The Absence of Sparrows

by Kurt Kirchmeier

  “Something has to be done,” she said. She belatedly wiped her mouth and chin, leaving an ugly brown stain on the sleeve of an otherwise clean white shirt. “I wonder if there’s gas in the chain saw.…”

  Given the state she was in, I wouldn’t have trusted her with a letter opener, never mind a chain saw. She pushed herself up from her chair, her eyes sweeping past Dad as if he’d become just another piece of furniture in the room.

  I got up to follow her. “Just wait a sec, Mom. Hold on. It couldn’t have been the merlin. It had to be something else. Just stop and think about it.”

  But she was beyond logic or common sense. She was operating on impulse now, a slave to her own hysteria, and I had a horrible feeling that whatever spell she was under probably wasn’t going to break until after she did whatever it was that she planned on doing. She put on her sandals and went out the back door.

  I knew that I had to stop her, but first I ran to the stairwell and yelled, “Pete! Get down here! Mom needs us!” I listened for a second, but there was no answer. “Pete!” I yelled again. Still nothing. I swore and bolted up the stairs, throwing open the door to our room. It was empty. Where the heck was Pete? I went back downstairs and out the door, forgetting to even put my shoes on.

  Mom had gone into the garage, and was already on her way out of it when I got outside. She had the chain saw in her hands, her face a resolute mask. It was obvious that she must have suffered some sort of mental break. I immediately moved to block her, my focus so fixed on the empty insanity in her eyes that I didn’t see the rake on the ground by my feet. I stepped on the outermost prong, with only a sock to protect my foot.

  An explosion of pain sent me hopping sideways. I screamed and fell to my knees, tears filling my eyes almost instantly. Mom walked right past me, her focused intensity more than a match for maternal instinct.

  I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand up, the pain searing. I didn’t have to look to know that my foot was bleeding. I could already feel the wetness of it soaking into my sock. I limped forward, keeping the heel of my injured foot elevated as I went. I couldn’t even see Mom anymore, but it was obvious where she was going, so I struggled along as best as I could, cursing myself for leaving my shoes behind.

  By the time I finally made it out onto the street, Mom was already standing at the base of the merlin’s nest tree. I looked up and, sure enough, the small falcon was there, perched like some bird-of-prey Christmas tree topper. It flew off, keening, as the high-revving growl of the chain saw tore a hole in the silence of the morning.

  “Mom!” I yelled, adrenaline now numbing my foot, allowing me to actually run.

  The lowermost branches were gone in an instant, clearing the way for Mom to attack the trunk itself. A few of our neighbors had come out onto their steps, but they all remained there, obviously wary of the crazy woman with the chain saw.

  I yelled again as the spinning chain bit deep into wood. The sound was high and horrible and seemed to go on forever. Mom managed to cut a perfect sideways V into the trunk, allowing the tree to fall lengthways along the sidewalk instead of on our neighbors’ cars or houses.

  I whispered, “Timber,” as Mom stepped clear, and with a groan like a rumble from deep in the belly of a hungry whale, followed by one loud crack and a rapid series of smaller snaps, the huge pine settled in a massive green heap upon the ground.

  Mom had hoped to scare off one bird, but instead scared off every bird in the neighborhood. The scream of the saw wound down to a series of sputters, then silence.

  Mom set the chain saw gently down on the ground and casually brushed off her hands at a job well done. “There,” she said.

  A few of the neighbors began to come forward.

  I grabbed Mom by the arm and gave her a firm pull to get her started back to the house. As soon as she was walking along on her own, I stopped and turned around to address the murmurs that had already started. The last thing I needed was an angry mob following us home with questions about Mom’s sanity, not to mention questions about what to do with the tree. I decided I had an answer for that, at least.

  “You all need firewood, right?” I said. “The saw’s right there. Help yourselves to it.”

  And with that, I continued on home, locking the front door behind me.

  Pete got back from wherever he’d gone about an hour later. He was carrying not only his radio, but also a plastic bag.

  “Where the heck were you?” I yelled at him.

  Mom had gone back to bed without mentioning what she’d done, after I made her wash down a pill with a glass of water. I wondered how long it would take for her symptoms to wear off. Probably she’d have to be back on her pills for a while.

  “At the library,” Pete told me, his eyes narrowing in confusion at my anger. “I got you a book. What happened outside? Who cut down that big tree?”

  I looked in the bag and saw there a book by my favorite author, Jim Kjelgaard.

  “It’s Outlaw Red,” said Pete. “I wasn’t sure if you’d read that one.”

  I hadn’t, but at that particular moment I didn’t care. Beneath the book I saw the real reason that Pete had gone out, and why he hadn’t been there for us when we needed him. He’d gone to find batteries. Breaking into the library had probably just been an afterthought.

  I took the book out and threw it across the room, watched it collide with a picture of a sparrow that I had drawn for Mom a few months before, which she’d framed and put up on the wall above the lamp.

  The picture fell, the glass breaking.

  Story of my life. Story of all our lives.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  They say that in certain species of hawks, the grasping instinct is so strong that sometimes they can’t let go of their prey even if they need to, even if it becomes a matter of life and death. There are stories about northern goshawks being dragged underground while clutching large rabbits that kept on running after being caught, rabbits whose own instincts told them to seek safety inside their warrens.

  The goshawk’s wings would forcibly collapse as it entered the hole, the delicate bones all breaking on the way down, snapping like cheaply made kite frames, and still the hawk would not let go, its talons seeming to possess a will of their own. Once trapped, there was nothing the bird could do. It would either die there of its injuries or slowly starve to death. If it got lucky, a predator might come along and pull it free to kill it quickly and put it out of its misery.

  The idea that a hawk might come to its end in such a tragic way disturbed me greatly, and confused me, too. How could an animal be so stupid? How could evolution allow for such behavior? I didn’t understand that there was a very good reason this instinct was so strong, and that a firm grip could mean the difference between losing or keeping a meal, which in turn could mean the difference between survival and death. That’s the thing about nature—it exists on a knife edge.

  Humans used to exist on that edge, too, a long time ago. Maybe now we were beginning to feel the way that we used to, that it all could end at any moment unless we did something. Unless we grabbed on to a running rabbit and refused to let go.

  I think the plan put forward by the voice on the radio became that rabbit.

  There were debates, some of them escalating to the point of violence. World leaders consulted with “experts,” and those experts consulted with each other, and when the dust of all this lofty speculation finally settled, a reluctant consensus was met.

  A date was set for the shattering. On September the third, at precisely four p.m., legions of people the world over would pick up their hammers and their bats, their golf clubs and tire irons, and together they would do the unthinkable.

  I shivered at the thought of it.

  September the third was only twelve days away. Just two hundred and eighty-eight short hours. I couldn’t let it happen. I wouldn’t.

  Mom had been back on her pills for five days now and was already showing signs of improvement. Her headaches seemed
less severe, and her tremors were almost gone. Still, I wasn’t sure how long it would be before her mind was clear again. Probably more than twelve days, which meant that I might not be able to count on her to stand beside me on the day of the shattering. I might have to stop Pete all on my own, that or convince him to see things my way before that happened.

  “It’s not like we have to go along with it,” I had already tried to tell him. “It’s not like it’s a law or anything. Besides, Dad’s only one person. One won’t make any difference.”

  “What if everyone thought like that?” Pete asked me. “Then the shattering wouldn’t work. One is everything, Ben. It’s everything.”

  I could see then that my brother wasn’t going to be swayed.

  “Don’t you at least feel bad about it?” I asked him.

  He looked hurt, then angry. “It’s not like I want to do this, Ben, but in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the only plan we have. What do you think is going to happen if we just keep waiting? If we don’t do anything at all? First we’ll lose our electricity permanently. Then we’ll lose our water. And what about food? Where would we get it from? How would we survive without any adults left in the world?”

  “That wouldn’t happen,” I argued.

  “Why? Because you don’t want it to? That’s not how life works, Ben. We don’t get to just wish things into existence. Sometimes we have to make hard choices, for the good of everyone. If Dad was here, he’d say the same thing.”

  “He is here,” I reminded him. “And don’t tell me what he would say. You don’t know that. Just because you think that the shattering is a good idea doesn’t mean he would, too.”

  Pete shook his head, as if he felt sorry for me because I just wasn’t getting it.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea, Ben. It’s the only idea, and until someone else comes up with a better one, it’s what we’re stuck with.”

  “But it’s wrong,” I insisted. I couldn’t get past this.

  “That doesn’t matter either,” Pete said simply. “It’s shades of gray, Ben. Shades of gray.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  With only six days to go, the sky went dark and stayed that way. If you stood outside and listened closely, you could hear things, strange groaning noises, and creaks, like the hull of a submarine straining against the crushing weight of an ocean.

  I looked at the sky and searched for cracks there, evidence that the other side might be breaking through now, one reality succumbing to another. I imagined galaxies colliding, moons and planets crumbling in the chaos, bright stars spiraling down into the awful depths of hungry black holes, their light being siphoned away like gas from a tank.

  Never before had I felt so small and helpless, so alone.

  My injuries were healing, but Mom looked them over anyway, her eyes so full of guilt that I almost cried for her.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It’s not okay,” she whispered.

  We didn’t talk about the shattering. Not yet.

  Dad was still in one piece, I kept reminding myself, and the cracks that I searched for in the sky above had not appeared. Hell on earth might be coming, but for now at least there was hope.

  I began thinking that there had to be another way, if not of stopping the glass plague in its entirety, then at least of bringing Dad back before it was too late. I made it my mission to figure out how.

  For lack of any other alternative, I went to the library. Mom wasn’t happy about it, but she let me go anyway. I think she was beginning to understand that I wasn’t the same eleven-year-old kid that I had been before. My childhood had effectively ended the moment that Dad turned to glass.

  The lock on the library door was broken, so I walked right in. I wasn’t sure if Pete had been the one to break it, or if someone had come before him, but I guess it didn’t matter, just so long as the books were still there, which they were. So, too, was Ms. Golding, the librarian, her perfect posture preserved in glass behind her big desk.

  I wandered the aisles with no clue where to begin, although not before depositing Outlaw Red in the return bin. I hadn’t actually read it, but someday I might. Until then it would remain as something for me to look forward to, like how I looked forward to waxwings at the start of each winter. I think it’s important to have things to look forward to, especially if you know that it’s going to get cold and dark.

  I turned my head sideways and read the book spines in search of inspiration. Nothing was jumping out at me, though. Still, I kept at it, knowing that persistence was something that Dad had always preached.

  I lingered in the sections with paranormal and mythology books for a while, thinking about demons and angels and ghosts, and things like spells and wards and séances. Was there something I could use to protect Dad, or some way for me to communicate with him without actually communicating with him, like how a medium might talk to a spirit? I began pulling random books and skimming through pages, searching for step-by-step instructions and not just encyclopedic bits of information, which seemed to be what most of the books were full of.

  What I needed was something specific, like an amateur’s guide to communing, or a build-your-own-magical-amulets textbook, neither of which was likely to exist in the Griever’s Mill Public Library. Heck, I already had to rely on interlibrary loans just to get my hands on some of the better bird books.

  I began to pace, frustration building as I discarded one volume after another. A little voice in my head began telling me to just give up, to accept that anything a kid in a small-town library might possibly come up with had already been thought of and tried by folks much older and smarter than me.

  I finally paused at the end of the aisle and looked again at Ms. Golding behind her desk. As always, she had a big scarf wrapped around her neck. She made them herself, and she seemed to have a new one every time I came to the library. The one she had on today was even larger than usual. It was red with yellow edges, and sort of reminded me of Doctor Strange’s cape.

  I bet he would know how to get Dad’s soul back. I imagined the caped hero striking a magician’s pose, his hands out before him, summoning cosmic energy to do with whatever he willed. If only it were that easy.

  Poor Ms. Golding. She didn’t have any kids, but I wondered if she had any pets. If so, they were probably starving now. Or maybe they were already dead.

  Pete and I had a dog once, a black terrier named Buster. He was always getting out of the house and running off, until one day he got hit by a car. Pastor Nolan was nice enough to come over and hold a little doggie funeral for us. Afterward Pete asked him about ghosts. He wanted to know if dogs could become ghosts, too, or if it was only a human thing.

  Pastor Nolan told him he wasn’t sure, but that he believed that every living thing had a spirit.

  “So, if dogs have spirits,” Pete continued, “can they get possessed? Like that girl in The Exorcist?”

  Dad had ended the conversation right there, apologizing for Pete’s inappropriateness.

  Pete had watched The Exorcist the week before while at a sleepover at his friend Shane’s house. Shane’s older brother had brought the movie home with him. He thought it might be worth a laugh to see how a pair of nine-year-olds reacted to it. He probably wasn’t laughing when Shane’s screams alerted their parents, though. Mom and Dad found out soon after, and Dad was livid. He grounded Pete for a month.

  This all came back to me in an instant, the memory causing a light bulb to go off in my head. If regressions sometimes worked for those who’d returned, then maybe an exorcism might work for the ones who hadn’t.

  I wondered if Pastor Nolan had ever done one, and whether he even knew how. I almost went straight to his house to find out, but I’d already been gone for more than an hour and I knew that Mom might already be worrying. Besides, I wasn’t sure if Pastor Nolan would even be at home. He might be at the church with Patrick.

  I decided I would go first thing in the morning. I could get up early a
nd leave Mom a note.

  After feeling helpless for so long, it felt good to have an actual plan.

  Pete was on his way up from the basement when I came in through the front door. He paused to look at me, but didn’t ask where I’d been. Nor did I ask why he was carrying Dad’s toolbox. We simply stared at each other for a moment, and then went about our separate business, which for Pete meant returning to our room (or, more accurately, to his radio), and for me meant heading into the dining room, to be close to Dad, and Mom as well, as it happened. For only the second time since Dad turned to glass, she was sitting with him at the dining room table.

  She smiled at me as I approached. It was a tired smile, but tired in a normal way. She looked better.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

  I shook my head, deciding that I wasn’t going to tell her about my exorcism idea just yet. I wanted to talk to Pastor Nolan first, to find out whether or not it was even possible. For all I knew, he’d already tried to do one on Patrick.

  “It’s okay,” she told me. “You tried. Your dad would be proud of you for that.”

  “Would he?” I asked. I couldn’t help but feel like I was letting him down, like there was a big doomsday clock hanging right over his head and the hands on it wouldn’t stop moving.

  “Of course,” she assured me. She had her hands wrapped around a steaming mug.

  “Tea?” I wondered if she’d found some in a place where I hadn’t thought to look.

  She shook her head. “Hot water with lemon. I couldn’t find any tea. I guess we’ll have to stop by Holga’s one of these days.”

  I nodded and smiled, but didn’t mention that her tea shop friend had packed up and left without saying good-bye.

  “I’m gonna go downstairs and draw for a while,” I said instead. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but something about Mom sitting there across from Dad was bothering me. It just seemed too normal. Mom seemed too normal. Like her mind had finally started to clear and she had decided that it was well past time to not only face what was happening, but what might happen from this point forward. If she got that far, I knew, then she would have to make a decision about the shattering.