Scarecrow (12 page)

John Seth Whittaker.

A relative, then. So this was probably the family plot where all the generations before Seth had finally come to rest. Staring down at them, I felt like a guilty intruder.
John Seth Whittaker.
Even the name was stern and formidable. Had he been Seth’s father or grandfather? Laying the cross down, I moved on to the other graves. These I could read without disturbing the foliage.
Sary Maud Whittaker…Zoe Ruth Whittaker…Elizabeth Darrow Whittaker…Wilburn Seth Whittaker…
Another Seth. The family had been full of them. And had they all been like him, I wondered? And had that fierce pride and narrow-mindedness and obsession for order been in their very blood, passed down intact, tainting each new offspring with its strange, frightening power?

Something crackled behind me, and I whirled, my scream lodged, choking me.

Something crept forward, filthy and disheveled, covered with mud and wet black leaves…

“Dewey won’t come,” Girlie said, and her solemn eyes were as big as bowls and her voice was eerie and sad on a breath of cold, cold wind. “Dewey won’t ever come,” she said again. “Not ever.”

And then it was only me, and the awful stillness, and the five silent listeners lying deep, deep beneath my feet.

“W
ELL, SHE’S MISTAKEN,
” Rachel said matter-of-factly. “She’s just a little girl who likes to make things up.”

“Shoot, Dewey always comes,” Franny joined in, thumping a wad of dough into a neat fat loaf. “Been coming around here for so long now, I reckon it’d snow in July the day he didn’t show up.” She chuckled at her own joke and patted flour onto her palms. “Girlie’s just storying you.”

“She knows Dewey always comes. She was just teasing you, I reckon.” Rachel smiled indulgently and turned back to the stove, but I wasn’t convinced. I had seen that strange, knowing look on Girlie’s face before, and I felt with all my being that she was telling the truth now. But if it
was
really true, then why
wasn’t
Dewey coming? And how was I going to get home?

“How’s your head?” Franny asked, and for a second, she caught me offguard. I looked at her blankly and she tapped her forehead. “Your headache.”

“Oh,” I recovered myself. “Much better, thanks.”

“Did you have a nice walk?” Franny asked, and I dropped my head, pretending to study my sleeve. Girlie…of course she would have told them where I was. It wasn’t possible to keep a secret in this house.

“Very much. I’ve never lived in the country. There’s so much to see and appreciate.”

“It helps me, too. Whenever I’m out of heart, just to take a walk in the woods.” Rachel smiled, stirring a pot of beans on the stove, fanning her face with a dish towel.

“The fresh air felt good. I should have gone with you, after all,” I said regretfully. “Oh, I
did
find an old graveyard while I was exploring.”

Franny thumped the bread again and looked bored. “Oh, that old thing. Shoulda been torn out long ago. Snaky old place. I don’t know why Seth wants to keep it anyhow—”

“Well, it’s family, after all,” Rachel cut in. “And they’re the ones who rightly settled this land, so I reckon they deserve a little place of their own—”

“Lord, Rachel,” Franny sniffed, “they’re
dead.
Why think about folks after they’re dead?”

I felt a stab through my heart.
Brad…Kerry…I can’t stop thinking…I won’t ever stop thinking…

“Did you know them?” I broke in.

“Seth’s sisters. His granddaddy. His Ma and Pa,” Rachel said quietly. “It’s little enough to do for them now.”

“Well, I’m sure they don’t give two hoots about it.” Franny snatched her shawl from a hook by the door. “Gotta see to the chickens. Wanna come along?”

“Can’t I do anything to help?” I asked, but Rachel laughed.

“Mercy, no. I’m the only one who can make any sense out of my kitchen. You run along. Don’t overdo now.”

“No, I won’t.” I slipped my own shawl over my shoulders and looked at her, concerned.

“Rachel…”

“Hmmm?” Such simple sweetness and light, she should have been a painting. Brad would have loved her, to capture that certain essence she had about her.

“You
are
sure Dewey’s going to come?”

“Now you’re working yourself up over nothing.” She came to me, straightening my shawl, smoothing it over my arms. “I do wish you wouldn’t fret now.”

“I just hope, you know—it’s not that I’m ungrateful or anything—”

“Ssh, I know that. As if you could be.”

“It’s just that people will be worried and wondering about me.”
Oh God, why didn’t I tell someone where I was going?

“Now don’t
you
worry. In all these years Dewey’s never missed a trip. And I reckon your being here won’t make it any different.”

I followed Franny out toward the chicken house, but Rachel’s words kept ringing in my ears.
“Your being here won’t make it any different.”
And what was it Seth had said to me that day as we’d walked back from the smokehouse—
You don’t belong here…you’re not part of it…
I was so intent on my thoughts that I stumbled and Franny began to laugh.

“I swear you’re clumsier than a newborn calf.”

“It’s these shoes.” I shook one foot out in front of me. “I feel like I’m wearing army boots.”

“Come on, I wanna show you something.”

“But I thought you were going to see the chickens.”

Her eyes had an evil twinkle. “I fibbed. Come on.”

Grabbing me by the hand, she pulled me across the yard, and onto the path that led to the smokehouse.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. Just keep quiet—I don’t want Seth snooping around to see what we’re up to.”

“What
are
we up to?”

“Hush now. Just come along.”

I had little choice but to follow. As we neared the smokehouse I could hear the pounding of hammers, a low undertone of voices, but Franny held a finger to her lips and pulled me away from the path and deeper into the woods.

“Franny, what—”

“Ssh!” she hissed at me but her eyes were merry, and she guided me expertly as if she’d been this way many times before. As we maneuvered down a narrow incline Franny ducked through an opening in the trees, and I found myself in a small gorge, so completely surrounded by forests and bluffs that it seemed a secret little hiding place all to itself.

“How pretty,” I said, turning slowly to admire the autumn colors all around, the soft, damp earth underfoot, the fleecy clouds bunched like pillows between the laced branches overhead.

“My place,” Franny announced.

“And no one else knows about it?”

“Only Girlie—she knows everything.”

I felt a cold twinge.

“But she wouldn’t tell,” Franny went on. “She likes it here, too. But none of the others know.”

I found it hard to believe that there was any place in the vicinity that Seth wasn’t familiar with, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Instead I nodded, remembering my own girlhood. “It’s nice to have a special place all your own. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“I wanted to show you this—”

I turned toward the sound of her voice and gasped. “God, Franny, I thought he was real!”

And for one heart-stopping second, I
had
thought the scarecrow was real—really Seth in Seth’s clothes, slouched languidly beneath a tree, hat pulled low over his brow, long lean body almost insolent in its casualness.

“Well, I told you he
is
real,” Franny said, annoyed that she even had to remind me. “I put him here. Nobody will ever find him here.”

“What about Girlie?”

“She hates it when Seth gets mad. She’ll never tell.”

The scarecrow made me uncomfortable. I averted my eyes and rubbed briskly at my arms. It was getting colder.

“Take me with you,” Franny said suddenly, and I spun to face her, surprised.

“What?”

“When Dewey comes—and you go off again—take me with you. Please!”

I wasn’t prepared for this. And now as I stood there, flabbergasted, Franny’s eyes filled slowly with tears.

“You could do it, you know you could—and I wouldn’t be a bother—I wouldn’t cause you any trouble—”

“Franny,”—I finally managed to stammer—“your family would
never
stand for that, they’d—”

“No, not them—just Seth! Seth’s the only one who’d care. Rachel, she’d be happy for me—”

“Franny, I just couldn’t. Not without their permission. Seth would have to know—”

“No, he wouldn’t. I could hide—they’d all just think I was off somewhere. I could wait for you over where Dewey leaves his truck—”

“Leaves his—so there isn’t a road that comes all the way to the house,” I said. “Then how did Seth get me here in the wagon?”

“Seth never brought you in the wagon.” Franny looked surprised. “He carried you all that way.”

“Carried me!”

“There’s never been a road up here. Seth said so. You have to take a path down the hill—about a mile’s walk—and that runs into another path—and that goes on forever, but it finally turns into a road.”

“And that goes to Cranston?”

Franny nodded, her eyes imploring. “Please, Pam, I wouldn’t be any trouble to you—”

“But what would you do once you got away?” I asked her.

“Do? Why, live with you!”

She was so matter-of-fact that I stared at her stupidly. “With me?”

Her head bobbed up and down. “Oh, Pam, I could learn to be just like you—you’re just like what I’ve always wanted to be.”

“Well…that’s very flattering, Franny, and I appreciate it very much, but—”

“I could learn things real quick and help you forget about all the misery in your life—”

“The…misery…”

“Yes…I’d be lots of company for you with your husband and your little boy gone—”

Something snapped inside me. I gazed at her, my hands knotted into fists at my sides, my whole body freezing, shaking, the earth spinning, the world gone hazy through unshed tears. “What…did…you…say?”

But Franny was rushing on, totally unaware. “Oh, I know you must miss them, Pam, but I’d be such a good friend to you. You’d see. Why, I’d—”

“How…” I took a deep breath and looked down at my clenched hands. They were bleeding where my nails had dug into my flesh. “How…did you know…that?” My voice was deathly calm, my heart racing out of control.

Franny stopped and regarded me with mild surprise. “Know what? Oh, about your little boy? Why, Girlie told me. She—”

“She couldn’t have told you!” I screamed, and Franny jerked back, her expression suddenly worried and unsure.

“Pam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you all—”

“She couldn’t have known that! Do you hear me! She couldn’t have known those things! She’s only a child! She’s never seen me before in her life, and she couldn’t…
couldn’t
—” My hands flew to my mouth, trying to stop the screams, the hysterical voice that couldn’t be mine, and all around me I could see the world spinning, falling apart, shattering at my feet. “She couldn’t…” I gasped, my heart, the ache, I thought I might at last be dying—“couldn’t…no…no…”

“Oh, Pam…”

I never saw her come toward me. Franny was just there, holding me, making soft comforting noises under her breath, crying for herself and for me, because still, still, I couldn’t release my tears.

“Pam, it’s all right,” she whispered. “You can cry. You can. Nobody will know but me.”

I shook my head fiercely, sick and weary to my very soul. “I can’t, Franny. I just can’t.”

“It’s all right.” She stroked my hair and after a while added, “I’m the only one besides Girlie who knows, and I won’t tell if you don’t want me to.”

“Franny,” I said, leaning near, grasping her hands in mine, “please don’t keep saying those things to me. There must be some way that Girlie found out. If
she
knows then everyone else probably knows, too.”

“She’s always had that Gift,” Franny went on as if she hadn’t heard. “She knows things nobody else does. Sees what other folks can’t. I guess if I didn’t live with her, she’d be downright scary. But I’m used to her. And she does
know,
Pam. She really does
know.
She knew you were coming here.”

I glanced at her, not wanting to hear, but not able to help myself. “What do you mean?”

“We were all at supper. And she looks up from her soup and says to Seth, ‘There’s a lady on the road, and she’s dying and you have to save her.’ And we all just looked at her, and then Rachel, she says, ‘Are you sure, honey?’ And Girlie, she nods and says it again, looking at Seth the whole time, and Seth says, ‘It’s none of our affair.’ And Rachel says, ‘It
is
our affair if someone’s in trouble and dying, and we can’t ignore it.’ And Seth starts cussing and says he wishes to hell Girlie would stop, he can’t keep bringing strangers here and upsetting everything just ’cause Girlie knows about them, and then—”

“Wait,” I stopped her, my hand numb on her arm. “Do you mean this has happened, before?”

Franny regarded me levelly, but I was sure. I’d seen something just then, a flicker of
what?—fear?
—deep in her eyes as she grew silent for a moment. At last she said, “She knows when people have trouble on that road. And when they get lost. When their cars break down. You know. And Girlie, she always tells us.”

I stared at her, not sure I believed her. For some reason I felt there was something more, something she wasn’t telling me.

“And then what happens…to all the people who come here, I mean?”

“Oh…” Franny’s eyes flicked away, her tone dismissive. “Well…they just go home again, I reckon.”

“You reckon? You mean you don’t know?”

She seemed agitated. “Well, they always walk over with Dewey to where he leaves his truck, and I never go with them. Seth won’t let me go. Scared I’ll run off.” She sighed, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t mind strangers coming around. Specially when they’re in trouble. Like you were in trouble.”

Slowly I said, “That must be hard for all of you, though. Being private like you are, but feeling a sense of…duty. To help people.”

“Duty?” Franny mulled this over. “Oh, it was more than duty.” She seemed to relax now, her guard down. “Like I was saying, that night you came, then Girlie says, ‘You have to bring her here.’ And Seth says, ‘Why?’ and Girlie says, ‘’Cause I made her real to be my friend.’”