DANCE OF THE SCARECROWS

By Charlotte Ostermann

TJ sat at the little wooden writing desk in his attic room, tapping his pencil. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a. He wondered how he could be so much the same and yet so different from the boy he had been just three short months ago. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a. Back and back he thought, to the sunny spring day of their arrival at Thornton’s Green in May. Like a detective looking for clues and puzzling over an unsolved crime, Timothy James Russell looked for an answer.

In they had whooshed to Grandpa’s house – Mom, Dad and TJ. The Russells always seemed to whoosh wherever they went, not like regular people who simply come and go. For one thing, even when they ‘traveled light’, they brought so much luggage! Cynthia Russell never went anywhere without her computer and a box full of notes and files and more notebooks to take more notes in. “Who knows when an idea will strike for a new book, or one of my little seedlings will grow and need tending?” she exclaimed to anyone who questioned the need for it all. And since sales of her books helped pay for their travel, TJ and his Dad didn’t complain. Mr. Russell – Kevin – really couldn’t complain, because of his own extra suitcase full of books and files and crossword puzzles and computer paraphernalia. “Research and mind-sharpening tools! Absolutely necessary!” he would say. TJ’s luggage allowance was used for his parents’ extras and there was barely room in his one bag for his own growing collection of journals and travel souvenirs and maps. Wherever they went, it seemed there must be more than just three people swooping down for a landing.

They loved to leave a crowd of friends, with great hugging and chatter about the adventures to come; loved to travel, singing together and laughing about how different everything was than they had expected; and loved to return home, whooshing in with stories and souvenirs, new recipes and more hugs for everyone they had missed. When they arrived at the farm, they had been in Europe for six months while Kevin researched some crazy king for an Important Paper he was writing for a history journal. Only Grandpa was at the airport to greet them and bring them back to his house for the rest of Kevin’s sabbatical from Marymount College. Tiny, quiet Martinville, Vermont seemed a world away from the bustling college town of Thomastown, Maryland. “The perfect writer’s retreat!” both parents had said. But TJ missed their home full of friends and Dad’s students from all over the world. He missed his own room and the old upright piano and the workbench where he was allowed to saw and sand, glue and paint wood scraps into imaginary cities.

The tiny attic bedroom with Mom’s old writing desk, the hooked rug Aunt Elaine made when she was fifteen, and the rocking chair that had been Grandma’s favorite was nice enough, but it just wasn’t the same.

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a. TJ’s pencil always tapped when he was deep in thought. Mom and Dad were used to it, but it drove Grandpa crazy. TJ did most of his tapping upstairs nowadays.

As soon as Mom had found “a place for everything and everything in its place”, TJ was free to roam Thornton’s Green and Martinville. He had finished most of his correspondence school lessons during a long, cold winter in Bavaria. Until the local kids got out of school, he didn’t expect to find playmates, but he enjoyed what Dad called, “playing the Lone Explorer”. Residents of Martinville, though they respected Bob Thornton and were slightly in awe of the Russells, were a little bit suspicious of TJ coming around during school hours, and having “too much time on his hands”. Apparently, it was the local custom for folks to keep pretty much to themselves and not come round for unnecessary chatting much. They didn’t encourage his visits, and he was disappointed when they responded stonily to his attempts at conversation. “Maybe they just don’t know how to talk to children,” Mom had suggested. “So many people think kids can only talk to other kids.”

Mom and Dad were busy writing from nine to two each day, with a quick lunch break and then a pause for siesta. “A tremendously fruitful habit to cultivate!” Dad had decided, while they were in Spain. TJ didn’t feel any desire for a nap, but was content to read quietly or draw while they slept.

Today, he was cogitating. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a. He loved Grandpa’s word for thinking. Part remembering, part daydreaming, part imagining and part puzzling – cogitating, according to Grandpa was “all the hard work your brain is doing while it looks like you’re doing nothing.”

That’s what he had said he was doing in the barn when TJ found him there one day, sitting quietly on a milking stool in a ray of sunshine, looking out the barn doors at the beautiful green lawn that stretched away toward the garden near the little creek. “And what are you up to, TJ?” he had asked.

“Nothing much.”

“Not bored, are you?” Grandpa asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

TJ knew better than to admit to being bored. This family had some strong opinions about boredom. “The hobgoblin of little minds!” Dad would thunder. “A fertile field for inquiry and reflection!” Aunt Elaine would say knowledgeably. Mom’s elder sister was the mother of TJ’s six cousins, so her approval of boredom as a necessary condition for the proper growth of children was accepted wholeheartedly. They were all completely unsympathetic and laughed if you expected them to entertain you. So, no, he was definitely not bored. “Just lookin’ for something to do,” he had said.

Invited by Grandpa to “look wherever you like. I’m heading out to weed the garden,” TJ had discovered an old scarecrow in the far corner of the unused horse stall. Just a wooden stand with an unstuffed, shabby old suit wired on, and a basket tacked on top for a head – still, it caught his interest. “Sure, you can have it if you want,” Grandpa had said, “though, as I recall, it wasn’t much good at scaring birds away from my corn patch.” TJ stuffed the suit with fresh hay, drew on a new face with a piece of charcoal, set an old straw hat from the Thornton girls’ childhood dress-up chest on top, and decided he wanted a garden of his own to put him in. “I’ve got all the vegetables we can use growing already. But your mother is mighty fond of cutting flowers. Go on over to Amanda Castle’s and see if she’ll sell you some starter plants.” So, TJ took Grandpa’s advice and his saved-up allowance down to the Castle place on the edge of town.

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a. Nothing he had remembered so far seemed to explain why he felt so different. Only two weeks had gone by, and he had a few new freckles, but was pretty much the same as ever. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. From somewhere outside he thought he heard a hollow CLUNK. It seemed to chime in with his pencil tapping now and then, changing the long, regular tapping into a martial drumbeat. He looked out, but no one was there. Only the row of scarecrows he had made over the last few weeks were there. So he went back to cogitating. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK.

Old lady Castle had been surprised to see him. “I haven’t seen Bob in ages. He and my Roger were fishing buddies and I used to help Valerie Thornton with the 4-H exhibits at the county fair. Sure, I’ll sell you some plants. In no time you’ll have flowers for your mom.” When he went around back with her to the greenhouse, there was something about the pile of old pots in the corner that planted a seed in his imagination. “Sure, you can have ‘em. Roger used to do all the repotting and ground planting, but all I can manage anymore are the flats of seedlings.”

He spent a few days rummaging in the Castle potting shed and puttering in the Thornton’s Green barn with rope and wood scraps. Mom invited Amanda to late afternoon tea so she could see the new scarecrow he had made. “That’s Roger’s big barrel chest alright,” she laughed when she saw the use he had made of the old rain barrel. “I’ll bring over some of Roger’s old clothes for him and maybe you’ll haul him over to my backyard when he’s finished. Could be, I’d go ahead and plant some flowers myself with a fine fellow like this watchin’ over the garden!” All he lacked, in the end, was a face. Grandpa’s red barn paint and green house paint and white fence paint didn’t quite add up to a scarecrow face, so TJ found himself knocking on the Hubbard’s door. “Don’t know much about ‘em, but she paints signs and they seem like nice folks,” Grandpa had said. “She’ll likely have the colors you need.” Cathy and her carpenter husband, Jim, were happy to give him odds and ends of paint and wood.

Remembering how Jim Hubbard’s pile of wood scraps had seemed to sing to him to make another scarecrow, TJ got the feeling he was about to discover something. Like a private investigator on the trail of an important lead, he played back in his mind all the steps he had taken to make a man and a lady scarecrow for the Hubbards out of old signs and boards.

“For someone with nothin’ to do, you sure are busy!” Grandpa had chuckled. Sure enough, there were days, by early June, where TJ didn’t even come in for late tea. “Such an enchanting custom,” Mom had said, when they adopted it from English friends. Tending his new garden, helping Mrs. Castle with hers, putting the finishing touches on Roger the scarecrow, hauling scrap materials to the barn from the Hubbard’s shed, and arranging and rearranging the parts of two new scarecrows made for pretty full days. TJ went to bed right after supper and ran out right after breakfast and chores every day.

When he finally nailed the new scarecrows together, the Hubbards came out to have dinner and see the progress. Cathy laughed at the old rusty saw in the hand of what she called ‘the Hubby’, and said, “All he needs is a bow to make that old saw sing!”

Hmmmm – singing – that felt like the clue he was looking for. The first real difference TJ had spotted in himself, as he looked back over the summer, was that sometime in mid-June he had begun to sing out loud while he worked. It was unusual, but didn’t explain why he felt so changed from the boy who had walked off the plane in May. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum. This time, he was sure someone was outside singing. When he looked out, Mrs. Castle’s scarecrow seemed to be looking back at him, smiling. The two Hubbard scarecrows looked as though the wind had blown them together and tangled their dangling wood block arms. His own, plain old fellow’s face had the look of a wink, and Judy Pringle’s seemed to be kicking up her high heels to dance! The crazy impression passed over him quickly, and he went back to reliving the busy weeks of making friends and flower gardens and a few more scarecrows. Whoever was singing along to his tapping went on with no more notice from TJ. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum.

Cathy had called Judy Pringle, Martinville’s music teacher, to ask for an old violin bow for the Hubbard Hubby. TJ was sent over to fetch it and Miss Pringle showed him a whole room full of broken-down instruments. “This ought to be a guest room, but over the years it’s become an instrument orphanage! If they could be fixed, I’d call it a hospital, but they’re all just beyond repair. Still, one does hate to throw them away. People give them to me, hoping I can do something with them, and here they sit.” A small harp and a child-sized violin stashed together had looked, at first glance, so much like a beautiful lady that TJ asked impulsively to have them. Miss Pringle was interested to see what he would make of them, and handed them over. She offered to trade a few violin lessons if he could make a scarecrow of them for her garden. With Cathy’s help painting beautiful Spanish eyes on the violin face, a black wig from the dress-up chest, an embroidered peasant dress from Amanda Castle’s long-ago trip to Mexico over the harp body, cracked drumsticks and dented cymbals for legs and feet, and arms made of an oboe and a clarinet, TJ made quite a lady of her. The only problem was, he needed a new way to stand up a scarecrow beside a potted, patio garden since Miss P. had no backyard.

Jim Hubbard thought of using an old tire filled with concrete as a base, so TJ met Mike, the mechanic, who was happy to give him a tire. Mike didn’t have any garden, but when TJ got a peek at all the old auto parts sitting around his garage, he practically begged for the chance to make a scarecrow of them. Mike knew how good it felt to take things apart and put them together and get good and dirty in the process, so he gave TJ the go-ahead. “Who knows,” he thought, “I might even plant a garden one of these days after all.”

It wasn’t until he realized this scarecrow looked a bit like Mike – tall and gangly, blue eyes closely set, and a painted-on black beard, moustache and pony-tailed hair – that TJ decided he ought to have a whistle for a mouth. TJ had noticed the garage was always alive with Mike’s whistling, and had taught himself to whistle a few tunes in imitation of his favorite resident of Martinville.

“Okay, there’s something new about me,” he thought. “I’ve learned to whistle. I have a bunch of new friends here, I’m learning to play the violin, and I’m very busy. I also have a row of new scarecrows outside my window. I suppose that’s all enough to explain why I feel so different. But I’m sure there’s something else, too. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK. Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum. TJ wasn’t surprised now to hear a new melody being whistled over the steady tattoo of his pencil. He didn’t look out anymore to see what was making the nice CLUNK, or singing along to his beat. And it seemed perfectly natural that the gourds forming the hands and feet of Mrs. Mitchell’s scarecrow were now shaking along in time to the lively whistling he heard.

Mike had had plenty of car parts – the brake pedals TJ used for legs and feet, the fan belts from which they dangled, the drive shaft stand, tie rod shoulders, tire body, alternator face, fan hat, rubber hose arms and goofy hands made of springs. But he was stumped for a mouth that would whistle. It was Judy Pringle’s idea to ask poor Samantha Mitchell for a bird whistle. People thought of her as ‘poor Samantha’ because she had multiple sclerosis and had to have a wheelchair. Also, because they all felt so awkward about visiting her, they knew she was lonely, too. Judy remembered that, before her illness, Samantha had been called the ‘bird lady’, and thought TJ might enjoy learning from her about all the species in the area. Miss Mitchell was glad to help with Mike’s scarecrow, and glad of TJ’s company, too. She thought he was silly, wanting to make the ‘bird lady’ a scarecrow to scare birds away from a yard with no garden in it, but she was happy for him to see what he could do with an old bird house and some gourds. She used to grow gourds to make houses, but the garden patch was overgrown now.

The ruffled blouse he painted on the birdhouse, with nest holes for ‘buttons’, left the silliest triangle roof-top face, made with paint and birdseed. When Amanda Castle saw it – she and Grandpa were regular visitors now – she stopped by Samantha’s with an old hat trimmed in fake fruit and feathers, to ask if she could plop it on top of the scarecrow they called Birdy now. Samantha loved the idea, and invited her in for lunch. She sent Amanda back to Thornton’s Green with her old dancing shoes to hang under the red-checked vinyl tablecloth skirt. “I won’t be needing ‘em,” she joked. “Maybe Birdy can have some fun with ‘em.”

TJ was dropping in almost daily at his friends’ homes now, to borrow one thing or another, or help with this and that, or just to let them know how their scarecrows were coming along. He hadn’t really minded that there turned out to be so few other children in Martinville. As soon as school was out, off they had all gone on family vacations, or to visit relatives. Some were in summer school and others had chores or music camps keeping them busy. TJ had noticed, finally, that one little fellow seemed to shadow him whenever he was in town.

Fascinated by TJ’s boldness in knocking on doors, and curious about the armfuls of treasure he carried off homeward, Matthew Johnson was happy just to tag along quietly as far as the edge of town, trying to figure out TJ’s mystery project. His piano teacher, Miss Pringle, had encouraged him to go right up and ask TJ about it. She hinted that it was a very great mystery indeed, and worth investigating. But an eleven-year-old looks awfully big to an eight-year-old, and Matthew was shy. Closer and closer he came, until one day, TJ turned around and said, “Well, if you’re going to follow me, maybe you could carry some of these wood scraps.” And, simple as that, the whole history of the scarecrows was told, and TJ got a great helper and friend. Together, they had made a little scarecrow out of Matthew’s old toys and contributions from everyone else. And together, they planted a little garden in Matthew’s back yard.

“Maybe that’s why I feel so different,” TJ mused. “I’m an ‘older kid’ now, and I’ve usually been the ‘younger kid’ with our friends at home.” By now, the tapping and clunking, singing, whistling and shaking went on merrily without causing TJ a moment’s pause in his thinking. As he felt the last piece of the puzzle fall into place, his pencil slowed down and stopped. The music seemed to come from his garden – from the area where the seven scarecrows were lined up waiting for the party Mom was throwing for all their owners tonight. She wanted to celebrate the new book she had just finished, thank all his new friends for letting TJ use their odds and ends, and help him say goodbye to the scarecrows that had become like friends themselves. TJ found himself in the field, talking to his own scarecrow as though it was not at all strange to do so.

“It’ll be a great party!” said the scarecrow.

“Who is making all this music?” TJ asked, for by now it sounded like a dance band was playing in the field, but he could see no musicians.

“Why, we all are, son, and you started it!”

“Me? How’s that?”

“You held on to your beat, boy, and you held on long enough that we could join in! Don’t you remember? Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a?”

Just then, the music stopped completely. In the hush, TJ heard a steady tapping from the attic window floating out over the field. Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a. He heard it grow gradually back into the great happy dance music that had drawn him outside. Now he could tell it was his own scarecrow’s tree-branch hands clunking together, and the voice of the barrel-chested scarecrow in Roger’s suspenders and pants singing dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum. Mike’s lanky scarecrow whistled the melody. Miss Judy’s lady was like a one-man band. The Hubbard Hubby stopped bowing his screechy saw to whirl his partner around the field in a happy, tangly dance. Soon they were all singing, dancing, shaking, clanking, plucking and playing merrily, with TJ carrying on in the middle as crazily happy as the rest.

Birds joined in, whistling and wood-pecking. (These scarecrows never did scare any birds, but were much loved by their owners anyway.) It was quite a party and seemed to go on for hours. Finally, TJ said, “I’d better go rest or I won’t be able to stay up for the party tonight.”

And the next thing he knew, he was waking up at his little wooden desk. His pencil had fallen to the floor. Mom was calling, “TJ come on down. Our guests are arriving!”

TJ went down the stairs slowly, a bit sad that the dance of the scarecrows had been a dream, but happy to see his friends. He really did look forward to introducing each finished scarecrow to its owner, even if it was hard to have them taken away. Their party was a great success. Everyone was delighted with the scarecrows and enjoying new friendships with each other. They shared gardening tips and planned more get-togethers and stayed wonderfully late talking and laughing with Grandpa and the Russells. When everyone had finally said goodbye, TJ turned to take one last look at the scarecrow in his own beautiful flower garden.

He is sure he heard him say, “Hold on to your beat, boy!” before he went in to bed.

Scarecrows’ Song

Why don’t you pucker up and whistle,

Clap your hands and stomp your feet,

Shake a gourd or ring a cowbell…

Just don’t forget to hold your beat!

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum

It doesn’t matter whatcher made of,

Skin and bones or wood and tin,

You’ve got some music in you somewhere,

Just hold the beat and join in!

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum

If you will keep the beat a-goin’

Other folks can play along.

Pretty soon you’ll hear a big band,

Dressing up your little song!

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum

Then your feet’ll start to fidget,

And no matter what you do

You’ll have to wiggle to the music.

Now the beat is holding you!

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum

What a way to make a party,

All your pals will want to stay

Makin’ music in the moonlight,

Dancin’ half the night away!

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum

And if you’re ever feelin’ empty,

Find a beat and start it slow.

You’ll soon be filled with cheerful music.

Dontcha ever let it go!

Tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-CLUNK

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum