[The Scarecrow]
Currently unpublished
Will you play at the wedding of Hélène and Marius? Asked Jean, laughing and refilling the glasses before him.
I pray daily she forgets that abomination, replied Marc, though I would perform gladly at his funeral!
Let her be, mes frères, we have all been young and let our dreams get the better of ourselves, Lucie smiled, patting Marc’s knee. In any case, she added, the little thing is closer by years to her christening than any wedding.
The pitiful Hélène had been the topic of the village’s scorn for months now: her pointless and lonely obsession with Marius, his inflexible silence in response. It delighted girls' cruelty, tickled women’s pity, attracted boy’s violence, and provoked men’s humour — men aside from Hélène’s father Marc. Marc had brought Marius into their village, their home, and thus into the life of his beloved daughter, and for this he felt an unutterable mix of shame, confusion, disgust, and disappointment, with Hélène, with Marius if such a thing were possible, and most of all with himself. In the time since Marius’ arrival Hélène, a quiet and unusual, but altogether pretty and well-mannered girl, had spent almost every waking and otherwise unobliged moment by his side. He is kind, she would say on the rare occasions she broke her silence about Marius, he is kind to me and listens to me. Leave her to her thoughts, Danielle would say when she saw Marc staring madly at her little form in between the wheat grass, she’ll grow up and away from him soon enough. And, she would smile into his neck, you remember how we would run around when we were silly and small, running desperately to be alone, holding hands behind the orchard. She said this pressed behind him, curving her hands around him and drumming her fingers along his stomach and chest. Marc would sign heavily, turn into her and cup her face gently with his left hand, moving his right down her side. Maybe we are getting old, he would say. Maybe my memory is failing me, and maybe yours more so, or I do not remember either of us being in love with scarecrows.
Hélène had stuck out from the other children, particularly the cruel and skinny-kneed ones that would follow her home from the schoolroom. Her eyes were small and close together, which only further accentuated the sharp protrusion of her narrow nose. In the fields, hidden behind the grain, she could be alone with Marius. She would curl over by his side, her elbows and wrists drawn tightly against her body, small and darkly silhouetted when the evening sun would set behind them. I am sick of being small and miserable, Marius, Hélène would say to Marius when she was feeling particularly small and miserable. She was rubbing her shoulders, bit and bruised from pebbles thrown at her during the afternoon break of schoolroom. I wish I could grow up already. I shall join Maman and Papa on the farm, and when the farm is barren I shall pick blueberries all morning and eat them by your side all afternoon. She didn’t need to look up at him to see the understanding smile on his face, the gentle optimism that he held for her, persistent when even her family’s wavered. For a while she pretended not to see her mother waving her back home for dinner. She wiggled her feet in the dirt next to her socks and shoes, picking at the rough skin on her knees and fingers, and watching the stalks of wheat get warmer, wagging in the light of the setting sun. Her mother began to call in a firm echoing coo, Hélène, dîner… Hélène…
Before I go, Marius, she said nonchalantly, I got you something. She waved with both arms to her mother to assuage her, and turned back briefly to her partner. I think this will suit you, she said, and stuck a crow’s feather in his top buttonhole.
Along this run of the mountains the plateaus sit between twelve and eighteen hundred metres above sea level. Though herds of goats, wild and domesticated, are at home along inclines and tableland alike, the area is otherwise hostile to the fragile knees and cloven hooves of cows. Cows, much like children and elderly, must be guided up on paths well-worn, of firm dirt or established gravel. It was along one of these such passages that Daniele was returning the herd home below but still, for now, in front of the incoming thunder. It was Autumn, after the equinox, when the times of the sunset would vary wildly, and it was best to take one’s cues from the quieting of birds and the desperate homesickness in the pupils of cows. This evening the sun had departed early, the darkness had risen sooner, and the cows had grown melancholic with haste. Before encouraging the herd forward, she went to retrieve an adolescent calf who had wandered clumsily to the edge of the clearing, its curiosity quickly stifled by the thunder leaving it shivering lightly in confusion. It looked up at her and licked its nostrils with its fat, rough tongue. Here, darling, Danielle said with her palm open. She kept the fear from her face and her eyes fixedly forward, not on the incoming clouds, wary not to agitate the empathetic creature. The calf backed up a few steps, and crooned for its mother, whose reply groaned back slowly across the meadow. Alarmed by the distance, the young animal began to reverse, its limbs shakily readjusting to the changing ground. Danielle advanced in turn, but in the damp underfoot and uncertain shrubbery lost the grip between sole and soil. She slipped, her whole body making a dull and painful impact with the ground, and began to tumble down the mountainside. She clawed, panting, around her for grip, dislodging fallen branches and rocks, wet leaves and mud passing uselessly through her fingers. She slid and rolled a short and painful few metres until she hit a wooden fence, in place to block off a steeper ravine, and a stone she had upset in her keel fell into her, pinning, with a wet and sad crunch, her ankle between itself and the post. As the rain grew steadily stronger, Danielle began to sob.
Marc left Hélène home by herself when he went to look for Danielle. She had left bread rising in a large bowl on the kitchen counter and it had started to deflate on itself with time passing and temperature dropping. Marc had laid out cabbage, carrots, and pork sausages along the counter to cook once she was home, but his nerves grew taunt as the hills grew dark. Please, stay here, I’ll be back very soon, he said to his little daughter across table.
Where’s Maman?
I’m sure she is almost home, ma chérie, I’ll just go up to help with the cows in the rain.
He shut the door quietly behind him. Hélène laid her head on the table, ear pressing against the wood, listening to the sounds of her fingers drumming on the table, the different inflections she could generate with distance, intensity, nails or flesh. She swung her legs slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. It already felt like a very long time. She pushed her chair out from the table, got up, and pattered over to the kitchen window. In the murky purple night she could just make out the figure of Marius. He was very brave, staying out there in the cold all night. Hélène thought he would also be worried about Maman - Danielle, to him. She was the only other person besides Hélène who visited him, she would come over to both of them on sunny afternoons and tell them stories about the local dogs, or silly objects displayed for selling to tourists in the cafe and across the road. She would steal half her stories from Lucie, who worked in that souvenir shop most days, who had an affection for foreigners and a disdain for Parisians. Hélène watched the shifting angle of the rain, beating stronger and stronger, and the shape Marius cut against the streaks of grey. She couldn’t bear it any longer. She took Danielle’s shawl from the top of the bureau and ran outside to him. Bracing herself against the shrieking wind she secured the blue fabric across his neck and shoulders. It’s not much, but I hope it’s a little better, Hélène said to him, panting with the cold. Before Marius could respond, she saw a mass of animals moving across the plain toward her, Marc’s forceful Yah, allez! behind them. Marc was holding Danielle like he had on their wedding night, carrying her with leaden shoulders and stifled breath. Hélène ran over to usher the cows into the barn, her father called behind her Brush them down, Hélène, I will help your mother.
Hélène treated each animal to a firm and hasty brush, the wooden handle the size of her forearm. She had only recently grown tall enough to see over the backs of the cows, and the full-body routine for each damp creature left her smelling of wet hay and cold sweat. When she had finished she ran from the barn without saying goodbye, and came back into the house to see Danielle, her face contorted and wet with rain, sweat, tears, bracing herself while Marc wrapped her foot and lower leg. Maman, are you okay? Hélène asked. Just my ankle, ma chérie, Danielle replied without looking at her daughter. Hélène stood leaning her back against the door, watching her father carefully but quickly work around the limb.
Your Papa will take me to the hospital in town tomorrow, she said, the colour beginning to come back into her greyed face, can you walk yourself to schoolroom tomorrow?
Yes, Maman.
That’s good of you -- can you bring me my shawl, please?
I took it to Marius. He is cold outside.
Danielle’s face went blank. Of course you did, Hélène, she said dully, and, setting her jaw, laid her forehead against the table.
Hélène did walk to schoolroom alone the next morning. Her parents had left soon after dawn before her. Jean was driving and telling long, rambling jokes in between their silences. Have you heard about the man who kidnapped the tax collectors in Peniel? he would ask with a grin showing his receding gums. Danielle stared out the window, eyes wet and waiting. Indeed, Hélène walked to schoolroom for the next two weeks alone, while her mother’s bone repaired itself, wrapped in crisp white bandages, smelling of a sharp and sticky ointment. Hélène made long and quiet detours on the way there every morning, and walked quickly and directly back every afternoon. The other children would ferret her out every morning, and pursue her closely every afternoon. The girls would pull her hair and compare it to straw, the boys would kick her shins and compare them to twigs. If an adult chided them they would all run from her laughing and caw-caw-caaaw-ing. Her mother had sharpened with pain and immobility. Hélène would spend exhausting afternoons with her father, herding, feeding, brushing cows, forking hay, mulch, and manure, running apples, cabbages, and butter up to and back from the village. When she could come inside for dinner Danielle would beat the dirt off her clothes and return to shredding cabbage. How was school, Hélène?
It was okay, Maman.
Are those children still bothering you?
They are okay, Maman.
You need to be firm with them. You’re very quiet. Have you told your Papa?
I’ll be okay, Maman. She paused. Are you feeling better today, Maman?
Danielle was then silent. The room then remained silent. Hélène watched her mother cook wordlessly, until Marc returned home, complaining about the recent tourists and their gaudily coloured cars. Each day was spent in agonising wait until she could wriggle out after dinner and run to the dark and damp fields and sit, sighing, with Marius.
Danielle’s bone healed, but the wound didn’t. The hinged joint was now walkable itself, but the flesh around it had become putrid under the yellow ointment. You need to go back to the hospital, Marc would say softly, only before the sun had risen, before he left to milk the cows. Two thousand francs, mon amie, just for the visit, and then whatever they will prescribe on top of that… she would speak softly with her eyes still closed. Marc would leave and they wouldn’t speak on it until the next morning. That evening Marc went to the village cafe to spit his remorse into his wine, and seek advice from Jean. I will tell you a story, said Jean. My Papa, he came home at the end of the War when I was fourteen. He had fought in the countryside for the better part of the invasion. He had had no time to rest, repair, seek help from his months in the rain and the mud, and through this time his broken toes and worsening circulation reached a tipping point. On his way home he passed through Toulouse. He visited a doctor and they told him all that could be done was to amputate it.
Jean drove Danielle once again to the hospital the next morning. Danielle was to receive two injections and spend two nights in the hospital while the nurses monitored the recession of the infection before clearing her to return to the village. During these two days Marc spoke to Lucie on behalf of himself and his wife. He spoke to her for the ten-thousandth time as a friend, and spoke to her for the first time as a salesman. He spoke to her about Parisians, weekend tourists, a chalet and two horses. In other words, he spoke to her of a sale of their fields to the souvenir shop. He spoke to her with eyes red and rough rimmed. She noticed for the first time how far his hairline had receded. She smiled and told him to wait there at the table. Marc waited obediently, ordered a carafe of wine and put his head in one hand. Lucie returned with her husband and a notebook. He looked eager, and took Marc firmly by the hand. They spent the rest of the afternoon working out the details, drinking, and smiling at each other. Marc returned home just before the sun went down, bringing home sweet rolls from the village. He and Hélène ate them outside by Marius, watching the clouds grow dark.
Over the next week Hélène helped to harvest the wheat and clear the field. The premature grain and chaff would be sold to neighbours for pig feed filler, and anything left behind was grinded into mulch for the pear trees. She worked alongside Marc, Jean, and Lucie & her family. The razed field looked dry in the warm light. Hélène took a nap in the mid-afternoon when it got too hot to work, Marius standing over her, vigilant. She woke to Marc calling her inside for cider and tarts. She hugged Marius goodbye for now, Maman, Danielle, is almost better now, she told him. Inside, the food was sweet and sticky, her mother wiping fruit stains off her chin, pulling her ear gently and laughing. They slept early and long. In the morning, Danielle, slowly, walked Hélène to school.
When Hélène returned home the field was empty. The bales and chaff had been cleared, and Marius was gone. Her breath stopped, then quickened direly. Hélène began to pull at her hair and felt the blood leave her hands and feet. She ran into the house and found no one there. She threw off her bag by the door and rushed to the barn, where she found her mother fixing the hay behind the cows. Where is Marius, where is Marius, Hélène began to moan.
Is he not in the field, ma chérie? Danielle stood slowly, going to her daughter with open arms.
No, he’s not, no, no, no, Hélène cried, throwing off the embrace of her mother and turning to run out, where is Papa?
Hélène ran, her arms flailing clumsily as she stomped through the mud and grass. She ran down the hill until she reached Jean’s house. She went in through the unlocked front door, searched the empty house, and stumbled out the back, to find her father and Jean smoking Alfas and watching Jean’s two mares eat from the trough. Jean reached out to pat her head and began a hello, but Hélène had already latched on to her father’s vest, howling, where is he, where is Marius?
Calm yourself, little one, he said, trying to hold her shoulders.
The scarecrow? Jean asked. We cleared the field, no need for a scarecrow if you have no grain. We relieved him of his service, and, he laughed, he was stuffed with perfectly good horse feed.
Hélène detached herself from Marc and ran over to the trough, grabbing as much mushy straw as she could get in her tiny, shaking hands. When it started to drop onto the dirt she wailed and turned to beat her pathetic fists against the horses’ stomachs, give him back, give him back. They ignored her and continued eating. She fell to the ground, shoving the heels of her palms into her eyes, sobbing silently. Her father came to pick her up and carry her home, nodding goodbye to Jean as he left. Hélène was then quiet, and she never forgave her father.
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