Sentinels (6 page)

Chapter Seven

“Ever seen it this bad on the battlefield?” Sheriff Cole asked Noah Chandler the next morning as they surveyed the bodies strewn along the road.

“Yeah, after the docs finished using the bone saws,” Noah said.

They and three other deputies Noah had first met that morning all hitched their horses to Leroy Elkton's fencing. Five soldiers, still mounted on their horses, loomed behind the lawmen. Elkton and four freedmen kept their distance from the carnage and lingered near the farm's entrance. They all thought to a man that their war-weary eyes had seen the worst types of human savagery, until today.

“Well, the horses were spared,” Cole said of the two stallions that towed the empty carriage into Henderson hours earlier. “I'm glad they knew their way home, otherwise it might've been a while until—” The sheriff knew not what to say.

Arms, legs, heads and torsos littered the road. Swarms of insects hopped and flew to feast. Cole worried a fox might slink in and snatch one of the arms with hands still gripping revolvers.

“So who kills the Klan and soldiers all at the same time?” Noah stared at the remnants of the two soldiers who'd been shredded no differently than the racists.

Nobody could conjure a rational answer.

A blue sky framed a sun that baked blood onto wherever it splattered. Elkton internalized how much wheat he'd have to destroy based on the arterial spurts across the stalks.

“What a waste of linen,” Deputy Roger Clement, a veteran lawman, said as he used his boot tip to lift a swath of white sheeting stained with crimson mud. “It's like a tornado made of knives scooped 'em up and spat 'em out. Bullets would've done the job much cleaner. Shame to get my boots all dirty like this. Just bought 'em, too.”

“It's overkill, for sure.” Noah ignored Clement's crudeness. “I expect we can make out some of the tracks, though.”

“Well, see what you can see, boys,” Cole said. “I'll help you.”

“Why you give a shit about them?” one of the freedmen called to the sheriff. “Whoever did it saved the government some time and money.”

Cole turned and spat tobacco away from the scene.

“I give a shit because I won't allow vigilante acts by the Klan against you boys,” Cole said. “And in case you haven't noticed, two men who risked their asses to free yours are now as dead as Abraham Lincoln. I
better
give a shit about who's killing the scum of the earth and its salt if the aim's to be civilized.”

“Fuck them and anyone who looks like them,” the freedman replied.

“Sheriff Cole, there's one over here, alive!” Deputy Eric Harrison, the newest hire, a short and stocky one at that, stood off road, straddling the lip of Elkton's wheat field closest to his home.

“He's stirrin' a little, moving his arms and legs,” Harrison said.

The only intact body belonged to Robert Culliver, who pressed his hands to his belly to stem the bleeding while sputtering for breath.

The men abandoned the road to examine the victim.

“Hang on, boy, doctor's on the way,” Cole said, relieved by the sounds of Doctor Richardson's wagon trundling down the road.

“Hope the bed's big enough for all these parts,” said Harrison, scanning the human debris.

“The parts ain't going in the doc's wagon,” Cole said.

Then it hit Harrison. “Wait a minute, are
we
supposed to pick up the pieces?”

Richardson, shabbily dressed in overalls and a white shirt as he'd just woken up, simultaneously stood as he steered the wagon and focused on the twitching body.

“Because, I mean, I forgot to bring my gloves with me, Sheriff,” Harrison continued, trying to bring the other deputies to his side. “I suppose what I'm saying is that—'lessen you're a surgeon or a mortician—on your first day of work you're usually just setting up your desk making sure it's just so, and not, I don't know, picking some guy's decapitated head off the road.”

“Grow a pair, son.” Cole didn't look at him. “You must've sat behind a just-so desk during the War—otherwise you'd be used to this.”

Not so, Sheriff,
Noah thought.
Soldiers didn't do this, not Northern or Confederate soldiers.

“Maybe the freedmen did it.” Noah made it sound like a question.

“Those boys over there?” Cole eyed the freedmen.

“Nossir, not them. I mean the folks living in town—but even then I can't see them doing this. Especially because of the two soldiers. Why would they want both the Klan
and
the Army seeking revenge on them?”

“Whoa!” Richardson eased his horses, pulled the rig's brake, hopped off the wagon with his medical bag, and handed the reins to a freedman.

“Out of my way!” the doc ordered the lawmen and waved his arms. “Stand back!”

They obliged and formed a disjointed half-circle. The doctor analyzed his patient and made a snap judgment.

“I can't do anything to him here, I need you boys to help me pull him out—gently.”

Noah and Harrison gingerly slid their hands underneath Culliver's armpits while the doc stood opposite them and lifted the wounded man's legs. They laid Culliver on his back on a relatively unblemished part of the road and gave the doctor his space.

“Mother of God, I see intestines,” Richardson said. “If you can hear me, don't move. Stay right as you are.”

Richardson yanked apart the bloody sheet and the shirt underneath it to better access the wound. He nimbly prodded around the body and found no other cuts—just the eight-inch slice along Culliver's belly. Richardson pulled a pair of scissors from his bag to cut away Culliver's clothing to face nothing but the gash. He reached into his bag and pulled out a white cloth, a small bottle of chloroform, blood sponges, sutures and a bottle of carbolic acid.

Richardson commandeered Cole. “Sheriff, I'm gonna suture and dress it just enough to get him back to my office without his guts spilling out.”

The doctor, unlike a vast majority of battlefield medics who amputated and stitched wounded soldiers, had surgical experience prior to the War. He dabbed some chloroform on the cloth and put his patient to sleep, and used the small sponges to sop up whatever fresh blood pooled around the cut.

“I'm amazed he hasn't bled out.” Richardson spoke as intensely as he worked. “Had whatever cut him gone an inch or two deeper—” He trailed off.

He hastily poured the carbolic acid on the sutures before stitching.

“The hell you doing?” Cole said.

“It's called sterilization. I dip all my instruments in the acid at my office. Reduces the rate of infection and gangrene.” The doctor poked a piece of Culliver's protruding intestine back into his body before stitching. “Seven years ago I'd have eased his pain and set him aside to die. Today there's a chance to save him.”

Richardson worked for ten minutes on the wound, stopping every so often to ensure Culliver kept breathing.

“It's gonna have to do for now. I'll redress it back at my office. I need all of your men to help me pick him up and load him into my wagon. I want someone riding in the back with him.”

“I'll bring it around.” Noah bounded away without being asked.

“Today's your lucky day, Harrison—you ride with the doctor,” Cole said.

“Talk to him the entire time—I don't care if he responds to you or not,” Richardson said before Harrison had a chance to offer a relieved “Thank you.”

“Yessir,” Harrison said, adding, “Thank you.”

“And water,” Richardson said. “Ask the farmer for some water. But first.” The doctor pulled a tiny bottle of morphine from the bag and delicately plucked out a syringe. Elkton had heard the doctor's orders and ran for a bucket. Harrison followed.

Richardson injected the morphine and waited for Harrison to return. Noah wove the wagon along the shoulder opposite the Elkton entrance and pulled the bed as close as he could to Culliver.

“Let's lift him,” Richardson said. “Slowly. Someone get in the bed to pull him.”

Noah handed the reins to Cole and climbed over the driver's seat and into the bed, waiting for the human cargo. Harrison returned with a bucket and a cup and put them down to help Richardson and the remaining deputies inch Culliver into the wagon. Noah pulled Culliver under the shoulders to center him face up in the bed.

“Get in there, Harrison,” Richardson said. “And someone hand him the water.”

The doctor packed his bag and scooted into the coachman's seat before instructing Harrison, who moved aside so Noah could hop down.

“If he wakes up, he'll be in some pain. Keep his hands away from his belly. Try to give him water, and whatever you do, keep his attention
away
from the wound. Don't let him think about it.”

“Doc, you think we should take him to the hospital in Greenville?” Harrison said.

“No, son. It's thirty miles and several hours away. It's my office, or he'll die.” The doctor steered the wagon around the mess and soon disappeared underneath a far-off canopy of fir trees.

Noah scanned the road, silently counting.

“Okay, so, I see nine heads—some of which are still
on
the bodies,” Noah said. “I'm not even bothering to count the arms and legs—some of which are nowhere
near
the bodies.”

“What're you getting at?” Cole said.

“That fella the doc's carting, he's in one piece because he hid—he must've,” Noah said. “Probably rolled himself into the field. Smart thinking.”

“I'm guessing that whoever did this probably won't be pleased that they left a witness alive,” Cole said.

The sheriff turned and addressed his men. “Preston, get back to the doc's and stand guard by the door,” he ordered Deputy Drew Preston. “Get some soldiers there to help you—and don't take shit from them if they try to give you any.”

Preston hopped on his horse and galloped toward town, passing another wagon rumbling its way toward the gruesome cluster.

“All right, here comes the cavalry,” Cole said. “I asked the general to send some more of his boys out here to help us collect the, well, evidence. We won't be the only ones getting our hands dirty.”

Noah and the two other deputies had resigned themselves to the grisly task in the offing.

“Sheriff, there were footprints in the mud heading toward these fellas here,” Noah said. “Saw them when Richardson asked for his wagon. I counted four sets, some appeared to've been made by men wearing boots. Army boots by the looks of it. But some of the others, it's, well, I can't.”

“Spit it out,” Cole said.

“Some of the tracks weren't made by boots, but feet—really weird-looking feet, slender-like, almost clawed.”

“Probably just the way the rain fell and warped them.”

“Take a look for yourself, Sheriff.”

“I will. But you also said Army boots? So, what, we've got rogue soldiers taking the law into their own hands? And they don't flinch at killing their own men?” Cole said. “I'll ask the commander who he had out and about last night other than these two boys.”

“You think bayonets did all this?” Noah said, sweeping his arm across the road over the bodies and limbs.

“No, I don't,” Cole said.

A young soldier brought to a halt what would soon be a meat wagon. The other soldier riding next to him closed his eyes and prayed. The kid driver stood in his seat and his mouth dropped upon seeing the buffet of appendages. He then puked over the side of the wagon.

“Well,
he
didn't do it.” Cole chuckled, and then gave an order any decent man would rue. “All right, let's clean up. Someone'll be able to identify them sooner or later.”

“We can identify our own right now,” one of the horse-mounted soldiers said.

“I didn't mean any disrespect,” Cole said.

Noah squatted before a torso with a hooded head but zero limbs. He grabbed the body by the ragged sheets and underclothing still covering what remained of the man's shoulders and dragged the body to the wagon's rear. The soldier finished his prayer and exited to open the wagon's bed while the coachman composed himself.

“You wanna give me a hand here?” Noah said to anyone within earshot. “Someone please grab him by the belt—if he's wearing one—and lift when I do.”

The praying soldier helped Noah hoist the first of many remains into the wagon.

“I'm just thankful it's covered,” the soldier said to Noah, who looked at the wagon bed's arched canopy.

Clement, who ranked second to Cole in seniority, rounded wagon's rear, stood back a distance and nonchalantly tossed two severed arms, one after the other, into the wagon. Noah grimaced with each sickly thud.

“Score two for me.” Clement raised his arms in victory. “Lobbed them in without the bloody parts touching the canvas.” Clement waited for the soldier and Noah to respond. “I think I'll just place the legs inside,” Clement said after neither responded. “They're heavier.”

Clement chuckled and walked away.

“You find anything funny about this?” Noah asked the unsmiling solider—Deacons was his name.

Deacons lifted the right cuff of his blue pants to reveal a wooden prosthetic.

“Goes up to the knee,” Deacons said. “I stopped finding things funny after the cannonball took it from me.”

The soldier walked away.

One of the freedmen approached Noah and waved to get his attention.

“You wanna know why that boy's still alive?”

“Like I told the Sheriff, he ducked into the field.”

“That's a possibility,” the freedman said. “Or, the saints who chopped up his buddies
let
him live.”

Noah thought about it and shook his head. “Why would they do that?”