Jeffrey M. Feingold
Phil’s thoughts turned to killing Mr. McFeely. He was a wiry, anxious man, scrubbing dinner dishes on a hot Saturday night. He had just put his son Daniel to bed, in his unassuming tenth floor apartment. As Phil squeezed the kitchen sponge, he imagined the pomegranate soap bubbles popping around the white cellulose as blood frothing forth from the jagged peaks of Mr. McFeely’s freshly severed neck. Phil pictured him—head dangling nearly perpendicular to his body, spikes of bone and tendon protruding from the neck’s ruptured aperture.
Mr. McFeely was screeching in the living room. He screeched all the time. Every day. All day. Except at night, when his cage was covered. The screeching was a vulgar, urgent cry. A piercing peal splitting Phil’s noise-sensitive brain in two. After a year since getting Mr. McFeely for Daniel, Phil could bear it no longer. Still, he didn’t want to kill Mr. McFeely. How could anyone want to kill Mr. McFeely? But what other choice was there? He’d read online that a humane method was to snap the neck. Quick and neat. Like breaking a pencil. As Phil twisted the sponge with both hands, he remembered the thick canvas gardening gloves his latest ex-wife, Daniel’s mother, Mary, left in the closet. Perfect for the task at hand. Afterward, he would quickly bury the bird in the community garden behind the alley. In the morning, he’d tell Daniel Mr. McFeely had flown out through the screenless kitchen window, no doubt to find his way back to his own kind. Phil would make pancakes for Daniel to cheer him up, then they’d look for a store to buy a quiet little parakeet. Or perhaps a goldfish—Daniel had wanted a goldfish not long ago.
Phil cared about animals. He was gentle, quiet, and, since his last divorce, vegetarian to boot. He had hoped to release Mr. McFeely—alive—in the nearby woods. But when he looked up online whether a pet cockatoo could be released into the wild, he read the bird would not survive. Phil didn’t want Mr. McFeely to starve in the woods or be eaten by a coyote or another predator. He would be a large, easy target, too, his entire chest, neck, and head awash with bright pink feathers. He was pink all over, except for light gray wings, and black eyes. Although he’d come from a pet shop, he looked as if he had flown right through Phil’s kitchen window from a set of the Barbie movie.
And Phil had read online that such a release would be a crime. Punishable by up to seven years in prison. Seven years! Phil’s ADHD meant such a punishment would be six years, eleven months, and three weeks more than he could survive.
Mr. McFeely had come with a silver metal band around one leg, with some identifying marks. While considering the release, Phil had examined the band. He determined he had no ready way to remove it, without, at any rate, removing the leg to which the band was affixed. Phil wouldn’t do that. Of course not, never. He wouldn’t sever an animal’s leg, then release it into the wild. The whole point of the release, after all, was to afford the atonal bastard a chance to live. So, the leg—banded—remained.
Phil was a luckless man. Two ex-wives. Failed career. Crushing debts. And now a screaming cockatoo. Phil’s motto was, if something can go wrong, it will—probably twice. Even some friends, colleagues, and two out of two ex-wives referred to him as Unlucky Phil. A release was therefore out of the question. Absolutely out. For no matter how secretive the plans, no matter how black the gloom of night, no matter how deep the depth of woods into which he would trek to do the deed, Phil knew the band would mean his doom.
After all, why should his hard luck be limited to love, career, and money? Surely it would extend to crime. He placed the dish he was scrubbing in the sink, removed his rubber gloves, closed his eyes, saw it all clearly. Someone would find the band in the woods after a predator dispatched Mr. McFeely most viciously. A coyote or a weasel or perhaps an owl. Yes, an owl, Great Horned, would shred Mr. McFeely as easily as the meat fell away from Mary’s overcooked braised short ribs. The hook-beaked pillager would eat Mr. McFeely alive, in a blur of flying feathers and squirting blood, only later to poop out the indigestible leg band. And let’s not forget the scat. Oh, that scat would be his undoing. For it would be found by someone—a girl scout, a hiker, perhaps a young Audubon volunteer studying owls and their scat for a scatological thesis. The band’s identifying information would be traced back to Phil. After all, they must have algorithms for that sort of thing now—they have algorithms for everything. He would be slumbering in his cotton pajamas, or perhaps half-dressed while making nighttime Jasmine tea in the kitchen or reading Crime and Punishment on the toilet—he read widely while on his bidet—when The SWAT team would punch the door in with their battering ram. Hollering, swarthy men would throw Phil to the floor, zip tie his hands behind his back, drag him away, naked and afraid. They wouldn’t even stop to think to take his CPAP from the nightstand.
The Judge—no doubt the great-granddaughter of John James Audubon—would take no pity on a pitiless bird murderer. She would stare at Phil with avian eyes, point a knowing finger, say “murderer,” then sentence Phil to the maximum hard time in the slammer. There, gangbangers, other hardened criminals, and bird lovers incarcerated for unspeakable crimes—angry about Phil’s snoring because he didn’t have his CPAP to control his sleep apnea—would have their way with Phil while sniggering about his crime of releasing a bird in the woods. God, how he detested sniggering.
And, despite a modest lifestyle, Phil enjoyed his creature comforts. Just as with a CPAP, there would be no bidet in the penitentiary. Surely no bidet. Perhaps there were bidets in the clink for the wealthy and famous. But Phil was just a writer for a small marketing agency on the outskirts of Chicken Nub. He could barely cover his child support and used Jeep payments, let alone muster enough slush money to bribe guards into letting him have a penal bidet. He supposed even Oscar Wilde couldn’t get one in Reading Gaol. And Phil was no Oscar Wilde. Over the years, Phil had written a trunk full of unpublished plays, poems, short stories, and the eco-feminist novel, This Yearning Earth. His published works included the slogan Best Darn Grub in Chicken Nub, on the billboard for the local diner.
No, prison wouldn’t do. And how would Daniel get on without him? He’d have to live full time with Mother Mary, instead of the current joint custody. That would devastate Daniel, a smart, social, non-verbal autistic child who adored his dad, birds, and reruns of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. After bringing the bird home together from the pet shop, Daniel signed to Phil that he wanted to name the bird Mr. McFeely, after the Speedy Delivery man on the TV show. Although Daniel signed this, Phil hoped somehow the bird would help Daniel to speak. He won’t talk now, but maybe he’ll eventually talk to his beloved bird, and then, one day, to people.
At their first meeting in the pet shop, the shopkeeper took the bird out of his cage and placed him on a perch, where he flapped his large wings rapidly. Daniel was so excited he began flapping his arms. The two stood facing each other, silently flapping away. “Happy flappy,” Phil said to Daniel. Phil bought the bird on the spot, even though he knew it would mean a late support payment, and an argument with Mary. Phil didn’t care, for he had seen the future, when Daniel and his bird would be happily flapping while chatting away.
But in the year since the bird came home with them there had been only screeching. Neither the bird nor Daniel had spoken a word. Mr. McFeely screeched. Daniel flapped. Phil’s anxiety smoldered. “Let me give you a script for a new med,” Mary, a psychiatrist, said. “It’s called Sunnydaze. You know, the little white pill, for anxiety, you’ve surely seen the TV ads.” But Phil said no to white pills, he’d just white-knuckle his way through.
Phil dried his hands on the towel hanging in front of the stove, then found the gloves in his bedroom closet. He slipped them on, held up both hands, wiggled the canvas-clad fingers. There was a number two pencil on the closet shelf. He picked it up, held the two ends in his gloved hands. He slowly but steadily applied pressure to the pencil ends. The pencil began to flex with the mounting pressure. Then it split with a sharp snapping sound, it’s graphite core and wooden exterior severed in the middle.
Before the aborted attempt to release the bird into the woods, Phil’s initial instinct was to re-home Mr. McFeely. He called bird sanctuaries in his and nearby states. All had waiting lists of up to a year. Phil couldn’t make it that long. He called the pet shop, too, to inquire about returning the bird, but Fur-Midable Pets had filed for bankruptcy. Twice.
The constant screaming—Phil would surely go mad. He couldn’t re-home the bird. He couldn’t release the bird. Only one option remained. A quick, merciful euthanasia. A pencil snap. Phil shuffled back to the living room. He stood at the door of the six-foot-high flight cage. Mr. McFeely was inside on a perch near the top. From outside the cage, Phil slowly held up two gloved hands, at which Mr. McFeely’s pink head feathers shot straight up in a parrot pompadour. Did he know, somehow, something was rotten in the neighborhood? Phil carefully unlatched the cage door. He raised both gloved hands slowly toward the perch, speaking softly to Mr. McFeely. “It’s alright, you’ll be fine, I’m not a murderer, after all,” he said with a little reassuring cluck. “No murderers here.” Mr. McFeely cocked his head fully to one side, staring at Phil with a cold black eye. When Phil’s two gloves neared the bird’s wings, Mr. McFeely fluttered so violently, while emitting piercing shrieks, Phil stumbled backward a step. Then Mr. McFeely shot out past the open cage door. He screeched and flapped all about the living room. There was pandemonium as Phil dashed from one end of the room to the other, arms unhappily flapping, all the while trying to end the fracas by shooshing the bird so as not to wake Daniel.
Mr. McFeely perched on the back of the sofa, then on the shade of the floor lamp, and fell silent. Phil inched toward him, with reassuring shooshes, and soft declarations of “no murderer here, you silly bird.” When Phil got too close, Mr. McFeely again erupted in a paroxysm of screeching and flapping as he struggled to maintain his balance on the lampshade. “Alright, alright,” Phil said, “the gloves are coming off.” He removed the gloves, placed them on the floor. He tip-toed down the hallway to Daniel’s bedroom door. Opening it a crack and peeking in, he was relieved to see his son asleep under his eagle blanket. He gently closed the door.
Phil quietly padded to Mr. McFeely. He held out an open hand. Seeing no glove, Mr. McFeely stepped from the shade onto Phil’s palm. “You see,” Phil said, “I told you, no murderer.” Once the bird was back in its cage, Phil poured a glass of red wine in the kitchen, sat at the table, opened his laptop, clicked on the browser. Clearly, the pencil snap was not a snap. What then? He searched “how to mercifully kill a large pet bird.” One article recommended “cervical dislocation.” But Phil had already failed at breaking Mr. McFeely’s neck. Another helpful article suggested decapitation, noting that a garden spade could do the trick quite nicely. Phil remembered his neighbor often used a spade in the community garden. He read on about how to hold the bird in place with a foot on its feathers (being careful not to crush the wings and hence needlessly hurt the bird), then place the garden spade on the neck, then, then—. He rolled his eyes after reading the article footnote: the body will squirm for a few moments while electrical signals pass along the muscles. But not to worry, for the bird is dead as soon as it’s lost its severed head. Phil felt sick. Decapitation was out of the question. He couldn’t go through the rest of his life with such a dark secret. The man who decapitated Mr. McFeely. Yet another article suggested tying a high tensile string around the neck, with the other end tied around the doorknob of an open door. Then hold the bird firmly while kicking the door shut and —.
Phil shivered. He was about to give up when he glanced at the last search result at the bottom of the screen. A link to an article about freezing. Why hadn’t he thought of that? So simple. So painless. Just pop the bird in the freezer. The article said the cold will make the bird fall asleep. It will expire peacefully. At last, a merciful solution. To die in your sleep. Is that not what we all want?
Phil rose from the table, walked to the fridge, opened both doors, looked around. He settled on a deep rectangular Tupperware container with a red lid. He carried it to the counter, removed the lid, with a spoon scooped out some of the leftover vegetarian shepherd’s pie into the metal sink. He didn’t even wash the container before walking into the living room. He stood in front of the cage. Although Mr. McFeely had been afraid of the canvas gloves, he always liked to be held by hand. Phil reached out a palm, onto which Mr. McFeely immediately stepped. Phil slowly shuffled back to the kitchen, gently placing Mr. McFeely on bottom of the plastic tub. The bird stood silently on a thin bed of lentils, peas, corn, diced carrots, turnips, rosemary, and thyme, in a savory vegetable stock, covered by a thin residual layer of garlic mashed potatoes. Pinch of salt. Was he immobilized by the garlic? Mesmerized by Phil’s cooking? Mr. McFeely looked up at Phil, gave a little trusting glug-glug, then with the speed of one possessed Phil jammed the red cover back onto the Tupperware and pushed hard with both hands, locking the lid in place, thus sealing the Speedy Delivery man’s deliverance. He slid open the door to the mostly empty freezer, slipped the Tupperware in, under the box of Red Dragon frozen pizza.
Phil’s heart throbbed. A pain in his left arm coursed upward, radiating into his chest. He sat on the floor, by the freezer door. A heart attack? Really? Are you kidding? Daniel would find him dead on the linoleum in the morning. Then, what if Daniel wanted pizza for lunch? He’d find Mr. McFeely dead, too. Like some weird, avant-garde Shakespearean tragedy. But why should Phil die this way? Better to die in his sleep, peacefully. A merciful solution. Isn’t that what we all want? Or perhaps to be frozen into a gentle, endless slumber, on a bed of shepherd’s pie. Phil was unsure if he was thinking clearly. Daniel, after all, never made pizza by himself. Maybe it wasn’t his heart. A panic attack. Yes, anxiety finally getting the better of him. Was Mary right about the pills? She was usually right, wasn’t she? Why had they got divorced? Why had their love failed them? He remembered the first night they met. Her pink dress. Her feathered scarf. He was lost from the moment he first looked into her black avian eyes. The gravitational pull a black hole absorbing his soul. He was lost then and lost now. He sat a long time, motionless, his mind traveling through space and time, leaving only his body—seemingly as frozen as a cockatoo in a Tupperware container beneath a Red Dragon pizza stuffed into a Frigidaire.
Phil had no idea how long he had been on the floor when, finally, he was roused by an almost imperceptible sound. Birdbirder, did it say? Birdbirder. Birdbirder. The sound grew less faint, though still muffled. Birdbirder. Louder now. Birdbirder. Phil cocked his head to one side to listen. A bit louder, then louder still, birdbirder, murdbirder, birdmurderer.Murderer!
Oh, god, he’s alive. Mr. McFeely is alive!
Phil scrabbled up onto his knees in front of the freezer door, yanked it open, grabbed the Tupperware, carried it to the sink. He’s alive, alive! And—he spoke. Jesus, he spoke. Phil ripped off the red cover, scooped up Mr. McFeely with both hands. He was cold. Hard. Dead. Phil started to cry. Warm salty tears fell onto Mr. McFeely’s stiff feathers and icy beak. So many tears. Could they, somehow, revive him? Like in the story? Wasn’t there some story? The magic something? Phil looked down, but, no, no, Mr. McFeely was still dead. Phil held Mr. McFeely up to the open window, but just as with Phil’s warm tears, the warm breeze failed to revive the bird, although his wet slippery feathers slid from the flat of Phil’s palms out through the open window. It was the final flight of Mr. McFeely. Phil thought to dash down to the alley to retrieve him, but then he realized Mr. McFeely would be gone by morning. Alley cats.
Phil was crushed. He placed the night sheet over Mr. McFeely’s cage, then went to bed in his clothes.
Phil white-knuckled it on Sunday morning. He made pancakes for Daniel. Right after breakfast, Daniel went to remove the sheet from Mr. McFeely’s cage. Phil, standing just behind him, wished he was the one who had slid out the window. He’d ruined everything. He always did. Finances. Marriages. Dreams. He wished he could close his eyes and dissolve. Or be frozen in a shepherd’s pie for eternity. But his eyes were open, as he summoned everything he had to fight back tears, while gently laying a hand on one of Daniel’s shoulders. His heart could not bear breaking Daniel’s. It was not strong enough. “I’m so sorry, son,” he said, “but Mr. McFeely, well, he flew out the kitchen window last night. He’s probably home by now, with his own kind.”
At that, Phil could no longer stave off the waterworks. Daniel turned toward Phil. This was the moment. Phil knew it, somehow. Daniel was about to speak. To reassure Phil. His first words. Something soothing. Perhaps that he forgave Phil. That it will be alright. And then, Phil knew, Mr. McFeely’s death would have meaning.
Daniel looked into Phil’s face, raised both hands, opened his mouth, and signed, it’s OK, Dad, it’s OK. We can get a goldfish.
#
Jeffrey M. Feingold’s stories, published widely in literary journals, have been nominated for the PEN America Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories. His first short story collection, The Black Hole Pastrami, won multiple book awards, including the National Indie Excellence Award. This was followed in the same year with his second collection, There Is No Death in Finding Nemo, which received numerous awards. Jeffrey’s third collection, A Fine Madness, was published in late 2024. Jeffrey resides with family in Boston, Massachusetts. He swears he has never frozen a cockatoo.