Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

Pearl Ann (Larkin) Hamilton

But it was Heck Carlson who won the Remember When contest. His entry read

Remember when Manifest seemed a place too far away to ever get back to? A place too good to be real. A place one was proud to call home. Remember? For those of us who made it home, let us always remember. And for those who didn’t come home, let us never forget.

But a question remained: where was my home? Lettie finally asked what we’d all been avoiding. “Abilene, what are you going to do?”

I hadn’t known for sure until I happened to take a closer look at the book I’d accidentally stolen from the high school and had yet to return. For weeks it had sat on my nightstand, apparently waiting patiently to be noticed. And then I noticed it. It was Moby Dick , the book Sister Redempta had mentioned when I’d quoted Gideon’s saying about home. The same quote Ned had written in his last letter. It is not down in any map; true places never are .

I paged through it for a while, looking for those words. I haven’t found them yet, as I’ve got about six hundred pages still to go. But I did find something else. The checkout card taped in the front of the book. There were names that went way back. There was one date stamp: September 12, 1917. Beside it, in a familiar hand, was the name Ned Gillen. And he must have read the whole thing, as he’d checked it out two more times after that.

But it was the next name that made my eyes well up. March 6, 1918—Gideon Tucker. I had found him. I’d found my daddy. And I would find him again.

The morning of August 30 came. It was overcast as the 9:22 chugged into the depot. Lettie and Ruthanne, one on each side of me, walked me to the train station. I wore a pretty lavender smock that Mrs. Evans had made for me out of an old dress that had belonged to her daughter, Margaret. Mrs. Evans said it complemented my auburn hair and hazel eyes. I didn’t even know my hair was auburn.

Lettie squeezed my hand. “Are you sure about this, Abilene?”

“I’m sure,” I said as the train hissed a steamy sigh. I held tight to my satchel that held the cigar box of mementos and letters.

“You sent him a telegram, didn’t you?” asked Ruthanne.

“I did. It was a little vague.”

“Then maybe we should all go back to Shady’s place,” Lettie pleaded.

One after another, travelers started to get off the train. Charlotte Hamilton, Miss Beauty Parlor, pranced her way down the steps and looked at me a little aghast. “Are you still here?”

I just smiled as her mother called from down the platform. I wasn’t too worried about Charlotte Hamilton, daughter of Pearl Ann Larkin Hamilton and granddaughter of Mrs. Eugene Larkin, and likely future president of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She came from good stock and she would come around.

Then it appeared that all who were getting off had gotten off. Ruthanne and Lettie looked at me, apparently not knowing what to say.

“Maybe he didn’t get the telegram,” said Ruthanne.

“That’s right. He’ll probably be on tomorrow’s train,” said Lettie.

“No. He won’t be on tomorrow’s train,” I said, staring off down the tracks in the direction the train had just come from. Then, as if those tracks were calling me, I took off running. I felt on solid ground again, hearing the rhythm of my feet pounding against each railroad tie. I made it clear past the shot-up Manifest town sign before I saw him. Anyone worth his salt knows it’s best to get a look at a place before it gets a look at you.

He was walking toward me, one railroad tie after another, as if he’d spent the whole summer getting back to me. He looked thin; his clothes hung a little baggy. I knew he’d gotten my telegram. It was probably not that convincing a con but I guess I was banking on the hope that he missed me. The truth is I wasn’t sure he would come. I knew he loved me and he’d only left me because he’d thought it was for the best. But for now he was here. Would he stay?

He walked toward me like a man in a desert, looking afraid that what he saw before him might be a mirage that would vanish when he got closer. I stepped up to him, closing the gap, and at last he knelt down and took me in his arms. He held his face next to mine, and when he looked straight into my eyes with tears in his, I knew. And he knew. We were home.

I took his hand and in it was the crumpled-up telegram Ivan DeVore sent for me at no charge.

WESTERN UNION

TELEGRAPH SERVICE

DEAR GIDEON TUCKER STOP REGRET TO INFORM YOU OF THE GRAVE ILLNESS OF YOUR DAUGHTER ABILENE TUCKER STOP SHE’S PUTTING UP A BRAVE FIGHT BUT THE LUMBAGO HAS SET IN AND WE FEAR HER TIME IS NEAR DONE STOP HER LAST WORDS (SO FAR) ARE: HERMAN MELVILLE SHOULD STICK TO WRITING ABOUT BIG WHITE WHALES, BECAUSE TRUE PLACES ARE FOUND IN MANY PLACES, INCLUDING ON MAPS STOP WE THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW SO THAT YOU CAN COME TO MANIFEST AND PAY YOUR RESPECTS IN PERSON STOP WE WILL TRY TO KEEP HER ON ICE UNTIL YOUR SPEEDY ARRIVAL STOP GOOD LUCK AND GODSPEED STOP

The Rattler

AUGUST 31, 1936

I’ve been told that every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. As Gideon and I sat for a spell, just the two of us, right there on the train tracks, I told him the story I’d needed to hear. And I knew he needed to hear it too, all the way to the end.

I gave him his box of mementos and watched as he fingered each one: the Wiggle King fishing lure, the silver dollar, the cork, little Eva’s nesting doll, and the skeleton key. These treasures that had sparked Miss Sadie’s stories and led me back to my daddy. Gideon’s eyes filled with tears when I gave him Ned’s letters, all in a neat bundle and tied with string. He said he’d like to read them one more time; then we would give them to Miss Sadie. It was what we both wanted.

We pieced together some things in the middle. The fact that the spy map wasn’t really a spy map at all. It was just Ned’s drawing of home, a place he wanted to remember.

And I’d wondered for some time why Shady kept that bottle of whiskey right out in the open but never touched a drop of it. Gideon said it was because sometimes a man’s demons could creep up on him. He figured Shady would rather know where his demon was so he could keep an eye on him.

As for the Rattler? There had been a mysterious figure known as the Rattler, who had never really been a spy. Just a ghostly figure some would see walking the woods at night, a faint rattling sound accompanying the movement.

But one night had been different—the night Finn met up with Jinx. “Jinx” would be the way I’d always refer to my young father. There were several people in the woods that night. Jinx and Finn were having their argument. Uncle Louver was out setting his raccoon traps. And there was the mysterious shadowy figure that loomed from nowhere, accidentally frightening Finn into stepping in one of Uncle Louver’s traps. The fall landed his head on a rock so hard it killed him dead.

Gideon himself couldn’t shed any light on this mystery. But I could think of one person who would have been walking in the woods after being called to the Cybulskis house to help deliver a baby. And who might look a little ghostly at night dressed in her flowing black gown. And who rattles when she walks. Oh, I was sure Miss Sadie had done her part in tending Jinx’s wound. But a diviner’s jewelry jangles. A nun’s rosary beads rattle. It’s a universal.

With that, I knew I had my story I would turn in on the first day of school. And I formed the first line in my head as Gideon and I walked into town, past the sign with big blue letters: MANIFEST … A TOWN WITH A PAST.

HATTIE MAE’S