Moon Over Manifest

by Clare Vanderpool

  Then I remember the last mail call. The names of the guys who got letters from family, girlfriends, kid brothers. I remember hearing those names go unanswered, one, then another and another and another. So many letters sent back home, unreceived and unopened. Gets hard to listen anymore.

  Sorry, buddy. You’ve got better things to do than read my rambling. Been fishing lately? Try Echo Cove down at Triple Toe Creek. The waters run a little deeper, so it’s not as hot for the fish. You can even use my green and yellow sparkle lure. Gets one every time.

  Ned

  P.S. Catch one for me, will you?

  Ode to the Rattler

  JULY 4, 1936

  It was cloudy as Ruthanne reread Ned’s July Fourth letter out loud. We didn’t hold our breath for rain, but a hot breeze blew through the tree house.

  “Did you bring ’em?” Ruthanne asked.

  “Yeah, I brought ’em.” Lettie showed her stash of four scraggly firecrackers she’d found in her brother’s tackle box. We’d decided to set them off in honor of Ned’s Fourth of July letter on our own Fourth of July. Sort of a tribute by doing the normal things Ned mentioned.

  “But this letter always makes me sad,” said Lettie.

  It was interesting how Ned’s letters struck us differently from one reading to the next. Lettie might get teary one time at the thought of all those unopened letters, and another she might smile at his fishing advice for Jinx. We had read them so often they almost started to feel the way I’d heard folks talk about scripture, like the words were alive and speaking straight to us.

  That day my thoughts lingered on the ending and Ned’s mention of the green and yellow sparkle lure. I still hadn’t told Lettie and Ruthanne about the mementos I’d found under the floorboard in my room. Never having had much to call my own I guess I liked having those few treasures all to myself.

  Ruthanne’s thoughts were somewhere else altogether. “I wonder if it’s still there.”

  “If what’s still where?” Lettie and I asked together.

  Ruthanne sat up as if she’d been jerked out of a dream. “What Stucky Cybulskis wrote in their classroom. His ‘Ode to the Rattler.’ Ned said he didn’t get caught, so he must have written it somewhere he wasn’t supposed to. I wonder if it’s still there.”

  Lettie brushed a strand of sweaty hair off her face. “After all these years? Surely it would’ve been washed off, painted over, or just thrown away by now. Why don’t we just set off our firecrackers and go see Hattie Mae about some lemonade?”

  “Maybe he wrote it in an out-of-the-way place,” Ruthanne continued, “or stashed a note somewhere … someplace where his classmates might see it but the teacher wouldn’t.”

  “What if it is still there?” I asked. “Do you think it might tell us something about who the Rattler was … or is?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Ruthanne answered, already shinnying down the rope ladder. Lettie and I shrugged at each other and followed.

  Another of life’s universals is there’s always those things in a town that “everybody knows,” except for the person who’s new. So when we got to the high school and I asked Ruthanne how she planned to get in, I wasn’t surprised when she said, “Everybody knows the storage room window doesn’t shut all the way.”

  We skirted around the back of the building and Ruthanne laced her fingers together to give me a leg up. Casting a last nervous glance around the school yard, I hoisted myself through the window. With an unexpected shove from below, I ended up tumbling into the storage room, overturning a galvanized bucket with a god-awful clamor.

  Lettie was next to make her way through the window. She was much more graceful in her landing. Lettie and I used the upturned bucket to stand on so we could reach out the window and grab hold of Ruthanne.

  “I’m surprised they don’t fix that window,” I said now that we were all safe inside.

  Ruthanne rubbed her stomach where she’d scratched herself on the windowsill. “ ‘They’ would be Mr. Foster, the janitor. And he’d probably be delighted to spin a little web to catch some kids sneaking in.”

  Lettie nodded. “My brothers say he can sniff out mischief and shenanigans before they even happen. And when he’s not chewing his tobacco, he loves to grab a kid by the scruff of the neck and march him into the principal’s office, and before you know it, he’s turned a little mischief into cause for big trouble.”

  “Besides,” Ruthanne added, “kids spend nine months of the year trying to get out of school. I guess they don’t figure anyone’s going to sneak back in.”

  That made sense. And yet here we were.

  “Come on.” Lettie led the way out of the storage closet. “The senior classroom is down the main floor.” I didn’t doubt that Lettie, who had six older siblings, knew her way around this school.

  We tiptoed down the hall to the second classroom on the right. The heavy wooden door opened easily and we stepped in. There is an eerie, expectant feeling to a schoolroom in the summer. The normal classroom items were there: desks, chalkboards, a set of encyclopedias. The American flag with accompanying pictures of Presidents Washington and Lincoln. But without students occupying those desks and their homework tacked on the wall, that empty summer classroom seemed laden with the memory of past students and past learning that took place within those walls. I strained to listen, as if I might hear the whisperings and stirrings of the past. Maybe Ruthanne was right. Maybe there was more here than met the eye.

  “We’re not going to find anything just standing here,” she said.

  We spied around, in the cloakroom, behind the teacher’s desk, on all the walls.

  Ruthanne checked by the pencil sharpener and flipped through the dusty pages of a large dictionary atop a bookshelf. “Too bad we can’t just look it up. That would make things simple.”

  “It would have to be somewhere that wouldn’t get painted over,” Lettie said, for some reason looking in the trash can.

  The room was still and the desks looked familiar and inviting. Ned’s letter was fresh in my mind, so sitting in one of the desks and running my hands over the grainy wooden top, I could imagine this room full of past students: Ned Gillen, Stucky Cybulskis, Danny McIntyre. Tracing my fingers along the ornate cast iron legs, I could picture Heck and Holler Carlson, Pearl Ann Larkin, even Hattie Mae Harper.

  “So where would Stucky have written his ‘Ode to the Rattler’?” Lettie interrupted my thoughts. “Where would a teacher not look?”

  I tapped my fingers on the desktop, preferring to fall back into my daydream of an earlier time filled with raised hands, muffled giggles, lessons yet to be learned, and lives yet to be lived.

  And then came the questions I could never seem to keep at bay. Did Gideon ever sit in this classroom? Did he ever raise his hand to answer a question? Or write a hidden message that had not been erased?

  That was when it dawned on me. “Where would a student write a secret message?” I was thinking the words, but I must have said them out loud, because Lettie and Ruthanne abandoned their own search and stood beside me as my drumming fingers suddenly went still.

  I lifted the desktop and laid it back on its hinges to reveal the space where each student would store his or her books and slate or tablet of paper. Where one might keep a secret note or a drawing passed from a friend or an admirer.

  The desk was empty except for an old pencil whittled down to a nub. There were no messages from admirers, no hidden notes that had been passed behind the teacher’s back. My shoulders slumped like I’d just flunked a final exam.

  Then Lettie saw it. “Look.” She pointed at the underside of the desktop. There, in a handwritten scrawl, were the words

  Here I sit, my eyelids sagging,

  While teacher’s tongue just won’t quit wagging.

  Louver Thompson

  “Uncle Louver?” Lettie said, sounding shocked. And proud.

  “Well, I’ll be dipped in sugar,” Ruthanne breathed. We all stared as if we had discovered s
ome ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. “He graduated high school years before even our mothers. This must’ve been here over twenty years.”

  “I can’t believe it’s still here,” I said. “It’s only in pencil. Somebody could’ve erased it long ago.”

  “What kid would want to erase fine poetry like that?” Lettie smiled. “You’d be considered the lucky one to have this desk.”

  “Let’s see if there’s any more that have writing,” I said, moving to the next desk over. “Here’s one. It’s unsigned.

  “My mind wanders, my attention drifts—

  Outside it looks like heaven

  Till Mr. Epson calls on me and says,

  ‘Do problems one through seven.’ ”

  Ruthanne read another.

  “I hear an explosion. What could it be?

  It’s chemistry class, with Miss Velma T.

  Frankie Santoni.”

  Then, suddenly, Lettie screamed from the desk in the far back corner. “Here it is! ‘Ode to the Rattler by Stucky Cybulskis.’ ”

  Ruthanne and I hurdled chairs to reach the back. We looked at Lettie in anticipation, but she said, “Ruthanne, I think you should get to read it. After all, it was your idea to look.”

  “Okay.” Ruthanne grinned and raised an eyebrow. “But don’t blame me if it’s scary. ‘Ode to the Rattler,’ ” she began, making her voice sound spooky like Count Dracula.

  “He roams through the woods, prowling the night,

  Rattling to wake the dead.

  The dogs sniff and bark, chasing this ghost,

  But only come back well fed.

  What is he up to? Where does he go?

  Is he a skeleton clattering alone?

  The Rattler is watching, he knows who you are,

  Maybe he’ll throw you a bone!”

  Ruthanne did such a fine rendition that we were pleasantly spooked—until we heard a clattering noise in the hallway. After several seconds of us pointing to each other, determining who should look out the window of the door, it seemed that with Lettie and Ruthanne both pointing to me, I was the chosen one.

  Without a word, Lettie got down on her hands and knees next to the door and I stepped up on her back. I saw a man in sweat-stained clothes. A cigar hung from his mouth. He dunked a large scrub brush into a bucket of water and commenced halfheartedly scrubbing the floor.

  Lettie fidgeted a little under my weight. “What do you see?” she grunted.

  “It’s the janitor.”

  “The janitor?” Ruthanne smacked her hand against her forehead. “Oh, Lord, mean Mr. Foster.”

  “He’s scrubbing the hallway. And from the looks of the tin canister next to him, I think he’s fixing to do some waxing.”

  “That man barely lifts a finger all year long and he picks now to wax floors?”

  Lettie shifted again and I bumped up against the door. The noise startled Mr. Foster and he dropped his cigar right into the soapy water. He let fly with a string of curses that would make a sailor blush, and stomped down the hallway and out of sight.

  “He left!” I said, jumping down from Lettie’s back. “I think he’s just going to get another cigar. If we hurry, we can sneak back out the same way we came in.”

  The three of us scampered out of the classroom and back to the open closet window. Ruthanne and I gave Lettie a boost up. Then I laced my fingers together to give Ruthanne a foothold. She looked at me. “Wait a minute. He’s got the bucket. If you give me a leg up, how will you get out?”

  I confessed I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’ll find an open door.”

  “But—”

  “Hurry up, or he’ll come back and I’ll be stuck in here. I’ll be fine,” I assured her.

  “Okay. We’ll meet you in the alley behind the schoolyard.”

  She wiggled out the window and was gone.

  I chanced a look into the hallway. He still wasn’t there. But as soon as I ventured into the open, his swear words announced his return. The closest place to go was back into the senior classroom. I ducked in and leaned my back against the chalkboard with my heart pounding and sweat trickling down my neck.

  By then the shadows in the classroom had grown long. My breathing seemed so loud I was sure Mr. Foster could hear me through the classroom wall. It was the same feeling I had when getting ready to jump from a train. Only this train wasn’t slowing down.

  I could hear the sound of the janitor’s lackadaisical scrubbing against the wooden floor. It looked like I might be stuck there for a while. As I slowly inched along the wall and away from the door, my hand brushed across the pages of the still open dictionary. It was open to the Hs.

  This was the only dictionary I’d seen since coming to Manifest, and I remembered Sister Redempta’s instructions. “Manifest,” she’d said, “look it up.” I thumbed through the pages. Hobble, hobby, hobnail. What’s a hobnail? I wondered. I flipped ahead to the Ms. Magi, magpie, manicure … manifest.

  I listened to make sure I could hear scrubbing in the hall. Mr. Foster was still at it.

  Manifest—noun. A list of passengers on a ship.

  That was interesting, since most of the people who had lived in Manifest years before were immigrants who had come to this country on ships. So their names would have been listed on a ship’s manifest. But Sister Redempta had said that the word was a verb as well as a noun.

  Manifest—verb. To reveal, to make known.

  I admit I was stumped. She had said to start my story with the dictionary and this definition in particular. How was this supposed to help me start a story? What was I supposed to make known? The room was hot and stuffy. I lifted my foot to give my leg a scratch and managed to knock a book off the bottom shelf. It hit the floor with a thump.

  Quietly picking it up, all I heard was my own breathing. That was it. No scrubbing noise from the hallway. I scooted quickly back to the door, only to smell the stale odor of old cigar. Then somebody on the other side slowly turned the doorknob. I couldn’t move and there was no place to hide anyway. This was just an empty summertime classroom. I squeezed the book to my chest, waiting to be discovered, when there was a loud kapow, kapang, kapang, kapow farther down the hallway. It sounded like Al Capone had arrived in Manifest with tommy guns blazing.

  Mr. Foster issued forth with another exuberant round of oaths, yelling his way down the hall. I took my chance, sprinting the opposite way down the hall and bursting out a side door that had been left propped open by a can of nails.

  I rushed to the alley, not knowing what I feared more, Mr. Foster or the gun-firing gangsters, then ran headlong into Lettie and Ruthanne.

  “Quick! Over here!” Ruthanne shoved me behind a rose trellis that didn’t provide much coverage, as there were no blooms to boast of.

  Ruthanne and Lettie giggled.

  “What’s so funny? I was nearly caught by Mr. Foster. And then gunshots went off from who knows where. I could have been killed in there!”

  They giggled even louder.

  “Those weren’t gunshots.”

  “They were firecrackers!”

  “We busted you out.”

  “So happy Independence Day!”

  Lettie’s firecrackers. I was relieved and a little embarrassed at getting into such a flurry. I smiled a shaky smile.

  “Wait!” I said, realizing I still held the book in my hand. “I have to put this back.”

  But they were already pulling me toward the newspaper office for some of Hattie Mae’s lemonade.

  “There’s no going back in there now,” Lettie said. “My brother, Teddy, is going to be a senior this year. He can take it back the first day of school, and no one will be the wiser.”

  “Are you sure?” I hesitated.

  “Sure I’m sure. Just put it somewhere safe until then and Teddy will put it back in its place.”

  Back in its place. The first day of school. Where would I be then? What was my place?

  Where would Gideon be? I had so many questions that had no
answers. I recalled the definition in the dictionary.

  Manifest—verb. To reveal, to make known.

  The way I saw it, that was the wrong name for this town.

  Drawing Straws

  JULY 11, 1936

  In our hunt for the Rattler, Ruthanne, Lettie, and I must not have been as secret as we thought. One day, I was walking up Main Street, caught up in my own little contest of tossing a hedge apple into the air and catching it, hoping to count to two hundred catches without dropping. I was on one hundred and fifty-eight when Mr. Cooper, the barber, stepped out of his shop, blocking my way.

  He flapped his haircutting cape to shake off the clippings and said, “Hey, kid.”

  I looked around to make sure he was talking to me.

  “You one of them girls that’s been looking for a spy?” he asked, kind of half looking at me.

  I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “Um.” I shrugged. I admit it wasn’t the best I could come up with, but it kept him talking.

  “Yeah, well, my father came here from Germany. Hermann Keufer. We lived at 224 Easy Street. Can you believe that? A street called Easy and a German living on it during the war? I was fifteen when the war started, and I can tell you, it was far from easy.” Mr. Cooper took out his razor and wiped it clean with his apron.

  I wasn’t sure why he was telling me all this, but he kept on. “He worked in the mines and sang baritone in a barbershop quartet. After he died, my mother changed our last name. She thought it would make things easier on us.” The sun glinting off the razor made his eyes water. “Somehow, I always felt like we were turning our backs on the old man.” He folded the razor on itself and put it into his pocket. “So if there was a spy here, good luck finding him, but it wasn’t my dad. All right?”

  I nodded, relieved to watch him and his razor go back into the barber shop. My gaze went to the old picture in his store window of the group of men in overalls and miner’s hats. It was easy to spot Hermann Keufer with his handlebar mustache. Slowly, thoughtfully, I took up catching the hedge apple again, One, two, three …, but I wasn’t really paying attention to my counting anymore.