Moon Over Manifest

“But the elixir. It saved lives.”

“It helped people feel better for a while. Until the worst wave of the influenza hit just a few weeks later. The deadly one. Then it was beyond what any elixir could cure.”

I let his words sink in, then stood up. “Show me.”

Shady took my hand and walked no more than twenty feet from where we’d been sitting. Pushing aside a few branches, he made an opening in a row of bushes. And there they were. Dozens of tombstones surrounded by dense shrubs and weeds. Bodies set apart from the town cemetery because of the deadly disease that had killed them. This was no-man’s-land.

I walked from stone to stone, feeling the loss of each person. Judge Carlson. Callisto Matenopoulos. Mama Santoni. Even little Eva Cybulskis. It seemed no family had been left untouched. Donal MacGregor and Greta Akkerson. And Margaret Evans, senior class president, class of 1918. Shady said she’d been the first to die of the influenza in Manifest. All died in November of 1918.

Then the name that was probably the hardest of all to believe: Mrs. Eudora Larkin. In my mind, she’d been so vigorous, so staunch, that surely if death was to approach her, she would give it a good tongue-lashing and send it on its way.

But as Miss Sadie had said, “Things are not always what they seem.” It was clear death had come to Manifest and would not be brushed aside.

I felt Shady pull me away. “Come along, Miss Abilene. You’ve seen enough. Let’s go home.”

The word struck me as odd. Home. That was a word I didn’t know the meaning of. “I think I’d like some coffee. Strong coffee.”

Shady understood. He took me along the railroad tracks to the bend by the woods. Back to the Jungle, where there were faces familiar to me. People lost and wandering. Like Gideon. Like me.

I sat at the fire and received nods of welcome from the men camped there for the night. Shady handed me a tin cup. The hot coffee scalded me as I sipped.

No wonder Gideon had started closing in on himself. Looking back, I thought it started not when I had been cut, but when I’d turned twelve. I was growing up and he was probably already worrying about the road being a poor place for raising a young lady. Then, when the accident happened and I got so sick, the world came crashing down around him. He thought he was still a jinx and, one way or another, my life could not be good with him. When I’d cut my leg that day, I’d said the same thing as was written in Ned’s letter. It was just a scratch. Gideon was afraid and he sent me away.

I took another strong swallow, letting the coffee sear my throat. “He’s not coming back, is he?” I asked Shady. “He’s going to wander in the valley of the shadow of death all by himself.”

Shady stared uncomfortably into his coffee cup, as if searching for a way to answer me.

“When we got the telegram from your daddy saying that you were coming, we knew he must be in a bad way. Maybe I should have told you more about when he was here, but it was so long ago. And when Miss Sadie started her story, it seemed like that might be the best way for you to hear what happened.”

I drank the last of my coffee, wincing at the bitterness of it. All the weeks of feeling like Gideon had abandoned me. Trying to catch glimpses of who my father was, to find even one footprint in this town that I could recognize as his. Now I realized that through Miss Sadie, I’d witnessed it all. And I did understand. Gideon hadn’t sent me away because he didn’t want me. Miss Sadie’s words came back to me. “Who would dream that one can love without being crushed under the weight of it?” Hot tears burned in my eyes. Being loved could be crushing too.

Shady rubbed his whiskers. “The thing is, none of us realized that we needed to hear our stories as much as you did. All those Remember Whens in the paper kind of reminded us of who we were and what brought us together.” He filled his own cup of coffee, letting the steam warm his face. “Having you here has given us a second chance.”

That made me feel warm inside. “Kind of a do-over?”

“Kind of a do-over.”

Shady, Miss Sadie, Hattie Mae. They’d all nurtured and cared for me, hoping that I’d take root in this place.

But I couldn’t help looking at the rough faces of the men sitting a respectful distance away. The Jungle. The valley of the shadow of death. Manifest. Gideon. Where did I belong? Where was home? I needed to go once again down the Path to Perdition.

The Shed

AUGUST 24, 1936

The sun was just coming up as I made my way back to Miss Sadie’s. I cut over the back fence and marched straight to the shed, knowing it would still be locked up tight. But I held the skeleton key. It hadn’t ever been mentioned in Miss Sadie’s stories, but in my mind, it had worked its way in on its own. I’d wondered before what skeletons this key was hiding. Well, there couldn’t be any more skeletons than in Miss Sadie’s shed.