Scarecrow Gods Read Free

almost understood. His friends had talked about it enough. Like at the baseball game last week, Danny had surprised Timmy with the punch. He didn’t know if he was lucky or if Timmy hadn’t been paying attention. Either way, when someone accused his family of incest, it was fighting words—even if he was small for his age.
    Danny could tell his mom had heard the rumors too. Especially when she stared at his dad sometimes with those looks that were both far off and penetrating, like the time he saw her staring out the living room window at his dad on the riding lawnmower. As his dad drove in his shrinking square of cut grass, it was the set of his mother’s jaw that had scared him. Danny had called to her and remembered how she’d spun, the strange glint still in her eyes, slowly softening into something less lethal, more familiar.
    Danny passed a bathroom on the right and a bedroom on the left. He stopped at the end of the hall under a picture of a lion and its pride. His favorite picture in the house, it had gathered spider eggs in the storeroom for God knows how long until he’d found it in one of his bored searches. He remembered bringing it out and begging his mom to let him hang it. It hadn’t been the picture that had made his mom angry, it was his snooping into things that weren’t his business. Through the efforts of his dad, however, Danny kept out of trouble. After all, kids were meant to explore , he’d said.
    To his left was the door to his room. Plastered in the middle were two signs. One said No Girls Allowed in his own crimped writing. The other said Except Me in a beautiful scrawl, written by his sister, Elaina, almost a full year ago. He eyed the sign and wished that she really was in his room. He glanced to his right at the door to his sister’s room which was unmarred except for the crucifix his mother shined and replaced every day.
    He paused, remembering his sister’s warnings never to enter upon pain of wedgy, then reached down and turned the well-used, old-fashioned brass knob that Elaina had begged dad to install three years ago. When Nana had died, each kid was given a choice to have anything they wanted before the grown-ups took their turn. They could have anything, anything at all as long as it was small. This last restriction had come from Great Aunt Madupe who’d let everyone know that Nana’s china was now hers, as it should have been when their mother had died. Danny remembered picking a small glass frog, one he’d played with every trip to the farm. Almost as good as a toy, it was something that would allow him to always remember the bright-eyed old woman with the wrinkled smile and soft skin.
    Elaina, on the other hand, much to the consternation of her parents and to her aunts, chose the knob from the door that led to Nana’s room. Danny thought his sister’s choice was pretty cool. The brass knob shined up real nice. It had raised, intertwining vines all over so that when one gripped the cold metal, the outlines of the vines could be felt in one’s palm. Danny had asked his sister why, among all of the old cool things that were available to her, she’d chosen the doorknob. She’d said, because more than anything else in the house, Nana had touched that the most .
    The wood creaked softly as Danny gripped the knob and swung the door open to the room. Someone had closed the blinds since yesterday when he’d last been here. The brightness of the yellow walls and white furniture seemed subdued without his sister. It wasn’t just the darkness. It wasn’t just his sadness. It was as if a filter had been placed across the room.
    He noticed that everything had been recently dusted. He smelled the fresh lemony scent of furniture polish. On the tightly-made bed was an imprint as if someone had recently sat upon the edge. On the floor beneath, was a wadded-up tissue like the kind his mom carried in her sweater pocket; the kind she spit on and wiped his face with if she determined