“I’m telling you, he wasn’t there.” Deputy Richard Ellison returned from the Chandler plantation to the Jenkins farm and spoke to Diggs, Clement and Lyle on the front porch. “I staked the place out as best I could. Nobody came to the front door. No horses left the stables. He didn’t go there.”
“What if he’s there right now?” Lyle pressed.
“Then what the hell took him so long to get there?” The sun waned as eight o’clock neared. “Chandler’s resourceful. He’d have found a horse one way or another to get there. Or he’d have hitched a ride in a wagon. He didn’t. He ain’t there.”
“How long were you inside the house?” It was Diggs.
“Not long, only a few minutes. I asked the mother and father if Noah might be there—told them something work-related had come up. They said no, and did we try his house. I believed them, told them it was no big deal, and left. Hid out for hours where they couldn’t see me. They stayed inside.”
Deputy Bruce Hughes rode his horse from the road to where the men gathered and didn’t bother tying it to a post.
“He definitely went home.” Hughes, shaken in appearance, grabbed the porch railing and hunched over it to collect himself.
“You were supposed to wait at the Sheriff’s Office!” Diggs said.
“I waited long enough. Preston’s still there. He can handle things. If I hung around town too long, some of the other boys might get suspicious. Figured I’d stop at Chandler’s house before coming back, just to see if maybe he was there.”
“Why are you so certain he was there?” Diggs said.
Hughes described the carnage to the group.
“And their guns are gone,” he said.
“What else did you see? Perhaps they wrote a note to someone saying where they’d be and left it on a table?”
“Nossir, Mister Diggs. No sign of that.”
“And they weren’t dissected in any manner?”
“Both shot, close range like I told you.”
“Very well.” Diggs looked up at the road and then scanned the property. “They will come back.”
“Noah and the woman?” Hughes said.
“No. Toby’s hired hands.” The other men had noticed it, too, but said nothing; Diggs was nervous.
“Be vigilant,” Diggs told the sheriff and two deputies. “Take up positions in the house’s upper levels. Pick a window that’s not occupied, remove a slat from the shutters, keep them closed, and watch for anything unusual. I’ll have candles lit downstairs to make it appear as it was the night Lyle and his bunch bungled their task.”
Lyle said nothing, agreeing with Diggs’s logic.
“If you see these men heading to the barn, don’t shoot,” Diggs said. “Wait for them all to enter. I’ve got a railroad man hiding in the pasture keeping watch. The second they’re all in there we lock the door and burn the building to the ground. If they avoid the barn and approach the house, Lyle will fire the first shot from the downstairs window, and then you can join in.”
The men entered the home. Brendan sat reading a book in the same sofa where Diggs and Lyle had earlier shot Toby Jenkins. Clement walked upstairs. Franklin prowled the room, looking at the titles kept in an enormous, seven-tiered, ornately carved bookshelf lining the wall.
“Nice to see you men are busy,” Diggs said.
“You see all this stuff, Mister Diggs?” Brendan looked up from a leather-bound tome. “You like that Shakespeare feller and whatnot, maybe there’s something here that’ll tickle you.”
“Unlikely,” Diggs sniffed. “I’m surprised those savages know how to read.”
Franklin ran his fingertip across the book bindings along the topmost shelf.
“Brendan’s right,” he said. “Some of these books might be valuable. I’ll be damned. Who’d a thought Toby and his old lady had done so well?”
“All right, boys, you’ve intrigued me enough.” Diggs feigned interest at first but soon became absorbed by the collection of worn, cracked bindings that encased weathered pages of yellowed parchment. Some of the loose spines caused pages to drop to the floor as Franklin cracked open the books.
“Marassa, Ibiji? What the heck is this stuff,” Franklin said. “It says somethin’ bout a loa, a gate opener, and visible and invisible worlds.”
He unshelved another thick book stuffed with crinkly pages that unevenly jutted from between the flaps.
“I am the Priest of the Yeveh Vodoun and Mami Wata tradition,” Franklin said. “It’s scrawled like that in the beginning, like a diary.”
“Big deal, this one’s got Cajun cooking recipes.” Lyle, bored out of his mind, played along.
“It’s mostly gibberish,” Diggs said while examining the titles. He, too, succumbed to curiosity and carefully opened one. “But I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Diggs unshelved what looked like a bible covered in dust. Its brittle pages would surely disintegrate if handled too roughly. “Amazing. This one’s at least a hundred years old if it’s a day.”
“More recipes?” It was Brendan.
“No. I think not. I keep reading about something called a baka, it appears to be some sort of spirit. I wish I knew more French.”
Diggs tucked the book under his arm, clearly intent on reading further.
“Boys, as much as I appreciate your fascination with Toby Jenkins’s expansive literary collection, I’m certain of a few things: One, reading makes you tired, and I need you awake. Two, the fact that the Army hasn’t overrun us yet tells me Chandler did not make it to town. He’s had ample time to do so. For all we know he was injured by those railroad men at his home and is dead or dying.” Diggs turned to Lyle. “I want you to take someone with you tomorrow morning at dawn, first thing, back to Chandler’s house, and then to town. I’m certain they’ll try to get there.”
“You forgetting something?”
“No. I haven’t. Toby’s men.” Diggs walked to the closed front door, wanting to open it and gauge the landscape one final time before sunset, but didn’t want to chance being seen by prying eyes. “They’ll either surmise they were duped, or that the Klan got scared and called the whole thing off.”
“Do you think they’ll feel duped?” Franklin said.
Diggs gave it serious thought and said quietly, “I don’t. Anger is more likely.”
Lyle gave Franklin’s meaty arm a nudge with his fist. “Come on, big guy. You got first watch. I’ll rest, then spell you.”
“Spell.” Diggs said aloud, and looked at the book. “Sortilège.”
“What?” It was Lyle.
“Sortilège,” Diggs replied with his back to him. “It means ‘spell’ in French, I believe. It’s written on every page I’ve seen in this.” Diggs held the book in both hands. It felt heavier somehow, as if the many ages of its existence had given it heft.
Diggs disappeared into the dark kitchen. They heard a thump, and after a few fumbles, Brendan, Lyle and Franklin saw soft candlelight.
“I’ll be reading,” Diggs called to them.
“He’s at the kitchen table,” Lyle said. “Franklin, take watch and tell the others upstairs where he’s at in case they need him.”
He did. Brendan, still sitting on the couch, waved at Lyle.
“What you want me to do?”
“Take up by that window behind you. I’ll find you a chair.”
Lyle helped his friend sit in front of closed shutters and removed one of the bottommost wooden slats so Brendan could peek outside.
“Best not to have the candle right next you,” Lyle said. “Moon’s coming out, your eyes’ll adjust. Keep watch on the barn and the pasture, and whatever part of the cornfield’s in your view.”
“That night we screwed up, Franklin said he saw someone looking out this window before the pitchfork was thrown at him,” Brendan said.
“Then it’s a good spot. I’m gonna lie down on the couch here. Wake me in about three hours if nothing happens.”
Night fell and, indeed, Brendan and the other watchers grew accustomed to the moonlight. Despite their inevitable sleepiness, they craved Toby’s men to return, longing to fight and end this. Surely the battle would reinvigorate them. They each jumped at the slightest sound of wind rustling leaves or at the sight of shadows belonging to inanimate things whose movements were the work of drowsiness. Some of the men nodded off only to be startled awake when their foreheads knocked on the shutters.
But Toby’s farmhands did not come.
Brendan, desperate for someone to swap spots with him so he could sleep, rested his head in the palm of his hand, forcing himself to continually survey a moribund landscape. He figured it two in the morning.
He saw nothing.
But that sound. He heard something. He knew it.
Brendan closed his eyes to concentrate on the sound—it seemed somewhat near—a rustling, shifting noise of discomfort. But he saw nothing.
Closing his eyes felt good, relaxing.
I’ll just rest ’em a little, he thought.
Soon the contented feeling of encroaching sleep enveloped him and he disregarded the sound of fingers clawing over dirt toward the closed shutters.