Sentinels

by Matt Manochio

Chapter Twenty-Six

  Noah opened his eyes to sunlight flooding his parents’ guest bedroom.

  “You need another bath.” Natalie, holding Jake, stood beside her husband.

  Noah looked at his bare feet. The only things he removed before crashing to sleep were his socks and boots.

  “And your mother will need to wash the sheets, smelly boy.”

  He exaggeratedly opened and closed his eyes to clear out the gunk.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Well enough to walk,” Natalie said. “Bigger question is how are you feeling?”

  “My head don’t hurt as much.” He prodded around his temples and the blood-stained bandage. “The doc was right. I think drinking all that water last night helped.” He eyed the bundle in her arms. “How’s the little guy?”

  “Just fine. Sleeping peacefully. I think when he learns how to talk his first words will be ‘where’s Daddy?’.”

  “It’s been an interesting few days, honey, to say the least.” He sat upright and held out his arms. “Now, please let me hold my little man.”

  Natalie eased Jake into her husband’s arms, uncertain Noah had mastered the art of baby holding. He cradled Jake in the crook of his arm and patted his tiny head. The child squirmed but remained asleep. She smiled, realizing this was the first time she could enjoy the sight of Noah doting on their son.

  “Try not to touch him too much.” She couldn’t help but to giggle.

  “Honey, I did wash my face and hands last night.”

  “Yeah, but not your feet.” She frantically waved her hand in front of her nose.

  “Very funny.” Noah blocked out his stink and delighted in the scent of a pristine newborn.

  “Doctor Richardson’s going to swing by today to check him out,” she said.

  Noah stared wide-eyed at Natalie. “Something wrong?”

  “No! I’m sorry honey, no. Everything’s fine. It’s all normal. The doctor said he always stops by a few days after to check on the mother and baby. Jake’s fine.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Noah whispered to his boy.

  As much as she enjoyed the father-son bonding, she couldn’t escape reality and grew stern.

  “You could’ve died yesterday, based on what your father told me.”

  “But I didn’t.” He closed his eyes and inhaled Jake’s aroma, enjoying the feeling of serenity for the first time in a while. “I didn’t.”

  “I’m thankful for it, and he doesn’t know it yet, but so’s your son.”

  Noah reflected on his previous statement. “Why?”

  “Why would your son be thankful his father wasn’t murdered?”

  “No, not that. I mean, why wasn’t I murdered?”

  “This really isn’t the conversation I imagined us having a couple days after our child was born.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I!”

  “Natalie, wait. What I’m saying is those same guys could’ve hacked me to bits like what they did to Sheriff Cole. Aside from knocking me cold they didn’t lay a hand on me. Hell, the other night at the Sheriff’s Office, they laid out those four soldiers—didn’t kill them either.”

  “Can I have Jake back, please?”

  Noah knew his continued inability to escape work would drive Natalie insane.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I’ll stop.”

  “Please do.” She withdrew her arms. “Tell you what. I’m going to go lie down a bit. How about you spend some much-needed time with our boy?”

  “I’d like that,” he whispered while listing to Jake’s wispy breathing.

  “Bring him back to me whenever you’re ready and I’ll feed him. Well—I’ll try.” She playfully jiggled her chest.

  “Lucky him.”

  “You stop that.” She swatted his shoulder.

  “I’m not saying I want to make another one of these anytime soon, but—”

  “You had your chance before this little spud popped out, remember?”

  “I certainly do.” He smiled. “I think we’re both a little on the sore side to do anything mischievous.”

  “That, and we’re in your parents’ house.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He looked around the room. “Much as I like it here, we gotta get you home.”

  “Maybe the doc will give us his blessing today. I’m hoping so.”

  “Go take a rest, sweetie.” He again smiled—this time to end the conversation.

  “All right, then. Not too long, mind you,” she said. “I don’t want his blanket smelling like you.”

  “Oh, just wrap him in a new one,” he said as she walked out the door.

  “Bathe yourself soon,” came her disembodied voice.

  He stayed quiet for a few moments, his eyes scanning every inch of his boy’s face, noticing the pencil-thin eyebrows and the way his little lips puckered for a nipple that wasn’t there.

  “Mine won’t do you any good, mister.” Noah kept his voice low. Most of whatever came out of his mouth tended to be the typical inanities and noises all parents speak to their uncomprehending babies.

  After a while a mixed scent of smoke and sweat overtook Jake’s newborn smell, and Noah decided it was time to hand him over to his mother.

  “I hope I can give you a good life,” Noah said to Jake. “A little hope’s fine just so long as it’s tempered with a little reality. It’s gonna be rough out there. Good Christ, when hasn’t it been? Don’t repeat the Christ part.”

  He crept to Natalie’s room and she whisked off the swaddling blanket and wrapped Jake with a new one without waking him.

  Noah, after washing and donning clean clothes, thanked his mother for drawing him another bath. The heat wave broke and allowed for Noah to sit on his parents’ open-air veranda to wait for the doctor, only Sheriff Clement arrived first.

  “Don’t get up,” Clement said as he climbed the front stairs after hitching his horse.

  “I wasn’t planning on it, but feel free to sit.”

  Clement sat in a wicker chair like Noah’s and placed his hat next to a water pitcher on the small table separating them.

  “I didn’t expect this to happen.” Clement watched the sharecroppers working the Chandlers’ cotton fields.

  “Why would you?” Noah sipped a cool glass of water and handed Clement the glass he had planned on giving the doctor.

  “I mean, I knew there would be trouble at times with the Klan, but this?”

  “What’d you do with Culliver?”

  “We recovered the skull. The bastards chopped up the body before putting it back in the coffin. The leg bones had been slashed and hacked—you could see the grooves, the doc had to point them out to me, but they were there. The rest was pretty much ash. We boxed it up and told the widow we’d bury him pronto. I expect a couple of town workers are out at the cemetery doing it now. I mean, why desecrate a body like that? They’re lunatics. I can’t think of any other explanation.”

  “And I looked one of them in the eye.”

  “Heard about that—it’s why I’m here.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Well, what about it?”

  Noah recounted the corpse-snatching and how it led to sprawling grassland. What mattered most to Clement was obvious. “What’d he look like?”

  “A freedman, I think. No way the guy was white. Maybe a Mexican or Indian. I saw his eyes and the skin around them for maybe a second. He was tall, I can tell you that. About my height.”

  “So we need to keep an eye out for a tall guy who might be a Negro, Mexican or an Indian? Shit, that narrows it down. Eye color?”

  “Red. Bloodshot red. I swear, even the irises were, too. I’m pretty sure it was the same guy I shot outside of the office before they killed Culliver—except he wasn’t wearing a Klansman’s hood this time.�
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  “Hang on.” Clement counted. “You told me the other night you shot this person six times, and you shot him again in that field?”

  “If it’s the same guy, yeah. He’s out there right now with seven bullets in his body.”

  “Then someone’s taking care of him. Someone with medical training.”

  “Sheriff, the man should be dead. Six bullets at that close range? He should’ve collapsed in front of me. Instead, he grabbed a pitchfork and brought down two soldiers—with help, I imagine. Still.” Noah waited a few seconds. “Those eyes, Sheriff. I’ll never forget them.”

  “All right, so he was all strung out when he attacked. I think you’d have to be to swipe a dead guy. And maybe he had on a metal plate or something to deflect the bullets. How many were there in the field with you?”

  “No. No plate. And there were at least three. Did you talk to Culliver’s widow?”

  “Did it personally this morning. Said she only saw them topple you from afar. Nothing we can really use.”

  “What are people saying around town?”

  “That there might be a bunch of deranged corpse-fuckers on the loose.”

  “Oh, God, you spoke to my father?”

  Clement turned his head and looked at Noah cockeyed. “No.”

  “It’s just—that’s what he suggested. I guess he’s not the only one thinking that. I think it’s bullshit.”

  Clement looked back at the field hands. “Yeah, that’s my take. Can’t say a roving pack of murderous maniacs is a pleasant alternative to murderous necrophiles.”

  “What’d Diggs have to say?”

  “Oh, His Majesty? He has no idea why anyone would target him or his property.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the sincerest of people. But I’m inclined to believe him, for now.”

  Noah took a long drink of water and put down the glass.

  “Why would you?” Noah said.

  “Do what now?”

  “Believe anything Diggs tells you. Why?”

  Clement fidgeted in his chair, annoyed.

  “Christ, it’s a hunch. You have them, too. You get a feeling about someone, right? Sure, I’m always skeptical of what people say, but right now I’ve got no reason to doubt him. You have anything concrete to prove why I shouldn’t?”

  “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory,” Noah said.

  “Look, you may be right. Have you spoken to him?”

  “In the past. Not any time recently. Certainly not about what’s happened in the last week or so. I’m talking years. It’s these men he’s got working for him—especially this guy named Lyle—they’re the ones that give me a bad feeling about Diggs.”

  “That’s reasonable enough.” Clement realized how he had come off. “I didn’t mean to jump on you, either, Noah. I haven’t had much sleep. You know what that’s like, for sure. Sorry I’m irritable.”

  Noah shrugged.

  “It’s not your concern, anyway,” Clement said. “I need you to heal. Enjoy your baby while you’re doing it. Block all this crap out and let us deal with it. We’ll get by without you.”

  Clement watched Noah drink. “Any regrets?”

  He put down the glass. “How do you mean?”

  “Exchanging a suit for a star, going from the courtroom to our level.”

  “You make it sound like ‘our level’ is something subhuman.”

  “Don’t need much brains to do it.”

  “I disagree. You’re sorta selling us all short,” Noah said. “I mean, with all respect and please correct me otherwise, but if you’re not enamored with being sheriff, you don’t have to do it. You could go back North.”

  “And be a lawman there?”

  “If it’s what you want.”

  “Here, there. It’s all the same.”

  “To an extent, Sheriff. But what’s happening down here ain’t happening in Concord or Providence. It can’t.”

  Clement shot Noah a sly look. “Is that so?”

  “Damn straight. People are more discontent down here because of the War. To me, there’s more purpose to what we’re trying to do down here to alleviate that.”

  “And that’s why you came down here, to remake the United States?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Isn’t that why you moved here?”

  “It’s a job that promised a decent salary.”

  “So it’s about the money?” Noah tried not sounding somewhat discouraged.

  “No, not entirely. But most of our decisions center on money—and there’s never enough of it. With all due respect to you and your family, Noah, you’ve got a big pile of cash to fall back on. You don’t have to work now or worry too much about financing your future. Perhaps that’s why we look at our situations a bit differently.”

  “I was taught the value of work.” Noah turned defensive. “My father would never underwrite a freeloader. And believe me, I know there’re men my age living in their fathers’ mansions not doing squat and never will. I couldn’t live that way. My family’s not giving me a dime to care for my wife and child.”

  “So you bought that little house you’re living in?”

  Noah didn’t respond. His slouched posture ceded the point.

  “Don’t get me wrong.” Clement leaned toward Noah and gestured with his hands to make amends. “I’d have accepted the same offer. It’s a smart thing to do for you and your brood. Look, all I’m saying is if I could’ve gotten similar pay up North, I’d have stayed. I guarantee you there’s something just as heinous happening, or will happen, in Concord and Providence—we just won’t hear about it. There’re always gonna be bad guys, Noah. If the government wants to pay me more to fight them down here, fine by me. But if you think I’m on some crusade to right wrongs and get blacks and whites to hold hands and build a perfect society, you got the wrong guy. There’s no such place, never will be. The sooner I can get out of this routine, the better. I figure I can retire earlier down here if I play my cards right.”

  Noah poured himself more water and remained silent.

  “But good for you, Noah. You’re from here. You want your hometown, your state, to be better. I can respect that.”

  “I feel like I owe it to my brother.”

  “Come again?”

  “My older brother, Benjamin. Died on the battlefield. I saw it.”

  “You fought against your brother? Shit. I didn’t know.”

  “At Fort Sumter. We weren’t the only pair to have done so throughout the War, you know.”

  “I know that much, but I’m wagering not every brother saw the other one die, though. I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

  “I’m not. Sounds weird, I know. But had Benjamin not been near my spot on the line, I’d be dead. You’d be talking to a different deputy. Ben’s last act on earth was convincing a Confederate soldier to spare my life.”

  Clement slumped in his chair. “I—I don’t know how you—”

  Noah interrupted the sheriff’s stammers. “Happened so fast. Both sides charged each other. The soldier I was fighting knocked away my rifle with his and then swiped the bayonet across my chest. I fell. The guy brought back the blade ready to jam it into me. Ben grabbed him before he could. It was just some kid, a teenager, caught up in the moment. I saw it in his eyes: rage overriding his fear. He’d have killed me, I don’t doubt it. ‘He’s my brother.’ That’s what Ben screamed into his ear. The kid screamed back: ‘He’s the enemy.’ Last words I ever heard Ben say: ‘Not to me—leave him.’ I had my hands up, sort of over my face, to surrender, or ward him off. I don’t know. The kid looked at Ben and to back me, shook Ben off. ‘Maybe you’ll bleed out, boy.’ That’s what the kid said before he spat on my face. I guess I can’t blame him. I mean, I was the enemy. Ben gave me a look—I saw his disappointme
nt in me, but also that he didn’t want to see his little brother die. Anyway, the kid and Ben jumped into some other melee. Last thing I saw before I passed out was a bullet taking off Ben’s face. I don’t know who shot him—most likely someone on my side. Can’t say I blame whoever fired. Ben was the enemy, too. He fell atop a heap of blue and gray bodies. At least my parents got him back for a proper burial.”

  Clement took a long deliberate drink of water. “Nothing I can say to that, Noah. Clearly your reasons for being here are more honorable than mine. You want it so that your big brother would be proud of you, I guess.”

  “I’ll never know it, but yes.”

  “You’ve also got a wife and child riding on success down here—I don’t. Maybe I’d see things differently if I did.”

  “You would.” Noah looked at the bottom of his empty glass. “Whatever our reasons for doing what we do, I hope we’re successful enough to see some improvements. I’d wager it’d make your retirement a lot more enjoyable, Sheriff.”

  “That, it would.”

  Both men focused on the single-seat wagon wobbling up the plantation’s main road.

  “Doc’s here,” Noah said.

  “I’ll get. You stay where you are. No need to see me off. I’m glad you’re all right, Noah, even though you might not look it.”

  “Thanks, I expect the doctor to give me a quick check-up before focusing on my wife. But I’ll stop by the office, see how things are going.”

  “That’s fine, I’m sure Harrison will be happy to see you. Wants me to tell him how you’re doing. He’s a good kid.”

  “Tell him thank you.”

  Clement exchanged pleasantries with the doctor and left on his horse. Noah waved to Richardson from his seat on the porch. As predicted, the doc gave him a cursory examination and seemed unconcerned. Noah pinched Richardson’s shirtsleeve to stop him before going indoors to check on Natalie.

  “Doc, the sheriff said you saw Culliver. Is it normal for a body to stink like that?”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “When I saw him burning last night, he really stunk.”

  “Were you expecting otherwise, deputy?”

  Noah let go of Richardson’s shirt.

  “Here’s what I’m saying: The undertaker embalmed him only a few hours before he was taken. I know his body’s naturally decaying. I mean, he is dead. He ain’t gonna start smelling like a peach pie the longer he sits in the sun. I get that. But from the time I last saw him in that field to when he was burning in that fire pit—what would that be, five hours, six—would his body have rotted away so quickly?”