The book opens with the murder of a journalist.
David jumped when startled by the unexpected onslaught of a hundred beating sparrow
wings. He did not, though, hear the metal-on-metal click that caused that sparrow
stampede. Nor did he hear the weapon’s report. The bullet arrived at David’s chest
faster than the sound of the explosion that discharged it. He soared backward off
his seat and was laid flat, as if struck by the swing of Babe’s giant tail. As David
lay suspended in the air, drifting toward the ground as if in slow motion, the bullet
completed its deadly path. It shattered ribs and ripped through flesh and muscles.
David did not feel pain, or even the slightest pressure, from the copper-jacketed
bullet. That tumbling projectile painlessly ground David’s insides into sausage,
finely mixed with bits of bone that were once ribs and spinal column. He did not
feel the rocks press themselves into what remained of his spine when he landed flat,
back to the road, some three feet from where he once sat. David gave no thought to
his inability to draw a breath after this inexplicably violent ejection from his
once comfortable seat. He had no time to answer the disembodied voice of his wife
as her lovely, ghostly tone reverberated inside of his brain. David could not move
his arms to waive goodbye to the final vision of his boys. He did not understand
that the final view of his beloved universe, the vision that blessed his final instant
of both sight and life, was the pink and gray underside of a lonely, soft, cumulus
cloud. David did not hear the thunderous echo created by the rifle that killed him.
