There are multiple ways to scare off birds from your garden. Some string up pie tins hoping the shininess of it all will scare off the crows, others take the innards of old vhs tapes and spread the film across their crops. Then you got the scarecrow, or there’s the real scarecrow. Which is just shooting a crow and hanging it from a stake.
My nanny does it all. But her favorite thing is to take her old cassette player, run an extension cord up into the garden and shove it under a metal bucket then put on the gospel station. She never tells you when she is going to do this, so you just walk outside one morning hearing hymns, or the turn and burn word being screamed across the valley.
I sit outside a lot, smoking cigars or a pipe and reading or scribbling some nonsense in my journal. Normally our little valley is a quiet one, you got the occasional car going up the road and you hear dogs making a ruckus or someone shooting. But it is quiet. But not during the corn sermons. You can hear the gospel being hollered out of the stalks; it brings me back to my childhood of growing up in a southern Baptist home. I have heard hundreds of “sermons” like this. Except we did not call them that. That sounds to rehearsed and worldly. They were just preaching. So, I can perfectly imagine the man inside the metal bucket. Clinching onto his white handkerchief, sweat staining his blue dress shirt while his black tie hangs perfectly still. Held on by one of those gold tie clips that I have only ever seen preacher’s wear. I can hear the white spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth and the way he gasps for breath after each shout of insanity disguised as humility. There are the Amen’s and bless him lord rolling out of the pews. The same pews that families have sat in for generations, there is never an assigned seat in those churches, but you know where you are supposed to sit. Feeling uncomfortable when a new person comes in and sits in someone else’s “spot”. Don’t they know who sits there?
All of this is familiar to me. I spent my youth in those pews. in my spot. Wishing I was somewhere else, trying to talk to the preacher in my head begging him to please shut up. Counting how many wood tiles are above the pulpit or knowing exactly where to push my finger into the pew to feel a nail. Pushing just enough to bleed then letting off. It is the same church that I would be baptized twice in, get in trouble for circling ass in my bible or dedicating the front of it to Jeff Gordon. (my biggest act of rebellion in a home of die-hard Earnhardt fans). I’ve sworn that I will never step foot in those churches again, except for the occasional funeral and even then, I am reluctant to go. But here I am, back in the pew. Listening to the rantings and ravings of a mad man. Except this time, it’s just me and the crows listening. And I haven’t the heart to tell nanny that the crows do not seem to mind the preacher man’s words while they pluck away and the only ears his words are falling on are mine and the corns. But it gives her a peace of mind and maybe a few stalks are saved from eternal damnation. But I do know this, me or those crows aint tithing a damn thing.
Sharts of Narsil 