Moon Over Manifest

“I suppose. But what appears to be dead can still hold life.” Her voice sounded small and far away. That day she wore a light housedress instead of her velvety fortune-teller garb, but it seemed like she was fixing to go into another one of her trances anyway. And since my back was aching for a chance to stretch out, I decided to help her along.

“So, what about that Klan rally?” I asked. I’d heard of really bad things Klan folks did to Negroes. Mean, hateful, deadly things. I didn’t know they were hateful toward white folks too.

“They think they hide their hate behind a mask,” she said, her accent thick, “but it is there for all to see.”

“And the boy whose girl got sore at him over the fish? And his friend?” I asked, pretending to be disinterested enough not to remember their names. “What happened to them?”

“Ned and Jinx,” she answered. “They are a match from the start. Jinx is cocky and streetwise. He knows a con for every day of the week. But he knows little of friendship and home. Ned provides both. He takes Jinx to Shady’s place, where many a wayward soul is welcome and no questions are asked.”

So Jinx must’ve been the one who’d hidden the letters and mementos under the floorboards at Shady’s house. “I’ll say. My money’s betting that Shady ran a speakeasy. He’s got the perfect setup to have run one of those secret saloons with the hidden cabinets and movable bar top for hiding illegal alcohol away when the law would come calling.” I spoke of it as if it was only in the past, but from what I’d gleaned of Shady, I wasn’t so sure. I waited for Miss Sadie to confirm or deny.

“Shady and Jinx share something in common. They both have dealings they are reluctant to reveal,” Miss Sadie said, not telling me if I’d win my bet. “It is clear Jinx runs from something, but Shady asks for no explanation.” I figured that was about as much answer as I was going to get. “It is not the first time he takes in a stranger in need. But, he says, Jinx must attend school. Sister Redempta takes him into her classroom.”

“I bet she plopped an assignment on him right off the bat too.”

“It is possible. In a town of immigrants, new students come all the time.”

“Is that how Ned got here?” I asked, wanting to stretch out my stretching out.

Miss Sadie breathed in again. “He comes to America on a boat, yes. But to Manifest, he comes by train. A train for orphans. He stays with the Sisters for a time. Sister Redempta cares for him. But he is a little boy, five years old, of undetermined nationality, so he belongs to all the people. Of course, it is Hadley Gillen, the widower hardware store owner, who adopts him as his own. But the town grows to love the boy and imagine that his future can be theirs as well.”

It got quiet as Miss Sadie lingered in the past. The heat took over me like a dream. A hot breeze seemed to conjure up exotic smells and faces of colorful people. People who had come from their various parts of the world to build a better life.

I stretched out my body under the willow tree, my face feeling cooler in its shade. Somehow, I felt like I was one of those people. Someone taken out of one place and put into another. A place where I didn’t belong. Why did my daddy really send me here? I wondered. “Why here?”

“The coal mines.” Miss Sadie answered my question that I didn’t realize I’d asked out loud. “People need work and the mines need workers. It sounds like a good match, but most do not realize the mines will consume them.” It took me a minute to realize she wasn’t talking about Gideon or me but about the people of Manifest years ago. She was heading into another story and I hadn’t even paid her a dime. Miss Sadie must have figured that since she wasn’t getting paid, she wouldn’t put on quite as much of a show as before. This time she left off all the divining gyrations and jingle-jangle antics and just started her story, plain and simple.

“The mine whistle was the sound that brought us together. And kept us apart at the same time.…”

The Art of Distraction

OCTOBER 27, 1917

The shrill whistle of the Devlin Coal Mine signaled the end of one shift and the beginning of another. Jinx gripped the handlebars of a dilapidated bicycle and shuddered in the midmorning breeze as he waited for Ned to emerge from the mine shaft.

Three weeks had passed since Jinx had jumped the train near Manifest, but for him, it seemed a lifetime. He had come to a community where strangers arrived every day, from places farther away than the next state over. He knew he might be fooling himself into thinking that he could stay. That he could leave his past behind. But he’d met Ned and was living with Shady. He was going to school. Leading a normal life. And for now, he felt safe.