Scarecrow by Richie Tankersley Cusick Page B

from my mind, steadily meeting Franny’s gaze again.
    “Oh, I just knew it,” Franny breathed. “I just knew it would be.” She looked so serious and then she laughed, a carefree flirtatious laugh. “I dream about it all the time—how it’ll be—having somebody love me that way.”
    “It’s natural at your age to think about those things. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your feelings. Someday you will be loved that way—”
    “Oh, but I’m not ashamed.” Her wise eyes regarded me serenely, no hint of embarrassment. “No, I’m most certainly not.” The sadness had left her voice now, the anger, the yearning. She put out her hand and plucked at the scarecrow’s frayed cuff. “Dewey and me—one time when Seth was out working in the fields—”
    I opened my mouth to protest, but Franny rushed on.
    “We went in the smokehouse, see, and he showed me some things. Not serious things, you know, ’cause he’s married and he’s old, but…” Her eyes brightened mischievously, no hint of remorse. “He put his hand in my shirt.” She pointed to her breasts. “And I felt it…clear down…” She motioned between her legs. “Here. It felt so nice,” she sighed. “I’m sure I’d just love all the rest of it.”
    I pondered a moment before I spoke. “With the right person it’s wonderful, but—”
    “Oh, I never see anybody around here,” Franny cut in impatiently. “Dewey’s no fun, he’s too ugly anyhow. That’s why I made him.” She patted her scarecrow. “That’s why I made my Prince Charming.”
    I looked silently at the scarecrow again. He really did look so much like Seth, it was unnerving. How strange that this thing she loves, resembles what she hates so much…
    “He’s my boyfriend,” Franny went on. “My boyfriend. I come here sometimes and talk to him and nobody knows.”
    “Not even Seth?”
    She shook her head. “I pretend I’m meeting him after dark, and he’s hiding here waiting for me, and I sneak out of the house late at night and we talk about so many things. I swear I’ll love him forever, and he swears he’ll take me away…” Her voice drifted, her fingers trailing slowly down the front of the scarecrow, down his bony frame, down, and up again, almost reverently…“And then…sometimes…” she glanced at me, her voice low and shy, hesitant now, “sometimes he makes love to me…here on the grass, on the leaves…under the moon…”
    I watched her, transfixed, her young face transformed with aching, watched her slender, work-worn fingers move up again to his face and his skin, the cold, pale skin, and the black, soulless eyes, and he looked so much like Seth, the skin so real…
    “Touch him,” Franny whispered, “touch him now…” and I couldn’t help myself, raising my fingers to the hollows of his cheek, the coldness, the startling texture of skin beneath skin—and a sharp cry of fear rose in my throat as the skin began to move, responding to my touch, responding, yearning, pulsing beneath my fingertips, and the skin seemed to cling to me like my own skin, melting, molding to my own so that all at once I tore myself free and stared at Franny in mingled horror and disbelief.
    “You feel it, too, don’t you?” Franny smiled knowingly. “How real he is—”
    “What is that, Franny—it feels— alive. ”
    The girl’s eyes lingered on me a moment, and then she giggled. “Why, it’s just a hide, Pam, an animal skin. What did you think it was?”
    I rubbed clumsily at my fingers, as if I could somehow rid them of the whole unpleasant experience, and I knew I looked flustered and confused as Franny continued to watch.
    “Well, of course I knew it was something like that.” I forced a smile that felt totally foreign to my lips, and my breath came out in an equally forced laugh. “It felt so…so strange…”
    “Be careful now, or you’ll hurt his feelings.” Franny laughed loudly, her old self, and I began to relax a little as she pulled me