Scarecrow

It started on the Monday after families’ day, and by Wednesday it was everywhere.

I don’t think anyone decided it. Words don’t need deciding. Mr. Haddon had said it at the bottom of the ramp, loudly, in front of forty families and twenty soldiers and a car that was now on the roof of the barracks. And everyone had heard. And everyone had seen what happened next. And that was enough.

On Monday, somebody chalked it on the wall outside the mess. Just the word, in big careless letters, at about the height of my shoulder. SCARECROW. With an arrow pointing at the door.

On Tuesday, somebody put straw on my bed. A handful of it, from the stable at the far end of the cave where they kept the two old horses nobody rode. Spread out on my pillow in the shape of a cross.

On Wednesday, I heard it in the corridor. Not from Squad Two. From two boys in Squad Six I’d never spoken to, who were laughing about something as I came round the corner, and stopped when they saw me, and then one of them said it. Not to me. To the other one. Just loud enough.

Scarecrow.

And they both laughed again, and walked away fast, the way people walk away from a dog they’ve just thrown a stone at.

By Wednesday night, it was what I was. Not forty-one. Not Dask. Not freak, which had stopped, the night I said goodnight to Sigmund. Something worse than freak, because freak was one boy’s word, and everyone knew it. This was everyone’s.

Liam knew what it meant. So did Risa. So did Toby. It was the first thing I found out about it, that week. Everyone who’d grown up in the dome knew exactly what it meant.

I’d thought I knew too. Garnet had worked it out, on the road in the dead flats, the day of the convoy, with the boy in the mask and the pickup fishtailing away in the ash. Because they’re scared of us. Things left standing in a dead field to frighten off what’s out there.

But that was only the half of it we’d worked out from outside.

”It’s what they taught us,” said Toby, at the fern, on Wednesday. Very quietly. With his tuning fork in his lap. ”In school. On the lower floors. When I was little. There’s a picture book. With a farm, and a farmer, and crows coming to eat the corn. And the farmer builds a scarecrow out of old clothes and puts it in the field to frighten them away.” He turned the fork over. ”And the crows go away. And the farmer’s happy. And then winter comes, and the farmer goes inside, where it’s warm.”

”And the scarecrow?”

”Stays in the field,” said Toby. ”On the last page. In the snow. On its own. Because it’s not a person. It’s just old clothes.” He looked at the floor. ”Everybody knows what it means. The teachers never say. They don’t have to.” His voice went smaller. ”My dad was a scarecrow. Before the Act. That’s what the boys in my class called him. When I was five.”

Risa didn’t say anything. She’d stopped eating.

”Everyone on the lower floors has that book,” said Toby. ”Everyone. It’s the first book they give you.”

Sigmund didn’t say it.

That was the strange thing. I noticed it on Wednesday, and then I couldn’t stop noticing it. Squad Two said it. Brock’s friends said it. Boys from Squad Five and Six and Seven said it in corridors and laughed and walked away. But Sigmund didn’t. When it was said near him, at the far end of the mess, his narrow face went perfectly blank, the way it had at the end of the Town when he turned and looked at the empty glass.

And Brock didn’t either.

Brock had gone very quiet since families’ day. He did his drills. He ran his laps. He ate his meals at the end of the Squad Two table, with his big shoulders hunched. When the boys from Squad Six said it in the corridor, I saw him look at them. Just look. And they stopped laughing faster than they would have.

And on Thursday morning, when I came out of the barracks at five to check on the fern, the chalk outside the mess hall was gone.

Somebody had scrubbed it off. Hard. With a brush. There was still a faint pale patch on the stone where the word had been. And at the bottom of the wall, in the corner, a bucket with a gray rag in it, and a brush, and a little pool of dirty water that hadn’t dried yet.

The only person in the compound up before five, apart from me, was Brock Haddon. Liam told me later. He’d started getting up before dawn to run extra laps after families’ day, alone, in the dark, because he couldn’t sleep.

I never asked him about the chalk. He never said.

But it came back on Friday anyway. Bigger.

That night, I climbed onto the roof of the barracks.

It wasn’t hard. There was a drainpipe at the back, and a window ledge, and I was tall. I didn’t use anything else. I didn’t lift myself. I didn’t change anything. I just climbed, the way I’d climbed the filter shed in the field when I was eight, to fix the vent.

The roof was flat, and tarred, and cold, and enormous. It ran the whole length of the barracks, the boys’ end and the girls’ end and the corridor between. Up there, the lamps on their long chains were close enough to touch, swaying very slowly, and the cave ceiling was a long way above them still, black and rough and invisible.

And in the middle of the roof, exactly in the middle, exactly square, was Mr. Haddon’s car.

Long, and black, and polished, without a scratch on it. Just as Genny had put it down. Nobody had moved it. Nobody knew how. Okafor had said families’ day after next, and Okafor had meant it.

I sat down on the tar with my back against its front wheel.

It was the quietest place in the cave. Quieter than the fern, even. Below me, through the roof, I could hear the barracks breathing. Forty people asleep. Toby humming, very faintly, the four new notes Garnet had taught him, over and over, getting them right. Liam talking. Somebody snoring.

Above me, nothing. Lamps on chains. Rock. Dark.

I thought about the field.

Father built the scarecrow the spring I turned five.

I remember it, because it was the first time I ever asked him a question he didn’t answer straight away. The wheat was older than me. He’d made it the first year outside, before I was born, out of dead gray dirt that hadn’t grown anything since the bombs. Changed the dirt, a little at a time, over a whole winter, until it was dirt that could hold a seed. Then made the seed. Then made the water. And it had come up. Green. A whole field of it, in the middle of the dead flats, under the gray sky. The only green thing for a hundred kilometers.

It had been growing for six summers before he built anything in the middle of it.

And then, one morning, he went out to the center of the field, where the rows crossed, with an armful of things, and built a scarecrow.

Two old fence posts, lashed in a cross. A feed sack, stuffed with straw from that summer’s cutting, for a head. One of his own coats, the brown one, already patched at one elbow. He stood it up where the rows crossed, and stepped back, and looked at it for a long time.

I was standing at the edge of the field in my bare feet. I’d followed him out.

”There aren’t any crows,” I said.

I knew that. Everyone knew that. There weren’t any birds out in the dead flats at all. Nothing flew. Nothing came to eat the wheat. There was nothing out there except us, and the gray, and the domes, very far away on the horizon, like soap bubbles.

Father didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he said, ”No. There aren’t.”

”Then what’s it for?”

He looked at the scarecrow in his old coat, standing in the only green field in the world.

”They call us scarecrows,” he said. ”In the domes. Did you know that?”

I didn’t. I was five.

”They built us to stand between them and the dark,” he said. ”To frighten off what was coming. And we did. And when it was over, they put us out here, in the dead fields, and went inside, where it’s warm.” He was quiet for a moment. ”And they think that’s the end of the story. They think a scarecrow’s just old clothes, left standing in a field that’s dead.”

He crouched down beside me, in the green, so his black eyes were level with mine.

”So I built one,” said Father. ”In a field that isn’t.”

I didn’t understand. I was five.

”When you’re older,” he said, ”and somebody calls you that. And they will, Lucas. Somebody will. You think about this one.” He put his hand on the back of my neck, the way he did. ”Standing in the middle of the only green thing for a hundred kilometers. Because somebody made it grow.” He stood up. ”That’s what a scarecrow is. It’s whoever’s left standing in the field when everyone else has gone inside. Keeping it.”

Then he went back to the house, and I stood at the edge of the field and looked at the scarecrow in his coat for the rest of the morning. Later, when nobody was watching, I got a stick of charcoal out of the stove and drew it a face. I’d meant it to look brave. It came out looking faintly disappointed, and it stayed that way for twelve years.

I hadn’t thought about it in years.

I hadn’t let myself.

I sat on the barracks roof against the wheel of a car that shouldn’t have been there, and thought about the field the way it would be now.

Nine weeks since we left. The filter still running in the empty house, because nobody had told it to stop. Catching at five every morning, and humming, and climbing, and settling, for nobody. The wheat going gold, and then going over, with nobody to cut it. The east strip Genny had fixed. Father’s stone on the ridge.

And in the middle of it, where the rows crossed, the scarecrow.

In Father’s coat, patched at both elbows now, because I’d patched the second one when I was twelve. With its charcoal face, faded almost to nothing, looking faintly disappointed at the sky. And round its neck, where Garnet had tied it on the morning Crane’s craft came over the ridge, Mother’s blue scarf. So it won’t be cold, Garnet had said. In the gray light, at a quarter to five, with tears on her face, standing on tiptoe in the wheat.

Nobody to fix its coat when the wind pulled it crooked.

Nobody to say good morning.

Standing there anyway. Keeping it.

”There you are,” said Liam.

His head came up over the edge of the roof, red hair first, then freckles, then grin. Then the rest of him, scrambling, swearing, with something wrapped in a cloth under one arm. He’d come up the drainpipe too. Less quietly.

”Toby saw you go,” he said, hauling himself onto the tar. ”He’s coming. He’s slower at drainpipes.” He looked at the car. ”Oh, it’s beautiful up close. Have you been in it?”

”No.”

”Lucas.” Liam went to the driver’s door and tried it. It opened. Of course it opened. Mr. Haddon hadn’t locked it, because Mr. Haddon hadn’t imagined anybody would be able to get to it. Liam climbed in and sat behind the wheel and put both his hands on it and sighed like a man who’d come home.

Toby’s head appeared over the edge of the roof. White-faced. Clinging.

”I don’t like heights,” he said.

”Then why’d you come?” said Liam, from inside the car.

Toby looked at me. Then at the tar. Then he came the rest of the way up, very carefully, on his hands and knees, and crawled across the roof, and sat down beside me against the other front wheel, as far from the edge as it was possible to be.

He didn’t answer Liam. He didn’t need to.

Liam unwrapped the thing under his arm. It was three puddings, in three tin bowls, with three spoons. Brown and sweet, with custard on top. He handed them out through the car window.

”Mum sent them,” he said. ”In the families’ day basket. I’ve been hiding them in my locker. They’ve gone a bit solid.” He ate a spoonful. ”Still good.”

We ate pudding on the barracks roof in the dark, with a stolen car between us, and the lamps swinging slowly over our heads.

”I know what you’re thinking about,” said Toby, after a while. Quietly.

”What?”

”The book.” He was holding his tin bowl in both hands. ”The scarecrow in the snow, on the last page. On its own.” He didn’t look at me. ”That’s what I think about. Every time somebody says it.”

”I wasn’t thinking about the book.”

”What, then?”

So I told them.

About the field. About the wheat, the only green thing for a hundred kilometers. About Father going out one morning with two fence posts and a feed sack and his own coat. About there aren’t any crows. About the charcoal face I’d drawn, that had come out disappointed. About the coat getting pulled crooked by the wind every night, and me fixing it every morning, my whole life. About Garnet hugging it because she said it got lonely. About Mother’s blue scarf, tied on at a quarter to five on the morning we left.

And about what Father had said, crouching in the green with his black eyes level with mine.

It’s whoever’s left standing in the field when everyone else has gone inside. Keeping it.

Liam had stopped eating. He was sitting very still behind the wheel of Mr. Haddon’s car, with his spoon in his hand.

Toby was looking at me.

”It’s still there?” he said. ”Now? In the field?”

”It’s still there.”

”On its own.”

”Yes.”

Toby looked down at his pudding for a long time.

”In the book,” he said finally, ”the field’s dead. On the last page. It’s winter, and everything’s gone, and there’s just snow. And the scarecrow.” He turned his spoon over. ”I always thought that was the saddest bit. Not that it’s alone. That it’s standing there guarding nothing.” He looked up. ”Yours isn’t guarding nothing.”

”No.”

”Yours is in a field that grows.”

”That was the point,” I said. ”That’s why he built it.”

Liam got out of the car.

He came round the front of it, and sat down on the tar in front of the two of us, cross-legged, with his back to the edge of the roof and the whole long dark cave behind him. His face was very serious. I’d seen it serious perhaps three times.

”Take it,” he said.

I looked at him.

”The name,” said Liam. ”They’re going to call you it anyway. You can’t stop them. Genny lifted a car onto a roof and it got worse.” He leaned forward. ”So take it. Before they finish making it theirs. Make it yours. Make it his.” He jerked his head, at nothing, at the field a hundred kilometers away. ”Make it mean the thing in the middle of the wheat. Not the thing in the snow on the last page of a book they give to babies on the lower floors.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Callsigns,” said Liam. ”Next week. Okafor’s giving out the forms. Everyone picks one for the comms on Avalon.” He grinned, suddenly, the old grin. ”Brock’s going to put Iron. Sigmund’s going to put Storm, because of his dad, and then he’s going to cross it out and put something else and pretend he didn’t. Sera’s going to put Ember and threaten anyone who laughs.” He spread his hands. ”You put Scarecrow.”

”And then everyone who says it,” said Toby slowly, ”is just saying your name.”

Liam pointed at him. ”Exactly. Toby gets it.”

I looked at the two of them. Liam, cross-legged on the tar with pudding on his chin. Toby, against the other wheel of the car, white-faced, holding his tin bowl in both hands, as far from the edge as he could get.

Neither of them had called me it once. Not even as a joke. Not even when everyone else was.

”I’ll think about it,” I said.

”He’ll think about it,” said Liam to Toby, delighted. ”That means yes. That’s what it means when he says it. It took him four days to think about the steel ball. He’s very slow. You get used to it.”

They went down before eleven, because Toby wanted to be in bed before the soldier came round, and Liam wanted to try the car’s horn and I told him if he did I’d turn it into a beach.

I stayed.

I sat against the wheel with my empty tin bowl on my knee and looked up at the dark where the cave ceiling was. I couldn’t see the moon from here. I couldn’t see anything. Just lamps, and rock.

But I knew where it was. It was always somewhere. A little left of center.

And under it, a hundred kilometers away, a scarecrow in a patched brown coat and a blue scarf, standing in a field going gold, with nobody to fix its coat.

Keeping it anyway.

When I climbed down, Luna Windsor was standing at the bottom of the drainpipe.

She had her arms crossed. She was looking up at me with her pale, still face. I don’t know how long she’d been there.

”The reading room’s empty,” she said. ”You weren’t there.”

”I’m sorry.”

”I waited forty minutes,” said Luna. ”I read book 71. It was about the evacuation of the western cities. It was very long.” She looked at the drainpipe. Then at me. ”You were on the roof. With the car.”

”Yes.”

”Liam and Toby were with you. I heard Liam. Everybody heard Liam.”

”Yes.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

”What did you decide?” she said.

I didn’t ask her how she knew I’d been deciding something. She noticed everything.

”Nothing yet,” I said.

”Yes, you did,” said Luna Windsor. ”It’s on your face.” She turned, and started walking away toward the girls’ end of the barracks, at exactly the pace she always walked. Even. Unhurried. Then she stopped, without turning round.

”Dask.”

”Yes.”

”My father has a word for what your father was,” she said. ”Asset. And Brock’s father has a word. And the lower floors have a picture book.” She paused. ”If you’re going to be called something, it might as well be the one you picked.” Another pause. ”That’s all.”

She walked away.

I didn’t write anything about Mother in notebook fifteen that night. It was the first night in seven weeks I didn’t.

I wrote this instead, at the bottom of the page, by feel, in the dark, very small:

Scarecrow: whoever’s left standing in the field when everyone else has gone inside. Keeping it.

Father built his in a field that grows.

And then, under it, after a long time:

So will I.