Moon Over Manifest (20 page)

Ruthanne and I turned the rope as Lettie jumped out. It was Ruthanne’s turn.

“I’ve got a new one.” Lettie and I turned the rope as Ruthanne jumped in.

Just then, we saw Sister Redempta walking over to school. Lettie and I instinctively dropped the rope, figuring we’d better not be singing about spies on school property. Why a teddy bear choking on a bubble seemed appropriate subject matter, I can’t say.

Anyway, it was a nice chance to sit, each of us on a swing, letting our toes draw lines in the dirt.

“Sure is hot,” I said.

“Sure is,” Lettie echoed. “I bet Charlotte Hamilton is romping in some cool beach water down in South Carolina.”

“Oh, who cares?” Ruthanne piped up. “We’ve got a whole spy hunt all to ourselves right here in Manifest.”

That was looking on the bright side. I’d been keeping Lettie and Ruthanne apprised of the latest goings-on in Miss
Sadie’s stories, and our conversation generally revolved around Manifest in its earlier and more exciting times. I think it helped distract us from the dry, humdrum, and heat of the here and now. For us, part of that excitement was, of course, the Rattler.

“He’d have to be someone with some connections to the world outside of Manifest,” I mused. “Someone who could pass along secret information to the enemy.”

Ruthanne perked up. “I’ve got it. Who’s in contact with people outside of Manifest every day?”

Lettie snapped her fingers. “Cousin Turk. He delivers fertilizer to folks all over the county.”

Ruthanne glared at her and I couldn’t help giving her a look of half pity, half consternation. “Cousin Turk is barely eighteen years old.”

Lettie recovered, saying, “Who’d you have in mind, Ruthanne?”

“I had in mind someone who was actually
alive
when the Rattler was going about his business.” Ruthanne drew her lips in like she was getting ready to spit a seed.

Just then, Mr. Cooper, the barber, stepped outside his shop across the street to shake out his apron.

“What about him?” Lettie whispered. “Maybe he’s like the Barber of Seville.”

“Who’s the Barber of Seville?” I asked. We jumped from our swings and snuck toward the side of the barbershop for a better look.

“I don’t know exactly, but I think he had long, wild hair, because he was the only barber in town and had no one to cut his hair. And he probably spent day after day cutting one head of hair after another, until one day, he just snapped.”

Mr. Cooper took out his razor and wiped it clean with his apron. He examined it in the sunlight, then wiped it again and went inside.

“And on that day,” Lettie continued, “the Barber of Seville took out his razor and waited for the next sorry soul to come darken his doorway and occupy his chair. He got the man all lathered up for a shave, but left his throat clean, then—”

“My word, Lettie! You have some imagination,” Ruthanne said. “I think he’s just a barber. Let’s go check out the post office.”

But something caught my eye in the shop window. It was a picture. I crept around to the front of the store. An old picture of a group of men wearing overalls and miner’s hats. Each looking into the camera. Looking at me with—what was it? Hope, desperation, defeat? I couldn’t tell.

I looked up to see Mr. Cooper staring at me through the store window.

Suddenly, I realized that Lettie and Ruthanne were gone and I was alone. I ran to find them, my heart pounding like a drum. Mr. Cooper didn’t seem like a cold-blooded killer, but then, I didn’t know any cold-blooded killers, did I? And he’d seen me looking in his store.

I crouched my way through a couple of backyards, getting scratched and scraped by fences and bushes. Then I heard a low growl. It was a bulldog, his slobbery mouth and bared fangs not two feet behind me. I made a beeline for a porch railing and jumped just in time to keep my pant leg away from his snapping jowls. I clung to the railing, not taking my eyes off the angry bulldog.

“Go on,” I said in a hushed voice. “Go on, get.” He stood his ground and growled, like he’d rather wait me out.

I let my breathing slow a bit and straddled the railing only to have my heart speed up again. I noticed the faded porch with its ornate woodwork and realized I was at the worn-out gingerbread house that belonged to the stony lady who always sat on the porch. What if she was across the porch? Looking at me? I brought my other leg around and there she was, right where I’d seen her before. In her rocking chair, staring off into nothing.

I’d either have to climb over the railing and get down the way I’d come or walk past her to the steps. I peeked back over the porch. The bulldog flapped his jowls and barked. I’d try the steps. I tender-footed across the porch to the steps; then her chair creaked, and without my willing it to do so, my body turned around, and my eyes looked straight at Mrs. Evans. And Mrs. Evans was looking straight at me.

Not knowing what to do, I checked my arms and legs. They still moved, so I hadn’t been turned into a statue. For a time, neither one of us said anything. Then I said the only words that came to mind. The ones Shady’d been telling me to say to anyone I met for the last few weeks.

“Shady’s having a service at his place this Sunday night. He’d be pleased to have you.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I just took her porch steps in one leap and was off, not stopping till I ended up with skinned knees and elbows in the alley beside the post office.

“Abilene.” It was Lettie. “Over here,” she whispered loudly.

“What took you so long?” Ruthanne scolded. “I thought you were right behind us; then you were gone.”

I was breathing too hard to answer but crept around to the side of the post office. Ruthanne used her forearm to
wipe the dusty window, only to find that there was a cabinet blocking the view on the inside.

“Come on,” she whispered. “We’ll have to go around front to get a better look.”

“At who?” I asked.

Ruthanne placed a finger to her lips. She peered around the corner of the building like she was waiting for some incoming artillery. Then she made a break for it and ended up with Lettie and me beside her, peeking in the front door.

“Him,” she answered, pointing to the very tall, very thin man behind the mail counter. He wore suspenders over his white shirt and, even without long sideburns, bore a remarkable resemblance to Ichabod Crane of the Sleepy Hollow legend.

“Ivan DeVore?” Lettie said as if considering him the Rattler was akin to suspecting Santa Claus. Ruthanne had mentioned him before, but we’d never gotten around to spying on him.

“Think about it,” Ruthanne replied, not taking her eyes off the man. “He’d have known of all the mail that came in and out. He was the telephone operator
and
he ran the telegraph machine. So he could click, clickity, click whatever information he wanted to whoever he wanted and no one would be the wiser.”

We watched Mr. DeVore move efficiently about the room, placing one letter in this box and another in that. Then he tapped on the counter, like he was debating something. Finally, he removed a key from his pocket, unlocked the top drawer of his desk, and took out a single sheet of yellow stationery and a matching envelope. Then, with a half smile, he penned a brief note, placed it in the envelope, and,
after a suspicious look this way and that, quickly stuffed the note into one of the boxes on the wall.

“That’s Velma T.’s mailbox,” Lettie said. “I know because that time she went to visit her cousin in Oklahoma—remember that, Ruthanne, when her cousin had the shingles? Velma T. had me pick up her mail for her.” Lettie paused in thought. “Come to think of it, she had one of those same yellow envelopes once a week. Now, why would Ivan DeVore put a letter in her mailbox when he sees her all the time? He could just say what he wants to say. Unless, do you think they’re both spies and they have to talk in code or secret notes?”

We studied Mr. DeVore as he whistled and moved about the room. “Spies don’t write spy notes on pretty yellow paper. I think he’s sweet on her,” I said.

“Then why doesn’t he just tell her?” Ruthanne asked.

“He’s probably scared to. I bet he doesn’t even sign those notes.”

Just then the telegraph machine began clicking and Mr. DeVore sat to take down the message. One long click, followed by two short. One short. One short, one long. Short, long, short.

Gideon had worked for a time in a freight yard in Springfield, Illinois, and Miss Leeds, the lady in the office, had taken me under her wing. She could work a telegraph machine like nobody’s business. She said that over time, she could tell a woman operator from a man, as each operator developed a style, or a voice, so to speak. The operator in Decatur was a woman who displayed a precise staccato touch. Each letter came across the wire sharp and pointed. “She probably has a pointed nose, too,” Miss Leeds would say. The operator in Peoria had a harsh, hammering quality.
Miss Leeds imagined him to be a gruff man who would pound his fists on the table when demanding his dinner. But the operator in Quincy, he had a firm, steady touch. One that indicated a fair hand and well-mannered demeanor. Truth be told, I thought she was real fond of him even though she’d never laid eyes on him.

Now, as we sat hunched just outside the door, listening to those first four letters, I felt my insides ball up. D-E-A-R. Someone was being addressed. Someone who was dear to the person sending the telegram.

I slumped down, not wanting to decipher the rest of the message. What did I care what sweet words this someone away had to say to their “dear” someone here. My eyes stung a little. I tried to let the clicks, long and short, blend into each other so I wouldn’t make out the words. But they kept clicking into my head. M-I-S-S Y-O-U.

I knew Gideon was busy. He was probably working hard to make enough money to send for me. Why, here it was July already. He’d be coming to get me himself in a few weeks. Sometime in August, probably. H-O-M-E S-O-O-N. I didn’t want to hear any more. I started running, my feet pounding as loud as my heart.

Gideon’s sending me a telegram wouldn’t speed things along anyway. Still, my heart ached like it was being squeezed in two.

I kept running, knowing that eventually I’d find myself at Miss Sadie’s.

I
made it to Miss Sadie’s house but all I found was hot dirt and a cranky old woman. Miss Sadie was in a mood and she was not going to be coaxed, cajoled, or otherwise budged from it.

All day I slaved away, scrubbing down her porch, sorting buttons, picking dead flies from her screen door. Why, she even had me pull the big Persian rug out of her divining room and beat the dust out of it with a broom. I can tell you that was a pure waste of time, as the dust kicked up in the air like someone kicking a bad habit, only to settle into its old ways, right back on that rug.

She kept me busy doing anything but working in the garden. And
anywhere
but near the garden shed.

When I first started working off my debt to Miss Sadie for breaking her Hungarian pot, she said I’d know when I was done. I knew I’d worked off more hours than was
needed to square my debt. But I also knew I wasn’t done. I wasn’t done hearing her story of Manifest.

I could have asked Shady to fill in the rest and saved myself some work. But somehow I knew he would know only his piece of it, like Hattie Mae would know just her piece of it. Only Miss Sadie knew the whole story. She was the one who’d watched and listened all these years. Even now the people who came by her place, they talked and talked, unburdening themselves of all manner of tales and stories. And she listened to them all.

I was also becoming more interested in Miss Sadie’s own story. What had brought her to America? Why did she stay in Manifest if she was such an outcast? There was more to Miss Sadie than baubles and beads.

Her mood was putting me in a mood. I was working and she wasn’t talking. I tried to find a way to bait her into a story, and I figured there’s no better bait for a storyteller than to get part of the story wrong.

“I saw some lilacs down by Ruthanne’s place,” I said. It was miserable hot that afternoon on Miss Sadie’s porch. My hands were deep in a tub of soapy water, cleaning out one dusty mason jar after another, while Miss Sadie rocked steadily in her porch rocker.

“Hmm,” she murmured with little interest as she blew some tobacco ash from her pipe.

“I bet the Widow Cane could say which of the thirty-seven varieties of lilac it was. I’m sure a bunch would look nice in one of these jars.”

“Hydrangea,” Miss Sadie said, tamping down a wad of new tobacco into the pipe.

“What’s that?”

“There are thirty-seven varieties of hydrangea, not lilac—and I plan to use the jars for canning fruits and vegetables.”

Fruits and vegetables from her parched garden, no doubt. “Hydrangeas, lilacs. Probably didn’t make much difference in the long run. I don’t imagine anyone could raise a thousand dollars in four weeks.”

She stopped rocking. “So that is what you think?”

“That’s what I think,” I answered, swishing suds in and out of the umpteenth mason jar that would probably collect another year’s worth of dust before there’d be any fruit fit for canning.

“Pah,” Miss Sadie grunted. “One who cannot tell the difference between lilac and hydrangea can hardly speculate about such things.”

I was close but not quite there.

“Well, at least Shady stayed out of it. He’d never be involved in something … well … shady.”

Miss Sadie heaved a heavy sigh.

“Shady was in it … How do you say? Up to his neck. We all were.…”