The Union of Unemployed Scarecrows

When new machines replace a valley's scarecrows, the discarded figures assemble outside the grain office demanding useful work. A warehouse clerk and a practical seamstress must discover what the valley is afraid of before its newest workers begin protecting entirely the wrong things.

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How it begins

The first scarecrow arrived at the grain office before Walter Dean had unlocked the door.

It stood beneath the public noticeboard wearing a coat Walter recognized. His late brother had donated it to a farmer who disliked wasting wool.

On the coat someone had pinned a card. AVAILABLE FOR WORK.

Walter looked up the road. Nothing moved except a loose newspaper and the distant arms of the new harvesting machine.

'Office opens at nine,' he said.

The scarecrow did not object. Its patience made him uncomfortable.

By nine there were seven of them. At a quarter past, a woman carrying a basket stopped to count. By half past, the office windows looked onto a crowd of straw hats, stitched faces and empty sleeves.

Walter telephoned the agricultural board. A secretary asked whether he meant demonstrators dressed as scarecrows.

'I mean scarecrows dressed as scarecrows.'

The line became very quiet.

Mabel Fox arrived with her sewing bag. She pushed through the waiting figures without fear, though she apologized when her elbow caught a turnip nose.

'They came through my yard,' she said. 'I thought one of them needed mending.'

'Does it?'

'They all do. That's not why they're here.'

Walter glanced at the nearest card. Another figure wore one reading EXPERIENCED IN PREVENTION.

'Prevention of what?' he asked.

The straw head turned toward the machine. Slowly, the empty sleeve pointed at the grain office door.

Walter had spent twenty-six years recording how much grain entered the stores and how little left for the valley's own households. He had never considered whether a scarecrow might notice the same thing.

Mabel threaded a needle.

'Before you give them a job,' she said, 'you had better decide what you want protected.'

Behind the glass, Walter's telephone began to ring. Not one of the figures moved aside.

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Develop this idea

Give scarecrows a limited, comprehensible awareness rooted in what they observed in fields. Their speech and motion should become more precise through repairs without treating disability as a joke. Research agricultural change in a chosen invented setting and avoid a simple machines-bad argument. The problem is allocation and purpose. Walter must change his own recordkeeping choices, and the scarecrows need agency in accepting their eventual work.

Discarded scarecrows gather at the grain office asking for useful work.
Mabel discovers their repairs affect how clearly they can communicate.
Walter assigns harmless guarding tasks to satisfy the agricultural board.
The scarecrows protect grain from hungry residents instead of from waste.
The board praises efficiency while the town becomes increasingly resentful.
Mabel demands workers be able to question the purpose of their tasks.
Walter uncovers storage losses concealed behind the new machinery's success claims.
The scarecrows refuse instructions that confuse protecting food with withholding it.
Residents negotiate new roles in seed saving and shared crop protection.
Walter opens the records while Mabel establishes a paid repair workshop.

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