Corn Stalks

fiction by Rob Rotell

The sky is a clear, ashen blue, devoid of the faintest of clouds. The sun is blazing white, illuminating each emerald green ear of corn in the field that stretches for miles. The stalks wave lazily in the faint wind and a little brown-haired boy named Jacob is sweating through his flannel shirt, drenching it a dark maroon.

He stands in an open patch, the legs of his denim overalls rolled up, his flannel red shirt open. He stares at the field in front of him. He is breathing hard. He looks to the right and sees a scarecrow suspended on a cross like Christ, its brown head drooped low underneath a holed straw hat. Jacob turns back to the corn stalks. He walks slowly. The stiff blades of faded stalk and discarded leaves shred the underside of his bare feet. He looks down for just a moment, but continues on.

Jacob stands before the thick corn stalks. Then he reaches out and pushes away to the side the stalks and the sun illuminates, a few feet in front of him, the petite body of an ugly black crow. Noisy flies buzz around the carcass. The beak is open in a dull yawn, sopping with swart blood. The eyes stare aimlessly upwards.


Jacob slowly turns his head back to the scarecrow. The head tilts up slowly, revealing two very dark holes in the burlap head. Jacob stops breathing, not afraid, but not at ease. He decides to run.


Running for what seems like hours, he arrives at his home, a ramshackle green house in the middle of a grassy patch overlooking the fields. He runs through the screen door. His mother is washing dishes with her hands and a sponge until she feels the force of Jacob flying by.


Dorothy continues listening to the radio. They’re talking about a plane crash—no survivors. They’re talking about recalling a pesticide. She turns off the radio and stares at the ceiling, trying to hear Jacob up in his room.


Later, Jacob is eating with his mother and father. He is silent; he does not talk about what he found in the field. His head is bowed and polite. His mother and father talk, she about the sweltering weather, he about the annoyance of the latest pesticide recall; they give him strange glances but they never question him.


Jacob is in bed. His eyes are twitching nervously beneath his eyelids. He sees a vast, mountainous desert. Nothing but burning sallow sand surpassing the horizon, beneath a bleached sky. Suddenly—in the distance—people. Their footsteps in the soft sand seal up as soon as they are imprinted, their paths erased as soon as they are made. They walk over the sand dunes, their feet raw from the hot sand. Veins stick out in their taut necks as they wipe huge drops of sweat from their gleaming, dirty faces. Then shade. A huge shadow overcasts them. They look up and see a flock of crows descend upon them. They scream as the crows tear skin from muscle, muscle from bone, remove the flesh from their faces, and slurp up the blood. The people are on their knees crying, thick open wounds gaping. One of the them stares up at the flock of crows and screams. . . .


The next day, Jacob is back in the field. He stands motionless, watching the scarecrow from thirty feet. He waits for it to move its head again, but it does not. He hears a fluttering sound. He looks to the left and sees a crow fruitlessly trying to open an ear of corn. Jacob stares at the crow for a moment, studying it. Then he steps toward the stalk. The crow flies off, and lands nearby. watching Jacob. The little boy opens the ear of corn the crow was pecking at, and drops the green cob onto the ground. Jacob stands still, watching the crow. After a moment, the crow tilts its head, then flies down onto the ground and starts pecking pieces of corn. Jacob watches it peck the corn, then quickly stomps with a forceful crunk.


Then Jacob looks at the scarecrow. Its head is directed towards him now. A black hole in the middle of the face forms a crooked smile.

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Rob Rotell is a senior creative writing major at Susquehanna University from York, Pa.  He has done layout and design work on RiverCraft, The Apprentice Writer, The Susquehanna Review, and Susquehanna University's Common Reading.  His fiction has also appeared in The Susquehanna Reivew.

Coming next week: fiction by David Joseph