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Sullivan slammed on the brakes of the Wolseley with an almost dangerous amount of force. “What the hell are those?!”
Sergeant Goodfellow had caught himself on the dashboard as the car jerked to a stop. “What are what, Inspector?” he ventured cautiously as he straightened back up.
“Those,” Sullivan stressed, aiming one finger towards the field that stretched from the side of the road to a distant windbreak.
“Ah...cabbages, sir?”
“No, not-” He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “I know what cabbages look like, Sergeant. I’m asking about the scarecrows.”
“Oh!” Goodfellow peered past him and then chuckled, earning an incredulous side-glance from Sullivan. “This must be that field Mr. Whitman was talking about. I overheard him down at the pub a few weeks ago, saying that he needed new scarecrows to watch over his cabbages.”
When the Sergeant didn’t go on, Sullivan pressed. “And did he happen to mention that he was planning to make them look like members of the constabulary?”
“No, sir,” Goodfellow replied, biting back a smile. “Mr. Carter did, though.”
...Of course he had. “And you didn’t try to dissuade him? I’m appalled.”
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t take it as an offense. And I didn’t know they’d actually gone and made them, either. Anyway,” his grin slipped through for a second, “Me saying something probably wouldn’t have done any good. When Mr. Carter really gets set on an idea, he can be very convincing about it.”
Sullivan needed no reminder of that. He’d fallen for one of Sid’s ‘ideas’ six months ago and had yet to recover from the experience. In fact, he was starting to think that recovery was impossible. But while he was willing to show the impudent brat he was now bedding on the regular a fair bit of leniency, this was too much. He grimaced and gestured out the window again. “You know there’s likely one of you out there, too? And all the others.”
“That’s a good point, Inspector.” The Sergeant’s hand rose towards the door handle. “Maybe we should take a closer look at them?”
Yes. Yes, a closer look was warranted, if only so that Sullivan could determine how much punishment to dish out when Sid came over tonight. “Very well, Sergeant. Let’s start tallying up charges.”
Sid’s welcome-home smile faded into hesitancy when Sullivan stopped on the kitchen threshold and crossed his arms a few hours later. “Uh-oh. What’d I do?”
“You know full well what you did.”
His eyes went to the pan on the cooktop, then came back to Sullivan. “Thought you didn’t mind breakfast for dinner?”
“I don’t.” Fried eggs and a rasher of bacon in the evening was just one of many things that they’d discovered a shared passion for. “But I do mind being made fun of publicly.”
“We’ll be outed in five minutes if I stop teasing you in public, love.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t excuse making a visual farce of me.”
Sid frowned for a moment, puzzling as he prodded a piece of meat. “Oh! Cal Whitman’s new scarecrows!” His lips resumed their beaming for a split second, then fell into disappointment when he looked at Sullivan again. “...You don’t like them?”
“You made effigies of my entire staff!”
“What?” Sid turned the heat under the pan off. “Not effigies,” he insisted, turning to face Sullivan entirely. “Nothing bad’s meant to happen to them.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure the local schoolboys will consider your intentions when they pull down the one of me and do God only knows what to it.”
“Well, maybe if you just kept walking when you smell a whiff of cigarette smoke coming from behind the school...”
Sullivan saw red. “Sidney.”
“Oh, c’mon! What is this, the Middle Ages? They might egg your house come Mischief Night, but they’re not gonna go out of their way to tar and feather your scarecrow.”
“And you know this how?”
Sid shrugged. “It’s what I'd do, if I was them. They’re not stupid; they know a bit of laddish vandalism’s a safer risk than full-blown destruction of property. Anyway, abusing a doll with a recognizable face would be a pretty violent thing to do. You might not be universally loved around here, but no one actually wishes you harm.”
A beat passed as a sad shadow underlined Sid’s expression. His right hand rose to grip his left elbow in a partial self-embrace. “I mean, I know I didn’t, when I was making it. Your scarecrow. I thought it’d be sweet. You out in the field, ever-vigilant, chasing off the thieving crows...I figured everyone else’d think I was poking fun at you, but I wasn’t.”
“...No.” Sullivan let out a long sigh. “No, of course you weren’t.” He should have known as soon as he looked up into the straw man’s face. The careful lines on the pale sacking had conveyed a remarkable sense of life, and even beauty. For a moment, he recalled now, he'd seen Sid’s real message. Then the Sergeant had called it a good likeness, and all the negative possibilities had flooded in to drown out the love.
“I’m sorry I reacted the way I did,” he went on. “I never thought you meant to be insulting. But it was a shock to come down the road and see an obvious representation of myself standing in the middle of a cabbage patch. You might have warned me. And I do wish that you’d considered the unpleasant things people might feel inspired to do to something like that, even if you don’t believe that anyone will touch it.”
Sid managed a faint smile. “There you go again, always assuming the worst of people.”
“There you go again, assuming the best.” It was the kind of habit, Sullivan shivered, that could get a person killed in a place like Kembleford.
“I don't always. I just like to try and give people a chance if I can. I mean, where would I be without a few of those having been thrown my way?”
Not standing here and cooking them a meal to share, Sullivan allowed silently. And that would be an unfathomable loss.
“I’ll talk to Cal tomorrow,” Sid continued. “He thought they were a laugh, but he’ll take them down if I make some replacements for him.”
A laugh. That was all this was, even to Sergeant Goodfellow, whose stuffed visage had been as easygoing and amused as his real one. There had been whispering around the station later in the afternoon; Sullivan would bet money that the word had been spread, and that each of his men would want to find their own scarecrow amongst the posse guarding Whitman’s cabbages. They’d take their families, he imagined, invite their friends. If he ruined such innocent fun, mightn’t his scarecrow almost deserve to be kicked around a little?
“Don’t.” Sid’s eyebrows rose. “...Don’t take them down.”
“If it’s upsetting you, though-”
“No. They don’t upset me. Not anymore.” He shook his head. “Not now that you’ve explained.”
“...You’re sure?”
“I am. They’re fine. They, ah...they were quite well done, you know. I don’t think I can call them realistic, but they were certainly artistic. In the good way.”
Sullivan’s heart never felt half as full as it did when he saw pure, boyish happiness on Sid’s face. When he was the one who had put the look there, he wondered how he managed to keep from bursting with satisfaction. Bursting, or perhaps suffocating, since he regularly forgot to breathe when the other man smiled at him like he was right now. Either way, he thought as he reminded himself to inhale, would be a blissful death.
“Well, I had a pretty handsome model for the main one.” Sid winked, then turned back to the cooktop and re-lit the hob beneath their bacon and eggs. “Gorgeous, actually.”
Oh, so they were playing now, were they? “Careful,” Sullivan warned, moving up behind him. “I’m getting jealous.” His hands came to rest on Sid’s hips. Heat. Firmness. A slight, welcoming backward shift. What had he been upset about, again?
“You’re probably just hungry.”
“Mm. Probably. Can I have something sweet for afters?”
“C’n have whatever you want,” Sid answered, his voice husky from the brush of Sullivan’s lips against his throat. “So long as I can have a roll in the hay.”
“...You had better not have made a scarecrow of me just to have a chance to use that terrible pun, Sidney.”
“I didn’t, I swear. But I couldn’t let the opportunity go by, could I?”
“No.” Sullivan’s arms wrapped fully around Sid’s waist. “We wouldn’t want to miss out on any of those. In fact...” His hand slipped between the cooker’s controls and the front of Sid’s trousers, clicked the heat off, then rotated to cup him. “I think we should take this sudden stove malfunction as an opportunity to have afters, first...”