Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

“Now, come on. I’m sure we’ve all got better things to do than fuss and fidget around here all day. Let’s move along.” Like a mother hen, he gathered up his chicks, sometimes nudging, sometimes snapping, and shooed them out the door.

Donal remained in the entryway, as if posting himself sentry.

But Jinx slid quietly from his perch and left Shady’s place, letting the door swing shut behind him.

The mood in the town was already somber when the first death of the quarantine was reported a few days later. Mr. Underwood prepared a pine box and was quite put out when Donal said he would take care of the rest. The body would be buried out of town, they said, to keep the smell and germs away.

With shovels in hand, Shady, Jinx, and Donal MacGregor carried the casket out of town. Each sagged under the weight of their heavy task.

They reached the clearing, not far from the abandoned mine shaft, and took turns digging near an old craggy sycamore tree. Six feet down and four feet across. Late-afternoon shadows crept across the clearing as Donal threw out the last shovel of dirt. He wiped his brow and accepted a canteen of cool water Shady offered when Lester Burton emerged from the trees.

“I heard there’s been a death.”

“You heard that, did you?” Donal said. “Word sure gets around, even in a quarantine.”

“Who is it?” His abrupt speech indicated what the men already knew. Burton’s primary interest was in discovering if he’d lost a miner. And if so, was there a strong son of thirteen or fourteen left behind to take his place?

“Gourouni,” said Donal.

“Gourouni? I don’t know him.”

“Aye, God rest his soul,” Donal said. “He didn’t say much. He lived in the little house behind me. Kept to himself mostly.” He took in a breath. “No, I didn’t know him well, but he could eat, that one. Both of us bachelors, I’d often fix extra. My cooking wasn’t the best, mind you, but I never heard a word of complaint out of him.”

Shady stood by the open grave and removed his hat. “It’s time, Donal.”

“All right. Let’s lay him down.”

“Wait,” said Burton. “Let me see him.” A note of suspicion rose in his voice, as if this Mr. Gourouni might have a few hours work left in him.

“I don’t think you’ll want to be doing that,” said Donal. “He’s been dead more’n a day. Not exactly fresh, if you know what I mean.”

“I said let me see.”

“Right.” Donal nodded at Jinx, who pried open the lid of the coffin.

Immediately, such a stench arose from the casket that Burton covered his nose and nearly retched. Jinx let the half-opened lid drop back down.

“Aye,” Donal said. “The smell of rotting flesh is one few can stomach. When Mr. MacTweeg was a lad back in Lochinver, he was on his way home from the pub. He took the shortcut through the Ballyknock Grove when a wild boar charged him, goring his leg, nearly tearing it off before MacTweeg could reach his knife and slice open the boar’s throat. Three days he lay there, in the stench of the rotting beast and his own festering flesh still caught on the animal’s tusks.”

Donal MacGregor took a slow drag from his pipe and let the smoke curl out of his mouth like the story itself. “When some local lads came upon him, MacTweeg lay pinned beneath the bloated, oozing carcass. Clawing and scratching, he was, already fighting his unseen demons. The infection eventually took his leg. But ’twas the stench of death that drove him mad.

“But,” Donal said, his mood suddenly brightening, “come have a look if you must.” He gave the coffin lid a yank, sending another waft of odor floating up. “He’s not at full steam yet.”

Burton covered his mouth and gagged again. “Just hurry up and bury him.” He whipped out a ragged bandana to cover his nose and stalked away.

The men waited until he was gone; then Shady and Jinx lurched away from the open grave, gasping for air. “Blast it, Donal, did you have to open it a second time?” croaked Shady. “I was barely keeping it in as it was.”

“Well, it got rid of him, didn’t it? And I don’t expect he’ll be coming back round to check again.” Donal opened the pine box. “Ahh, Stanley, God rest your soul.” He hoisted out a smaller, metal box lying within the pine coffin. “A finer pig there never was. He’d been ailing for a time, so I do suppose it was right to put him down.”

“Where’d you come up with the name Gourouni?” asked Jinx.

“Matenopoulos told me it’s the Greek word for pig. Gourouni.” Donal rolled his r ’s as he said it. Then he wagged a finger at Jinx. “You were right, lad, to come prepared for Burton. But how do you think he knew we’d be here?”

Shady and Jinx were still holding their breath. “Donal, please, just take it in the woods and bury it,” said Shady. “No one’s going to come around with that smell surrounding us.”

Donal was off, carrying the metal box of pig remains, and the smell gradually followed him.

“Looks like you were right,” Shady said, sitting down on the coffin like a balloon gone flat. “What did you call it?”

“A mole.”

“A mole,” Shady repeated, rubbing his whiskers. “So there’s someone among us in Manifest who’s feeding information to Burton. I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Both sat for a moment, lost in thought and speculation as to who the mole might be.

Then Shady stood. “Well, we’re not going to figure it out sitting here. Give me a hand with this lid.”

Shady and Jinx opened the coffin and inspected the dozens of bottles resting in a bed of straw so as not to clank against each other.

“We dug the hole; we might as well use it,” Shady said. “That way the stuff’ll not be in plain sight, in case someone else happens along.”

Jinx climbed into the pit, then helped lower the pine box. Shady eased in after him and the two hunkered down like soldiers in the trenches, their backs up against the wall. Dusk faded to dark.

Jinx broke the silence. “You think folks’ll find us here?”

Shady answered with certainty. “They’ll find us.”

Another few moments passed and Jinx spoke again.

“Shady?”

“Yes.”

“D’you think a person can be cursed?”

“How do you mean?”

“Cursed, like when a fellow doesn’t mean for bad things to happen, but they just sort of follow him around like his shadow.”

“Well, I don’t know for sure,” Shady answered, speaking as one with a few shadows of his own. “I suppose it’s either a matter of outrunning your shadow or staring it down in the light.”

“Staring it down, huh? Easy as that.”

Shady shook his head and let out a heavy breath. “Nothing easy about it. Don’t let nobody tell you otherwise.”

The two sat in silence until they noticed a figure emerging from the woods. And then another. And another. They knew to keep away when the sheriff and Burton were around. But now the sick and weary had returned.

Shady and Jinx remained in the open grave, pulling out bottle after bottle. They worked steadily, distributing the elixir. It was an eerie sight—Shady and Jinx, their arms reaching up from the ground, as if the dead could provide some comfort for the living.

PVT. NED GILLEN

SEPTEMBER 12, 1918

Dear Jinx ,

Do the Akkersons still have that Shetland sheepdog? The one that could round up a whole herd of cows, practically lining them up single file? That must be how Sarge got his nickname. Fellas in other battalions know him as First Sergeant Daniels, but he’s always been Shep to us .

He got hit by a mortar shell yesterday. The guys and me, we’re still sitting around like a bunch of scared kids. Oh, we talk all big and cocky, but he was like our dad and we were his boys. We loved him. We’d have walked into a swarm of bees if he’d told us to .