They Mocked a Black Boy for Stuffing Old Shirts With Straw — Then Blackbirds Hit Every Field but His
Chapter 3
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He didn't plan to spread them evenly across the field. The notebook told him the birds came in through three gates: the tree line on the north side, the drainage ditch on the east, and the low corner by the fence on the south. By noon, he had driven 14 stakes into the ground, numbered in black paint, and clustered at those three gates.Then he started dressing them. He nailed a crossbar to each stake loose enough to turn. He packed the bodies of the shirts tight with straw so they'd hold their shape, but he barely stuffed the sleeves. He wanted them limp. He wanted them to lift and fall every time the wind shifted.By the time Vivian's truck rolled into the yard that afternoon, he had three of them standing. When it rolled out again, the laughing had stopped, but the photo hadn't. By supper, it was in the county farmers' group chat with a caption underneath:Holloway hired a crew. Somebody added three laughing emojis.Darius didn't answer. He went back out and kept tying sleeves. He never once called them scarecrows.The next morning, he moved three of the shirts to new stakes and took one down altogether. He walked a different route through the rows than the day before. When the birds lined up on the wire, he walked straight to a figure by the ditch and stood beside it for five minutes in plain sight. After the flock lifted and moved off, he pulled that shirt off its stake and carried it somewhere else.On the fifth day, a cannon boomed at Ashford Plains, and a dark cloud lifted off Vivian's sorghum. A small group, maybe 40 birds, peeled off and came toward Holloway farm. Darius stood by the truck and watched. The birds dropped low over the north corner. The wind caught a sleeve and lifted it, and the group veered off. But about a dozen swung around and landed along the south edge anyway. They stayed until Darius walked out toward them.Walter had seen it from the road. He leaned out his window. "Lucky.""Maybe."That night, Darius wrote:Worked once. Means nothing yet. Under it, he added:South corner, watch.Then he called Walter at home and told him not to hold that early slot. Walter asked if he was sure. Darius said he was. The crop would stay in the field until it was ready, and whatever happened to it now was on him.By the end of the first week, Darius had rules. He never moved every figure on the same morning. Some days he moved two, some days four. One morning, three shirts stood together by the ditch, and the next morning only one stood there, turned to face the other way. He swapped a gray shirt for a blue one on the north side, then swapped them back. His walking route changed every day, and so did the hour he walked it.Every approach went into the notebook. When the birds came in low and turned away, he made one kind of mark. When they circled once and came right back, he made another.