They Mocked a Black Boy for Stuffing Old Shirts With Straw — Then Blackbirds Hit Every Field but His
Chapter 6
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Dr. Hannah Vega came out that same afternoon. She was the extension specialist who handled crop damage from wildlife, and she'd been driving the county for two days, walking field edges and counting pecked heads. She stood at the end of Darius's north row and looked at the figures without much expression."How often do you move them?"Darius handed her the notebook. She read for a long time, flipping pages, going back. Then she put her finger on the two days with nothing but a note in the margin."This is when the pump broke?""Yes, ma'am.""This is when they started sitting next to them. That tracks." She handed the notebook back. "I'll be straight with you: moving scarecrows every few days, randomizing cannons, getting people out in the field—that's in every handout we print. The hard part is nobody keeps doing it after the first week. They get busy.""I'm not doing anything new.""You're doing the old thing longer and better than anybody out here. You've mapped where they come in, and you've tied the moves to when you're actually standing there. That part's yours." She looked across the field. "But don't turn it into a ritual. If you move the same three shirts every morning at 7:00, you're just teaching them a new pattern.""Are the shirts worth anything at all?""Inside a bigger plan, sure. By themselves, they're laundry." She chose her next words carefully. "And don't take this to mean Vivian doesn't know what she's doing. One man can walk 42 acres. Nobody can walk 2,000. Over there, it's a labor problem.""Is my crop going to make it?"A faint smile. "I can't promise you that. Nobody honest could."After that, Darius stopped working on any kind of schedule. Each morning, before he touched a single stake, he sat in the truck and watched where the birds were gathering. If they were heavy on the north wire, he worked the north side—walking, checking heads, standing in the open. If a figure had stood in one spot for two days, he pulled it down and left the stake bare, and three hours later he put it up somewhere else.He mixed real work into all of it: he checked fence, he drove the turnrows, and sometimes he just stood still for 20 minutes and watched. Birds never got a clean read on which shapes were men.On the 16th day, Walter stopped by again. This time, Darius didn't wait for him to offer."Hey Briggs, you check your east block most mornings, right?""Most mornings.""Could you swing by my ditch on the way? Not at the same time every day. Get out, walk a little, then go."Walter looked at him like he was hearing something he'd been waiting a while to hear. "Yeah, I can do that."He did it the next morning. Afterward, he asked to see the notebook and sat on Darius's tailgate reading it for half an hour. He didn't laugh once. He came back the morning after that at a different hour without being asked.