The Scarecrow's Revenge

A Tall Tale

It was a blustery autumn day the year Mitch turned eight. He and Gramps went out back of their small ranch house to get air and let Mitch burn off steam in the empty cornfields. Gramps bundled the boy up in his heavy red coat and pushed on the hat and mittens Gram crocheted for him. Mitch thought they were itchy and hated the scarf most of all, the way it prickled his ears and chaffed his lips. He dashed through the door before Gramps could wrap it around his hood and cocoon his face in the rough spun wool.

Gramps paced after him and put a palm to his forehead.  It was just the two of them now since their son and daughter-in-law gave Mitch up as a baby and Gram passed away in the spring. It was all Gramps could do not to drop dead himself constantly chasing after the boy. He was a good boy at heart but full of hot sauce. He never sat still, not even when he slept. He flopped and tossed through the night and Gramps often found him hanging halfway off his bed in the morning with the blankets and sheets strewn about in wrinkled mounds.

     The cornfield was tiny--just two acres. The harvest a month back was easy and plentiful. They couldn't sell much of it and as a result had a lot for themselves to use in the cold months ahead. Plenty could be done with surplus corn. Boiling, popping, feeding the old brown milk cow and the potbelly sow.

Mitch ran himself in circles along the tufts of dried stalk that poked from the earth. Gramps stayed on the porch, rested himself in the wicker rocking chair, and swayed to and fro breathing in the crisp air that coated his nostrils and the back of his throat in cold. The chair had a gentle creak and groan that had the effect of a lullaby on Gramps' mind. He dozed off for who knows how long before a snore caught in his throat and jarred him awake.

     "Mitch?" he hollered out to the boy. He eased himself out of the porch rocking chair. His body wasn't nearly as spry as it used to be and every joint was tight with arthritis. He'd never gotten used to the slow pace his old bones dictated and often reminded himself to take it easy.

     Gramps hobbled into the field. The trees showed their rough twisted skeletons and the parched earth was beige with random patches of grass grasping color from the ever-shortening rays of sun. He caught sight of Mitch's red coat, the only bright color against the desaturated autumnal landscape. The boy dropped his hood and the wind whipped his black hair. His mittens hung limp from strings at the cuffs of his jacket, dangling against the gusts. He stooped to pick up a dirt clod, cranked his arm back, and beaned the old scarecrow Gramps had been meaning to dispose of for weeks.

     "Now, now, boy. Don't you go'n anger that straw man. He'll likely spite you as quick as look at you," Gramps said in his most stern tone. "You don't want to end up like poor Jesse Jenkins, do you?" 

     The boy stood with another dirt clod poised to launch and looked up at his grandfather. He cocked his head to one side and said, "Who's that?" Warm breath puffed from his mouth, quickly condensed, and vanished into the atmosphere.

     "You know that bog down Highway 9?" Gramps asked.  "Did you ever get to wonder how a swamp turned up in the middle of prairie land?"

     Mitch looked up at him. His tight lips indicated he pondered the question with serious consideration and the furrow of his eyebrows showed the whole thing confused the boy.

     "Why don't we go inside and sip some hot cocoa and I'll tell you all about it."

     The boy stomped a foot in protest.

     "Now now, do as your Gramps tells you. That wind is picking up and don't like the look of those clouds over there." The old man pointed up over the boy's head to the west. A line of tumbling storm clouds crept along the gray sky.