Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 7, July, 1955

Scarecrow by David Alexander

Nobody liked old Jeff Purdy, so there were no broken hearts when Purdy’s Scarecrow killed him.

Andy Tevis, the rural mail carrier, tooled his jeepster at an angle to the curb directly in front of a No Parking sign outside the county courthouse in Clayville. He was a small, aging man, but he seemed made of taut wire and saddleleather as he leaped from the ancient vehicle with the agility of a self-important squirrel. It was the first Saturday of the month, court day, and there was a big crowd in town from the nearby farming areas. The loafers in front of the court-house, most of them wearing overalls and mackinaws, regarded Andy curiously as he pushed his way through, and a few called after him, “Hey, Andy! What’s the matter? You got a letter from the President?”

Tevis did not bother to answer them. He hurried to a basement entrance of the courthouse with the urgent concentration that always marks the bearer of disastrous tidings. He entered the mildewed, neo-Classis building that dated to pre-Civil War days and made his way down a narrow basement corridor that was dimly lighted by fly-specked, low-watt bulbs. He found a heavy door with the legend “Sheriff’s Office” inscribed on it and pushed it open.

Inside, Sheriff Charley Estes and his deputy, Coates Williams, were bent over cards and pegboards playing cribbage. Andy called out loudly, “Charley, old Jeff Purdy’s dead!”

Estes, a lean, weathered man, totted his score carefully before he spoke. Then he said, “You mean Martha finally killed the ornery old boy, Andy?”

“I didn’t say that,” Andy answered. “All I said was he’s dead. Been dead five-six days, maybe a week now. The Scarecrow don’t keep much track of time, I guess.”

“He must be plumb ripe by now,” Coates Williams commented. “There ain’t no embalmers out near Rocky Farm that I’ve heard of.”

“The Scarecrow says he got drunk and fell off’n the big cliff into Winding River,” Andy said. “He must of floated all the way to the Mississippi by now, I guess, the way that river runs when the spring thaws come.”

“Don’t call Martha ‘Scarecrow,’ ” the sheriff said to Tevis.

“That’s what her own husband called her!” the little man flared. “And she looks like a raggedy scarecrow, if you want to know it. Something on a broomstick, that’s what she is. I guess you ain’t seen her in recent times. I have.”

“I knew her all right when she was young,” the sheriff replied. “She was Martha Parsons then and there wasn’t a prettier girl in Jarrod County. I walked out with her myself when I was a young buck. She’s not more than pushing forty-five right now, today. Old Jeff must of been pushing sixty-five, at least. It was a plain cruel shame the way her old man married her off to that ornery drunk, twenty-five years ago, at least, it was. She’s been out there on that God-forsaken farm ever since, never seeing anybody and never coming into town. If she’s a scarecrow now, Jeff Purdy made her one.”

Andy Tevis said, “I guess we never would have known old Jeff was dead, even, if the Scarecrow — Martha, I mean — didn’t order one of them Burpee flower seed catalogues every living year. It was the only mail they ever got out there. I guess even the government didn’t know they was alive because they never even got no income tax forms. I don’t know what the hell she wanted with them catalogues. You couldn’t grow flowers on that rocky land. You couldn’t grow nothing but weeds and pigs and poke salad.”

“How’d you find out?” Coates asked.

“Because the catalogue come and I had to drive up that old road to Rocky Farm that nobody’s used since Dan’l Boone shot the b’ar. Damn near broke my axle. When I got there I just reached out and stuck the catalogue in the mailbox. Damn place gives me the creeps. No smoke from the chimney. No light in the window. House ain’t had a coat of paint or even whitewash since Sherman come a-burning through these parts. Damn place leans in the wind like the town drunk on Saturday nights. Dismal, that’s what it is.”

Andy Tevis bit off a chew of tobacco, softened it in his mouth and chewed on it. He spat at a brass cuspidor, missed. He said, “I was starting up to turn around back to Route 16 when I heard this screeching that would curdle up your marrow. It was the Scarecrow calling to me. She was standing back there in the doorway and waving her skinny arms at me to come in. Well, I didn’t want to, but I went.”

He spat another brown stream and hit the mark this time. The cuspidor rang like a tiny bell. Andy shook his head. “First time I was ever inside. Never saw nothing in all my life to equal it. Broken-down furniture and dust thick on everything and empty corn-squeezings jugs all over the place and a stink to make you wish your head was stuffed. I tell you that woman’s plumb crazy daft, and don’t lose no bets on it. She made me come inside and set down and didn’t say nothing about her old man being deader’n a doornail all the time. She said I had to have a cup of tea with her, and nothing I could tell her would stop her from brewing me one. Honest to God, I got right sick, just looking at her. Part of the rags she was covered with was plain old burlap bags, I swear it. And it’s a living cinch she hadn’t washed herself all over in a year, but there she was brewing me a cup of tea, like she was some fine lady in a big, white house. She got some cups out of an old trunk and told me they were the fine china she’d got for a wedding present. At least she washed them and they wasn’t broken up like everything else in the place. Then she give me this cup of tea and said maybe I’d like some brandy in it! Brandy! She said it was from her father’s cellars. Hell, old man Parsons didn’t have nothing but the chamber pot beneath his bed when he passed away.”

Andy spat and nodded with satisfaction when the cuspidor rang. “The brandy she gave me was the corn-squeezings old Jeff made in his still. Then she told me. She said she was planning to do a lot of entertaining now that her husband was dead. She said she wanted me to invite all her friends from town out to see her. She mentioned you especially, Sheriff, by the way. Then she told me her husband had got drunk and beat her up and then stumbled up to the cliff and fallen off into Winding River some five-six-seven days ago, she wasn’t quite sure when. I asked her why she hadn’t reported it to the authorities, and she said she couldn’t walk fourteen miles to town and that the old Model T that’s rusting on the place didn’t run no more and she didn’t know how to drive it if it did. So I gulped down the tea and corn squeezings and finished up my route and come into tell you to get up there.”

Charley Estes said, “Poor Martha. I was right sweet on her when I was young but I couldn’t marry her because I was working in the livery stable and studying correspondence courses and didn’t have an extra pair of britches to my name. Jeff Purdy had just been left a little money and old man Parsons married Martha off to him. She was pushing twenty, maybe and Jeff was forty-up. They had a good farm for awhile in east Jarrod County, but Jeff drunk that and all the money up and moved out to that Rocky Farm on the river that no redneck’s ever scrubbed a living out of in fifty years. They been there ever since. You reckon the poor woman’s had anything to eat, even, since the old bastard died?”

Andy Tevis said, “She said there was some side meat in the smoke house. She’s been eating off of that and turnip greens.”

“Poor Martha,” Charley Estes said, picking up his cards and scrutinizing them.

“Ain’t you even going out there?” Andy Tevis asked.

“Sure,” said the sheriff. “I’ll have to get Martha and bring her back here and find some place we can keep her. She can’t live out there all alone if she’s as bad off as you say. But there ain’t no hurry. He’s been dead a week, he’ll stay dead till we finish this game. Coates is six bits up on me.”

Coates picked up his cards and they resumed their game of cribbage. The taut little mail carrier stood by, fidgeting. Finally he said, “Charley, you think she killed her old man?”

Charley Estes played a card and grinned. He said, “How do you like that, Coates?” He turned to Andy Tevis, said, “I guess maybe I’ll have to ask her while I’m up there.”

Tevis spat at the cuspidor, turned his back on the card players and left the office in disgust. He was glad it was court day. There would be plenty of rednecks at Dan Squires’ saloon who would listen to his story.

The sheriff and his deputy finished their game unhurriedly, and in the end, Charley Estes regained his losses and won a dollar-ten. They put on mackinaws because it was early spring and there was still a chill in the air and it was getting on toward late afternoon now. They left the office and piled into a 1952 Buick sedan outside the building.

Coates said, “Think we ought to pick up the coroner?”

Charley Estes shook his head. “If he’s in the river, there ain’t no body, and if there ain’t no body we don’t need a coroner,” he answered.

They drove to the east end of the town and the plankings of the old covered bridge over Clear Creek set up a thunderous rattling as they crossed it to reach the high-crowned road called Route 16. They drove in silence for awhile, both seeming at peace with the red-gashed southern clay that formed the country landscape. At length Coates Williams spoke.

“Charley, you think this could really be a murder?”

Estes shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “God knows, she had reason enough to kill him. It was a scandal the way he used her all their married life. Just after they moved to Rocky Farm she was going to have a child, but he wouldn’t call a doctor in. Delivered the baby himself, I heard, and it was stillborn. Martha almost died, too. She had black eyes and broken arms from his beatings half the time. Once a fellow who’d been fishing in Winding River drove by there and he swore he heard screaming and saw Martha tied up to a post like an animal and old Purdy was blazing drunk and stripping the clothes right off her with a blacksnake whip. Then he got himself a hired girl from the county orphanage a long time ago. No more than fifteen, she was. He used to come into Squires’ saloon on Saturdays in those days and he’d brag how he’d kicked Martha — the Scarecrow he called her, by then — out of his bed and taken the hired girl in to keep him warm. I flattened him with my fist once for calling her the Scarecrow. He starved her. It’s no wonder she got skinny and lost her looks.”

“I can’t remember ever seeing him, even,” Coates said.

“You’re young,” Charley replied. “He couldn’t get more credit and he quit coming to town. He didn’t do nothing much but make moonshine in that still of his. Sold some, but drunk most. He had some pigs for meat and turnips and weeds for poke salad and he got his kicks, after the hired girl run away, just torturing poor Martha. He was the meanest man who ever lived.”

“It sounds like murder, all right,” Coates declared.

“Maybe,” said Charley, his face tight. “But it might be kind of hard to prove.”

They drove for ten miles on the highway. Finally they came to a rutted, red-clay road that was littered with boulders as large as a man’s head. Charley turned the car north on the dirt road.

“Jesus!” said Coates. “We need an Army tank for this.”

The car jarred and jolted and careened over the dirt road. Once they hit a boulder and had to stop entirely after they almost skidded into the ditch. There was no sign of life except for a red fox that scurried across the road in front of them. It took them longer to cover the four miles than it had taken for ten on the highway. It was twilight when Rocky Farm came into view.

When Coates Williams saw the decaying frame house he exclaimed, “God almighty! What’s holding it up?”

Rocky Farm was covered with scrub and tangled weeds and boulders. It sat at the bottom of a high cliff that rose precipitously to frown down upon the rapid-running Winding River, a stream colored by the red clay of the southern land that seemed blood-red in the sunset.

There was a tiny curl of smoke from the broken chimney now and the feeble glow of a lamp through one of the windows. Charley Estes parked the car outside the rusting, broken barbed-wire fence and he and his deputy walked up the weed-grown path to the crumbling house.

Charley had prepared himself for it, but when he saw the woman in the shadowy doorway, his stomach went sick. Unclean, mottled flesh that sagged in flaccid sacs on her bones showed through the many rents in her rags. Her graying hair was wildly matted and her mouth was almost toothless. He knocked her teeth out, Charley thought. To make the horror worse, the ragged woman’s misshapen mouth was smiling at Charley expectantly.

Charley cleared his throat. He said, “Martha? I’m Charley Estes. You remember me?”

Her voice was cracked, like a voice that has not been used too often. She said, “Why, of course! You took me to the barn dance that the Knights of Pythias gave! And we had strawberry ice cream at the church social and I spilled some on my nice yellow dress. I’ve been expecting you. I told the man who brings my flowers to invite you out for tea. Come right in and bring your friend. I’ll put the kettle on and show you my flowers and we’ll have a pleasant time. I just love entertaining.”

They entered the littered, unswept room with the broken furniture. It seemed to be a combination kitchen and living room. She motioned them toward rickety chairs, busied herself filling a tea kettle from a hand pump. She put the kettle on the stove in which a fire was burning. She said, “The tea may be a little dry, I’ve saved it so long, but it’s been in a metal can, tight sealed. It’s fine tea, the kind we served in my father’s house.”

Once she had the tea kettle going, she went to the table. It was spread with clippings from the seed catalogue. She had cut out the pictures of roses and African violets and dahlias and had apparently been busy tacking them to the bare walls when her visitors arrived. She said, “I’ve always loved flowers. They’re sent to me every year, you see, by an admirer. Such lovely flowers. Very rare, some of them, too. But my husband, Mr. Purdy, did not fancy flowers. He’s dead now, you know, so I can have all the flowers I want and lots of parties with tea and brandy. Only there’s no cake today, I’m afraid.”

“When did Purdy die?” the sheriff asked.

“Oh,” the woman answered airily, as if it were of no consequence at all, “I think it was around a week or so ago. I’m really not quite sure. I’ve been so busy with my flowers and entertaining. Why, you’re the second visitors I’ve had this very afternoon!”

Estes said, “Tell me how he died, Martha.”

She turned her thin back on him and went to the stove. She said, “The water’s boiling. I’ll give you your tea.”

She shook tea leaves that seemed to have crumbled to dust out of a canister into an old flowered teapot. While they were brewing, she said, “It was an accident.”

“Tell me about it, Martha,” urged Estes, his voice patient and kind.

“We mustn’t let the tea spoil,” she said. She put cups in front of them. They were good china, with flowers painted on them, Charley noted. They had been scrubbed to gleaming brightness that contrasted with the squalor of the room. She said, “This is my best china. A wedding present. I’ve hardly used them. Mr. Purdy did not enjoy tea parties.”

The hands that held the delicate teacups were sandpapery rough and big-knuckled and crossgrained with black dirt and the filth-caked nails were crinkled as tiny clamshells. Estes thought of the times, long ago, he had held Martha Parsons’ hands when they were courting and going to socials and barn dances. They had been tiny then and very white and soft as the petals of a garden flower.

Estes said, “I’ve got to tell you this, Martha. I’m the sheriff now. This here young fellow is named Coates Williams. He’s my deputy. You know what that means, Martha?”

The Scarecrow who was pouring his tea said, “Why, of course, I do, Charley! It means you’re a big success in life, just like I always knew you would be, working and studying so hard. Do you wish a little of my father’s fine brandy in your tea, gentlemen? We’ll drink to your success, Charley.”

The sheriff looked dubiously at the cloudy corn whisky in the half-gallon jug and shook his head. He said, “Coates and I are temperate men, Martha, and we’re on duty. We’ll just have the tea. Now, Martha, when a man dies under what you call suspicious circumstances, like Jeff Purdy did, it’s the duty of the sheriff and his deputy to investigate and to ask some questions, you understand?”

Martha’s swimming eyes regarded Estes for a moment and there was a puzzled look in them. She said, “Well then, ask all the questions you want, Charley, but it will kind of spoil our nice tea party. There was nothing suspicious about Mr. Purdy’s death, though. He just walked up that path to the cliff while he’d been drinking and fell off into Winding River and got carried downstream.”

“Did you see him fall off, ma’am?” Coates Williams asked.

The woman said, “Why, I suppose so. Why, yes, of course I did. I mean he was drinking a lot and I sort of missed him and I went looking for him and I saw him standing up there on the top of the cliff and then he staggered and tumbled off into Winding River. That’s all there was to it.”

Coates looked at Estes as if expecting him to continue the interrogation. The sheriff tried to gulp down the bitter tea. He said nothing.

“What time of day was this, ma’am?” Coates asked.

“Oh, late. I mean it was evening-wards, about dark.”

“It was dark?”

The woman nodded.

“But you said you saw him fall. How could you see him if it was dark? It’s quite a piece from the house to the cliff. A hundred yards, at least, I’d say.”

The woman looked appealingly at Charley Estes. The sheriff did not meet her gaze. He sipped his tea noisily.

Finally Martha Purdy said, “Why, now I remember! There was a big bright moon!”

Coates Williams rose from his chair. He crossed to a corner where an old shotgun was standing against the wall. It was a dusty corner but the gun was not dusty. As he crossed the room, Williams said, “You say he died about a week ago. There’s been rain and clouds over the moon for at least a week in these parts.”

“Not out here!” the woman flared. “We’ve had big, bright moons every single night. They shine right through the window into my eyes and keep me wakeful.”

Coates picked up the gun, smelled the barrel, broke it, examined the chambers. He said to Estes, “One barrel’s been fired, not so long ago, either, I’d guess. There’s a shell in the other one and the safety was left off.”

“That’s right dangerous,” the sheriff commented. “You better click that safety on, Coates. A jar could fire it and hurt somebody.”

The woman licked her dry, cracked lips and once more she looked appealingly at Estes. This time he met her eyes briefly, then he gulped the remainder of the tea in his cup and said, “Martha, that’s right fine tea. How about another cup?”

“Why, certainly!” the woman exclaimed, seeming delighted. “It’s imported tea, very costly, you know. I’m sorry there’s no more cake, but I’ve had so many guests, it’s all gone. I must remember to bake another tomorrow. I use an old family recipe. You remember when my mother’s cake won the blue ribbon at the county fair, Charley?”

Charley nodded dumbly as she poured more of the dark, vile brew into his cup.

Coates said, “Ma’am, tell us what happened just before your husband fell off the cliff into the river.”

The woman said, “I don’t wish to speak evil of the dead, young man. But Mr. Purdy was a violent man when he was drinking and he hit me and knocked me down on the floor unconscious, so I don’t know too much about what did happen, to tell the honest truth.”

Coates’ eyes narrowed. “You say you were unconscious?”

“That’s right. He blacked my eye and I hit my head when I fell down.”

“But you said you saw him fall. How’d you see him fall if you were unconscious?”

Martha Purdy inhaled audibly and clamped her hand to her mouth. Finally she stammered, “Well, I mean I was unconscious there on the floor for a minute and then I sort of woke up and I missed Mr. Purdy and I went out to look for him and I saw him fall off the cliff into the Winding River.”

“He was drunk and violent and he knocked you down but you went looking for him,” said Coates doubtfully. “Tell me, when was the last time that old shotgun was fired?”

Martha said, “Is your tea all right, Charley? Can’t I give you a little to warm yours up, young man? You’ve hardly touched your cup.”

Coates shook his head and waited. Charley Estes swallowed tea.

The woman said, “Mr. Purdy was quite a hunter. He... he liked to kill things. Little animals, like rabbits and squirrels, although he never even skinned them. He went hunting in the woods the very day he died. That’s when the gun was fired last.”

Coates said, “Let’s step outside the house a minute, so you can show us right where you were standing when you saw your husband fall.”

“No hurry,” Charley Estes protested. “We haven’t finished our tea yet.”

“No use waiting till it’s dark,” Coates persisted. “It’s almost dark already.”

They went outside the rickety house. The woman was standing on the doorsill. An old tree cut off her view of the towering cliff, but she said, “I was standing here. Just inside the door.”

Coates said, “But you can’t even see the cliff from here, ma’am.”

She said, “Well, I was a little farther out, I guess. I was kind of dazed from being unconscious on the floor. I don’t just remember.”

They moved out farther into the weed-tangled yard. The evening was falling fast now and in the gathering dusk the cliff above the river reared like some misshapen monolith. Coates stiffened, and exclaimed, “What the holy hell is that?”

There was a rock-strewn area at the base of the cliff. In the center of it stood something that resembled a human figure with outstretched arms.

Charley Estes said, “It’s nothing, Coates. It’s an old tree got hit by lightning years ago. The branches stick out like arms, the two lower ones that was left.”

The old woman spoke hurriedly. She said, “It’s a scarecrow. Mr. Purdy hung a scarecrow up to the tree. He didn’t fancy birds. I liked to see them fly and hear them sing, but Mr. Purdy said birds were pesky things and he shot at them and built a scarecrow to frighten them away.” She turned to Estes. “Mr. Purdy called me ‘Scarecrow’ sometimes when he was drinking. He called me that because I’m not pretty like I used to be, I guess.”

Coates was walking toward the rock patch and the stunted tree. Charley Estes called, “Wait up a minute. Where you going?”

Coates said, “I want a look at this scarecrow.”

“Come back here!” Charley Estes snapped. “It’s dark and that’s a rough path. No use wasting time with scarecrows. You going dauncy?”

Coates said, “I think we ought to look at it.”

Estes shook his head. “I said come back and I’m the sheriff. That’s an order, Coates.”

Coates returned reluctantly and they went back into the house.

“I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t take a look, at least,” Coates Williams grumbled.

“It’s getting dark,” said the sheriff. “I don’t want you stumbling into the river, too.”

The woman was lighting another coal-oil lamp. She said, “You two gentlemen must stay and have dinner with me. I just love having visitors. Mr. Purdy never liked social life, but I’m going to have lots of parties now, with all the fine china I got for my wedding present and never used. I’ll go to the smoke house and get some meat and...”

Charley said, “No, Martha. Not tonight. Coates and I are married men and our little women are expecting us for supper. But we can’t leave you out here alone. You need a rest a while in a hospital and have the doctors look you over and get fed up so there’s some meat on those bones. After that, I’m going to see if I can’t get you a job of some sort or other around the courthouse or cleaning up for some nice folks in town. You pick up whatever you need and put a wrap on and come with us.”

“But I can’t!” the woman cried, cowering away from him. “I can’t go with you now!”

“Why?” asked Coates Williams. “Why can’t you go with us?”

“Because there’s things to do before I leave, that’s why.”

“What things?” Coates asked.

“Why, I’ve got to pack up all my wedding china and the trousseau clothes I never wore, and — and lots of things,” the woman said.

“All right, Martha,” Charley Estes said gently. “You do your packing and whatever else you’ve got to do. Coates and I are going in to eat our supper. I’ll drive back here in a couple of hours or so for you. You be ready.”

He shoved Coates toward the door. Coates said, “Why don’t we wait for her? There’s no point in coming all the way back here tonight, Charley. Those last four miles are rough.”

Charley Estes said, “I won’t need you... I’ll come back by myself.”

They got into the car. They were both silent as they drove over the boulder-strewn clay road.

When they reached Route 16 at last, Coates said, “Charley, old Purdy was a hunter. Had been all his life, I hear. Hunters don’t leave the safety off when they set a loaded shotgun in a corner.”

Estes said, “Purdy was a drunk. You can’t calculate the things a drunk might do.”

The car sped over the high-crowned road and the night fluttered like dark mourning streamers.

Coates said, “That’s a funny place to put a scarecrow, in that rocky patch there at the foot of the cliff, beside the river. There’s not even any ragweed for birds to pick at.”

Charley Estes did not answer.

Coates said, “He called her ‘Scarecrow,’ Charley. She must have hated him for that. Now just suppose — just suppose, I say — that she shot him there beside that stunted tree the lightning hit. The tree that’s got two arms reaching out like a man. Just suppose she pulled him up and hitched his body to the tree, like a scarecrow. You couldn’t see it from the road. She would be the only one could see it — from the house. Did you notice the smell when that wind came up from the river, Charley?”

“Can’t say I did,” Estes answered. “Dead fish wash up when the river’s running, anyway. And there’s lots of skunks in this country, Coates.”

Coates grunted doubtfully. “Just suppose she did what I said, though. Can you imagine what it was like the past week or so out there? The thing hanging to the tree and the old woman remembering all his drunken meanness while she stood there outside the doorway, screeching. I can almost hear her yelling at the thing — ‘Scarecrow! Scarecrow! Scarecrow!’ ”

“You got quite an imagination, Coates,” said Charley Estes. “Maybe you shouldn’t be my deputy. Maybe you should be writing story books.”

They were silent until the twinkling lights of Clayville and the hulk of the old covered bridge came into view.

Then Coates said, “Tell me the truth, Charley. Do you really think old Jeff Purdy’s in the river?”

Charley Estes didn’t seem to hear the question. He said, “You know, it was downright pitiful poor Martha wanting to stay on awhile to pack up things she never used.”

“Yeah,” said Coates. “Yeah, I forgot. She said that she had things to do. I guess the scarecrow won’t be there tomorrow.”