Scott Nicholson - Ashes

He heard Grandpa yelling as if they were miles apart. He kicked his legs, trying to find purchase in the empty air. Crumbs of tobacco leaves trickled down the back of his shirt. His hands, toughened by a season in the fields, held onto the pole until his body stopped swaying.

"Hold on here, Jerp. You okay, boy?" Grandpa's voice came from somewhere above.

Jerp felt as if his arms had been ripped from his shoulder sockets, the way they had felt when he grabbed the electric fence to see how strong the shock was. He looked down at the barn floor fifteen feet below. The scarecrow boy was standing there, grinning like a turtle eating saw-briars even though its eyes were cold and dead.

"Lordamighty, it's a wonder you ain't broke your neck," Grandpa yelled. Boots drummed down the loft stairs, then the crib door banged shut. Then Grandpa was underneath him, telling him to let go. The scarecrow boy was gone.

Jerp relaxed his hands, and the balls of his feet drove into the dirt floor. Pain shot through his ankles. Grandpa caught him before he fell over.

"You sure you're okay?" Grandpa asked, holding Jerp's shoulders.

Jerp nodded numbly. Accidents happened on a farm. Timber fell on legs, snapping them like dry twigs. Horses kicked out blindly, causing concussions or worse. Plows and harrows sometimes turned more than red clay, sometimes making furrows in flesh and blood.

And accidents happened in the city. Gunmen drove by and filled the street with random hot lead. Drug dealers knifed rib cages because someone looked like someone else through angel-dusted eyes. Airliners sheared off rooftops and spread carnage like confetti. Misunderstood boys were labeled maladjusted and sent to juvenile hall where they learned nothing except how to be real criminals instead of amateurs.

"I'm sorry, Grandpa, I just lost my step," Jerp said as his wind returned. "I'm all right now. Let's get back to work."

Work was the answer. Work would keep evil away. Work would keep thoughts and daydreams and made-up monsters away. Work would make Grandpa happy.

"You sure?" Grandpa asked, and this time there was no threat in the words, only real concern and tenderness. Jerp nodded again and walked to the corncrib door, trying to hide his limp. They went back up to the loft and Grandpa lifted the pole that spanned the haychute.

He let out a liquid whistle and said, "Boy, lucky you fell just right. This thing mighta speared you like a frog on a gig."

The scarecrow boy could have made it happen that way, if it had wanted. But Jerp would work harder now.

They bundled tobacco the rest of the day, until the pile of sheaves was taller than Jerp. Grandpa complained about having a headache, and by the time they had cooked and eaten supper, the headache had turned into a fever. As night rose like a cliff made of coal, Jerp built a fire and Grandpa sat by the hearth, a shawl across his knees.

He looked miserable in his helplessness. "Jerp, I ain't up to doing chores tonight. You think you can handle them?" he said, his voice as chalky as his face.

"Sure, Grandpa." Jerp was anxious to make up for dropping that egg basket, forgetting to slop the hogs that day two weeks ago, and burning the cabbage bed by broadcasting too much fertilizer. "I know what to do."

"Don't forget to put up the cows."

Put up the cows. In the barn. With scarecrow boy riding herd.

"Something wrong, boy? You ain't afeared of the dark, are you?"

Dark wasn't bad. Dark was only black, suffocating stillness. Dark didn't walk. Dark didn't smile.

"No, of course you ain't. And remember to latch the gate when you're done," Grandpa said, his attention wandering back to the fire which reflected off his rheumy eyes.

Jerp put on his coat, his fingers shaking as he fumbled with the zipper. He took a flashlight from the ledge by the front door and went out into the night, under the black sky where stars were strewn like white jackstones. Crickets chirped across the low hills. Jerp's flashlight cut a weak circle in the darkness, and he followed the circle to the gate.

The cows had come in on their own, following the twitching tail of the mare who was smart enough to know where food and shelter could be found. They were milling outside the pen, rubbing against the split locust rails. Jerp walked through the herd, grateful for the warmth the animals radiated. He lifted the latch and they spilled into the barnyard, annoying the sow into a round of grunting. Jerp slid back the barn door and the animals tottered inside. So far, so good.

But now he had to go to the hayloft. Now he had to go through the corncrib and up the stairs and across the loft that was littered with square black holes. Now he had to meet the scarecrow boy on its home turf.

He almost turned and ran back up the hill to the light and safety of the farmhouse, almost let his legs betray him by becoming a whirling windmill of fear. But then he pictured Grandpa asking if all the animals were put up and fed and the chores done proper. And Jerp heard the words that Grandpa had been waiting to say.

I was hoping to leave this farm to you, to let you carry on the tradition that your father abandoned. I was hoping someday the soil would lay claim to you, because busy hands touch no evil. But if the dirt's not in you, you can't plant there.

Jerp squinted in the moonlight that spilled into the barn. He kicked a horse chip across the ground. He took a pitchfork from the wall and walked to the corncrib. He would be part of the farm, not a big-city sissy.

Jerp banged the wooden handle on the door to warn the rats and the scarecrow boy that he was coming and had work to do. Taking a deep taste of air, he slammed the door open so hard that the sweet potatoes rolled around in their bins. He ran up the steps with one hand clenched around the pitchfork.

The haybales were stacked like bricks on the far end of the loft. He tiptoed through the tobacco that hung like long sleeping bats, around the hole he had fallen through earlier, and past the workbench. He was among the hay now, walking down an aisle between the silent stacks. Jerp turned the corner and there was scarecrow boy, sitting on a bale and grinning at him, a straw jabbed between its teeth.

Jerp held the pitchfork in front of him. If the scarecrow boy was stuffed with straw, Jerp was ready to pierce its flesh and shred its muscles and rake its insides out. If the boy had a ragball heart, Jerp would make the heart stop beating. Jerp's own heart was racing like that of a crow that had eaten poisoned corn.

The scarecrow boy looked at Jerp with eyes that were beyond life, eyes that neither flinched nor twinkled in the flashlight's glare. Eyes that were as black as good bottom soil, black as manure. Eyes that had seen drought and flood, lush and fallow fields, harvests both meager and bountiful. Eyes that were seeds, begging to be planted and given a chance to take root, to grow and bloom and go to seed, to spread on the winds and in the bellies of birds, to propagate among the loess and loam and alluvial soils of the world.

"You've been waiting for me," Jerp said. "Always."

The scarecrow boy nodded, its head wobbling on its shoulders like an apple tied to a kite.

Suddenly Jerp knew whose farm this was. It had never been recorded on a deed down at the county seat, but some laws were unwritten and universal. Rights of ownership went to the possessor.

And Jerp belonged here, belonged to the farm and to the scarecrow boy.

The scarecrow boy spread its musty arms as if to hug Jerp. Jerp let the flashlight drop to the floor as the scarecrow boy rose like smoke and drifted through the tines of the pitchfork. Jerp tried to draw back, but he felt as if he had a splintery stake up his spine. His arms went limp and he itched, he itched, his hands were dusty and his mouth was dry. The pitchfork fell onto the planks, but the clatter was muffled, as if he were hearing it through layers of cloth. Jerp tried to stretch the threads of his neck, but he could only stare straight ahead at the boy in front of him.