Moon Over Manifest
Clare Vanderpool
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Clare Vanderpool
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vanderpool, Clare.
Moon over Manifest / Clare Vanderpool. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89616-3 [1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Fathers—Fiction. 3. Depressions—1929—Fiction. 4. Kansas—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.P28393Mo 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009040042
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To Mother and Daddy,
for loving a good story, and a good laugh,
and for giving me a good life
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Characters
Contents
Santa Fe Railway
Path to Perdition
Shady’s Place
First Morning
Sacred Heart of the Holy Redeemer Elementary School
Fort Treeconderoga
Main Street, Manifest
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
Triple Toe Creek
A Bargain Is Struck
Likely Suspects
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
The Art of Distraction
Frog Hunting
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
The Victory Quilt
Under the Stars
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
Elixir of Life
Dead or Alive
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
No-Man’s-Land
One Short, One Long
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
The Walls Go Up
Ode to the Rattler
Drawing Straws
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
Distribution
A Dying Breath
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
Day of Reckoning
The Jungle
Remember When
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
Homecoming
Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
St. Dizier
The Shadow of Death
The Shed
The Diviner
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
The Rattler
Author’s Note
Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHARACTERS
Manifest townspeople of 1918
SHADY HOWARD: saloon owner and bootlegger
JINX: con artist extraordinaire
NED GILLEN: Manifest High School track star
HATTIE MAE HARPER: up-and-coming journalist for the Manifest Herald
THE HUNGARIAN WOMAN: owner and operator of Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor
SISTER REDEMPTA: nun, not a universal
IVAN DEVORE: postmaster
VELMA T. HARKRADER: chemistry teacher and maker of home Remedies
MR. UNDERHILL: undertaker
HADLEY GILLEN: Ned’s father and owner of the hardware store
EUDORA LARKIN: president of the Daughters of the American Revolution (Manifest chapter)
PEARL ANN LARKIN: daughter of Mrs. Larkin, and Ned’s girl
ARTHUR DEVLIN: mine owner
LESTER BURTON: pit boss
FINN: Jinx’s uncle
Additional townspeople and their countries of origin
DONAL MACGREGOR: Scotland
CALLISTO MATENOPOULOS: Greece
CASIMIR AND ETTA (AND LITTLE EVA) CYBULSKIS: Poland
OLAF AND GRETA AKKERSON: Norway
MAMA SANTONI: Italy
HERMANN KEUFER: Germany
NIKOLAI YEZIERSKA: Russia
Manifest townspeople of 1936
ABILENE TUCKER: new girl in town
GIDEON TUCKER: Abilene’s father
LETTIE AND RUTHANNE: friends of Abilene
PASTOR SHADY HOWARD: still a little shady
HATTIE MAE MACKE: still writing “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary”
IVAN DEVORE: still postmaster
VELMA T.: still the chemistry teacher
SISTER REDEMPTA: still a nun
MISS SADIE: still a diviner
MR. UNDERHILL: still the undertaker
MR. COOPER: the barber
MRS. DAWKINS: owner of Dawkins Drug and Dime
MRS. EVANS: woman who sits on her porch and stares
Santa Fe Railway
SOUTHEAST KANSAS MAY 27, 1936
The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I knew only from stories. The one just outside of town with big blue letters: MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A RICH PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE.
I thought about my daddy, Gideon Tucker. He does his best talking in stories, but in recent weeks, those had become few and far between. So on the occasion when he’d say to me, “Abilene, did I ever tell you ’bout the time …?” I’d get all quiet and listen real hard. Mostly he’d tell stories about Manifest, the town where he’d lived once upon a time.
His words drew pictures of brightly painted storefronts and bustling townsfolk. Hearing Gideon tell about it was like sucking on butterscotch. Smooth and sweet. And when he’d go back to not saying much, I’d try recalling what it tasted like. Maybe that was how I found comfort just then, even with him being so far away. By remembering the flavor of his words. But mostly, I could taste the sadness in his voice when he told me I couldn’t stay with him for the summer while he worked a railroad job back in Iowa. Something had changed in him. It started the day I got a cut on my knee. It got bad and I got real sick with infection. The doctors said I was lucky to come out of it. But it was like Gideon had gotten a wound in him too. Only he didn’t come out of it. And it was painful enough to make him send me away.
I reached into my satchel for the flour sack that held my few special things. A blue dress, two shiny dimes I’d earned collecting pop bottles, a letter from Gideon telling folks that I would be received by Pastor Howard at the Manifest depot, and my most special something, kept in a box lined with an old 1917 Manifest Herald newspaper: my daddy’s compass.
In a gold case, it wore like a pocket watch, but inside was a compass showing every direction. Only problem was, a working compass always points north. This one, the arrow dangled and jiggled every which way. It wasn’t even that old. It had the compass maker’s name and the date it was made on the inside. St. Dizier, October 8, 1918. Gideon had always planned to get it fixed, but when I was leaving, he said he didn’t need it anyway, what with train tracks to guide him. Still, I liked imagining that the chain of that broken compass was long enough to stretch all
the way back into his pocket, with him at one end and me at the other.
Smoothing out the yellowed newspaper for the thousandth time, I scanned the page, hoping to find some bit of news about or insight into my daddy. But there was only the same old “Hogs and Cattle” report on one side and a “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary: Charter Edition” on the other, plus a couple of advertisements for Liberty Bonds and Billy Bump’s Hair Tonic. I didn’t know anything about Hattie Mae Harper, except what she wrote in her article, but I figured her newspaper column had protected Gideon’s compass for some time, and for that I felt a sense of gratitude. I carefully placed the newspaper back in the box and stored the box in the satchel, but held on to the compass. I guess I just needed to hold on to something.
The conductor came into the car. “Manifest, next stop.”
The seven-forty-five evening train was going to be right on time. Conductors only gave a few minutes’ notice, so I had to hurry. I shoved the compass into a side pocket of the satchel, then made my way to the back of the last car. Being a paying customer this time, with a full-fledged ticket, I didn’t have to jump off, and I knew that the preacher would be waiting for me. But as anyone worth his salt knows, it’s best to get a look at a place before it gets a look at you. I’d worn my overalls just for the occasion. Besides, it wouldn’t be dark for another hour, so I’d have time to find my way around.
At the last car, I waited, listening the way I’d been taught—wait till the clack of the train wheels slows to the rhythm of your heartbeat. The trouble is my heart speeds up when I’m looking at the ground rushing by. Finally, I saw a grassy spot and jumped. The ground came quick and hard, but I landed and rolled as the train lumbered on without a thank-you or goodbye.
As I stood and brushed myself off, there was the sign not five feet in front of me. It was so weathered there was hardly a chip of blue paint to be found. And it looked to have been shot up so bad most of the words were gone. All that was left read MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A PAST.
HATTIE MAE’S
NEWS AUXILIARY
CHARTER EDITION
MAY 27, 1917
I am pleased as punch to be commencing this groundbreaking column in the Manifest Herald. My experience last year as assistant copy editor of the Manifest High School newspaper (Huzzah, huzzah for the Grizzlies!) has provided me with an eye for the interesting and a nose for news.
After Uncle Henry talked it over with his people at the paper, he decided to give me a column anyway. What with our nation involved in a great war and our young men leaving our sweet land of liberty, we must be vigilant on the home front. President Wilson has asked all of us to do our patriotic duty in supporting the war effort, and already many are answering the call. Hadley Gillen says Liberty Bonds are selling quicker than half-inch nails at the hardware store. Mrs. Eudora Larkin and the Daughters of the American Revolution are sewing victory quilts.
Even Miss Velma T. Harkrader generously devoted our last week of senior chemistry class to making relief parcels for our lads in arms. Despite a minor explosion while we mixed her dyspepsia elixir, the parcels turned out beautifully, each wrapped in red-white-and-blue gingham, and I am sure they will be received with great appreciation.
Now, it is time for me to hang up my crown as Manifest Huckleberry Queen of 1917 and trade it for the hardscrabble life of a journalist. And here is my pledge to you, faithful reader: you can count on me to be truthful and certifiable in giving the honest-to-goodness scoop each and every week.
So, for all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres, look at the backside of “Hogs and Cattle” every Sunday.
HATTIE MAE HARPER
Reporter About Town
BILLY BUMP’S HAIR TONIC
Listen up, fellas. Do you have a dry, itchy scalp? Wish you had more hair on your head? Is your hair turning the color of the old gray goat? Then Billy Bump’s Hair Tonic is for you. Just rub a little on your hair and scalp before bedtime, and when you wake up, you’ll already notice a clean, tingly feeling. This means your hair is growing back, and in the same color you remember from your high school days. That’s right, men. The ladies will notice the hair on your head and the spring in your step. Get your Billy Bump’s Hair Tonic today at your local barbershop. Tell them Billy sent you and get a free comb. Works on mustaches and sideburns too. But avoid contact with ears and noses.
Buy a Liberty Bond
and save American liberty!
Path to Perdition
MAY 27, 1936
First things first after jumping from a train: you needed to check and make sure you still had what you jumped with. That was always easy for me, because I never had much. Gideon said all you needed was your traveling pack and a good head on your shoulders. I had both, so I figured I was in good shape.
Heading for a grove of trees that looked half alive, I found a creek. It was only a trickle but it felt cool and clean on my face and hands. Now I could face the preacher I was to stay with for the summer. How my daddy ever got hooked up with a preacher, I can’t say, as he’s not a churchgoing man. Apparently the preacher had taken in a wandering soul now and again, and Gideon had been one of them. In any case, Pastor Howard was expecting me and no amount of dillydallying would change that fact.
I hunted up a good fence-running stick and rattled it along the first fence I came to. Gideon and I found that sounds filled up an empty quiet. When I was younger, we spent many a walking hour singing, making up rhymes, playing kick the can. Now the sound of stick on fence carried off into the trees, but it didn’t fill the emptiness. For the first time I could recall, I was alone. Maybe I’d try the rhyming. Gideon would start with a line and I’d come up with another that rhymed. The clatter of the stick provided a nice rhythm for the rhyme running in my head. I wish I had a penny and I wish I had a nickel. I’d trade ’em both in for a coffee and a pickle. I wish I had a quarter and I wish I had a dime. I’d buy a stick of gum before you could tell the time. I wish I had an apple and I wish I had an orange—
I realized I’d rhymed myself into a corner with orange when my stick came to a gate. A wide wrought iron gate that had every manner of doodads welded right into it. Forks, kettles, horseshoes, even the grate off an old potbelly stove. Looking closer, I ran my fingers over the black iron letters sitting along the top of the gate. The letters were kind of crooked and a little uneven but they looked to read PERDITION. Now, Gideon and I had been to enough church services, hoping to get a hot meal afterward, that I’d heard the word a time or ten. Preachers used it. They told people to give up their evil ways or follow the devil straight down the path to perdition.
Why somebody would want that word welded on their gate, I can’t say. But there it was. And weeds wrapped their way up through the ironwork, daring you to enter. And there was an actual path. Beyond the gate, leaves and dandelions lined a long grassless swatch of ground all the way to a dilapidated old house. The paint was worn off and the porch swing hung crooked, like it was plumb out of swing.
Surely no one lived there. A train car or a shantytown by the railroad tracks seemed a more welcoming place. But one of the front curtains fluttered. Was someone watching? My heart beat like a bat’s wings. For the time being, I was content to stay off that Path to Perdition. The town wasn’t far ahead, so I put my stick to the fence and continued walking.
This time I did my rhyme in a quiet voice. “I had a little cat and it had a little kitten. I’d put it in my lap wherever I’d be sittin’.”
There was a break in the fence but another started up again around a cemetery. Gravestones stood in the wispy grass, seeming to watch me go by. The hair at the back of my neck prickled as the ground crunched behind me. I stopped and looked back. There was nothing but blowing leaves. I moved on, clattering my stick as the trees grew thick around me. “I had a little dog and his name was Mike. I always let him sit wherever he’d like.” The branches clawed at me and I stumbled on a tree root, landing hard on my knee. It was the knee that had gotten cut a couple o
f months back. It had scarred over, but the stretched skin felt like it was still working at keeping things together. I massaged it a little and brushed the dirt off.
There it was again. Maybe not a sound, but a movement. I held my breath, listening to the quiet, then continued toward lights at the edge of the trees. “I once had a horse and his name was Fred. He ran all day, then—”
Another loud crunch behind me, then a man’s voice.
“He dropped dead.”
Shady’s Place
MAY 27, 1936
I swung around in the dimming light. A man stood holding a pitchfork as tall as he was and only slightly thinner. Everything about the man was thin. His clothes, his hair. Even his scruffy whiskers were sparse on his face.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
At first I thought he meant the pitchfork. Then I saw the compass dangling from his fingers. I checked my satchel in a panic. The outside pocket had torn open when I’d fallen.
“I’m Shady Howard. You must be Gideon’s girl.” I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. He handed me the gold compass. I hung it around my neck and tucked it into my shirt. “When you didn’t get off the train, I thought you might be making your own way into town.”
He said it like he had jumped from a train or two himself. With his worn plaid shirt and brown pants that had been stitched and patched, he looked the part.
“Are you related to Pastor Howard? The preacher at the First Baptist Church?”
“There’s folks that call me Pastor Howard. But you can call me Shady.”
I kept my distance, not knowing exactly what he meant. “Do they call you that because you are the preacher at the First Baptist Church?”
“Well, that’s a kind of interesting story.” He started walking, using his pitchfork as a walking stick. “You see, I’m what’s called an interim pastor. Meaning the old one left and I’m just filling in till they can get a new one.”
“How long you been filling in?” I asked, thinking maybe he hadn’t had time to order his preacher clothes yet. Or shave.
