Standler Scarecrows

by Ren Seger

Two red, one yellow, one orange. Daddy said they were to honor those in our family who worked the Standler Farm generations before us. I thought scarecrows were an odd way to honor someone, but then again, we’re odd folk. Four of them stood throughout the tobacco fields, each clothed in dingy colored plaid and dirty denim jeans, same as how my daddy and grandpa dressed. Every picture I ever saw of my daddy's family, they all had on a similar outfit. Plaid and denim, the apparent uniform of a Standler. 

Most days when I was young, Mama and I would work in the garden near the house while Daddy in his green plaid and Grandpa Bob in his blue worked the tobacco and cattle fields at the back of the farm. As the sun settled each evening, Grandpa would join us for cornbread and baked chicken before he made his way to his small cabin at the edge of the property past the fields. After he’d gone, Mama and me would settle into our places on the scratchy yellow couch, and Daddy would ease back into the matted brown recliner that creaked just like his knees because it too was just too old for this. We’d talk, and laugh, and yawn, then sleep until the next day before doing it all again. 

As days went on and I got older, I started to notice things that were stealing my Daddy’s fellow farmhand from him. How my grandpa's reach shrunk as he attempted to hang tobacco. His movements grew stiff, forced, painful. I also started to notice things that were stealing my grandpa from me. His once dark hair lightened to the color of straw more each day, and the dirt on his hands got harder and harder to wash off. The lines created when he winced gradually became etched into the sun-damaged burlap skin of his face.

One night Daddy and Grandpa were late to dinner, so Mama sent me across the farm after them. Specks of dust and cattle feed whirled around me when I pushed through the barn doors and saw Daddy holding a wooden plank up against Grandpa's back as he marked a place near the top with his flat yellow pencil. Grandpa’s eyes seemed endlessly black when he turned to look at me. 

“We'll be there shortly, pumpkin," Daddy assured me.

“Run along back to the house now," Grandpa rasped out. 

At the dinner table that night, Grandpa couldn't raise an ear of corn to his mouth to eat. His arms didn't bend like they should've. He groaned and swayed as if trapped in a breeze as he moved from the table to sit in the recliner, the cushion barely sagging under his featherweight. 

“Grandpa's going to stay here tonight," Mama told me as she and Daddy ushered him to the back spare room, each with an arm under his, carrying him nearly effortlessly through the house. 

That night I laid in bed awake much later than I should have. There was an incessant scratching noise that I couldn't place and it wouldn't let me rest. I sat in bed straining my ears against the wall of dark that was the night. I closed my eyes and saw straw. It sounded just like how straw would sound if it were being dragged across the floor. Like a broom sweeping. Like a scarecrow walking. 

The next morning we woke to start the day but the day didn't wake with us. The sun was too low and it hid behind clouds. Daddy and Mama trudged out from the back of the house, clumsy, tired, dirty. 

“No work today, pumpkin. Grandpa passed on last night." Mama held Daddy’s hand as he wilted into the recliner. 

The next day we got back to it. No rest for the weary. With Grandpa gone, it was time I left Mama and the gardens near the house and began helping Daddy out on the farm. We loaded up the setter and headed out for the fields. 

Climbing up the hill, I looked out across the acres of tobacco and eyed the Standler Scarecrows. Two red, one yellow, one orange. But now a fifth scarecrow stood in the field, an unsettling addition with his oddly familiar straw hair, stiff limbs, and blue plaid. 

I looked down at my own plaid, the shirt Daddy handed me this morning before we left the house. Its tan and black colors had reminded me of tobacco leaves as they hung from the barn lofts, wilted and leathery. But, with the blue scarecrow’s endlessly black eyes peering down at me from the wooden plank he rested upon, I instead began to think of the dirt the tobacco grew from, and the worms that slowly ate away at it over time.