Something About Birds
PAUL TREMBLAY
THE NEW DARK REVIEW PRESENTS
“SOMETHING ABOUT WILLIAM WHEATLEY”: AN INTERVIEW
WITH WILLIAM WHEATLEY BY BENJAMIN D. PIOTROSKWI
William Wheatley’s The Artist Starve is a collection of five loosely interconnected novelettes and novellas published in 1971 by University of Massachusetts Press (the book having won its Juniper Prize for Fiction). In an era that certainly predated usage of YA as a marketing category, his stories were from the POV of young adults, ranging from the fourteen-year-old Maggie Holtz who runs away from home (taking her six-year-old brother Thomas into the local woods) during the twelve days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the last story, a near-future extrapolation of the Vietnam War having continued into the year 1980, the draft age dropped to sixteen, and an exhausted and radiation-sick platoon of teenagers conspiring to kill the increasingly unhinged Sergeant Thomas Holtz. The Artist Starve was a prescient and visceral (if not too earnest) book embracing chaotic social and global politics of the early 1970s. An unexpected critical and commercial smash, particularly on college campuses, The Artist Starve was one of three books forwarded to the Pulitzer Prize Board, who ultimately decided no award for the year 1971. That The Artist Starve is largely forgotten, whereas the last short story he ever wrote, “Something About Birds,” oft-reprinted and first published in a DIY zine called Steam in 1977 continues to stir debate and win admirers within the horror/weird fiction community, is an irony that is not lost upon the avuncular, seventy-five-year-old Wheatley.
BP: Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Mr. Wheatley.
WW: The pleasure is all mine, Benjamin.
BP: Before we discuss “Something About Birds,” which is my all-time favorite short story, by the way—
WW: You’re too kind. Thank you.
BP: I wanted to ask if The Artist Starve is going to be reprinted. I’ve heard rumors.
WW: You have? Well, that would be news to me. While I suppose it would be nice to have your work rediscovered by a new generation, I’m not holding my breath, nor am I actively seeking to get the book back in print. It already served its purpose. It was an important book when it came out, I think, but it is a book very much of its time. So much so I’m afraid it wouldn’t translate very well to the now.
BP: There was a considerable gap, six years, between The Artist Starve and “Something About Birds.” In the interim, were you working on other writing projects or projects that didn’t involve writing?
WW: When you get to my age—oh that sounds terribly cliché, doesn’t it? Let me rephrase: When you get to my perspective, six years doesn’t seem as considerable. Point taken, however. I’ll try to be brief. I will admit to some churlish, petulant behavior, as given the overwhelming response to my first book I expected the publishing industry to then roll out the red carpet to whatever it was I might’ve scribbled on a napkin. And maybe that would’ve happened had I won the Pulitzer, yes? Instead, I took the no award designation as a terrible, final judgment on my work. Silly I know, but at the risk of sounding paranoid, the no award announcement all but shut down further notice for the book. I spent a year or so nursing my battered ego and speaking at colleges and universities before even considering writing another story. I then spent more than two years researching the burgeoning fuel crisis and overpopulation fears. I travelled quite a bit as well: Ecuador, Peru, Japan, India, South Africa. While traveling I started bird watching, of course. Total novice, and I remain one. Anyway, I’d planned to turn my research into a novel of some sort. That book never materialized. I never even wrote an opening paragraph. I’m not a novelist. I never was. To make a long, not all that exciting story short, upon returning home and very much travel weary, I became interested in antiquities and bought the very same antiques shop that is below us now in 1976. I wrote “Something About Birds” shortly after opening the shop, thinking it might be the first story in another cycle, all stories involving birds in some way. The story itself was unlike anything I’d ever written; oblique, yes, bizarre to many, I’m sure, but somehow, it hits closer to an ineffable truth than anything else I’ve written. To my great disappointment, the story was summarily rejected by all the glossy magazines and I was ignorant of the genre fiction market so I decided to allow a friend who was in a local punk band to publish it in her zine. I remain grateful and pleased that the story has had many other lives since.
BP: Speaking for all the readers who adore “Something About Birds,” let me say that we’d kill for a short story cycle built around it.
WW: Oh, I’ve given up on writing. “Something About Birds” is a fitting conclusion to my little writing career as that story continues to do its job, Benjamin.
Mr. Wheatley says, “That went well, didn’t it?”
Wheatley is shorter than Ben but not short, broad in the chest and shoulders, a wrestler’s build. His skin is pallid and his dark brown eyes focused, attentive, and determined. His hair has thinned but he still has most of it, and most of it is dark, almost black. He wears a tweed sports coat, gray wool pants, a plum-colored sweater vest, a white shirt, a slate bow tie that presses against his throat tightly as though it were gauze being applied to a wound. He smiled throughout the interview. He is smiling now.
“You were great, Mr. Wheatley. I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity to talk to you about my favorite story.”
“You are too kind.” Wheatley drums his fingers on the dining room table at which they are sitting and narrows his eyes at Ben, as though trying to bring him into better focus. “Before you leave, Benjamin, I have something for you.”
Ben swirls the last of his room-temperature Earl Grey tea around the bottom of his cup and decides against finishing it. Ben stands as Wheatley stands, and he checks his pocket for his phone and his recorder. “Oh, please, Mr. Wheatley, you’ve been more than gracious—”
“Nonsense. You are doing me a great service with the interview. It won’t be but a moment. I will not take no for an answer.” Wheatley continues to talk as he disappears into one of the three other rooms with closed doors that spoke out from the wheel of the impeccable and brightly lit living/dining room. The oval dining room table is the centerpiece of the space and is made of a darkly stained wood and has a single post as thick as a telephone pole. The wall adjacent to the kitchen houses a built-in bookcase, the shelves filled to capacity, the tops perched with vases and brass candelabras. On the far wall rectangular, monolithic windows, their blue drapes pulled wide open, vault toward the height of the cathedral ceiling, their advance halted by the crown molding. The third-floor view overlooks Dunham Street, and when Ben stands in front of a window he can see the red awning of Wheatley’s antiques shop below. The room is beautiful, smartly decorated, surely full of antiques that Ben is unable to identify; his furniture and décor experience doesn’t extend beyond IKEA and his almost pathological inability to put anything together more complex than a nightstand.
Wheatley reemerges from behind a closed door. He has an envelope in one hand and something small and strikingly red cupped in the palm of the other.
“I hope you’re willing to indulge an old man’s eccentricity.” He pauses and looks around the room. “I thought I brought up a stash of small white paper bags. I guess I didn’t. Benjamin, forgive the Swiss-cheese memory. We can get a bag on our way out if you prefer. Anyway, I’d like you to have this. Hold out your hands, please.”
“What is it?”
Wheatley gently places a bird head into Ben’s hands. The head is small; the size of a half-dollar coin. Its shock of red feathers is so bright, a red he’s never seen, only something living could be that vivid, and for a moment Ben is not sure if he should pat the bird head and coo soothingly or spastically flip the thing out of his hands before it nips him. The head has a prominent, brown-yellow beak, proportionally thick, and as long as the length of the head from the top to its base. The beak is outlined in shorter black feathers that curl around the eyes as well. The bird’s pitch-black pupils float in a sea of a more subdued red.
“Thank you, Mr. Wheatley. I don’t know what to say. Is it? Is it real?”
“This is a red-headed barbet from northern South America. Lovely creature. Its bill is described as horn-colored. It looks like a horn, doesn’t it? It feeds on fruit but it also eats insects as well. Fierce little bird, one befitting your personality, I think, Benjamin.”
“Wow. Thank you. I can’t accept this. This is too much—”
“Nonsense. I insist.” He then gives Ben an envelope. “An invitation to an all-too-infrequent social gathering I host here. There will be six of us, you and I included. It’s in—oh my—three days. Short notice, I know. The date, time, and instructions are inside the envelope. You must bring the red-headed barbet with you, Benjamin, it is your ticket to admittance, or you will not be allowed entrance.” Wheatley chuckles softly and Ben does not know whether or not he is serious.
BP: There’s so much wonderful ambiguity and potential for different meanings. Let’s start in the beginning, with the strange funeral procession of “Something About Birds.” An adult, Mr. H______ is presumably the father of one of the children, who slips up and calls him “Dad.”
WW: Yes, of course. “It’s too hot for costumes, Dad.”
BP: That line is buried in a pages-long stream-of-consciousness paragraph with the children excitedly describing the beautiful day and the desiccated, insect-ridden body of the dead bird they take turns carrying. It’s an effective juxtaposition and wonderfully disorienting use of omniscient POV, and I have to admit, when I first read the story, I didn’t see the word “Dad” there. I was surprised to find it on the second read. Many readers report having had the same experience. Did you anticipate that happening?
WW: I like when stories drop important clues in a nonchalant or non-dramatic way. That he is the father of one, possibly more of the children, and that he is simply staging this funeral, or celebration, for a bird, a beloved family pet, and all the potential strangeness and darkness is the result of the imagination of the children is one possible read. Or maybe that is all pretend too, part of the game, and Mr. H______ is someone else entirely. I’m sorry, I’m not going to give you definitive answers, and I will purposefully lead you astray if you let me.
BP: Duly noted. Mr. H______ leads the children into the woods behind an old, abandoned schoolhouse—
WW: Or perhaps school is only out for the summer, Benjamin.
BP: Okay, wow. I’m going to include my “wow” in the interview, by the way. I’d like to discuss the children’s names. Or the names they are given once they reach the clearing: the Admiral, the Crow, Copper, the Surveyor, and of course, poor Kittypants.
WW: Perhaps Kittypants isn’t so poor after all, is he?
There is a loud knocking on Ben’s apartment door at 12:35 A.M.
Ben lives alone in a small, one-bedroom apartment in the basement of a run-down brownstone, in a neighborhood that was supposed to be the next it neighborhood. The sparsely furnished apartment meets his needs, but he does wish there is more natural light. There are days, particularly in the winter, when he stands with his face pressed against the glass of his front window, a secret behind a set of black, wrought iron bars.
Whoever is knocking continues knocking. Ben awkwardly pulls on a pair of jeans, grabs a forearm-length metal pipe that leans against his nightstand (not that he would ever use it, not that he has been in a physical altercation since fifth grade) and stalks into the combined living area/kitchen. He’s hesitant to turn on the light and debates whether he should ignore the knocking or call the police.
A voice calls out from behind the thick, wooden front door, “Benjamin Piotrowsky? Please, Mr. Piotrowsky. I know it’s late but we need to talk.”
Ben shuffles across the room and turns on the outside light above the entrance. He peeks out his front window. There’s a woman standing on his front stoop, dressed in jeans and a black, hooded sweatshirt. He does not recognize her and he is unsure of what to do. He turns on the overhead light in the living area and shouts through the door, “Do I know you? Who are you?”
“My name is Marnie, I am a friend of Mr. Wheatley, and I’m here on his behalf. Please open the door.”
Somehow her identification makes perfect sense, that she is who she says she is and yes, of course, she is here because of Mr. Wheatley, yet Ben has never been more fearful for his safety. He unlocks and opens the door against his better judgment.
Marnie walks inside, shuts the door, and says, “Don’t worry, I won’t be long.” Her movements are easy and athletic and she rests her hands on her hips. She is taller than Ben, perhaps only an inch or two under six feet. She has dark, shoulder-length hair, and eyes that aren’t quite symmetrical, with her left smaller and slightly lower than her right. Her age is indeterminate, anywhere from late twenties to early forties. As someone who is self-conscious about his own youthful, childlike appearance (ruddy complexion, inability to grow even a shadow of facial hair), Ben suspects that she’s older than she looks.
Ben asks, “Would you like a glass of water, or something, uh, Marnie, right?”
“No, thank you. Doing some late-night plumbing?”
“What? Oh.” Ben hides the pipe behind his back. “No. It’s, um, my little piece of security, I guess. I, um, I thought someone might be breaking in.”
“Knocking on your door equates to a breakin, does it?” Marnie smiles, but it’s a bully’s smile, a politician’s smile. “I’m sorry to have woken you and I will get right to the point. Mr. Wheatley doesn’t appreciate you posting a picture of your admission ticket on Facebook.”
Ben blinks madly, as though he was a captured spy put under a bright lamp. “I’m sorry?”
“You posted a picture of the admission ticket at 9:46 this evening. It currently has three hundred and ten likes, eighty-two comments, and thirteen shares.”
The bird head. Between bouts of transcribing the interview and ignoring calls from the restaurant (that asshole Shea was calling to swap shifts, again), Ben obsessed over the bird head. He marveled at how simultaneously light and heavy it was in his palm. He spent more than an hour staging photographs of the head, intending to use one with the publication of the interview. Ben placed the bird head in the spine of an open notebook, the notebook in which he’d written notes from the interview. The head was slightly turned so that the length of the beak could be admired. The picture was too obvious and not strange enough. The rest of his photographs were studies in incongruity; the bird head in the middle of a white plate, resting in the bowl of a large spoon, entangled in the blue laces of his Chuck Taylors, perched on top of his refrigerator, and on the windowsill framed by the black bars. He settled for a close-up of the bird head on the cracked hardwood floor so its black eye, red feathers, and the horn-colored beak filled the shot. For the viewer, the bird head’s size would be difficult to determine due to the lack of foreground or scale within the photograph. That was the shot. He posted it along with the text “Coming soon to The New Dark Review: Something About William Wheatley” (which he thought was endlessly clever). Of course many of his friends (were they friends, really? did the pixilated collection of pictures, avatars, and opinions never met in person even qualify as acquaintances?) within the online horror writing and fan community enthusiastically commented upon the photo. Ben sat in front of his laptop, watching the likes, comments, and shares piling up. He engaged with each comment and post share and couldn’t help but imagine the traffic this picture would bring to his The New Dark Review. He was aware enough to feel silly for thinking it, but he couldn’t remember feeling more successful or happy.
Ben says, “Oh, right. The picture of the bird head. Jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to, I mean, I didn’t realize—”
Marnie: “We understand your enthusiasm for Mr. Wheatley and his work, but you didn’t honestly give a second thought to sharing publicly a picture of an admission ticket to a private gathering, one hosted by someone who clearly values his privacy?”
“No, I guess I didn’t. I never mentioned anything about the party, I swear, but now I feel stupid and awful.” He is telling the truth; he does feel stupid and awful, but mostly because he understands that Marnie is here to ask him to take down his most popular Facebook post. “I’m so sorry for that.”
“Do you always react this way when someone shares an invitation to a private party? When they share such a personal gift?”
“No. God, no. It wasn’t like that. I posted it to, you know, drum up some pre-interest, um, buzz, for the interview that I’m going to publish tomorrow. A teaser, right? That’s all. I don’t think Mr. Wheatley realizes how much people in the horror community love ‘Something About Birds’ and how much they want to know about him and hear from him.”
“Are there going to be further problems?”
“Problems?”
“Issues.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No. No problems or issues. I promise.” Ben backs away unconsciously and bumps into the small island in his kitchen. He drops the pipe and it clatters to the floor.
“You will not post any more pictures on social media nor will you include the picture or any mention of the invitation and the gathering itself when you publish the interview.”
“I won’t. I swear.”
“We’d like you to take down the photo, please.”
Everything in him screams no and wants to argue that they don’t understand how much the picture will help bring eyeballs and readers to the interview, how it will help everyone involved. Instead, Ben says, “Yes, of course.”
“Now, please. Take it down, and I’d like to watch you take it down.”
“Yeah, okay.” He pulls his phone from out of his pocket and walks toward Marnie. She watches his finger and thumb strokes as he deletes the post.
Marnie says, “Thank you. I am sorry to have disrupted your evening, Benjamin.” She walks to the front door. She pauses, turns, and says, “Are you sure about accepting the invitation, Benjamin?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can give back the admission ticket to me if you don’t think you can handle the responsibility. Mr. Wheatley would understand.”
The thought of giving her the bird head never once crosses his mind as a possibility. “No, that’s okay. I’m keeping it. I’d like to keep it, please, I mean. I understand why he’s upset and I won’t betray his trust again. I promise.”
Marnie starts to talk, and much of the rest of the strangely personal conversation passes like a dream.
WW: I’m well aware of the role of birds within pagan lore and that they are linked with the concept of freedom, of the ability to transcend the mundane, to leave it behind.
BP: Sounds like an apt description of weird fiction to me, Mr. Wheatley. I want you talk a little about the odd character names of the children. Sometimes I’m of the mind that the children are filling the roles of familiars to Mr. H______. They are his companions, of course, and are assisting him in some task . . . a healing, perhaps, as Mr. H______ is described as having a painful limp in the beginning of the story, a limp that doesn’t seem to be there when later he follows the children into the woods.
WW: (laughs) I do love hearing all the different theories about the story.
BP: Are you laughing because I’m way off?
WW: No, not at all. I tried to build in as many interpretations as possible, and in doing so, I’ve been pleased to find many more interpretations that I didn’t realize were there. Or I didn’t consciously realize, if that makes sense. In the spirit of fair play, I will admit, for the first time, publicly, Benjamin, from where I got the children’s names. They are named after songs from my friend Liz’s obscure little punk band. I hope that’s not a disappointment.
BP: Not at all. I think it’s amazingly cool.
WW: An inside joke, yes, but the seemingly random names have taken on meaning too. At least they have for me.
BP: Let me hit you with one more allegorical reading: I’ve read a fellow critic who argues there’s a classical story going on among all the weirdness. She argues that the Admiral, the Crow, and Kittypants specifically are playing out a syncretic version of the Horus, Osiris, and Set myth of Egypt, with Mr. H______ representing Huitzilopochtli, the bird-headed Mexican god of war. Is she on to something?
WW: The references to those cultural myths involving gods with human bodies and bird heads were not conscious on my part. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there. I grew up reading those stories of ancient gods and mythologies and they are a part of me as they are a part of us all, even if we don’t realize it. That’s the true power of story. That it can find the secrets both the writer and reader didn’t know they had within themselves.
Ben doesn’t wake until after one P.M. His dreams were replays of his protracted late-night conversation with Marnie. They stood in the living area. Neither sat or made themselves more comfortable. He remembers part of their conversation going like this:
“When did you first read ‘Something About Birds’?” “Five years ago, I think.” “When did you move to the city?” “Three years ago, I think?” “You think?” “I’m sorry, it was two years ago, last September. It seems like I’ve been here longer. I don’t know why I was confused by that question.” “As an adult, have you always lived alone?” “Yes.” “How many miles away do you currently live from your mother?” “I’m not sure of the exact mileage but she’s in another time zone from me.” “Tell me why you hate your job at the restaurant.” “It’s having to fake pleasantness that makes me feel both worthless and lonely.” “Have you had many lovers?” “Only two. Both relationships lasted less than two months. And it’s been a while, unfortunately.” “What has been a while?” “Since I’ve had a lover, as you put it.” “Have you ever held a live bird cupped in your hands and felt its fragility or had a large one perch on your arm or shoulder and felt its barely contained strength?” “No. Neither.” “Would you prefer talons or beak?” “I would prefer wings.” “You can’t choose wings, Benjamin. Talons or beak?” “Neither? Both?” And so on.
Ben does not go into work and he doesn’t call in. His phone vibrates with the agitated where-are-yous and are-you-coming-ins. He hopes that asshole Shea is being called in to cover for him. He says at his ringing phone, “The New Dark Review will be my job.” He decides severing his already fraying economic safety line is the motive necessary to truly make a go at the career he now wants. He says, “Sink or swim,” then playfully chides himself for not having a proper bird analogy instead. Isn’t there a bird species that lays eggs on cliffs in or near Ireland, and the mothers push the hatchlings out of the nest and as they tumble down the side of the craggy rock they learn to fly or perish? Ben resolves to turn his zine devoted to essays about obscure and contemporary horror and weird fiction into a career. He’s not so clueless as to believe the zine will ever be able to sustain him financially, but perhaps it could elevate his name and stature within the field and parlay that into something more. He could pitch/sell ad space to publishers and research paying eBook subscription-based models. Despite himself, he fantasizes The New Dark Review winning publishing industry awards. With its success he could then helm an anthology of stories dedicated to Wheatley, a cycle of stories by other famous writers centered around “Something About Birds.” If only he wasn’t told to take down the bird head photo from his various social media platforms. He fears a real opportunity has been lost, and the messages and emails asking why he took down the photo aren’t helping.
Instead of following up on his revenue generating and promotional ideas for The New Dark Review, Ben Googles the Irish-cliff-birds and finds the guillemot chicks. They aren’t kicked out of the nest. They are encouraged by calls from their father below the cliffs. And they don’t fly. The chicks plummet and bounce off the rocks and if they manage to survive, they swim out to sea with their parents.
Ben transcribes the rest of the interview and publishes it. He shares the link over various platforms but the interview does not engender the same enthusiastic response the bird head photo received. He resolves to crafting a long-term campaign to promote the interview, give it a long life, one with a tail (a publishing/marketing term, of course). He’ll follow up the interview with a long-form critical essay of Wheatley’s work. He reads “Something About Birds” eight more times. He tacks a poster board to a wall in the living area. He creates timelines and a psychical map of the story’s setting, stages the characters and creates dossiers, uses lengths of string and thread to make connections. He tacks notecards with quotes from Wheatley. He draws bird heads, too.
That night there is a repeat of the knocking on his front door. Only Ben isn’t sure if the knocking is real or if he’s only dreaming. The knocking is lighter this time; a tapping more than a knock. He might’ve welcomed another visit from Marnie earlier while he was working on his new essay, but now he pulls the bedcovers over his head. The tapping stops eventually.
Later there is a great wind outside, and rain, and his apartment sings with all manner of noises not unlike the beating of hundreds of wings.
WW: Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s the question the title of the story all but asks. I’ve always been fascinated by birds and prior to writing the story, I’d never been able to fully articulate why. Yes, the story is strange, playful, perhaps macabre, and yet it really is about my love, for lack of a better term, of birds. I’m flailing around for an answer, I’m sorry. Let me try again: Our fascination with birds is more than some dime-store, new-age, spiritual longing, more than the worst of us believing these magnificent animals serve as an avatar for our black-hearted, near-sighted souls, if we’ve ever had such a thing as a soul. There’s this otherness about birds, isn’t there? Thank goodness for that. It’s as though they’re in possession of knowledge totally alien to us. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well, and that’s why I wrote the story. The story gets at what I’m trying to say about birds better than I can now. I’ve always felt, as a humble observer, that the proper emotion within a bird’s presence is awe. Awe is as fearsome and terrible as it is ecstatic.
Ben wakes up to his phone vibrating with more calls from the restaurant. His bedroom is dark. As far as he can tell from his cave-like confines, it is dark outside as well. Ben fumbles to turn on his nightstand lamp, and the light makes everything worse. Across from the foot of his bed is his dresser. It’s his dresser from childhood, and the wood is scarred with careless gouges and pocked with white, tattered remnants of what were once Pokémon stickers. On top of the dresser is a bird head, and it’s as large as his own head. Bigger, actually. Its coloring is the same as the red-headed barbet. The red feathers, at this size, are shockingly red, as though red never existed before this grotesquely beautiful plumage. He understands the color is communication. It’s a warning. A threat. So too the brown-yellow beak, which is as thick and prominent as a rhino’s horn, stabbing out menacingly into his bedroom. The bird’s eyes are bigger than his fists, and the black pupils are ringed in more red.
He scrambles for his length of metal pipe and squeezes it tightly in both hands, holding it like a comically stubby and ineffective baseball bat. He shouts, “Who’s there?” repeatedly, as though if he shouts it enough times, there will be an unequivocal answer to the query. No answer comes. He runs into the living room shouting, “Marnie?” and opens his bathroom and closet doors and finds no one. He checks the front door. It is unlocked. Did he leave it unlocked last night? He opens it with a deep sense of regret and steps out onto his empty front stoop. Outside his apartment is a different world, one crowded with brick buildings, ceaseless traffic, cars parked end-to-end for as far as he can see, and the sidewalks as rivers of pedestrians who don’t know or care who he is or what has happened. Going outside is a terrible mistake and Ben goes back into his apartment and again shouts, “Who’s there?”
Ben eventually stops shouting and returns to his bedroom. He circles around to the front of the dresser so as to view the bird head straight on and not in profile. Ben takes a picture with his phone and sends a private group message (photo attached) to a selection of acquaintances within the horror/weird fiction community. He tells them this new photo is not for public consumption. Within thirty minutes he receives responses ranging from “Jealous!” to “Yeah, saw yesterday’s pic, but cool” to “I liked yesterday’s picture better. Can you send that to me?” Not one of them commented on the head’s impossible size, which has to be clear in the photo as it takes up so much of the dresser’s top. Did they assume some sort of photo trickery? Did they assume the bird head in yesterday’s photo (the close-up of the head on the hardwood floor) was the same size? Did seeing the second photo re-calibrate the size of the bird head in their minds? He types in response, “The head wasn’t this big yesterday,” but deletes it instead of sending. Ben considers posting the head-on-the-dresser photo to his various social media platforms so that Marnie would return and admonish him again, and then he could ask why she broke into his apartment and left this monstrous bird head behind. This had to be her doing.
After a lengthy inner dialogue, Ben summons the courage to pick up the head. He’s careful, initially, to not touch the beak. To touch that first would be wrong, disrespectful. Dangerous. He girds himself to lift a great weight, even bending his knees, but the head is surprisingly light. That’s not to say the head feels fragile. He imagines its lightness is by design so that the great bird, despite its size, would be able to fly and strike its prey quickly. With the head in his hands, he scans the dresser’s top for any sign of the small head Mr. Wheatley initially gave him. He cannot find it. He assumes Marnie swapped the smaller head for this one, but he also irrationally fears that the head simply grew to this size overnight.
The feathers have a slight oily feel to them and he is careful to not inadvertently get any stuck between his fingers as he manipulates the head and turns it over, upside down. He cannot see inside the head, although it is clearly hollow. A thick forest of red feathers obscure the neck’s opening and when he attempts to pull feathers back or push them aside other feathers dutifully move in to block the view. There are tantalizing glimpses of darkness between the feathers, as though the depth contained within is boundless.
He sends his right hand inside the head expecting to feel plaster, or plastic, or wire mesh perhaps, the inner workings of an intricate mask, or maybe even, impossibly, the hard bone of skull. His fingers gently explore the hidden interior perimeter, and he feels warm, moist, pliant clay, or putty, or flesh. He pulls his hand out and rubs his fingers together, and he watches his fingers, expecting to see evidence of dampness. He’s talking to himself now, asking if one can see dampness, and he wipes his hand on his shorts. He’s nauseous (but pleasantly so), as he imagines his fingers were moments ago exploring the insides of a wound. More boldly, he returns his hand inside the bird head. He presses against the interior walls, and those walls yield to his fingers like they’re made of the weakening skin of overripe fruit and vegetables. Fingertips sink deeper into the flesh of the head, and his arm shakes and wrist aches with exertion.
There’s a wet sucking sound as Ben pulls his hand out. He roughly flips the head over, momentarily forgetting about the size of the great beak and its barbed tip scratches a red furrow into his forearm. He wraps his hand around the beak near its base and his fingers are too small to enclose its circumference. He attempts to separate the two halves of beak, a half-assed lion tamer prying open fearsome jaws, but they are fixed in place, closed tightly, like gritted teeth.
Ben takes the head out into the living area and gently places it on the floor. He lies down beside it and runs his fingers through its feathers, careful to not touch the beak again. If he stares hard enough, long enough, he sees himself in miniature, curled up like a field mouse, reflected in the black pools of the bird’s eyes.
BP: A quick summary of the ending. Please stop me if I say anything that’s inaccurate or misleading. The children, led by the Crow and the Admiral, reappear out of the woods that Mr. H______ had forbidden them to go into, and you describe the Admiral’s fugue wonderfully: “his new self passing over his old self, as though he were an eclipse.” When asked—we don’t know who the speaker is, do we?—where Kittypants is, the Crow says Kittypants didn’t fly away and is still in the woods, waiting to be found and retrieved. Someone (again, the speaker not identified) giggles and says his wings are broken. The other children are eager to go to Kittypants and erupt into mocking chant and song. The dead bird that they had brought with them is forgotten. I love how it isn’t clear if the kids have finally donned their bird masks or if they’ve had them on the whole time. Or perhaps they have no masks on at all. Mr. H______ says they may leave him only after they’ve finished digging a hole big enough for the little one to fit inside and not ruffle any feathers. The reader is unsure if Mr. H______ is referring to the dead bird or, in retrospect, if it’s a sinister reference to Kittypants, the smallest of their party. The kids leave right away and it’s not clear if they have finished digging the hole or not. Perhaps they’re just going home, the funeral or celebration over, the game over. Mr. H______ goes into the woods after them and finds his gaggle in a clearing, the setting sun throwing everything into shadow, “a living bas relief.” They are leaping high into the air, arms spread out as wide as the world, and then crashing down into what is described from a distance as a pile of leaves no bigger than a curled-up, sleeping child. It’s a magnificent image, Mr. Wheatley, one that simultaneously brings to mind the joyous, chaotic, physical play of children and, at the same time, resembles a gathering of carrion birds picking apart a carcass in a frenzy. I have to ask, is the leaf pile just a leaf pile, or is Kittypants inside?
WW: I love that you saw the buzzard imagery in that scene, Benjamin. But, oh, I wouldn’t dream of ever answering your final question directly. But I’ll play along a little. Let me ask you this: Do you prefer that Kittypants be under the pile of leaves? If so, why?
Tucked inside the envelope he received from Mr. Wheatley is a typed set of instructions. Benjamin wears black socks, an oxford shirt, and dark pants that were once partners with a double-breasted jacket. He walks twenty-three blocks northwest. He enters the darkened antiques store through a back door, and from there he navigates past narrow shelving and various furniture and taxidermy staging to the stairwell that leads to the second-floor apartment. He does not call out or say anyone’s name. All in accordance with the instructions.
The front door to Mr. Wheatley’s apartment is closed. Ben places an ear against the door, listening for other people, for their sounds, as varied as they can be. He doesn’t hear anything. He cradles the bird head in his left arm and has it pressed gently against his side, the beak supported by his ribs. The head is wrapped tightly in a white sheet. The hooked beak tip threatens to rend the cloth.
Ben opens the door, steps inside the apartment, and closes the door gently behind him, and thus ends the brief set of instructions from the envelope. Benjamin removes the white cloth and holds the bird head in front of his chest like a shield.
There is no one in the living room. The curtains are drawn and three walls sconces peppered between the windows and their single bulbs give off a weak, almost sepia light. The doors to the other rooms are all closed. He walks to the circular dining room table, the one at which he sat with Mr. Wheatley only three days ago.
Ben is unsure of what he’s supposed to do next. His lips and throat are dry, and he’s afraid that he’ll throw up if he opens his mouth to speak. Finally, he calls out: “Hello, Mr. Wheatley? It’s Ben Piotrowsky.”
There’s no response or even a sense of movement from elsewhere inside the apartment.
“Our interview went live online already. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but I hope you like it. The response has been very positive so far.”
Ben shuffles into the center of the room, and it suddenly occurs to him that he could document everything he’s experienced (including what he will experience later this evening) and add it to the interview as a bizarre, playful afterword. It’s a brilliant idea and something that would only enhance his and Mr. Wheatley’s reputation within the weird fiction community. Yes, he would most certainly do this, and Ben imagines the online response as being more rabid than the reaction to the picture of the bird head. There will be argument and discussion as to whether the mysterious afterword is fictional or not, and if fictional, had it been written by William Wheatley himself. The interview with afterword will be a perfect extension or companion to “Something About Birds.” Perhaps Ben can even convince Mr. Wheatley to co-write the afterword with him. Or, instead, pitch this idea to Mr. Wheatley not as an afterword but as a wraparound story, or framing device, within the interview itself. Yes, not only could this be a new story, but the beginning of a new story cycle, and Ben will be a part of it.
Ben says, “This bird head is lovely, by the way. I mean that. I assume you made it. I’m no expert, but it appears to be masterful work. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind it that we could discuss further.” In the silence that follows, Ben adds, “Perhaps your friend Marnie brought it to my apartment. We talked the other night, of course.”
Ben’s spark of new-story-cycle inspiration and surety fades in the continued silence of the apartment. Has he arrived before everyone else, or is this some sort of game where the party does not begin until he chooses a door to open, and then—then what? Is this a hazing ritual? Is he to become part of their secret little group? Ben certainly hopes for the latter. Which door of the three will he open first?
Ben asks, “Am I to put the bird head on, Mr. Wheatley? Is that it?”
The very idea of being enclosed within the darkness of the bird head, his cheeks and lips and eyelids pressing against the whatever-it-is on the inside, is a horror. Yet he also wants nothing more than to put the bird head over his own, to have that great beak spill out before his eyes, a baton with which to conduct the will of others. He won’t put it on, not until he’s sure that is what he’s supposed to do.
“What am I supposed to do now, Mr. Wheatley?”
The door to Ben’s left opens, and four people—two men and two women—wearing bird masks walk out. They are naked, and their bodies are hairless. In the dim lighting their ages are near impossible to determine. There is a crow with feathers so black its beak appears to spring forth from nothingness, an owl with feathers the color of copper and yellow eyes large enough to swallow the room, a sleek falcon with a beak partially open in an avian grin, and the fourth bird head is a cross between a peacock and a parrot. Its garish blue, yellow, and green feathers loom high above its eyes like ancient, forbidding towers.
They walk toward Ben without speaking and without ceremony. The soles of their bare feet gently slap on the hardwood floor. The man in the brightest colored bird mask must be Mr. Wheatley (and/or Mr. H______) as there are liver spots, wrinkles, and other evidence of age on his skin, but the muscles beneath are surprisingly taut, defined.
Mr. Wheatley takes the bird head out of Ben’s hands and forces it over his head. Ben breathes rapidly, as though prepping for a dive into deep water, and the feathers flitter past his eyes, an all-encompassing darkness, and a warmth in the darkness, one that both suffocates and caresses, and then he can see, although not like he could see before. While the surrounding environment of the apartment dims, viewed through an ultraviolet, film-negative spectrum, the bird feathers become spectacular firework displays of colors; secret colors that he was blind to only a moment ago, colors beyond description. That Ben might never see those colors again is a sudden and great sadness. As beautiful as the bird heads are, their owners’ naked human bodies, with their jiggling and swaying body parts, are ugly, weak, flawed, ill-designed, and Ben can’t help but think of how he could snatch their tender bits in the vise of his beak.
The two men and two women quickly remove Ben’s clothes. The Crow says, “Kittypants is waiting to be found and retrieved. He didn’t fly away,” and they lead him across the living room and to the door from which they’d emerged. Ben is terrified that she’s talking about him. He is not sure who he is, who he is supposed to be.
Through the door is a bedroom with a king-size mattress claiming most of the space. There is no bedframe or box spring, only the mattress on the floor. The mattress has not been made up; there are no bedcovers. There is a pile of dried leaves in the middle. Ben watches the pile closely and he believes there is a contour of a shape, of something underneath.
Ben stands at the foot of the mattress while the others move to flank the opposite sides. The lighting is different in the bedroom. Everything is darker but somehow relayed in more detail. Their masks don’t look like masks. There are no clear lines of demarcation between head and body, between feather and skin. Is he in fact in the presence of gods? The feather colors have darkened as well, as though they aren’t feathers at all but the skin of chameleons. Ben’s relief at not being the character in the leaf pile is offset with the fear that he won’t ever be able to remove his own bird head.
The others whisper, titter, and twitch, as though they sense his weakness, or lack of commitment. The Crow asks, “Would you prefer talons or beak?” Her beak is mostly black, but a rough, scratchy brown shows through at the beak edges and its tip, as though the black coloring has been worn away from usage.
Ben says, “I would still prefer wings.”
Something moves on the bed. Something rustles.
The voice of Mr. Wheatley says, “You cannot choose wings.”