Scarecrow

Chapter 9, part 2

At first, Eddie doesn't tell Penny what he is scheming to do. If he had, perhaps things might have gone differently. Perhaps she could have stopped him before another shower of blood darkened the now curfewed streets of Beauty, policed day and night by Lewis's troops. There probably wasn't much she could have done to dissuade him, anyway. Penny had not been there, out in the fields with Jim and Mr. Straw. She had not seen the look in her husband's eyes when he looked up at the scarecrow, nor his face when he so nonchalantly mentioned the hen house slaughter, a private horror Eddie had confirmed to be anything but a fox attack– could foxes slash scythe gashes through solid wood? What she had seen was the scarecrow on its support cross, and while the sight of Mr. Straw after so many years had been unnerving, it was nothing to write home about.

Nor, in her personal opinion, any reason to plot a secret plan and then not tell your lover what it is. Which is precisely what Eddie is choosing to do now.
"Ed, you can't do this, whatever this is. If it involves Jim, if you're thinking of letting something slip..."
"No, baby, never. I just..." Eddie tries to wrap his arms around Penny's waist, but she pulls away.

"Baby, you need to trust me."

Easy for him to say. She does not like this mystery plan of his, almost as much as she dislikes the determined look already hard-set in her lover's sky-blue eyes. Almost. Eddie is a tunnel-visioned thinker, ample in brawn but a bit lacking in the brains department. There is no doubt in her mind that he loves her, loves the baby already as well, which is precisely what makes his silence all the more infuriating.

"Trust me. Please."

Penny succumbs enough to let him get his arms around her. She cannot know it yet, but her lover's hands will be awash with blood, some of it his own, and some belonging to the mad sheriff currently screaming at a terrified beat cop who came up short on a lead for the Hendricks case. Right then, however, his touch is soft, warm.

"Just tell me what it is, Ed. That's all I'm asking."

His hands find the crease of the bottom of her blouse and lift it up, fingers caressing the tightly swollen skin separating them from his baby. Out in the fields, Donnelly can be heard cursing faintly as he knicks himself with one blade or another.

"A distraction."

Eddie waits until sundown of that day to seek Donnelly out, nighttime being the ideal time to stage an escape. Penny is still in the dark as to the details of his "distraction," but she'll cooperate. She has to, or the slim window they have been given will close, trapping them on the farm with Jim and that

(thing)

scarecrow, that evil, wretched zombie of a straw skeleton. It has stayed up in the fields all day, still as a statue, as if Eddie really expected it to do anything but remain inanimate. Yet he can almost swear he saw it move once, twice... or perhaps the sight of it is slowly driving him insane. The scarecrow, or "Mr. Straw" as Donnelly called it, does seem to have that charming effect on people.

Eddie has tried not to look at it too much while he slogged through the rest of the day's work of reaping corn and bundling the stalks together for shipment. On the rare occasions that he did chance a look back in its direction, Donnelly seemed to always be close by its side.

Talking to it.

The rest of the day passes in general peace, and it is only as the sun dips behind the sea of corn does Eddie put his plan into action. He watches Jim enter the cow barn soon after sunset, then waits another few minutes before following him. The door opens with a muffled creak, the sound of the cows as they settle in for the night reduced to a low hum in his ears as he calls out, "Mr. Donnelly, are you here?"
"Back here, Eddie. Watch the landmines, will you?"
Eddie makes his way over to Bess's stall, heeding Donnelly's warning not to step in the huge piles of dung lining the other closed gates.