“That’s the aim.” Noah followed Young to the four remaining bodies. Waylon Deacons, the soldier with the prosthetic leg, stood guard over them by slouching against oak tree that shaded the remains.
“Where’d the other guy go, and the wagon?” Noah said.
“Took it back to base to wash it out,” Deacons said. “I just assume burn the damn thing. It was getting pretty foul.”
“I’m pleased people are at least claiming these guys.” Noah flipped away the makeshift burlap blankets and delicately shrouded a corpse with a long fresh sheet. Deacons pushed himself off the tree, grabbed a folded square of linen where Noah had placed them on the ground, and did likewise to the body covered in a black cloth tarp.
Young joined them and soon the yard took on the appearance of a crime scene and not a slapstick outdoor morgue.
Chapter Twelve
Noah had been tagged for the late shift, but that changed when he saw from the Sheriff’s Office’s front window his father-in-law, Benedict Kealty, whipping the reins to his horse-drawn wagon barreling down Main Street. Noah ran into its wake and realized the destination. He thought of his wife and unhitched Wilbur to ride to Doctor Richardson’s office.
He arrived just as Richardson was climbing aboard Kealty’s wagon and pulled up next to it.
“It’s happening, Chandler,” Kealty told Noah, who for the better part of his life never once recalled Benedict calling him by his first name. “Natalie’s water burst all over our family room floor. Shame she wasn’t at your place. Such is life. You ready, Doc?”
“Go.”
The wagon pulled away as Noah dismounted Wilbur and knocked on the doc’s front door. Deputy Harrison answered.
“Tell Cole my wife’s in labor and I’m with her at my inlaw’s.”
He hopped aboard Wilbur before Harrison replied, “Good luck.”
Noah anticipated this day with eagerness tinged with dread, the latter due to the rate of women dying during childbirth. Although Benedict would never admit it, he was grateful for the Chandlers offering to pay for the doctor’s services rather than have a midwife help Natalie through the delivery.
Noah’s absence left Sheriff Cole to pick the short straw. It didn’t bother him much as he lived in the apartment above his own office. All of his deputies had put in a long day and he decided it proper to keep watch over the doc’s place upon the stroke of midnight. He took his time, not rushing his horse to gallop down Main Street and kick up a fuss. The road had quieted from its typical daily bustle. A town ordinance required any place that served alcohol—essentially, the Tavern—to close at eleven at night. No sense in the law or military having to bust up meaningless barroom brawls over who had first dibs on a whore at one in the morning. He let his body ride with the horse and took in the faint flickers of candlelight in second story windows where dwellers had yet to fall asleep. It was enough to guide him to the doc’s, where two soldiers stood guard on the front porch. A lantern hung on a hook in the center of wide porch’s ceiling. A third soldier had stationed himself in the rear of the home.
“Doc ain’t back yet?” Cole said to one of the soldiers as he hitched his horse to a post by the porch.
“Nossir,” one replied.
“That’s a long time to be in labor,” Cole said. “Jeez, in this heat? That’s one mix of sweat and frizzled hair I don’t want to see.”
“Suppose so. Fortunately nobody sick has stopped by. Otherwise we’d have sent them to that woman’s place outside of town.”
“Nurse Yarnell?” Cole said of Melissa Yarnell, an older woman who served as a nurse during the War and always volunteered to help Richardson. “Glad she’s on call.”
“I went and told her myself ’bout the doc being busy at the Kealty home—said she’s got no place to be tomorrow, so we’ll be in good shape if the doc’s delayed.”
“You boys being spelled anytime soon?”
“Nossir, we just came on.”
“All right, I’ll be inside.”
“Door’s open, Sheriff. The other feller in there poked his head out a few moments ago looking for you.” The sheriff marveled at how northern transplants, himself included, acquired a southern twang just by being around the natives.
“Harrison wants to go home, huh?” Cole chuckled. “I suppose he’s done enough today.”
Cole gripped the doorknob and slowly turned it.
“Watch this one, boys.” Cole grinned. He burst through the door with such speed that Harrison, who’d nodded off in a waiting room seat, flailed his arms and kicked out his legs and toppled off his chair.
“Sleeping on the job, huh?” Cole crossed his arms, looking down at the young deputy with feigned disappointment.
“Nossir.” Harrison fumbled and put his hand on the chair to push himself up. “I was just deep in thought, thinking about those murders.”
“Really? Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, son. What if I was some crazed killer who stormed in here?”
“I’m assuming those fine soldiers outside would’ve stopped you first.” Harrison stammered a bit as he stood and then straightened out his clothes. “And if not them, then the guy out back would’ve been all over you.”
“Got it all figured out, huh? Don’t worry, son. I can overlook it. We’re all bushed. How’s our Klansman doing?”
“He sleeps when he’s not groaning for water. I check on him every fifteen minutes or so.”
“He eating anything?”
“So far he just wants water. He ate an apple a little earlier. But that was it.”
“Not to be indecent, but when’s the last time he went to the outhouse?” Cole motioned for Harrison to sit back in his chair. The sheriff took a seat across the room before continuing the conversation. Two lanterns resting on a coffee table in the middle of the room provided the light.
“The doctor gave me a big glass bottle for the guy to piss in. He got the hang of it pretty easy. He needs help standing. I make the son-of-a-bitch hold the bottle under his parts himself. I’m not doing that. I can’t say it’s fun dumping the thing in the outhouse, but that’s why you’re paying me the big bucks.”
“And if he had to relieve himself otherwise?”
“The doctor left a bedpan. I’m thankful he hasn’t had to use it.”
“He’s walking around, then?”
“Only a few feet at a time. Hurts him to move. The doc shot him up with some painkiller before he left. It must be wearing down. He’s been moaning a bit more now than he was earlier today. I’ve not shackled him to that table yet. I was thinking about it, but, honestly, have we charged him with a crime? I mean, it seems he’s the victim here.”
“Those boys weren’t just playing dress-up,” Cole said. “They wanted to attack that farmer and those freedmen. So, yeah, we’ll charge him with something. I don’t care if it’s disturbing the peace. But I’m more concerned about him regaining his wits to tell us something other than wraiths attacked him.”
“Yeah, he talked about that too.”
Cole’s ears perked up and he leaned forward. “What’d he say?”
“That them ‘wraiths brought the rain and pain and washed away the Mexican stain.’ He kind of chuckled too. Clearly the man isn’t in his right mind. And, Sheriff, we didn’t find—”
The sheriff held up his hand. “I know, no Mexican.” He clasped his hands together and rested his chin on his knuckles. “I heard what you said—just don’t know what to make of it.”
“I mean, it ain’t unheard of for people to be delusional. Right?”
“That’s all he said? ‘Rain and pain,’ ‘Mexican’?
“It’s what he said, Sheriff. Said he closed his eyes after seeing the Mexican. And then another downpour. Said it happened real fast: the rain, the attack, then more rain. Said he’d never heard men scream like that, not even in the War. Oh, his wife stopp
ed by a couple of times to check on him. Her name’s Doreen. Sweet lady.”
“How nice of her. Think she’s as big of a bigot as her husband?”
“I didn’t ask her that. Didn’t seem appropriate to bring up in conversation. Just kept an eye on her. She didn’t say nothing about the freedmen. Said she’d be back in the morning.”
Cole placed both hands on his knees and stood, giving Harrison the idea he should do likewise.
“Go on home, son. I’ll check on our boy.”
“Who’s spelling you, Sheriff?”
“Deputy Hughes,” Cole said.
Harrison wished the sheriff well, telling him he’d be back on the job the next afternoon to work another evening shift. He handed Cole a set of the doc’s office keys.
“Tell those boys outside to knock if they need anything,” Cole said to Harrison before shutting and locking the door.
Robert Culliver, clad in nothing but his white shorts, slept face up on the doctor’s examination table. The sheriff inched into the room the way he imagined Noah would when it came time to check on his little one in the nursery: never wake a sleeping baby.
Two lanterns, placed on the doctor’s small medicine cabinet on the opposite side of the room, cast an orange glow over a sweaty body made muscular by endlessly lifting heavy things. Cole spied a bucket of water with wet rags draped over its rim and figured they were there to cool Culliver in case a fever spiked. A carafe filled with water stood next to it with a half-full drinking glass. And next to it—but not too close—stood the empty piss jug. Cole removed his cowboy hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Not needing it, he placed the Stetson next to the carafe. Culliver’s chest rose and fell peacefully. Cole grimaced upon seeing a centipede of stitches, some encircled by ooze, crawling across Culliver’s belly.
Cole tiptoed to check on the opened window next to where Culliver slept. The air felt nice. He touched the flimsy lock binding the shutters, knowing how easily someone with purpose could breach the office.
The sheriff slid open the bolt lock and pushed out the shutters to have a look. Chest-high hedges formed the property’s perimeter. One large maple tree shaded the house while a few dogwoods were scattered about the yard. Nothing fancy, save for the birdhouses dangling from the branches and a marble birdbath.
“Shit, I know it’s late, but sleeping on the job for real?”
The soldier—supposedly in charge of manning the back of the house—rested like a letter L against the maple.
“Boy, wake up!” Cole kept his voice low, but loud enough to be heard by the man. “Soldier, on your feet!” He didn’t budge.
Cole closed and locked the shutters. Culliver remained asleep. The sheriff exited the examination room and patted the keys in his pocket. He picked up one of the lanterns lighting the lobby and opened the front door.
“Hate to say it but your buddy’s sawing logs back there and—” Cole thought he was addressing the soldiers he’d spoken to earlier but found the porch empty.
The sheriff looked side-to-side, as if doing a double-take, to confirm they had disappeared. He closed and locked the door before drawing his Smith & Wesson.
“Fellas, where’d you go?” Cole crept down the stairs, worn wood squeaking with each step, leading to the road. He backed away from the house to absorb the scene.
He swiveled his body three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Nobody stirred—no movement but for the candles being extinguished in the few buildings behind him as Henderson went to sleep for the night. Even Cole’s horse, tied to the post off to the side of Doc Richardson’s office, stood trance-like, awake but unmoving, as if turned to stone by something it’d seen. The doc’s place was the last one people passed as they left town. The sheriff looked at the suffocating darkness that would swallow anyone riding through Henderson that night.
Where the hell’d they go?
Cole examined where the soldiers had stood and saw no outward signs of struggle. He lowered the lantern to the white-stained wooden floor. Blood drops, little ones sprinkled here and there, pockmarked the area directly in front of the door. He followed the red specks down the steps until they disappeared in the grass. Thousands of footsteps lined the dirt road in every direction, so checking for fresh ones at night seemed useless.
It started as a slight but discernable squeal made by wood and metal being yanked but not moving, only to crescendo into an explosion of wooden boards clattering together and then falling into silence.
He knew what had happened and ran left to circle into the backyard. The hedge wall parted to make room for the white wooden trellis that allowed rear entry. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, made brighter by moonlight. Nobody hid behind the skinny dogwoods. Only the towering maple provided space to remain unseen. He scurried to the side of the house, stepping over small planks, and arrived at a massive square void where the shutters once hung. It appeared as if someone fired a piano out of the doctor’s office. He poked his head into the space and illuminated the examination table—now empty of Culliver.
Harrison should’ve shackled him to the table, the sheriff thought. But how the hell’d they do it so quick?
Nobody had entered the office while he stood watch inside—unless they were already there when Cole arrived, he reasoned. But then why knock a hole in the side of the wall when they could just open the shutters from indoors?
No, they breached the place by literally yanking out the window frame, and kidnapped a man weighing at least one-hundred-and-seventy pounds in less than ten seconds. He figured two men at the minimum were responsible. No one man could snatch a body so quickly. He reflected on the word.
What man could do this? They must still be here.
Cole whirled to face the yard and checked both his sides.
The shade tree, it’s the only place, he knew and then remembered. Holy Christ, the soldier!
He rushed to the man slouched against the tree and kneeled to his side.
“Hey, boy, wake up.” Cole placed the lantern on the ground and patted the soldier’s cheek to get his attention. It was a young kid, barely twenty years old, with what looked like a handlebar mustache in the works. He sat slightly reclined, allowing him to rest against the bark. The pats tilted the boy’s head to the side. Cole listened and put his fingers to the soldier’s neck. He heard breath and he felt a pulse. The sheriff went to retrieve the lantern and noticed blood smeared on his fingertips. Cole holstered his gun, and held the lantern close to the kid’s head to see blood trickling down the soldier’s neck. Cole hesitated at first but reached around to feel the back of the boy’s head—the cracked skull moved sickeningly inward at the touch. The boy’s head nodded down, as if looking at his belly.
“Good God.” Cole sprang up and drew his revolver. He moved the lantern up and down the tree and saw a dark, slick blotch on bark where the soldier’s head would be aligned if standing. Cole’s inside’s shifted when he realized it wasn’t an overripe tomato that had splattered against the bark, but a young man’s head.
Cole walked around the tree and fell into further despair upon finding the two soldiers who had guarded the front door. Now sitting next to each other, their bodies slouched inward, their foreheads touching as if they fell asleep mid-nuzzle.
The sheriff stooped to look and found fresh blood flowing from wounds where their foreheads met. Again, the sheriff holstered his piece and felt both of the young men’s pulses. All these soldiers were just babies, he thought—and thank goodness, live babies. But injured babies.
Someone cracked their skulls together like coconuts, he thought.
A quick rustling of leaves caused him to look skyward. A dark mass plummeted toward him but stopped with a quick snap of taut rope. A few leaves and small tree branches landed around Cole in a circle. Still crouched, he held the lantern high and brushed the backside of his shaking hand against still-warm skin, and he realized a
pair of feet twitched inches above him.
Robert Culliver’s ill-clothed body wriggled from a noose knotted to a sturdy tree limb that the sheriff couldn’t see when he stood. Culliver’s spastic jerks rustled the leaves, and his desperate eyes, open and glaring at Cole, relayed that his life would end unless…
Cole drew his revolver and fired six shots that followed the taut rope—one of the bullets breaking the cord. Culliver crumpled to the ground and lay on his side, squirming and gasping.
The sheriff rushed to his side and yanked on the noose, loosening it. He turned Culliver to lay him flat when he heard a voice.
“You’re empty.”
Culliver’s eyes darted to the voice’s direction. The sheriff whirled and aimed at a man who entered the backyard the same way as the sheriff. The stranger held no firearms, but both hands wielded machetes.
“Don’t move.” Cole cocked his gun as the figure confidently strode toward the lawman. “I warned you.” The sheriff pulled the trigger, hearing only a click.
“I told ya you was empty, and you ain’t got time to reload.” The man wore a bandana to conceal his nose and mouth—but not his moonlight-reflecting eyes, which chilled Cole because he’d seen them before.
“You?” Cole said. “Why you doing this?”
“Don’t matter why. But I wish you hadn’t fired. People’ll be here soon—means I gotta rush. Say hello to those Klansmen and soldiers. You’re about to meet ’em.”
Chapter Thirteen
Benedict Kealty answered the Chandler plantation house’s front door and saw Deputy Harrison with his hat in his hands.
“Chandler, it’s for you.” He didn’t bother inviting Harrison inside. Kealty turned and brushed by Noah, still dressed in his clothes from the previous day.
“I thought you told those boys you’d be off when the time came.” Kealty whispered it, but loud enough for Harrison to hear as Noah’s father-in-law left to be with his daughter and grandson.
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