Scarecrow (9 page)

Read Scarecrow Online

Authors: Robin Hathaway

BOOK: Scarecrow
7.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
When I walked in, helmet in hand, Paul beckoned me over to the desk. “I've got all the stuff in the basement,” he whispered. “Have you got the clothes?”
“I'll get them,” I whispered back, falling easily into The Great Scarecrow Conspiracy.
My closet yielded a ragged pair of jeans, some old hiking boots, and a tattered Columbia sweatshirt. The sweatshirt gave me pause. We had been through a lot together. Football games, classes, frat parties, and exams. Even—in bed together, on cold nights.
But you're not giving it up
, I assured myself.
You're just lending it to a friend
. I grabbed it and the other clothes and hurried downstairs.
The motel basement was a disappointment. The cinderblock walls were a dull gray, and the slit-like windows let in only a wan light, casting pale, formless shadows on the concrete floor. What had I expected—my great-grandmother's attic, complete with old trunks spilling over with fringed shawls, patchwork quilts, and lace petticoats? The only objects stored here were a couple of exhausted mattresses and a rolled-up remnant of the shit-brown carpet that covered the floors of all the rooms and corridors upstairs.
“Over here!”
Peering through the gloom, I spotted Paul at the far end.
Under a single lightbulb, he was bending over a table—a piece of plywood set on two carpenter's horses.
I laid my bundle of clothes on the table.
“Great. Now we're all set.” He had already constructed a solid T by nailing two sturdy poles together. It leaned against the wall. Beside it stood a bail of hay and an enormous ball of twine. What intrigued me most was the pair of huge red long johns, complete with flap, spread out on the table.
“My contribution,” he said, following my glance. “They hold the straw better than anything.”
As I watched, he began pulling handfuls of straw from the bail and stuffing it into the legs of the long-johns. When he had filled one leg to bursting, he tied it off neatly at the ankle, cut the twine with a pair of shears, and began filling the other one.
“It'll settle once we hang him,” he answered my unasked question.
“Can't I do something?”
“Sure.” He tossed me a thermal shirt with long sleeves, size XXX. “Start filling that.”
When I had finished, we connected our two parts with gigantic safety pins and added my jeans and sweatshirt. The result was a fantastic, headless monster—half Frankenstein creation, half Columbia linebacker. I christened him Ichabod after Washington Irving's headless horseman. (I
had
studied a few things besides biology and organic chemistry.)
“That where you went to school?” Paul tapped the black letters spread across Ichabod's new chest.
I nodded. “But football was never our strong point.”
“We wanted our boy to go to college,” he said. “Rutgers. But he was always more interested in tinkering with his bike than reading books. He ended up at the local vocational school, in the plumbing class.”
“That's a good trade. Very lucrative,” I said. “My dad did both. He's a printer. He went to college and then opened his own print
shop. He's had a lifetime of tinkering, and I don't know any man who's been happier—with his career, at least.”
“Huh.”
“I took a boyfriend of mine to his print shop once. And you know what he said? ‘Your father's such an intelligent man, why doesn't he open a chain of print shops and just manage them?' He missed the whole point. Jackass!”
Paul stopped fussing with the scarecrow and looked at me. “I think I'd like your father.”
Together, we held our headless monster up to the wooden T to see if he was a good fit. Perfect. We took him down again.
“How did you come to be a doctor?”
“My dad's idea. I liked to tinker, too. I would have been happy hanging around the print shop. But Dad had other plans. He had this idea that his only child should have a “profession,” not just a trade like him. He didn't know that medicine was going to turn into a corporate monster … .” I fit a sneaker to one straw leg, twisted its laces around the ankle, and pulled them tight. “ … And instead of having an office on the corner—their own private domain—they'd be assigned a cubical, á la
Dilbert
, with
Ivan
watching them—in the form of government agencies, insurance companies, peer-review committees …”
Paul looked at me quizzically.
“Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox.” I looked at our new creation critically. “What about the head?”
From a paper bag, Paul pulled out a deflated basketball. With a bicycle pump, he pumped the ball until it was about the size of an average human head and sealed it off. Before I could beef about the tangerine color and the lack of features, he whipped out a beige tote bag and pulled it over the ball.
“And how … ?”
Before I could finish, Paul produced from his pocket a spool of heavy thread and a wicked-looking needle. “I used to mend sails,” he said, and went to work sewing the bottom of the tote bag to the top of my Columbia sweatshirt. When he had finished, our monster
had a head, but no neck. Oh, well, most linebackers were neckless, too.
“He needs a hat.” Sadly, I thought of my stolen scarecrow's floppy straw hat.
From his magical paper bag, Paul drew a straw hat, almost identical to that of the other scarecrow.
“I'll leave the face up to you,” he said, pressing a box of magic markers into my hand. “You're the one who's going to have to live with him.”
The box was marked
waterproof
.
“That's in case you ever own a field and want to put him in it.”
He had thought of everything.
I set to work to make a face as close to the one of my friend in
The Wizard of Oz
as possible. Two bright blue eyes, a pink nose, and a scarlet, upturned mouth.
“He looks more like a clown,” Paul observed.
I shrugged. I never claimed to be an artist.
“He looks cheerful, at least. Come on. It's time to hang him up,” he said.
Together, with the rest of the twine, we anchored him to the cross.
“This feels sort of like a crucifixion,” I murmured.
Paul, intent on his work, made no reply.
When we were done, we stepped back to admire our masterpiece.
“Not bad,” Paul said. “If I do say so myself.”
“It's a shame he should be denied his life's work,” I said. “He ought to have a crack at scaring crows.”
“Well, you could lend him out in the spring. I know a farmer who would be glad to get him. Old man Perkins. He lost one recently.”
“Stolen?” I asked glumly.
He nodded. “And someone put a dead man in its place.”
“Oh, yeah.” I remembered the news article.
“They still haven't identified the body.”
“How come?”
“Under the scarecrow outfit, he was stark naked.”
“Couldn't they trace him through his dental work or DNA?”
“They tried all that, but it seems he was from out of town. A stranger.”
“What's going on down there?” Maggie was back from church.
“Coming!” Paul shouldered our new creation.
As he started up the stairs, Ichabod's hat fell off. Despite his fine new head, I'm afraid that name would stick. (Just so long as no one called him “Icky.”) I grabbed the hat and followed them up the stairs.
“There's my hat!” cried Maggie. “I was looking all over for it.”
“Whoops!” I handed it to her.
Paul ignored my glare.
After introducing Ichabod to his new quarters, I took off on my bike again. I was able to say “my” now with more authority. I had just presented Maggie with a check for that first installment.
I decided to tool around the neighborhood. I wanted to familiarize myself with the territory, so when (if) I had another house call, I would know how to get there.
When I had mastered the five square miles around the Oakview Motor Lodge, I decided to go further afield. (“Afield” is right. That's all there was.) I had brought a map, but of course there were no road signs, which rendered it practically useless. A compass would have been more to the
point
. I snickered at my own joke. (There was no one for miles to share it with.)
Pausing at a remote intersection (they were all remote), I noticed a bright green field in the midst of all the brown ones. Green in November? Puzzling over this freak of nature, I heard a pickup truck trundle up behind me. I didn't move. There was plenty of room for it to go around me.
The motor behind me continued to throb and a faintly familiar male voice shouted, “Lost?”
Turning, I saw Robin Hood. For once his expression was uncool. Dumbstruck was the only word for it. Immediately spoiling my advantage, I grinned.
Matching my grin, he climbed out and came over.
(The desolate nature of South Jersey can be proved by the fact that not a single vehicle passed us during our exchange.)
“Did I wake you?” He had recovered his cool.
“I was just wondering why that field is so bright green in the middle of November.”
“Winter wheat,” he said.
“Since you're so smart, what kind of bird lives there?” I pointed to an elaborate black and yellow cone fitted to the top of a tall, stainless steel pole.
“A noisy one.” He laughed. “That's an emergency siren for the nuclear power plant. There are dozens of them around here.”
That shut me up.
“Where you headed?” He reached for my map.
“I'd like to get back to the Oakview Motor Lodge.”
“That's easy. You're here.” He pointed to a crossroad. “Crab's Neck and Possum Hollow roads.”
How I longed for Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street! “They have a peculiar habit of not supplying road signs around here.” I was instantly horrified at my snide Madison Avenue tone.
“Oh, they supply them all right. But as soon as the signs go up, they take 'em down.”
“They? Who? Kids?”
He shook his head. “Grownups, I'm afraid.”
“Why?”
“They don't want people to find this place. The wrong people.”
“Like me?”
He shrugged.
“Don't they ever get caught?”
“They're good at it. Besides, there's sort of an unspoken law that you look the other way.”
“Well, everybody's good at something,” I said. “Do you know Bullwinkle?”
“The moose?” He nodded.
“He had one talent—he could remember everything he had for breakfast since he was born.”
“No kidding.” He laughed.
Why was he staring over my shoulder?
“See that field?” He pointed behind me.
I turned.
“That belongs to old man Perkins. His scarecrow was stolen—”
“—and a dead man took its place. One of your quaint local customs?”
Abashed, he changed the subject. “By the way, how is your scarecrow?”
I told him about the theft.
Our eyes locked for a second. “Do you think … ?”
He shrugged.
“Anyway,” I went on, “I have a replacement.” And to my astonishment I found myself telling him about Ichabod. When I had finished, I waited tensely for his derisive laugh.
He smiled instead. “I'd like to see him.” Then he spoiled it with his next question, “How's the doctor business?”
“It's not a business,” I snapped. “Or, at least it shouldn't be,” I modified.
“Point taken.”
“Sorry.” I stuffed the map in my saddlebag.
What's the matter with me? Why am I turning off this perfectly nice guy?
“That's a sore point with me,” I explained. “As for doctoring—I don't know if I can make a go of it here. This place isn't exactly overpopulated.” I scanned the empty fields. “And the people I've met so far look pretty healthy.”
“Wait 'til winter sets in. You'll have plenty of bus … er … patients. I'll try to steer some your way.”
“Don't break your back.”
There I go again. Maybe I should see a shrink
. Anxious to get away before I said something worse, I pressed the starter. My bike revved up with a ripple of sound.
His truck, on the other hand, coughed three times, and when it
finally caught, backfired. The last I saw of him, he was careening—much too fast—down Possum Hollow Road … or was it Crab's Neck?
I trundled along—smooth as silk—and wondered why I didn't feel more satisfaction.

Other books

Damned and Desired by Kathy Kulig
Annihilation by Athans, Philip
Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers
Checkmate, My Lord by Devlyn, Tracey