Moon Over Manifest Chapters 36-38 Summary

Chapter 36

Everyone is preparing for the town festival.
The sheriff is watching Jinx, and Shady decides to play a trick on him. He tells Jinx to meet him near the place they'd been selling the elixir.
Shady gets into the open grave they had dug for the dead pig and hands a couple of jugs up to Jinx.
But the sheriff catches them, and makes them give both to him. Aw, shucks.
After he leaves, Shady tells Jinx it was a tiny bit of whiskey—and a whole lot of prune juice. Nice on.
Suddenly, the sheriff's brother-in-law shows up. You know, the one looking for Jinx and Finn.
He says he's got to hang someone for the murder, and it might as well be Jinx.
Sheriff Dean doesn't want to give Jinx up at first, but his brother-in-law threatens him, so he shows him where Jinx is.
Jinx sees them coming and tries to run, but he bumps into Finn in the woods. Ugh.
Finn uses his old mean tricks on Jinx, trying to shame him into coming back to him, but Jinx refuses.
Then, out of the blue, Finn sticks a gun in Jinx's back, and tells him that Junior's death wasn't an accident: he killed him, and just blamed Jinx. (Well, duh—we already knew Jinx was the good guy.)
He's about to shoot Jinx, when they hear something rattling through the woods…
Finn lets him go, but the gun goes off, and Jinx blacks out.
The next day, the men of Manifest are lowering a casket into that open grave in the woods.

Abilene's crying—she can't believe Jinx is dead.
She'd always hoped that Jinx was really her dad as a kid. But if he actually died, then it would be like losing him all over again. Poor kid.
Miss Sadie doesn't say anything until she can tell that Abilene is calm and determined to hear the story to the end.
Then she starts the story again…

The sheriff's brother-in-law notices that the gravestone doesn't say "Jinx."
Shady tells him that was just a nickname, but the sheriff insists on opening the coffin to make sure it's him.
Can't he just leave it be?
Sheriff Dean looks inside, and verifies that it's Jinx, so his brother-in-law leaves.
Once he's gone, the men stare at Sheriff Dean…
…who asks them where Jinx is.
He's okay. He was shot through the shoulder, but he lived.
Finn had fallen over into an animal trap, hit his head and died. He was the one in the coffin. And he was missing a foot.
The men don't understand why the Sheriff helped them, but he tells them it's because he didn't like his brother-in-law's cocky attitude.
Well, whatever—at least he helped out.
The town festival is huge success.
Everyone is friends now, and they're having an awesome time… until an army truck pulls up.

LETTER FROM PVT. NED GILLEN