Sparrow Man

by M. R. Pritchard

  “Meg.” He turns towards me. “Maybe your adventure is over, but mine isn’t. I still have things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Feathers,” he whispers as his green eyes flick to my lips.

  Just this one second, when he looks at me like this, I am filled with so much hope of seeing Jim again, but at the same time I’m filled with this almost unbearable sadness at the fact that I may never see Sparrow Man again. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so thoroughly torn in opposite directions in my entire life.

  …

  The Kingston Safe House is just as Noah described it: nothing but a huge prison. There are miles of chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Guards pace the lookout points with weapons in hand. As we get off of the bus a man walks towards the gate, keys jingling on his belt. I walk towards the gate, my heart in my throat, barely able to breathe, barely able to believe that I am here right now.

  The man with the keys looks at me and then Sparrow. He clears his throat. “Miss? We can take you but not him.” He nods towards Sparrow.

  I turn. “Why not?”

  “His kind can’t cross these grounds.”

  I narrow my eyes on the man with the keys. “His kind?”

  “It’s okay,” Sparrow interrupts. “I don’t need this place, you do.”

  A bit confused, I settle my eyes on Sparrow. “Where will you go?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replies with a smile.

  “Goodbye, Sparrow,” I tell him, feeling mighty sad.

  “Goodbye, Meg.” He gives my shoulder an awkward pat. As I walk away from him through the gates of the prison, he says something strange. “I hope you find the answers you’re looking for.”

  I notice the bus is already gone as he walks towards the dusty parking lot, a gray feather sticking out of his pocket. I turn away from him and follow the man down the fenced entryway and into the large prison.

  Qualifiers and Quarantine

  The first thing they did when I walked into the Safe House was search my backpack. They took the two handguns¸ didn’t even ask me about them, they just took them and the bullets. The second thing they did was hand me two pieces of paper and a pen. The first sheet of paper was just like my college admission forms. I wrote my name at the top, my date of birth, my age, every personally identifying tidbit about myself. The second page had two questions: Are you searching for someone? Followed by What is your greatest sin?

  Noah warned me about this part, how they lock everyone up at night because they think it’s their sins turning them into the walking dead. I guess they want to know up front what to expect.

  I sit there, tapping the pen on the paper, thinking real hard about all of the bad shit I did and trouble I got into. I’m sure they want to know my juvy record and the fact that I was knocked up before getting married. Gosh, when I sit down and think about it, there’s a lot I’ve done wrong with my life. But my worst… Well, my worst has got to be killing those seven men. Killing is wrong, that’s what they all say, even if it was in self-defense. I write down my story and hand it to the man who escorted me in.

  Then I wait.

  It’s not long before a man in a black suit with a white Roman collar tucked into the neck of his shirt arrives. He nods at me.

  “Meg?” he holds a hand out. I stare at it. “My name’s Deacon, it’s nice to meet you.”

  “I don’t touch people,” is my response.

  “Okay, then.” He grasps his hands together and sits across from me. Staring. Like a creeper. He has a plain face with light brown hair and thin eyebrows and I think if I saw him in public I’d probably look right past him.

  My eyes settle on the Roman collar. I may not go to church but I know enough that a Deacon holds some religious status. “Is your name really Deacon or are you a Deacon?” I ask.

  “It’s my name, my title. So you’re looking for your fiancé?” he asks.

  “Yes, Jim. Jim Sullivan. He’s supposed to be here. We had an agreement if anything ever happened that we would meet in Kingston.” I reach into my bag and pull out my passport. “Look, I have dual citizenship.”

  He holds his hand up, waving away the passport. “That’s okay. Are you familiar with the Qualifiers and Quarantine process?”

  All I know is what they did when I got sent to county lockup: fingerprints, pictures, body cavity searches. “No,” I tell him, hoping that the process isn’t the same here.

  “Well, I will be your Parole Officer.” He taps his fingers on the table as though he’s bored. “I will be responsible for locating your loved one and helping you through the Quarantine process. The first part was the test you filled out.”

  “I didn’t realize that was a test.”

  “Well, you certainly wrote some colorful things on there.”

  “I thought you wanted to know the worst?”

  “Yes, we do and we appreciate your honesty. So the next step is for me to show you to your cell and then the interview process starts. It takes three days and we can’t release you into the general population until someone comes to claim you.”

  “Jim,” I remind him. “Until Jim comes to claim me. My fiancé.”

  “Yes.” He folds his hands and smiles.

  “So, are you ready to be shown to your cell?”

  I sigh. Another cell. “Sure.”

  I get up when Deacon does and follow him, my backpack strapped across my shoulder. We trail behind a man who unlocks and relocks gates as we walk down long corridors with barred cells. Some are empty, others decorated with pictures and colorful blankets, just like someone’s house would be. We walk down some stairwells and across some catwalks, until we come to a row of cells where there are no personal items on the beds or taped to the walls. This must be Quarantine.

  Deacon stops and steps aside.

  “This is your cell.” He points to the bed at a set of maroon scrubs. “Those are Newcomer uniforms. You will wear them to the interviews so the decision will not be impacted by your clothing or… other things.”

  His eyes settle on the tattoo across my collarbone. I pull at my shirt to cover it, annoyed that he can stand here and judge me based on how I look. What a dick.

  “Would you like something to eat before the interview begins?” he asks, his face completely complacent.

  “That would be nice, thank you.”

  He waves at me to go into the cell and I do. But as I hear the metal door slide across its track and the turn of his keys, I am filled with a sense of dread.

  …

  Three days later.

  I had this last day of questioning to make it through and it went pretty much the same as the others: they asked me what happened, they asked me what I did, and they asked me why those men targeted my house. I gave them the same answers as I have the last three days. I have no idea.

  They wanted me to tell them something I didn’t know. I think they were just killing time, making me wait the extra day in Quarantine, to see if my tattoos would make me wake up a walking dead person.

  Then that bitch threw my milk on my bed again. I refrained from punching her in the face. Instead, I sang her a little tune I had thought up last night:

  As I lay me down to sleep,

  I hope you turn into a creep,

  I hope your guts rot and twist,

  I hope you get punched with a fist.

  She slammed the cell door, locked it, and whispered to me, “That shit only happens to sinners like you. Not good Catholic school girls like me.”

  I told her to fuck off. I’m not a poet, or anyone remotely artistic, but I thought it was good; it rhymed and shit.

  I shower, just like I did after the other questioning sessions. It’s not that I was sweating or anything, just pissed off and angry and… and… I just wanted to be home. I wanted Jim to come get me just like he did when I was at college and I called him to tell him that I was pregnant and that I wasn’t going to keep the baby but I thought he should know.

  Th
at night, my last night of waiting for my fiancé to collect me, I slept in my borrowed cot which smelled of unpasteurized milk, again, and I dreamt of Sparrow Man, and it was hot.

  He took off that stupid coat and whatever else he wore under there and he was all pale skin and hard muscle. He had shaved the stubble and trimmed his hair, and I swear to God he looked like he stepped out of the pages of a magazine. And he smelled so good, like… like… I don’t know, just really, really good. When he walked towards me, all naked and gleaming, I didn’t step away. Holy hell no, I stood there, eyes wide, holding my breath. I let him strip off every piece of clothing I was wearing. He did it so slow, like he was unwrapping a gift, so slow I thought I was going to die before he finished. I let him run his lips over my skin, every scar, every mark of ink. He mumbled sweet things in my ear, he licked my neck and when I turned my face to meet his, I finally took a breath, and… yeah, he smelled like heaven, like Christmas and New Years and cake batter. My stomach quivered. I let him lay me down on my borrowed cot. I let him press himself to me and I could feel him on my leg. He was hard and I was achy. His hands trailed all over, touching every inch of me. I moved my legs apart, ready for him, ready for this. Sparrow pulled back, his green, green eyes looking into mine, and he smiled that smile he only ever gave me. I felt his hips move and-

  I woke up all sweaty and panting and I’m pretty sure I had the female equivalent of a boner. Part of me felt dirty, dreaming that way about a poor demented man. A sinner? Yeah, I am a sinner. Only a sinner could have a dream like that while she was waiting for her one true love to come claim her. Maybe my daddy was right; maybe I am nothing but a trashy whore. I’d be surprised if I didn’t wake up a walking meat sack by sunrise.

  …

  In the morning, Deacon collects me from my cell. He walks me to the visiting room. “We’ve put out a notice. But we can’t let you leave until someone comes to collect you.”

  I sit at a table. There are three of us here, me and two men. I sit there all day and watch as each of the men leave with someone else. By evening I am the last one left. And that’s when it hits me: that pain that reverberates through your chest like ripples from a stone tossed in a pond. The one that hurts too much to bring tears even when you try. You feel it over and over, each time it gets stronger and stronger, until your heart swells and your chest caves at the same time, pulling and twisting your lungs in the wrong direction. I realize, sitting here alone that he’s not coming for me. Jim’s not coming for me.

  …

  Deacon doesn’t come to bring me back to my cell. Instead the man whom I recognize from the center of the desk-of-questioning, the middle man, walks into the room, his robes flowing around his feet like ocean waves. His face is set, grim.

  “Sorry about this,” he tells me.

  For an instant I hope he’s telling me that Jim is on his way, that maybe he was busy or lost or something.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, grip the backpack that’s across my shoulder. “He’s not coming?” I ask.

  The man shakes his head no.

  “Okay.” I stand to leave, and there is a strong sensation in my gut that I recognize as the need to vomit.

  “We can still use you here,” the man starts. “There’s not many women. We can keep you here. You’ll be safe and maybe, in time, we can locate your Jim, maybe he’ll come around.”

  From the sound of his voice it sounds like they’ve already found Jim and the news is not good.

  “No thank you,” I tell him.

  “You’ll be safe here,” he offers again. “Safer than you will be out there.”

  “I’ll be a prisoner. If Jim were here for me that would be one thing. But I’ve spent enough time locked in a jail cell. I’m not going to live my life like this; locked up, waiting for my sins to turn me into one of those things. And I’m not going to hang around here so I can make a bunch of men happy.”

  “Very well then.” The man tips his head. “This guard will show you out.” As I pass him he reaches out to stop me. I weave away from his touch. “You need to be careful who you trust out there,” he warns me. “Things are not what they seem.”

  “They never are.”

  I walk away from him, recognizing the guard that appears at the door as the same one who let me in. I follow as he leads me out of the prison, down the fenced walkway. I can feel the eyes of the people here watching me as I leave.

  “Too bad,” the guard starts speaking as he unlocks the gate. “Hear you don’t have the baby making parts any longer. Men here could make you very happy. Baby making isn’t allowed with the fertile ones.”

  “Shut up,” I tell the guard. “I want my guns back,” I demand, remembering the two handguns they took from me when I got here.

  He shakes his head from side to side. “Can’t do that.”

  “What the hell is it with people taking my guns?”

  “Guns can’t help you here.” He shrugs. “Looks like you have a visitor.” The guard tips his head. “Looks like he’s still breathing too.”

  I raise my head and find Sparrow sitting on a cement block in the parking lot. I walk towards him. He smiles, tilting his head towards the sun.

  “Sparrow?” I ask. “What are you doing here?”

  “Would you like to come with me?” he asks.

  “Where?”

  “On an adventure.”

  “An adventure?”

  “Yes, I still have things to find.”

  “Like what?”

  “Feathers.” He turns away from the sun and looks at me. Something in the center of my chest warms as I stare at his face and his green eyes. God, how I missed Sparrow while I was waiting in that cell. It’s all I can do to tear my eyes away from him to look around at the desolate space around us.

  “You promised you would get me more feathers,” he reminds me.

  “Sure, Sparrow.” I have nothing else to do. No one else to look for. When I really think about it, I missed Sparrow more these past three days than I did Jim. That means something, right?

  “Great!” Sparrow jumps down from the cement block, dirt wisps up at his feet.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I have to find feathers.”

  I sigh. Noticing the corner of his lip quirk up I ask, “What kind of feathers?”

  He looks up to the sky, then turns. “Flamingo.”

  “We are in Canada. Flamingoes aren’t native to this area, Sparrow. There are none anywhere near here.”

  “Yes there are. At the zoo, just across the border.”

  I stop in my tracks. “You want to go back across the border? After all it took to get here?”

  “Look around, Meg, they’ve got the same problem here as we do in the states. That fence at the border isn’t helping them at all.”

  I turn around and look at the Safe House I just left. It seems, even though we haven’t seen any of the dead walking during the day, they must have the same problem here, or they wouldn’t be locking themselves up in prisons at night and praying that they wake up in the morning.

  …

  We walk down the same highway we showed up on, headed for the American border. It feels strange, walking during the daytime, instead of waiting for night to travel. Sparrow doesn’t seem to notice the difference. He walks next to me, his hands in the pockets of his ripped coat.

  After we’ve walked for a few hours, I hear the sound I recognize as a city bus. It stops next to us.

  “You kids headed in the wrong direction,” the same old lady who drove us to Kingston shouts out the window at us. “Didn’t find what you were looking for?”

  “Nope!” Sparrow tells her. “No flamingoes here.”

  I burst out laughing.

  The bus driver’s chest hits the steering wheel as she slams on the brakes.

  Sparrow laughs.

  “Whelp.” She grins. “Want a lift?”

  I turn to Sparrow. “I’ve gotten enough sun for the day,” he tells me like a man wal
king away from a buffet table.

  “Sure,” I tell the lady as we walk around the bus to board.

  She drops us off at the same bus stop where she picked us up from three days ago. As we approach the giant fence that keeps Canada and America separate, I notice that it looks a lot less intimidating from this side. The same guard steps out of the observation shack as we get close.

  “Thought you two wanted in?” he asks as we approach him.

  “Didn’t find what I was looking for,” I tell him.

  The officer looks at Sparrow and twists his face. I feel a sudden need to defend Sparrow, even though this man isn’t saying anything I can tell what he’s thinking.

  “Leave him alone,” I tell the officer.

  “Didn’t say a thing,” he replies with a chuckle.

  “You don’t need to.”

  The officer grunts and tugs at his belt. “Guess you want to go back to your filthy America?”

  “At least we’ll be free there.”

  “Until your sins catch up with you,” he says as he reaches for a keychain in his hip. “It’s kind of weird, huh?”

  “What?” I ask as he twists the key in the gate lock.

  “You guys used to keep your borders all locked tight, didn’t want to let the immigrants into your free country. Now look at you all, fighting to get out of there with nowhere else to go.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter. “I didn’t vote for those assholes that locked up the border.”

  “Yeah,” the officer laughs. “You don’t look like the voting type.”

  The officer opens a narrow door and waits for us to walk through.

  “Safe travels,” he says with a smile as we walk through.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I snap at him. “Fucking Canadians.”

  The officer slams the gate behind us, locking it up tight.

  We walk across the bridge to America. I feel defeated and renewed all at the same time. It’s a strange feeling, losing Jim but having Sparrow Man back. The only downside is now I’m not really sure what to do with myself. But, I did promise Sparrow that I would help him find more feathers. I guess now that is just what I will do.