“Okay, honey,” she told me. “I’ll call you when it’s time for supper.”
FORTY
I wasn’t sure what to write on my note, so I decided to go with the truth. At least this way she wouldn’t wonder and worry. I wrote:
Gone to see Pastor Nolan.
Be back soon.
—Ben
I left it on the counter where I knew Mom would find it, then slipped out the front door. I ran to the end of the block and stopped there for a second to look back and make sure Pete wasn’t following me. He wasn’t, so I continued on.
Pastor Nolan lived about halfway along Chester Street, in a small blue-and-white bungalow with a redbrick chimney. I’d never been inside his house, but it was easy to remember which one it was because the place right next to it was a weird pinkish-purple color, and belonged to a woman named Mrs. De Lint, who everyone knew because she owned a skunk named Pepper as a pet. She walked it around town on a leash, like a dog. People sometimes ran away from it, even though it had been de-stinked.
I walked up Pastor Nolan’s sidewalk and thought about what I would say. I wasn’t sure I should use the word exorcism right off the bat. Working up to it would probably be better.
I rang the bell and waited.
I hadn’t actually seen Pastor Nolan since that day at church when Patrick was taken, so I didn’t really know what to expect if he answered the door. I imagined an unshaven wreck who hadn’t slept for more than a week, eyes all glossy and red, crisp white collar dulled to gray. Or maybe he wouldn’t be home at all. Maybe he was staying at the church to be close to his son, still frozen in place atop his organ bench, a lumberjack statue with musical hands.
I rang the doorbell a second time, and knocked, too, in case the buzzer wasn’t working.
“Pastor Nolan?” I finally yelled, my face right up to the door. “Are you in there? It’s me, Ben Cameron, from church. I need to talk to you.”
Even if he couldn’t help me with an exorcism, maybe he could at least come over and have a talk with Mom and Pete. Maybe he could try to convince my brother to have some faith in something other than the Voice.
I waited. Still nothing.
I sighed, thinking that I’d have to go all the way to the church now. Before I did, though, I decided to check the door. I was pretty sure it would be locked, but it wasn’t. It swung inward with the faintest creak.
“Pastor Nolan?” I said again. It felt wrong to go beyond the threshold, so I held back for a moment, until a bad feeling came over me, compelling me farther. I stepped lightly through the gray-carpeted living room and turned right into a bright and spacious kitchen. The house was silent, the rooms dark but tidy. Nothing appeared unkempt or out of place. There wasn’t even a single dirty dish in the sink, but for some reason my bad feeling intensified.
I continued into the hallway, passing first a bathroom and then a reading room before finally arriving at what I assumed must be Pastor Nolan’s bedroom. The door was halfway closed, blocking my view. My heart pounded as I reached up to push it open.
Pastor Nolan stood frozen next to his bed. He was facing a full-length mirror, his left arm down at his side, clutching a rosary, and his right arm reaching, as if the act of touching his own reflection might somehow keep him from turning to glass, which it obviously hadn’t. He was wearing his cassock, his skin now as dark as the flowing black fabric itself. The white swatch on his collar seemed strangely isolated.
I looked down at the dangling cross on the rosary, and felt all my hope flow right out of me, like air from a punctured bike tube. Finding the tea shop empty had been a disappointment; this was like a death blow. My plan was ruined now, and there was no time to come up with a new one. Not that an exorcism was likely to have worked anyway. Maybe I’d just been lying to myself so I wouldn’t have to face the truth.
I stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do next. There was an open window on the opposite side of the bed, with thin white curtains that were sweeping in and out across the sill at the whim of the wind. I watched the back-and-forth motion for maybe a minute, until a strong gust of wind finally broke the spell and sent the curtain fluttering inward like some Halloween ghost. The spectral illusion lasted only a moment, the curtain settling back into its rhythm as the wind eased up some.
I’m not sure why, but I went over to close the sash. A sound from outside, however, stopped me. It was the sound of birds, the familiar chips and jibs of sparrows conversing. House sparrows.
I looked outside and saw three large feeders there, swinging in the wind beneath an apple tree laden with overripe fruit. Several birds were perched amidst the branches. I felt a surge of hope at the sight of them, my first thought being that maybe these were Mom’s sparrows, come to visit the pastor’s yard, only there wasn’t a leucistic female among them. I searched for the pure white wings to no avail.
The birds darted away as soon as they noticed me, seeking shelter in a globe cedar that was likely their home.
No, I thought, these aren’t Mom’s sparrows. These ones belonged here, and had probably been here their whole lives, or at least for as long as the feeders had been up.
Soon they would need to find a new home, now that Pastor Nolan would no longer be around to replenish the seeds. I imagined house sparrows all over the world becoming displaced in this way, moving from one backyard to the next like winged refugees, their human providers vanishing one by one, from flesh to glass, soul by mortal soul.
What would happen to house sparrows as a species if people disappeared entirely? Would they follow us into oblivion, slowly but surely, as wilder species moved in to reclaim our towns and cities? That’s the thing about house sparrows—they’ve kind of evolved alongside us, building their homes by our homes, sharing our space and our food, hanging out in our parking lots like a bunch of kids with no place else to go.
If you drive out into the country, you’ll hardly see them at all. The nest boxes you find along the back roads will be filled with swallows and bluebirds, and sparrows of the American variety, like Savannah and vesper and lark sparrows. True sparrows, some might say, as the “house” variety aren’t technically sparrows at all. They actually belong to the weaver-finch family. The settlers renamed them after bringing them here from overseas, because their coloration was so similar to that of the native sparrows. The birds were supposed to help in controlling insect pest populations, only it didn’t quite work out that way. As it turned out, house sparrows usually prefer seeds and grains to bugs. Still, the birds thrived and were soon riding railcars from one settlement to the next, traveling along with their favorite food sources and establishing their own little colonies inside ours. They’ve been our constant companions ever since, succeeding wherever we do, and sometimes failing right alongside us.
I wondered if, on some level, the birds understood this, that our fates had become intertwined. If so, how would they adapt? What would they do? Was there anything they even could do? It wasn’t as if a few lowly house sparrows had the power to stop the glass plague, although maybe they could mob the crows who came to carry our souls away after we transformed, the same way they banded together to mob crows who tried to rob nests. Maybe they could start getting crows to leave souls behind, or maybe the sparrows could even follow crows from this world into the next one and, once there, steal souls and bring them back.
That last thought hit me like an epiphany as I remembered that Mom’s sparrows had disappeared at pretty much exactly the same time that Dad turned to glass. It was almost as if they’d gone with him, or after him, perhaps. Maybe Mom’s sparrows were the first to sense what was coming, and therefore the first to act. Maybe if we just waited a little while longer, they would return and Dad would be whole again.
I looked back at Pastor Nolan, reaching toward the mirror and his reflection reaching back, like Adam and God in that famous old painting. The hopelessness that I’d felt when I entered the room was gone now, replaced by a faith in something that might be unlikel
y, but at least seemed possible. All I had to do was tell Mom, and together we could overrule Pete.
I left Pastor Nolan’s and ran for home.
FORTY-ONE
I entered the house and kicked off my shoes, fully expecting that Mom would be waiting for me and wondering why I would have gone to see our pastor so early in the morning, but she wasn’t. The living room and kitchen were empty, and, as usual, Dad was alone and unchanged at the table in the dining room. I checked the backyard bench, but she wasn’t there either.
I went over to the bottom of the stairs and was just about to call up to her when I heard something that stopped me cold: an unfamiliar voice from up in Pete’s and my room. A man’s voice.
I held my breath, my pulse quickening. I listened for a second but couldn’t make out his words. Whoever it was, neither Pete nor Mom was talking back, which I took to be a bad sign, as if they’d been told to be quiet. I immediately pictured some crazed lunatic, holding a finger to his lips and a knife in his hand, one of those Rambo-style ones with a blade on one side and a row of sawing teeth on the other.
In spite of this all-too-vivid image, I continued up to the top of the stairs, taking care not to step on the creaky spots. The voice continued to talk, but there was a muffled quality to the sound, as well as a soft and steady background hiss, the hiss—it suddenly dawned on me—of radio static.
I opened the door, my heart sinking at what I found on the other side.
Pete’s radio was sitting in the middle of the floor. Its plastic shell had been removed and wires spilled out from inside it—wires that Pete had cut and then spliced together with others, bypassing the radio’s blown speaker for one that worked properly—a rectangular tower that stood next to Dad’s toolbox.
Pete was in his usual spot on the floor, his back up against the side of his mattress and box spring. Mom was sitting on the edge of my bed with her hands folded neatly in her lap. It didn’t look like she’d just sat down. Her posture was too settled, her attention too focused. She had obviously been listening for a while.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I could only imagine what the voice on the radio had filled her head with. I felt my jaw clench at the thought of it.
“Sit down, Ben,” Mom told me. “I think it’s time we had a family talk.”
It wasn’t so much her words that shook me (although they did), but more her expression. I’d seen the same one on Pete’s face for days, a mixture of pity and hard resolve.
I shook my head and went no farther, my horror at this new development mixing with a wary surprise at the reasoned tone of the voice on the radio. I guess I’d just imagined something more impassioned, something with more fire and wild intensity, sort of like you might get from a fanatical preacher in a movie. This wasn’t that at all, though. This was more the voice of a teacher or a philosopher, of a scientist and a sage all wrapped into one. Somehow that made it even scarier.
“No!” I tried to tell Mom. “You don’t understand! The sparrows went after him! We have to wait!” My knees suddenly grew so weak that I had to lean against the door to keep myself from falling.
Mom stood up and reached out for me, sympathy in her eyes. “Oh, Ben” was all she said to me. “Oh, Ben.”
FORTY-TWO
I tried to explain it all downstairs, where I wouldn’t have to compete with another voice. Mom listened as I pieced it all together, and although there was a moment when an ember of hope seemed to spark in her eyes, an instant in which she believed me, or at least wanted to believe me, the fire of certainty never quite kindled.
“It’s a nice thought, Ben,” she finally told me. “But I’m not sure it’s anything more than that.”
Pete wasn’t nearly so kind.
“Sparrows?” he scoffed. “We’re supposed to wait because of some stupid sparrows? You gotta be kidding me.”
I felt like Mom had pushed me down and Pete had kicked me in the stomach, all while Dad sat helplessly by, still saying grace after all this time.
Of course I was serious. I’d never been more serious about anything in my life, and I didn’t understand how Pete could be so dismissive. After all, he himself had seen the way that the crows always seemed to show up right after a transformation, first the one that landed on old man Crandall’s head, and then the small murder of them right outside the church that day. We hadn’t actually seen one when Dad turned, but the single caw that had come from outside was unmistakable. It couldn’t just be a coincidence. It meant something. It had to. And if crows and ravens could move between worlds, then why couldn’t sparrows? Maybe all birds could. It was just that most of them didn’t have any reason to.
I stared at my older brother, my frustration turning to anger now, and suspicion. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Pete and Dad had never gotten along, that there had always been a weird sort of tension whenever the two of them were in the same room.
“Do you even care that he’s gone?” I asked him. “Do you even miss him?” I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to feel as awful in that moment as I did.
“Ben!” said Mom, shocked at my words. Pete just stood there, though, his expression softening.
“Of course I miss him,” he told me. “Of course I care. But I also care about you and Mom. That’s why we need to do something. Wishes aren’t plans, Ben. Maybe you’re still too young to understand that.”
“I understand it just fine,” I told him. “You’re the one who needs to grow up a little.”
Pete just shook his head, as if to say that he wasn’t taking the bait.
I turned to Mom then, imploring her with only my eyes since I wasn’t sure I could talk and not start crying.
“There’s still time, Ben,” she told me. “We have five more days yet. If you’re right, then maybe that’s all the time we’ll need. We just have to wait and see.”
If she was hoping to reassure me, she didn’t succeed. I understood now that, like Pete, she had made up her mind. For a brief moment, I wished she’d never started back on her pills. At least then Pete would still be alone in his convictions. But then I remembered how weak and shaky she had been, and how she had looked on the morning that she picked up the chain saw, with empty madness in her eyes and cold instant coffee dribbling down her chin. It was an image I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get out of my mind, and one that I hoped I would never have to see again.
I couldn’t look at either of them anymore and felt claustrophobic just sharing a room with them. I started toward the back door, Mom telling me to please wait, to please not go. I paused to look at her, making no effort to hide the anger on my face. I looked at Pete, too, who was sitting across the room from me, near the fireplace. It suddenly occurred to me that I was a lot closer to his radio than he was. Although breaking it probably wouldn’t serve any real purpose now that a date and a time for the shattering had already been set, it would probably feel pretty darn good to see it in pieces.
My gaze remained on Pete but my body started to turn, toward the stairwell.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t do it, Ben,” he warned me.
I hesitated for only a second, then shot for the stairs, taking them two at a time while Pete charged after me.
I managed to get to the radio an instant before he got to me, but all I had time to do was pick it up and hurl it toward the wall, the spliced wires coming apart as I did so, the new tower speaker toppling over as the body of the radio itself—still missing its outer shell—collided with one of Pete’s muscle car posters and then fell to the floor, leaving behind it a loose flap of ripped paper where before there had been a shiny chrome wheel. The voice went silent.
Pete shoved me out of his way, swearing a blue streak.
I laughed for a second, and then started to cry, the pointlessness of it all washing over me.
FORTY-THREE
Pete locked himself in our bedroom with the toolbox and radio. I wasn’t really sure how badly I’d damaged it, but I figured it was mostly cosmetic. The
voice would probably be speaking again in no time. Meanwhile, all I could do was just fume and pace, and berate myself for not trying to destroy the thing sooner, when I first got the inkling that something was wrong.
Mom tried to get me to eat something. My stomach was growling so loud that she actually heard it, and yet the thought of eating just made me feel gross. Food could wait. What I really needed was some air, so I went outside and sat on the step, the ashen sky softly groaning and creaking above me. My face felt hot, flushed. My leg bounced with nervous energy. I put my head in my hands and stared out at nothing.
A moment later a black-and-white shape entered my peripheral vision. I sat up and looked, saw movement beside an overturned garbage can. It was a skunk, I realized, but not just some random wild one out scavenging for scraps. It was Pepper, the skunk that lived in the pinkish-purple house right beside Pastor Nolan’s. It was wearing a collar—purple like the house it belonged in, with small diamond studs that would have caught the light had the sun not been permanently quarantined. The skunk paused when it noticed me watching it, but it didn’t run. Pepper was friendly and trusting of humans. Mrs. De Lint had let me pet it one time, and I could still remember how that big fluffy tail felt under my fingers. Was it possible that Pepper remembered me, too?
I got up and approached, and tried talking to it in a low soft voice, saying, “Hey, Pepper. What are you doing out here all alone?”
The skunk just looked at me, its dark eyes glistening. Clearly it had gotten out somehow (like our old dog, Buster, always used to) and wandered away from its neighborhood. I wondered if skunks could find their way home the same way cats did. If not, then Pepper would need my help.
The Absence of Sparrows Page 17