Sparrow Man

by M. R. Pritchard

  “What do you need from the store?”

  “I’ll know when I get there.”

  We drove through the town when we got here. There’s one of everything; a doctor’s office, a dentist, a Wal-Mart, a pharmacy… the list goes on. The only problem is they are a mile or more from where we’ve been staying.

  “I’ll drive,” I suggest, skipping a few steps to get in front of Sparrow and lead him towards the Jeep.

  He shrugs and follows me.

  We drive to the drug store.

  …

  “What do you need all of this glue for?” I ask Sparrow.

  “Something,” is all he tells me as he intently packs the glue into my backpack.

  I leave his side and wander through the store. It’s been mostly picked through. Probably from whoever lived here before, the survivors stocking up before they turned. I stop in front of the shaving supplies. I grab a men’s razor and shaving cream. As I walk away, I reach for a women’s razor. It’s been a while since I shaved my legs.

  When I find Sparrow again, my bag is bursting at the seams with glue. “Why didn’t you use your bag?”

  “My feathers are in there,” he scoffs as though I should know better than to ask.

  We retreat to the Jeep, but not before I search the store for something to eat. When I find a candy bar, I don’t even ask Sparrow if he wants some of it, I know what his answer will be. I shove it in my mouth.

  Something strange has come over us after the shopping spree. A lightness or something. Maybe it’s the chocolate.

  “Why don’t you sing a song?” Sparrow suggests.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I laugh. “What do you think we all listened to in the trailer park? Nothing more than seventies and eighties music blaring out of the boombox.”

  “So, what will you sing?”

  “Do you know any Meatloaf?”

  “Meatloaf,” he says it as though he bit a lemon.

  “Come on!” I tease. “I’ve been listening to you sing Bon Jovi for weeks.”

  “Yeah, but Bon Jovi is the man!” He reaches forward and slaps the dashboard.

  “Well you need to stretch your wings bird-boy. On the playlist, right now, it’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf. The other man.”

  I sing loud, with my best shower voice. Sparrow chirps in, singing the chorus and at times the lead with me. It’s not long before our voices break apart, Sparrow singing for Meatloaf and me singing for that strange looking lady in the white jumpsuit that I remember from the video. I accelerate and Sparrow stands in the passenger seat as he sings, extending through the open roof, his arms spread wide. I laugh out loud, throwing my head back with a full smile. Sparrow looks down at me, smiling wide himself. The sleeves of his coat billow in the wind.

  “It’s like you’re flying,” I tell him.

  He freezes, the night suddenly empty of his voice, his smile gone as he slides down into the passenger seat.

  “Oh, jeez.” I pull over. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? I… I didn’t mean anything I was just…”

  He turns to me and I see something pass over his face.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I just remembered something that I think is very important.”

  “What? Gosh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” My hand hovers in the air as though I might touch him to comfort him. I don’t though, because I know how both of us are. I’ve only touched him once and it was awkward, yet comforting. And I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

  Sparrow tips his head as though he’s studying me. “You’re very pretty when you smile, Meg.”

  I sit back in my seat, dumbfounded. I wasn’t expecting him to say that.

  …

  I wake to find Sparrow looking at me. No, he’s lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, thoughtfully gazing at me. I scramble to sit up and move away from him, feeling my face for drool or something different, like death.

  “What?” I ask.

  He smiles that smile that I secretly love and I move further away from him, afraid that maybe he woke up changed just as Noah did that day-or maybe I have.

  I stand, running my hands all over myself, feeling for something, anything to explain the look on Sparrow’s face right now. “What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that? Did I change? Am I waking up like one of them?” I run my hands through my hair, smell myself, touch my teeth. It’s all still there, the same.

  Sparrow stands and I notice his movements are different, slower, less like he usually is. His eyes don’t flick from side-to-side, he doesn’t check the buttons on his coat. He smiles as he speaks and tells me slowly, “I remembered something while you were sleeping.”

  “What’s that?” I step further away from him.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he promises.

  I keep a close eye on Sparrow as we get ready to leave, and yup, Sparrow has definitely changed. He seems to no longer possess those odd quirks and movements and ways of speaking that made me truly believe he was cracked a bit in the head. While everyone around us has woken up a walking corpse, and I fear for the day when I do, it seems Sparrow has woken up completely normal.

  …

  The lighthouse has been good to us, but we’ve cleaned the shoreline of feathers.

  “Where do we go now?” I ask Sparrow, my head still full of unease at the way he’s acting.

  “We could hit some more zoos,” he suggests.

  “The next closest one is in Ohio. We’d have to get more gas.”

  “Let’s go find some gas then.”

  We leave the lighthouse to walk across the breakwall for the last time. I drive down Washington Ave headed out of town. Suddenly, I see Sparrow’s head turn quick as though he’s noticed something in the shadows.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Stop the car.” He reaches out, his hand hovering over mine.

  Before I can shift the Jeep into park Sparrow has his door open and he’s running towards the sidewalk. He stops in front of a huge Gothic Church.

  I get out and walk up next to him.

  “What are we doing here, Sparrow?”

  He turns to me, his green eyes ablaze. “You confessed your sins. Now, I must confess mine.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He looks at me, lucid and together, the crazy gone for this moment. Whatever he’s saying, he’s telling me the truth. “I had to collect the confessions of a sinner.” He tips his head to the side, studying me. “You were that sinner.”

  “Sparrow,” I step back from him, “I think you’ve gone and lost your nut.”

  He looks down the length of himself. “My nuts are fine.” He blinks at me.

  I choke out a laugh.

  “Wait here.” He runs up the steps and pulls the door to the church open. It closes behind him with a heavy thud.

  I sit on the front steps, ready to retreat in case the bags of meat start moaning and gimping down the street. And I think about the last time I was in church, breathing in the dust motes and holy water spray during a school field trip. There was something comforting about the insides of a church, not one of those new Born-Again pole barn buildings, but a true brick and mortar Gothic creation with rows of candles and statues and the echoes of ritual. There was comfort, peace, a feeling of belonging. It was odd, feeling like that, especially since Daddy always said I’d burn to a cinder if I ever stepped foot in a church. Nothing ever happened during that school trip, I wonder if it would now?

  Instead of finding out, I sit and when my butt goes numb, I stand and begin pacing the sidewalk in front of the church, wondering what the hell Sparrow is doing in there for so long. A few times I climb the stone steps and press my ear to the door. I can hear the murmuring of his deep voice in there speaking to someone, even though no one ever answers him.

  Recognizing the pink-gray glow in the sky as the sunrise, I stop pacing and stare at the carved church door. If Sparrow takes much longer I’m going to ha
ve to interrupt the personal service he’s having right now.

  Throwing myself down on the cement steps to sit, I pull a feather out of my pocket, a bright green one from one of the dead parakeets at the zoo. I run it through my fingers and then stop, realizing it’s a little too similar to one of Sparrow’s odd quirks. I toss the feather into the night air, pull my knees to my chest and watch as it flutters down the street. Just as the feather travels further into the last shadows of the nearly ended night, until I can barely see it anymore, the ground shakes, and I mean it shakes hard, tipping me over. I roll down the steps, stopping myself at the bottom on my hands and knees

  “Holy shit.” I push myself off of the ground. “Sparrow!” I yell, running to the door and tugging on the handle. The door doesn’t budge, it doesn’t even move. I can hear his voice through the thick wood; Sparrow Man talking, lucid and clear, just as when he told me he had to collect my sins. A deep shiver runs up my back. “Sparrow!” I yell, pounding on the wood with my fists. The sun rises higher in the sky and behind me I hear a deep moaning sound. Shit. Meat sacks. “Sparrow!” I scream, pounding so hard my entire arm throbs.

  Finally, the doors push open and a long arm reaches out, pulling me into the safety of the church.

  “Sparrow?” I ask as my eyes adjust to the dim light. I can only see the outline of his tall form in front of me. “The dead are awake. I heard them. They’re headed this way.”

  “It’s safe here. Hallowed ground. They can’t get in,” he replies.

  “But we need to get out. We can’t be trapped in here.” The faces of strange statues stare down at us from the cathedral ceiling, watching, judging. “I can’t be trapped in here.” I look at my hands, at least I didn’t burst into flames, seems Daddy was wrong about that.

  “No.” He turns from me. “We can’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He paces the stone floor between the pews, a serpentine walk towards the altar.

  “What do you mean we can’t?” I ask. “Answer me, Sparrow! Did you remember something? Do you remember who you are?”

  Stopping when he reaches the aisle, he runs his hands through his hair and his green eyes are wild as he turns to me. “Not quite. I need your help.”

  “What can I do?” I walk down the center aisle towards him, my footsteps making muted sounds on the aged stone. “What can I do to help you?”

  “Feathers.” He starts towards his backpack that’s on the floor near the altar.

  “You have all of your feathers, Sparrow. We just traipsed across the state collecting them. And then you were suddenly sane and now it’s like you’re regressing. What is happening to you?”

  “Largest to smallest.”

  “What?”

  “You… you have to arrange them, largest to smallest.”

  “I have no fucking clue what you are talking about, Sparrow!”

  He turns after stepping up to the altar and I watch as he unbuttons his coat. He’s wearing a loose ragged shirt and as he unbuttons it, his eyes are clear and focused as he stares at me. He pauses, his fingers smoothing over the last button. “Don’t freak out, okay?”

  “What?”

  He presses his lips together and turns around.

  I step back, blinking, taking in what I see.

  His body is pale and well muscled, but… but his back… Jutting out of the skin at sharp angles is the skeletal form of a pair of wings.

  Wings without feathers.

  Memories and the dead

  Sparrow turns around to face me, his eyes wide. “Help me with the wings?” he asks. No, he pleads.

  Sparrow pushes his hands into the pockets of his pants and coat and starts pulling out handfuls of feathers. All the ones we’ve collected from owls and robins and finches and doves and chickadees. Hundreds of colors and sizes.

  “What the…”

  “Don’t swear. We’re in a church,” he nips. “Help me, Meg. Please, will you help me?” His green eyes are wide and rimmed with red like he’s been crying. “I need you,” he begs. “I need you. Help me. You’re the only one who can do it.” He steps down off of the altar and in a few long strides he’s in front of me, reaching forward, taking my hand in his. “It has to be you. Please.” He drops to the floor at my feet. “Please, please, please, Meg. Help me.”

  Standing still, barely able to move at the sight of Sparrow like this, on his knees in front of me, half-naked and begging. This is worse than when he lost his feathers near the dam.

  I drop to my knees, into the thickness of feathers at my feet, facing Sparrow and pick up a bright blue feather from a Blue Jay. I know this because I held my hand out, seed piled in my palm, so Sparrow could catch the bird and pull out two of its flight feathers. Pressing the soft tip of the feather to his bare chest, “What are you?” I ask.

  Sparrow shakes his head. “I can’t explain. I just know that I need your help.”

  “This is…” Sparrow’s eyes flick to mine, a warning. “Messed up.”

  Sparrow reaches to the floor, grasping handfuls of feathers. “Will you help me?”

  At this moment, staring at his wild, handsome face and his fistfuls of feathers, I realize I can’t tell him no, not after all he’s done for me since I’ve met him. “Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”

  Reaching down with a shaky hand, spreading the feathers out before me, and searching for the ones that I know are large: the vulture and eagle and flamingo feathers. I start sorting, biggest to smallest.

  …

  After what seems like a very long time, long enough for my legs to fall asleep under me and for the feathers to blur into a dripping rainbow in front of my eyes, I look up.

  Sparrow stands in front of me, clean shaven, his unruly hair combed. He’s still without a shirt and he’s taken off his boots and socks. A clean pair of jeans sits low on his hips. I gasp audibly. He looks amazing, like he walked off the pages of a magazine, like he walked out of that horny dream I had in the Safe House.

  Suddenly self-conscious in front of him, I run my hand over my face, feeling the tired skin and the awry hair sticking to my cheeks and neck. Shit. I never did pride myself on my looks much, but I’m sure disheveled doesn’t even compare to what I look like right now.

  Looking up at him again, my breath catches in my throat and I feel my face flame red from embarrassment. “When did you suddenly become not crazy?” I ask him, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of my shirt.

  The corner of his mouth twitches. “Maybe I still am.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “We’ve switched places. I’m sure of it.”

  Sparrow smiles that handsome smile that I love. Straight white teeth and dimples.

  “Don’t smile at me like that.”

  “Like what?” His left eye squints into an almost-wink.

  “Like you know a secret and you’re not going to tell me.”

  “Perhaps I do.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  I bend my torso, resting an elbow on my leg and continue with my sorting. Eight bluish-black feathers of a dead crow, sixteen bright blue feathers from a dead parrot at the zoo, one sparkling white feather of a snowy owl, I grip that in my hand remembering the night he got them and the day he lost one.

  “Those are my favorite,” Sparrow says as he sits across from me, leaning back on his hands and crossing his legs that are stretched out in front of him at the ankle.

  “I know. You spoke to that owl like she was a woman you wanted to take home to bed.”

  “Did that make you uncomfortable? Hearing me speak like that? Is that why you ran away?” he asks, his voice low and sultry.

  I sit up, back suddenly straight, embarrassed that he could read me so easily. “I liked you better when I knew you were crazy.”

  “Do I frighten you now?”

  My eyes drift over him. Hell no, he makes me think about that dirty dream I had in that jail cell when he peeled my clothes off. “I knew what to expect from you then.” I bend dow
n again, setting the owl feather above the line of sorted feathers. Without its match, I’m not sure where to put it.

  Time passes as I sort the feathers and when I look up again, Sparrow is gazing at me with a strange look in his eyes that I don’t quite understand.

  …

  “What happened to you, Sparrow?” I ask as he stands still in front of me. I know he’s watching me, silently.

  “I will tell you when you tell me what happened to you.”

  I look up at him. He crouches down on his haunches and I think it’s so strange to see him like he is now, without a coat or a shirt and the bony appendages visible behind his shoulders.

  “What happened to you, Meg? The entire story.” He tips his head to the side, waiting.

  “There were men…” I start, running a large black feather through my fingers.

  “How many?”

  “Seven.”

  “Seven,” he repeats quietly, tipping his head to the other side.

  “Seven,” I breathe out.

  “Meg.” He leans forward with his hands on the floor now. “Remember what happened.”

  I close my eyes. “I told them to go away. I told them to come back when Jim got home. But they wouldn’t leave. They threatened to break down the door, said they had a paper from the Governor. That they had the right by law to search for guns. I opened the door.” I pause, swallowing hard. “There are seven and I remember one looking at my stomach. I could tell by their faces, they looked bad, they felt bad. As they stormed the house, I ran for the stairs.”

  “What happened next, Meg?

  “I’m… I’m not sure.”

  “Yes you are. Tell me.”

  I swallow hard. “I ran for the stairs. And then… then I noticed another man walk in the door.”

  “Who was it?” Sparrow asks.

  “Oh…” I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Who?”

  My heart contracts painfully. “It’s Jim,” I whisper. “Jim was there.”

  “Jim was there,” Sparrow repeats.