“Should we find you a leash?” I said, looking around the yard for something to use. My eyes came to rest on a long piece of twine that one of our bird feeders was hanging from. I went over and quickly untied it, while Pepper continued to investigate the contents of the overturned can.
I got the twine free and left the bird feeder crammed in a nook between two branches. As I turned back around, the dark sky swirled and shifted so abruptly that I felt for a second like I was standing on a moving platform. I had to pause to let a moment of vertigo pass.
I wasn’t sure how the skunk would react to me coming close enough to actually reach down and grab its collar, but as it turned out, it hardly reacted at all. In fact, it seemed happy for the human touch. I tied one end of the twine to the collar and wrapped the other end twice around my palm, and that was that; we were ready to go.
“Come straight home again,” said Mom from the doorway. I hadn’t realized she’d been watching me. I held her gaze for a moment but didn’t reply, and then Pepper and I were off, a sad and hopeless-feeling eleven-year-old and a lost skunk on a leash made of twine, both of us beneath a strange sky in a town full of people who had turned to glass.
Walking a skunk, I discovered, was a lot like walking a dog. Pepper’s nose did the leading, and it stopped to investigate almost every new thing it encountered. I took advantage of each brief pause to scan the trees for late-summer warblers, which should have started moving south already. But there was no sign of them. For the first time I wondered if the constant darkness might have an effect on bird migration. I hoped not.
Slowly but surely, we plodded along, ten minutes bringing us halfway to where we were going. We turned onto a street that looked even more abandoned than the last few that we had gone down. Out of twelve houses, I counted only two with cars in driveways. There was one bike as well, a BMX left carelessly on the edge of a lawn up ahead. I didn’t think anything of it until I reached it and recognized the bike as belonging to Lars Messam.
I quickly glanced up and over at the front door to the house. It was one of those doors that had a bunch of little windows in it, each rectangle of glass framed by decorative metal trim. One of these little windows—the one closest to the handle and the dead bolt—was smashed. I shook my head. Lars was looting, and during the daytime no less. This was bold, even for one of the Messam twins.
I watched the house for a moment before deciding that I’d best keep moving, not only for my sake, but also Pepper’s. I hadn’t forgotten what I’d found in the sandbox-turned-firepit in the Messams’ backyard. I took a step forward and gave the leash a gentle tug, and that’s when the front door of the house swung open and Lars leaned out to drop a stuffed backpack onto the step. He didn’t look up or see me, but instead disappeared back inside.
My heart kicked against my rib cage at the close call, this while my brain played a loop of a wagging finger and the promise of Next time. Next time.
I tugged the twine leash again, but this time Pepper resisted. The skunk had apparently decided that this was the perfect place to stop and take care of business.
“Really?” I said. “Right now?”
I glanced back at the house, feeling suddenly exposed and vulnerable. There was movement in the window. I crouched low to make myself smaller, but Lars wasn’t looking out at me. He was doing something with the curtains. I narrowed my eyes, wondering what. A second later I had my answer, as an expanding circle of flame began to consume the draping fabric. Lars had apparently made up his mind that simply looting the place wasn’t enough.
All the stories that had been in the news about whole city blocks going up in smoke suddenly came back to me. I could already see it happening, the way the fire would leap unimpeded from one house right to the next, down the whole length of the street. It obviously hadn’t occurred to Lars, but if this one fire was left to burn, our entire town might end up as a pile of smoldering embers.
I rushed Pepper over to the yard next door and quickly looped the twine around the top of a fire hydrant, then I turned and made a beeline across the yard and into the house, just as Lars was leaving, a big proud grin on his face. The grin disappeared when he saw me, his impish delight replaced with a look of surprise and confusion. I shot him a glare in passing but kept on going. There was no time to stop.
The fire was still growing and climbing toward the ceiling, but the bottom corners of both of the curtains remained unburned. I reached down, grabbed them, and pulled, the wavering wall of fire falling toward me as the rings at the top broke free from the rod. The sudden release threw me totally off balance. I stumbled backward, but somehow still managed to duck out of the way just in time to avoid having my hair go up like a torch.
Lars had come back in and was yelling at me, demanding to know what I was doing, while shuffle-stepping to keep a safe distance from his own idiotic handiwork, which threatened to spread to the rug and the couch.
“What does it look like I’m doing?!” I yelled back. I tried stomping the fire to put it out, but my shoes weren’t doing the job, so I grabbed a cushion from the couch and started smothering the flames with that. It was a lot bigger than my size 6s.
Between the arching flames and those I managed to put out, the smoke thickened around me, to the point where I could hardly breathe.
Lars started to laugh. I was pretty sure I heard him slap his knee.
“Help me, you moron!” I coughed at him. “The whole neighborhood’s gonna burn down! Don’t you know that there aren’t any firefighters anymore?” I wasn’t sure this was strictly true, but given that Griever’s Mill’s firefighters were all volunteers—Dad being one of them—I was pretty sure no one was coming.
Lars stopped laughing then and seemed to consider this. Was it really possible that he’d thought the fire would remain in one place, consuming a single house as if it were isolated in a brick-lined pit? The other alternative was that he hadn’t thought about it at all, that he’d lit the fire on a whim, with zero consideration as to what might happen next.
Judging by the look on his face now, I figured it must be the second thing. But he didn’t step forward to help me. He just stood there and stupidly stared down at his fire, which had just found its way onto my pant leg. I didn’t notice until I felt the heat, and I swore as I snuffed it out, the fabric molten against my leg. In an anger- and panic-fueled flurry, I grabbed more cushions and kept up my smothering attack, robbing the flames of oxygen while struggling to get enough of my own. It took some doing, but I finally managed to get it all out.
I doubled over, coughing harder than I had ever coughed in my life.
When at last I straightened back up again, Lars was still just standing there, a twelve-year-old punk with a soul as black as tar. He looked at me and said, “I suppose you think you’re a hero now or something.”
It was exactly the sort of thing that I would have expected him to say, only instead of it coming across as intimidating or antagonistic, it now just seemed pathetic and sad, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that those were the only two words I needed to describe the twins. Maybe it was because I was having a particularly awful day, or maybe it was the end result of everything that I had been through since the glass plague started, both at home and everywhere else, but suddenly words like tough and scary didn’t seem to apply. The image I’d built up in my mind was starting to crumble.
We stared at each other across a distance of less than ten feet, and it was in that exact moment, as our eyes locked in the thinning smoke, that I lost all fear of Lars Messam. I felt it leave me like a weight, freeing me. I had already stood up to him once inside the tea shop when last we crossed paths, but that was different; that was anger and spite toward Pete just redirected, and desperation masked as courage. This was something more permanent. The predator/prey dynamic was broken, and I could tell that Lars sensed it, too. I saw it in his posture and his eyes, and though I thought he might still block me as I made for the door, he didn’t. I walked right
past him as if he weren’t even there, and then I was down the steps and crossing the yard to where a lost skunk waited for an escort home.
The sky churned and a crow flew past me, cawing as I took up the twine. I didn’t bother turning around to see where it landed or why it was there. I already knew.
FORTY-FOUR
Pete had the radio fixed by the time I got home. I could hear it even before I got through the door, but I went in anyway, wondering again how just one voice could do so much talking, and how just one man could convince so many that he was right when I couldn’t even convince two just to keep their minds open to other ideas, like how a small flock of sparrows might help themselves by trying to help us.
I reeked of smoke and my jeans were ruined, and my leg didn’t feel great either. Mrs. De Lint had asked me if I’d rescued Pepper from a burning building. When I told her no, she was understandably confused. So was Mom. She immediately wanted to know where I’d been and what I’d been doing. I told her it was nothing and that I was fine, even as I marched upstairs and into the bathroom to put on some salve and a wrap. Mom wasn’t about to let me off that easy, though. She followed me up and stood just outside the door.
“If you started a fire, Ben,” she said, “I need to know about it.”
I felt angry and hurt at the assumption.
“I was putting it out,” I said shortly. “Just like Dad would have.”
There was a moment of silence. “Okay, good,” she said. “That’s good. You can still talk to me, you know. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
I didn’t answer her. The voice droned on from across the hall, saying something about strength of purpose. I clucked my tongue inside my mouth in an effort to drown out the words.
Mom waited for an answer that wasn’t coming. Then I heard her sigh. “When you’re done in there, come downstairs please,” she told me. “I don’t care if you want to or not, you need to eat something.”
She was right. My empty stomach had gone from growling to feeling like it was starting to digest itself. First things first, though. I rolled up my pant leg and put on some salve. It felt cool against my skin, which was red but hadn’t blistered. I guessed that meant the burn wasn’t really that bad. The wrap went on next. I did it too tight the first time and had to start over, but other than that, it all went fine.
I thought about changing into some clean clothes, but since that would have required me going into my room, I settled for some less dirty ones out of the hamper in the basement. Afterward, I ate some beans and a handful of dried banana chips. As I chewed I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth in days. My hair was in dire need of washing, too. I suddenly felt as uncomfortable in my skin as I did in my house. And Pete was only making things worse.
The voice got louder as he opened the bedroom door upstairs. I waited for him to close it again, but he didn’t. I wasn’t sure if this was a dare or an invitation, but either way, I wasn’t biting. Instead I waited until Mom had her back turned (there was no way she was going to let me leave again after seeing the state I’d just come home in) and then grabbed both sets of Dad’s truck keys from the hook in the hallway and quickly snuck outside.
I didn’t actually need the keys, since Dad always left the truck open, but I figured this way I could lock myself in and stay there as long as I wanted.
As always, the truck smelled of Armor All and Old Spice and air-freshener pine. This was the first time I’d been in it since Dad was transformed, and I wasn’t prepared for the flood of memories that the familiar scents triggered. From camping and fishing trips to drives to the rink and runs into Paulson for the annual midway and once every winter to pick out a tree. I’d never really thought about it before, but the truck was sort of our ticket to escaping the monotony of our small-town world. I wondered if we would ever escape it again.
I took hold of the wheel and squeezed it as hard as I could, willing my hurt and frustration to bleed from my fingers and into the old worn leather.
Mom came out and knocked on the passenger window. “Can we please not do this, Ben?” she said. “It’s getting late. I know things are hard for you right now, but I’d like you to come back inside.”
The darkness of day was giving way to the darkness of night now, gray becoming black as the sky continued with its low groans and unnerving creaks. I thought back to the afternoon when all this started, when we got home from the garage and Mom came running out of the house and looked up as if the sky were falling. It almost seemed like it might now, like huge chunks of it could start raining down at any moment. I almost wished that it would. I was tired of being crushed slowly.
“Not until you and Pete promise not to touch Dad,” I replied.
“You know I can’t promise that, Ben,” she told me.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m staying here, then.” I felt like a child, demanding to have my way. I wasn’t, though. Not anymore.
Mom crossed her arms. “I’ll give you ten minutes,” she told me. “Ten minutes more and that’s it.”
I watched her return to the house. The night continued to deepen around me. Twice, the streetlights flickered as power tried and failed to restore itself. I felt as if a similar flickering and failing had been happening inside me, as every idea I had to make things better seemed destined to just fizzle out. I know my dad would have told me not to give up, but without a little luck or some help, I wasn’t sure that there was much left I could do.
As if in answer to this thought, I heard a car approaching from down the street. The truck was facing the house, so I had to turn around in my seat to see who it was. Constable Sheery’s cruiser rolled past a moment later, the sight of it instantly bringing to mind what Dad had said to us that day when we eavesdropped on him from upstairs, and how if worse ever came to worst, we could always call on Wayne Sheery for help.
Hoping that Dad was right, I jumped out of the truck and ran into the street, waving my arms like someone in need of a rescue. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to see me in the growing dark, so I started yelling, too, saying, “Stop! Wait! Over here!” The brake lights came on as the car slowed down, and then sure enough it pulled a U-turn at the end of the street and started coming back toward me.
Yes! I thought, simultaneously relieved and excited at the fact that something was finally going my way. I wasn’t sure yet exactly how Constable Sheery might be able to help me, but help me he would, of that much I was certain. He wasn’t just a cop, after all. He was also Dad’s friend.
I waved again once the car had covered about half the distance back to our house, but then something strange happened. Instead of slowing down, the car sprang forward, like Constable Sheery had stomped on the gas. It swerved a little, too, so that suddenly both of its headlights had me pinned.
I stopped waving but still had my hand up, confusion freezing me in place. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t hitting the brakes or correcting his course. The closer he got, the more the car picked up speed, the engine roaring.
The gears in my brain still hadn’t engaged yet, but thankfully my muscles recognized the danger. Without consciously thinking about it, I jumped back and out of the path of the runaway cruiser just in time. The streetlamps flickered the moment it passed me, the brief flashes of light shining on Constable Sheery’s face. His skin was shiny and black, his expression a frozen rictus of panic and fear. He must have lost control when he felt himself changing, his arms seizing up while the foot that he drove with became a heavy dead weight on the pedal.
With a crunch and a squeal of metal on metal, the cruiser glanced off the side of Uncle Dean’s pickup truck and kept on going right down the street, where it pinballed off two other parked cars before finally plowing headlong into the back of a big fifth-wheel trailer near the end of the block. The impact was like a cannon going off in the night, and somehow set off the cruiser’s siren, albeit only for a few seconds. It wailed discordantly and then died.
I hadn’t seen or heard her coming, but suddenly M
om was beside me, her eyes wide with shock and worry as she helped me up from the grass. She kept asking me if I was all right. I gave her a blank nod, my ears still ringing from the crash and the siren.
As soon as I was steady on my feet and it was clear that I really was okay, Mom told me to wait right there and said she needed to go and check if Constable Sheery was okay.
She was off and running before I could tell her that there was no point, that even with an airbag to cushion him, Wayne Sheery was surely now just a fragmented pile on the seat and the floor.
I turned and headed back to the house, my gaze traveling up to our bedroom window, where Pete stood in still silhouette against the light of several candles.
FORTY-FIVE
I barely slept for the next three nights, and when I did, I dreamed of sparrows, lost and flying through a maelstrom, their wings and tail feathers battered by winds so strong that I could still hear the roar in my ears even after waking. I had my sleeping bag down on the floor right next to the dining room table now. I’d given up my chair by the window in order to be closer to Dad.
Pete wasn’t sleeping much either. I could hear him pacing up in our room, back and forth and back and forth, as if the accumulation of steps might somehow absolve him of some of his guilt. I also noticed that he wasn’t eating much, or listening to his radio quite as often as he had been, perhaps because he could no longer carry it on his shoulder, or perhaps because he was starting to have second thoughts. Maybe now that we were coming down to it, the true gravity of the situation was beginning to assert its pull.
I started catching him taking sidelong glances at Dad, his eyes filled with a wary uncertainty. He didn’t just look tired; he looked absolutely wrecked, and maybe even a tad bit out of his mind, which made me wonder if the little sleep that he actually was getting was filled with nightmares. The kind you can’t quite shake even after waking. Maybe his subconscious was trying to tell him something, planting seeds that I might just be able to water.
The Absence of Sparrows Page 18
