Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

Jump on, jump on, jump on , the boxcars taunted. I reached out my hand. Reaching for the only home I’d known—tracks and trains. Reaching for Gideon. Then the sound died down and the train moved on. I stood mourning the silence. I’d missed my chance.

And then Shady was there. He placed a steady hand on my shoulder, and together we watched the caboose disappear around the bend.

Shady handed me two bags of flour to carry while he toted two bags of coffee. We walked in silence for a time; then he said, “Kind of like a hot-air balloon.”

I looked at him, puzzled. He shook the bags hanging at his sides.

“Ballast. Like the sandbags that hang off the basket of a hot-air balloon to keep it weighted and steady. I rode in one a long time ago. Fella was giving rides for fifteen cents. Going up it felt so light and thrilling-like. You could see everywhere in the world a person might want to go. But after a time, a body just wants to be back in a place where it belongs.” He shook the bags hanging at his side. “Ballast.”

His eyes were red again, his face unshaven. He’d been out all night. I’d heard a harmonica playing again the night before and wondered if that was the sound that lured him out. Like the ocean sirens Gideon told me about. They were kind of like mermaids, and their song lured seamen to crash their ships into the rocks. I didn’t think poorly of Shady. I’d seen my share of folks who looked to a bottle of whiskey for whatever they’d lost. I believe Gideon himself might have looked there if he hadn’t been trying to raise a daughter on the road.

We stopped near Miss Sadie’s place and Shady took my bags. “Will I see you tonight for supper?” he asked, seeming to acknowledge that I could still take off if I pleased.

I wanted to ask him a hundred questions. Why had Gideon closed himself to me? Why had he sent me away, and when would he come back? I wanted to tell Shady I had an old cork of his on my windowsill. A cork that had become special because it was part of a story. And I knew that story wasn’t finished. But I also knew that Shady wasn’t the one to tell me the rest of it.

“Depends,” I said. “What’s for supper?”

“Oh, I’m fixing something special.”

“Let me guess. Beans and corn bread.”

“You peeked at my menu,” he said, pretending to be hurt, even though it didn’t take a diviner to figure that out.

“I’ll be there. It sounds better than what I’ve got.” I showed him my sack of skeleton weed, spiderwort, and toadflax. “Now, can you point me in the direction of some prickly poppy?”

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

JUNE 17, 1936

Late that afternoon I returned to Miss Sadie’s place in a mood. Having crawled through a bramble bush for the prickly poppy, I was feeling a bit prickly myself just then. Why Miss Sadie had call to send me all over God’s creation to dig up plants never intended for human use, I can’t say. Her Divining Highness was not in sight when I arrived, so I busied myself with trying to find a pot or a vase to put the flowers in. There was nothing on the back porch but a metal watering can and piles of dried-up leaves that had been pushed into a corner.

The gardening shed looked to be the likely place for a pot, but it was locked. I peeked through the dirty windows, trying to make out what was inside, when—

“Get away from there!” Miss Sadie hobbled from the side of the house. “There’s nothing in there that you need,” she said, breathing heavy from the effort.

I held up my flour sack full of plants. “I got most of the ones you asked for. I was just looking for a planting pot.” I noticed the wound on her leg. It was worse, all red and festering. “I can lance that for you. To let out the infection.”

Miss Sadie settled herself in her metal rocking chair and her breathing slowed as if a crisis had passed. “No.”

I didn’t know what she was waiting for, but it was her leg.

“Let me see.” Her breathing was still heavy as she motioned toward the plants in my hand. She ran her fingertips all over them, feeling the stems, leaves, petals, smelling them like a blind person wanting to know what she could not see.

“Aren’t those the ones you wanted?” I asked.

“They are. But they do not tell me what I wish to know.” She gazed up into the cloudless sky. “The earth, it holds back secrets it is not yet willing to part with.”

Then, as if she’d seen enough, she started taking the plants apart, expertly sorting leaves from stems from seeds, creating small piles of each in her lap.

“I went all over tarnation to get those and all you wanted were some dead flowers?”

“They are only dead to what they once were. Now they become something else. Go.” Without looking up, she motioned to the dry ground of the garden. “Back to work.”

I looked at the rows of tilled-up soil splayed out like open wounds and did as I was told. My already blistered hands and scraped knees rebelled as the dust took over me like a swarm of bees. I went to the far end of the yard so I could grumble to myself without being heard. “ The earth, it holds back secrets it is not willing to part with, ” I mimicked. “What a bunch of hooey,” I said under my breath, tossing a dirt clod over my shoulder against the locked-up garden shed. I studied the little outpost, and feeling the diviner’s eyes on me, I came to the only reasonable conclusion. Miss Sadie was holding back a few secrets of her own.

As the afternoon wore on, I began feeling like the miners from years ago, covered in grime. Tasting the dirt in my mouth, I imagined it to be the soot of the mines. Had their families recognized them when they’d emerged from their desolate work? Would anyone recognize me? Would anyone care? I was enjoying my pitiful thoughts. What if I died right there in that dirt? Would anyone notice?

“Death is like an explosion,” Miss Sadie said, her accent thick, like the humid air that hovered heavy around me. “It makes people take notice of things they might have overlooked.”

I sat back on my haunches, annoyed that my sorrowful thoughts had been not only interrupted but seemingly overheard. What was Miss Sadie talking about this time? Whose death?

“This is the way with the Widow Cane. Her death causes people to notice things they have overlooked,” she continued.

My mind had to work backward. I recalled the name. The abandoned mine shaft where Ned and Jinx had made their fireworks—it had been on the Widow Cane’s property near the mine. I tried to shut out the story I knew was coming, but Miss Sadie’s words pulled at me. It was like being drawn out of the dark mine, only to emerge squinting into the bright light of day. I preferred to stay lost in the darkness of my dismal thoughts.

Unbidden, Miss Sadie went on. “Mr. Devlin and his mine people have a sudden interest in that little stretch of land near the edge of the woods that before had only been a pleasant spring and a shady place to sit between Manifest and the mine.”

I could hear it coming like a freight train and there was no stopping it. I kept my back to her.

“Lester Burton, he goes back and forth across that stretch of land. He observes it from this way and that. They even call a new geologist to make a report. The townspeople keep a watchful eye, but ask questions only among themselves.”

Keep talking. I’m not listening .

“Before long Mr. Devlin himself pays a visit to the public land office to inquire about purchasing the land now that the Widow Cane is dead. This is his mistake. Mrs. Larkin’s neighbor works in that office. Mr. Devlin, he barely leaves his seat before half the town knows he wants to buy this land.”