"Good Morning!" by Mark Ifanson
I couldn't get comfortable at all last night. The rising sun burns my eyes as I squint to survey my surroundings: endless rolling hills of ripening corn. I can sense the heat and the dust. Who knew hot dust has such a distinctive odor and taste?
Once my eyes adjust to the light, I try to move my legs, but cannot. Looking down, I see they’re bound by twine. I’m wearing blue jeans and a tattered plaid shirt with the cuff buttons missing. Straw is poking out of my sleeves. I’m baffled. What the hell is going on?
Then it comes to me: I’m a damn scarecrow. Somewhere, it appears, in the middle of a cornfield, in Iowa, in the US Midwest, of course. Middle, middle, middle. Yeah, of course, I get it, I’m waking up in the middle of nowhere in the middle of this story. Shit, how uncreative.
A crow lands on my arm. “Good morning,” he says. Sure, a talking crow, that sounds about right.
“In medias res,” says the crow. I want to laugh at the lack of originality, but can’t, as I lack a functional mouth, and instead can only wonder: what else have you got?
The crow stares at me with its mischievous Corvus grin, refusing to say more. I study its posture as it grooms its feathers, and begin to realize this odd bird looks somehow familiar. Is it winking at me? Then I recall; it’s Finch from the Iowa Summer Writer’s Workshop a few years back. Finch gave great feedback and had been one of the better writers there, even though they really had only that one story to tell.
The two of us snuck off one night, got wasted at some scruffy townie bar in Iowa City, hooked up later. OK, you’re right, it happened more than once. They sure knew what to do with those feathers, and that beak, well, I just don’t want to go there. Yeah, that crow.
I later heard they were nominated for a Pulitzer. Too bad they’ve been roped into this stupid tale. They deserve better. They’re a better crow than that.
A wall cloud attempts to sprout a line of funnels as an indigo line of thunderstorm cells approaches from the southwest. Finch winks again and launches skyward, singing a faintly familiar tune, something about arriving like the morning sun and leaving like the wind. Yes, it’s about time to get past the middle of this story. Now things should get interesting.
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