Moon Over Manifest

Lettie marveled at various parts of the story as Ruthanne and I walked alongside, our feet crunching through twigs and leaves in the moonlight. I was on another one of Miss Sadie’s nature errands. She’d had me do all manner of divining, as she called it. Things like venturing out at dusk to collect blue moss from under a fallen sycamore tree, and getting up at sunrise to gather a handful of dandelions before the morning dew burned off. The tasks were always unusual and she’d mash whatever I’d brought back into a paste or a powder. To what end, I didn’t know. But that night was a bit more mysterious, as I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. Miss Sadie said a good diviner needed to watch, and listen, and wait.

“What do you think the curse was?” Lettie continued. “I mean, what curse causes a water tower to explode?”

Truth was I’d been afraid to ask Miss Sadie about the curse she’d placed on Mrs. Larkin. The words seemed so ancient and full of bad omen I didn’t want her saying them in English and accidentally directing them toward me.

“And I still don’t understand why Shady was bidding against Jinx for the quilt,” Lettie said.

Ruthanne rolled her eyes. “How you ever got a better grade than me in math, I’ll never know. Now listen and I’ll explain it again.” Ruthanne always spoke about the stories as if she had witnessed the events herself. “At the auction nobody wanted the quilt, because it got wet and the president’s signature was all smudged, right?”

“Right,” Lettie said, concentrating.

“But Shady knew that Jinx had made a bundle of money selling his homemade fireworks.”

“Right. His share was twenty-five dollars and seventy-five cents.”

“Right. Since it was Jinx’s fireworks that caused the water tower to burst all over the place, Shady wanted him to make restitution and made him buy it. Jinx probably started with a lowball bid, so Shady kept bidding against him until the quilt finally sold to Jinx for twenty-five dollars—”

“And seventy-five cents!” Lettie’s eyes lit up. “The same amount he’d made off the fireworks.”

“Yes,” Ruthanne said with a sigh. “But it was probably Miss Sadie’s curse that doomed the quilt in the first place, don’t you think, Abilene?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “She must be a witch. Even Mrs. Larkin called her a sorceress. A caster of spells.”

“Then why does she call herself a diviner?” I asked. “How come her sign doesn’t say, ‘Miss Sadie: Sorceress and Caster of Spells’?”

“Because people in her line of work like to be mysterious. Just like whatever it is we’re traipsing through the woods for in the dark right now. There’s a mystery.” Ruthanne looked at me for an explanation.

“Miss Sadie gave me this bucket and told me to find a young cottonwood tree in the moonlight.”

“But what’s the bucket for?”

“She said to just keep my eyes open.”

“What kind of crazy instructions are those?” Ruthanne grumbled.

“It is kind of adventurous, though,” said Lettie. “It’s like that song ‘Riding the Rails in the Moonlit Night.’ ” Unbidden, Lettie broke into song.

“I lit out on a dark and dreary night, life had dealt me a heavy blow.

First my boss gave me the knee, then it up and rained on me,

And I had no earthly place to go.

Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee.”

“For the love of Pete, Lettie, if you don’t sing something a little more cheerful, Abilene and me are going to throw you on a train and not wave goodbye.”

“Don’t worry. It gets better,” Lettie said reassuringly.

“My soul and my shoes were all wore through, no money or job in sight,

But once I hit the tracks, my burdens at my back

,

I hopped that train in the pale moonlight.”

I couldn’t help but join in.

“Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee. Yodel-ay-hee.”

We reached a clearing at the creek bed and studied the rocky, parched ground, and I imagined a time when this had been a lively stream that one could wade in for a swim. “There’s cottonwoods all along here,” Ruthanne said.

I touched the rough, heavy bark. “They look too old. She said a young cottonwood.”

“Then let’s look for some volunteers that have sprouted up more recently. Besides, the moon isn’t very bright yet. Come on. I’m getting hungry.” She steered us toward a clearing in a grove of cottonwoods and elms, some not much bigger than saplings.

Ruthanne sat down, her back against a rotted tree trunk, and opened a knapsack. “I guess if we have to wait for the eye of newt and heart of toad to present themselves, we might as well get comfortable. What’d you bring?”