Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

“That’s right. We just saw Sister Redempta wearing her wading habit down at the river,” Ruthanne yelled.

I poked my head out. “You did?”

“No. But I bet that’d get you down from that tree house in a hurry.” Lettie laughed.

I pulled my head back in, feeling a little foolish. Even if Sister Redempta had a wading habit, there probably was no water in the riverbed. “I’m busy right now.”

“Okay. I guess we’ll come up. You first, Soletta?”

“After you, Ruthanne.”

I was sure they were just teasing me again, until I heard the creak and pull of the rope ladder. I tried to fold the map before they pulled themselves up. They were fast climbers.

“What’re you doing up here?” Ruthanne poked her head up first and scrambled onto the platform.

I slipped the map and keepsakes back into the Lucky Bill box. “Nothing much. What are y’all doing up here? I really don’t need help with that assignment. Nope, I’ll be long gone before Sister Redempta can lasso me with that rope around her waist. Besides, y’all probably have better things to do, like run off to the dime store or something.” I didn’t know why I was being so snippy. I guessed it was because Gideon had taught me not to be anybody’s charity case.

“Well, as a matter of fact, that’s where we just came from,” Lettie said, reaching up for Ruthanne’s hand. With her short curly hair, she looked like the salt girl on the crates, and she carried a red bandana knapsack on her back.

“We brought you something.” She opened the pack and pulled out three lovely sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, three apples, and, my goodness me, three ice-cold Coca-Colas. At the same time, Ruthanne saw me clutching the letters.

“What are you hiding?” She snatched them out of my hand.

“Give them back,” I said.

“Are these letters from your boyfriend?”

My pride welled up like a blister ready to pop. I grabbed the letters. “I know why you’re here. Y’all are the ones hoping to get noticed by the teacher or your parents for doing a good deed to the new girl. Well, I don’t need no corpus works of mercy,” I said, slipping into my new-girl-in-town way of talking. “So y’all can just find someone else to get your extra credit from this summer.”

Seeing the looks on their faces, I almost busted out crying to be so mean.

They looked at each other as if silently agreeing which one would speak to me.

“That’s just fine.” It was Ruthanne. “But I’d like to point out that they’re the corporal works of mercy. You know, doing things like clothe the naked and feed the hungry. And we weren’t doing them in the first place. But I think even Sister Redempta would agree there isn’t one among them says anything about sitting in a tree house with the pigheaded. Isn’t that right, Lettie?”

“That’s right.” Lettie was quietly putting the food and drinks back into the bandana.

“Nor one about running all over town collecting empty pop bottles for trading in to bring Coca-Colas to the ungrateful. We came up here to pay a visit and get acquainted. But it looks like you’ve got your own self to keep you company. Or y’all self or whatever it is you keep saying. Come on, Lettie. Let’s go.”

They both stood.

I wasn’t sure what to say but knew it had better be something good and quick.

“You mean y’all don’t say ‘y’all’?”

They paused; then Ruthanne answered, sounding kind of disgusted. “No, we all don’t say ‘y’all.’ That’s two words. ‘You all.’ You might as well get that straight right now.”

I cleared some dust off the floor with my foot. “Anything else I need to know? For while I’m here, that is?”

Lettie and Ruthanne looked at each other again, probably deciding if they could tolerate me another minute. They must’ve figured they could, because they sat back down and opened their parcel of sandwiches.

“Well,” Lettie said while Ruthanne popped the bottle tops off with the hammer claw, “there’s a river that when it’s in Arkansas, you can say it like that. The Ar-kan-saw River. But once it hits Kansas, it’s called the Ar- kansas River. That’s kind of important.”

“And there’s a woman up the way who sits on her porch and stares. Don’t let her look you in the eye or you’ll turn to stone,” Lettie said, as if that was on the same level of importance as how to pronounce Arkansas .

“And you might want to work on your grammar,” Ruthanne added with a mouthful of egg salad sandwich. “It doesn’t bother us any. Fact is, during the summer we all talk however we want. But come fall, Sister Redempta’s kinda picky when it comes to ‘don’t need nos’ and ‘might couldas.’ And as for that lasso around her waist, it’s not a lasso. It’s a rosary and it’s for praying on.”

I could tell it would take a while to learn the lay of the land. But that was okay. Those girls were real friendly, the Coca-Cola was going down good, and come fall I’d be long gone, I told myself, pushing aside the wobbly feeling I’d been having off and on.

I opened the cigar box. “You ever seen a spy map?” I asked.

Main Street, Manifest

MAY 28, 1936

“An honest-to-goodness spy!” cried Lettie as the three of us crouched behind the wooden Indian in front of the hardware store. “Right here in Manifest! Why, I’ve never heard anything so exciting.”

I kept the mementos hidden away in the cigar box, but showed them the first letter and the spy map. It might’ve been a little selfish of me, but I wanted to read the other letters by myself before letting Lettie and Ruthanne see them. Maybe there would be some mention of Gideon in those.

“The Rattler. That sounds as mysterious as the Shadow.” Lettie took on the deep, dramatic voice everyone knew from the Sunday-night radio broadcast. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

Ruthanne rolled her eyes.

“In fact,” Lettie continued, “it’s just like that episode a few months ago. A lady, she gets mysterious letters from her dead husband—well, they’re not letters really, they’re more like notes, because they don’t come in the mail, they’re just left under her pillow, and right before she goes insane—”

“Not now, Lettie,” Ruthanne said. “The Rattler, whoever it was, could still be here, spying on us at this very minute.”

“After all this time? The letter was written”—Lettie did the calculating in her head—“eighteen years ago. And I don’t see how this map is going to help us.” She looked over the paper. “It’s just a map of Manifest, or at least Manifest as it was back in 1918. See here, that Matenopoulos Meat closed down forever ago.”

The cousins’ debate continued. Ruthanne said, “So, maybe it’s a map of likely suspects and places the spy might frequent.”

“Maybe he’s dead by now. The Matenopoulos place is on there and Mr. Matenopoulos is dead.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. Come on, let’s scout around.”

As we all got up, I figured Ruthanne had won. And from Lettie’s skipping along beside us, I gathered she didn’t mind.

We looked up and down Main Street, taking in store owners and passersby.

There was the butcher, hanging up a big hunk of meat to cure outside his store. He pulled the fleshy meat hook and wiped it on his already bloody apron. The iceman whacked his spiky tongs into a block of ice and hoisted it out of his truck. The barber shook out his apron and wiped his razor blade clean. Thinking of spies and people going insane made everyone seem a little frightening.

They were like nameless men in a scary nursery rhyme—the butcher, the iceman, and the barber—until Lettie identified them as Mr. Simon, Mr. Pickerton, and Mr. Cooper.