Sparrow Man

by M. R. Pritchard

  “Do you want to see your old house?” Jack asks. “I mean, I know they sold it, but…” He turns to glance at me and stops talking. “Sorry, that’s a pretty bad idea.”

  While his hands are gripping the steering wheel that I notice the gold band across his left ring-finger.

  “You’re married?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” He stretches his fingers. “Almost a year now.”

  “Congratulations,” I tell him, turning away to look out the window. “I need a car.”

  “There’s the dealership on Route Eleven,” he suggests.

  “Can you take me there?”

  Jack drives me and waits as I decide on one of those hybrid vehicles that uses less gas. I call the bank and have them transfer the entire amount. While we sit in the car as the salesman goes inside to finish the paperwork, Jack turns to me. “Where will you go, Meg?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I had a dream I went to jail for what I did.” I turn to face Jack, my stomach dropping with the change of his expressions.

  “The state buried it. You won’t go to jail. The Governor’s waiting for you to sue over what those men did. Now that you’re wealthy and can afford a lawyer.” Jack adjusts the badge on his chest pocket. “They should’ve never hired those goons. Or passed those gun laws.” He exhales a long breath and my focus turns to the pistol on his hip. I consider asking for it, remembering Sparrow’s words, guns can’t help you now. I guess they can’t, and an officer won’t give me his weapon, but I can go down to the hunting store and buy a shit load of weapons now. Maybe another day.

  “So, where will you go?” Jack asks again.

  “Not sure. I just can’t stay here.”

  I feel his arm grip me around the shoulders and I lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder. I think this is the first person I haven’t flinched away from.

  “I’m sorry Noah got you into so much trouble as a kid. I didn’t know that was how your father treated you. Noah never said a thing.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “Can’t change it.”

  The salesman interrupts us. “Well, you’re good to go, miss.”

  I take the keys, I hug Jack, and then I sit for a long time at the edge of the dealership parking lot trying to decide which way to go and what to do with my life, feeling emptier than I ever have before.

  Looking down at the scrubs I’m wearing, I decide that my first stop is to find a store for some new clothes. I drive away from Gouverneur, towards Watertown, where I have less of a chance of running into someone who recognizes me.

  Sitting in the J. C. Penney parking lot I find myself filled with apprehension. Before I knew what I wanted; I’d run into Wal-Mart and grab the shortest jean skirt and tightest tank-top I could find.

  After what seems like forever, I unlatch my seatbelt and get out of the car. Standing next to the new car, key-fob in hand, I can’t seem to remember how to lock the darn thing. Staring at the buttons for too long, I give up and head into the store.

  Opening the glass doors, I look over the sea of clothing racks, suddenly insecure about what to do next.

  “Can I help you, miss?” a lady with curled gray hair and a nametag asks me.

  “Women’s dresses?”

  “Sure. Follow me,” she says with a pleasant smile. Her heels click on the floor as she walks. “What type of dress are you looking for?” she turns her head to ask me.

  “Just something… nice,” I reply with a shrug.

  She stops in front of a rack of dresses. “Day, evening and night.” Her wrists jangle with bracelets as she points towards the racks of clothing.

  “Thanks.” I smile at her.

  I search the racks, finding a few dresses that I think might fit. In the fitting room, I settle on a gauzy teal one that hits at the knee. Next I search for the shoes, choosing a pair of sandals, real sandals with leather straps, not plastic flip-flops like we wore in the trailer park. I pass a salon. Backing up, I walk in and see if they have any appointments available.

  As the hairdresser works to cut my long, dark hair, every clip of her scissors brings back the memory of Sparrow slicing his blade across my ponytail and throwing my hair into the trees. I close my eyes and fight with the memories, the emptiness in my chest. I tell myself it wasn’t real. Those were just dreams from the coma, my brain trying to figure things out.

  “You work the night shift, hon?” the hairdresser asks.

  “What?”

  “You a nurse or something?” I look down at the scrubs I’m still wearing. “You work nights? Is that why your eyes are closed or are you too afraid to see all this pretty hair gone?”

  “Uh…” I search for some answer. “I’m just tired.”

  “Almost done here,” she replies between chewing on her gum.

  She clips a few more times before the comb and scissors are replaced by a hairdryer. I feel her spin the chair.

  “All done, hon. What do you think?”

  My eyes open and I look at my reflection in the mirror. I’m sure the cropped haircut is better than the one Sparrow gave me. My eyes look bigger, my cheeks flushed. “It looks great.” I smile. “Thanks.”

  The hairdresser whips the hair covered apron off of me and I watch all of the dark pieces of hair fall to the floor. Running my hand across my now bare neck, I follow the lady to the cash register.

  …

  After changing my clothes in the store bathroom, I sit in my new car with my new outfit and new haircut, feeling empty, still.

  Where will you go? Jack’s words echo in my ears.

  Away, is all I can think, far away from here.

  Getting on 81 south, I find myself on the same route as I took with Sparrow in my dream. I drive, stopping at a highway rest stop by mid-afternoon. I just sit for a while and stare off into the forest until my bladder spasms.

  When I come back from using the bathroom, I find a white feather on my windshield. I look around the parking lot before reaching for the feather, noting that I am the only one here. As I hold the feather in my hand and twirl it in my fingers I notice the light brown spots on the edge of it. It’s a snowy owl feather.

  “Sparrow?” I whisper, looking around the empty parking lot.

  No one answers. I set the feather in my purse and drive away.

  …

  I find myself following the signs for Syracuse and the zoo.

  As I walk towards the entrance I realize this must look odd, me being here alone, without a family or a child. The ticket man says nothing as he takes my money and stamps my hand. I head for the exhibit labeled Birds of Paradise.

  Sitting in the aviary, I can’t help but think that the last time I was here this place was littered with dead birds. No. Wait. That wasn’t real. A green conure flies over my head, dropping a feather, which flutters down to the bench beside me. I reach over to pick it up, stopping when I realize what I’m going to do with it: shove it in my purse. Fuck, now I’m turning into a crazy sparrow woman.

  A small parrot lands on the bench next to me. I can’t help but recognize it as one that Sparrow held in his hand and pulled the feathers from. The parrot chirps a light trill at me be before flapping off into the trees.

  This is where I sit for hours, trying to figure out what this empty feeling is inside of me and trying to push the memories of Jim, of my lost baby, of my hurtful father, and of Sparrow, to the back of my brain where I might forget them.

  At the end of the day, when the children and families have filtered out and the lights outside come on, I hear the soft brush of leaves against something, a whistle, someone talking softly. No, they’re not talking, they’re singing-humming.

  I stand and turn to find a man in jeans and a blue shirt standing not too far from me. He’s singing to a large parrot that’s perched on a branch in front of him. He turns towards me as I take a deep breath in, and smiles. I recognize him instantly. It’s Sparrow, in the flesh; wingless and standing before me.

  “Hello,” he tells me with a sm
ile. The smile I’ve missed so much.

  How can this be, the man from my coma dreams, here, alive, real? I take a hesitant step towards him. “Do they call you Sparrow Man?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he laughs, moving one arm to rub the back of his neck.

  I reach into my purse and pull out the snowy owl feather that I found on my car. I hold it out to him, my fingers shaking. His sparkling green eyes focus on the feather and then back to me.

  “No one has ever given me a feather before,” he says, reaching for the feather.

  “I know,” I reply, trying to contain the urge to touch him and make sure he’s real. I give up. “I… I know this is weird, coming from a stranger and all, but… can I touch you?”

  He nods.

  I step towards him, reach my arms around his neck, run my hands over his shoulders and down his shoulder blades where I feel nothing but taut smooth skin underneath. Something inside of me sinks when I don’t feel wings. Maybe this is not the Sparrow I’m looking for and miss so much.

  “This would be strange, Meg,” he whispers in my ear. “But we are not strangers.”

  I remember that I haven’t even told him my name, just felt him up a little. “How do you know my name?” I ask, pulling myself away from him, dropping my arms to my sides.

  He looks me up and down from my head to my toes. “You look nice, Meg.” He tips his head to the side, just like he did so many times in my head, in my coma dreams, studying me.

  “I bought a dress, like a lady.” Before I would have added ‘and shit’. But I refrain. “I don’t understand how you’re here?”

  “This is new for me too.” He does that smile, the one that leads me to believe he knows some secret.

  I watch him closely as he takes a pink feather out of his pocket and tucks it behind my ear. This barely makes sense, any of it. A glimmer of something deeper begins to ripple through my chest, and for a moment I wonder if maybe I’m starting to believe in something greater than all of this.

  Sparrow smiles and my heart stops for a second. “Meg?” he asks, leaning into me.

  “Yes, Sparrow?”

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he tells me. His eyelashes brush against his cheeks as he looks down at me.

  I stare up at him at that moment, in awe at how much he’d changed from an odd crazed person into this handsome man standing in front of me.

  “Okay,” I tell him.

  Sparrow leans closer to me; his soft lips hover just over mine. I feel his hand trace down my side, to my leg, pushing my skirt up.

  “Sparrow!” I scold, trying to push the skirt down; after all, I’m trying to become a lady.

  “It’s okay.” He smiles and then presses his thumb to the birthmark on my thigh and his lips to mine. And just like before there is a blinding white light and the sound of a thousand sirens blaring, which makes my eardrums rattle.

  …..

  As my eyes flutter open I see the dusky church and Sparrow standing over me.

  “What the shit was that?” I yell, pushing and slapping at him to get away from me. He stands still, watching me as I pace, naked as the day I was born. “What was that, Sparrow?” I yell at him, running my hands through my hair. “I was back… things were back to normal. I was free. I had money and a car and I was free of that town and I found you at the zoo. What was that?”

  “I think… I think that was a life you were never meant to live, Meg.”

  “But what was that, how was I there and now back here?”

  “You just closed that door. Shed that skin.” He takes a step towards me.

  I take two back.

  “What if I didn’t want to?” I yell at him. “What if I wanted that life, not this… whatever this is now?” I point towards the door. “At least I had a life, not this… this… whatever the hell this is.”

  “I just saw a glimpse of that life. Was it really all that great? You looked very sad.”

  “What the fuck do you know, Sparrow? You can’t remember shit. For all you know I was a fucking princess!”

  “I have remembered a few things.”

  “Not enough!” I point at the wings behind his back. “You can’t even explain to me what you are or who you are!”

  “I’ve remembered a few things,” he repeats walking closer.

  “Like what?”

  “Like that I really, really like you.”

  “Well I sure hope so, Sparrow. For Christ’s sake we just had sex in a church.” I point to the carpet a few feet away from us. “I sure as hell hope you like me if we just did that!”

  He takes another step towards me. I take two more back. His tall nakedness is slightly intimidating.

  “How do you know I was never meant to live that life?” I ask, nervous at what just happened. It all seemed so real. And I do feel a bit different now. Although I’m not sure how to describe the difference I feel.

  “Let’s just say I have a feeling about it.”

  “What the hell is going on, Sparrow? Who are you?” I focus on the feathers behind his back. “What are you?”

  “I’m still not one-hundred percent, but I think I have an idea.” The corner of his mouth tips up. “You want to see?”

  I give him a hesitant nod.

  Sparrow backs away from me and stands facing the altar. All I can see are his legs, his broad shoulders, the back of his head, and the wings I just glued back together, the colorful feathers all arranged just like he asked. Sparrow begins extending the wings. I circle around him to see that sweat beads his brow and he lets out a groan of pain, as though he’s using a muscle that hasn’t been stretched in a long time.

  I step back, mouth agape. I don’t want to say it out loud. I know that would just make this whole situation seem even crazier. What he is, a man with wings who seems to know strange stuff. That can only mean he is one thing. “Oh my God, you’re-”

  “I think so,” Sparrow says with a strained voice.

  “This is so fucked up,” I mutter on a breath.

  He exhales loudly and the wings retract. “Would you stop swearing?” Sparrow glances towards the altar.

  “Why?”

  He points at the altar.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well maybe you should. Have some respect.”

  “I don’t care where we are and I won’t show respect for something I don’t believe in. I don’t believe in God, not one that let me live a life like I did. Not one that would let my father and Jim treat me like they did.”

  As soon as the words are out of my mouth, the ground shakes, just as hard as it did when I was outside alone waiting for Sparrow. The entire church shudders, cracking the plaster walls and coating us in a layer of white dust.

  I take in a deep breath and scrunch up my nose.

  “What?” Sparrow asks.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “It seems,” he looks towards the door at the end of the isle that runs down the middle of the church, “that is the smell of failure and death.”

  “What-”

  Before I can finish Sparrow looks towards the front door of the church and the large oak door heaves as something pushes on it from the outside.

  “Meg, get your clothes on,” Sparrow offers, calmly.

  We scramble to get dressed.

  “I thought you said they couldn’t come onto hallowed ground?”

  “This must not be hallowed enough,” he replies.

  Sparrow slips on his pants and buttons them just as I’m tying my boots. “Is there any chance you could believe right now?” he asks. “Someone might send us some help.”

  “I don’t think that kind of thing can happen in five minutes.”

  The door bulges again with a collective thud, the sound of hundreds of bodies surging. Just as I clip my backpack across my shoulder, the sound of splitting wood echoes through the church.

  Sparrow grabs my sleeve, pulling me through the back hallways of the church, and through a door marked exit. We run down the street
in the broad daylight, although the light doesn’t seem as bright as it should be, nor as bright as I remember it.

  “What the hell good are those things if you can’t use them?” I point to the sky. “Can’t you fly?”

  He pauses and stretches the wings, disappointment cloaks his face. “It seems I’ve forgotten how.”

  “Do I need to push you off a cliff or something? Like your momma bird?”

  “Don’t have time for that right now.” He looks behind us to see the shuffling dead trickle out of the back door of the church. “Let’s get going.”

  We run.

  When we are far enough away, we both slow to a fast paced walk. Sparrow is still shirtless with his machete fastened to his belt loops, hanging down his leg. Now I see him in the daylight and it’s better than what he looked like in that dusky church. He’s broad shouldered, muscular but not too bulky, his jeans hang from his narrow hips. The sight of him, like this, now, is very distracting.

  “I think we need to find you a shirt.”

  His lip tips upwards. “Why? Does my near-nakedness make you nervous?”

  “No. It makes me think dirty thoughts and I can’t focus on where we’re going right now.”

  “I remember a time when you had no problem stripping down to your skin in front of me and I don’t think you gave a damn whether I could focus or not.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter to him, keeping my focus on the road in front of us, trying to sort out what I was just given a glimpse of and what’s real.

  “Let’s loop around to the Jeep. I bet it’s clear there by now,” Sparrow suggests.

  We jog around the block, making way for the Jeep that I left on the side of the road. The dead trail behind, too slow to reach us. I open the driver’s side door and climb in, just as Sparrow launches himself over the passenger door. The engine hums to life as I turn the ignition and speed away.

  As I follow the signs for 81, Sparrow gazes at me, twirling a piece of my hair around his finger.

  “Stop.” I shrug my shoulder and pull away from him. “I don’t like to be touched.”

  “You didn’t mind me touching you earlier.”

  I give him a look. “Where are we headed?” I ask.