Ichabod Crowley - series 1 Life and Legacy

Chapter 6

Sorting through his own finances had been easy enough, just a matter of giving away the proper amounts to the right people. A donation to Father Duncan was an absolute necessity, a minor thank you for all of his assistance over the years, he could deliver it later, and felt the need to do it in person. After which came the errands he had to run, visiting the bank, a trip to the pharmacy for chemicals and ingredients, to the church for more holy water, a few towns over to a scrap yard for metal to melt down for bullets. Then there was the store proper, buying wine, cooking sherry, a Christmas ham with the proper sides and seasoning. Then came the chores, running a wet-stone over his knife to maintain the edge, topping off his ammo supply, peeling, cutting, slicing, binding the main dish for tomorrow. Finally, leaving the ham to brine in the freezer, he went to the pumpkin patch to find a new head for Toulon.

He took his time examining the fruit, thinking over what face to give his friend before just shrugging and deciding to wing it, figuring that, any time before when he'd tried to plan out Toulon's personality, it had never worked the way he wanted. So he began with the mouth, a simple one full of stubby spikes, then a nose, composed of two triangles side by side. The eyes were a bit tricky, he'd intended them to be ovals but messed up the arch on his first try and gave the pumpkin a bit of a scowl. He was trying to fix it when a voice called out, startling him.

"Ichabod!" his father screamed, stomping towards him from the house.

"Urk!" he flinched and his knife slashed open the upper arch of the eye leaving a cut four inches long into the skin of the jack-o lantern, "Dammit," he considered the mark and there was no way to cover it up, not without completely re-sculpting his eyes to be massive, and that alone might damage the integrity of the structure, "Well, I guess he's got a scar now."

"Don't ignore me you brat!" Victor snapped as he waddled closer.

"Try though I might," Ichabod muttered, extending the cut an inch or so through the bottom arch before starting again on the left eye, "What do you want?"

"How about a little goddamn respect for once," Victor snapped.

"Ooooh, sorry, fresh out, can we interest you in anything else?"

"This is serious you..." he stopped for a moment, grinding his teeth, "Margaret lied to me this morning."

"Good for her?" Ichabod muttered in response, examining his work, the eyes were a bit uneven, and, while the left was the proper oval he'd been intending for his creation, when set alongside the other it gave the whole thing a bit of a cocky sneer, following that, he drew another line from the corner of the left eye creating a bit of a trailing eyebrow, looking now on what he felt was a finished work, he finally latched on to something his father had said, "Wait, morning? What time is it now?"

"Are you even listening to me?"

"I don't know, are you going to tell me what time it is?"

"You know, because it occurs to me that a lot of my girlfriends..."

"One night stands," Ichabod corrected, turning away towards the shed.

"Have had brief conversations with you..."

"Of course they're brief, you're a disgusting Lech who uses women for sex and maid service," he was already walking away, "There's not much else to say."

"I had a good thing going on here..."

"I know," he laughed, "But, all good things must end."

Ichabod was most of the way to the shed when his father reached out and grasped his elbow, the feel of those chubby fingers on his arm had the carving knife, still loose in his hand, suddenly locked in a death grip as he tried to keep from plunging it into his father's neck.