be all right?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. That’ll be all right.”

The pillow was cool against my cheek. It felt good giving
in to sleep. Still, I brought to mind what I’d seen: the cigar box, the letters. Since Gideon had stayed with Shady, maybe this had been his room. Maybe I’d found Gideon’s footprints after all.

The breeze died down. But in the calm of the night, my body still felt the movement of the train.

W
hat kind of addlepate starts school on the last day?
I’d been asking myself that question since waking to the sound of pans clanking downstairs and the smell of bacon and coffee rising upstairs. My stomach growled, reminding me that Hattie Mae’s meat loaf sandwich had become a too-distant memory.

Then I remembered the Lucky Bill cigar box. With a buzz of anticipation, I sprung out of bed and found the loose board, only to have Shady call upstairs.

“Miss Abilene, you’re burnin’ daylight. Breakfast is ready.”

As much as I was itching to get more than a moonlit look at what was in the box, I knew better than to keep a cook waiting. I left the box under the floorboard for safekeeping and checked to make sure the compass was still around my neck. I put on my one change of clothes, a blue dress with
yellow daisies. The daisies were a little faded but not so bad you couldn’t see them. Then I splashed some water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair. It felt like straw but was the color of a rusty nail. Wearing it short, I never fussed with it much, but I did look forward to that “proper bath” Shady had mentioned the night before.

The stairs emptied into a small back room. More of a porch, really, with a black cookstove, a washtub, and a cot. It appeared Shady could do his eating, bathing, and sleeping all in one place. There was a plate of biscuits, slightly burnt, and bacon, just as warm and pleasant as you please, on the cookstove. Having someone cook my meals made me feel like I was at a fancy hotel.

“There’s some of Velma T.’s blackberry jam in the cupboard,” Shady called from the big room with the bar top and pews. I spread on a modest amount and set it on a pink glass plate, the kind that came free in bags of sugar or flour or laundry soap.

Since there was no table, I took my pink plate into the big front room. With the light of day shining through those stained-glass windows onto the gleaming bar top, I didn’t know whether to kneel down or belly up. Shady was tinkering at his workbench as I ate my breakfast. He was looking real close at a tiny something, cleaning it off with a wire bristle brush. “What’re you working on?”

“The letter
L
,” he said, squinting at his task at hand. “Hattie Mae’s been writing her column for almost twenty years; it’s no wonder that typewriter’s about give out.” He blew on the metal key and eyeballed it from a distance. Wiping off the piece with a cloth, he placed it beside the typewriter.
“Now she can get back to her whos, whats, and wheres and I can get the
L
out of here.”

Gideon hadn’t told me that Pastor Howard had a sense of humor. Seemed nobody had told Pastor Howard either, as he didn’t let on like he thought it was funny.

I finished off the last of my biscuit. It was hard going down, as my mouth had gone dry. Maybe if I made myself useful, I wouldn’t have to go to school. I’d been in and out of schools before, but I’d always been in the protective shade of my daddy. Here I was alone and exposed to the heat and clamor of the day.

A bell started clanging from a distance, jarring me out of my thoughts.

“Better get on over to school. You don’t want to be late.” He studied the splayed-out typewriter in front of him. “Here’s a couple things for you to mind while you’re there.” He handed me the letters
P
and
Q
.

I studied them. “If I took these, it’d sure leave Hattie Mae in a pickle and a quandary and she wouldn’t be able to type either one.”

Shady smiled a half smile. As I put the letters back on the table, I noticed that day’s newspaper lying off to the side. It was folded open to “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary.” I picked it up and read the line at the bottom.
All the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres you never knew you needed to know
.

I headed out, giving the cowbell above the door a mournful clang as I left.

Y
ou’d have thought I’d be used to this by now. Being the new kid and all. I’d been through this umpteen times before but it never gets any easier. Still, there’s certain things every school’s got, same as any other. Universals, I call them. Walking into the schoolhouse, I smelled the familiar chalky air. Heard fidgety feet rustling under desks. Felt the stares. I took a seat near the back.

My one consolation was that I knew these kids. Even if they didn’t know me. Kids are universals too, in a way. Every school has the ones who think they’re a little better than everybody else and the ones who are a little poorer than everybody else. And somewhere in the mix there’s usually ones who are pretty decent. Those were the ones who made it hard to leave when the time came. And sooner or later, it always came.

I guessed I’d never find out who was who around there,
it being the last day of school and all. The books were already stacked on shelves for the summer. The blackboard was just that: black. No math problems. No spelling words. Then a girl with a rosy round face spoke up.

“I bet you’re an orphan.”

“Soletta Taylor!” a skinny, red-haired girl scolded. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“She came in on the train without a mama or a daddy, didn’t she? It was all the talk at the five-and-dime.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be listening to ‘all the talk.’ Besides, that doesn’t mean she’s an orphan.” The girl twisted one of her red braids and looked at me. “Does it?”

My face was hot and probably red, but I squared my shoulders. “My mother’s gone to that sweet by and by.” I said it loud enough for everybody to hear, since they were all ear cocked anyway. Some gave kind of sympathetic looks for my loss. I didn’t figure it was a lie, since who knew for certain what the sweet by and by was? Most folks seemed to think it meant she had died and gone to a better place. But in my book it just meant she had decided that being a wife and mother wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and when I was two, she joined a dance troupe in New Orleans. But since I had no memory of my mother, it was hard to miss her.

“But,” I continued, answering their next question before they could ask it, “I got a daddy.” I’d often been asked about my mother, but until now, I’d never had to explain the whereabouts of Gideon. It wasn’t fair, him putting me in this predicament. “He’s working a railroad job back in Iowa. He says it’s not fit living for a girl my age, so I’m here for the summer.” I didn’t say that the railroad had been fit living for
me pretty near my whole life and I didn’t see why this summer was any different. “But he’s coming back for me the end of the summer.” For some reason my words rang a little hollow. I wasn’t sure if it was the look Hattie Mae and Shady had exchanged the day before or the look of pity on some of those kids’ faces just then. Maybe they knew of someone else who got left for good, but Gideon
was
coming back for me and I’d have a few choice words for him when he arrived.

“See, Lettie? I told you she’s not an orphan,” said the red-haired girl. I figured Lettie must be short for Soletta.

“They’re cousins,” said a freckle-faced boy in overalls, as if that explained everything. “Your daddy ever seen anyone get flattened by a train?”

“Now what kind of question is that?” It was Lettie who said it. “Come on, Ruthanne, you jumped on me for asking a dumb question. What about Billy’s?”

“It ain’t a dumb question,” Billy said. “My granddad used to work at the depot and he tells a story about how a fella got hit by a train in Kansas City and, dead as he was, he stayed on that engine car all the way to the Manifest depot. Nobody wanted to peel him off and since he had a round-trip ticket, they left him there all the way back to Kansas City.”