Writers as Kids: Plague: A Cornfield Becomes a Cemetery

by Megan Martin

Pictured: Chris Killen

1.

Later there will be laws against it—much later it will be called “cruel and unusual.”

But now, in Britain, in 1348, to the gaggle of boys just hired to patrol the wheatfields with sacks of stones, it’s great fun.

They scout the sky for intruders, race to spot one first—there, that speck, see!  A crow swoops down from a cloud and boys chase him in a rain of rocks and whoops and arm-wavings.  They chase them all day long like this; never run out of breath. 

They watch the wheat grow taller than themselves, then taller than men.  The sight of bloodslicked feathers—oh, the boys grow proud, proud: rulers of this kingdom.  

2.

A disease has taken flight.

Boys hear rumors from the farmers’ wives that it has been delivered by fleas that nest in feathers,  in the fur of rodents.  They hear it coming for miles in the crow-caws.  It isn’t a game; it’s a war now, except to the boys war is another kind of game.  They whoop and cry and wave harder and scream—oh, war is great fun!  It is great fun being men!

One grows a headache; another shivers in the heat.  I’m going home for the day; the light is too bright to stand. 

I grow a knot on my neck; you, a lump in your thigh.  We chase the birds harder, scream murder til we can’t breathe.  I see you bent over in the tall wheat coughing.  But this is a different kind of scream—the kind I feel in my veins.

Your lump grows to the size of a pea; an apricot, then overnight a rotten orange.  Your mother sends you back to work where you tell me how it burns in the sun; where I watch it split hot black open with blood while you tell me how everything that erupts from you is blood; how everything that erupts from you smells like death. 

It’s true: I can smell you coming, I joke. 

I’m going home for the day.  The light is too—

3.

First boys don’t return; then they disappear.  Each one now has acres to patrol: there are not enough boys to make a difference.  They grow taller than the wheat.  Crows arrive in droves.  The fields disappear under black wings.  The boys stand back and watch the numbers reverse—are they boys, or crows?  Who is in charge here?  They run wild, in all directions—but what are they running from?

On the walk home they watch as bodies are shoved in pits, as pits overflow and are abandoned.  They watch bodies being shut up in houses; houses being burnt to the ground.  They watch because there is nothing they can do.  Bodies are left in the streets (smell of black blood rotting, eyes the eyes of crows); boys leapfrog over them: laughter is what keeps them safe. 

4.

But at night I feel fleas crawling softly over my body, burrowing into my hair, making a grave of me.   

The farmer tells us too many boys have disappeared: there aren’t enough of us to do the job. 

We watch from the road with one boy’s mother as we are replaced by wooden replicas of ourselves: sacks stuffed with straw, eyes and mouths carved into the faces of turnips, hands and feet nailed to stakes. 

They lean lifeless against the poles, arms straight out, frighteningly stiff.  We remember our boys’ bodies running waving through fields like wind and we remember our screams and our mothers and our fathers and their voices soft in the next room at night while crows pour out of the sky into black dreams.

Comments

[erin tee]

Way to take a cute moment and make it creepy, Martin! :) haha jk... I'm so glad you took your piece in a dark direction. I was worried that mine (forthcoming) would be the only one that wasn't sweet, funny and cute. Thankfully, I can count on you, black death debbie downer. jk you know i lylas! ;) this piece scared the crap out of me! -et

[kathryn regina]

i think this is one of my favorites. so beautiful. the great megan martin.

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