JOHN BURT

The Sparrow

On New Year's Eve, at the end of five days of driving, Bishop, who was taking his turn at the wheel, steered Corbin's Nova onto an exit ramp in Gallup, New Mexico. Crossing the railroad tracks, they found themselves on the old Route 66, passing the Historic El Rancho Hotel and several smaller motels from the heyday of that road in the 1930s, dispersed amid the red dust and the thin, scrubby trees. Passing beyond a lot full of heavy construction equipment, Bishop turned off the main road into a neighborhood of small, pink stucco houses. Finally, he saw ahead, up a small rise, a rose brick tower and cupola. "That will do," he said.

"What will do?" asked Corbin.

"You can wait here if you want. I won't be long."

"It's freezing out here. I'm coming with you," Corbin replied.

On the steps of the Sacred Heart Cathedral, before the leftmost of the three tall, arched doors, Bishop found a stunned little bird.

"It's dead. Come on." Corbin moved toward the door.

"Oh no it's not. Just look—it's breathing." Bishop kneeled.

Bending over where his friend knelt, Corbin saw the bird's beak working with effort as it strained to breathe. "Let's go. It's dying anyway," Corbin insisted.

"We don't know that. It might be hurt, that's all," Bishop said. "And it'll freeze if we just leave it here."

"Okay, Saint Francis," Corbin said. "We'll build a sparrow hospital right here and injured birdies will come from every state for you to fix their little bodies up."

"Let's get it warm and see if it survives." Whatever new quest Bishop had just launched himself on, Corbin saw he was not going to be diverted from it easily.

"Oh, for God's sake."

"Why not?" Bishop seemed to have no idea that it might be strange to imagine that God had called him to rescue a freezing bird.

"It's foolishness," Corbin sighed. "Besides, I thought you had some things to do. Why are we stopping here? What does this place have to do with us?" But Corbin knew he had already lost the tug of war.

Bishop was back at the car and had popped the tailgate up. He rummaged in the trunk and pushed aside a sleeping bag, a pack, one black Converse, and a wiffle ball. Then he found the shoebox with the new loafers Corbin's parents had just given him for Christmas. The tissue they were wrapped in sailed away, swirling and flapping down the frozen street.

Corbin plopped down on the Cathedral stairs. He shook his head, then locked his skinny arms around his knees till Bishop trotted back, his breath condensing like a steam train's exhaust.

"Wait. Don't just shovel him," Corbin laughed to see that his friend was squeamish about touching the bird with his hands.

Bishop knelt there, at a loss.

"You'll have to pick it up. With your hands. Some saint you are," Corbin shook his head.

Bishop laughed too. Corbin had called him St. Paul Bishop, Patron Saint of Lost Causes and Confused Maidens since they had first left Willimantic.

"You'll have to practice now. Wash beggars' feet. Kiss lepers. Raise the dead." Corbin laughed.

"Okay. Enough." After a moment's hesitation, Bishop raised the bird gingerly in numb unsteady hands. "I feel it breathing."

The box had fallen over in the wind. Corbin caught it before it blew away. "Alright," he said. "You should have kept that paper. Be sure to wash your hands when you go in. Being a saint might not protect you from getting whatever that bird might have."

Bishop placed the bird in the shoebox and carried the it to the big front door which, they should have known, was locked, but at the side entrance up a concrete ramp at the left side of the church a little signboard on a metal stand said "Daily Masses: 9 am and 12 pm."

"I can light a candle anyway," Bishop said.

"Then go ahead. For the repose of birds."

"I sure could use a bit of that repose."

Hearing this, Corbin had to lay down his exasperation with his friend. "Don't let me stop you. Just don't be too long. Our Rachel is waiting for us. She just has to know whether you've been spiritually transformed."

"Oh no, she doesn't even know I'm coming."

"Sweet Jesus. She tells you to convert or die, or, anyway, convert or go away and never see her smiling face again, and just like that you're roaring across the continent. You’re in earnest, anyway, for sure, whether she is or isn't."

"I'm going in. You don't have to come with me. Maybe you shouldn't," Bishop said.

Corbin turned and walked almost back to the car, a little bit taken aback by Bishop's surprising tone, then stopped himself. "It's too damn cold out here. Wait up!"

But the door had closed between them.

The church was bare, at least by Catholic standards, and the winter desert sun threw down pools of blue and green from stained glass windows along the nave. The brickwork behind the altar had a Navajo linked-diamond pattern, and the center aisle of the nave was tiled with red and turquoise chevrons like a Navajo blanket. Bright, cylindrical lights hung from the ceiling high above, marching in order towards the altar. The walls were rose-red like a canyon wall. But all the pews were blond and polished bright, and rank on rank of bright wooden arches spanned the nave.

Corbin entered and, from the side door, saw his friend, shoebox in hand, pausing at the altar, staring up at the great crucifix before him, the thin face of Jesus looking not out at the pews, but disconsolately down at the floor before him. Bishop had to shift the box to cross himself, but then turned his gaze up to the rose window, at the other end of the nave, and watched the dust-motes pirouette in light. It was not the glass that Bishop gazed at, just the dust that sifted in and out of slanting, colored shafts. Corbin took a step, then stopped himself as Bishop paused before the first station of the cross, then moved on to the next one, muttering.

The church was empty, and Bishop took his time. Corbin watched him, stock-still, open-mouthed, as Bishop worked his way along the wall. From far off, Corbin listened to the traffic passing, the squealing of a bus, a crying child. They were the pale thin ghosts of sounds, of lives.

When Bishop had worked completely around the church, he touched a knee down by the altar rail and crossed down to the rack where four or five candles burned in little red glass jars. He shifted the shoebox first then stepped away and put it on the floor between the pews.

Fumbling in one pocket, then the next, he found, in his handkerchief, a wadded bill, which he folded for the slot. Predictably, the candle wouldn't light. Corbin took a step to help him, but just then the wick flared up, and Bishop set it down.

"I'm ready now," said Bishop, turning back to where he'd put the shoebox down. And then, just as he touched the shoebox, out it flurried, the sparrow, and shot straight for the far end of the nave. "Jesus!"

"I guess it was alive," said Corbin.

"Oh no, look!" Bishop pointed as it flew round and round, trapped, beating from one end of the cathedral to the other, frantic. "We'd better save it."

“You’ve done that once too often.”

"I'll get the sexton," Bishop exclaimed, and out he ran, through the little door behind the altar.

The sparrow struck a clerestory, faltered, then flew at the rose window at full tilt. When Corbin got there, he found on the stones a little puff of feathers, a smear of blood. 
 
As Corbin squatted there, Bishop came in, but paused just inside the door, unable to move. Bishop watched him for a few seconds, and all of the expression dropped from his features. He looked blankly over Corbin's head, at the rose window, as if he had lost the power to do anything else.

Then the red-faced sexton pushed past him. "Are you boys making trouble? This is God's house, damn it! I've just called the cops and you'd better be out of here before they get here!"

After he closed the door of the car, Corbin asked, "Now tell me, which one is the sign of God's intent, the sparrow coming suddenly to life, or its beating out its brains against the glass?"

"God doesn't leave messages in code," Bishop said, with a bitterness that took Corbin aback.

Bishop started the Nova. "Let's go back home," he said, making a U-turn in the street.

Winner of Prize Americana, A Moment's Surrender is COMING SOON from Press Americana | Hollywood Books International.

Look for "The Sparrow" in Chapter 7 of the novel.

 

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