CHISAGO COUNTY PRESS 11/5/92
SCRIBES CORNER, page 11
Beyond The Raspberry Patch
By Jeff Smith
These things all became fact for me one day in Mr. Stanwyck’s berry patch. True, I’d never given them much thought before that time but, everything became clear that morning, or rather, things became less clear. I think.
You see, since that time there has been, for me, no longer any distinct black or white, good or bad. That morning I began to feel convinced that there are many shades in between, and that what most folks think is good may be just a lighter tint of evil.
So, anyhow, I was about eleven years old when Mr. Stanwyck brought me out to his berry patch that summer morning. Ma and us kids relied heavily on various odd jobs the well-to-do people around town would give us. It was a good deal for them because we were hard workers and, I suspect, it helped them feel less guilty about their own good fortunes.
My Stanwyck was a bigshot in town. But he liked to come across as some kind of gentleman farmer or something too. He liked to sport big cowboy hats, the boots, big belt buckle – the whole westerner get-up. And although he never got his hands dirty, he preferred to think of himself as a hobby farmer: he had well tended livestock, crops and fancy farm machinery.
This was my second year picking Mr. Stanwiyck’s berries. Actually they were for Mrs. Stanwyck, she was a sort of homemaker wiz, winning ribbons for her preserves and writing cute little cookbooks and all.
The patch was Mr. Stanwyck’s “private stock.” Ever since he picked up this land through some forgotten default, it had produced remarkable yields.
That morning, as we rode out in his new pickup, he was taking, again, great pains in telling me how important those berries were, and how they had to be picked just so, and how, in a way, it was a great honor for me to be picking such special berries, in such a special patch, for such special people.
He was wasting his air, you know. By that time, I’d picked more berries in my life than he had ever seen. And I would’ve taken the same care whether I was picking them for a king or a bum like Stanwyck. I was beginning to realize, even then, the more important a person is, or thinks he is, the more likely they are to believe their own baloney.
We got out to the patch and I was following along, carrying the pails and mostly agreeing with Mr. Stanwyck at the proper times, when he stopped suddenly.
“Well I’ll be!” He drawled, he liked to use a southern kind of drawl, whenever he remembered to put out the effort, even though he was from Michigan.
He was looking down and I could see a dead crow, a big one, on the path.
“Well I’ll declare,” he said as he squinted towards the berry patch, “Ever since that scarecrow was struck by lightning, he must just be plain scaring these crows to death.”
I followed his gaze and saw a large scarecrow sagging on its cross in the center of the berry patch. It did look singed, and for just an instant, I thought I caught a whiff of smoke – like the smell you get when an electric motor is overworked. It sent a chill right through me.
“I just can’t believe it,” he went on, more to himself now then to me, “I had Trevor out here with the shotgun, paid him fifty cents a crow, cost me nearly forty dollars by the time he lost interest in it, and now I’m finding twice as many dead crows.”
Fifty cents a crow! A small fortune. I could just see Stanwyck’s son, the smirking little Trevor, turning his nose up at a plum job like that.
I looked back down at the crow. Its claws were pointed up as if it were pleading with the heavens, and its head was face down with its beak buried in the dust. No matter what old Stanwyck thought, that bird had not died of fright. He kicked the bird off the path with his shiny boot. Soon, after further unnecessary instructions, Mr. Stanwyck left me to my work.
It’s funny, but I never much hated a task like berry picking. My mind would be off in its own imagination somewhere while I watched my hands, like they were on T.V., doing the work.
As I was picking, something in the plants snagged my shirt sleeve. I pulled my arm back and whatever was caught on my shirt came along with it. Suddenly, returning rudely from my day dreams, I saw the talons of another dead crow were tangled in my sleeve. Frantically I flapped my arm in front of me. The crow came loose and spun slowly though the air, with its head lolling about sickeningly, and struck me across the face. Its body felt greasy and oddly empty – like a husk. I spit on the ground and staggered about wiping my face and mouth and my shirtsleeves.
I thought I heard a sharp laugh behind me and I whirled bout. There was nobody there, just the charred scarecrow hanging in the haze. I shuddered and looked back down at the crow. Maggots crawled out of its open beak.
My hands were trembling as I returned to my work. I was scared and jumpy. Several times, thinking I heard something in back of me, I’d twirl around and find just the deserted patch, butterflies fluttering in the sun.
I had worked my way towards the center of the patch and had begun to settle down when I heard a sharp cracking sound in back of me. At that instant I had a glimpse of a quick motion. Before I could even turn around, a large crow fell from the sky and landed at my feet. It spasmed and died, its head twisted at an unnatural angle.
Screaming, I jumped backwards and the scarecrow grabbed me. He wrapped his legs around my chest and, by bending his knees, pulled me up off the ground. He hooked one sooty arm across my chest and with the other arm across my throat, he began squeezing. I fought as best I could, kicking and digging my elbows into him, but it was no use. My air was being squeezed out of me and I couldn’t draw any in.
Through my coarse shirt the scarecrows body felt stiff and, like the crow that had earlier slapped across my face, he felt strangely hollow. His leather face was alongside my head and he whispered, “Listen punk, ya wanna live don’t cha? Ya help old scarecrow out and I’ll let ya go.”
His grip momentarily tightened and he went on, “…now punk, you promise to help and I won’t hurt ya no more…understand?”
He loosened his grip a bit more and I gave him a weak nod.
“Now is it a promise I hear or do ya die up here in my little embrace?”
I croaked a little “yes,” I would help him, and for an instant he tightened his grip. Things began to grow dim for me, and suddenly I began to feel peaceful and really didn’t care anymore.
He threw me to the ground.
I lay there on my belly, vomiting in the dust.
From above me the scarecrow taunted, “Kid, c’mon kid. I didn’t hurt ya THAT bad. Ya wanna see pain? I’ll show ya pain...”
Then his voice became smoother, more soothing, “I’m sorry if I hurt ya, kid. I didn’t mean ta – I just wanted ta get your attention is all. Now, c’mon, roll over an talk to me kid. Please?”
Slowly I rolled over onto my elbows. I was lying in his shadow, he was dark against the sun. His motions were jerky and he kept craning his head back, attempting to look behind himself, around the burnt post that suspended him, trying, it seemed, to look into the woods whish rose up like a wall beyond the berry patch.
“Now,” he said, “That’s better. I really do enjoy your companionship. It has been quite some times since I had any intelligent company around here. But, if you must know the truth, I am in a bit of a hurry, and, although I hate to bring this up, and I trust you will forgive me, there is the small matter of, as you recall, the promise you so recently made to me?”
As he continued a crow swooped low overhead. His arm shot up and, without interrupting his conversation, he plucked the bird from the sky. Grasping it by its head, he swiftly twirled the bird’s body through a quick circle. There was an abrupt and stifled squawk followed by a sudden snap. He tossed the body back over his shoulder in the direction of the woods.
“Do I need to remind you of what happens to little boys who fail to keep their promises?” he asked. Again, nervously, he craned his neck around to look at the woods. I heard him answer himself, under his breath, “They end up being scarecrows.”
Several crows were now circling about the trees and he grabbed another one that came within range. Snaring the head he gave its body a quick twirl. He tossed its body aside.
“Listen,” he said, “I can tell you’re a hard worker. You wouldn’t believe how hard I’ve been working. All day in this miserable heat, my back aches so hanging here, the crows don’t rest and….” He hung his head a bit and sobbed a little, “You wouldn’t believe the nights.”
More crows were joining the others and he snatched two more from the sky, one with each hand. He cranked them impatiently.
Stabbing a gloved fingertip towards me he roared. “Listen punk, ya promised. Now get me offa this blasted tree!”
I jumped to my feet and, before I knew what I was doing, I began untwisting the wires and the staples that held him to the post.
In between pulling crows from the sky, he’d hook an arm back and point with a ragged glove, “There’s something in back there, I just can’t..…reach. Hurry!”
Now the sound of caws was filling the air as more crows were taking wing above the woods. Nervously the scarecrow kept craning his head backwards over my shoulder as I worked behind him. A fevered automaton, he was furiously snatching crows from the air, mechanically wringing them, and tossing their bodies aside.
Finally I undid the last clasp of wire and the scarecrow collapsed to the ground as if he were a pile of rags. I was about to poke at him with my shoe when he sprang up like one of those creepy marionettes on T.V.
“Thanks, punk.” He grated to me and began brushing himself off in a kind of dignified way.
He stooped then and grabbing my shirt he pulled me up close.
“Listen punk,” he hissed into my face, and in the deep shadow of his straw hat I could see his eyes and they looked like the clinker coals my brother and I used for eyes on the snowmen we’d build, “Never trust a crow, they watch, they see and they keep accounts.”
By now the air was filled with the cawing of thousands of crows. The scarecrow took off running then, in long, loose, loping, strides – each footfall sending up a puff of dust – and as he ran he kept right on plucking crows from the sky.
He looked back over his shoulder, a frantic glance. I turned and, following his gaze towards the woods, I saw an angry black mass of hundreds and thousands of crows boiling up into the air.
At last he lost his footing and pitched forward. Then he began to crawl on all fours, as the black crow bodies festered over him. He shrieked and I began to run towards him. Something lit on my shoulder. A large crow perched there. It dug its claws and cocked its head. I looked into its beady eyes.
I saw everything in those eyes and I’ve never seen so far. My way of seeing was forever changed then. And although I’ve paid attention and peered closely into the eyes of many a crow since, the vision has never been the same.
When I eventually looked back at the scarecrow I saw only a frenzied mound of crows. He arched up once, trembled and, finally, collapsed.
Mr. Stanwyck found me sitting on my empty bucket in the center of his devastated berry patch. If I had been older, or wiser, I would’ve kept my mouth shut, but I told him everything.
Naturally, he was furious. He not only thought I was lying, but thought I was crazy besides. He made it rough on me ever after. You see when you wear the mark of someone as powerful as Mr. Stanwyck, in a small town like that, well, you can’t outlive it.
Mrs. Stanwyck was so concerned about me she led the charge to help me out. Eventually they put me in a hospital with lots of other kids. You should have heard some of the ideas those kids had!
When I got back home again things were, of course, never the same. It seems an element of trust was somehow lacking.
One thing did not change, though. It seems that for all those years, no matter where I went, there’d be crows watching. They are everywhere: in the distance, along the road, or outside the window. And how they talk.
Even in the dead of winter, when I’d be shoveling snow, I’d look up and see them on those naked branches, right out in the teeth of the wind. How do they survive?
It came as no surprise to me when they discovered the bodies. Mr. Stanwyck and his simpering son Trevor, found one morning, in the cab of Trevor’s new pickup.
Of course the sheriff wasn’t convinced that so much brutal injury could be caused by just driving into a flock of crows.
Although I can name dozens who could’ve had a motive, it seems the obvious suspect was apprehended.
And I can still hear the crows, even through the skimpy windows in the block. And I see them perched upon the wall when they walk me in the yard.
The crows keep telling me to wait and see. Just watch and take account. Soon I’m going to get my own jolt and then, who knows, maybe I’ll end up in your own garden or berry patch.
The End
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