Sparrow Killer

Sparrow is my favorite meal. It’s why I frequent Willa’s yard at dusk. She spreads seeds on the porch railing in the evening and they flock without fail, shitting a dazzling white I can see from the air. 

Usually, I don’t mind interrupting her meal on the picnic table, covered in papers, weighted down with rocks. But tonight she has a visitor. 

“You’ve got another neighborhood done since last I was here.” The man gestures with the shining wine glass to the table, his head is ringed in a puffy gray down, he is round and shorter than Willa. His vowels are round too, and sonorous. “Impressive. When do you sleep?”

“I took your wife’s advice to work out here so when the sun goes down, it’s impossible to keep going.” Willa taps a finger to her temple. “I’m useless without sleep.” 

“Kathy misses you. You should come over for dinner soon.”

“I’ve already accepted enough free wine.”

“So return the favor and bring some to dinner Wednesday.”

“Maybe next week.”

He lifts his sweater vested shoulders, almost cringing. “I know you're entrenched in this project. But we’re a little concerned it might be taking control of your life.”

Willa sips her wine, “Mm, oh it is my life. Very consciously so. No worries there.”

“Remapping an entire town on a retired detective’s hunch,” He says each word slowly, staring her dead in the eye. If anything but my mate came to my nest and looked at me like that I would lunge at them with my talons. 

She leans in, voice pitched low. I can hear each syllable even from the bobbing limb of the sycamore. 

“Bring this up again and you aren’t welcome in this house.”

He bristles, sets his glass down, makes for the door, turns, “Can I say one more thing? And I’ll promise that’s it.”

“Shoot the moon.”

“Ten years is a long time.”

“Quite the investment.”

He nods. “Dinner’s at seven on Wednesday. We’ll set a place. It’s up to you.” The door closes. A car revs in the drive. 

Slowly, Willa picks up a glass and throws it at the trunk of the sycamore. The sparrows flit away in a solid gray wave. 

 The sound of shattering glass is exquisite.  I can’t help but fan my feathers, open my wings. 

“Oh, it’s you, the sparrow slayer. Go eviscerate your dinner someplace else.”

I blink and she goes foggy from behind the membrane of my eyelid. 

“Go!”

She shatters the other glass. There is no way I’m going now. There are windows and a bottle of wine left. She might break them too. Gorgeous. She must be having a wonderful time. Especially now that the man was gone. Her exhale had changed colors when he was there, acrid, anxious. 

I chatter at her from the base of my throat. All I can do. The sound I give my mate when he plays with the chicks. When one flies for the first time. 

“Fuck off!”

I bob, chatter more. 

She turns, grasping the neck of the wine bottle and closes the door behind her. As abrupt as the man. Maybe I intimidated her. 

I wait for the sparrows to return. I miss. They’re more skittish than usual. I’ve probably hunted here too many times in a row. Better to let them forget me for a while. 

I catch a young rabbit in the meadow near the nest. It’s heart slams more fiercely against my talon with each new squeeze. It flails, twists. I pierce the fur, the skin, the muscle. It’s almost part of me already, without having to eat it, that pulse so close and strong, stronger than my own. 

I strip its back, hollow out the stomach, and carry a few thick strips home in case my mate was as unlucky as I was with the sparrows. 

Already I can smell blood. The rabbit will just be extra, then. 

Trees flash by, leaves turning to shadowy pelts. A strange tang to the smell of the blood. Did the prey scratch him?

Feather litter the ground. Large, brown, red, black, white. Down floats like cottonwood fluff from a ravine under the pine where we nest. 

Coyote urine glows in the scree.

I want nothing more than to land there, find him. But I take a branch from above instead. Only feathers left. Two coyotes roll in the leaves, playing? Or waiting for me? 

Without considering it, I swoop at the dirt, loose the meat and grab a tail feather in my claw. I spray them with shit as I fly past. It steams in the chilling night air.  

If they weren’t distracted with one another there is no way I could have gone that low and not caught teeth. Even then, I would have done it. 

They yip and roll in the dirt, trying to get my scat off. But it just sticks to their pelts. I hope they never stop smelling like prey.

I’m lucky the next day. I catch three mice before the sun is high. I perch in the sycamore, bloated but feeling hollow. 

Willa is face down on her papers, one arm splayed out, sleeping. It rained last night. The papers are clean and white and wrinkled.

Rain dribbles, then splatters from above. It sluices off leaves and beads on my feathers. Willa tenses for a moment, then slackens. 

When she comes to drool drips down her chin. “Didn’t I tell you to shove off?” Rain drips in my eyes. I blink. “Serial killer.” She says under her breath.

“You get wine drunk one time.” She raises a finger, crosses her eyes at it. “And look what happens.” She snaps her palms up over the table. She picks a wine bottle off the bench, cradles it between her knees. A new one this time, blue. 

“Some people killed my husband. Slit his throat and threw him in a ditch. The cops said they probably didn’t even stop the vehicle to do it, just threw him out the door and kept driving.”

“You ever slit something’s throat? Probably.”

I screech. It tears out of my beak on its own volition and once it starts it doesn’t stop. So much for backing off the sparrows. They don’t just startle into nearby branches, they disappear entirely. 

“What’d I do to you? You scared lunch off, not me.”

I screech again. She goes inside. I watch my double in the glass, all day, screeching so loud I scrape my throat. My head feels strange taking in all the sound but I can’t seem to stop. He’ll come back if I call loud enough. He’ll hear me from the time before, while we circled in the sky. 

Around nightfall she comes out, falls on her knees, and matches me scream for scream.