by Cynthia Robinson
Alfie said he didn’t want the parrot. He was worried it would perch on his shoulder and shit down his back.
“But it needs a home,” Sylvia said.
“Not my problem.” Alfie brushed his hand across his windbreaker, as if to brush away the taint of the unwanted pet.
“It was the old man’s last wish that you should take his bird,” Sylvia said. “And it’s a macaw, by the way. Not a parrot.”
“Why?” Alfie asked.
“Because both its parents were macaws,” Sylvia said.
“Why do I have to take the bird?”
Sylvia pulled a single sheet of paper out of a manila folder. The paper was brittle onionskin and the hammering cuneiform of a dot matrix printer had nearly punched right through it. Sylvia read out loud:
I, John Liverstone, do hereby bequeath to Alfie Grewcock the care and stewardship of my most beloved companion, Captain Bill. The bird is a fucker, but I’m as fond of him as any human I’ve ever known.
“That can’t be a legal document,” Alfie said. “What the hell?”
“The hell,” said Sylvia. “Is that the macaw is now your bird.”
Sylvia told Alfie that the bird preferred not to be on a first-name basis. She told him to address the bird as Captain Bill.
At the sound of his name, Captain Bill reared up on his perch and shuddered his electric blue feathers. He lifted off, and sailed across Sylvia’s parlor with just one flap of his mighty wings. He landed on Alfie’s shoulder.
“What am I?” Alfie said. “A pirate?”
“Well,” Sylvia said. “If the wispy goatee, and the rotten eye tooth, and the habitual ransacking of other people’s expensive Scotch, and now the tropical bird dribbling guano down your back are any indication, then yes. Alfie, you are a pirate.”
“I don’t have dental coverage,” Alfie said.
“Prick,” Captain Bill said.
“Excuse me?” Alfie said.
“Fucking prick,” Captain Bill told him.
“You two had better go now,” Sylvia said. And she ushered Alfie out the door with Captain Bill on his shoulder.
Alfie ran a tobacconist shop. He sold tins of pipe tobacco and packets of cigarettes. He sold expensive cigars that he kept in a locked humidor, and cheap cigars that he kept in metal tubes on the counter. He sold pipes. And he sold matches and lighters. He sold death, or at least, that’s what Sylvia would say.
And Alfie thought secretly to himself, it was his fault that the old man was dead. Cancer. John had been a regular customer for nearly twenty years. He liked Dominican cigars. The Cubans were too pricey. John would always stop at the shop to buy cigars before driving his lorry to Spain. That’s what he did, lorry driver.
Captain Bill was always perched on John’s shoulder on these long drives from southern England, through the Chunnel, down across France, and along the eastern coast of Spain.
“Taught this bird everything he knows,” John would tell Alfie. He liked to brag, “The captain can talk up a blue streak.”
On his first morning as Captain Bill’s keeper, Alfie fed him a dish of dried cuttlefish and went downstairs to open up the shop. Mrs. Campbell came in around 9:00 a.m.
“Pack of the usual please Alfie,” she said.
“Here you go luv,” Alfie said. “Export As.”
Alfie handed Mrs. Campbell her cigarettes.
“Fucking cunt!” Captain Bill screamed from upstairs.
“What was that?” said Mrs. Campbell.
“Kids,” said Alfie.
Throughout the rest of the morning, Captain Bill shrieked “fucking cunt” and “bollocks” and “lazy bastard” at regular intervals. Finally, Alfie ran upstairs and burst into the flat to find Captain Bill shackled to his perch, looking through the open window and people passing by.
“Greasy cunt,” Captain Bill screamed at a woman pushing a baby in a pram.
“Shut up you bastard,” Alfie told the bird.
“Shut up you bastard,” the bird told Alfie.
“What is it?” Alfie asked. “You don’t like being alone?”
“I love you,” said Captain Bill.
Alfie unhooked Captain Bill from his perch. The big bird leapt up and landed lightly on Alfie’s shoulder. It rubbed its smooth beak against the stubbly skin on Alfie’s cheek. It playfully chewed on Alfie’s earlobe and tried to thrust its black tongue into his ear.
“All right,” Alfie said. “Let’s get back to the shop.”
Later in the afternoon, a policeman came in.
“Received a few complaints,” the policeman said. “Someone in the vicinity seems to be making vulgarities. Rather loud.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Alfie told him.
“Do you, perhaps, have a disturbed relative or someone with a drinking problem somewhere hereabouts?”
Captain Bill turned his head 180 degrees to look at the shelves of tobacco tins. Then he swiveled his head back around toward the policeman and shook it, as if indicating no.
“No,” Alfie told the policeman. “No madmen or drunkards. Sorry.”
“Fucking pig bastard,” Captain Bill stated.
Mrs. Campbell and her neighbor Mrs. Sumner came rushing into the shop. Alfie realized that they had been standing in front of the window, worrying the handles of their shopping bags while they watched Alfie’s exchange with the policeman.
“That’s it,” Mrs. Campbell said. “That’s the voice I heard.”
“Fucking cunt,” said Captain Bill, and he let loose a snarl of guano that dribbled down Alfie’s shirt.
“That’s enough of that,” the policeman said.
Captain Bill said, “You fuck off pig.”
“You watch your mouth, you cheeky bird,” said Mrs. Sumner.
“And you two cunts can fuck off as well,” said Captain Bill.
Sylvia got in touch with a pet psychologist, Trude Mostue. Trude approached Captain Bill slowly. The bird turned his head to the side and clucked at her.
“Hello Captain Bill,” Trude said.
“Wanker,” Captain Bill greeted her. Captain Bill bent forward and bounced his body up and down as if he were being buffeted by ocean waves.
“Handsome boy,” Trude said. “Would you like to learn some Norwegian?”
The bird signaled his approval by rattling his bullet-shaped tongue against the underside of his beak.
“Muggfitte,” said Trude. Bill stood perfectly still. He twisted his head to the side and upward, like a man with his neck in a noose.
“You like that word, don’t you? Muggfitte. It is Norwegian for moldy pussy.”
Captain Bill shrieked with delight.
“Pretty bird, can you say Muggfitte?”
And after just a few more repetitions, Captain Bill could say Muggfitte.
A few days later, Mrs. Campbell told Alfie, “Glad you’ve got that bird under control.”
“Yes, he was a terrorist, wasn’t he?” added Mrs. Sumner.
Alfie lit their cigarettes for them. They both took a puff and regarded Captain Bill through a bank of smoke.
“Din brunoyet er lekk,” said Captain Bill, which in Norwegian means, your asshole is leaking.