Given all the shit I’ve been through with my leg, that had better be all it is.
“This is our biggest cage,” Sparrow says.
We’ve walked down a path from the main farmhouse that leads toward what looks like an old rice paddy. I don’t know enough about rice to tell if they’re growing anything there or not, but bordering it is a big chicken-wire enclosure that makes a dome around a gnarled tree, nearly twice as tall as I am and about the size of a basketball court in length and width. There are a couple of wooden structures in it-big birdhouses? Some tin trays and what looks like a pond. And birds. Big waterfowl like Boba. Smaller ones, doves, chickens, ducks. A bunch of little ones, I don’t know what they are. Some of them are obviously injured: limping, crooked wings flapping; a big one that I can see from here has a mangled beak. A few act almost like they’re drunk, walking and flying in wobbling circles, as if they’re tied to a pole.
“Wow,” I say. So far my plan to get Sparrow alone hasn’t worked. We’ve had a little entourage trailing us every step of the way: Han Rong and then Sophie and the macho guy toting grain sacks. It’s like they’re all tag-teaming, keeping watch, and I don’t know what that means.
“So what’s wrong with them?” I ask. “The birds, I mean.”
“Many things. Some of them injured. By people. By boats. Even cars. Others, they are sick. Parasites. Diseases. Some of them, they are poisoned, we think, with heavy metals. That’s why they act that way, why they can’t fly straight.”
Sparrow kneels by the enclosure, where a large crow has trotted up to greet her. It has a feather in its beak.
“Xiao Heizi… Ni xihuan huasheng ma?”
She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a peanut. Xiao Heizi-whose name means “Little Black One”-pokes its beak through the chicken wire, pushing the feather out toward Sparrow’s hand, releasing it onto her palm. She holds the peanut between her thumb and finger, and the crow snatches it in its beak.
“We trade gifts,” she explains.
I glance around. Sophie and Han Rong are a few yards away. Macho Man totes another big bag of feed over one shoulder, heading toward another chicken-wire cage and shed.
“What about David?” I ask.
“What about him?”
I’m still not thinking that straight, I guess. Before, I’d kept hoping I could ask a simple, direct question and find out what I want to know, which is where the fuck is the guy, but I know by now that isn’t going to happen. So instead I ask a vague one and get a nonanswer. Great.
“Did he volunteer here?”
“A little.” She rises. Meets my eyes for a moment, then looks away. “I’ll show you.”
I follow her down the path. Boba follows me.
It’s colder now, or I’m just catching a chill, and I take a moment to zip up my jacket. I can see my breath on the air, mist surrounding the cone-shaped hills, lighter grey against a dark grey sky. It feels like rain is coming. There’s a sudden flapping of wings behind us, maybe from the birds that can’t fly straight.
The path we’re on leads to the cage and shed where Macho Guy was headed, I think, but I don’t see him. Maybe he’s inside.
I stop for a moment. I’m not sure I want to go any farther.
Sparrow half turns. “This way,” she says, gesturing toward the shed.
It’s a big shed, more like a small barn, really, surrounded by another chicken-wire fence. The door is closed. The front of it is featureless. Blank. I shiver in my jacket.
Sparrow opens the gate. “Come on, we just go inside.”
“I, uh…”
I’ve already been attacked, twice. Jason was here, and he’s vanished.
I just blundered out here like it was safe. Like it was a refuge. But what do I know about her? What do I know about any of these people?
Now Sparrow stops and looks at me. “You okay?” She seems genuinely concerned. Or she’s a really good actor. “You need to rest again?”
Remember the wounded antelope. You don’t want to be one.
“Oh, no, I’m fine. Just… uh, it looks like it might rain.”
“Maybe so.” She hesitates. “You don’t have to see this,” she says. “Just, you ask about David.”
I have a bunch of thoughts, like David’s dead and rotting in there, or maybe maimed, or he’s crazy and chained up to keep him from running away, or…
Well, fuck.
In for a penny, in for a pound or whatever.
Sparrow pauses by the door of the shed. “Okay, when I open, come in quickly,” she says.
She opens the door. I hesitate. And stumble into the dim interior. The door closes behind me.
I smell it before my eyes can adjust.
The unmistakable odor of cat piss.
Something bumps against my calf.
“Holy shit!”
“You don’t like cats?” Macho Man asks.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I, UH… WOW. THIS is a lot of cats.”
The shed/barn/cathouse-whatever you want to call it-is crawling with cats, or hissing/jumping/purring/meowing with them. I can’t begin to count. There are shelves along the walls where they perch, ceiling beams they drape themselves on or pad across, a giant cat tree in the middle of the room that stretches up to a beam with platforms jutting out.
“I just built that,” Macho Man says. “The cats love it.”
The cats obviously love him. We’ve caught him in the middle of pouring kibble into feeding stations. Several cats rub and lean against his calves.
“I made an outside area, too. You want to see?” He points toward the back of the cathouse.
“Sure. I guess.”
I follow him. He opens the door. Several of the cats dash for the exit. There’s a yard there, screened in with chicken wire all the way to the top of a mostly-dead tree that looks like it was struck by lightning. Two cats, a white one and a ginger, scramble up the trunk.
Sparrow has crept in behind me, so quietly that I took her for another cat at first.
“So…” I try to think how to ask it. “You’re a bird sanctuary. And… cats?”
Sparrow shrugs.
“We rescue them,” Macho Man says proudly. “Somebody post on Weibo that a truck passes by here with many cats. To sell to restaurants, for meat. So we go up there and block the road. Fifty of us. Argue with him for hours. Finally he releases the cats to us.”
Weibo is Chinese Twitter. It makes the authorities crazy, but microblogging’s so popular that they’re afraid to shut it down.
“We pay him,” Sparrow explains. “Also, Kang Li is very persuasive.”
Macho Man, Kang Li, grins. “I just tell him to think of his karma. Better to release so many cats than to kill them.”
“So now we have cats,” Sparrow says with a sigh. She gives me a sudden, sidelong glance. “You want one or two? Take them home to Beijing?”
“I… well, let me see how things go the next few months. My situation is a little… unclear.”
Kang Li, the tough guy, scoops up one of the cats, a coal-black one that’s all long legs and skinny tail. He flips it over, holding it like a baby. “Mao mao,” he croons, scratching its belly. “Ni tebie lihai!” You’re especially fierce!
“So… David,” I manage. “How does he fit into all this?”
“He help with the cat rescue,” Sparrow explains. “Block road. Take video. That’s where we meet.”
I think about this. “Video?” I ask.
“YOU KNOW WHY I like cats?” Kang Li leans back in the chair, sucks down his beer. “Because they are affectionate yet independent.”
He leans over and scratches Boba’s head. Boba blinks his reptile eye, stretches his long neck, and flaps his wings, which I guess means he likes it.
“Here it is,” Sparrow says. She’s booted up her computer. I push myself to my feet and hobble over to her desk, which is stacked high with paper, books, a dirty teacup, and a couple of rubber-duck bath toys.