Moon Over Manifest

His eyes were red again, his face unshaven. He’d been out all night. I’d heard a harmonica playing again the night before and wondered if that was the sound that lured him out. Like the ocean sirens Gideon told me about. They were kind of like mermaids, and their song lured seamen to crash their ships into the rocks. I didn’t think poorly of Shady. I’d seen my share of folks who looked to a bottle of whiskey for whatever they’d lost. I believe Gideon himself might have looked there if he hadn’t been trying to raise a daughter on the road.

We stopped near Miss Sadie’s place and Shady took my bags. “Will I see you tonight for supper?” he asked, seeming to acknowledge that I could still take off if I pleased.

I wanted to ask him a hundred questions. Why had Gideon closed himself to me? Why had he sent me away, and when would he come back? I wanted to tell Shady I had an old cork of his on my windowsill. A cork that had become special because it was part of a story. And I knew that story wasn’t finished. But I also knew that Shady wasn’t the one to tell me the rest of it.

“Depends,” I said. “What’s for supper?”

“Oh, I’m fixing something special.”

“Let me guess. Beans and corn bread.”

“You peeked at my menu,” he said, pretending to be hurt, even though it didn’t take a diviner to figure that out.

“I’ll be there. It sounds better than what I’ve got.” I showed him my sack of skeleton weed, spiderwort, and toadflax. “Now, can you point me in the direction of some prickly poppy?”

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

JUNE 17, 1936

Late that afternoon I returned to Miss Sadie’s place in a mood. Having crawled through a bramble bush for the prickly poppy, I was feeling a bit prickly myself just then. Why Miss Sadie had call to send me all over God’s creation to dig up plants never intended for human use, I can’t say. Her Divining Highness was not in sight when I arrived, so I busied myself with trying to find a pot or a vase to put the flowers in. There was nothing on the back porch but a metal watering can and piles of dried-up leaves that had been pushed into a corner.

The gardening shed looked to be the likely place for a pot, but it was locked. I peeked through the dirty windows, trying to make out what was inside, when—

“Get away from there!” Miss Sadie hobbled from the side of the house. “There’s nothing in there that you need,” she said, breathing heavy from the effort.

I held up my flour sack full of plants. “I got most of the ones you asked for. I was just looking for a planting pot.” I noticed the wound on her leg. It was worse, all red and festering. “I can lance that for you. To let out the infection.”

Miss Sadie settled herself in her metal rocking chair and her breathing slowed as if a crisis had passed. “No.”

I didn’t know what she was waiting for, but it was her leg.

“Let me see.” Her breathing was still heavy as she motioned toward the plants in my hand. She ran her fingertips all over them, feeling the stems, leaves, petals, smelling them like a blind person wanting to know what she could not see.

“Aren’t those the ones you wanted?” I asked.

“They are. But they do not tell me what I wish to know.” She gazed up into the cloudless sky. “The earth, it holds back secrets it is not yet willing to part with.”

Then, as if she’d seen enough, she started taking the plants apart, expertly sorting leaves from stems from seeds, creating small piles of each in her lap.

“I went all over tarnation to get those and all you wanted were some dead flowers?”

“They are only dead to what they once were. Now they become something else. Go.” Without looking up, she motioned to the dry ground of the garden. “Back to work.”

I looked at the rows of tilled-up soil splayed out like open wounds and did as I was told. My already blistered hands and scraped knees rebelled as the dust took over me like a swarm of bees. I went to the far end of the yard so I could grumble to myself without being heard. “The earth, it holds back secrets it is not willing to part with,” I mimicked. “What a bunch of hooey,” I said under my breath, tossing a dirt clod over my shoulder against the locked-up garden shed. I studied the little outpost, and feeling the diviner’s eyes on me, I came to the only reasonable conclusion. Miss Sadie was holding back a few secrets of her own.

As the afternoon wore on, I began feeling like the miners from years ago, covered in grime. Tasting the dirt in my mouth, I imagined it to be the soot of the mines. Had their families recognized them when they’d emerged from their desolate work? Would anyone recognize me? Would anyone care? I was enjoying my pitiful thoughts. What if I died right there in that dirt? Would anyone notice?

“Death is like an explosion,” Miss Sadie said, her accent thick, like the humid air that hovered heavy around me. “It makes people take notice of things they might have overlooked.”