Straw House

by Daniel Nayeri

  “How do you know?” said Sobrino, struggling with a peg broken off in its socket.

  “Used to be a gallows dummy. What they call an effigy. They’d hang me to make sure the knot’s right and the lever’s workin’.”

  Sobrino poked a nail into the socket to pry the peg loose. He said, “You live ’cause the farmer took you?”

  “And ’cause straw don’t choke, no matter how hard you string it up.”

  The peg unwedged, and Sobrino stood up. He put both his hands on Sunny’s shoulders. “See, chacho,” he said. “I am tall, and you can breathe. And this”— he showed the broken peg. “This —”

  Sunny interrupted him. “I know, majeek, majeek. It all came to rights.”

  Sobrino squeezed Sunny’s shoulders to get him to look up.

  “No,” he said. “This is broken forever. It’s dead.”

  Sobrino tossed the broken peg over his shoulder. Three hens rushed to peck at it, soon as it landed, and ended up crunching each other’s beaks.

  Across the barn, Boy kicked his legs in indiscriminate joy, then lost balance, fell backward off the crossbeam, and crashed to the straw floor of the stall. There was a pause, a settling of dust — then a squealed wheee!

  NIGHT WAS ALL around them. The farmer’s daughter played a somber tune on a rainbow xylophone that chimed like a funeral in a tiny cathedral. She sat on the porch in the rocking chair next to Sunny. Many of the toys had gathered in the yard, looking up at the two of them on the porch, maybe waiting for some kind of eulogy that wasn’t coming. The light of a dozen glow-in-the-dark blobs set on the railing cast a radioactive tint on the assembly. A light-up peg board sat on a stool with the words “4ever in r hearts” arranged in a multicolor pattern.

  Sunny held a red clock-face toy with a big arrow in the middle pointing at pictures of farm animals. He pulled the handle. “The chickens say: cluck cluck cluck!”

  A couple hens burst into wailing clucks. The arrow spun around on the clock face. Sunny looked stupefied with exhaustion, but it made the toys gathered in the yard feel better, vocalizing their mourning for the ones that were otherwise noiseless. He pulled the handle again. “The mice say: squeak squeak squeak!”

  The toys in the yard rattled in the wind. A pinwheel buffeted before toppling over. A rubber ball maundered down the hill. A tricycle just lay there on its side, and the screen doors of a dollhouse slammed an irregular salute.

  Sunny’d given Pup his whole dinner of sausage and beans, and now the dog was sleeping on his side by Sunny’s feet, snoring unevenly. The farmer’s daughter had come back from the garden dried out, like a whole layer of bark needed scraping off. She was bouncing the head of the mallet on the green bar of the xylophone in long yawning notes, and she said, “The farmer ain’t gonna come out here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Sunny looked at her, then at the toys scattered around the porch steps. “I wasn’t thinking it.”

  “They are.”

  “They’re just saying good-bye.”

  “No,” said the farmer’s daughter, “they’re waiting for an explanation.”

  “Easy,” said Sunny, putting the clock-face toy aside and bringing his sleeve back for a pull of straw. “The old man did it.”

  “That isn’t what I meant, but you’re an ijit for thinking it after he held your hand all day in that barn.”

  The sound of Sunny’s shoulders cocking back in irritation was the same sound as shucking an ear of corn. The way Sunny saw it, being old was just another way of saying you’d done a lot of bad things.

  “It’s true,” said Sunny.

  “It ain’t true.”

  Dot bounced the wooden handle of the mallet on each color of the xylophone to hear the ugly clack of each one, making a tallying din. Dallying tin. She said, “I think he’s a giant.”

  “You think?” said Sunny.

  “Not like a blue-ribbon pumpkin,” said Dot. “They got these stories about giants in the mountains. Magicians.”

  “I seen his magic,” said Sunny. “They got better tricks in Town Hall.”

  “Magicians used to be giants.”

  “He ain’t either.”

  “Would you let me talk? If you can hurl a huge rock down a mountain, you can make it rain boulders. Can you do that?”

  “That ain’t magic.”

  “That’s magic,” said Dot. “If you can do that, you done magic the rest of us can’t.”

  Sunny looked out at the blackness, past his post, over the pasture to where Sobrino was camped. The old man hadn’t lit a fire out of respect — or to keep Sunny from watching him all night. He could have been towering just outside the light of the porch, or lumbering toward the barn. Sunny squinted but couldn’t make out a thing.

  “Yeah, well. I can juggle,” he said.

  “Good for you,” she said.

  “So now he’s shriveled up.”

  “Yeah,” she said without looking up, tired out with him being so cocksure.

  “He can’t be older than the farmer,” she thought aloud.

  Sunny smirked. “You’re the one mad the farmer ain’t out here. I just assume he don’t care.”

  All he seemed to care for was coddling a bunch of baby toys out in the rows. Sunny could hear Dot draw her breath. “That’s different,” she said.

  “Y’all are supposed to be his kids; it ain’t different,” said Sunny.

  Dot played the next note like a book you slam by accident. She almost threw the mallet but stopped herself. A mad tear watered her cheek. Sunny was equal parts ashamed of being an ingrate and proud of his own commitment to truth telling. Dot composed herself, pruning the one tear from her cheek, and said, “You’re a real sonofabitch, Sunny.”

  Sunny picked a fleck of straw from the tip of his tongue and said, “And you’re a farmer’s daughter.”

  “You don’t even know he talks like you’re his own, too. You don’t know ’cause you’re busy pickin’ on a poor dying Mexican who’s just trying to find labor enough to buy an orange. Farmer should’ve made you a field hand after saving you from bein’ a judge’s sandbag. Instead you think you’re a sheriff now, you dumb runt.”

  Sunny took the whole straw from his mouth and rolled it around his finger. He didn’t look anywhere but straight at the porch railing. When she was finished, he got up to leave.

  Pup lifted a drowsy head. Dot and Sunny heard a noise for the second time, coming from the barn, this time a shambling sound.

  Sunny froze. The farmer’s daughter sprang up, holding the mallet like a hammer. The sound was urgent and substantial, like something as big as a bull. It rustled around the bookshelves in the main bay, looking for something.

  Dot whispered, “The stick horse.”

  Sunny put a finger in the air. “Shhh.”

  They heard a few steps, a spell of silence — then a snap of wood and rubber like a flinging catapult. Some frantic skitters, then just one or two. Then nothing.

  In the breathless pause, the ornery crow made a laughing caw from Sunny’s bedpost. The farmer’s daughter ventured, “Sounded like a mousetrap.”

  Sunny grinned. “Big enough to pin a mechanical bull. Made it this afternoon.”

  “You made it?”

  “Me and Sobrino.”

  “If he helped you make a trap, why would you still think he’s the thief?”

  “All I said was he’s a suspect.”

  “That’s not all you said.”

  Dot sighed at the thought of all that conversation wasted. It seemed Sunny didn’t want to be right; he just wanted to be confident.

  She grabbed the light-up peg board to go investigate. Sunny shook his head no.

  He whispered, “Could be more than one.”

  “What if he runs off?”

  “Naw,” said Sunny. “If his back ain’t clean broke, he’s got a headache he ain’t gettin’ up from.”

  Dot seemed to weigh an option on each eyebrow. She hoped one trap would scare off whatever thief or ga
ng of thieves there was in the barn. Or else for a few hours till sunrise, the strangers would have run of the place.

  “Do you have more traps?” she asked.

  “No,” said Sunny.

  “I’ll get the toys inside,” she said.

  Sunny nodded and stepped off the porch into the night. For the moment, he felt unafraid. He was sure he’d turned an outsize stranger into a slobbering carcass. Maybe old Sobrino couldn’t help himself, perverted as he was by all those years stewing in the world. Or it could have been some other bad man. Either way, Sunny had protected the farm. The farmer could hide all he wanted in the house; Sunny didn’t need him. All he needed was a corner to back into and a dart in his hand, and the whole daggum world could come looking for a fight. Sunny would oblige.

  He swaggered into the front yard toward his bedpost overlooking the pasture. When he could make out the figure of the brazen crow perching on his post, he squared up beak to beak with the bird. Both of them stretched their necks. Sunny smiled and whispered with a magical waggle of his fingers, “Shazam.”

  THE LOCKING BAR of the oversize rat trap hadn’t bitten clean through the body of a man. It had come down on a left shoulder and pushed till the legs went down into splits. The body was pinned in the weird angular gesture, like an unstrung marionette. The arms looked like bent spokes.

  In Sunny’s line of work, there was an appreciation for the art of scaring people off your land. He and Sobrino stood side by side, looking down at the mangled stranger. There wasn’t any blood, though it had cuts. It didn’t wear clothes, aside from a pair of jean shorts. Its fingers were curled up and turning brown. Next to the trap was a stick. A cloth horse’s head lay nearby. The straw stuffing had been ripped out.

  “Is no living,” said Sobrino. It sounded like leaving.

  Sunny glanced over his shoulder. “Got that right,” he said, crossing his arms. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  “No,” said Sobrino, striding in front of him and putting his gnarled hands on the lock bar embedded in the stranger’s collarbone. “Is no alive.”

  The farmer had already walked along the rows in the early dawn light, but short of the upstart caboose, the crops were still too timid to sprout. Sunny hadn’t gone to meet him.

  Sunny took a step back as Sobrino lifted the mousetrap bar. The body slumped over and gave off a smell like old cabbage. “Jeez, I know, quit jostling it,” said Sunny, gagging a little.

  The farmer’s daughter appeared in the bay door and said, “He ain’t sayin’ it’s dead. He’s sayin it wasn’t ever alive to begin with.”

  “Sí,” said Sobrino, then added, “Yes, exacto.”

  Even Sunny, who was usually blindsided by other people’s feelings, could hear the prickles in her voice. She went straight toward the body, smacking her shoulder into Sunny’s back as she passed. “You used the stick horse as bait,” she said, kneeling to pick up the head.

  “Just a fake one, Dot,” said Sunny. “We couldn’t well use cheese.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What if he’d seen it? You know how scared he’d be?”

  She swept up the stick and the scattered straw as quick as she could. “Come on, now,” she said, which was what she said when she really expected better of somebody.

  “Who?” said Sunny. “The farmer? The horse? I tied it off by the chicken coop; the sheep too. They weren’t here to see anything —”

  “See what?” asked Boy, who was standing in the doorway rubbing his eyes.

  Dot froze with the fake stick horse in her arms. With one giant stride, Sobrino scooped her up to his chest level and did a full round, like a dandy two-step. When he put her down, not three seconds later, everything in her arms was gone.

  Dot looked down at her empty arms, then up at the giant. He winked and showed his empty palms with the after-flourish of a disappearing act.

  The farmer’s daughter turned to Boy and said, “Nothing.”

  “Go on,” said Sunny, but by then Boy had seen the body. “Wow, is that a toy?”

  “No,” said Sunny, and stepped in his line of sight. Boy dodged around to peer at the body. Its head hung limp, like the bones had gone soft.

  “Does he like to play with toys?” asked Boy.

  “No,” said Dot, interrupting Boy. “If you see one, you run and get us, you hear?”

  Boy was too mesmerized to nod. Sunny didn’t like to baby anybody. He said, “Boy, that guy’s dead.”

  “No living,” corrected Sobrino.

  “It was never alive,” corrected Dot.

  “How do you know that?” said Sunny.

  “It’s a homunculus,” said Dot.

  There was a silence, and Boy said, “They don’t play with toys?”

  Sunny had only heard of such a thing as a homunculus. He whispered to the farmer’s daughter, “You sayin’ he’s a plant?”

  She nodded.

  “Aw, hell,” said Sunny as he went over to the body, which was starting to wrinkle like a fallen leaf. Sunny could see inside a cut on its shoulder. The meat was dense like a squash. Its face was generically male and smooth, without dimples or pocks. On the side of its neck, Sunny could see a burn mark, like a cattle brand.

  Sobrino picked Boy from the ground. He made the gleeful auto-response and then went back to his pensive scowl. “Why don’t they play, Sobrino?” Boy found it useful to his thinking to pull on Sobrino’s goatee.

  “When a man is hanged,” said Sobrino, “under him it grows a little plant. When you take and grow the plant, it’s a man or woman.”

  “You can grow people like toys?”

  “Sure you can,” said a voice from over by the stalls. At the same time, a yapping Pup came tearing in from the back door, tumbling over his own front feet, toward Sunny. The message was to be afraid.

  At the sight of the figure that appeared after Pup, the homunculus in the trap jerked a few times, trying to stand at attention.

  “You can grow ’em nice and big, and then tell ’em to do anythin’ you please,” said the man.

  He was wearing denim jeans and a denim jacket. He was more round than tall, with sweat stains at his armpits and across the paunch under his belt. His neck looked like a custard, and his nose was bulbous and red with burst capillaries. He had gin blossoms on his cheeks, and his lips were black with the permanent tattoo of chaw.

  “Who’re you?” said Sunny, squaring his shoulders, ready to protect the farmer’s daughter.

  “Who’m ah?” said the man, chomping at the same time on a mix of chewing gum and chewing tobacco. “Why, I’m the owna o’ that homunculus you so savagely tore up. It’s mah property.”

  He made a portly bow. “The Growin’ Man, at y’all’s service.”

  “You’re on our property now, mister,” said Sunny. “And your dummy killed some friends of ours.”

  A mocking laugh gurgled out the Growin’ Man’s throat. “An’ now you’ve killed mine.”

  “It wasn’t alive,” said Boy, volunteering his new fact.

  “Certainly not like you.” The Growin’ Man grinned, licking his black lips at the marvelous sight of such a creation as Boy. His tongue was dyed green and blue with candy.

  “It was half alive,” said the Growin’ Man.

  “Half alive ain’t life — it’s just moving,” said Dot.

  The Growin’ Man sat back on his haunches and stuck a paw in his jacket pocket. “Well, wouldn’t you know it,” he said. He made a chup-chup noise when he chewed, like the sound of pulling your boot out of slop.

  Dot wouldn’t look the man in the eye. The rancher leered at her as though her discomfort were delicious.

  He pulled his hand out of his jacket and produced a handful of gum balls. Their colors had leaked all over his sweaty palm.

  “Where’d you get those?” said Sunny, stepping forward.

  The Growin’ Man pushed the gum balls into his maw. He smacked and said, “A darlin’ little machine I found.”

  “You’re a thief.”

>   “How do you know?” said the man, laughing. Then he added, “Maybe they broke themselves by runnin’ under mah boot. Toys will be toys, after all.”

  The Growin’ Man puckered his stained lips and whistled. From the back door, another figure emerged, lurching, as if at the rancher’s command. The creature was human, mostly. Its arms hung at its side like overladen branches. Its legs were hairless but coarse, like tree trunks shucked of their bark. Dot was startled.

  Sunny leaped toward the figure and swung both his arms. A row of darts bloomed out along the newcomer’s bare chest. The homunculus groaned and stumbled backward a few steps. It struggled to stay upright but kept coming.

  “No!” Dot shouted. Boy buried his face into Sobrino’s neck. Pup added to the noise.

  The homunculus swung its arm at Sunny. It had the same power­ful languor of a steer and about as much language. Sunny ducked and jammed a couple more darts into its underarm. Then he hopped back. He snapped his wrists, and two more darts dropped down from his sleeves. It was a showboat thing to do. He acted like a bullfighter, punching into the senseless creature, while he stared down the Growin’ Man to show it wasn’t very taxing. Then he flung the darts and hit the homunculus dead center of its heart. It took a few more steps and dropped to the ground.

  “Bull’s-eye,” said the Growin’ Man, and clapped. Then he put his hand in his pocket. Sunny heaved his chest out, more for a bucked-up effect than to catch his breath. “But as long as the hangin’ judge is in town, I got a full herd.”

  Sunny charged forward. He wanted to push a dart up through the folds of the man’s throat like a sewing needle. But as he came rearing up, the Growin’ Man pulled a lighter out of his pocket and flipped it open. The tiny flame was barely enough to brand a neck with, but Sunny panicked at the sight of it. Like a cat on a greased counter, he fell backward at the Growin’ Man’s feet. Then he scratched at the ground to get purchase going the other way.

  The Growin’ Man chupped his lips in open delight over Sunny’s fright. Sunny scrambled back behind the farmer’s daughter, clutching her shoulder and gaping at the lighter’s flame. The Growin’ Man snapped the lighter shut, but it was all he needed to burn fear into the side of Sunny’s neck, saying he was owned property.