Moon Over Manifest (21 page)

It started with a few coughs and body aches. Then it moved to fever, chills, and dizziness. Everyone had read of the symptoms that were not supposed to cause any concern—the same symptoms that were spreading from town to town throughout the country.

All over Manifest, people were showing signs of this influenza. In church, the library, the mines, a few coughs that turned into a wheeze. Rubbing of the neck and shoulders. Even in the August heat, you might see a woman draw on her shawl to calm her shivers.

There was a tension that permeated Manifest, as if one shoe had fallen on it and the whole town was waiting for the other to drop. But where, when, and on whom it would fall was still unknown.

Many were the times Jinx thought he’d better get while the getting was good. But every time he thought he’d
light out, he’d see Sheriff Dean hovering about, watching him. No, for now, he just had to hope that the town had some luck that was better than his.

Once the telltale signs of sickness had been exhibited, it didn’t take long for Lester Burton, Arthur Devlin, and their wives and associates to start feeling a bit puny. Or if they weren’t actually feeling sick yet, it was clear to them that with everyone coughing, sneezing, and wheezing all around them, it was only a matter of time. So anyone with means, including Burton, Devlin, and their lot, used the opportunity to take a holiday—elsewhere. Even Sheriff Dean stayed close to his home, which was down by the river and safely outside of town.

The county medical examiner was called in, and within thirty minutes he declared that until the influenza ran its course, the entire town of Manifest would be under official quarantine. Nobody goes in. Nobody gets out.

After the last train had pulled out and the smoke from the last Model T had settled, there was an unearthly quiet, as if death had won out. Then, after a minute or two that seemed to last for hours, the mine whistle blew.

A few curtains were pulled aside by people peeking out to make sure that all was clear. Mr. Keufer, still wearing his pajamas, was the first to venture into the street. Then Mrs. Cybulskis stepped onto her porch, washing from her face the powder that had given her a deathly pallor.

Soon everyone was smiling and shaking hands, patting one another on the back. It was as if a miracle had happened and all were healed, but the real miracle was that Burton and Devlin had fallen for their ruse. With the mine
included in the quarantine, there would be no whistles calling the men to work. No long hours of labor that did little but line the pockets of Devlin and Burton.

The children were particularly excited. The start of school would be postponed. Food and supplies would be brought by train and left just outside of town. Word spread quickly, and soon Stucky Cybulskis, the McIntyre boys—Danny, Michael, Patrick, and Sean—the Santoni brothers, and even nine-year-old Rosa Santoni, who was as pretty as pie but as rough and tumble as the big boys, all climbed trees or perched themselves on rooftops, appointing themselves sentries of Manifest. They would stand guard to keep a careful eye on anyone approaching from the outside. Among them all, Jinx was hailed as a local hero for coming up with the greatest scheme ever.

But the greatest scheme ever would involve a lot of work. While the trees were lined with young sentinels keeping watch, the adults would be busy making the one thing that had brought in any money of late: the combined concoction of Shady’s hooch and Velma T.’s elixir.

Mama Santoni donned an apron and led the women in shucking corn. Greta Akkerson and Etta Cybulskis rolled up their sleeves and joined in. Their many hands made light work as they shared stories of home and family.

They talked of their common experiences of traveling to America on ships filled with immigrants, tears of emotion welling up as they recounted their first sightings of the Statue of Liberty, and the joy and fear of arriving at Ellis Island.

“I was so afraid I would be turned back,” said Mrs. Cybulskis, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “The
way they examined everyone for disease and malady.” The women nodded in agreement. They had all experienced the fear of being labeled unfit to enter America. A simple chalk mark drawn by the medical examiner on one’s clothes could have a person barred from entering his newly adopted country. An
E
for eye problems, an
L
for lameness, an
H
for heart problems. They would have to board another boat and go back to wherever they’d come from no matter how long a journey they had just traveled.

“In Poland,” Mrs. Cybulskis continued, “I have no shoes, so my neighbor, he is a cobbler, he makes me a new pair. Beautiful shoes with fancy heels. Never had I walked in heels. The inspectors detain me, because they think I have a problem with balance and maybe am sick.” Mrs. Cybulskis shrugged, raising her hands, which were full of corn husks. “I have to take off my shoes to show I can walk straight!” The women laughed together as they filled bucket after bucket with corn.

Callisto Matenopoulos and Hermann Keufer loaded the corn onto a wagon and hauled it over to Shady’s place. “Ma-ten-o-pou-los,” Mr. Matenopoulos said, sounding out his name. He laughed as Mr. Keufer stumbled over the pronunciation. “You think my name is difficult. At Ellis Island, the inspector asks my friend Milo, ‘What is your last name?’ ‘Zoutsaghianopoulous,’ he says. The inspector asks him if he wants to change it to make it easier to pronounce. My friend gives this much thought. After all, this is his family name. Finally, after much consideration, he agrees. ‘Take out the
h
.’ ” Mr. Keufer chuckled loudly.

Of course, the real excitement was at Shady’s place, and
Jinx was right in the thick of it. This was the first time Shady’s whiskey still had seen the light of day. The whiskey-making machine had been retrieved from the darkness of the abandoned mine shaft on the Widow Cane’s property, where it had been in constant activity since the start of Prohibition. But one wouldn’t be enough for the operation they hoped to have up and running. So Donal MacGregor, Hadley Gillen, and Nikolai Yezierska assembled four more stills out of spare tanks and copper tubing and set them up in a run-down barn near the natural spring. This gave them an easy supply of water and an out-of-the-way location to run their operation.

But it was as if Shady himself was also thrust into the light of day and he was left stunned and unsteady. He reached for a bottle of whiskey stashed under the eaves overhanging the back steps. Just a sip to stop the shakes and give him a little liquid courage. He uncorked the bottle and moved back into the shadows of the eaves.

The back screen squeaked open and Jinx stood beside him. “Come on, Shady, you can do it. Just show ’em what you know.”

Shady ran the back of his hand over his whiskery face. “I don’t know anything.”

Jinx’s voice was calm and steady. “Right now there’s only one thing these folks need to know and you’re the only one who can teach them.”

Shady stood still a full minute before placing the cork back in the bottle. He returned it to its hiding spot above and stepped into the warm daylight as Jinx held open the screen door. Then Shady oversaw the process with the watchful eye
of a master craftsman, wanting each of his apprentices to learn the art of his trade. He seemed grateful to have Jinx nearby for moral support.

“That’s right, keep that burner low, Mr. Keufer. We don’t want to scorch the mash. Casimir, why don’t you get another batch going in that tank over there? Corn, water, yeast, and sugar,” he said, rattling off the contents of a time-honored recipe used by bootleggers throughout many a dry region.

“I knew a guy in Chicago,” Jinx said, “he scorched the sugar to make a richer color.”

Shady shook his head. “It may be wrong to make whiskey, but there’s a right way to do it.”

The first batches of mash fermented day after day, with any number of men standing by, like children in Mama Santoni’s kitchen. Stirring, smelling, eyeing, wondering.

On the ninth day, Donal MacGregor stood at a simmering tank. “Give it a whiff, Shady. I think it’s ready.”

Shady smelled the brew. “Cap it off and Jinx’ll hook up that copper tubing. When the liquid separates from the mash, it goes through the tubing and ends up in this barrel.” He lifted the spigot at the base of the oak barrel and captured a few ounces of amber liquid in a glass jelly jar.

Shady’s hand showed only a slight tremor of need as he held the jar to the light to check the color, and smelled the liquid’s aroma. Folks who knew Shady knew he struggled with the drink. So when he poured the whiskey back into the barrel and said, “It’s ready for Velma T.’s elixir,” everyone understood that was to be the code of conduct. Not a drop would be had by any man there.

•   •   •

Jinx and Shady hauled the first barrel over to the high school. Mrs. Larkin caught sight of them on the front steps. “Shady,” she called in a shrill voice. “Shady Howard.”

They pretended they didn’t hear her, and walked into the high school and down the hall to the chemistry room. Mrs. Larkin had been working Jinx pretty hard, making him weed her garden and clean out closets of her husband’s old papers. Worst of all was sitting down for afternoon tea, carrying on what she called polite conversation, which, in her estimation, was something every gentleman should be capable of doing. So it was understandable that Jinx would wish to keep his distance.

But as Mrs. Larkin stormed in behind Shady and Jinx, all three stopped dead in their tracks.

“What’s that smell?” Jinx rubbed his neck as the pungent odor practically singed through his nose, clear to the back of his head.

Hattie Mae looked up through safety goggles while Velma T. stood sentry over several beakers of clear liquid warming over Bunsen burners. “A fermented mixture of corn, castor oil, eucalyptus extract, menthol, iron, potassium, and calcium,” Hattie Mae answered.

“Nothing that wasn’t in it when you two ne’er-do-wells took it upon yourselves to play hanky-panky with my elixir,” said Velma T., jotting some notes on a clipboard. Her safety goggles looked like bulgy fly eyes against her narrow face.

Shady and Jinx both knew they’d have to tread lightly, as Velma T. was not completely on board with their endeavor.

“How do you make so much with just those little beakers?” Jinx asked.

“This is what is called the base mixture,” Velma T. answered, “which you would know if you ever showed up to my chemistry class. This syrup combined with Manifest springwater in an exact four-to-one ratio makes up a palatable and restorative elixir.”

“Velma,” Mrs. Larkin interrupted, “surely you are not going to participate in this”—she struggled for the right word—“this … charade. My husband, the late county appraiser, would be rolling over in his grave at this exercise in depravity. Why, I’ve a mind to telegraph my sister’s boy in Topeka. He works in the governor’s office. He’s the assistant to the assistant, you know.”

Most folks were surprised and more than a little curious when Mrs. Larkin stayed behind for the quarantine instead of leaving town with the rest of the people of means. She’d certainly made her objection to Jinx’s plan clear the night of the town meeting. Her daughter, Pearl Ann, was already away at the university, and some speculated that Mrs. Larkin was less a person of means than she liked others to believe and maybe couldn’t afford to leave town. At any rate, since she was still here, there was nothing they could do but hope that she wouldn’t ruin everything.

Ignoring Mrs. Larkin, Velma T. lifted her safety goggles onto her head and glared at Shady and Jinx through narrowed eyes. “You know, I should have let Sheriff Dean arrest both of you for tampering with a medicinal product and endangering the public health. My elixirs are carefully synthesized compounds of potentially dangerous elements.” She poured the syrupy liquid into a measuring glass and
tested the volume and density. “They are meticulously prepared remedies that deserve a little respect.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Neither Jinx nor Shady pointed out that her elixir had never remedied anybody until it was mixed with Shady’s whiskey. However, the following silence said it all.

“Still, I suppose serendipity is a force to be reckoned with,” Velma T. said with a sigh.

Hattie Mae came to the rescue. “Now, don’t you underestimate yourself, Miss Velma. Of course there are discoveries made by unexpected occurrences. But it takes the right someone to make sense of it all. You told us yourself, ‘An apple is just an apple until it falls on Sir Isaac Newton.’ ”

“Then what is it?” Jinx asked.

“Gravity,” Velma T. said. “I suppose you’re right. Even Louis Pasteur, the father of modern medicine, said that ‘chance favors the prepared mind.’ ”

Mrs. Larkin was beside herself. “Velma, really! You can’t be serious about this so-called miracle medicine.”

“I’m not prepared to say that there is anything miraculous about this combined elixir. But it seems to have put you right, Eudora.”

“Yes, right out of the Women’s Temperance League. Besides, I’m sure I was already well on the road to recovery.”

“Still,” Velma T. continued, “I hear there have been outbreaks of the influenza as nearby as Pittsburg and Baxter Springs. If my medicine will help, then—”

“Now, dear,” Mrs. Larkin interrupted. “I’m sure your elixir is fine for keeping a body regular, but I think it can hardly be classified as medicine.”

Velma T.’s back stiffened; her lips pursed; even her nose seemed to get a little pointier.

Everyone in the room knew that Mrs. Larkin had said the wrong thing.

“Very well, Shady. I will be happy to make my elixir available to anyone who is in need. So we had better get busy. As word spreads about Mrs. Larkin’s recovery, I’d imagine bottles of the Manifest elixir will be in greater demand than before.”

Shady muttered to Jinx, “Certainly won’t hurt that it tastes better than before.”

“I heard that, Shady.” Velma T. patted her pockets. “Who took my safety goggles?”

Shady pointed to his head, indicating that the spectacles rested above her forehead. Velma T. recovered the goggles, breathed on them, and wiped them with her white lab coat. “All right, then, where exactly are we going to mix up the stuff? Between my elixir and your … contribution, there will be a lot of liquid to be combined.”