Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

Louver Thompson

“Uncle Louver?” Lettie said, sounding shocked. And proud.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in sugar,” Ruthanne breathed. We all stared as if we had discovered some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. “He graduated high school years before even our mothers. This must’ve been here over twenty years.”

“I can’t believe it’s still here,” I said. “It’s only in pencil. Somebody could’ve erased it long ago.”

“What kid would want to erase fine poetry like that?” Lettie smiled. “You’d be considered the lucky one to have this desk.”

“Let’s see if there’s any more that have writing,” I said, moving to the next desk over. “Here’s one. It’s unsigned.

“ My mind wanders, my attention drifts—

Outside it looks like heaven

Till Mr. Epson calls on me and says,

‘Do problems one through seven.’ ”

Ruthanne read another.

“ I hear an explosion. What could it be?

It’s chemistry class, with Miss Velma T.

Frankie Santoni .”

Then, suddenly, Lettie screamed from the desk in the far back corner. “Here it is! ‘Ode to the Rattler by Stucky Cybulskis.’ ”

Ruthanne and I hurdled chairs to reach the back. We looked at Lettie in anticipation, but she said, “Ruthanne, I think you should get to read it. After all, it was your idea to look.”

“Okay.” Ruthanne grinned and raised an eyebrow. “But don’t blame me if it’s scary. ‘Ode to the Rattler,’ ” she began, making her voice sound spooky like Count Dracula.

“He roams through the woods, prowling the night,

Rattling to wake the dead.

The dogs sniff and bark, chasing this ghost,

But only come back well fed.

What is he up to? Where does he go?

Is he a skeleton clattering alone?

The Rattler is watching, he knows who you are,

Maybe he’ll throw you a bone!”

Ruthanne did such a fine rendition that we were pleasantly spooked—until we heard a clattering noise in the hallway. After several seconds of us pointing to each other, determining who should look out the window of the door, it seemed that with Lettie and Ruthanne both pointing to me, I was the chosen one.

Without a word, Lettie got down on her hands and knees next to the door and I stepped up on her back. I saw a man in sweat-stained clothes. A cigar hung from his mouth. He dunked a large scrub brush into a bucket of water and commenced halfheartedly scrubbing the floor.

Lettie fidgeted a little under my weight. “What do you see?” she grunted.

“It’s the janitor.”

“The janitor?” Ruthanne smacked her hand against her forehead. “Oh, Lord, mean Mr. Foster.”

“He’s scrubbing the hallway. And from the looks of the tin canister next to him, I think he’s fixing to do some waxing.”

“That man barely lifts a finger all year long and he picks now to wax floors?”

Lettie shifted again and I bumped up against the door. The noise startled Mr. Foster and he dropped his cigar right into the soapy water. He let fly with a string of curses that would make a sailor blush, and stomped down the hallway and out of sight.

“He left!” I said, jumping down from Lettie’s back. “I think he’s just going to get another cigar. If we hurry, we can sneak back out the same way we came in.”

The three of us scampered out of the classroom and back to the open closet window. Ruthanne and I gave Lettie a boost up. Then I laced my fingers together to give Ruthanne a foothold. She looked at me. “Wait a minute. He’s got the bucket. If you give me a leg up, how will you get out?”

I confessed I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’ll find an open door.”

“But—”

“Hurry up, or he’ll come back and I’ll be stuck in here. I’ll be fine,” I assured her.

“Okay. We’ll meet you in the alley behind the schoolyard.”

She wiggled out the window and was gone.

I chanced a look into the hallway. He still wasn’t there. But as soon as I ventured into the open, his swear words announced his return. The closest place to go was back into the senior classroom. I ducked in and leaned my back against the chalkboard with my heart pounding and sweat trickling down my neck.

By then the shadows in the classroom had grown long. My breathing seemed so loud I was sure Mr. Foster could hear me through the classroom wall. It was the same feeling I had when getting ready to jump from a train. Only this train wasn’t slowing down.

I could hear the sound of the janitor’s lackadaisical scrubbing against the wooden floor. It looked like I might be stuck there for a while. As I slowly inched along the wall and away from the door, my hand brushed across the pages of the still open dictionary. It was open to the H s.

This was the only dictionary I’d seen since coming to Manifest, and I remembered Sister Redempta’s instructions. “Manifest,” she’d said, “look it up.” I thumbed through the pages. Hobble, hobby, hobnail. What’s a hobnail? I wondered. I flipped ahead to the M s. Magi, magpie, manicure … manifest .

I listened to make sure I could hear scrubbing in the hall. Mr. Foster was still at it.

Manifest—noun. A list of passengers on a ship .

That was interesting, since most of the people who had lived in Manifest years before were immigrants who had come to this country on ships. So their names would have been listed on a ship’s manifest. But Sister Redempta had said that the word was a verb as well as a noun.

Manifest—verb. To reveal, to make known .

I admit I was stumped. She had said to start my story with the dictionary and this definition in particular. How was this supposed to help me start a story? What was I supposed to make known? The room was hot and stuffy. I lifted my foot to give my leg a scratch and managed to knock a book off the bottom shelf. It hit the floor with a thump.

Quietly picking it up, all I heard was my own breathing. That was it. No scrubbing noise from the hallway. I scooted quickly back to the door, only to smell the stale odor of old cigar. Then somebody on the other side slowly turned the doorknob. I couldn’t move and there was no place to hide anyway. This was just an empty summertime classroom. I squeezed the book to my chest, waiting to be discovered, when there was a loud kapow, kapang, kapang, kapow farther down the hallway. It sounded like Al Capone had arrived in Manifest with tommy guns blazing.

Mr. Foster issued forth with another exuberant round of oaths, yelling his way down the hall. I took my chance, sprinting the opposite way down the hall and bursting out a side door that had been left propped open by a can of nails.

I rushed to the alley, not knowing what I feared more, Mr. Foster or the gun-firing gangsters, then ran headlong into Lettie and Ruthanne.

“Quick! Over here!” Ruthanne shoved me behind a rose trellis that didn’t provide much coverage, as there were no blooms to boast of.

Ruthanne and Lettie giggled.

“What’s so funny? I was nearly caught by Mr. Foster. And then gunshots went off from who knows where. I could have been killed in there!”

They giggled even louder.

“Those weren’t gunshots.”

“They were firecrackers!”

“We busted you out.”

“So happy Independence Day!”

Lettie’s firecrackers. I was relieved and a little embarrassed at getting into such a flurry. I smiled a shaky smile.

“Wait!” I said, realizing I still held the book in my hand. “I have to put this back.”

But they were already pulling me toward the newspaper office for some of Hattie Mae’s lemonade.