The Absence of Sparrows

by Kurt Kirchmeier

  “Got it,” I said, but Pete wasn’t giving up so easily.

  “Are you gonna go to the general store?” he asked Dad.

  “Never mind what I’m going to do. Just get up to your room like I told you to, before I decide to ground you.”

  “You might as well ground us anyway,” Pete stubbornly continued. “It’s not as if Mom is going to let us go outside.”

  “I’m not going to stand here arguing with you,” Dad warned him. That’s when Mom appeared at the foot of the stairs.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, her forest-green house coat wrapped tight around her and her feet in her favorite slippers, the ones with fake fur around the edges. (Mom wouldn’t have worn them if the fur were real.)

  “Everything’s fine,” Dad assured her. He reached out and turned off the TV. “The boys couldn’t sleep, so they came downstairs.”

  “What’s that smell?” Mom asked.

  The burned-photo stench had lessened a bit but was definitely still in the air.

  “Just a bit of mischief,” Dad explained, without really explaining at all. “Nothing to worry about.” He looked at us each in turn then, his expression making it clear that we weren’t to mention the photo.

  For a second, I thought Pete would anyway, just to make things difficult, but thankfully he bit his tongue. Until we got to our room, that is, at which point he blew up about how unfair it all was and how he shouldn’t be treated like a kid anymore. He was twelve going on thirteen, practically a teenager.

  I wasn’t really worried about what was or wasn’t fair. And I didn’t feel like I needed to see for myself whether old man Crandall had gone to pieces or not either. What good would it do us?

  Pete stopped pacing and went to the window, where he stood for ten minutes, until Dad got in his truck and backed out of the driveway.

  “I knew it,” he said.

  “Why do you even want to go?” I asked. I wished that he’d never woken me up in the first place. If I’d slept a little bit later, things might have turned out differently. I might have put on clean jeans instead of yesterday’s pair. The photo might have gotten ruined in the wash before I ever even looked at it. But now, instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and wondering…

  “Just because” was Pete’s only reply, which didn’t tell me anything but was basically the answer that I expected. Pete always acted on impulses. If you told him there was a haunted house on the corner, he’d be over there before anyone could say “boo,” even though he might not be able to say exactly why he wanted to see a ghost.

  But just because “just because” was good enough for Pete, that didn’t mean it was good enough for me.

  “That’s not an answer,” I told him. “The sky’s not blue just because. Water’s not wet just because.”

  “Why is it wet, then?” he asked me.

  “What? I don’t know, because of its molecular structure, I guess. But that’s not the point.”

  “It is, though,” he disagreed. “Why is the molecular structure the way it is?”

  “Because that’s how the atoms are arranged,” I answered, digging deep into science class memories.

  “And why are the atoms arranged that way?”

  “Nobody knows that.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Just because. It’s the answer to everything.”

  “That’s stupid,” I told him, even though there was something weirdly true about his logic. Maybe I was wrong in believing that Pete never thought deeply about things. Maybe sometimes he did, only it didn’t bother him that there might not be any real answers. He could accept that. I couldn’t.

  He just shrugged and left it at that, abandoning his spot at the window for a spot on the floor. He sat back against the side of his bed and lifted the half-broken radio up to his shoulder, pressing the speaker against his ear.

  ELEVEN

  George Crandall was still in one piece. So was Charlie Watts at the Safeway store. Hundreds of others around the world weren’t, though. Thousands maybe. Nobody really knew for sure yet. Scientists were analyzing some of the fragments, using microscopes and spectrometers. They weren’t saying much, other than that the substance wasn’t actually glass. It might look like glass and shatter like glass, but apparently it was “compositionally unique.” It didn’t matter. People were still calling it glass.

  Dad was talking about going out for a while. He said he had a stack of papers that he needed to drop off in Paulson, which was where the insurance company that he worked for had its office. Paulson was a large town about thirty minutes south of Griever’s Mill. There was a big mall there and three grocery stores instead of just the one that we had. There were a number of restaurants, too, including a Venice House that had the absolute best pepperoni pizza. Just thinking about it made my mouth water.

  “You can’t just go to work like it’s a normal day,” said Mom. She was ignoring the fact that, had it been a normal day, Dad would have left at seven a.m., and now it was an hour past lunchtime.

  “I need to get paid,” Dad told her. “Plus I should grab a few things, groceries and whatnot, before too many others get the same idea.” There had been reports on the news about panicked shopping, with people buying generators and stocking up on canned goods.

  “Paulson’s got that outfitter place, too,” said Uncle Dean. “Might be worthwhile stopping there.” He and Dad were both sitting at the dining room table, with Mom looking at them from the kitchen. I was on the floor in the living room, in front of the TV, which I had muted at Dad’s request.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Mom told Uncle Dean.

  Uncle Dean said sorry and went back to nursing his coffee. His baseball cap was sitting a little askew today, and his eyes were noticeably bloodshot, which was explained by all the empty beer bottles in the case by the door.

  “I have to stop at the drugstore as well,” said Dad, giving Mom a look that said, Remember?

  “Oh, right,” Mom replied with a sigh. “I totally forgot.”

  The drugstore in Paulson was where Mom got her anxiety medication. I knew that because it said PAULSON PHARMACY right on the bottle. I’d wondered at first why she didn’t just get the prescription filled at the local Safeway, but I guess she was worried that someone might talk, that it might get out that she was on “happy pills.” People wouldn’t understand, and when people don’t understand things, they usually criticize them, like the way Pete always criticized me for liking birds.

  “I can hang around here until you get back,” Uncle Dean offered.

  “Would you?” said Dad.

  Uncle Dean shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  Mom wasn’t satisfied, though. “What if something happens while you’re driving?” she said.

  “I guess I’ll pull over,” Dad replied.

  “What if you can’t pull over?” Mom pressed. She was standing right next to the table now, her arms crossed.

  “Now you’re just being paranoid,” Dad told her.

  “You don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does.”

  “Fine,” said Dad. “I’ll take Ben with me. I could use some help with the groceries anyway.”

  “What about Pete?” I asked, while trying to avoid thinking about having to take the wheel if Dad were to suddenly glassify right beside me.

  “Let him sleep,” said Mom. “He needs it.”

  Pete had stayed up right through the night and into the morning. He finally fell asleep with the radio still against his ear, a lullaby of static and whispered news bits. I switched it off to save the batteries, though I doubted that Pete would thank me for it later, especially once he discovered that Dad had gone off to Paulson and had taken me along with him. Pete would be annoyed. I could pretty much count on that.

  “All right, then,” said Dad. “I guess we might as well get a move on. You ready, champ?” he asked me. “Hit the head if you need to.”

  I didn’t need to, so I got my shoes on.

  “Drive care
fully,” Mom said as we were leaving. “And hurry back, please.”

  Dad promised we would.

  TWELVE

  The closer we got to Paulson, the better Dad’s radio came in. The crackling voices gave way to clear speech, although it might have been better if they hadn’t. We soon discovered that new glass storms were spreading out all over the east.

  Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had gone totally dark, and so had Bangor, Maine, along with half the state of Vermont. The shatterings continued as well, just a few at a time, here and there. Always, they said, without any precursor.

  I shifted around in my seat to look in every direction, but aside from some typical summer clouds—a few small cumulous islands connected by wisps—the sky held no trace of malice. Even so, a ball of dread began to build in the pit of my stomach.

  “Should we go back?” I asked Dad.

  He shook his head. “No point now. We’re almost there.”

  I could already see the outskirts of Paulson in the distance. We passed the small airport a moment later, and then the farm equipment dealership, where huge combines and tractors sat in a row along the road’s edge, some of their tires twice as tall as I was.

  “We’ll be fine,” Dad tried to reassure me. “It’s a good thing we left when we did, though. Your mother would have taken my keys.” He smiled as he said this, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  We stopped at the office first, and then the pharmacy, which was right across the street from the huge IGA supermarket.

  “We’ll just park here and walk over,” said Dad. “Looks like we’re going to be in for a bit of an adventure.”

  I was going to ask why, but then I noticed the state of the parking lot, not just the number of cars there (lots), but also the number of shopping carts left out in the open instead of being put back in the cart corral. Usually there were a few of them left abandoned—Dad always pointed them out as an example of how lazy people had become—but today there were dozens of them, sitting this way and that all over the place, as if people just couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  “Unbelievable,” said Dad.

  It actually wasn’t too bad inside. People were moving quickly and you could feel the tension in the air, but nobody was being rude or pushy or trying to leave the store without paying, which probably wouldn’t have surprised me considering how long the checkout lines were.

  Dad said that we were lucky Paulson was just a big town and not a big city, where people probably wouldn’t be behaving so calmly.

  The canned food section had been hit pretty hard. Most of the good soups were already gone, so we were left choosing among three types of chowder. We ended up grabbing a case of each and got lucky in finding some vegetable beef barley tucked in the back. We grabbed three bags of rice and some SPAM and canned tuna as well, and then just some regular groceries, too—crackers and cereal and whatnot. Also birdseed—I made sure to remember the birdseed.

  Dad tried to call Mom twice on his cell phone to let her know that we were okay and that we’d be leaving Paulson after one more stop, but both times the call got dropped before he could talk to her. He swore and dug a quarter out of his pocket. “Here,” he said. “Go find a pay phone while I get this stuff. I think there’s an old one near the bus stop around the corner—if it still works.”

  Mom must have been waiting right by the phone, because she answered on the first ring. “Tell your father to get his butt in gear,” she said, which I repeated verbatim, with a slight smile, when I rejoined Dad.

  “I didn’t realize it had been out of gear,” he said.

  Ten minutes later we were on our way, our cart left neatly in the corral. We didn’t go straight home, though. Dad wanted to check out the outfitter place that Uncle Dean had mentioned.

  It was a lot quieter there. I only counted eight people other than me and Dad.

  From what we ended up buying, you’d have thought we were going on a giant camping trip or something. We got kerosene, new lanterns, four big sleeping bags, and even a giant box of army-style food, which was basically just little packages that you could heat up by pouring some water—cold water, even—into the bag. Dad said it worked by chemical reaction.

  I thought it might be interesting to try one out, but was also hoping that we wouldn’t have to. If it got to the point where we needed the ration packs, then it would probably mean things had gotten real bad.

  “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, eh?” said the guy at the counter.

  “Words to live by,” Dad replied. “Words to live by.”

  We picked up our bags and made for the exit. That’s when the air raid siren sounded.

  I stopped dead in my tracks as the low wail built up in intensity, like a thrum that starts outside your body and then vibrates its way right in, until you’re hearing it more with your bones than you are with your ears.

  I hadn’t even known that Paulson had an air raid siren. I guess they probably just used it for tornado warnings.

  Dad didn’t realize that I’d stopped, and continued right out the door. The guy who rang up our stuff came out from behind the counter and ran outside as well, eager to see what was happening. Clearly it wasn’t a tornado. A regular storm wouldn’t have had time to brew up in the fifteen minutes we’d been in the store.

  Dad poked his head back in a second later, his eyes full of alarm. “We need to leave, Ben,” he said. “Now.”

  My feet came unglued from the floor, but I only got a few steps outside before stopping once again. The siren was almost deafening. The sky to the south was alive with a dark churning mass that dwarfed the one Pete and I had seen from the roof of Uncle Dean’s garage. It was moving faster than that one as well, not so much gliding as billowing forward like one of those pyroclastic clouds that come from volcanoes. It was terrifying and mesmerizing all at once.

  Dad yelled at me to get moving, his voice stretched and dampened, like I was hearing it from under water, in slow motion.

  I don’t really remember throwing my bags in the back of the truck or climbing into the passenger seat, but I obviously did, and before I knew it we were back on the highway, speeding north.

  “You okay?” Dad was asking me.

  As quick as it hit me, my adrenaline seemed to evaporate. I nodded, then glanced at the side-view mirror, then looked away, not liking what I found there. Instead I focused on the power poles in the ditch, my eyes tracing the drooping wires from one to the next. Some of the poles had white stains near their tops from bird poop. Hawk poop, to be specific. They liked to perch on the poles in the daytime, watching for rodents in the fields and ditches.

  I decided to do a count to distract myself. I often did them anyway. The most I’d ever seen between Paulson and home was sixteen—a mix of red-tailed and Swainson’s hawks. I liked the Swainson’s better because they weren’t skittish—you could stop and watch them without them flying away, whereas the red-tails almost always took off as soon as you began to slow down.

  “I don’t see it anymore,” said Dad a few minutes later. “I think we’re in the clear.” He didn’t slow down, though. Nor did he turn the radio back on.

  I kept on counting.

  Crows and ravens were usually common on the poles as well, maybe even more so than the hawks, but not today. By the time we reached the Griever’s Mill turnoff, I’d counted seven red-tails and six Swainson’s, but not a single raven or crow. I wondered where they all were, and whether their absence meant something. I couldn’t imagine what.

  THIRTEEN

  Mom was totally freaking out by the time we got home. Apparently, the whole town was. Lots of people had friends and family in Paulson, so word had gotten out quick that something was happening, although nobody had any details since Paulson’s phones had all gone dead just moments after the darkness swept in.

  “Should we even stay here?” Mom asked Dad. “Is it safe?”

  Dad told her we’d have to sit tight and just wait and see. We could leave in a h
urry if we needed to.

  “And go where?” she asked him.

  “Wherever we need to,” Dad replied.

  “I’ve got jerry cans at the garage,” said Uncle Dean. “I should go fill them right now, while I still can.”

  Griever’s Mill only had two gas stations. If all of a sudden everyone decided to leave, they would probably both be backed up down the block.

  “I’ll grab my generator, too,” Uncle Dean added.

  But first he’d have to get back to his house to grab his truck, which meant driving him over there.

  “We’ll all go together,” Mom decided, and so we did, with Uncle Dean riding in the bed of the truck like a farm dog, surrounded by bags and boxes. The sky was blue and white and holding steady, at least for now.

  We dropped him off and headed back home. Dad took Mom inside and told me and Pete to unload the truck, except for the camping gear. He told us to leave that for now.

  “How bad was it?” Pete asked me. “In Paulson?”

  It was the first chance we’d had to talk on our own since I got back.

  “Bad,” I told him. “It was way bigger this time. And Paulson has an air raid siren. Did you know that?”

  Pete nodded. “I knew that. You should’ve woken me up. I would’ve woken you up.”

  “Mom told me not to,” I replied, as if that had been the sole determining factor.

  “Did it look different at all?” he asked me.

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know, just different.”

  “It was scarier than the first time,” I told him. “Faster, too.”

  “So it’s getting stronger, then, whatever it is.”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe next time it’ll stay,” Pete went on. “Maybe it’ll be dark forever.”

  “I doubt it, Pete.”

  He ignored me. “The crops will die first, and then the animals, and then us. Unless we’re all glass or shattered by that time. Then it won’t matter.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Why not?” he asked.