Moon Over Manifest

Remember when Manifest boasted citizens of twenty different nationalities? When you could walk down Main Street and smell Mama Santoni’s warm bread instead of dust and wind? Listening to Caruso sing “Eyes of Blue” on the Victrola? When we all bought Liberty Bonds to support our brave soldiers “over there”?

This brings me to the announcement. Due to Fred’s “injury” and the fact that his mother is coming in from Springfield to “help,” I will be taking a sabbatical from “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary.”

However, some of our younger patrons wanted to know more about our fair town back in the day. So at their suggestion, we are inaugurating the Manifest Herald’s Remember When contest. Write up a favorite memory from 1918 in your best handwriting and submit it to the Manifest Herald by Friday, August 23. We’ll run as many as we can, but the winner will receive a five-dollar cash prize. I asked Uncle Henry for ten but … read the above.

Good luck and, as always, for all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres you can’t find in the rest of this nickel-and-dime paper, turn to

HATTIE MAE MACKE

Reporter About Town

Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor

AUGUST 11, 1936

The town was abuzz about the recent “mix-up” with the newspaper. Billy Clayton loved a good prank and had been happy to deliver the 1918 newspapers that had not made their way to the basement.

He said there wasn’t anything worth reading in the current papers anyway. Everyone knew that these days there wasn’t much news and most of it was bad. So, for the time being, we waited to see if anyone would respond to the contest announcement.

Hattie Mae was excited about the idea. It was true that we wanted to know more about Manifest back in the day. We just didn’t mention, even to Hattie Mae, that we were particularly interested in who might have the same handwriting used in the note telling us to “leave well enough alone.”

I stood at the sink in Miss Sadie’s tiny kitchen, wrapping an assortment of exotic tea leaves in a worn piece of cloth. I tied a string around the neck of the cloth and dangled the tea bag into a pot of boiling water on her cookstove. Waiting for the tea to brew, I gazed out the window, watching the clouds churn and roil high above the neat rows of Miss Sadie’s garden that in fact had come to feel like my own. Those seeds of all kinds—carrot, pea, squash, pumpkin, onion—rested just beneath the surface. I had touched each one, planted each one in rows. Removed and replaced every bit of dirt just so, in hopes that they might take root in this place.

Those seeds. My seeds. Maybe they were wondering, as I was, if this would be the day rain would come.

I looked at the shed, still locked and dark. As the rich, spicy aroma from the teapot filled the kitchen, I found myself wondering if this would be the day Miss Sadie would tell what she had brewing inside her.

Then I felt her presence behind me. There was less idle talk each time I came. It was as if she had fewer words in her and the ones she had were the story. I pulled a stool over to her and she rested herself on it, leaning an elbow on the cabinet.

There was plenty I wanted to ask her. I wanted a conclusion to the story. I wanted to know about the skeleton key, the last remaining memento from the Lucky Bill cigar box. I wanted to know where Gideon fit into all of this. Why he was never mentioned in any of her stories. But I knew from experience that Miss Sadie told the story in her own way and in her own time. I was afraid that there were parts of it still simmering in her that she might never share.

In the silence of Miss Sadie’s kitchen, I thought of Gideon. I wondered about his story and why he had retreated so far into himself, where I couldn’t reach him. Why had a cut on my leg been such a big deal? I knew I’d gotten very sick. But I got better. I remembered the way he’d looked at me. I had just turned twelve and he said I was growing up into a young lady. True, “young ladies” were not often found living on the road, traveling from town to town and job to job. But wasn’t it more important that we were together? I wondered where Gideon was and when he would come back. If he would come back.

Miss Sadie studied me, trying to read my thoughts. But I kept her out. She had her secrets and I had mine.

Suddenly, the kettle whistled, and for the life of me it sounded just like a train whistle blowing in the distance.

Miss Sadie’s voice was husky as she began.

“The Santa Fe steamer chugged into town—three days early.…”

Day of Reckoning

SEPTEMBER 28, 1918

The people of Manifest emerged cautiously from their homes and headed toward the depot. When Arthur Devlin himself stepped off the first passenger car with Lester Burton and the county medical examiner in tow, they knew the quarantine was over. But how?

Devlin gestured broadly. “You see, Dr. Haskell, they’re in fine health, wouldn’t you say?”