Moon Over Manifest

The space was dark and cramped. Jinx shifted to find a more comfortable position and noticed a pinhole of light. He strained to reach it and placed his eye against a perfect peephole, through which he could see most of the bar’s seating area of small wooden tables and chairs.

It was Chester Thornhill who entered. Chester was a regular customer, who knew nothing of any meeting. “Evening, Shady. I’ll have a shot.”

Jinx heard Shady behind the bar. “Evening, Chester. Going to have a quick one tonight? I’ll bet the missus is waiting for you.”

“I’m in no hurry,” Chester said.

The front door opened again and more people arrived. Jinx watched from his hiding space.

Chairs shifted and scraped against the dusty floor as people took their seats and eyed each other without speaking. There had never been a town meeting before. Normally, each fraternal order would gather in their own hall and discuss their own business. On occasion there might be an awkward encounter in the mercantile or the hardware store, in which members of one nationality might exchange a halted word of greeting with those of another.

Even in church, folks kept to their own. Among the Catholics, the Austrians went to Mass at eight o’clock, Italians at nine o’clock, and Irish at ten o’clock. Services were divided up similarly among the Lutherans and Methodists.

But in light of the recent goings-on at the mine, the cross burning at the German Fraternal Hall, and the Widow Cane’s death, the whole town was abuzz. With everyone’s wanting to talk and a more than usual desire not to be noticed by Burton and his pit boys, representatives of each nationality and a few others had been asked to the secret meeting at Shady’s place. Chester Thornhill, one of Burton’s crew, had not been invited. But here he was, smack in the middle of it.

Wide-eyed, Chester sipped his drink as Velma T. Harkrader arrived. Soon after, Olaf and Greta Akkerson of Norway took their seats. The Akkersons were the driest couple in town. When they started munching on a few beer nuts, it was too much for Chester to swallow.

“What’s going on here, Shady?” Chester blustered as Casimir and Etta Cybulskis from Poland joined the growing crowd, their four-year-old daughter, Eva, in tow.

“Why, we’re having a discussion on prairie flora and fauna, in honor of the late Widow Cane.” Shady whipped out five glasses and filled them with sarsaparilla.

“Flora and who?”

“Fauna,” Shady replied without apology. “Did you know there are thirty-seven varieties of hydrangea in Crawford County alone?”

Little Eva stared at Chester as she took her first sip of the bubbly sarsaparilla. Then, being eye level with Jinx’s peephole, she peered right at him and giggled.

Chester banged his glass down on the table. “This is a bar, Shady, not a ladies’ tearoom.” He tossed a coin onto the table, nearly running into the Hungarian woman as he stormed out.

Jinx’s hiding spot was getting stuffy and his feet tingled from lack of circulation. But even after being spotted by Eva, he couldn’t take his eye away from the drama unfolding before him.

The Hungarian woman, her bracelets and beads jangling, took her place alone at the bar. Shady filled a shot glass for her and couldn’t help smiling. Never had there been such an array of people in his establishment. Some were regulars, unbeknownst to their wives, while others would normally sooner be caught dead than set foot across his threshold. But here they all were.

Sitting on the floor, Eva played with her set of colorful nesting dolls, removing one hollowed-out and brightly painted doll from inside the other, while everyone waited for someone to speak. Jinx breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like Mrs. Larkin wasn’t going to make it after all, but then the door burst open and Mrs. Larkin came in, wagging her finger. She hadn’t been invited either.

“Shady, I’ve a bone to pick with you. That hooligan you’ve got staying here—” She stopped, realizing that Shady’s saloon was full of people who she was fairly certain were not his usual crowd. “What’s going on here?”

Shady just whistled nervously and wiped out a few more whiskey glasses.

“Come on in, Eudora.” Hadley pulled up a chair for her at the Cybulskis’ table. “We’re just having a little town meeting, so I guess this pertains to you too.”

Mrs. Larkin was apparently too stunned to speak and quietly took her seat, clutching her handbag in her lap.

“Thank you all for coming,” Hadley continued. “I think we all know why we’re here, except for maybe Mrs. Larkin. My apologies, Eudora. In a nutshell, Arthur Devlin needs the piece of land belonging to the late Widow Cane, and for once, there’s something he can’t get his hands on. That land could be a big bargaining tool for all of us. He has to get to his vein of coal, and if we owned the Widow Cane’s land, he’d have to go through us to get it.”

There was a silence while all present considered what this meant.

“But the Widow Cane, she is dead, no?” said Callisto Matenopoulos. “Who owns the land now?”