Me and Miranda play behind the sanctuary. Our wooden stick-swords slash the pine-needly air, maim the spiderwebs and the moss dangling green fingers in our faces. We slashslashslash a giggling path past the edges of our parents’ voices. We tramp down the duff, packing it under our Mary Janes.
It’s the sparrow that startles us. Miranda hops backward, and I catch her stumble.
The bird hops one-legged on its branch, holds one spit-slick wing out awkward like it wants to shake hands but no one taught it how. There’s no telling what spring-vicious thing caught and spared it. I lean close and then closer, until I can see our faces funhouse reflected in the sparrow’s beetle-black eyeball.
“Is it broken?” Miranda’s finger and voice tremble together. “Can we save it?”
I can’t fix a bird. I know that just fine. But I promise her anyway, scoop the pulsing, panicking body into the hammock of my blouse, and carry it to the hollow of an old cedar.
“It’ll be safe here,” I tell Miranda, hoping it’s not the kind of lie that will get me smited.
The church bell rings from its steeple, calling us back, and she leans to kiss me, a quick delicious peck. It’s then that I learn there’s a bell pull inside me, too, plumb through my middle. It twangs and echoes somewhere beneath my belly, in the dark hollow under my skirt.
We wave a goodbye to our bird. I crouch close, squinting for a last mirrored look at the pair of us reflected in its gaze, but already its eye is dulling like a pebble pulled from the creek.
Back at church, my mama scolds me for the black pitchspots on my palms. She swipes dust streaks off my cheeks with her sleeves, and Miranda’s papa whisks her into a pew before I can say a single word.
Wedged between my parents, I flip through the Bible. I let the fan of its pages chill the fever-heat of my face and marvel at all the kinds of ways Preacher says we can die of sin:
trampled to smithereens
burned by eternal fire
gnashed apart by teeth
starved in a seven-year famine
stabbed with the jawbone of an ass
torn apart by two bears
turned to a big old salt statue
Outside the wind howls hollow in the eaves. Outside lingers the ghost of that stolen moment. Outside is the sparrow, alone.
Inside, Preacher’s telling about Sodom and Gomorrah again. I squeeze my toes to keep them from kicking the pew.
Inside, the stained-glass light glints yellowpink off Miranda’s black hair.
I catch fire off her sparks.
I could rush up the aisle. I could snatch her hand. I could tug us back down the pathway, back toward the tree, back to that moment. We could lock eyes with the sparrow before its eyes close forever.
We would be beautiful pillars of salt.
A native of the Pacific Northwest and a recovering English teacher, Lindsey James draws inspiration for her writing from the people and landscapes of eastern Washington State. Her previous work appears or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Necessary Fiction, Heavy Feather Review, Vast Chasm, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and elsewhere.
Annemarie Whilton is a Massachusetts-based writer, artist, and community activist. Her work explores the impact addiction has on families. Her storytelling has been nationally televised on WGBH’s Stories from the Stage, and her writing has been published in Cognoscenti, The North American Review, and Pangyrus.
