Free Sentinels by Matt Manochio

and limbs.
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œWell, 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.”
    â€œWe can identify our own right now,” one of the horse-mounted soldiers said.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œScore 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œGoes 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.
    â€œYou wanna know why that boy’s still alive?”
    â€œLike I told the Sheriff, he ducked into the field.”
    â€œThat’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?”
    â€œTo let other Klansmen know this is what could happen to them.”
    â€œKlan could’ve gotten the same message had they gone ahead and killed him.”
    â€œThat leads me to my second theory.”
    â€œAnd what would that be?”
    â€œThey want him to think about what happened to his friends—let that set in real good before they finish the job. They ain’t done with him. Just a theory.” The freedman swished tobacco around in his mouth before spitting the juice away from Noah. “Whoever did it, I like ’em—I feel bad for the soldiers, or course. But they brought death to them others, and it rained last night.” The freedman spread his arms and twirled to get Noah to look at the wheat and the water droplets clinging to the stalks. “Them boys might be good luck.”
    Noah waved the man away, about to resume plopping bodies in the bed when he made a beeline for the sheriff.
    Cole, hunched over a lower half of a Klansman’s body, dragging it by the boots to the wagon, saw the deputy’s approach and dropped the feet.
    â€œSlouching on me?”
    â€œNossir, not at all. Did it rain in town last night?”
    â€œI’m sorry?”
    â€œIt rained here a good amount,” Noah