Sentinels (31 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

“Wait here.”

Toby Jenkins walked into the cornfield behind his house, leaving Noah Chandler nervous and alone.

I'm not really alone,
he thought.
I mean, Sarah's inside with Isaac, and Franklin's loading corn into a buyer's wagon out front. I'm amazed Toby hired him. But it makes sense. He's down a few hands.

Noah, three weeks after Doctor Richardson extracted the bullet and stitched him up, sat atop his new prairie schooner pulled by Wilbur and Walter, the newest horse in the Chandler stable. He scanned the massive field, most of which had been picked clean in the previous weeks. The bumper crop would help pay for a new barn, Toby said.

Those scarecrows do the job
, Noah thought. And one approached him through the stalks whose green leaves began fading brown. He couldn't tell from which cross it had dropped. They loomed a distance away—far enough not to arouse suspicion, but close enough so that the hanging things could continuously monitor the property.

His heart beat faster as the stalks jerked aside. Toby appeared at the edge of the field.

“He's ready.”

He. That's the first time Toby's acknowledged these things are male, well, at least one of them is.

Noah eased himself off his perch and kept patting his belly out of habit—mostly to make sure he hadn't started to unexpectedly bleed.

“Go on in, Noah. You'll be fine. I promise. I'll be right behind you.”

Noah wove through stalks and stopped ten feet into the field. The creature he'd seen save its skin by jumping into the water well stood before him. It wore the same church clothes that were ablaze when it fell from Toby's window and scrambled to safety. The black cloth was singed above the waist and along the shirtsleeves. The thing's red eyes encased in scabby brown skin stared at Noah through a dirty executioner's hood.

Noah took full measure of it, examining the black boots and pants—nothing out of the ordinary—but stopped at its shriveled, clawed hands. Intermittent strands of hay grew from its forearms.

“I need to see its face,” Noah said.

“Just be ready.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Lift,” Toby ordered the creature.

It grabbed the soiled spike of the black hood and ripped it off.

Noah stepped back and into Toby, who held him upright.

“I know that face.”

Despite its shriveled, decaying skin, and its hair blackened and matted—Noah still recognized the face of Robert Culliver.

Without asking Toby, Noah reached in and ripped apart the thing's shirt—it made no move to stop him—to look at its chest, and saw the same stitched gut Culliver sported on Richardson's table.

“That unclaimed Klansman's body that was stolen from the undertaker's ice house, the limbs and such—that's who was burning in front of Diggs's house.”

Toby didn't deny it.

“Diggs had to know I was serious.”

“Why not just burn Culliver's body?”

“Because I could use him as part of the crew.”

“
The
crew
?”

“Noah, I'd like to think I didn't lie to you when I pleaded ignorance about those two soldiers that were killed outside of Elkton's farm. I mean, I didn't lay a hand on them. I never laid a hand on any of them, actually.”

The explanation sickened Noah, who looked a final time at the unmoving creature. “You can put your hood back on.”

“Go on back,” Toby ordered. It hooded up and vanished into the stalks to transform into a withered stick figure that appeared to be no more than leather, rags and hay dangling from a cross. And if the wind blew off its hood and someone saw its face, the head would resemble a shriveled apple that little girls use to top their handmade dolls.

Noah kept his back to Toby. “I'm tempted to say you're no better than Diggs, sending out those, those
things
to get their hands dirty instead of your own.”

“I can't argue that. And those soldiers' souls will haunt me to my death bed. I never meant for them to die.”

“They were murdered, Toby, they didn't just
die
.”

“I thought they knew the difference between the white sheets and the blue uniforms—”

“
Stop
.” Noah faced Toby. “Even if they did know the difference and spared the soldiers, you orchestrated mass murder.”

“Those Klansmen would've killed Elkton and his sharecroppers.”

“You don't know that,” Noah said.

“Oh, but I do.”

Noah saw no purpose in going back and forth.

“How can Robert Culliver possibly be alive?”

“He isn't, Noah. He's dead. Reanimated. But dead. His heart doesn't beat, his lungs take in no air.”

“But his brain
must
work.”

“That's right. That's all important. A bullet to the head makes 'em useless.”

“I still don't—”

Toby halted Noah with a raised hand. “Noah, I'm from Ghana.”

“So, what?”

“My father was a bokor—a houngan, specifically.” Toby walked a circular path around Noah. “As was his father before him. Generations of our men have been picked from birth due to our power. Isaac has it. So does Sarah. She's bokor, too—a mambo.”

“A mambo? You sayin' your wife's a snake?”

Toby stopped. “That's a
mamba
!” He laughed to himself and continued walking. “She's a mambo asogwe. Noah, she's a high priestess. My great-grandfather—he escaped from slavery in Haiti in the late 1700s—managed to resettle in West Africa. And some of the sorcery he learned in Haiti? You can't even imagine.”

“Toby, stop.
Sorcery
?”

“We raise the dead.”

Noah waited for more. He heard only wind rustling the stalks for what seemed like a minute.

“I need to sit down.”

Sarah prepared tea with a slice of lemon floating in the cup, and Noah was more than happy to drink it when he walked inside with Toby and sat at the kitchen table.

“For once in my life I think something a little harder might be in order.” He pulled in the saucer and blew onto the steaming surface to cool it. “I'm being halfway serious.”

Franklin knocked on the front door and stuck his head inside.

“He's all settled up, Mister Jenkins.”

“We're in here,” Toby replied, and Franklin joined them, but remained standing.

“Here you go.” Franklin handed Toby a wad of rolled up bills. “It's all there, count it, please.”

Toby rolled off a bill and handed it to Franklin. “I trust you. Here. Go on home. You done enough for today. Be back tomorrow?”

“Yessir, thank you.”

“Wait! Franklin, don't go.” Noah felt embarrassed because it sounded as if he was begging him to stay. “It's just, I haven't been able to talk to you since, well, everything happened, and, honestly, I thought that thing had cut you up against the tree.”

Franklin looked at Sarah and Toby.

“It's okay, Franklin,” Toby said. “He knows—not everything, but he's getting there.”

“That was David Pruitt. Diggs paid him to kill Toby and his family before hiring Lyle to do it.” Franklin took off his sweat-stained bowler and held it to his waist while eyeing the floor in shame. “I guess you could extrapolate that to mean before Diggs hired
me
to do it too. Pruitt asked to borrow my Derringer. I didn't know why at the time, and those little guns don't go well with my hands, so I didn't mind doing it. Anyway, I thought he was gonna end me right there against that tree. He even swung like he was about to. But he stopped the blade a hair from my throat and looked at me. Then he reached into his pocket and handed me back my Derringer. He walked into the barn right after. Now he's gone.” Franklin donned his hat and turned to leave but hesitated. “Mister Jenkins, why am I still alive? That first night, when the pitchfork missed me, did it miss on purpose? Did Pruitt recognize me as a friend, or did you tell him not to kill—”

“I'll be honest with you, Franklin.” Toby sat at the table. “Something in you must've told you to duck before those prongs hit the wood, because whoever threw it aimed to kill you. But Sarah and I—how best to explain it? We saw something in you, something good. And we thought about you, and later we saw what you were going to do to Lyle before he stepped foot on our property. And it was for that reason that we told our, well, our men, to spare you.”

Franklin closed his eyes and his lips trembled. “Thank you.”

“Franklin.” Noah impatiently drummed his fingers on the table. “Can you understand how anything Toby just told you is remotely possible?”

“No, not really,” he said, as if it didn't bother him. “But Mister Jenkins just said he saw something good in me. I ain't used to hearing that. I never heard my folks say they saw
anything
decent in me. Hell, I'm certain Mister Diggs never even bothered trying to look.” Franklin tilted his head and gave it some thought. “Look, I know Saint Peter's gonna swallow the key when I get to the gate, but I
know
there's some good in me, really. It took Mister Diggs trying to destroy what little was left in me to want to save it. And he would've killed me, too, had you not hit him with that shovel, Mister Jenkins. So the way I look at it, I'm in debt to you. I suppose I could walk away from here and have nothing to do with you for the rest of my days, but I don't want to do that. I owe it to you and to myself to stay here as long as you'll have me.” Franklin bashfully smiled. “I'll see you tomorrow.” He left and gently closed the door.

Noah broke the lingering silence. “How exactly were you able to
see
Franklin shoot Lyle before it happened?”

“They same way I saw you fighting Diggs and his men, and surviving,” Sarah said. “I don't expect you to understand it, but I see events, Noah, in my mind before they take place.”

Noah looked at her husband, but still spoke to Sarah. “That's why you weren't going berserk after Toby was shot. You knew he was alive?”

“I did,” Sarah said. “Some intuitions are stronger than others. When I saw Toby giving it to Diggs with that shovel, I saw you there too. And Franklin holding the gun. You
all
had a part to play. Taking you to the sheriff's men and the Army would've prevented it from happening the way I saw it. That's why you woke up in that field. By the time you did, Toby was with me in our cave, checking on us and making sure that I saw, well, that everything would work out.”

“You
knew
all of this when we were at my house, plotting our strategy?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you didn't bother telling me I'd get a shotgun butt smashed in my face, that I'd be tormented with a branding iron,
and
that I'd be shot in the stomach?!”

“Well, I mean.” Sarah fidgeted, scratching behind her ear. “You don't always see
everything
.”

Toby, sensing his wife's unease, said, “Noah, what can I do to make this right between us? I mean, what happens between us? Are you going to arrest me?”

“For masterminding a slaughter involving two innocent soldiers? Believe me, I've thought of it. I really have. But it'd be impossible to prove. The powers that be would look at me like I was insane. And it'd bring more heat down on the freedmen if the Klan ever caught wind it was a black man who murdered their brothers. Henderson doesn't need that. But you've got to stop sending them out. You can't control them.”

“You shouldn't have sent them to Elkton's—I told you that,” Sarah mumbled. “You
know
you lose power over them the farther they get from you or me.”

Toby took the chiding, not wanting to verbally admit he was wrong.

“You can't bring those men back to life, I take it?” Noah said.

“The soldiers? You're serious?” Toby said. “No! Of course not. Can't stitch 'em back together, if that's what you mean.”

“You can understand why I asked. I don't know what else you got going on around here that might surprise me. I don't even want to begin to ask how you can bring lightning. Because that
was
you doing it. Don't tell me it wasn't.”

“I can't say there's nothing else. There's so much more.” Toby smiled sheepishly, looking at the floor.

“You were outside of the jail that night. You
had
to be.”

“Like I said, Noah, there's so much more.”

Noah pondered it for a moment but knew he'd never understand. “Have you considered paying some amount of restitution to those men's families? They might've left behind wives, children.”

“I'm reminded of that every night when I tuck Isaac in to bed. And, yeah, I'm gonna do that. I'll find a way.”

“Here's a head start.” Noah retrieved from his rear pocket a folded piece of paper, slapped it on the table and pushed it to Toby. “Read it, please.”

Toby opened and scanned it.

“You already asked the Army, huh?”

“Told the commanding officer there were some Southern benefactors interested in helping their families,” Noah said.

Toby read the New York and Vermont addresses. “The harvest is going great.” Toby said it to himself, and nodded, knowing what he had to do.

“And I'm not talking one payment,” Noah said. “I know the old saying that it can't buy happiness. Just ask my parents—they're as well off as anyone around here. But losing Ben? Me losing my brother? Money's just paper then. Those widows will always hurt, so will their kids.”

“I'll make sure the little ones are cared for. Not just now, but in the years ahead. I promise.”