A Blithering Literates Life

With a light thump, the scarecrow crumpled on the ash dusted summit of his hill home.  The comical impact with which he hit the ground seemed to have knocked all the drama from the situation.  He wasn’t angry anymore.  There wasn’t any billowing firestorm of emotion seething in the straw that was so effectively contained within him by his plaid shirt and overalls.  It might have dropped out of the two giant holes in his wrists, he thought to himself as he attempted to gather himself up.  After a couple false starts, he managed to raise his face out of the soot but his arms gave way at the wrists, again, and, in a puff of ash and loose straw, Connor’s face plopped right back into the fire charred dirt.

Connor channeled his burning rage through his being with unconscious effort.  There was a moment where he thought to stop and quench his rage in the sea of oblivion.  There is nothing in the void; no joy, but also no pain and it would be so easy just to let it all cease.  Merely letting go of his consciousness in a blink like a candle flame in a breeze.  He thought as he tensed and all the fibers that made up his body started to curl and crack.  In that moment, Connor stared once again into the heart of the void and, with a silent scream, renounced it.  With all his feelings flexed, his limp legs were drawn up for the first time and in a splintering explosion of straw and fabric Connor ripped his hands free from the nails that pinned them to his cross.

The sight inspired a myriad of feelings in his crinkly straw form.  He felt the wind before it made its way to the trees and so he could predict when their leafy tops would flutter and bow.  He felt the longing for his lost fields.  He grieved their fate.  If he had tear ducts, he may have cried.  As it was, he could only moan with regret at not being able to stop his lovely field from burning down and, finally, his self deprecating feelings he had began to heat up.  His straw sinew and guts began to feel tight.  He felt the same he had on the day he met that insolent crow and torn apart his arm in an effort to lash the fell beast and knock it off his cross.  He hated that feeling and by consequence anything that caused it.  He loathed the bird and now all his wrath was focused on the fire.  He wanted nothing more than to extinguish the blaze that had ruined his tranquil life.  By the fire that raged within him at this moment, he would not rest until that inferno had been snuffed out.

Out in the distance, he could see the origin of the cloud that loomed overhead.  He didn’t really have eyes to see with, but the slits cut into his potato sack skin seemed good enough to get the job done.  Seeing the origin of that pillar of smoke led him to believe that the fire had kept burning it’s way across the valley.  What struck him as odd, was that the fire had leveled the corn field, but didn’t seem to have even charred the forest to his left.  Without the corn the tree line was clearly visible and he could see the wind push contours into the rich green canopy like the fields he had watched over just yesterday, by his clock.

Another terror snapped off in his mind.  He wondered what had happened to Sir in the midst of the inferno.  Thinking about it a little more, Connor realized that his insufferable friend was probably miles away when the blaze started.  He’d only ever seen Sir fly through the field as a transient may pass through a city.  He didn’t live there.  He was just in the area long enough to reap the benefits of a free meal.  Having the gift of flight granted a tremendous freedom on those lucky enough to possess it.  Connor found himself a little envious at that moment and raised his head up a bit to get a clear view of the sky past the brim of his hat.

There was no more flapping of leaves or creaking of thin green stocks or thumping of overripe cobs on the firmly packed soil of the field.  No more music.  No more subtle din that gave the scarecrow a sense of enveloping comfort, like a blanket made weaved of air and corn silk.  There was just the moan of charging wind and a light haze of falling ash coming out of the bulbous black cloud that still loomed over head.  It was like the void of his unconscious being given form in reality.  Granted, it was slightly more colorful and there was a sense of time and place, but Connor still felt that same emptiness pulling him apart in all directions.  Only now, he had no far green fields to retreat to.  Not anymore.

It was a type of silence that Connor had never experienced before.  There were no birds or tiny rabbits chatting about him.  Nothing living was present and Connor was sad at the thought that, even though he had been spared of incineration by the blaze, his presence did not change that fact.  A gaping void of empty ashen fields that surrounded him out to the far off tree lines that seemed as still as the boards he was fixed to.  The ever present breeze, that wafted passed to mountains to his right and the forest to his left, had lost its rustling quality.  The rolling throngs of corn stocks that had leaned and danced to the lead of the wind were naught but ash swirling silently in gentle little tornados.

When they finally finished asking each other how many “r’s” were in that ancient curse word, the man had already straightened his back, uttered two more arcane obscenities and tarried off towards the jet pillars of smoke, rising with frightful consistency, in the distance.  A slight, foreboding grimace creased over his visage, though it could have been from the cracking of his back.  In any case, he seemed distraught, but looks can be deceiving.  Especially looks that had long lost their youthful pliability.  So, with a limp, he soldiered on down the road, continuing a journey with no beginnings in memory and no end in sight.

At least he could traverse the planet, where as his tree brethren were forced to travel through time while rooted in space.  “And space was quite the interesting place.”  He chuckled to himself in the common tongue of the land.  Now there were some words the ash trees could understand, but they were still hung up discussing the possible meanings of the mans long passed profanity.  Though they thought with average speed, stopping a sentence that they began was a kin to stopping a freight train: there was just too much momentum in their speech and, as a result, when they thought to speak, they would finish that sentence with all the stubbornness of a freight train.

Scores of humans had taken the path in silence and in talk and the trees had always heeded their jabbering speak and gleaned many meanings out of those diverse languages.  They certainly had the time, most of the trees along this path being of an age that inclined them to ruminate about the good old days, like all introspective fogies fixed in their ways and places in the world.  In the case of the trees the dirt was where they were fixed.  The old man listened to the trees and counted himself lucky for still being able to get around with relatively little trouble.