Sparrow Man

by M. R. Pritchard

  …

  “There’s a castle down the road here.” Sparrow points ahead of us. “We could stay there for a bit, no rush now that you don’t have a place to go.”

  There is a severe burning behind my eyes. I know he doesn’t mean it, telling me I don’t have a place to go. I only wanted to go home, find the home I had with Jim, but it seems he either doesn’t want me anymore or he’s gone.

  “What do you think?” Sparrow presses.

  I think I want to punch him in his neck for the insensitive words he just spoke to me. But, I’m sure physical violence-especially towards a crazy person- because you don’t like the words coming out of his mouth is definitely not ladylike.

  “Sure,” I tell him. And instead of punching him in the neck I shove my hands deep in my pockets. “Staying in a castle sounds like it might be fun.”

  Sparrow smiles and we walk, him with his hands in his pockets, me with my arms swinging at my sides once the urge to physically harm him has passed, my tattoos hanging out of the wide neck of my shirt. I don’t bother to cover them up like Deacon suggested at the Safe House.

  We walk Route 81, following Ely Drive all the way to Blue Heron Drive and then a tiny gravel road to the end. There, sitting on the lake, is a small castle, all stone and arches and a narrow moat like something out of the middle ages and not much bigger than one of those McMansions like my old friend Sara had.

  “What do you think?” Sparrow asks.

  “Looks nice.”

  I follow him around the side of the building to find a long deck that ends at the lake.

  “Can you fish?” he asks. “Sunrise is the best time to fish.”

  “But we don’t have any fishing poles,” I tell him.

  “Maybe you have something in your backpack?”

  I unclip the bag from my shoulder and search through it. I pull out the dining kit, the survival bracelet, the Swiss army knife and two self-filtering water bottles. “There’s not much more in here besides clothes.”

  Sparrow walks towards me with two sticks in his hand. He bends down, picking up the bracelet and the knife. “This should do.” He unwinds the bracelet and attaches the long string to each of the sticks. I watch his deft fingers as he ties knots and unhooks the clasp to use as hooks. He hands me a stick. “Done. Let’s fish.”

  We sit on the end of the deck, which extends just over the water. With the blunt clip of the bracelet and the lack of bait, I suspect that we won’t catch much, but I’m surprised when Sparrow pulls up four fish. I, on the other hand, catch nothing. I dip my water bottles in the water and fill them in order to feel some type of accomplishment for the day.

  “Okay.” He stands and looks over at the rocky shoreline. “Let’s get some firewood.”

  I follow him, simply watching as he bends and collects a handful twigs from the shore. I cross my arms and stare out over the lake, trying to figure out what the hell just happened at the Safe House in Kingston and why the hell I am still hanging out with a crazy man.

  “Hey, Meg!” I hear Sparrow’s excited whisper.

  “What?”

  “Look.” I follow his arm as he points over the water at a dark colored bird. It takes me a moment to realize it’s a loon. And just like when I told Sparrow that my favorite bird was the loon, Sparrow calls to the creature with an eerie tremolo. The loon calls back over the water. Sparrow looks to me, smiling, his arms filled with sticks and eyes gleaming.

  “That’s fucking amazing,” I reply dryly. “Are you going to pluck its wings now?”

  Sparrow frowns and twists his face. I feel a pang of guilt for acting like an ass when all he’s trying to do is help me.

  “Sorry,” I frown back at him and shove my hands in my jean pockets.

  “You know, Meg,” Sparrow starts as he hands me a bundle of sticks to start a fire. “You shouldn’t swear.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not very ladylike.”

  “I’ve told you before, Sparrow, I’m not a lady.”

  I’m nothing but trailer trash, just like my Daddy and the rest of those town people told me my whole life. But, I still have my teeth. I run my tongue across them all, just to make sure.

  “You could be,” he suggests as he turns away and waltzes to the shoreline to collect some of the larger pieces of driftwood. “You could prove everyone wrong about you.” Sparrow walks along the rocky shoreline, picking up sticks. “Okay,” he says as he grabs the line of fish and looks to the sky. The morning is getting brighter. “Time to hide.”

  We cross the bridge into the little castle. I don’t tell Sparrow, but I see the moat water stir as the dead under there wake. I shudder, remembering how we crossed that dam and they almost pulled Sparrow in. We lift the drawbridge and close the door, locking the heavy latches. I follow Sparrow as he chooses a room to accommodate us both for the day and protect us in case any of the dead get in.

  We stop at a bedroom on the second floor that has a fireplace and a private bathroom. I drop the bundle of sticks in the hearth and turn to help Sparrow lock the door and move some heavy furniture in front of it.

  As I light the fire, Sparrow prepares the fish, skewering them on a thin stick and laying them across the fire. I take a drink from my freshly filled water bottles and stare at the huge four-poster bed on the other side of the room. I’m going to make snow angels in that bed later. I’m going to stretch out my arms and legs as far as they go. It’s going to be amazing. I look around the room and notice the only other piece of furniture is a wingback chair. Sparrow works diligently making my dinner and I know that even though he says he doesn’t sleep, he can’t sit up all day in that chair. It looks like I will be curled up on my side, sharing that bed with my crazy companion.

  After I’ve eaten the fish and drank my fill, I head for the bed. I catch Sparrow settling himself into the chair.

  “Come on, Sparrow.” His eyes flick towards me and an apprehensive look appears on his face. “You’re not resting in that chair. This bed is big enough for the both of us.”

  “I don’t need to sleep,” he reminds me.

  I could tell him that he’s a liar. I caught him sleeping in that yard when I tried to look under his coat. “You need to rest and relax and you can’t do it in that chair.”

  I lie down and pretend to ignore him as he walks to the other side of the bed and kicks his boots off.

  We each hover on opposite edges of the bed, a large open space of mattress between us. Maybe if we didn’t both share the same issue of not wanting to be touched we could use up some of that space and be more comfortable. I wait, taking shallow breaths, until I hear Sparrow start to hum. Tonight it’s, We Weren’t Born to Follow. I fall asleep listening to his voice and realizing how much I missed it those three days I was in that prison.

  …

  As my eyes flutter open, I find that I am curled up on my opposite side from which I fell asleep and dangerously close to Sparrow. He stares at the ceiling, eyes open, hands folded across his stomach. He must sense that I’m awake, even though he never looks at me. Not long after my eyes open he rolls to the side and stands in one quiet movement.

  As he walks across the room his hands flutter over his coat, checking the buttons, ensuring that they are secure. I frown to myself, realizing that he doesn’t trust me-still-to not look at what he hides under that coat.

  “I didn’t look,” I tell him trying to control the defensive tone of my voice.

  “I know that.”

  “Then why were you checking your buttons?”

  Sparrow shrugs. “Habit I guess.” He walks to the window and looks out. I can see the fading light of day from where I sit. Soon it will be night, and we’ll be on the move again. I run my hands over the sheets of the bed, knowing that actually finding a bed and not a hard floor or rotting barn to sleep in is one of the few luxuries we have left right now.

  …

  “Which zoo are you headed for?” I ask Sparrow as we walk down Route 81, headed south, away f
rom the border. The roadside is mostly bare with just a few cars littering the side of the road.

  “There’s one in Syracuse,” he responds, scanning the sides of the highway.

  “Jeez, that’s like almost a hundred miles from here,” I tell him. “It will take us a week or more to get there.”

  “We’ll get there and look,” he points to a road sign. “It’s only ninety-six miles from here, not a hundred.”

  I let out a frustrated breath, not looking forward to another long walk, into a large city nonetheless. And then, in the shadows under the highway sign, I notice a red Jeep Wrangler parked on the side of the road, just calling my name.

  “Meg,” Sparrow warns as I skip towards the vehicle. “We aren’t driving,” he says from the middle of the highway.

  “Why not?” I reach for the door handle and open the driver’s side door.

  “I told you, it’s too much noise.” He makes no attempt to walk towards me.

  I open the door and lean inside. Something glints at me from behind the steering wheel. “They even left the keys!”

  “Don’t-”

  “Come on, Sparrow.” I turn to face him. “We could be there in less than two hours.” I turn back around and turn the key. The Jeep engine turns over and rumbles to life. “Look, there’s almost a full tank of gas! It’s like it was left here for us. Like a miracle or some shit.”

  “Shouldn’t that raise an alarm in your little head?” I hear his boots on the pavement as he walks around to the passenger side.

  “Just think of all those feathers you could have in just a few hours,” I tease. He pulls open the passenger door and gets in. “You don’t want to drive?”

  “I don’t drive. I don’t know how.” He looks out the window into the forest. “Better get moving.”

  I unclip my backpack and set it in the back seat before buckling my seatbelt. “It’s night, we don’t have to worry about the dead right now.”

  “It’s not the dead that worries me.” He clips his seatbelt. He tips his head to the side. “Someone is coming. You had better drive, fast.”

  “What do-”

  “Go!”

  As I flick the headlights on and shift the Jeep into gear as a deep voice shouts from the woods. “Hey! Get out of my car!” I push down on the accelerator and drive off just as a gunshot rings through the night air.

  “I think I just stole that guy’s car,” I tell Sparrow as I focus on the road in the night, accelerating the Jeep towards seventy miles per hour.

  “It’s probably better this way.” Sparrow stares straight ahead.

  “That I stole a car?”

  “That we got away from that man in the woods. Sometimes the living should be feared more than the dead.”

  “What do you think he was doing?” I slow down to swerve between two parked cars in the middle of the highway.

  “Hunting.”

  “Like deer or something?”

  “Like two people walking down the highway in the middle of the night.” A wrinkle of concern crosses his forehead.

  “That’s messed up.” I accelerate the Jeep, speeding further away from the man in the forest.

  Sparrow turns and looks out the back of the vehicle. “Just go. As fast as you can,” he urges.

  “What? Why?

  “Because it’s following us.”

  “Wha-”

  I lean to look behind us and sure as shit the man is running down the middle of the road at us, except it’s not really a man. I can see what looks like horns protruding from his head. I blink, trying to focus my eyes in the dim moonlight.

  “I have to touch you now,” Sparrow warns me as I feel the pressure of his hand on my thigh as he pushes down, causing me to accelerate the Jeep.

  “What was that?” I ask, hoping it was nothing more than shadows playing across that man’s figure.

  “Something worse than the dead which walk in the daylight.”

  …

  I follow the highway signs to Syracuse. Sparrow is quiet. Each time I glance at him his face is covered in an awkward expression as though he’s fighting something inside of himself or trying to remember something.

  Driving to a zoo in the middle of a heavily populated city in the middle of the night definitely isn’t a good idea. But now, I fear the day more than I fear the deep ghetto of the city.

  “Look,” I point out the passenger side window. “There’s a huge mall. We could get new clothes or something.” I glance at Sparrow’s ripped coat. “You could get a new coat.”

  “Stay away from that mall,” he warns. “Don’t go there.”

  “Why?”

  “Take a closer look.”

  I slow the Jeep and squint towards the large building made of glass and cement. I can see movement and torches behind the plate glass windows.

  “That’s nothing more than a huge prison. Just like the one you left in Canada. Except this one is filled with people from the middle of a city with a booming crime rate. Who do you think is running that place? There’s plenty of corruption in there and it’s only a matter of time before their sins catch up with them.”

  “Okay.” I pull away and continue driving, following the signs towards the zoo.

  …

  “The parking lot is empty. That’s a good sign. Right?” I ask, parking the Jeep near the front door of the zoo.

  “Yeah, there’s no one here.”

  We get out and head towards the front door, which I can see is already broken in. I follow Sparrow through the broken entrance and pull back as the stench of rot surrounds us.

  “Holy crap.” I pull my shirt over my mouth and nose.

  “Cage up a bunch of animals, make them completely dependent on the humans caring for them, and then this happens.” Sparrow shakes his head as he walks up an incline, past a gift shop and stops in front of the zoo map. “Aviary is over here.”

  I follow him as he pushes his hand against a door labeled Birds of Paradise.

  “Jesus.” I step out from behind Sparrow, watching where I put my feet. The floor is littered with dead birds.

  Sparrow bends and lifts one in his hand, a small pink parrot-like bird. “This is too bad,” he says as he grips the bird’s flight feathers and yanks them off.

  “That’s gross.”

  “Yeah. Easier than chasing after live ones though.”

  “I thought you wanted flamingo feathers?”

  “Those are outside.” He points towards a door. “You can wait out there for me if you want.”

  I walk past him, avoiding the dead birds that litter the ground and push open the door. Fresh air pours over me and I take a deep breath. I prop the door open with a garbage can so Sparrow can have some fresh air while he pillages the dead birds for their feathers.

  There are dark forms on the ground in the gated enclosures, animals rotting into the soil. The sign directly in front of me says: Lions. I stand and walk to the thick observation glass, pressing my hands to it and seeing three lions on the ground, hip bones jutting out, and sides sunken in, dead.

  I move on only to find a murky pool with a sign for penguins. The smell is so strong here that I step back and search the area for the walking dead. By the time I make it a few hundred yards, Sparrow catches up with me, his pockets full.

  I read the sign in front of me. “Are you interested in Emu feathers?” Sparrow leans over the hip-height fencing and searches the cage. “Emu feathers are big.”

  “No they’re not,” he corrects me.

  We stop in front of a fence with the label for a vulture. He grips the fence and launches himself into the cage and disappears into the shadows.

  After a few moments he returns with a handful of large gray feathers clutched in his hand. “Good idea,” he says as he reaches for the fencing and climbs out of the cage.

  “I didn’t suggest those ones,” I point out.

  He shrugs and moves on. A wooden sign points to the flamingo area. Sparrow walks so fast I can barely keep up with hi
s fast pace. He grips the wooden fence of the flamingo enclosure, ready to launch himself over the side. He pauses when I catch up to him.

  “Want to come with me?” he asks.

  I get the general feeling that I might be ruining his fun if I went in there with him.

  “No, I’ll wait here for you.”

  “You’re not going to run away on me again, are you?” he asks with a glimmer of humor in his eye.

  “Go pillage the pretty pink birds, Sparrow. Before they come back to life and peck our eyes out.”

  He grips the wooden fence. “Animals don’t walk like the dead, Meg. Their souls are pure.” He jumps over the fence. I watch as he stops at each pink mound, stretching the wings of the dead birds and pulling out all of their feathers, stuffing his pockets until he looks like a child bundled for the winter snow.

  …

  We hit the zoos in Rochester and Buffalo. Sparrow took a bag from one of the gift shops to hold all the feathers we took.

  With his craving for feathers sated, we stop in a little lakefront town on Lake Erie, just off of the highway, Dunkirk. It’s quaint, just a bit larger than Gouverneur. There’s a breakwall with a little lighthouse out in the middle of the water.

  I park the Jeep near the pier. As we make our way across the crumbling breakwall we can hear the sounds of the dead collecting on the shoreline. And when we are secure in the little lighthouse for the day, we watch the dead as the wobble across the peaks and valleys of the breakwall. We bet on which ones will fall into the lake next and which one will lose its footing and smack off of the rocks on its way down.

  Sparrow catches fish in the wee hours of the morning and we spend our night collecting gull feathers from the shoreline. There are so many that Sparrow doesn’t even need to capture any of the birds, we simply pluck the good ones off of the ground.

  On our second day Sparrow stands up straight after tucking a few feathers into his pockets and faces the small town.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask him.

  “I need to go to the store.” He begins walking across the breakwall towards town, now wearing a backpack that I know is stuffed full of feathers.