Straw House

by Daniel Nayeri

  As he turned, Sunny swung his arm. The dart nailed the hand of the cat-eared man into the roof of the chicken coop. The homunculus made a vacant groan and unstuck its hand. Sunny walked off. The Growin’ Man chuckled and blew a bubble with gum and chaw.

  THE LATE-AFTERNOON rain had mustered the rows and brought them strong into the growing season. The jumpy caboose was aboveground, almost up to its rails. On either side of it, a pogo stick and tasseled baton presented tall stalks. Out by the LEGO bushes in the far corner of the field, an entire dollhouse was coming up, wild from last season. Even the late planting was stirring under the mounds of dirt.

  Sunny leaned on the fence with his arms out on the perpen­dicular beam, not particularly looking over the rows. His hands dangled at the wrist. His head was rolled forward like a turnip. His nose seemed to be propping it up against his chest. Pup lay at his feet, whimpering, and licking between Sunny’s toes in hope of cheering him up.

  The farmer’s daughter walked up to the rows from the back of the farmhouse with a glass pitcher. Sunny didn’t budge the entire time. Dot came up behind him and said, “Made you my melonade. First watermelon of the year.”

  Sunny’s head jerked up. He sniffed and looked around. “Huh?”

  “Melonade,” repeated the farmer’s daughter.

  “Oh, yeah.” Sunny took a cup. He poured some on Pup’s head and held the rest. Pup sprang up and started licking at his own floppy ears.

  “They’re coming up nice,” said the farmer’s daughter.

  “Mmm,” said Sunny.

  The gradient spheres of twilight made everything look twice-baked, the color of rust and dusk. Dust and rusk. The braggart crow hooped once around the field and landed on the handle of an extendo-claw near the dollhouse. It spat a defiant caw, then lifted one leg and put it down, mocking them.

  “You’re gonna have to stake the vines pretty soon,” said the farmer’s daughter. The crayons were hanging heavy and low to the ground, in bushes on the western edge of the rows, where they’d rot if they weren’t propped up.

  Sunny said, “Yeah.” They’d need time to ripen into their full colors.

  Sunny took another drink. It seemed like she was waiting for Sunny to come up with a plan to kick out the Growin’ Man. Dot poured some in her palm and kneeled down to let Pup lap it up.

  “So what’s it like, being a plant?” said Sunny.

  The farmer’s daughter looked up at him, but he was staring out over the rows. She said, “Prolly feels the same as anyone else. Used to be just alchemists that’d grow us. They’d sneak under the gallows at night like grave robbers and dig up the sprouts. Then they’d try to figure out how to shove their dead lovers’ spirits into our husks.”

  “And here I figured you didn’t have the farmer’s eyes was all.”

  “I got a lot more than eyes from him.”

  The farmer’s daughter scratched Pup behind the ears. He thumped his foot in the dirt. The crow called out to make sure everyone was watching. “Look, Sunny, I shouldn’t have said what I said. About the sheep being your mess . . .” she trailed off.

  Sunny said, “Why idn’t he out here, Dot?” The farmer’s daughter stood up, wiping her wet hand on the back of her jeans.

  “How should I know?”

  “You and me, we’re each a homunculus to him —”

  “That’s a lie,” said Dot.

  “We’re only half alive, like the Growin’ Man says.”

  “Shut up, Sunny.”

  “We ain’t nothing but stuff.”

  Dot poured some melonade on Sunny’s feet. It shut him up for a minute.

  “The only reason I have to hate the farmer is he stuck me with you and letting you think you’re sheriff. Jeez almighty, I come to apologize for callin’ you an ijit, but I guess I was right the first time.”

  Sunny noticed the rows nearest to them, the final birdseed plantings of the season, sprouting the very tips of their beaks. He said, “Then, we’re no better than the toys.”

  “What made you ever think we were better than the toys?” said Dot. “They’re alive, too. And we all got purposes. I’m a daughter. You protect the rows. What else you want?”

  Sunny wanted something in common with Dot, whatever it was. Something as general as life — as being a son and a daughter, a man and a woman — instead of a bag of straw and a beautiful tree.

  One beak popped out of the ground and shook off the dirt — a cardboard head and white balsa-wood wings. The bird flapped a few times, sending black soil into the air, till finally its legless body unmoored itself from the ground and launched into the air. It flew toward the setting sun, as if racing to catch the thing before it dove under the horizon. The farmer would be out in the early dawn of the next morning, humming a deep eternal love song as he walked among the rows.

  But by then the birds of the season would have gone. Sunny wondered where they’d fly to before their wings finally gave out from the strain, never being able to perch. Or if a spring rain would soak and flatten them against the earth, turning them to half-decomposed paste. Like seasonal flowers, the birds were a disposable fancy.

  “Hey, Dot,” said Sunny, wondering for the first time what the farmer did that the Growin’ Man wanted to know so badly. He guessed it had to do with planting birds every season, even knowing they were temporary creatures, almost broken from the very start. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  The farmer’s daughter watched a second and third paper bird struggle out of the dirt and into the air. One of them clipped a wing and wobbled as it flew. Then she said, “Taller.”

  Sunny stood with his back on the fence, letting the last of the light warm his face, while the farmer’s daughter leaned forward from the other side, with her elbows resting on the crossbeam. Soon it would be dark and the farm would be an unsafe place, with mindless men roaming around, tearing up helpless creatures in the vain hope of bettering themselves.

  But for the time being, Sunny and Dot stared out onto the rows as tens then hundreds of white paper birds nuzzled their way out of the dirt and took flight toward futures not one of them could comprehend. Several birds grazed right past the ornery crow, and more kept sprouting right below its perch. At first it cackled at them, unwilling to give up the roost, then finally took to the air. It swept right over Sunny’s head and belted a huffy call.

  Pup shook all over with excitement, his tail wagging his entire bottom half, but he remained where he was in an attempt to be a good dog. He looked up at Sunny. Sunny nodded, gave him a little nudge with his foot, and said, “Go on, git.”

  Pup tore out from the post, down the plow line of the middle row, barking as he shot toward the last sliver of the sun. An exclamation of birds, like white confetti, burst into the sky, and, featherless, they fluttered toward singular and short purposes.

  Dot patted Sunny on the shoulder and walked back toward the farmhouse with the pitcher of melonade. She was Sunny’s friend.

  THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER stepped into the firelight of Sobrino’s camp and said, “Would ya like somethin’ to drink?”

  Sobrino extended his tin cup to her. “Gracias,” he said.

  There weren’t more than a few twigs in Sobrino’s fire — out of courtesy, Dot suspected. Or maybe so as not to draw attention from the Growin’ Man’s gang. It surprised her how many toys huddled next to him, finding shelter in the cricks of his knees or nestled under his arms. A plush lion was sitting as close to the fire as its frizzy mane allowed and kept its tail touching Sobrino’s hip at all times. The old man watched a row of penguins climb up the toes of his left foot and slide down the arch, only to march around and climb up again.

  “Is dangerous, no? To come here?” said Sobrino, whirling a finger at the dark around them. The moon, like the farmer, was absent, and the stars looked like evening primroses, blooming in haphazard yellow clusters.

  “I can take care of myself,” said Dot, pouring a cup for herself and planting herself on the other side of the fi
re. “I ain’t no delicate flower.”

  Sobrino giggled, a soft eh-eh-eh. “Maybe a thorny flower, a cactoos.”

  “A prickly pear.”

  “Una rosa.”

  “Maybe if I put my hair up.”

  The both of them took a sip. Dot spotted a movement behind Sobrino. It was one of the baby sheep. A few of them were still wandering around from one patch of grass to another, on Sobrino’s side of the dirt road, unaware that even the reckless squirrels were trembling on the farmhouse porch.

  “This one saw a dried-up man in the woods and ran here,” said Sobrino. “I would bring to you tomorrow.” He’d tied the lamb to the old oak with a yo-yo. The lamb was nibbling on the fescue surrounding the base of the tree, any ordeal with dead men long forgotten. “Thank you,” said the farmer’s daughter. Sobrino went eh-eh-eh. It was a language Dot didn’t know, so it sounded stupid to her ears.

  They let silence sit with them for a while. There wasn’t any more melonade to offer. The fire had done its deed and called the wandering toys. Now it was ready to flicker out.

  Without the lonesome nocturnes of the wood owls to the prairie, the farm was breathless. There seemed to be more rustling than most nights. Every tree sounded like a willow.

  The old giant constantly shifted his position to stretch his joints. He pushed deep into the palm of one hand with his thumb, then squeezed his swollen knuckles one by one. When he pushed back his shoulders and swung his head in a circular motion, the bones in his neck and collar made a sound like a cannonball rolling down a staircase. His skin looked overstretched, like his whole body was scar tissue. Dot wondered if he really was one of those giants from the mountains, hurling boulders over his head during lightning storms, howling at his strength. As a young man, he could have dashed chunks of the earth big enough to be called the world’s teeth.

  Dot said, “You could help us. You could run them off the farm.”

  Sobrino looked up at her and shook his head no.

  “How come? It’d be magic, wouldn’t it? You’re a magician, ain’t you?”

  “Sí,” said the old man, “But is no easy. He wants your —” He was having trouble thinking of the word, so he pointed at his chest.

  “He wants to know how Sunny and the toys and me turned out like we did. How come the farmer’s toys are more human than all those men.”

  Sobrino nodded.

  “Hell, even I don’t know,” said Dot. “He sings over us, then goes inside. He don’t even use fertilizer.”

  Sobrino squinted at the fire and ran a dirty thumb and forefinger over his goatee. He seemed to have expressions for situations Sunny and Dot hadn’t even lived through. He might have been an emotional giant as well, with feelings drawn out so long they twisted up into cords and soaked in sad and joyful brine till they’d smoothed and hardened at the same time.

  “Sony is scared, yeah. A showdown is coming for the chacho. Scared he is not man enough, so he waits. Maybe he becomes a man tomorrow. Then he can fight.” Sobrino made a gun with his long index finger and shot.

  The farmer’s daughter looked into the dying fire and remembered Sunny’s flinch at the Growin’ Man’s lighter. All Sunny knew about being a man was what he’d learned watching a bull run headfirst into a red barn. He still thought the highest law was to leave everybody well enough alone. “He don’t stand a chance,” said Dot, and got up. “I know it’s his job now, or he’s taken it on himself, but jeez, he ain’t got a fool’s shot at doin’ it right.”

  Sobrino nodded. “Too scared,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Dot, “or too young or there’s too many of ’em. Too somethin’.”

  She left the pitcher for Sobrino, wiped the dirt from her jeans, and climbed over the split-rail fence, back toward the house. As she crossed the hundred-yard pasture, she heard a rustling sound out on the periphery. If one of them pieces of chattel approached her, she’d tear it apart.

  Sunny hunkered down in the tall grass of the pasture, trying to keep out of her sight till she walked past where he’d been watching from. He felt a new kind of ache, worse even than being hung by a rope. Dot had never been a friend to him. He headed back around the pasture the long way, over the hill, and behind the house.

  The babies in the rows were all asleep. It seemed even the grown men had shame enough to leave them be. Sunny avoided the thought that the rows were exactly the Growin’ Man’s purpose and that he’d be coming for them soon enough. The plant men had squatted in the chicken coop way back behind the barn, walked down past the dirt road into the sapling orchard, and even crawled around the barn a little. But none of them had approached the farmhouse, the vegetable garden, or the rows. Not just yet. Sunny couldn’t turn a blind eye to that.

  He stood over the rows for the rest of the night, only failing his guard at the early dawn when he fell asleep. He woke up only in time to catch the farmer’s last shadow pass by. “Wait!” shouted Sunny, but the farmer couldn’t hear him. The farmhouse’s screen door was already shut.

  In the morning, Sunny didn’t find any new toys broken by the Growin’ Man’s gang. He left Dot alone to her work in the vegetable garden. Boy counted all the toys and fit them onto the congested porch. So much of the farm had been battened down that soon it’d be a regular war machine. Soon there’d be no reason to avoid a fight — even one that everybody thought they’d lose.

  By midafternoon Sunny had finished his chores. He walked to the barn and opened the doors of the main bay wide. He let Pup chase the chickens in circles out front, to run their spools down for the day. Ever since they’d shuttered up the barn, it had dampened like a sweaty bandage. The homunculus that had been caught by the trap left behind the smell of moldy pumpkins.

  The first sunlight that swept into the barn lifted a cloud of fibers, flax, and dust. It swirled out of the bay doors and let in sweet air you couldn’t see.

  A whispering sound seemed to crawl into Sunny’s ears from above in the attic. Maybe the toy grave was rattling to demand the remains of the sheep, which were still scattered at the foot of the rancher’s lean-to for all anyone knew. Or maybe it was nothing, just a draft between the floorboards. Sunny didn’t pay it any attention.

  Sunny didn’t have any chores left but to go fight a man. Instead, he picked up a few loose planks of wood in the main bay and began a new bookshelf. The sun set once again.

  Sunny had been a hanged man — or an effigy of one, anyhow — and no stranger to suffocating. He missed the feeling of dangling alone from a broken neck and the feeling that nobody knew his troubles, nobody could ever quite understand. But now, for all its isolation, for all the miles between town and the farm, Sunny couldn’t think of a single place to be alone. The farm felt more like a day care sometimes, with so many feeble hearts to care for — a man would nearly drown in stuff and people to have relationships with.

  Being on display for being lonely was what Sunny liked so much about the job of a sheriff. The point was having society and then choosing to reject it — but not running off so fast it couldn’t chase after.

  In short, when he considered what a man ought to be, Sunny thought of a lone gunman of the law. And when he thought of a woman, he thought of Dot.

  “But you never know what to do, ’cause farmer no tell you nothing, eh?” said Sobrino.

  Sunny turned around from the shelf he had been staining. Sobrino stood in the barn door, prodding the baby sheep he’d found the day before with his foot so it would amble inside.

  “Old man, you didn’t read my thoughts,” Sunny said as he dunked the rag in the wood stain and dragged it across a shelf. “Don’t pretend you read my thoughts.”

  The old magician put his hands up in surrender but made the eh-eh-eh sound like he was impressed with himself all the same. The stain pooled in places where Sunny had pushed too hard on the soaked rag, like the dark splotches of sun pocks on Sobrino’s hands.

  Sunny worked up a mean thing to say for when the giant made fun of the bookshelves again. B
ut nothing came. Sunny glanced over. Sobrino had tied up the sheep and grabbed a cloth from the bench. He was staining the tops of the bookshelves where Sunny couldn’t reach. He mouthed the word majeek.

  It occurred to Sunny that if he’d stained the wood before constructing the shelves, he wouldn’t need a stilt performer to reach the tops. He thought of Sobrino helping him a few days back, probably biting his tongue to keep from saying the same thing. “Whatever,” said Sunny.

  “¿Que, chacho?” said Sobrino, gliding the moist cloth over the shelf in even strokes.

  “Nuthin’, shut up.”

  “I no say nothing.”

  “Whatever. I ain’t yer chacho.”

  “Wokay,” said Sobrino. After a minute Sunny hurled the soppy rag across the barn and hit the grazing sheep square in the side of the head. It made a delayed baying sound and fell over. A brown splatter stained its cotton wool.

  “Aw, hell,” Sunny said. Wood stain dripped from every shelf. “Why didn’t you tell me to stain the planks before nailing ’em together?”

  Sobrino didn’t turn around from his work, but Sunny could tell he was grinning, just by the way his head bobbed. Sunny couldn’t say anything or he’d look stupid. He couldn’t just ask if Sobrino and Dot were having lots of secret meetings and talking behind his back. It’d seem like he didn’t know already.

  Pup heard something outside and stopped chasing the hens. He bolted through the bay doors to meet what was coming. Sunny whipped around. He twitched at the wrists, and two darts dropped in between his fingers. Pup came running back into the barn, then ricocheted out again. The farmer’s daughter walked in a moment later with Pup ahead of her and Boy following behind. Sunny quickly returned the darts to his sleeve.