A Murder of Crows

A Murder of Crows

Jan Dunlap

Copyright © 2012 Jan Dunlap

ISBN 978-0-87839-876-8

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First Edition: September 2012

Electronic Edition: September 2012

Published by

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

P.O. Box 451

St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

www.northstarpress.com

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Chapter One

I hate scarecrows.

They creep me out.

Oddly angled arms, dangling hands, shirts stuffed with straw and stuck up on a pole out in a cornfield. If I were a crow, they’d scare the bejeebers out of me. As it is, being a human, I still wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley, even though I know they’re just lifeless dummies with permanent bad-hair days. Heck, I’d rather not even see them in a cornfield in the bright sunlight.

As far as I’m concerned, scarecrows are second in creepiness only to clowns.

In fact, the worst day of my life was the day my kindergarten class went on a field trip to Emma Krumbee’s Apple Orchard just outside of Jordan, Minnesota, to pick apples. The apples were great —believe me, nothing tastes better than fresh apples right off the tree in the crisp days of autumn. But what was not so great was that Emma’s had a display of scarecrows for the harvest season, and our teacher, Mrs. Meyers, shepherded us right through the middle of it to get to the apple trees.

Talk about spooky. Not only were there Frankenstein and vampire scarecrows, but straw-filled contorted body shapes wearing doctor and nurse uniforms, complete with scalpels and knee hammers. Throw in a pair of scarecrows dressed in high school letter jackets and it could have passed for the set of a teen slasher movie. The most horrifying moment, though, was when I happened to find myself looking up at a leering clown face painted on a pumpkin head perched atop an overstuffed tuxedo, and every nightmare I’d ever had of white-faced scary clowns with mops of maniac hair came roaring back at me.

My classmates may never know how close they came to wearing my breakfast of Honey-nut Os and strawberry Pop-tarts.

I clapped a hand over my eyes and grabbed the back of the jacket of the kid in front of me. I was done. No way was I looking at any more scarecrows. I figured my classmate could just tow me blind to the apples, but he ratted me out.

“Bobby White’s pulling on my jacket,” the rat squealed to Mrs. Meyers. “Make him stop!”

I felt Mrs. Meyers gently prying my fingers off the kid’s coat and taking my cold hand in her warm one. I slid a glance at her through my fingers.

“I don’t want to see the scarecrows,” I whispered, afraid that the clown would overhear and exact a bloody and gruesome vengeance on me. “They look like dead people.”

“No, they don’t,” she assured me.

“Yes, they do,” I whispered louder, the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickling as I imagined the clown’s gloved hand reaching for me.

Mrs. Meyers smiled her brightest smile and leaned down to give me a hug.

“No, Bobby, they don’t,” she gently insisted. “But if you’re frightened, just stick with me, okay?”

No problem. I stuck to her like super glue all the way to the apples. It’s a wonder she could even walk with me wrapped around her left leg.

But now I know for sure that she was wrong.

Scarecrows can not only resemble dead people, but they can look
exactly
like a dead person.

Because I found one scarecrow that was.

A scarecrow that was a dead person, I mean.

Baby Lou was strapped to my chest in the forward-facing carrier thing that Luce and I had given to my sister, Lily, and her husband, Alan, when Lou was born in June. It was a perfect October morning, and since I’d promised to babysit my niece—it’s Louise, actually—for the day, I figured it was high time she started her life list of birds, so we’d buckled Lou into her car seat and driven out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chanhassen to stroll the trails and see what late migrants we might find.

The fact that it was also a weekend during the Arboretum’s annual scarecrow display had, unfortunately, escaped me, but as my lovely wife reminded me, we didn’t have to walk where the display was set up around the Visitor Center. Instead, we’d taken Three Mile Drive to a parking area near the restored prairie, and set off on a walk that wound through chest-high golden grasses and into a multi-hued forest of turning leaves.

“She’s falling asleep,” Luce said, nodding at Baby Lou on my chest.

I glanced down at the fine mop of black hair that crowned my niece’s head.

“My fault,” I said. “I promised her a rarity to start her list, like that Ferruginous Hawk that was spotted yesterday out in Stevens County, and all we’ve seen so far are your everyday Canada Geese and Wild Turkeys. I haven’t been this bored myself since the back-to-school faculty meeting in August.”

“Good morning,” Luce said in her greeting-a-stranger voice.

I looked up to see another Arboretum visitor who had appeared a few steps in front of us. He looked about my age, was carrying a thermos mug of coffee, and I guessed he was a regular at the Arb: his dark-green sweatshirt had the Arboretum’s logo on it. It reminded me that before we headed back home, I wanted to pick up a similar one in the Visitor Center’s gift shop as a birthday gift for my dad.

“Morning,” the fellow mumbled, his head down. He hurried past us and continued in the direction from which we’d come.

“I need to stop in at the gift shop before we leave this morning,” I told Luce before I forgot. “Dad’s birthday is next month, and I want to get him a sweatshirt like that guy had on. Dad loves the Arb.”

I glanced back at the man who was disappearing around a bend in the trail. “Geez. He didn’t even make eye contact with us.”

“Yes, he did,” Luce said. “You were too busy staring at Louise and talking about a faculty meeting to notice. We’ve passed several people this morning, but I don’t think they registered on your radar thanks to Baby Lou.”

I lightly stroked my niece’s soft hair.

“She’s pretty enthralling,” I admitted, then finished what I was saying about the school meeting. “The only reason I didn’t fall asleep during that particular snooze-fest was because Alan and I were trying to guess which of the new teachers is the Bonecrusher.”

Not that I’m a big fan of professional wrestling, mind you. I’m a baseball man. I catch a few Twins games every summer at Target Field in Minneapolis and keep a close eye on the season stats for all the major league teams. Every spring, I coach the sophomore girls’ softball team at Savage High.

Or, at least, I try to. Believe me, it’s much easier said than done.

But when the word spreads that a former world-class professional wrestler joins the faculty at a quiet suburban high school like Savage, it makes you sit up and take notice. That is, you would take notice if you knew who to look at, but so far, no one was admitting to anything. In the effort—which was generally hopeless more often than not—to keep students focused on academics, our assistant principal, Mr. Lenzen, had decreed that the identity of the former wrestling celebrity would be kept secret.

Which, of course, made it the hottest topic of the new school year in both the student cafeteria and the faculty lounge: who, in a previous life, was the Bonecrusher?

“I think you should respect the Bonecrusher’s privacy,” Luce commented as she led the way along a leaf-strewn trail towards Wood Duck Pond, a small lake that backed up to the marshes behind the Arboretum’s Learning Center. “For all you know, it was his idea, not Mr. Lenzen’s, to keep his identity secret. Maybe he wants a fresh start without the baggage of his past career. Not everyone enjoys notoriety and being recognized in public.”

“But that’s exactly the problem,” I pointed out. “No one has a clue what his face looks like because he was always masked in his matches. Alan and I looked the Crusher up on the Web, but in every photo, he was always dressed in a full-head mask and bodysuit. For all I know,” I said, echoing her words, “Mr. Lenzen could be the Bonecrusher, though I find that highly unlikely since Mr. Lenzen wouldn’t be caught dead wearing tights, let alone a full leotard. My bet is on Boo Metternick, our new physics teacher.”

“Because he’d look good in a leotard?”

I smiled at my wife. “Because he’s built like a tank, and so far, he doesn’t talk much. I figure he’s trying to keep a low profile.”

We followed a curve in the trail, and spotted a late Green Heron wading along the edges of the lake.

“Now that I can recognize,” I said. “A Green Heron in Wood Duck Pond. Look Baby Lou,” I said, gently lifting her tiny chin up with my finger, “your first Green Heron.”

“Bobby, she’s asleep,” Luce reminded me.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a contorted form splayed against a thick tree trunk a little ways off the trail. I noted the baggy blue jeans and flannel shirt, the beat-up floppy felt hat and ragged gloved hands of a classic scarecrow. Perched above it in the tree branches was a murder of crows.

It looked like a set for a Halloween movie.

“I thought you said that the display was only set up around the Visitor Center,” I said to Luce.