Online Flip Book / Download   Back to our Information Page

Edward (Skip) Skipperton spent most of his life in a thunderous rage. It was his nature. He had been full of temper as a boy, and as a man impatient with people’s slowness or stupidity or inefficiency. Now Skipperton was fifty-two. His wife had left him two years ago, unable to stand his tantrums any longer. She had met a most tranquil university professor from Boston, had divorced Skipperton on the grounds of incompatibility, and married the professor. Skipperton had been determined to get custody of their daughter, Margaret, then fifteen, and with clever lawyers and on the grounds that his wife had deserted him for another man, Skipperton had succeeded. A few months after the divorce, Skipperton had a heart attack, a real stroke with hemi-paralysis from which he miraculously recovered in six months, but his doctors gave him warning.

“Skip, it’s life or death. You quit smoking and drinking and right now, or you’re a dead man before your next birthday.” That was from his heart specialist.

“You owe it to Margaret,” said his GP. “You ought to retire, Skip. You’ve plenty of money. You’re in the wrong profession for your nature—granted you’ve made a success of it. But what’s left of your life is more important, isn’t it? Why not become a gentleman farmer, something like that?”

Skipperton was a management adviser. Behind the scenes of big business, Skipperton was well known. He worked free-lance. Companies on the brink sent for him to reorganize, reform, throw out—anything Skip advised went. “I go in and kick the ass off ’em!” was the inelegant way Skip described his work when he was interviewed, which was not often, because he preferred a ghostly role.

Skipperton bought Coldstream Heights in Maine, a seven-acre farm with a modernized farmhouse, and hired a local man called Andy Humbert to live and work on the place. Skipperton also bought some of the machinery the former owner had to sell, but not all of it, because he didn’t want to turn himself into a full-time farmer. The doctors had recommended a little exercise and no strain of any kind. They had known that Skip wouldn’t and couldn’t at once cut all his connections with the businesses he had helped in the past. He might have to make an occasional trip to Chicago or Dallas, but he was officially retired.

Margaret was transferred from her private school in New York to a Swiss boarding school. Skipperton knew and liked Switzerland, and had bank accounts there.

Skipperton did stop drinking and smoking. His doctors were amazed at his willpower—and yet it was just like Skip to stop overnight, like a soldier. Now Skip chewed his pipes, and went through a stem in a week. He went through two lower teeth, but got them capped in steel in Bangor. Skipperton and Andy kept a couple of goats to crop the grass, and one sow who was pregnant when Skip bought her, and who now had twelve piglets. Margaret wrote filial letters saying she liked Switzerland and that her French was improving no end. Skipperton now wore flannel shirts with no tie, low boots that laced, and woodsmen’s jackets. His appetite had improved, and he had to admit he felt better.

The only thorn in his side—and Skipperton had to have one to feel normal—was the man who owned some adjacent land, one Peter Frosby, who wouldn’t sell a stretch Skipperton offered to buy at three times the normal price. This land sloped down to a little river called the Coldstream, which in fact separated part of Skipperton’s property from Frosby’s to the north, and Skipperton didn’t mind that. He was interested in the part of the river nearest him and in view from Coldstream Heights. Skipperton wanted to be able to fish a little, to be able to say he owned that part of the landscape and had riparian rights. But old Frosby didn’t want anybody fishing in his stream, Skipperton had been told by the agents, even though Frosby’s house was upstream and out of sight of Skipperton’s.

The week after Peter Frosby’s rejection, Skipperton invited Frosby to his house. “Just to get acquainted—as neighbors,” Skipperton said on the telephone to Frosby. By now Skipperton had been living at Coldstream Heights for four months.

Skipperton had his best whiskey and brandy, cigars and cigarettes—all the things he couldn’t enjoy himself—on hand when Frosby arrived in a dusty but new Cadillac, driven by a young man whom Frosby introduced as his son, Peter.

“The Frosbys don’t sell their land,” Frosby told Skipperton. “We’ve had the same land for nearly three hundred years, and the river’s always been ours.” Frosby, a skinny but strong-looking man with cold gray eyes puffed his cigar daintily and after ten minutes hadn’t finished his first whiskey. “Can’t see why you want it.”

“A little fishing,” Skipperton said, putting on a pleasant smile. “It’s in view of my house. Just to be able to wade, maybe, in the summer.” Skipperton looked at Peter Junior, who sat with folded arms beside and behind his father. Skipperton was backed only by shambly Andy, a good enough handyman, but not part of his dynasty. Skipperton would have given anything (except his life) to have been holding a straight whiskey in one hand and a good cigar in the other. “Well, I’m sorry,” Skipperton said finally. “But I think you’ll agree the price I offer isn’t bad—twenty thousand cash for about two hundred yards of riparian rights. Doubt if you’ll get it again—in your lifetime.”

“Not interested in my lifetime,” Frosby said with a faint smile. “I’ve got a son here.”

The son was a handsome boy with dark hair and sturdy shoulders, taller than his father. His arms were still folded across his chest, as if to illustrate his father’s negative attitude. He had unbent only briefly to light a cigarette which he had soon put out. Still, Peter Junior smiled as he and his father were leaving, and said:

“Nice job you’ve done with the Heights, Mr. Skipperton. Looks better than it did before.”

“Thank you,” Skip said, pleased. He had installed good leather-upholstered furniture, heavy floor-length curtains, and brass firedogs and tongs for the fireplace.

“Nice old-fashioned touches,” Frosby commented in what seemed to Skipperton a balance between compliment and sneer. “We haven’t seen a scarecrow around here in maybe—almost before my time, I think.”

“I like old-fashioned things—like fishing,” Skipperton said. “I’m trying to grow corn out there. Somebody told me the land was all right for corn. That’s where a scarecrow belongs, isn’t it? In a cornfield?” He put on as friendly a manner as he could, but his blood was boiling. A mule-stubborn Maine man, Frosby, sitting on several hundred acres that his more forceful ancestors had acquired for him.

Frosby Junior was peering at a photograph of Maggie, which stood in a silver frame on the hall table. She had been only thirteen or fourteen when the picture had been taken, but her slender face framed in long dark hair showed the clean-cut nose and brows, the subtle smile that would turn her into a beauty one day. Maggie was nearly eighteen now, and Skip’s expectations were being confirmed.

“Pretty girl,” said Frosby Junior, turning towards Skipperton, then glancing at his father, because they were all lingering in the hall.

Skipperton said nothing. The meeting had been a failure. Skipperton wasn’t used to failures. He looked into Frosby’s greenish-gray eyes and said, “I’ve one more idea. Suppose we make an arrangement that I rent the land for the duration of my life, and then it goes to you—or your son. I’ll give you five thousand a year. Want to think it over?”

Frosby put on another frosty smile. “I think not, Mr. Skipperton. Thanks anyway.”

“You might talk to your lawyer about it. No rush on my part.”

Frosby now chuckled. “We know as much about law as the lawyers here. We know our boundaries anyway. Nice to meet you, Mr. Skipperton. Thank you for the whiskey and—good-bye.”

No one shook hands. The Cadillac moved off.

“Damn the bastard,” Skipperton muttered to Andy, but he smiled. Life was a game, after all. You won sometimes, you lost sometimes.

It was early May. The corn was in, and Skipperton had spotted three or four strong green shoots coming through the beige, well-turned earth. That pleased him, made him think of American Indians, the ancient Mayans. Corn! And he had a classic scarecrow that he and Andy had knocked together a couple of weeks ago. They had dressed the crossbars in an old jacket, and the two sticks—nailed to the upright—in brown trousers. Skip had found the old clothes in the attic. A straw hat jammed onto the top and secured with a nail completed the picture.

Skip went off to San Francisco for a five-day operation on an aeronautics firm which was crippled by a lawsuit, scared to death by unions and contract pull-outs. Skip left them with more redundancies, three vice-presidents fired, but he left them in better shape, and collected fifty thousand for his work.

By way of celebrating his achievement and the oncoming summer that would bring Maggie, Skip shot one of Frosby’s hunting dogs which had swum the stream onto his property to retrieve a bird. Skipperton had been waiting patiently at his bedroom window upstairs, knowing a shoot was on from the sound of guns. Skip had his binoculars and a rifle of goodly range. Let Frosby complain! Trespassing was trespassing.

Skip was almost pleased when Frosby took him to court over the dog. Andy had buried the dog, on Skipperton’s orders, but Skipperton readily admitted the shooting. And the judge ruled in Skipperton’s favor.

Frosby went pale with anger. “It may be the law but it’s not human. It’s not fair.”

And a lot of good it did Frosby to say that!

Skipperton’s corn grew high as the scarecrow’s hips, and higher. Skip spent a lot of time up in his bedroom, binoculars and loaded rifle at hand, in case anything else belonging to Frosby showed itself on his land.

“Don’t hit me,” Andy said with an uneasy laugh. “You’re shooting on the edge of the cornfield there, and now and then I weed it, y’know.”

“You think there’s something wrong with my eyesight?” Skip replied.

A few days later Skip proved there was nothing wrong with his eyesight, when he plugged a gray cat stalking a bird or a mouse in the high grass this side of the stream. Skip did it with one shot. He wasn’t even sure the cat belonged to Frosby.

This shot produced a call in person from Frosby Junior the following day.

“It’s just to ask a question, Mr. Skipperton. My father and I heard a shot yesterday, and last night one of our cats didn’t come back at night to eat, and not this morning either. Do you know anything about that?” Frosby Junior had declined to take a seat.

“I shot the cat. It was on my property,” Skipperton said calmly.

“But the cat—What harm was the cat doing?” The young man looked steadily at Skipperton.

“The law is the law. Property is property.”

Frosby Junior shook his head. “You’re a hard man, Mr. Skipperton.” Then he departed.

Peter Frosby served a summons again, and the same judge ruled that in accordance with old English law and also American law, a cat was a rover by nature, not subject to constraint as was a dog. He gave Skipperton the maximum fine of one hundred dollars, and a warning not to use his rifle so freely in future.

That annoyed Skipperton, though of course he could and did laugh at the smallness of the fine. If he could think of something else annoying, something really telling, old Frosby might relent and at least lease some of the stream, Skip thought.

But he forgot the feud when Margaret came. Skip fetched her at the airport in New York, and they drove up to Maine. She looked taller to Skip, more filled out, and there were roses in her cheeks. She was a beauty, all right!

“Got a surprise for you at home,” Skip said.

“Um-m—a horse maybe? I told you I learned to jump this year, didn’t I?”

Had she? Skip said, “Yes. Not a horse, no.”

Skip’s surprise was a red Toyota convertible. He had remembered at least that Maggie’s school had taught her to drive. She was thrilled, and flung her arms around Skip’s neck.

“You’re a darling, Daddy! And you know, you’re looking very fell!”

Margaret had been to Coldstream Heights for two weeks at Easter, but now the place looked more cared for. She and Skip had arrived around midnight, but Andy was still up watching television in his own little house on the grounds, and Maggie insisted on going over to greet him. Skip was gratified to see Andy’s eyes widen at the sight of her.

Skip and Maggie tried the new car out the next day. They drove to a town some twenty miles away and had lunch. That afternoon, back at the house, Maggie asked if her father had a fishing rod, just a simple one, so she could try the stream. Skip of course had all kinds of rods, but he had to tell her she couldn’t, and he explained why, and explained that he had even tried to rent part of the stream.

“Frosby’s a real s.o.b.,” Skip said. “Won’t give an inch.”

“Well, never mind, Daddy. There’s lots else to do.”

Maggie was the kind of girl who enjoyed taking walks, reading or fussing around in the house rearranging little things so that they looked prettier. She did these things while Skip was on the telephone sometimes for an hour or so with Dallas or Detroit.

Skipperton was a bit surprised one day when Maggie arrived in her Toyota around 7 P.M. with a catch of three trout on a string. She was barefoot, and the cuffs of her blue dungarees were damp. “Where’d you get those?” Skip asked, his first thought being that she’d taken one of his rods and fished the stream against his instructions.

“I met the boy who lives there,” Maggie said. “We were both buying gas, and he introduced himself—said he’d seen my photograph in your house. Then we had a coffee in the diner there by the gas station—”

“The Frosby boy?”

“Yes. He’s awfully nice, Daddy. Maybe it’s only the father who’s not nice. Anyway Pete said, ‘Come on and fish with me this afternoon,’ so I did. He said his father stocks the river farther up.”

“I don’t—Frankly, Maggie, I don’t want you associating with the Frosbys!”

“There’s only two.” Maggie was puzzled. “I barely met his father. They’ve got quite a nice house, Daddy.”

“I’ve had unpleasant dealings with old Frosby, I told you, Maggie. It just isn’t fitting if you get chummy with the son. Do me this one favor this summer, Maggie doll.” That was his name for her in the moments he wanted to feel close to her, wanted her to feel close to him.

The very next day, Maggie was gone from the house for nearly three hours, and Skip noticed it. She had said she wanted to go to the village to buy sneakers, and she was wearing the sneakers when she came home, but Skip wondered why it had taken her three hours to make a five-mile trip. With enormous effort, Skip refrained from asking a question. Then Saturday morning, Maggie said there was a dance in Keensport, and she was going.

“And I have a suspicion who you’re going with,” Skip said, his heart beginning to thump with adrenaline.

“I’m going alone, I swear it, Daddy. Girls don’t have to be escorted any more. I could go in blue jeans, but I’m not. I’ve got some white slacks.”

Skipperton realized that he could hardly forbid her to go to a dance. But he damn well knew the Frosby boy would be there, and would probably meet Maggie at the entrance. “I’ll be glad when you go back to Switzerland.”

Skip knew what was going to happen. He could see it a mile away. His daughter was “infatuated,” and he could only hope that she got over it, that nothing happened before she had to go back to school (another whole month), because he didn’t want to keep her prisoner in the house. He didn’t want to look absurd in his own eyes, even in simpleminded Andy’s eyes, by laying down the law to her.

Maggie got home evidently very late that night, and so quietly Skip hadn’t wakened, though he had stayed up till 2 A.M. and meant to listen for her. At breakfast, Maggie looked fresh and radiant, rather to Skip’s surprise.

“I suppose the Frosby boy was at the dance last night?”

Maggie, diving into bacon and eggs, said, “I don’t know what you’ve got against him, Daddy—just because his father didn’t want to sell land that’s been in their family for ages!”

“I don’t want you to fall in love with a country bumpkin! I’ve sent you to a good school. You’ve got background—or at least I intend to give you some!”

“Did you know Pete had three years at Harvard—and he’s taking a correspondence course in electronic engineering?”

“Oh! I suppose he’s learning computer programming? Easier than shorthand!”

Maggie stood up. “I’ll be eighteen in another month, Daddy. I don’t want to be told whom I can see and can’t see.”

Skip got up too and roared at her. “They’re not my kind of people or yours!”

Maggie left the room.

In the next days, Skipperton fumed and went through two or three pipe stems. Andy noticed his unease, Skipperton knew, but Andy made no comment. Andy spent his nonworking hours alone, watching drivel on his television. Skip was rehearsing a speech to Maggie as he paced his land, glancing at the sow and piglets, at Andy’s neat kitchen-garden, not seeing anything. Skip was groping for a lever, the kind of weapon he had always been able to find in business affairs that would force things his way. He couldn’t send Maggie back to Switzerland, even though her school stayed open in summer for girls whose home was too far away to go back to. If he threatened not to send her back to school, he was afraid Maggie wouldn’t mind. Skipperton maintained an apartment in New York, and had two servants who slept in, but he knew Maggie wouldn’t agree to go there, and Skip didn’t want to go to New York either. He was too interested in the immediate scene in which he sensed a battle coming.

Skipperton had arrived at nothing by the following Saturday, a week after the Keensport dance, and he was exhausted. That Saturday evening, Maggie said she was going to a party at the house of someone called Wilmers, whom she had met at the dance. Skip asked her for the address, and Maggie scribbled it on the hall telephone pad. Skip had reason to have asked for it, because by Sunday morning Maggie hadn’t come home. Skip was up at seven, nervous as a cat and in a rage still at 9 A.M., which he thought a polite enough hour to telephone on Sunday morning, though it had cost him much to wait that long.

An adolescent boy’s voice said that Maggie had been there, yes, but she had left pretty early.

“Was she alone?”

“No, she was with Pete Frosby.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said Skip, feeling the blood rush to his face as if he were hemorrhaging. “Oh! Wait! Do you know where they went?”

“Sure don’t.”

“My daughter went in her car?”

“No, Pete’s. Maggie’s car’s still here.”

Skip thanked the boy and put the phone down shakily, but he was shaking only from energy that was surging through every nerve and muscle. He picked up the telephone and dialed the Frosby home.

Old Frosby answered.

Skipperton identified himself, and asked if his daughter was possibly there?

“No, she’s not, Mr. Skipperton.”

“Is your son there? I’d like—”

“No, he doesn’t happen to be in just now.”

“What do you mean? He was there and went out?”

“Mr. Skipperton, my son has his own ways, his own room, his own key—his own life. I’m not about—”

Skipperton put the telephone down suddenly. He had a bad nosebleed, and it was dripping onto the table edge. He ran to get a wet towel.

Maggie was not home by Sunday evening or Monday morning, and Skipperton was reluctant to notify the police, appalled by the thought that her name might be linked with the Frosbys’, if the police found her with the son somewhere. Tuesday morning, Skip was enlightened. He had a letter from Maggie, written from Boston. It said that she and Pete had run away to be married, and to avoid “unpleasant scenes.”

. . . Though you may think this is sudden, we do love each other and are sure of it. I did not really want to go back to school, Daddy. I will be in touch in about a week. Please don’t try to find me. I have seen Mommie, but we are not staying with her. I was sorry to leave my nice new car, but the car is all right.
Love always,
Maggie

For two days Skipperton didn’t go out of the house, and hardly ate. He felt three-quarters dead. Andy was very worried about him, and finally persuaded Skipperton to ride to the village with him, because they needed to buy a few things. Skipperton went, sitting like an upright corpse in the passenger seat.

While Andy went to the drugstore and the butcher’s, Skipperton sat in the car, his eyes glazed with his own thoughts. Then an approaching figure on the sidewalk made Skipperton’s eyes focus. Old Frosby! Frosby walked with a springy tread for his age, Skip thought. He wore a new tweed suit, black felt hat, and he had a cigar in his hand. Skipperton hoped Frosby wouldn’t see him in the car, but Frosby did.

Frosby didn’t pause in his stride, just smiled his obnoxious, thin-lipped little smile and nodded briefly, as if to say—

Well, Skip knew what Frosby might have wanted to say, what he had said with that filthy smile. Skip’s blood seethed, and Skip began to feel like his old self again. He was standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets and feet apart, when Andy reappeared.

“What’s for dinner tonight, Andy? I’ve got an appetite!”

That evening, Skipperton persuaded Andy to take not only Saturday night off, but to stay overnight somewhere, if he wished. “Give you a couple of hundred bucks for a little spree, boy. You’ve earned it.” Skip forced three hundred dollar bills into Andy’s hand. “Take off Monday too, if you feel like it. I’ll manage.”

Andy left Saturday evening in the pick-up for Bangor.

Skip then telephoned old Frosby. Frosby answered, and Skipperton said, “Mr. Frosby, it’s time we made a truce, under the circumstances. Don’t you think so?”

Frosby sounded surprised, but he agreed to come Sunday morning around eleven for a talk. Frosby arrived in the same Cadillac, alone.

And Skipperton wasted no time. He let Frosby knock, opened the door for him, and as soon as Frosby was inside, Skip came down on his head with a rifle butt. He dragged Frosby to the hall to make sure the job was finished: the hall was uncarpeted, and Skip wanted no blood on the rugs. Vengeance was sweet to Skip, and he almost smiled. He removed Frosby’s clothes, and wrapped his body in three or four burlap sacks which he had ready. Then he burnt Frosby’s clothing in the fireplace, where he had a small fire already crackling. Frosby’s wristwatch and wallet and two rings Skip put aside in a drawer to deal with later.

He had decided that broad daylight was the best time to carry out his idea, better than night when an oddly playing flashlight that he would have had to use might have caught someone’s eye. So Skip put one arm around Frosby’s body and dragged him up the field towards his scarecrow. It was a haul of more than half a mile. Skip had some rope and a knife in his back pockets. He cut down the old scarecrow, cut the strings that held the clothing to the cross, dressed Frosby in the old trousers and jacket, tied a burlap bag around his head and face, and jammed the hat on him. The hat wouldn’t stay without being tied on, so Skip did this after punching holes in the brim of the hat with his knife point. Then Skip picked up his burlap bags and made his way back towards his house down the slope with many a backward look to admire his work, and many a smile. The scarecrow looked almost the same as before. He had solved a problem a lot of people thought difficult: what to do with the body. Furthermore, he could enjoy looking at it through his binoculars from his upstairs window.

Skip burnt the burlap bags in his fireplace, made sure that even the shoe soles had burnt to soft ash. When the ashes were cooler, he’d look for buttons and the belt buckle and remove them. He took a fork, went out beyond the pig run and buried the wallet (whose papers he had already burnt), the wristwatch and the rings about three feet deep. It was in a patch of stringy grass, unused for anything except the goats, not a place in which anyone would ever likely do any gardening.

Then Skip washed his face and hands, ate a thick slice of roast beef, and put his mind to the car. It was by now half past twelve. Skip didn’t know if Frosby had a servant, someone expecting him for lunch or not, but it was safer to assume he had. Skip’s aversion to Frosby had kept him from asking Maggie any questions about his household. Skip got into Frosby’s car, now with a kitchen towel in his back pocket to wipe off fingerprints, and drove to some woods he knew from having driven past them many times. An unpaved lane went off the main road into these woods, and into this Skip turned. Thank God, nobody in sight, not a woodsman, not a picnicker. Skip stopped the car and got out, wiped the steering wheel, even the keys, the door, then walked back towards the road.

He was more than an hour getting home. He had found a long stick, the kind called a stave by the wayfarers of old, Skip thought, and he trudged along with the air of a nature-lover, a bird-watcher, for the benefit of the people in the few cars that passed him. He didn’t glance at any of the cars. It was still Sunday dinnertime.

The local police telephoned that evening around seven, and asked if they could come by. Skipperton said of course.

He had removed the buttons and buckle from the fireplace ashes. A woman had telephoned around 1:30, saying she was calling from the Frosby residence (Skip assumed she was a servant) to ask if Mr. Frosby was there. Skipperton told her that Mr. Frosby had left his house a little after noon.

“Mr. Frosby intended to go straight home, do you think?” the plump policeman asked Skipperton. The policeman had some rank like sergeant, Skipperton supposed, and he was accompanied by a younger policeman.

“He didn’t say anything about where he was going,” Skipperton replied. “And I didn’t notice which way his car went.”

The policeman nodded, and Skip could see he was on the brink of saying something like, “I understand from Mr. Frosby’s housekeeper that you and he weren’t on the best of terms,” but the cop didn’t say anything, just looked around Skip’s living room, glanced around his front and back yards in a puzzled way, then both policemen took their leave.

Skip was awakened around midnight by the ring of the telephone at his bedside. It was Maggie calling from Boston. She and Pete had heard about the disappearance of Pete’s father.

“Daddy, they said he’d just been to see you this morning. What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I invited him for a friendly talk—and it was friendly. After all we’re fathers-in-law now . . . Honey, how do I know where he went?”

Skipperton found it surprisingly easy to lie about Frosby. In a primitive way his emotions had judged, weighed the situation, and told Skip that he was right, that he had exacted a just revenge. Old Frosby might have exerted some control over his son, and he hadn’t. It had cost Skip his daughter—because that was the way Skip saw it, Maggie was lost to him. He saw her as a provincial-to-be, mother-to-be of children whose narrow-mindedness, inherited from the Frosby clan, would surely out.

Andy arrived next morning, Monday. He had already heard the story in the village, and also the police had found Mr. Frosby’s car not far away in the woods, Andy said. Skip feigned mild surprise on hearing of the car. Andy didn’t ask any questions. And suppose he discovered the scarecrow? Skip thought a little money would keep Andy quiet. The corn was all picked up there, only a few inferior ears remained, destined for the pigs. Skipperton picked them himself Monday afternoon, while Andy tended the pigs and goats.

Skipperton’s pleasure now was to survey the cornfield from his upstairs bedroom with his 10¥ binoculars. He loved to see the wind tossing the cornstalk tops around old Frosby’s corpse, loved to think of him, shrinking, drying up like a mummy in the wind. Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind, as a Nixon aide used to put it about the president’s enemies. Frosby wasn’t twisting, but he was hanging, in plain view. No buzzards came. Skip had been a little afraid of buzzards. The only thing that bothered him, once, was seeing one afternoon some schoolboys walking along a road far to the right (under which road the Coldstream flowed), and pointing to the scarecrow. Bracing himself against the window jamb, arms held tightly at his sides so the binoculars would be as steady as possible, Skip saw a couple of the small boys laughing. And had one held his nose? Surely not! They were nearly a mile away from the scarecrow! Still, they had paused, one boy stamped his foot, another shook his head and laughed.

How Skip wished he could hear what they were saying! Ten days had passed since Frosby’s death. Rumors were rife, that old Frosby had been murdered for his money by someone he’d picked up to give a lift to, that he had been kidnapped and that a ransom note might still arrive. But suppose one of the schoolkids said to his father—or anyone—that maybe the dead body of Frosby was inside the scarecrow? This was just the kind of thing Skip might have thought of when he had been a small boy. Skip was consequently more afraid of the schoolkids than of the police.

And the police did come back, with a plainclothes detective. They looked over Skipperton’s house and land—maybe looking for a recently dug patch, Skip thought. If so, they found none. They looked at Skip’s two rifles and took their caliber and serial numbers.

“Just routine, Mr. Skipperton,” said the detective.

“I understand,” said Skip.

That same evening Maggie telephoned and said she was at the Frosby house, and could she come over to see him?

“Why not? This is your house!” Skip replied.

“I never know what kind of mood you’ll be in—or temper,” Maggie said when she arrived.

“I’m in a pretty good mood, I think,” Skipperton said. “And I hope you’re happy, Maggie—since what’s done is done.”

Maggie was in her blue dungarees, sneakers, a familiar sweater. It was hard for Skip to realize that she was married. She sat with hands folded, looking down at the floor. Then she raised her eyes to him and said:

“Pete’s very upset. We never would have stayed a week in Boston unless he’d been sure the police were doing all they could here. Was Mr. Frosby—depressed? Pete didn’t think so.”

Skip laughed. “No! Best of spirits. Pleased with the marriage and all that.” Skip waited, but Maggie was silent. “You’re going to live at the Frosby place?”

“Yes.” Maggie stood up. “I’d like to collect a few things, Daddy. I brought a suitcase.”

His daughter’s coolness, her sadness, pained Skip. She had said something about visiting him often, not about his coming to see them—not that Skip would have gone.

“I KNOW WHAT’S in that scarecrow,” said Andy one day, and Skip turned, binoculars in hand, to see Andy standing in the doorway of his bedroom.

“Do you?—And what’re you going to do about it?” Skip asked, braced for anything. He had squared his shoulders.

“Nothin’. Nothin’,” Andy replied with a smile.

Skip didn’t know how to take that. “I suppose you’d like some money, Andy? A little present—for keeping quiet?”

“No, sir,” Andy said quietly, shaking his head. His wind-wrinkled face bore a faint smile. “I ain’t that kind.”

What was Skip to make of it? He was used to men who liked money, more and more of it. Andy was different, that was true. Well, so much the better, if he didn’t want money, Skip thought. It was cheaper. He also felt he could trust Andy. It was strange.

The leaves began to fall in earnest. Halloween was coming, and Andy removed the driveway gate in advance, just lifted it off its hinges, telling Skip that the kids would steal it if they didn’t. Andy knew the district. The kids didn’t do much harm, but it was trick or treat at every house. Skip and Andy made sure they had lots of nickels and quarters on hand, corn candy, licorice sticks, even a couple of pumpkins in the window, faces cut in them by Andy, to show any comers that they were in the right spirit. Then on Halloween night, nobody knocked on Skip’s door. There was a party at Coldstream, at the Frosbys’, Skip knew because the wind was blowing his way and he could hear the music. He thought of his daughter dancing, having a good time. Maybe people were wearing masks, crazy costumes. There’d be pumpkin pie with whipped cream, guessing games, maybe a treasure hunt. Skip was lonely, for the first time in his life. Lonely. He badly wanted a scotch, but decided to keep his oath to himself, and having decided this, asked himself why? He put his hands flat down on his dresser top and gazed at his own face in the mirror. He saw creases running from the flanges of his nose down beside his mouth, wrinkles under his eyes. He tried to smile, and the smile looked phony. He turned away from the mirror.

At that instant, a spot of light caught his eyes. It was out the window, in the upward sloping field. A procession—so it seemed, maybe eight or ten figures—was walking up his field with flashlights or torches or both. Skip opened the window slightly. He was rigid with rage, and fear. They were on his land! They had no right! And they were kids, he realized. Even in the darkness, he could see by the procession’s own torches that the figures were a lot shorter than adults’ figures would be.

Skip whirled around, about to shout for Andy, and at once decided that he had better not. He ran downstairs and grabbed his own powerful flashlight. He didn’t bother grabbing his jacket from a hook, though the night was crisp.

“Hey!” Skip yelled, when he had run several yards into the field. “Get off my property! What’re you doing walking up there!”

The kids were singing some crazy, high-pitched song, nobody singing on key. It was just a wild treble chant. Skip recognized the word “scarecrow.”

“We’re going to burn the scarecrow . . .” something like that.

“Hey, there! Off my land!” Skip fell, banged a knee, and scrambled up again. The kids had heard him, Skip was pretty sure, but they weren’t stopping. Never before had anyone disobeyed Skip—except of course Maggie. “Off my land!”

The kids moved on like a black caterpillar with an orange headlight and a couple of other lights in its body. Certainly the last couple of kids had heard Skip, because he had seen them turn, then run to catch up with the others. Skip stopped running. The caterpillar was closer to the scarecrow than he was, and he was not going to be able to get there first.

Even as he thought this, a whoop went up. A scream! Another scream of mingled terror and delight shattered their chant. Hysteria broke out. What surely was a little girl’s throat gave a cry as shrill as a dog whistle. Their hands must have touched the corpse, maybe touched bone, Skip thought.

Skip made his way back towards his own house, his flashlight pointed at the ground. It was worse than the police, somehow. Every kid was going to tell his parents what he had found. Skip knew he had come to the end. He had seen businessmen, seen a lot of men come to the end. He had known men who had jumped out of windows, who had taken overdoses.

Skip went at once to his rifle. It was in the living room downstairs. He put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

When the kids streaked down the field, heading for the road a few seconds later, Skip was dead. The kids had heard the shot, and thought someone was trying to shoot at them.

Andy heard the shot. He had also seen the procession marching up the field and heard Skipperton shouting. He understood what had happened. He turned his television set off, and made his way rather slowly towards the main house. He would have to call the police. That was the right thing to do. Andy made up his mind to say to the police that he didn’t know a thing about the corpse in the scarecrow’s clothes. He had been away some of that weekend after all.