Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

CAMP FUNSTON, KANSAS

FEBRUARY 10, 1918

Dear Jinx ,

I am settled in here at Camp Funston at almost 2100 hours. (That’s military jargon for nine p.m.) It’ll be lights-out pretty soon. It seems early for that, but reveille sneaks up faster than Pop’s wake-up call of scorched eggs and charred bacon. Sarge says we’ll be here a few weeks before shipping out, so that doesn’t leave us much time for training. Most fellows here are in pretty good shape from football, basketball, or track and we’re raring to go .

Hope you’re not still mad at me for leaving. After all, I couldn’t have done it without you. Without the money from the fireworks sale, I could never have convinced the recruitment officer to sign me up underage. So I owe you, buddy .

Don’t know if I’m supposed to say where we’re going but I’ll have to parley vous a little on my vichy swaz, if you know what I mean. Looks like this Manifest boy is going to shake the coal dust from his shoes and see the world .

Got our uniforms already. Went into town with Heck and Holler to get our pictures made. The man behind the camera was confounded by their outlandish names. Said their mama and daddy must have drunk too much hooch before naming those boys. Don’t tell that to Judge and Mrs. Carlson. A house that dry is liable to go up in flames. I’m sending a big photograph to Pop for the mantel, but here’s one for you. Think I’ll be able to kill a few Huns with my charm and dashing good looks?

How are things coming in your search for the Rattler? At least now there’s one person you can eliminate as a suspect . Moi. (Another clue to my destination.)

Oh, river (that’s how Heck says au revoir) ,

Ned

Under the Stars

JUNE 12, 1936

I’d told and retold Miss Sadie’s last story and what I’d learned from Hattie Mae’s news auxiliary to Lettie and Ruthanne. I’d told them all about the Manchurian Fire Thrower, the untimely demise of Junior Haskell, the explosion at the water tower, and the unfortunate dousing of the victory quilt. I tried to remember every detail, even down to the Hungarian woman’s not being allowed to contribute a quilt square. But there were still things that needed pondering.

“So the Hungarian woman was Miss Sadie!” Lettie’s words broke the stillness of the dark woods. “So why does she call herself the Hungarian woman? Why doesn’t she just say ‘me’ or call herself Miss Sadie?”

“When she tells the stories, she’s sort of removed from them. She’s the storyteller.”

“Okay,” Ruthanne said, “but how does she know certain things that happened when she wasn’t there to see for herself?”

“I wondered about that too,” I answered. “But remember the Hungarian olives? Jinx had ducked into her tent at the fairgrounds and later he was doing fence work for her. That must be how she knows some of the things she knows. He had to have told her.”

“Well, she’s got to have some kind of hoodoo. After all, the curse on Mrs. Larkin and the quilt worked!” Lettie said.

Lettie still got excited even though she and Ruthanne had made me tell them the story umpteen times in the past week. And we’d all read Ned’s letters so many times we practically knew them by heart. It was always interesting when Miss Sadie’s stories overlapped with something in Ned’s letters.

Lettie marveled at various parts of the story as Ruthanne and I walked alongside, our feet crunching through twigs and leaves in the moonlight. I was on another one of Miss Sadie’s nature errands. She’d had me do all manner of divining , as she called it. Things like venturing out at dusk to collect blue moss from under a fallen sycamore tree, and getting up at sunrise to gather a handful of dandelions before the morning dew burned off. The tasks were always unusual and she’d mash whatever I’d brought back into a paste or a powder. To what end, I didn’t know. But that night was a bit more mysterious, as I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. Miss Sadie said a good diviner needed to watch, and listen, and wait.

“What do you think the curse was?” Lettie continued. “I mean, what curse causes a water tower to explode?”

Truth was I’d been afraid to ask Miss Sadie about the curse she’d placed on Mrs. Larkin. The words seemed so ancient and full of bad omen I didn’t want her saying them in English and accidentally directing them toward me.

“And I still don’t understand why Shady was bidding against Jinx for the quilt,” Lettie said.

Ruthanne rolled her eyes. “How you ever got a better grade than me in math, I’ll never know. Now listen and I’ll explain it again.” Ruthanne always spoke about the stories as if she had witnessed the events herself. “At the auction nobody wanted the quilt, because it got wet and the president’s signature was all smudged, right?”

“Right,” Lettie said, concentrating.

“But Shady knew that Jinx had made a bundle of money selling his homemade fireworks.”

“Right. His share was twenty-five dollars and seventy-five cents.”

“Right. Since it was Jinx’s fireworks that caused the water tower to burst all over the place, Shady wanted him to make restitution and made him buy it. Jinx probably started with a lowball bid, so Shady kept bidding against him until the quilt finally sold to Jinx for twenty-five dollars—”

“And seventy-five cents!” Lettie’s eyes lit up. “The same amount he’d made off the fireworks.”

“Yes,” Ruthanne said with a sigh. “But it was probably Miss Sadie’s curse that doomed the quilt in the first place, don’t you think, Abilene?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “She must be a witch. Even Mrs. Larkin called her a sorceress. A caster of spells.”

“Then why does she call herself a diviner?” I asked. “How come her sign doesn’t say, ‘Miss Sadie: Sorceress and Caster of Spells’?”

“Because people in her line of work like to be mysterious. Just like whatever it is we’re traipsing through the woods for in the dark right now. There’s a mystery.” Ruthanne looked at me for an explanation.

“Miss Sadie gave me this bucket and told me to find a young cottonwood tree in the moonlight.”

“But what’s the bucket for?”

“She said to just keep my eyes open.”

“What kind of crazy instructions are those?” Ruthanne grumbled.

“It is kind of adventurous, though,” said Lettie. “It’s like that song ‘Riding the Rails in the Moonlit Night.’ ” Unbidden, Lettie broke into song.

“ I lit out on a dark and dreary night, life had dealt me a heavy blow .

First my boss gave me the knee, then it up and rained on me ,

And I had no earthly place to go .

Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee. ”

“For the love of Pete, Lettie, if you don’t sing something a little more cheerful, Abilene and me are going to throw you on a train and not wave goodbye.”

“Don’t worry. It gets better,” Lettie said reassuringly.

“ My soul and my shoes were all wore through, no money or job in sight ,

But once I hit the tracks, my burdens at my back ,

I hopped that train in the pale moonlight. ”

I couldn’t help but join in.

“ Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee. ”

We reached a clearing at the creek bed and studied the rocky, parched ground, and I imagined a time when this had been a lively stream that one could wade in for a swim. “There’s cottonwoods all along here,” Ruthanne said.

I touched the rough, heavy bark. “They look too old. She said a young cottonwood.”