“It’s like it knew what I was saying,” Deidre said. “Do you understand me, little guy?”
The bird didn’t take its attention off Dom’s fingers as he reached for another sweet potato fry. It chirped, once, as if to remind him that it was there.
“If you chirp twice, I’ll give you all the fries you want,” she said.
The bird didn’t react.
“It was a pet,” Dom said, with more confidence. He offered another bit of sweet potato fry. “Had to be. It responded to your tone of voice, that’s all. Probably reacts to a few key words, like the gender thing.”
“Right,” Deidre said. She frowned.
“Almost done?” he asked.
She nodded. “Sure, but you’re not.”
“Almost. Come on. He’s so funny with the motorcycle, I want to show you.”
He stuck the last mouthful of burger into his mouth, picked up his stuff, and led the way back up the path. The sparrow remained on his arm, staring at the paper container that still held some stray fries.
They reached the little shack of a restaurant, and a few heads turned at the sight of the sparrow. As they approached the bikes that were parked on the far end of the road, the sparrow took off, perching between the handlebars, then to the second bike.
It practically bounced in place with energy, seeming far too excited that there were two motorcycles.
“Okay, I have to admit, that is pretty funny.”
“I didn’t think he’d go this nuts,” Dom confessed. “I don’t think his peanut brain can wrap his head around the idea of there being two motorcycles in one place.”
The bird flew straight for him. He had to duck to avoid it, only to realize after the fact that it would have only grazed him.
They both turned to see the bird disappearing off into the woods.
“Huh,” Dom said.
“What was that you said about tone of voice? I think you hurt his feelings.”
“Ha ha,” he said, deadpan.
“Seriously though, the bird was funny. Thanks for showing me.”
“Not a problem,” Dominic said, but his attention was on the trees, his thoughts elsewhere.
“Would have been fun to have it follow along, but I guess it was a fluke thing, last year?”
“Maybe,” he said, his attention still elsewhere.
Where did the bird go?
“Hey, Deids,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Watch my stuff?”
“Bathroom break?”
“Nah, no,” he said. Almost without taking his eyes off the trees, he pulled off his jacket and put it with his backpack on the seat of his bike, then headed down the path. Being still, without the benefit of the wind and the motion of the bike, he’d accumulated a bit of sweat.
He’d tracked the direction the bird had gone. That meant veering off to the right, into thicker trees. He used his hands and arms to brush at the branches.
The way wasn’t easy. He made it far enough into the woods that he began to have doubts, to suspect that he’d been wrong.
But the bird had flown with purpose, hadn’t it?
The thick canopy made the way surprisingly dark. The light that filtered through did so in beams and as an ambient glow, lighting up the dust and pollen in the air.
He heard a laugh. A girl’s.
He stopped, and he approached with a little more care.
A murmur, the girl’s voice, words inaudible.
A chirp. The sparrow.
He stopped.
She was sitting by the water, back to a tree. He couldn’t be sure if it was an old woman or a girl with platinum blond hair bleached whiter by the sun, but the voice, the laugh, and the fit of the seafoam colored sweatshirt she wore suggested the latter.
The sparrow was perched on her finger, busy chirping.
If he’d waited any longer, Dominic might have felt like he was doing something wrong.
“Miss!” he called out.
The girl froze.
“Are you the sparrow trainer? I was wanting to ask. Last summer, I-”
There was a flutter, a flap. Not the sparrow that had perched on her finger. If it weren’t for the branches right behind him, Dom might have fallen over backward.
As it was, he caught himself, freezing with a sparrow just inches from his face, perched on his shoulder.
The smaller sparrow arrived a moment later, flying his way. He put out a hand, and it settled on his knuckles.
The girl was gone. Small waves lapped up around where she’d been.
“Uh,” he said.
His heart was pounding, and he couldn’t put words to why. It wasn’t just the fact that the larger of the two birds had nearly flown into his face.
The little sparrow bounced with excitement. The larger one remained where it was, ruffling its feathers momentarily, almost seeming to ignore Dom altogether. Its attention was on the trees.
“Well, I’m going back to my bike. You can come if you want,” he said.
The sparrows didn’t leave. Dom turned to go back to the path and Deidre, then paused, glancing back.
No sign.
The birds were patient as he forged his way past the branches and everything in his way, the small one flying off and away when he accidentally almost knocked it off with a stray branch.
Back into the daylight. The smaller sparrow perched on him again as he headed up to the food shack and Deidre.
“There you are,” she said. He raised her eyebrows. “And you brought friends.”
“I did,” he said.
Both sparrows took off. Each one settled on a different bike. The larger on his bike, the smaller on Deidre’s.
“There’s two trained sparrows?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you call them?”
He shrugged. “I don’t.”
“You could call the big one Ugly,” she said. She turned her head at a sound, then shooed the smaller of the two sparrows. “No! Do not peck my motorcycle! No!”
It evaded her sweeping hands and settled back in the same place.
Dom looked at the larger sparrow that had perched on his bike. Unlike the small one, it seemed to be more focused on the surroundings than on him, or even the bike. It had feathers sticking up here and there, and it was a little dirtier. A small bit of branch was stuck in the plumage at its front. It looked like a sparrow that a cat had hacked up and left on the forest floor. Still, it had looked very similar last summer, too.
“I don’t want to call it Ugly,” Dom said, not taking his eyes off the little creature. “It saved my life. Maybe.”
“What?”
“I know it sounds dumb. But I was riding through the states, and there was this moment where I was overtaking, and I had that feeling. You probably know the feeling I’m thinking about. Something being wrong. Small voice in my head said ‘no’. But I went ahead, ignored it, and the car I was overtaking started merging into my lane. Totally blind to the fact that I was there.”
“The bird saved you?”
“Getting to that. The speed I was going, where the car was, the incoming traffic, I had that moment where I realized it was all going to go in a bad way, no matter what happened. Then, bam. Bird that was riding with just flies off, slams into the side window of the car. Scares the shit out of the driver, they correct, and I don’t die.”
Deidre looked at the bird.
“They rode with me all the way to Wisconsin. Disappeared. When I was on my return trip, they found me. Rode with me back here. They weren’t around in the fall, when I checked in. In retrospect, I’m not sure they weren’t acting as someone else’s…”