The Watcher

You can find this story in Phylum Press Issue 003! The Watcher was inspired by a painting by Caila Warren entitled The Watcher of the Field. This story appears in the Steeltown Dreaming cycle.  

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It was my turn to change Gregory’s coat.

We trapsed through the sea of winter wheat and it was a bright clear day, hot and muggy like a bowl of tomato soup. I was sweating something awful holding Gregory’s new coat. It took Momma and Nanna all of last week to put it together, get all the feathers just right. Black within black with some shades of blue. Was brand spanking new and I thought it’d look real good on Gregory, better than the last one, certainly. My sister Hannah and brother Caleb couldn’t contain their enthusiasm for this special day. I certainly didn’t blame them. I had a touch of it myself and they were quite a bit younger than me. Crows cawing overhead and we saw one of them steal a garter snake in its talons. Caleb thought that was funny. I knew I would write about this day when it was all but a misty memory.

“You been reading the good book like Momma told you?” Hannah said to Caleb.

 He nodded with a frown. “Yeah. Exodus twenty-two and it's boring as shit.”

“Caleb James Montgomery Warren!” Hannah yelled, “You take that back right now before you burn in hell.”

 “Alright you two,” I said, and as we approached a familiar figure appeared among the wheat.

 “You gonna ask Gregory?” Hannah whispered to me, frightened like.

“I suppose I should,” I said, rather quiet.

Up ahead standing seven feet high was Gregory, the family scarecrow. Our great-great grandfather planted him here when he first bought the farm with our great-great grandmother. They named him Gregory and he had been good to us Warrens ever since. Every harvest we changed Gregory’s coat made of feathers because it brought us good luck. Great-great grandfather found that out the year an awful blight hit all the crops around. He had just changed Gregory’s coat—an old farmer’s tweed jacket—because it had become destroyed in the elements. Every wheat and corn field in The Farmlands fell foul and was no better than rat poison—except for the Warren crops. Our great-great grandparents kept everything. Ever since then the Warren children have taken turns each harvest in changing Gregory’s coat.

 It was my turn.

 Caleb and Hannah stood on either side of Gregory. His old coat was beat up and chewed up and didn’t look right on him at all. I carefully removed the coat from the crossbar and gave it to the children, who folded it together very somberly. Hannah set it aside and looked at me.

My throat was parched and my head throbbed. Knowing this would be the last time I’d change him made me somber. He was completely naked except for that wide-brimmed leather hat which hung at the top of the steak. I had never liked seeing Gregory unclothed. It was unnatural and unbecoming of a guardian who had faithfully stood watch over the work of our family's hands.

 “Go on,” Hannah said. “Dress him.”

 I held Gregory’s coat as if it were the gold garments of kings. Carefully, so very carefully, I wrapped it about the crossbar so that it was nice and eve, then I made sure the hem dropped all the way down the stake and tied it off. I straightened Gregory’s hat so that it rested more naturally on the stake. Nothing was under that hat and I had always imagined a weather face with weary eyes, and a long grey beard.

 “Aren’t you going to ask him?” Hannah said.

 I took my hat off and looked up at Gregory whose new coat flapped in the warm summer breeze.

 “Gregory,” I said, shy like,“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to become a writer. I’d like to be published. I’d like to be read by all sorts of folks. Would that be alright with you?”

 His wide-brimmed hat appeared to us to tip downward, as if he had nodded. Caleb and Hannah whooped and hollered and pat me on the back and I stood there silent and happy. I was overcome with emotion at Gregory allowing me to live out my dream. I nodded back, put my hat on and told him thank you.

 “You gonna write about the farm?” Hannah said.

 “Hope to,” I said. “I’ll go to the city, find an agent and publish my stories in The Steeltown Gazette.”

 “Think they’ll print stories about our farm?”

 “They might,” I said. “I’ll walk in the footsteps of giants who have gone on before me. I’ll plant my feet in books like our family planted theirs in this soil. It’s a wonderful thing to be read and to be loved.”

 There was a long silence before Caleb said, “You won’t forget about us will you?”

I smiled and put my arm around him. “Now don’t you both cry. I’ll be back to visit over Christmases and Easters.”

 We talked well into the afternoon and walked through the winter wheat back to the barn. The sky had gotten shadowed blue and grey and the crows multiplied over our heads.

 “You two go on to the house,” I said. “I’ll close up the barn.”

Off they went. I could smell Momma's cooking come off the stove and almost taste that cool glass of strawberry lemonade set at the table. Nanna’s fresh chocolate chip cookies would be set out for desert. As is tradition in the Warren home Hannah played her violin and Caleb sat at the piano. That evening they played the Doxology which of course was my favorite hymn. I thought it tremendously sweet of them to consider me on this my last week before leaving. A week of last suppers.

 There I was standing all alone in the middle of that great barn where over many summers I’d fed the mules before storing our wheat in the big silo. As a boy I imagined the silo was a rocket ship or a watchtower where I’d look out for imaginary invading Martian hordes. I looked for the chicken coop which was old and rusted out and was covered up with a dirty fleece blanket. Moonlight came in through the cracks in the walls lighting up the blanket in silver. I went over to it.

I couldn't leave without saying goodbye.

I pulled down the blanket and there stuffed in the coop was the misshapen form of our elder brother, Eric. His crow’s beak was fractured in three places and caked with his own blood and the entirety of his body was covered with sores. His featherless arms were crow. His face and neck were crow, but his torso and legs were human. He looked at me with his very human eyes and I cried. I cried until my cheeks were so wet you could wash clothes on them. I thought back to happier days when Eric used to carry me on his shoulder or teach me to fish by the river.

 “Eric,” I leaned against the cage, said, “I’m going away very soon. I’m going to do what you always wanted to do, and I hope I make you proud. It’s not fair that this had to happen to you. It’s just not. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried while our dad pulled out your feathers for Gregory’s coat, and you cawing and screaming like that. I certainly won’t miss pulling them and I’m awfully sorry I hurt you. I can’t imagine your pain, Eric. It’s a strange magic our great-great grandfather came across and it’s a strange hope he found in Gregory, who watches over our wheat fields when all other wheat fails. But Eric, I’m going to do you proud. I’m going to get published and make money and I’m going to remember you for how you once were. Like us. Human. For as long as there’ll be firstborn Warrens crossed with crows for Gregory’s coat, I’ll immortalize them all in poems and novels. People will read about them a hundred years after we’re all gone, when a new set of Warrens will drape new coats over Gregory’s shoulders.”

 My brother twitched and clapped his featherless wings together and squirmed around in that small cage as if worms had gotten underneath his skin. Never had I seen such sadness, such pain, as when I saw it in Eric. He crouched there looking at me, his dark blue eyes like spears through my heart, yet it was his pierced the water flowed. I told him I’d always be grateful.

    “Well, I’ve said about as much as I can say. Goodbye, Eric. I’ll miss you.”

 That evening I had said goodnight to Momma and Dad and Nanna and Hannah and Caleb. I stayed up in my room writing on my typewriter. The sun had nearly set and still I could see an unusually large murder of crows hovering over Gregory. Their harvest was very near, and it seemed bittersweet to me that this was my last time watching them gather. Gregory sent out his legions of crows to the surrounding farms to devour their wheat, bring back eyeballs, kidneys, tongues and livers from bullheaded farmers who hadn't accepted that the Warrens grow the only wheat The Farmlands will ever need.

 I slept like a baby that night and I dreamed of my bus ticket and I dreamed of boarding the bus and dreamed of stories on my typewriter, fields of stories like winter wheat.