She wasn’t allowed to turn the heat up, even on the most frigid days. There were blankets in the linen closet and she had warm clothes, as she’d sternly been told, and Asa knew better than to touch the thermostat. The only time she had, her foster parents, Raymond and Shirley, had not fed her for a day.
She’d come to their home eight months before. Asa’s previous foster family, whom she’d lived with for almost a year, had been forced to move out of state because of the husband’s job. She’d liked them; they were kind and generous. Her room in their house had been comfortable and warm, decorated in colors and outfitted with toys that any eight-year-old girl would have loved. It was not that way with Raymond and Shirley. Her room on the second floor of their house was spare and plain, colorless and toyless. It contained a rickety iron-framed bed with a lumpy, thin mattress and a tiny dresser that held all her clothes, including the warm ones her hosts had made sure to let her know were there. The floor was made of wide wooden planks which were only partially covered by a very worn throw rug. At the far end of the room, next to the bed, was a lone window that looked out on the overgrown backyard. Asa, when she wasn’t in school, spent much of her time sitting on the edge of the bed and looking out that window. Beyond the largely overgrown backyard and the sagging wooden fence that hemmed it in, was a forest of maples and oaks with trunks and limbs that beckoned and dared children to climb them. Sometimes she heard other kids in those woods. Their laughter and shouts would reverberate through the trees, the unmistakable sounds of fun and happiness reaching her in the small, drab room even when she couldn’t see the children who made them.
She sometimes imagined those children were her and any unknown siblings she might have, somewhere out in the world, and that it was them playing in the woods, not whomever the real kids were. Asa had never known either of her parents. She’d been in the foster system as long as she could remember. A woman who worked for the state and recruited foster families for Asa to live with said that they’d been killed in an accident but wouldn’t say more. Asa had no idea if she had any family at all, which made her daydreams of playing with brothers and sisters in the forest both a balm for her loneliness and a ragged wound that kept it alive.
Raymond and Shirley told her never to go in the woods alone, but when she went outside to play, they didn’t watch her. It would have been easy to walk away, disappear into the Red and White Oak and Sugar Maples that grew in such abundance here. Asa was not afraid of getting lost. She knew the area a few miles outside Armonk, NY well enough in that year of 1952 to know that on the far side of the forest was a country highway, and that to her left was a relatively large farm. She could see the straight, even rows of a crop she couldn’t identify from the window in her room. There was even a scarecrow in the middle of the field. If she did get lost, she could listen for cars on the road, or the tractor working the farm, and eventually find her way out.
She’d come to live with Raymond and Shirley in the latter part of the school year. Now that it was nearing its end, she faced the prospect of a summer without the regimented comfort of a classroom, and without friends. It was a new school, the one she now attended. She’d been in a different school in another town a few miles away with her last family, and she’d had friends at that school. There were also twin boys, Petey and Tommy, who lived next door, and they’d played together a lot. Their mothers were friends and would often sit on the patio in the backyard while the children played in the sandbox or on the small swing set the twins’ father had built. There were no twins here and no mothers next door to be friends with Shirley. Asa wasn’t sure the woman had any friends. If she did they never came over. Raymond and Shirley both had jobs somewhere, although they never said where or talked about them, and Asa was not allowed to ask. She wasn’t allowed to ask much at all. And they never went anywhere other than work, except to the grocery store on Saturdays. Asa came home from school every day to an empty house. They didn’t even have a dog. There was a list of chores for her to do, and if she didn’t do them, she got no dinner or breakfast, only whatever the school served for lunch. The next day. She learned quickly to do her chores. Neither Raymond nor Shirley ever hit her, their favorite and most utilized form of punishment was withholding food. Occasionally they would forbid her from going outside to play in the overgrown backyard, but that was rare. They never yelled either. It was as if they didn’t care whether or not she was even there, like she was a goldfish swimming around its tiny, solitary bowl, given the bare minimum to survive, and glanced at indifferently once in a while.
When school ended very little changed, except that Raymond and Shirley left her home alone all day while they were gone. Daycare was never mentioned, and the only rules were to do her chores and not make a mess, which was easy since the chores all involved cleaning of some variety. Why make a mess when you just had to clean it up?
Asa had always liked books, which was about the only thing she had in common with her foster parents. They had bookcases full of them in the study downstairs, and she spent much of the first month of her summer immersed in stories. The majority of them were too advanced for an eight-year-old, but she found a few that weren’t. Her favorite thing to do after Raymond and Shirley left was to take one of the books out to the forest and read. There was a large cherry tree right at the edge of the woods with vibrant red leaves and big roots that poked out of the soil. Two of those roots formed a comfortable little bowl that she liked to sit in, her back against the trunk. It fit her small body perfectly, and Asa was fond of thinking the tree had made that spot just for her, like it had been waiting and planning all the long decades of its life for just this summer when she would become its only friend, and it hers.
It was a hot summer that year. Asa heard a man on the radio Raymond sometimes played say that it was the hottest in thirty years. The sweltering heat was terrible most days. Other days clouds would come, followed by thunder and lightning, rain and wind. She loved the storms, even though the thunder sometimes scared her when it was close. On those days she stayed in the house, usually upstairs in her spartan room with a book and the single window. She could see the cherry tree from there. Its branches would sway in the wind, its leaves like little waterfalls funneling the raindrops, and the roots like waves on an angry sea. She felt sad for the big tree on those days. It looked as alone out there in the storm as she felt in her dreary room.
It was just after the Fourth of July when she went into the woods for the first time. Raymond and Shirley were gone, and she hadn’t found any new books to read after finishing the last one. Asa wandered down to the basement and looked around. She’d never been in the basement before and had only come down because, in what was surely an oversight, Raymond and Shirley hadn’t forbidden it, and because she was bored. The single room contained very little. There were only some wooden shelves that held various tools and bric-a-brac, and a few stacks of newspapers. Raymond loved his local Armonk newspaper and had saved them all in orderly piles. She glanced at one as she walked by. The headline said something about a battle ending at the Chosin Reservoir in a place called Korea. The date on the paper was December 14, 1950. She scanned the article briefly but didn’t know what it meant, and her eyes dropped down the page. The story below mentioned a police officer and some kind of disturbance involving a snowman and a group of neighborhood kids that had happened in the center of Armonk the previous day, but Asa didn’t read it. There was nothing interesting though, and she went back upstairs.
The back door was open, only the screen on the storm door kept bugs out, and she saw the cherry tree looming over the decrepit fence. The brilliant red leaves contrasted starkly with the green leaves of the other trees. She’d never noticed that before. It was like her cherry tree was standing alone, engulfed in flames, while the trees around it paid no attention. Asa stared at the tree and the shadowed woods beyond it, and thought of the times she’d heard other children playing there. That’s where she would go. Maybe she’d find them and make friends. And if not, she could come back to her fiery red tree and sit between the roots.
The woods were quiet that day other than the sounds of birds and a light breeze rustling the foliage. The sun was out, but the day wasn’t hot yet as Asa stood next to her cherry tree and stared into the gloom beyond. It was intimidating even though Asa knew where she was and had no fear of getting lost. There was very little undergrowth, and the sun slicing through the leaves and branches created dark pools of shadow. She imagined things in those dark places, creatures and monsters waiting for unsuspecting children to wander past and snatching them from behind. But monsters weren’t real. At least, not the kind she was imagining. Asa reminded herself that other kids played in these woods, that they weren’t a place of fear and danger, but of fun and happiness. She looked again at her tree. Its branches swayed slightly in the warm breeze as if they were inviting her to a magical and wondrous place. Asa smiled and patted the tree’s trunk as she stepped over the roots into the forest.
The sun disappeared behind the canopy of leaves, and the air was noticeably cooler. It was pleasant in here, just warm enough to be comfortable, and Asa thought to herself that she would come to the forest on very hot days from now on. Dry leaves and twigs cracked under her feet as she walked. From the window in her bedroom, she’d thought the trees were dense, packed in together tightly, but now that she was in the forest, she realized that they were not. They’d grown apart from each other, leaving fairly large gaps between their trunks, while above her their branches intertwined to form an intricate Rococo ceiling.
She walked aimlessly for a time, not caring which direction she went but simply enjoying the earthy, loamy smell of the woods. Asa stopped and leaned against an oak tree and listened. She could hear cars on the distant country road, myriad birds, and what she thought was a chipmunk chattering on about something. She closed her eyes and imagined an entire city of trees populated by birds and animals. But wait. Wasn’t she already in one? Wasn’t the forest basically that? She smiled at herself and pushed off from the oak.
There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in here. No wicked witch’s house, no abandoned homestead, no clubhouse built from scrap lumber. It was just a forest, and Asa couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. Actually, yes she could. It was the last time she’d played with Petey and Tommy. Before she’d been told she wouldn’t be living with her old foster family anymore, before she’d come to live with Raymond and Shirley. She hadn’t realized how lonely and cut off from everything and everyone she’d felt until now, and Asa thought that as long as she could roam in this forest, that she’d never be lonely again. There was something comforting in the sounds and smells here, something she didn’t understand, but which she felt instinctually, intuitively. Asa was connected to this place, to her cherry tree and this forest in a way that she’d never felt connected to any place. At that moment it belonged to her and only her. Every tree was her friend, every animal a companion. The crushing loneliness she hadn’t really understood or acknowledged was gone, replaced by a peace she hadn’t known since coming to live here.
Asa, her heart lighter than it had been in a long time, skipped through the dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. The ground sloped gradually downward toward a small stream which bent to the left about thirty yards ahead, diverted from its course by a very large boulder that looked completely out of place. The rock was twice as tall as she was and double that wide. Asa walked slowly around it, looking at the huge piece of stone. There was nothing special about it, other than its size. The far side of it was in the stream. The flowing water created an eddy which had carved a hole in the streambed on the far side of the rock that was largely protected from the main current. She could see small fish swimming in the clear water, and leaned forward to get a better look. It was deeper than she’d initially thought, and she guessed if she were to step into it, that the water would come up to her waist. The rock just below the surface of the water was broken off. It was like someone had chiseled out a portion of it, making the face of the boulder slant back toward itself. Beneath that overhang, the hole and pool were in deep shadow.
The little fish were mesmerizing. Asa was enchanted watching them dart from one spot to another so quickly it was like they disappeared and reappeared. She leaned forward to get a better look, one of her smooth-soled sandals slipped on the wet, muddy ground, and with a splash she fell head first into the pool. The water was cold but not frigid, and she quickly stood up. Her initial estimate was right, the water was just above her waist. Asa mentally kicked herself for not being more careful, and she was glad it was a warm day. Her clothes would dry soon. Just before she stepped out, she noticed something in the hollow under the rock. It was at the bottom of the pool and deep beneath the overhang. The darkness made it difficult to see, but she knew there was something there. Asa took a deep breath and let herself sink down under the water. Her hands scrabbled about as they tried to find the item, and once her fingers grazed it, but it moved away. She thrust her head up out of the water and drew a few breaths. A quick look back into the hollow showed her the vague outline of whatever the thing was, except it had moved about two feet toward the shore. Again Asa dunked herself under, but this time she moved slowly and kept her eyes open. Everything was blurry, but she could just see the object. She reached her hand out and felt it under her fingers. Smooth. And thin. Asa got a grip on it and stood up. A few clumsy and slippery steps later, she was on the shore, chilly and dripping. She raised her hand to look at her prize. It was a hat. A top hat to be exact. She’d gotten hold of the brim, which explained why it felt thin. The fabric was smooth, probably silk. But what was a top hat doing in a pool of water under a boulder in a stream in the woods? People didn’t even wear top hats anymore. Asa couldn’t recall ever seeing a person wear one. Maybe one of the kids who played here in the forest had gotten it somewhere and lost it.
All that for a hat. Now that she had it, she didn’t know what to do with it. Raymond and Shirley likely wouldn’t let her keep it. They’d probably tell her to throw it away. But even though she didn’t have a use for it, she still felt proud that she’d found it, gotten it out of the water. Water. She was cold now in her wet clothes, colder than she’d been when she first fell in. A short distance away a ray of sun pierced the forest canopy and lit up a large area of the leaf covered ground. Asa walked over and stood in it for a few moments. It was warm and immediately began to dispel the chill. She needed to move though, to get out into the full sun and dry off, so she started back toward the house.
Walking helped her warm up, but after several minutes, she realized she’d lost her sense of place. Asa was sure the house was this way, but nothing looked familiar. Then she ran across the remnants of a tree that had fallen a long time ago. It was mostly rotten now, and she knew she hadn’t seen it before. Asa stopped to listen for the road, but could hear nothing. Her heart beat a little faster as she pondered what to do. She’d gotten totally turned around and didn’t know which way was home. This part of the forest was in deep shade, and the chill began to come back through her still damp clothes. The only thing to do was keep moving, and eventually she would find her way out.
The dead tree fell behind as she walked, but the chill stayed with her. Asa remembered reading somewhere that it was possible to tell direction by the sun, but she didn’t know how to do that. Still, it gave her an idea. If she tried to keep the sun on her right side, then she should move in a fairly straight line. A book she’d read at her old school had talked about how people lost in the woods can go in circles, and she did not want to do that.
The sun was high overhead now. She didn’t have a watch, so Asa had no idea how long she’d been in here, but it had to be about lunchtime; her stomach was rumbling. So around noon, she guessed. There was still plenty of time to get back to the house and do her chores before Raymond and Shirley got home. The forest stretched on unbroken, and the sun was still on her right. She stopped every so often to look for it. A particularly dense copse of trees blocked the way ahead, and she detoured around them. The moment she was clear, she saw a wooden rail fence through the trees a short distance ahead, and a field of crops beyond. The farm. The one she saw from her window. There it was. Asa breathed a sigh of relief and ran toward the field and the bright sunshine that bathed it.
When she burst from the forest, the heat of the day was jarring but welcome. She stood for a time basking in the warmth, letting it chase away the last of the chill in her bones and the moisture from her clothes. Now that she was out of the forest, she knew exactly where the house was and had no fear of being late getting back or even of being lost again.
She’d never been to the farm, and the rows of crops, which she now recognized as cabbage, were neat and orderly, with small valleys of bare dirt between the humps where the big round vegetables grew. Asa walked along them, smelling the soil and looking at the shiny skins and huge leaves of the cabbages. She’d never been on a farm before, only seen them in books and magazines and, like this one, from windows.
The loneliness overwhelmed her in that moment. She’d just adventured on her own into the woods, fallen into a stream and gotten herself out while claiming a silk top hat as her prize, gotten lost, and found her way again. It should have been a moment of happiness and achievement that she could tell a friend or parent about. But she had neither. Asa began to cry. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears leaked from them and ran down her cheeks. Sobs shook her small frame as she gasped for air and tried to fight the sadness. She hadn’t cried since the first time Raymond and Shirley had withheld dinner and breakfast. The top hat almost slipped from her hand, but she tightened her grip and held fast. She wished she could hold just as tight to a mother or father, sister or brother, and tell them about her day in the woods, show them the hat and tell them how she’d rescued it from its drowned fate. But there was just her, alone and forgotten in a field of cabbages.
Asa waited until the tears had run their course. This wasn’t the first time she’d cried for what she didn’t have, and she knew it didn’t do any good. Nothing would change after, but sometimes she felt a little bit better.
When it was over, she looked at the hat in her hand. Why had she carried it all the way out of the forest, and what was she going to do with it? Asa almost cast it away but stopped when she saw the scarecrow. It was near the middle of the field and was made from a pair of denim jeans and a flannel shirt. She’d never seen one up close before, so she approached and looked it over. The clothes had been stuffed with straw, while the head was made from an old pillow case. The face had been applied with paint. Asa, without thinking, reached up and put the hat on the head, then turned and walked away toward the house where she lived.
Raymond and Shirley were home that night at their normal time. Dinner was a nearly silent affair, as it always was. They didn’t ask about her day, what she’d done, and they barely talked to each other. Afterward, Asa was responsible for the dishes while Raymond went to his study and either read one of his many books or smoked his pipe and listened to the vacuum tube radio on the credenza by his wing back chair. Shirley often sat on the davenport in the sitting room with a few balls of yarn and knitting needles. She made hats and other things, but Asa never saw what she did with them. Eight-thirty sharp was her bedtime, and she knew better than to push it. One of them would remind her about eight-fifteen if she was still downstairs, but usually she was already in her room, teeth brushed and ready for bed.
Tonight was no different. Asa sat looking out the window as the sun dropped low in the sky. Her room was still hot from the day, and the window was open. A light breeze wafted in, bringing some cool air but little relief. The house never really cooled off until sometime after midnight. Shirley appeared in the doorway and told Asa it was bedtime. Neither she nor Raymond ever said goodnight. Asa had said it to them when she’d first come to live here but stopped when it was not reciprocated. The single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling was not on, so Shirley closed the door after verifying her charge was indeed ready for bed. Asa lay on the lumpy mattress for a long time before sleep finally stole her.
She slept longer than usual; Raymond and Shirley were gone when she got up. Asa had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, then immediately went out to the woods. She was determined to discover landmarks and where they were in relation to the house. The boulder and the dead tree were already imprinted on her mental map, but she wanted to find the road too, discover the boundaries of the forest so she could wander freely and not get lost again.
It was another gorgeous day that promised to be very hot by afternoon. Asa walked slowly through the woods back toward the farm. She wanted to start there, then find the road, the boulder and back. The stream would also be a very good feature to trace so she knew its path and where it led. The years of shuffling between foster homes had developed in her a sense of self-reliance. She had learned that the only person she could depend on was her. Being lost in the woods had only increased her determination to take care of herself.
She found the dead tree easily and was on her way toward the farm when she heard the laughter. Kids. And they were close. Getting closer. Then she saw them. There were three, a boy about her age and two girls a little older than her. They all had long sticks they were swinging at the ground and knocking around little clumps of leaves which, dry as they were from the hot weather, rustled and cracked with a pleasant sound. The boy saw her first.
“Hey! Who are you?”
The three children looked at her in surprise, but she didn’t try to run or hide. “I’m Asa,” she said.
The boy smiled. “I’m Bobby and these are my sisters Edith and Fay. Do you live here?”
“I live in the house over there,” Asa said, pointing back the way she’d come.
“Oh,” Fay said. “You’re the foster girl that lives with Raymond and Shirley.”
Asa didn’t say anything. There was no mockery in Fay’s voice. Sometimes kids teased her for not having a family like they did. Those kids could be very mean and cruel. These kids were smiling and seemed happy to meet someone new.
“It’s ok,” Edith said as if she’d read Asa’s mind. “We won’t make fun of you for it.”
“You don’t go to my school,” Asa said.
“No,” Fay replied, “Ma sends us to one in Armonk. But we’ll be here next school year. They won’t let us go to that one anymore since we don’t live there.”
“Do you want to help us look?” Bobby asked eagerly.
“Look for what?” Asa asked.
“Our scarecrow.”
Asa was confused. “You lost a scarecrow?”
“It was in the field yesterday,” Fay said. “Pa said it was gone this morning, so he told us to look for it. He thought maybe the Dennett boys from the other side of the highway stole it and hid it in the woods somewhere. They do things like that sometimes. So we’re looking for it. You can look with us if you want to.”
Asa smiled for the first time since meeting the other kids. “Ok, I’ll help you look.”
Bobby found a stick about the size of theirs and gave it to Asa. “We use these to move the leaves around. It helps make a trail so we can find our way back. Plus it’s fun.”
Asa swung her stick like the others and smiled when the dry leaves swished and crackled. It had been so long since she’d played with other kids that the simple act of walking with them felt foreign, strange. The kids at her new school had not ostracized her, but they hadn’t welcomed her either. She spent her recess and lunch breaks alone on the swing set or walking slowly around the playground. Being with other kids again was a strange feeling.
They wandered through the forest for a time, not speaking much, content to swing their sticks at the ground. Every so often one of them would veer off to look behind a tree or on the far side of a log.
“How does a scarecrow just disappear?” Asa asked.
“We don’t know,” Edith replied. Fay and Bobby were off investigating behind some of the few shrubs that grew in the woods. “Our pa went out this morning, and it was gone. We’re pretty sure the Dennetts took it, but he wanted us to look here before he goes to talk to their parents.”
“I put a hat on it yesterday,” Asa said hesitantly.
“You did what? Put a hat on it?” Edith asked.
“Mmm hmm. I found it in the water by the big rock.”
Edith called her brother and sister to them. “She says she found a hat in the water and put it on the scarecrow yesterday.” Fay and Bobby looked at her in confusion.
Asa, uncomfortable with the stares of the three other kids, quickly told them the story of falling in the water, finding the hat, getting lost and emerging into their field of cabbages.
“I… felt really sad for a minute and didn’t want the hat anymore. So I put it on the scarecrow’s head and went back to the house.”
“That’s all? Just put the hat on it and left?” Fay asked.
Asa nodded. “I had to do my chores before Raymond and Shirley got home, or they wouldn’t let me have dinner.”
“They wouldn’t let you have dinner?” Bobby asked. He was frowning in disapproval. Asa shook her head in response. “That’s really mean,” he said. His sisters ignored him; their focus was elsewhere.
“So you didn’t see anybody in the field when you did that?” Edith asked.
“No. I put the hat on it and left. I had to do my chores.”
“That’s so weird,” Fay said.
“I’ll bet pa’s right, I’ll bet the Dennetts took it,” Bobby said. “Remember when they took our snow sled last summer? When they tried to sled down the hill by their house and ma saw them with it? I’ll bet they took the scarecrow too.”
“They’re not very smart,” Edith said. “Who tries to sled down a dirt hill in summer?”
Satisfied that their new companion had not stolen the scarecrow in the middle of the night, the children resumed sweeping the ground with their sticks and laughing at everything. Asa was cautiously happy at being with other kids who accepted her. Rejection was something she’d gotten used to, and she did not often allow herself to be hopeful or happy. Doing so almost always led to disappointment and sadness. But these children were making it easy to have fun. They laughed and joked with her just like they did with each other, and she found it irresistible not to join in their mirth and games.
They’d gotten so caught up in swinging their sticks and playing among the trees that they didn’t realize how close they were to the big boulder until they were almost next to it. Asa saw it first.
“That’s where I found the hat,” she said as she realized where they were. The four of them stopped to look at the big rock and collectively gasped when the scarecrow walked out from behind it.
“Hello there!” it said. “I’ll bet you’re looking for me.”
The children were too dumbfounded to speak.
“You’re… alive?” Bobby finally managed to stammer.
“Sure I am. I’m talking aren’t I?”
“How are you…?” Edith said before letting the question die unfinished.
“Alive?” the scarecrow asked. Edith nodded. “Simple. The hat.” It raised a handless arm and gestured toward the top hat on its head.
“The hat made you alive?” Fay asked.
“You all sure have a lot of questions,” the scarecrow said laughing. “That’s ok. I don’t mind. Ask away. And yes, the hat brought me to life.”
“What’s your name?” Asa asked in a quiet and shy voice.
“I’m Tattie Bogle,” the scarecrow said as it swept an arm in front of its torso and bent over at the waist in a very formal bow.
“What kind of name is that?” Bobby asked.
“It’s from Scotland, and it can mean different things. Some of them are kinda scary, so I don’t think about them. I like the one that means scarecrow, which is me.”
"You’re our scarecrow,” Bobby said. “Our pa told us to look for you.”
“And you found me. Are you going to take me back to the field?” There was no fear in Tattie’s voice; it was just a question.
The children looked at each other uncertainly. Asa stood a short distance away from the three siblings and stared at the scarecrow. It was waiting patiently while the others whispered among themselves.
“I put the hat on you,” she said quietly.
Tattie Bogle turned toward her. “You did?”
Asa nodded.
“Well then I have to thank you. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here. So, thank you!”
She smiled shyly. “You’re welcome. I found it in the water right there,” she said as she pointed toward the boulder.
The other children were done with their conclave, and Edith spoke first. “We don’t want to take you back to the field, but we need to tell pa something, and we can’t lie and say we didn’t find you.”
“Tell him you did find me, and that I’d like to meet him.”
“We can’t tell him that!” Fay said. “You’re a… talking scarecrow.”
“Call me Tattie. And I’ll bet he would believe you.”
“Why?” asked Bobby.
“Does your pa read the newspaper?”
“Yeah, he loves the paper,” Bobby said
“Then he’ll believe you because there was already a talking snowman.”
All four children looked at Tattie, and their expressions ranged from outright disbelief to cautiously hopeful.
“What talking snowman?” Edith asked skeptically.
“The one that caused such a ruckus in Armonk the winter before last. They called him Frosty,” Tattie said.
“I remember a couple kids at school said something about a snowman that was alive,” Fay added. “I thought they were joking.”
“They were not,” Tattie said.
“How do you know about it?” Bobby asked.
The corners of the scarecrow’s painted on mouth turned upwards in a mischievous grin. “Because I was Frosty.” Before the children could ask any more questions, Tattie held up a hand. “I know you all want to know how I’m alive and how I could be a snowman too. The answer is the hat. I don’t know how it works, but that’s the magic that makes me live. I was Frosty, now I’m Tattie. The problem with snowmen is that when the weather gets warm, they melt. That’s what happened to Frosty. Or to me, I should say. I guess my hat ended up in the stream somehow when Frosty, when I, melted, and got lost behind the big boulder. Then my young friend here found it, put it on this body, and now I’m alive again.”
Fay looked at her siblings with a concerned expression. “Pa will want to know what’s taking us so long. We need to get home.” She turned to Tattie. “Would you come with us? Pa will never believe we found our scarecrow and that you’re alive.”
“Of course I’ll go with you. But only if I can have a stick like yours and you teach me the game you’re playing. Scarecrows like fun too!”
Bobby ran off to find a stick while the two older girls explained that it wasn’t so much a game as just something they did. Tattie seemed to like the idea and pinching the stick between its handless arms, attacked the leaves with gusto when Bobby returned with a suitable specimen.
The five of them laughed, joked and played all the way back to the farm, and Asa couldn’t recall ever having so much fun, even in her last foster home with the twins. The sense of belonging she felt with Tattie and the other children was so rare, so unexpected, that she didn’t want the day to ever end. She hadn’t thought of Raymond and Shirley since long before meeting the other kids and didn’t think of them now. Her entire attention was focused on Tattie’s jokes, swinging her stick, and running around the trunks of the trees as they played. Asa was disappointed when they emerged from the forest into the open field.
“I see pa,” Fay called out. She was running between the rows of cabbages, her siblings close behind. Asa and Tattie stood at the edge of the forest, not sure whether they should join the others or not.
“I don’t want to go out there,” Tattie said softly. “It’s their home, not mine. Even though they made me and put me in their field.”
Asa knew what Tattie meant. She didn’t belong here either. This was not her home. She didn’t have a home, just a house she lived in with people who didn’t care about her. The joy and fun of the day that had made her so happy just a short time ago melted under the hot light of her reality. She would be going back to that cold and lonely house, the barren room, the chores and the two people who lived there, but who never really spoke to her, and she clutched at Tattie as sobs once again shook her.
“Hey, it’s ok,” The scarecrow said. “I’m alone too.”
“You know I’m alone?” Asa asked through her tears.
“I do. I know a lot of things. But don’t tell the others. They’re not alone, and I don’t think they’d understand. You and I can be friends though. We’ll play together in the woods when they can’t, and we’ll play with them when they can. Ok?”
Asa nodded and let go of Tattie.
“Here they come,” the scarecrow said. Asa turned to look, and she saw the other children running back toward them, a tall and very thin man walking briskly behind them. He stopped when he saw the scarecrow and the little girl. The man made a visor with his hand to shield his eyes from the bright sun and peered intently in their direction.
“Come on pa,” Bobby yelled, “you’ll like them!”
Tattie and Asa stood where they were and waited for the man to reach them.
“Well I’ll be dunked in proper paint,” he said softly. “I’ve never seen the like. You must be Tattie,” he said to the scarecrow then turned to look down. “And you must be Asa. It’s nice to meet you both.”
“Very nice to meet you sir,” Tattie said.
“My kids said they found our scarecrow and that you could talk. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, they don’t lie, but I gotta admit, I didn’t expect this.”
The children were grinning madly, their heads swiveling between their father and Tattie.
“Ain’t it neat pa?” Bobby asked.
The man nodded silently and looked slowly at first Tattie then Asa. He exhaled audibly, and his shoulders slumped a little. “Well, I guess you two better come on up to the house then. No sense standin’ around here like a bunch of yayhoos.”
“Or a bunch of scarecrows,” Tattie said.
The man laughed and smiled at the joke, and his children, seeing that he’d accepted this strange new development, laughed with him. Asa joined after a moment, her sadness forgotten.
The house was a short distance away, and a woman was standing on the wide front porch as they made their way up a small hill to her.
“That’s my ma,” Fay said. “She was workin’ on dinner when we came and got pa.”
The children’s mother was shocked to see their scarecrow walking and talking like a human, but she recovered quickly when Tattie mentioned Frosty.
“Yes, I remember that from the papers,” she said when Fay mentioned the event. “But I thought it was a hoax like that awful War of the Worlds thing from when I was younger.”
The rest of the day passed quickly as Asa and Tattie got to know their new friends’ parents. They were offered lemonade, which Asa loved, while Tattie had to beg off, explaining that scarecrows don’t eat or drink. The mother took to Asa immediately and made her feel more welcome in a few minutes than she’d ever felt in Raymond and Shirley’s home. The children played in the yard with Tattie and watched as the father tinkered with the tractor engine. When the grandfather clock in the parlor rang three, Asa remembered her chores.
“I have to go back,” she said anxiously, “I have chores to do before they get home or they won’t…” she let her voice trail off.
“Won’t what sweetie?” the mother asked.
“Won’t give her dinner,” Bobby blurted out.
“They won’t give you dinner?” the mother asked, her expression equal parts shock and anger. Asa shook her head. “That’s just awful. How does a person do that to a child?” She put her hands on Asa’s shoulders and gave her a direct look. “If they don’t give you dinner tonight, then first thing in the morning, when you can, you come right here to this house, and I’ll make sure you have a big breakfast. Okay?”
Asa smiled slightly and nodded, but inside she was exuberant. She said her goodbyes to everyone and ran back through the woods to the house, stopping only long enough to pat her friend the cherry tree. She had new friends now, real friends, but didn’t want the tree to forget that for a time it had been her only friend.
The rest of that summer passed by far too quickly, and soon the children were talking about school starting again. They’d spent every available hour in the woods with Tattie who’d been there every time. Many days the three siblings had not been able to come to the woods for one reason or another, and on those days Asa and Tattie had played and talked alone. In some ways those days were more fun than when they were all together. She showed Tattie the cherry tree and told the scarecrow about reading books between the roots, and Tattie had declared the big tree its friend too.
The last day before school all five of them were playing in the woods like usual and ended up by the big boulder in the stream. They stopped to look at it, remembering how they’d first met Tattie when the scarecrow had emerged from behind it.
“We’re back here again,” Fay said.
“That sure is a big rock,” Bobby mused.
“Hey kids,” Tattie said. There was a hint of melancholy in the scarecrow’s voice that had never been there before. They gathered around, sensing something different, something not fun and playful.
“Everything has its time, its season,” Tattie said slowly, “and my time is almost over.”
“You’re leaving?” Edith asked with tears in her eyes.
“I have to. I’m not meant to last forever, just for a little while, like when I was Frosty. And it’s time for me to leave.”
“We’ll miss you,” Bobby said as he hugged Tattie’s leg tightly. The other children gathered around and hugged their friend just as hard. Except for Asa who stood a little apart. She was sad but not crying. She’d known this day would come. Good things always ended, and this one was no different. But she would be sad to see Tattie go. The other children were having a hard time accepting what was happening; they were all in tears and begging their friend not to leave. Tattie consoled the three children as best a scarecrow could, and when their grief had run its course, turned to Asa.
“We had some fun, didn’t we? Thank you for introducing me to your cherry tree. I’ll remember it next time.”
“Next time?” Fay asked through sniffles.
“Yep, next time someone finds the hat and puts it on a snowman. Or a scarecrow!” Tattie did a little dance that made Asa think of marionettes in a puppet show, and she smiled.
Fay and Edith began laughing as they wiped tears from their eyes while Bobby stood by dejectedly.
Tattie beckoned to Asa, and she walked forward hesitantly. When the scarecrow spread its arms for a hug, she ran the last few steps and wrapped her arms around its waist. Her tears fell on the leaves and dirt of the forest floor, joining those of her friends. She didn’t let herself cry for long, and disengaged with a sniff, wiping her eyes as she backed away. A tiny smile appeared on her face, and a matching one on Tattie’s.
“Will we ever see you again?” Bobby asked.
“You may,” Tattie replied. “I have to go now, but I need to say one last thing before I leave.” The children all looked at the scarecrow expectantly. Tattie smiled widely, turned and began running away. As the scarecrow disappeared into the trees they heard Tattie’s voice that was, for the first time they’d ever known, singing.
“But he waved goodbye, saying don’t you cry, I’ll be back again someday.”
Asa walked home after school through ankle deep snow. Christmas was over, and the new year had come. She’d made friends at school, and the best part was that Fay, Edith and Bobby were at her school now too. She and Bobby were in the same grade, the girls one and two grades ahead, but they were all able to play together at lunch and recess. She spent a lot of time at their house after school and on weekends. Raymond and Shirley didn’t care as long as she did her chores. Sometimes her new friends from school came with them to the farm, and there would be a whole group of kids playing in the woods and the fallow field. The first snow had fallen back in November and melted quickly, but it had come to stay in early December. Asa liked the snow and the cold didn’t bother her much anymore. It made her think of Frosty who had melted and become Tattie, her departed scarecrow friend, and she always smiled at the thought.
Today she was heading home to do her chores, then over to the farm for dinner. Raymond and Shirey gave her permission, and as long as she was home by seven, Asa could come and go almost as she pleased. The chores never changed, and she’d gotten so good at them that it took little more than an hour to finish everything.
By four o’clock she was running through the forest. The leaves had all fallen from the trees and were covered by an undisturbed blanket of fresh white snow. Asa stopped and listened to the silence of the woods. No birds were singing, no leaves rustled in a warm summer breeze, and there was no laughter of children with their scarecrow friend. She’d thought about Tattie many times since their last day together and had arrived at the very mature conclusion that some people, and even scarecrows, only came into your life for a short time, to teach you something or for you to teach them, then they left just as quickly as they’d appeared. Tattie, she thought, had been like that. Through the scarecrow, and now with Edith, Fay and Bobby, she’d learned that she wasn’t completely alone, that she was able to make friends, and that no matter what happened to her, who she lived with, she would be ok.
Asa inhaled the clean sharpness of the winter air and held it for a moment before letting it out slowly, enchanted as her breath come out in a cloud. It was fitting since the blue of the sky was walled off from her eyes by a ceiling of grey. Clouds above, clouds below, and how different and unrelated yet similar they were. Like her and Tattie. They’d both been alone, strangers in a world that had forgotten them. But they’d developed a bond, a friendship that would last all of Asa’s days. She knew if she ever met Tattie again, or Frosty, that they would pick up right where they left off, even if she was an adult.
“Bye Tattie,” she said as she walked toward the farm and the home of her friends.
The house was warm from the stove in the kitchen and the fireplace in the living room. Edith let her in and immediately dragged Asa to her room so they could play with some new dolls she’d just gotten. The girls got so lost in their games that they didn’t hear ma call them to dinner. Bobby had to come tell them.
Pa said grace when they were all seated at the dinner table, but no one started eating. They were all looking at Asa who began to squirm in her seat. She had never liked attention, and having the eyes of her friends and their parents on her made her uncomfortable.
“Asa,” ma said slowly, “we have a question for you.”
“It’s nothing bad!” Bobby yelped before anyone could stop him. Edith elbowed him in the ribs, and he stopped talking but still had a goofy grin on his face.
“Ok,” Asa said hesitantly. Ma’s eyes were shining in a way she’d never seen before. Even Pa was looking a little off. He coughed and looked down, but Asa thought she saw a tear run from his right eye.
“How would you like to… come live with us?” Ma asked.
Asa was confused. She already lived with Raymond and Shirley. “But… I already…”
“We know,” Pa said. “We talked to your foster parents already.”
Asa didn’t know what to say, so she kept silent.
“What we’re really asking you, Asa, is if you’d like to live with us forever? Become part of our family,” Ma said. She was crying freely now, along with the girls. Bobby was practically bouncing out of his chair with excitement, and even Pa was shedding a few tears.
“We’d like to adopt you, if that’s ok,” Pa said. His voice sounded strange, like it was coming from high in his throat.
Asa couldn’t speak. It was every foster child’s second dream, after their parents coming to claim them, being adopted by a family that really wanted them. Hers had just come true. She wished Tattie were here and realized that as long as she remembered the time with her scarecrow friend, that Tattie always would be. She nodded as vigorously as she ever had about anything in her life. The children all began hugging her while hooting and screaming with joy.
fi“Hey sis,” Bobby said. “Wanna see my new truck?”
My tears of joy flowed like the stream in which the silk hat was found when Asa found her forever family.