Moon Over Manifest

All eyes descended to the bottoms of the men’s cloaks.

“See there?” Jinx pointed. “You got raggedy bottoms. I’d say you boys could learn a thing or two from the folks down in Arkansas. Wouldn’t you say, Brother Cletus?”

“I’d say so, Brother Emmett. Come on. I think I hear Pa calling us. Coming, Pa.”

They left the men gazing downward and made a beeline to the far side of the camp.

“Over there.” Jinx nudged Ned toward a dilapidated cabin that looked long abandoned. The nearby outhouse apparently stood in good stead, since six or seven men waited in single file.

The boys fell in line and Jinx hopped around enough that three men let him move ahead. It was dark inside, but he easily found the leaves wrapped in his handkerchief. Making appropriate grunts and sighs, he grabbed a stack of newspaper scraps and dropped them into the open hole. Careful not to touch the leaves, he left them in place of the paper, remembering a well-known rhyme:

Ivy on the vine, two leaves on a stem are fine,

Pick up one with three, and itching you will be.

“Come on, son. We’re backed up out here,” came a holler from outside.

“Yeah, we’re backed up something fierce,” Ned yelled.

Jinx opened the door. “I guess leaves’ll do in a pinch, but can’t you boys afford any newspaper or something? Let’s go, Cletus.”

The boys sauntered away, Jinx yelling over his shoulder, “They got toilet paper in Arkansas.”

A Bargain Is Struck

MAY 29, 1936

Miss Sadie looked to be done for the day. Her voice had gotten raspy toward the end of her fortune-telling and she breathed like she’d been carrying something heavy.

I wanted my dime back. “I said I wanted to know about my daddy. That was just some old story from twenty years ago about two people I don’t even know.”

Her eyes narrowed a bit and she raised her chin as if she had just figured me out. “You show me a letter. I tell you what the letter shows me.” She wagged a finger. “Next time you should be more specific about what it is you are seeking.”

I didn’t plan on there being a next time. So she’d told a story about Ned and Jinx. A made-up story about two names she read in the letter. I pictured the yellow and green fishing lure in the Lucky Bill cigar box. She knew the mementos I had and she’d zeroed in on the fishing lure mentioned in the letter to conjure her story. Anybody could do that.

I looked at Miss Sadie sitting there, her leg propped up. She was a pathetic sight. What kind of purveyor of the future could only tell stories from the past?

“Go home,” she said. “Communing with the spirits is a privilege. I have ointment on the top shelf, just behind the baking soda, above the icebox. But I will get it myself.”

She sure gave good directions if she was planning on getting it herself.

“I’ll get it,” I said with no small amount of reluctance. “Long as you don’t charge me another dime for the privilege.”

I maneuvered my way through the maze of velvet and fringe into her pantry and retrieved the nearly empty jar of salve. I gave it a whiff and nearly singed my nostrils.

“What is this stuff?”

“Hawthorn root,” she said, scooping out the remainder and rubbing it onto her leg. “It helps to increase circulation.” She moaned a little, massaging her swollen leg. It was then that I could see the wound that was causing her so much distress.

“What happened to your leg?” I asked with a grimace.

“I catch it on barbed wire. It is slow to heal.”

That was putting it mildly. That sore, with its scabbing and yellow pus, looked to have gone from bad to worse and about another mile past that.

“If you tell me where another jar is, I’ll fetch that for you and then I’ll be on my way.”

“There is no more. I gather the last of the hawthorn root near the cemetery last night. But I am sure there is more to be found elsewhere.”

I looked outside at the scorching sun. “Maybe you haven’t been outside lately, but there’s not much growing around here. There’s not enough water to fill a thimble.”

“There is water. It remains deep and hidden, but there is always water.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know what my father knew. And his father before him. It is what diviners know.”

“Your people are all fortune-tellers?” I hoped they were better at it than she was but I didn’t say so.

“No. We are a family of diviners. We see and understand things most people overlook. We read the signs of the land.”

“You mean like those hill people who walk around with a jiggly stick, thinking they can find underground wells?”

She made a guttural, scoffing sound. “Pah, what does one need with a stick? All one needs is eyes and ears. The earth speaks loud enough when it wants to be heard.”

I was beginning to have no doubt that she heard things. The woman wasn’t right in the head.

“All right, then. You have a nice day,” I said, backing toward the door.