"Scarecrow"

Papa tells me it's "alive."

"Not actually alive," he tells me, "But 'alive.' Just alive enough to look like a real person from the right angles, but not enough to creep us out or be mistaken for a trespasser."

Its skin is the same loosely-woven fabric that we use for potato sacks. On its face, my little sis drew a cartoonish angry face. Actually, I'm a bit impressed by how clean and purposeful each line is. The brows are thick and angled towards its slightly-wrinkled nose, which itself sits above a dimpled frown and upturned chin.

It wears the same officer's cap that our great-granddad peeled off of a dead Nazi-- or at least, that's what Pa tells me. The hat looks too new to be some World War II antique, and Pa was never the kind to leave a relic like that out in the open air.

Below all that, its body is fat and crumpled. It holds one arm in the air, a wooden pistol stuck to its hand as if to say, "Land on these crops and I'll shoot you dead." Its frayed, bleach-stained jumpsuit dangles below, still wrinkled from its years spent in a basement box, waiting to see service.