The Absence of Sparrows

by Kurt Kirchmeier

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kurt Kirchmeier

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Hari & Deepti. Lettering by gray318. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

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  First Edition: May 2019

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kirchmeier, Kurt, author.

  Title: The absence of sparrows: a novel / by Kurt Kirchmeier.

  Description: First edition. | New York; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2019. | Summary: Eleven-year-old bird watcher Ben must defy his brother to save their father after the glass plague sweeps through their town and a voice on the radio demands the simultaneous shattering of all plague victims.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018020155| ISBN 9780316450928 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316450911 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316528825 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Family life—Fiction. | Brothers—Fiction. | Epidemics—Fiction. | Birds—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K623 Abs 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020155

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-45092-8 (hardcover), 978-0-316-45091-1 (ebook)

  E3-20190402-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For Anna, for everything

  When I look back on that summer, I think about birds. I think about crows and sparrows and waxwings, hawks and shrikes and jays. I guess you could say it’s just a distraction, a way for me to keep the truth of what actually happened to the back of my mind, but there’s more to it than that. It was through birds that I learned to see the world more clearly, both during the plague, and after.

  I used to wonder how something so small and delicate as a ruby-throated hummingbird could possibly fly nonstop across the entire Gulf of Mexico, a journey of five hundred miles and more than five million wingbeats, over nothing but cold, open water, but I think I understand now. They do it because they have to, because that’s the path that fate chose for them, however unfairly. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are survivors, and so are we. That summer was our Gulf of Mexico, and somehow we crossed it. But not all of us, and not unscathed.

  It all started on a blistering hot day in early July.…

  ONE

  C’mon,” said Pete. “Stop being a doofus.”

  I was avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk again, like we both used to do when we were younger and we’d race to the end of the block while trying our best not to break Mom’s back along the way. Pete always won, but I’m pretty sure Mom got crippled every time.

  “It’s harder than it used to be,” I said. “There’s way more cracks.” Plus, my feet had grown a few shoe sizes.

  I finally gave up, my attention turning to the sound of a black-capped chickadee singing from somewhere nearby. Black-capped chickadees were one of my favorite birds. Pete didn’t have favorite birds, and seemed to think that I shouldn’t either. It wasn’t normal.

  I could hear a northern flicker in the distance as well, with its long and loud wick-wick-wick sound. Flickers are big woodpeckers with exotic-looking markings. The first time I saw one, I thought I was looking at something that didn’t belong, a rare specimen that must have gotten lost during its migration. Turns out they’re actually common, but you don’t see them much because they’re skittish around people. Unlike chickadees.

  Pete continued on without me. I listened a moment longer and then ran to catch up.

  We were on our way to our uncle Dean’s shop, or more precisely, the shop roof, which was one of our two favorite haunts. The other was up in the arms of the big silver maple in Sunskill Park, the one with the checkered kite stuck fast near the top. Pete was hell-bent on someday freeing the kite, but could never quite work up the courage to risk putting his weight on those bendy little branches. Not even if I double-dog dared him.

  As was always the case when we knew we’d be up on the roof, we both stopped along the way to stuff our pockets with maple seedpods, or propeller leaves, as we called them, since that’s what they looked like when you dropped them: spinning propellers. I thought it amazing how nature sometimes made the best toys. Not that we ever called them toys, of course. Toys were for kids. Pete was twelve and I was eleven, and dropping maple seedpods from the roof of Uncle Dean’s shop was serious business. There was a root beer on the line.

  “Storm’s coming,” said Pete when we arrived at our destination. He kept his eyes skyward as he climbed the ladder attached to the wall at the back of the shop.

  Pete had been acting like some kind of weather expert ever since predicting a tornado last summer. It ripped through Stanley Peterson’s farm, dancing between a few grain silos before finally picking up and dropping Stanley’s riding lawn mower onto the roof of his burgundy Cadillac. That was the only damage, which is kind of weird when you think about it, especially since people used to say Stanley spent more time with that car than he did with his wife. He used to polish it at least once a day. Pastor Nolan told Dad that it was God’s way of punishing Stanley for his vanity. I don’t know if that’s true, but what I do know is that Stanley started driving a little old rust bucket shortly thereafter. I guess he didn’t want to press his luck.

&nb
sp; Pete’s prediction that day wasn’t anything special. He’d been making the same one regularly for almost two months. He would quirk an eye at the sky and say, “It’s going to storm.” If it didn’t, it was no big deal, and he’d just act like he never said anything in the first place. But if it did happen to storm, he’d look at you all sage-like and say, “See? I told you.”

  “Maybe,” I said as I stepped off the ladder and onto the roof, although the clouds didn’t really look stormy to me at all. They had a soft-edged fuzziness about them, not that crisp popcorn shape of growing thunderheads.

  We made our way to the front of the roof, where the garage overlooks Main Street. Uncle Dean was one of only two mechanics in Griever’s Mill (population 3,004), but even so, the shop was never all that busy. Nobody took any notice of us as we parked our butts and let our legs dangle over the edge. On the sidewalk directly below us was a white chalk circle with a big X through it. This was our target, the landing pad for our seedpods. The first one to hit it would earn himself bragging rights for a whole week, plus the loser would owe him a root beer float.

  “You go first,” Pete told me, as usual.

  “I always go first,” I argued. The wind invariably took the first pod. If I went first, Pete could try to compensate for which way it was blowing.

  “I went first last time,” he lied. Or maybe he was just misremembering. That wasn’t uncommon with Pete.

  “Fine,” I said. What Pete didn’t realize was that I’d come prepared this time, and had a single blade of grass to go along with my propeller leaves. I took it out of my pocket and tossed it into the wind.

  “Hey, that’s cheating, Ben!” said Pete.

  “So is making me go first all the time,” I countered.

  We both watched as the blade of grass landed well left of the target.

  “Be a cheater, then,” said Pete. “See if I care. You’ll still miss.”

  I probably would. The best either of us had ever done was getting it on our fifth try.

  “Definitely going to storm,” Pete said as I lined up for my drop. “Clouds are already turning black out past the edge of town.”

  “Shh,” I said. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

  Pete scoffed. “I bet you don’t even land within ten feet of it.”

  “Not this time,” I said with a sudden certainty that sprang from I don’t know where. Somehow I just knew that I wasn’t going to miss, that I was going to nail it the first try, like when an athlete gets into the zone and knows he’s going to score a goal or get a touchdown.

  My propeller spun as if guided by fate, around and around in slow motion, the wind pulling it away and then pushing it back into line again. Its ten-second journey from rooftop to sidewalk felt to me more like ten minutes, but it finally landed gently at the very center of the X. I let out a whoop while Pete called me a cheater, but my gloating pretty much ended there.

  When I looked up from the makeshift landing pad, my eyes were immediately drawn to the darkening sky that Pete had mentioned just moments before.

  “Uh, Pete,” I said. “I don’t think those are clouds.…”

  TWO

  They definitely weren’t clouds.

  Dust storm? I wondered, but even as the thought took form, I knew it was wrong. What I was seeing looked more like coal smoke, the kind you’d see billowing out from a locomotive, all thick and dark woolen gray. It didn’t disperse like smoke, though; it held together as if buffeted by winds from every side, a roiling mass as wide as our town, yet strangely flat, almost pancake shaped. It was getting closer, its underside maybe thirty feet off the ground and its leading edge about two football fields away. It drifted with all the silence of morning fog, and yet something about it seemed predatory, like a lion on the savanna stalking a kill.

  An icy chill climbed the length of my spine—a sensation immediately followed by a sudden and urgent desire to get down off the roof.

  “C’mon,” I told Pete, but he just stood there and kept on staring.

  “Pete!” I yelled.

  He finally snapped out of it and looked at me.

  “We need to go,” I told him.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Definitely.”

  By the time we’d climbed down and circled around to the front of the garage, the darkness had already reached the far end of the street. Others had noticed it, too, and a small crowd stood on the sidewalk in front of the shops to watch it approach. I rescued my maple seedpod from the landing pad before anyone could step on it. I thought it might be lucky, and I wanted to keep it for next time.

  Uncle Dean saw us from inside and came out to join us, not noticing what else was going on.

  “What’re you boys up to?” he said, adjusting his ball cap. Uncle Dean was always adjusting his ball cap. It was like he couldn’t quite make it comfortable on his head, even though he’d been wearing it for as long as I could remember.

  “Just watching,” said Pete.

  Uncle Dean followed our gazes out to the approaching dark. His lips parted as his jaw went slack. “What in the name of H. P. Lovecraft is that?”

  I had no idea who H. P. Lovecraft was, so I just shook my head and replied, “Not clouds.” I knew that wasn’t helpful at all.

  Across the street was Crandall’s General Store. Mr. Crandall was standing on the sidewalk by the front door, hollering in at his wife, Marge. “Hurry up and get out here!” he said. “You gotta see this!”

  “Whatever it is,” Uncle Dean continued, “I don’t like the looks of it. C’mon, let’s get you boys inside.”

  I was already three steps ahead of him, my thinking being that whatever was happening, it would probably be a whole lot safer beneath a roof and surrounded by walls. Once inside, I waited for something like a sudden gust of wind or a downpour of smoky-colored raindrops, but even as the darkness slid over the sky right above us, the only thing that seemed to change was that the neighborhood sparrows—regular house sparrows, mostly—immediately stopped their chirping and flying and took up silent perches on eaves and fences, their small bills turned up at the heavens, heads cocked as though they were listening.

  I wondered if they sensed something that we humans couldn’t. I watched them for a moment through the grimy glass of a single-pane window. Pete stayed close beside me, his eyes never leaving the sky.

  “I had a dream like this once,” he whispered, “except I was lost in a cornfield.”

  Outside it wasn’t night dark, but more like solar-eclipse dark, or at least what I imagined that to be. What little light there was had a different quality to it, a sort of peculiarity that made me think of all the “totality” YouTube videos that my science teacher made us watch in class last year, when half the country seemed to be suffering from total-eclipse fever.

  Uncle Dean headed off to the corner to call Dad on his CB radio, since he was most likely still out driving around in the country, where cell phone coverage was spotty. Dad was an assessor for an insurance company, which meant that he did stuff like write up estimates for hail-damaged crops. He was also a volunteer fireman, and a first responder, too. I listened as the static gave way to conversation. I couldn’t make out what Dad was saying from across the garage—the transmission was too crackly—but I could hear Uncle Dean.

  “Logan? Hey, whereabouts are you?” He paused, listening and nodding. “Yeah, it’s right above us here in town. Bloody bizarre. I’ve got your two birds here under my wing. Caught ’em flying down from my roof again.” Another pause. More static. “I will. Don’t you worry. Let me know if you hear anything, all right? Yep, you too, stay safe.” He hung up the CB and rejoined us at the window.

  “What’d he say?” asked Pete.

  “He says the sky’s clear where he is, but he can see the dark in the distance. He’s on his way back now and wants you two to stay put.”

  “What about Mom?” I asked.

  “I told your dad I’d call her on the phone. I’m sure she’s safe at home, though. Nothing to worry abou
t.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Mom could get a little anxious sometimes. Like when I was eight and someone reported a cougar near the edge of town. Pete and I weren’t allowed in the backyard for almost a week. I could just imagine what was going to happen because of this. She’d probably have us both on leashes.

  I went back to staring out the window. The darkness hovered above the whole town now and everyone had gone back inside except for old man Crandall, who was still out on the sidewalk, brandishing one of those Polaroid cameras that would spit out a picture right after you took it. You couldn’t look at the photo right away, though; you had to wait for the developing chemicals to dry first.

  I watched as Mr. Crandall snapped a picture and then tried to speed the drying process by waving the photo back and forth in the air. Mrs. Crandall yelled at him from the doorway, her eyes moving between her husband and the dark above, as if a coal-black funnel might suddenly appear to swallow him up.

  “For heaven’s sake, George!” she said. She finally stepped over the threshold and reached out, clearly intent on dragging him if that’s what it came to.

  She never got the chance, though. One second she was reaching, and the next she was standing there wide-eyed, staring down at George Crandall’s right hand, which was black now, I realized, and shiny as volcanic rock.

  The Polaroid camera crashed to the pavement as the old man seemed to lose all control of his fingers.

  “It’s spreading,” I heard Pete say. And it was.

  From his hand to his wrist and then right up his sleeve—by the time my brain even registered what was happening, the blackness had claimed his whole arm and part of his neck above his collar, and it didn’t stop there.

  Mr. Crandall opened his mouth as if to cry out, but it was already too late; the darkness had seized his vocal cords. A moment later the transformation was complete.

  George Crandall stood frozen in place, an obsidian statue dressed in an old wool suit with patches on the elbows. A crow flew down to land on the statue’s head. It cawed twice and then silently flew off south.

  THREE