Free Flowers by Scott Nicholson Page B

Grandpa had said, without bothering to explain what that meant. Jerp thought that maybe he meant everything died just the same.
    Death was part of life on the farm. Thanksgiving brought a blessing to all but the turkey. Hens who went barren because their eggs were stolen soon steamed on the table, stunted legs in the air. Hogs and cattle found a hundred different uses in the kitchen, baked, broiled, fried, or barbecued.
    "God bless this bounty on our table," Grandpa said before each meal. Jerp thought maybe he should do the prayers while the animals were still alive. The way he had done for Grandma.
    Jerp had peeked once during the dinner prayer, and saw Grandpa looking out the window to the barn at the same moment he added the part that went, "And, please, dear Lord, spare us from evil."
    Jerp shivered with the memory of that word, evil , and the way Grandpa's voice had cracked just a little as he said it. Jerp put away the currying brush and feed bucket, but the chill continued down his spine. Because he heard a soughing, scratchy sound from the hayloft above. He looked up just as a few strands of straw fell through the cracks in the floorboards. He hurried out of the barn, careful to latch the gate just as he had promised Grandma before she died.
    Jerp had sat with her one night, when her spark of life was fading rapidly. She looked at him with burning, fevered eyes, looked past and through him to the window, to the long shadows of the barn.
    "There’s a season for ever thing," she had gurgled. "The gate..."
    Jerp thought she meant the Pearly Gates. He waited for her to say more. But she closed her eyes to the lamplight and slept.
    Now Grandma was dead but the scarecrow boy was alive. Last year's piglet had grown plump and earned its place in the kitchen while the scarecrow boy still had its own moldy bristles. The cornfield was a dry graveyard, with not a morsel for the birds to scavenge, but the scarecrow boy still played silent sentinel. In seasons of change, seasons of slaughter, seasons of harvest, the scarecrow boy had patiently held its ground.
    As Jerp reached the farmhouse at the top of a slight rise of meadow, Jerp turned and looked back at the barn. It sagged silently to one side, making a crooked face. The two loading bays of the loft were deep eyes and the barn entrance was a hungry mouth with a hay-strewn tongue and stall-posts for teeth. In a high lonely window, Jerp saw the scarecrow boy staring back at him through the chickenwire screen. Jerp's heart clenched as he went inside the farmhouse.
    Grandpa was pouring milk into a gallon glass jar so he could tell when the cream was separated.
    "Grandpa, do barns have souls?" Jerp asked. Skyscrapers didn't have souls, airports didn't have souls, but maybe barns were different.
    Grandpa turned and gave a look that wasn't the look, but it was a look that could be its cousin, one that said I swear to Thee, what'll you think of next? A boy who dawdles in daydreams ain't much good on a farm.
    "Barns have animals and hay bales and feedbags and potato barrels and a mighty load of cow patties. But I don't know about souls. That's for them who breathe on God's green earth, and them that's gone on to heaven," Grandpa said, his voice as smoky as a brushfire in an orchard.
    "Don't animals go to heaven, too? And if they do, won't God need barns to put them in when the nights get cold? And won't God need somebody to watch over the livestock and the gardens?"
    Grandpa finished straining the milk through cheesecloth and screwed the lid tight on the jar. "No need for food where people don't need to eat, Jerp. Up there, the Lord provides. Here, we have to help ourselves."
    He said it in a way that Jerp thought meant No wonder you couldn't stay out of trouble back home, what with these kinds of darn-fool notions. But he only added, "Now, how about some scrambled eggs before we work up some tobacco?"
    They had a filling breakfast, then went back to the barn. Grandpa opened the door