Scarecrows, fiction by Steve Rasnic Tem
Gibson stumbled out of the woods with his orange jumpsuit covered in beggar-ticks and burrs. Maybe walking away from the county road crew wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done—he only had a couple of months left on his shoplifting sentence—but as his mama used to say her son wasn’t known for his smart decisions.
“You got no self-control.” Mama was right. But Gibson believed in grabbing opportunities when they came, and their guard was young and not much good at guarding. The kid spent most of his time on his cell phone sitting in the truck. Gibson and another convict named Frank Moore were working in a ditch not more than thirty feet from the woods. It took them less than five minutes to get gone. Moore wanted to split up—Gibson had an unlucky reputation—and so they did.
But Gibson had at least one good reason to take off. Two years ago, he killed a man in Memphis with a lug wrench after a quarrel in a parking lot—another lapse in self-control—and the police hadn’t figured it out yet. But when they did, and they most always did, he’d never see the outside of a jail again.
Once clear of the woods he looked for a way off the mountain. The road they’d been repaving cut across the top of the ridge. He worked his way down the slope through the firs and the pines and the worse undergrowth he’d ever seen. Apparently these folks never heard of forest fires. But he still had a lot more mountain to go. He was looking for a cabin or a farm, some place where he could get out of this jumpsuit and into some regular clothes, and maybe steal a vehicle.
He saw the barn first, its dark gray boards warped and the building on the verge of collapse, and then a stretch of plowed ground, a good sign the land here was still being worked. Then that field full of crosses, like in the Bible, a fellow hanging from each one.
Gibson thought about turning around and running right then, but he was pretty much out of run. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Those weren’t men. They were scarecrows. A collection of thirty, maybe forty of them. His mama used to have one in her garden at home, said it was pretty much useless. The birds perched on the silly thing and squawked at her. Crows and blackbirds especially figured the scarecrow out awfully quick. But every year she put new clothes on it, shirts, and overalls his daddy wore out. When Gibson asked her why she said, “I don’t know son. But folks been putting these up for thousands of years. Wouldn’t feel like a garden without a scarecrow.”
Staggered like a platoon of dying soldiers, struggling to make their way out of the field, these many scarecrows were overkill on a patch of garden this size. Like most fields on mountain farms, it was relatively small. The farmers had to remove a ton of rock and cut down a lot of trees to prepare an area big enough to warrant planting. This little garden had tomato plants, cabbage, and a couple of rows of potatoes was all. Whoever bothered to put all these up must have really liked scarecrows.
He kind of identified with these raggedy looking things. He’d lost a lot of weight in jail, and after running through those woods his jumpsuit was dirty and torn, and his hair felt like straw. But the scarecrows themselves were kind of pretty, in their way. Ingenious. As Gibson walked between the furrows he saw heads made from bleach jugs, buckets, baskets, flowerpots, and burlap bags full of rags. Sometimes the faces were missing and sometimes they were painted or drawn on with black marker or lipstick. Some of the figures were just old rakes and shovels with wigs stuck on top. One had six arms, and another had eight. One held an umbrella over his head to keep out the sun.
Some of the cleverer ones were made from car parts, or bicycle parts, metal pots and coat hangers and pieces from an old wringer washing machine, and one had bells and clacky wooden bits and shiny clangy pans attached all over like some kind of one-man band.
There were two brides with their less-than-handsome husbands. Most were clean shaven, but a few had rope or bead or straw beards. Several old women scarecrows with large breasts and big fannies made a circle around a withered old scarecrow who didn’t look like he’d eaten in a year.
Whoever did this put an awful lot of time and effort into it. He didn’t know if these things scared the crows, but they sure made him feel more than a little edgy.
Most of the clothes were old and faded, ripped up, and liable to draw attention if he were to walk around in them. But near the end of one row, he came across a scarecrow that looked freshly dressed, a rickety wooden ladder still leaning against the upright pole. It even wore a nice straw hat on top of its big fat mixing bowl of a head. It looked like it was smiling at him. Gibson felt practically chosen.
The old ladder creaked and shook like crazy with each step of his climb. He wondered how long it had been left out in the weather. Once he got near the top he grabbed onto the pole to steady himself. The clothing had been stuffed with straw and rags, the arms and legs tied with twine to the crosspiece and upright. It didn’t take much effort to set them free. The strawman had boots attached to a small crosspiece at the bottom of the legs. That made him grin. Gibson had never seen a scarecrow with boots before. If they happened to fit him they were now his.
The mixing bowl was attached somehow to the top of the pole, the straw hat glued on. Gibson reckoned he’d have to do without that hat. Without a body the head at the top of the pole still grinned, which made the dismembered scarecrow that more gruesome.
He’d undressed the downed scarecrow and stripped to his skivvies when he heard the distinctive sound of someone pumping a shotgun behind him. “Freeze jailbird!”
Gibson could feel his lungs seize. “I mean you no harm. I just needed some clothes.”
“Them’s Hector’s clothes!”
“Hector?”
“That scarecrow you done slaughtered and robbed.”
“You name these things?”
“They needed names. Hector was my second cousin, died last year. I named all these folks after my kin.”
“Can I at least turn around?”
“Long as you’re buttoned up down front. But take it slow.”
Gibson turned around. The woman holding the shotgun was short and skinny, in her sixties, maybe older, maybe younger. Appalachian people generally looked older than they were. “I’m harmless, really. Let me go and you’ll never see me again.”
“You’re a jasper, ain’t you?”
“What’s that?”
“Outsider.”
“I grew up in Maryland, the southern part. And I’ve lived, well, all over the South.”
She spat in his direction. “You killed my Hector. He done nothing to you. These are peaceful folk, unlike some I could name.”
A crazy woman with a shotgun. Gibson’s luck was at least consistent. “I’m really sorry about that. I guess I was desperate. I meant no disrespect to you, or to Hector. Look, I can put him back together for you. Good as new.”
“Keep your thieving hands off my cousin! You can’t bring back the dead.”
“There must be something.”
“Cover yourself! Put Hector’s clothes on.”
The shotgun was shaking, either from her anger or her infirmity. Gibson dressed as quickly as he could. The clothing smelled like sunshine, although the shirt felt a little damp. The boots fit him, so at least there was that. “I guess you really must like scarecrows.” He made a weak smile. He hoped it was okay to call them scarecrows and not people.
“They keep me company.”
He needed to keep her talking. Keep her mind on something besides shooting him. “You’ve been using the same ones year after year?”
“No, I burn ‘em after harvest time. Early each spring I make new uns. Birds is smarter than folks think, so I have to keep switching them out and changing their outfits. I’ll put a necklace of fishbones around some. Sometimes I’ll stuff spoiled meat into their shirt pockets. You gotta get up early to outsmart them birds.”
“They look lonesome out here.”
“Oh, you’ll keep them company.”
“What, what do you do with them exactly?”
“What a question! Anything I have a mind to. I made them, didn’t I, like a ma makes her babies? I like looking out at them at sunrise, and some evenings I sit on the porch and talk to them.”
“Do they talk back?”
“No, they don’t talk back! I ain’t crazy! Now get back up on that there ladder.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me. Climb up the ladder.” The shotgun continued to waver. Gibson did as he was told. “Now lift that old mixing bowl. It’s on a hook. Lift it off real careful and hand it down to me. My good’un broke and I need it.”
He handed it to her, the straw hat still attached. “Can I get down now? I can do some work for you, pay you back for Hector. Not that he’s replaceable. At least I could pay you for the clothes.”
“Oh, you’re going to do some work for me I reckon. Grab onto the pole and step up on that little piece at the bottom. Then turn around careful so’s you don’t fall off, holding on to that cross piece. Break a leg and you’re no use to me at all. Then stay like that, all Christ-like, iffen you even know who that man was, until I get up there.” Gibson hesitated, staring at the open ends of the shotgun as she gestured up with it. “Go on. Git up there!”
Gibson was convinced the old bat was going to go all New Testament on him and perform a crucifixion right there in her piddly garden. But she didn’t have a hammer on her as far as he could see. Maybe she had some long nails in the pocket of her faded apron. Then he noticed the loops of rope around one scrawny shoulder. She’d come prepared after all.
He thought about jumping her then. There wasn’t much to her. She was just a withered old lady. His mama would have been much more of a challenge than her. But the shot gun, and the way it wandered around in the air in front of her, terrified him. He was barely able to hold onto the cross piece with his fingers as he turned around, hugging the pole as closely as possible. Once turned, he hung onto the cross piece for dear life with his sweaty hands. She began wrapping the rope around him, pulling it snug around his arms and chest and making the knots behind his back. She acted like she’d done this before.
“I could die up here, you know.”
“I’ll feed you. I got some long poles for that, and a water bottle.”
“What if it rains?”
“Maybe Uncle Clarence over there will let you borrow his umbrella.” She made a dry coughing noise which might have been a chuckle.
“How will I use the bathroom?”
“Do what the beasts of the field do. You’re no better than them. I reckon after a while you’ll stink bad enough you’ll scare the birds better that way. Squirrels and raccoons too if you’re lucky.”
Gibson wasn’t feeling all that lucky. “These ropes are too tight. Could you loosen them just a little?”
She cackled at that and climbed back down. She took the ladder away and headed toward the barn.
***
After suffering through two days and nights Gibson was more than ready to quit his role as replacement scarecrow, but he could find no way to do that. The old woman tied him up so tightly he could barely breathe, much less wiggle free from his bonds. He had rope burns around his wrists and armpits and severely strained leg and arm muscles from the attempt. Now and then he would get these awful leg cramps, and all he could do was moan his way through them.
He really could have used some kind of head covering. Every time she brought him water or food he begged her for a hat or a cap, but she feigned deafness, didn’t even acknowledge he was speaking. So, he guessed that was a No.
The sun was merciless, and the occasional rain brought only temporary relief, quickly turning into a downpour of misery. When the sun came out again he could see the steam rising off his arms, as if his spirit were escaping the prison his body had become.
She did keep her promise and fed him: sausage off a nail at the end of a long pole, whatever bread he could eat before the main part of it crumbled to the ground. He had no way of holding the food but had to gobble it down like a dog. More than once he choked on what he was trying to eat. She’d wait until he was done making noises before offering him more. Water was plentiful, sucked through a plastic straw from a bottle tied to another pole. Sometimes she dumped it on his head “to cool you off some.” Most of the time he didn’t want that, but she did it anyway just for spite.
She called him “Hector,” and talked to him all the time as if they were having this friendly one-sided chat on her front porch. Mostly gossip about other members of the family, Mary Sue’s marriage, Cousin Carl’s divorce, the ailments which were killing Mildred, Phyllis, and Amelia. There were lots of “You’ll remember” and “I reckon you know,” about people and things he absolutely had no knowledge of, and sometimes she’d blame him for inconsiderate things he’d supposedly done in their shared past.
Hector had apparently been a bit of a rascal, always in trouble with the law. The connection wasn’t lost on Gibson.
At some point she took down the scarecrow next to him, a zombie looking thing with two eye holes cut into an old pillow, and another bigger hole suggesting a howling mouth. All these holes leaked damp, rotted stuffing that stank when the sun was at its hottest.
He didn’t watch her closely. He was feeling particularly bad that day and kept his head turned away, eyes closed. When he could pay attention again he saw that she’d taken his orange prisoner jumpsuit, stuffed it with whatever, and turned it into a scarecrow. For a head she’d taken a partially deflated basketball and drawn a frowny face on it with red marker. She’d written JAILBIRD in large, crude letters across the front of the suit.
With Jailbird’s round orangish face and unhappy expression, Gibson thought the resemblance wasn’t that bad. The scarecrow didn’t have any shoes, just an old pair of men’s white socks. For some reason this annoyed him.
For the next few days, his keeper came down to visit the new scarecrow, calling it “Jailbird” and offering it food and water which of course it ignored. Each time she said “not good enough for you Jailbird? I’m sure cousin Hector over there will eat it—he ain’t picky at all. Why I believe if I offered him some roadkill he’d gobble that mess right up.” Then she’d offer the food to Gibson, who yes, would gobble it right up, whatever it was. But sometimes she’d drop it, pretending Jailbird knocked it out of her hand, in which case Gibson got nothing.
He couldn’t last much longer like this. She obviously meant for him to die. His hands had gone numb. He could see blisters on the backs of his fingers from the intense sun. His face felt sore, his forehead tight. He imagined blisters were there as well. Pain had been such a constant companion he’d barely noticed.
He hadn’t handled this situation right. His mama used to tell him to make friends with people. Make allies. Wherever you go make friends with people. People wouldn’t hurt you if they thought you were their friend, if they saw your humanity. It was the first rule of avoiding becoming a victim, but also the first rule of the con.
The next time the old lady visited he said, through lips cracked and bleeding, “These your late husband’s clothes?”
That got her attention. She stared at him. “He ain’t late, far as I know. He just run off. Ten year ago, maybe more.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was like you. An Es-cape-ee. A jailbird. A convict. A good-for-nothing. But Lord, he could sweet talk. The sweetest words a gal ever heard. Trouble is, they was all lies.”
“My mama always told me, you should never lie to a woman, especially after she’s given you her heart. That’s about the worst thing a man can do.”
He could tell, even through his pain, that he’d sparked her interest. “Your mama a good woman?”
“Oh, my mama is the best. I just wish I could see her one more time before ... it’s all over.” He might have rushed and laid it on too thick. But he didn’t have a lot of time left.
“You shoulda thought of that earlier ... convict.” She turned to go.
“My name’s Frank. Frank Moore. I should have introduced myself a long time ago.”
She tilted her head back, shielded her eyes from the sun. For good or bad, she gave him a long, hard look, then she walked away.
***
Gibson woke up to something dripping over his right hand. He didn’t have a lot of sensation left in that hand, but he could feel the stickiness. He opened his eyes. The old lady had a pole with a rag attached, and something yellowy brown slathering his blisters. “What?”
“It’s honey, Frank. Good for the burns. Can’t put any on your head though, might drip into your eyes. Sorry about that.”
“This works?”
“Grandma swore by it, and she knowed a thing or two. Got some tasty grub for you too.”
Bacon speared on a nail. Fresh orange juice sipped from the bottle. It wasn’t much, but Gibson relished it. “Are you still going to let me die up here? Burn my body with the others after harvest?”
“Don’t be talking about dying now. Got to keep your spirits up.” Her voice had softened considerably. Gibson didn’t want to get too encouraged, but it was amazing the magic a few kind words could work on a lonely old woman.
After he’d eaten what he could, instead of going back into her house she sat on the ground and watched him. “So, what did you do?” she asked, “that they had to lock you up?”
“Shoplifting, I’m afraid. I knew it was wrong, but ma’am, I was so hungry. I shoplifted some fruit.” At least the shoplifting part was true. That’s what they caught him for. She didn’t need to know what else he’d done. But it wasn’t fruit. A camera, an expensive watch, some earrings, a fancy cell phone. He’d had his pockets full when they stopped him outside.
“They put you on a road crew doing hard labor for a little bit of fruit?”
“Yes ma’am. The government, they’ve got no pity for the little guy, for poor folks.”
“My ex done way more than that! Your mama, was she at least able to visit you in that jail?”
“My mama’s been sick, unable to travel. I just hope I can see her before, well, you know. But ‘blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,’ as it says in Matthew.” Gibson had a half-dozen Bible verses memorized, which he used on an as needed basis.
“Have faith, son. You’re a young man still.”
“Not so young, really. Not much younger than yourself, I reckon. I just wish I’d spent my time better, you know? Been a better son. Contributed more. I could have been a real help to someone like you, trying to run this place all by lonesome. It must be an awful burden.”
She stood up. “For true. Most years I hardly manage.” She was looking at him intently again. “You in much pain?”
“Quite a bit, I’m afraid. Quite a bit.” It almost pleased him not to have to lie.
She walked over to the Jailbird scarecrow, where the weathered ladder still leaned against the pole from when she hung the faux-Gibson up. She dragged it over to Gibson, the top of it level with his thighs. He still didn’t want to get his hopes up, but he could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks.
She climbed the ladder slowly. He couldn’t tell if it was her shaking or the ladder. Maybe both. She smelled like flour and honey, and a sweet touch of cinnamon. He saw the glint of the knife in her hand, and for a second he thought she was there to do him harm. Maybe she felt sorry for him and intended it to be a mercy killing, so what he’d said to her hadn’t landed as he’d hoped.
But then she used the knife to cut the rope around his legs. He felt immediate relief now that he was able to at least flex his knees. She climbed further, reaching around him. He felt her hand on his butt. She may have rested it there longer than she needed to. She hugged him tightly as she sawed at the knots in the rope behind his back. They were both shaking.
Once loose, he would take the knife and kill her with it. It couldn’t be helped. A crazy lady like this, she could change her mind at any time, and Gibson couldn’t take that chance. He could feel the rope around his back loosen slightly, but it was still tight across his chest and under his neck.
He felt her shift suddenly. She gave a little cry, and then she dropped. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fallen ladder, the broken rungs.
But she still held on to him. She was strong for a woman her age. She hugged him around the knees, her face buried between his legs, her full weight dragging him down.
He heard a crack, and the little bit of wood he was standing on broke away. She fell all the way then. He heard her moaning on the ground.
But he couldn’t see her. He had his eyes closed from the pain. Their combined weight had pulled him down, the rope around his chest slipping higher, and now it was pressed against his neck.
She was saying something. He couldn’t quite hear her. It sounded like “Frank,” but maybe not. He thought about correcting her, giving her his real name, but the rope against his neck was too tight, and at least for now, Gibson was going to sleep.
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