Scarecrow

One man stood alone. One small man.

No, that’s not true. He wasn’t a small man. Just small-minded. Mean of spirit.

The field swayed around him. Wave after wave of corn, slapped by the wind this way and that. It seethed as it moved, glancing first north, then south, as the capricious breeze threatened it from every angle. And still the man stood. Silent.

Dead.

He was leaning against a high metal pole, which stretched fifteen feet into the air. He had no visible means of support, above and beyond his own skeleton. And yet, he didn’t look as if he was going to fall down. He was a silent sentry, there in the middle of the field. His hair followed the corn, followed its direction, and its colour. Perhaps he had been out there that long, it had simply fallen victim to nature in the same way. His skin had flaked a little in the hot sun, smothering the dried blood which had snaked from the corner of his mouth. Many days ago.

Who had put him there? It was a question which needed to be asked. There was no other sign of life around. The field stretched endlessly to the ice blue of the horizon. A scene so flat, it seemed to show the earth’s curve. The field of hissing corn was interrupted only by a smooth line, which rolled from one sky to the other, and took in the clearing where the man stood. No tyre tracks, no footprints. Just him, and whoever had put him there.

His face looked skyward, with his neck tilted back. Not a pretty face. Not even a mother could claim that. A face which leered and sneered even in death. A face of curled lip and squint, which mocked the blazing heat. As if the man could somehow escape.

His legs were buckled slightly, but showed no signs of crumbling. They looked sturdy, beneath the baggy and faded denim. The rest of his pale, putty body was slouched a little, like a fat man on a couch. He seemed to achieve in the vertical what most people achieved in the horizontal. A fat man sleeping upright in a field of corn. Forever.

The pole he leant against sang in the breeze. Each time the wind passed by, it hummed a note which somehow hovered between tunes - a strange half-note which fitted nothing. A sound emitted by something which could never reach true pitch. A mechanical note, not borne of man.

Nothing else moved. Boiled by the sun, everything else had gone underground, or burned. The fat man, and his metal pole, were the tallest thing for twenty five miles. What a view he had! If only he could see. What sights the clouds must make for him, on less cruel days than this one. What he must be able to discern about life, about nature, about the passage of time. If only he were alive to do it. The man had ample opportunity to reflect, but could not. Someone was playing tricks. Someone was messing with his destiny, giving him this perfect opportunity, but snatching away his means. The fat man was cursed, here in this field. Nothing to do all day but look. And no eyes to do it with.

The man was out of place. This was a natural place, albeit cursed with a supernatural quiet. No birds sang here. No mice scurried between the grasses. It was just there, still and silent. The confidence of nature. The man was just a tiresome nuisance to it, but not a problem. Because he was just standing there, against a pole, doing nothing. The silent field could handle that. That was easy.

The man did not come from here. He was from a small town thirty miles to the west. A trim, neat town, where picket fences separated my house from yours. Porches served as windows onto a small world, where you had only to sit for ten minutes before you found someone to wave to. A small town like the one further west, or further east. It didn’t seem to matter. They all served the same purpose. They were all coastal towns. It was just that the sea was made of corn.

On the edge of the town was a series of large silos, like upended submarines, shoving their way upwards out of their horizontal world. They glinted back the late evening sun, into the house where the man had lived. His dust-encrusted windows kept out most of the light, or let it through with a musty yellow film, but the piercing shafts reflected from the silos found their way through the defences. More often than not, they alighted on the man’s bed.

The man’s bed was a large, sprawling affair, inherited from his grandmother. She had left him the bed, and some good advice. At least he’d kept the bed. The first time he slept in it he’d been uneasy, since it had been the place where she’d breathed her last. A good, Christian woman, without a bad word for anyone, she made him feel unworthy. Because he was. Sleeping in her bed had only served to make him more aware of that. But it only bothered him for a night.

After that, it became something of a friend to him. It was big enough to house a number of bottles - some empty, some usable - which were also his friends. They could loll around the big feather mattress in much the same way as he did, and were similarly unconcerned by matters of hygiene. They could fall out with a clunk, much like him. And the bed, although it creaked a little, never really seemed to mind.

Occasionally it paid host to a little fumbling, grumbling, drunken sex. When he could afford to pay for it, of course. He lacked either the physical grace, or social niceties, to get it himself. Sure, it was a small town, but he’d lived there all his life, and knew who struggled the most to make the rent. The husbands were in the fields all day, working the corn. Many times, he’d thanked the fields for life’s grubby little opportunities. Take what you want, when you can get it, was his motto.

The parts of his mind not fazed and hazed by alcohol kept wondering when all this would catch up with him. Since the era of Kennedy, he hadn’t had a job. Odd snatches of money had brushed past him, blown his way by some unforeseeable circumstance, without ever really settling. Money was just tumbleweed. Something in his brain told him being a farmer wasn’t for him. It wasn’t for anyone, really. Your fingers took an hour to get the blood back in winter, when the blizzards flew in from the mountains and thrashed at your hands. In summer, the sun stole your will to move, to think. He was damned if he was going to live like that.

Instead, he gave up trying to live, and settled for surviving instead. In fact, it was one of the few things he was any good at. He always seemed able to stay one step ahead of the thing that was going to bring him crashing down, be it a husband, or a debt collector. He remained a small fish in a small pond, but he kept alive. Alive enough for some drinks each night, and alive enough to notice when he was about to die.

He’d never been someone to dream of one big opportunity - the great deal which would somehow materialise in front of him. Firstly, because he felt his luck would never be that big. Faced with what he saw as a finite well of good fortune, he was drawing on it slowly, using up little pieces daily until one day it would stop completely. Secondly, that faith in a real break implied that he thought he was worth more than this, and he didn’t. He’d lowered his expectations, until they fell below even what others expected of him, and he never actually believed he deserved better. Even when it arrived in town.

On a hot, sultry morning, when thunderstorms were beginning to crash around the plains even at breakfast time, he had wandered over to the bank. He had an account, into which he deposited mighty sums such as five dollars. While a small customer, he had fervently hoped that the mere frequency of his custom would one day lead to an offer of credit. He had, not for the first time in his life, mistaken quantity for quality. Yes, he was a frequent visitor. Yes, he was capable of making thirty or forty transactions a month. But never having worked, he hadn’t realised that these cost the bank more to complete than they gained. He was, to quote the technical jargon of the manager, “a fucking liability”.

Unarmed with this in-depth knowledge of financial affairs, he had regularly strolled into the bank, waiting patiently to conduct his business. He’d been given to understand that bank employees had to be nice and chatty, but for some reason they weren’t. At least, not with him. This had something to do with the way he leaned on the counter, in that special, casual way which can only belong to people who can’t stand up. This morning, things were different.

To begin with, he was unusually, disarmingly sober. His line of credit with the liquor store - credit being a willingness to actually let him in - had dissolved, in a petty argument about whether he needed to pay for something. The owner said he should, he said he shouldn’t, especially as he was such a regular customer. Again, this quality/quantity thing.

After a sleepless night which was all too clear and lucid, he was anxious to get back to reality. Because of this, he found himself standing outside the bank two minutes before it opened. Leaning against a streetlight, he watched a long black Cadillac whoosh silently into view. It’s nose came to a bouncing halt thirty feet uptown. The engine stayed on, and no-one moved. The black windows remained unfurled. The earth seemed to stop rotating simply because the car was there. It sat purring in the street like a satiated tomcat, catching the sun’s rays just before they disappeared behind the oncoming storm. Light refused to permeate it. It just stood there in the middle of town, demanding his attention.

He’d become used to seeing a chance for personal advancement in most things - although it seldom materialised. However, even he couldn’t screw up that kind of money. What did he think - a rock star, a football player, a pimp? Maybe none of those, but at the very least, someone who could afford a Cadillac. Without rental plates, either, so they could afford to buy a Cadillac. This put them several leagues above him, and therefore someone he wanted to meet. But something about the car told him to hang back. It seemed to be waiting for something. Waiting for the world to catch up with what it wanted to do.

A click behind him said the door of the bank was opening. Reluctantly, he began to turn away from the black car. The walnut door opened, and he wandered in. A line of oak and glass met him. Feeling in his jeans pocket for his dog-eared chequebook, he was about to advance when he heard the snapping of heels on the floor behind him.

As he turned around, a woman - he assumed - swept past him, making much the same noise as her Cadillac. Without making an effort, she seemed to avoid giving him a good look at her. He saw snatches of gold, tanned wrists, big 80s - style hair, and a long coat made from some hapless South American wild cats he couldn’t place. Her legs tapered expensively down to black shoes. In her long, slender, but strangely inelegant fingers she clutched the handle of a black bag.

There was a slap behind him. Becoming anxious now, he wheeled around as a dustbin from the street smacked into the door of the bank, preceded and finished by a swirl of corn-coloured dust. The storm was coming on fast. He knew the signs well enough. He turned back around to hear the end of the woman’s conversation.

“.....That’s right, fifty thousand......what?.....of course I know it’s a lot.....I earned it, didn’t I?.......yeah, whatever you’ve got.....nah,nah, I’ve got a car and a driver...”

He was not a man whose life had been so filled with experiences that he could disregard the sight of fifty thousand dollars disappearing into a bag. It didn’t actually look any more impressive than the five dollars in his pocket, except for the fact that there was more of it. He didn’t think to steal it. Our fat man was poor. Our fat man was lazy. But our fat man didn’t think he could outrun this woman, let alone her Cadillac. Besides, where would he go, even with that cash? He lacked the ambition to get one of the daily buses out of here. Fifty thousand dollars wouldn’t have injected that kind of ambition. The money would have just dripped out of him, dollar by dollar, in the town he called home. No, he was just rubbernecking.

He concentrated on his own transaction, listening to the storm gathering pace. Shutters were crashing against the walls like rifle shots. The staff behind the counters were looking anxiously at each other, waiting for the word to go down to the cellar and sit it out. If only this fat man would hurry up and get lost. The woman wafted behind him and out of the door.

Leaving the bank his first sense was not of noise, or even of wind, but of light. The onrushing storm, gathering pace, had stolen the day. It was blacker than midnight across two thirds of the sky, the brittle line between night and daylight moving at a car’s pace over his head. The wind had slackened off to that unnerving calm, which just precedes the full unleashing of the fury. He knew he was in trouble. Home was five minutes away. He looked across the street, but all he could see were shutters, closed doors, and dust, driving down the main street towards him. Behind it, and coming on fast, he could see the whipped tail of a tornado searing towards the town. The fat man was directly in it’s path as it screeched towards him, like the manic, severed spinal cord of the entire world. It would wrench everything in its hideous path. It missed nothing on the surface of the earth. Nothing at all.

The Cadillac had disappeared towards it, presumably thinking it was just a thunderstorm. The fat man knew where to go. Where he had gone as a child - under the boardwalk, in that gap between the building and the dirt of the ground. He had scurried deep into the bowels underneath the hotel, terrified. Just a five year old boy, watching as his older brother stayed close to the edge of the tornado’s path. His five-year-old eyes saw his brother ripped up from underneath the hotel, just torn away like a piece of masking tape, never to touch the ground again.

The fat man knew how to stay alive.

What the fat man had forgotten was how much larger he was than a small child. He could get in - just. But half his torso lay outside the shelter of the bank. It lay in the path of the tornado. He squirmed like a lion’s half-dead prey, trying to prise himself deeper into the building’s grip, but the size of the animal he was asking it to swallow was too great. All he could do was hang on, and pray.

The wind screamed and ripped around him. He saw pieces of metal and wood bowl past him, as the town gave up whatever the wind wanted. It shredded roofs and other timbers. And then, out of the corner of his eye, as he squinted against the sandblast of the whipped dust, he saw it. The Cadillac.

Wherever it had been going, the wind had decided to bring it back. It rolled it down the street, end-on-end, like a child with a spinning top. It crashed the Caddy against the hotel opposite, the same one which had sheltered the little boy, and given away his brother. As it smashed the beaten Cadillac against the ground one last time, the one remaining door flew open.

A small black bag skidded across the dust, ending not twenty feet from the fat man. The storm gave the town a moment’s rest, as its’ eye passed overhead. There was no sign of the woman, or whoever had been driving. Just the black bag. Sitting on a dusty street, twenty feet from a fat man. The silence of the eye was more frightening than the storm itself. It allowed his imagination to wander.

Could he reach it? Could he get there in time? No telling how long the eye would last. He’d been in a few, but each was different. How long would it take? Too long, that’s for sure. Forget about it. What if the money isn’t in there? But what if it is? The owner’s dead. Everyone would think the storm had the money. It was free. It was sitting there twenty feet away. All he had to do was climb out and get it.

He waited. He waited for the storm to suddenly rush back, justifying his wait. He wanted absolution from the storm, to vindicate his indecision by showing him he couldn’t have got the bag. But it didn’t. It still gave him the chance. The black bag still sat there. Nothing moved. Not a thing. He could hear his own heartbeat, feel it in his temples. He could almost sense his blood moving around. His fingers tingled.

He looked up at the sky. It was still night time up there. The bag was twenty feet away, taunting him. And still the eye hung overhead.

He began to extricate himself from underneath the bank. Slowly, cautiously, as though the wind was just waiting for him. Just gingerly extracting one leg, then the other. Still he held onto the timber, ready to scramble under if he felt even a breeze. But he felt nothing. Not a moment’s caress.

The wind wanted him to have the bag. It wanted it. Why else would it bring the Cadillac back? Why else, to someone who knew what it contained? Why else, to the man who needed it? Why else, to the man crazy enough to reach for it?

He stood up slowly, glancing around as he did so. He half - expected a cop to swing by. But still the eye held, hovering overhead and delivering it’s jet-black benevolence. He took a step towards the bag. Still no breeze. This was stupid. If he was going to take the bag, just take it. As quickly as possible. He rushed over to the bag and grabbed it.

And the moment he touched it, the fury and anger of everything in the world descended upon him. There was no gradual change. No warning. Someone flicked the switch and the wind was back at full strength. He looked up into the teeth of the wind as it shrieked its’ disapproval. There was just a split second when the fat man stood tall, his toes the only connection between him and the ground, crying on the cusp of the wind.

And then it took him, up into a dizzy spiral that he couldn’t see. Up towards his brother, still clutching a black bag. He would know nothing else, he would do nothing else.

Ten miles out of town, and still airborne, the wind parted the fat man from his prize. Twenty miles further on, as it tore across a giant field of corn, in its’ own death throes, it deposited him, spine first, on a metal pole.

And he never knew that he was now a scarecrow.