The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 22: Sticks and Blood

[Muddy Footsteps]

ALFIE: Mud, filthy sticky, stinkin' mud. I hate mud - Be a farmer, I thought much easier than bein' a log driver. Loggin's for fools, I said. Now look at me, covered in mud, always and forever

The Old Farmers clothes were thrown on hastily, hanging off his boney ancient shoulders, his chin was a stubbled field of white bristles - an echo of ages past, while the hair on his head was thinned, and near bald on top, where only thin misty whisps remained, flitting about like tattered flag.

ALFIE: Mud, Mud, Mud - my life is mud, I'm mud, we're all mud. What I wouldn't do for some sand - haul it up from the river, throw it all over everything, dry things out a bit what do ya think Alfie? Sounds about right I think Alfie.

As he marched through his land, a checker board of dilapidated fields, the old Farmer known as Alfie conversed with... well with himself.

Life can get lonely on a farm.

ALFIE: What are we planting this year old man? Hmmm I think some corn, I like corn. And of course the pumpkins for the young'uns. Then there's the apples, aint gotta do much for that they just sprout up each year without much hand in em. What about potatoes?

ALFIE: Mmm nah, everyone's growing potatoes. Boring, bland, potatoes ain't gonna cut it.

The air was warming as the season changed. The last freeze of winter seemed to be behind The Fort, but Alfie, being the seasoned farmer knew better, he knew that fickle town always gave one last frigid push - on a night least expected, after a long and wonderfully warm day, without a cloud in the sky, as the moon would rise, crystal clear and so bright the black night sky looked dark blue, that's when the last freeze would come.

But it didn't hurt to start planning and thinking and plotting.

ALFIE: Should make the most of the shaded back acres this year - what grows in shade?

ALFIE: Probably something leafy.

ALFIE: Most likely - but what about scallions?

ALFIE: Scallions could work but a field of scallions? Most people grow those in their yard.

ALFIE: What do you care alfie? You're old and bored, ya need something to do.

ALFIE: I s'pose that's the truth.

Most folks in The Fort knew Alfie - knew he had a propensity to chatter on with himself as he walked through his fields, as well as through the town streets - often interrupting himself while talking with others.

Initially it had been a gimmick - a gag Alfie had cooked up to scare off the more conservative, straight-laced townsfolk.

But as Alfie came to find - he rather liked his company, and in fact liked it quite a bit more then he liked the company of others.

ALFIE: Do I even like scallions? I'll probably have to end up eating most of 'em.

ALFIE: Not sure, can ya dry em?

ALFIE: Not sure.

Before Alfie knew it, and despite what those individuals whispering that he was crazy thought he did in fact know it, Alfie had become the eccentric farmer, with his pumpkin fields, that all the children would come to with their parents plucking pumpkins for Halloween, and those children without parents who cared less, or couldn't afford one, can in the cover of near night, in the mists of twilight and pinched one from the crawling vines.

Alfie didn't care though - didn't mind children stealing pumpkins so long as it meant they could enjoy the season.

Beyond the pumpkin field Alfie didn't care much for farming.

He did plant each field. But he never carried through with a single harvest

Instead, he allowed whoever wanted to to come and harvest themselves, do so each fall.

When everyone had their arms filled with food, Alfie would let the fields simply wither and rot in the wet and the rain - slimy browned and brittle corn stalks beat into the ground by deer or children running through his fields.

It was an odd life cycle his farm and field went through each year but that's the way Alfie liked it.

Alfie stepped over puddles- more spry and athletic then he looked, landing painlessly and silent on the other side.

He held his walking stick in one hand - not using it to aid him in his balance but rather gripping the middle and waving it as he pumped his arms walking briskly through the field. It was a show piece mostly - a prop which he could wave at children as he made toothless threats to "git on home or else", as he pretended not to take delight in the fact that his land could be a kingdom of endless possibilities for the young ones.

It also had the added benefit of being used as a prop for the stuffy folks who always came knocking that time of year to see if Alfie was ready to sell, or accept Jesus - those two types of folks came in near equally irritating numbers. The second he'd see them in their starched up trousers, he double over clinging for dear life to the staff.

It made it more believable when he pretended he'd gone deaf from age.


As Alfie climbed up the steep embankment of an irrigation ditch, the scarecrow, standing stuck to his pole, and reluctantly watching the empty fields, but it was a splashing in the ditch as he crested the top of the dirt mound that caught his attention.

Down in the shade of the ditch, hunched over in the mud, have sunken, and leering up at him were two bright eyes, on a face that alluded daylight as if the soot smeared on his face ate it all, hungrily and greedily.

Man In The Cave: Hello Alfie, where are we off to today?

ALFIE: Oh no - I ain't got time for your nonsense today.

THE MAN: Oh come now! That isn't any way to treat an old friend.

ALFIE: Last I checked I done no such thing as ever call you friend

THE MAN: Hush Hush! That Isn't true now is it!

ALFIE: Don't start spouting Hush Hush, pretending like you aren't trying to slip a snake in the grass when I ain't lookin. I've got things to do. Places to be. Now if you'll excuse me I best be off to all those chores I got.

THE MAN: If you leave now, so rudely, without even showing me the respect due to an old friend I'll make sure everyone finds out what you did to poor Ben LaPonte.

A sickly yellow too-wide smile cut a slit in the darkness where his face should have been.