The bird, which I planned on naming Profitt after my wife’s maiden name, was I now believe, a great folly. I had been reading an article on the computer about birds when I came across a photograph of an Indian Blue Peacock with its plumage unfurled, and knew immediately I needed such beauty in my life. I walked to the living room, where my wife was reading a magazine and said, “I desire a bird.”
Without looking up from her magazine my wife said, “What sort of bird?”

“A peafowl,” I said. Of course, it was a peacock or nothing, as the hens appear to be homely and uninspired birds, but to admit the finer points of my longing was to admit defeat.

“Absolutely not,” my wife said.

“You’ll come around,” I said. She could not long ignore the creature’s obvious and terrifying majesty.

My wife turned a page in her magazine. “That’s unlikely,” she said.

“I’m putting my foot down here,” I said. “Exercising my rights as a man.”

My wife said, “Get to it.” With this I began to question the wisdom of my desires. I looked at my wife. She was beautiful in her own way, I supposed, although we had been married for a very long time and I no longer found that my attraction to her was as fresh nor, frankly, as rooted in human evolution as it once was. No doubt she felt the same way about me. I put my hands out before me to show my wife that I was weighing my decision on a great metaphorical scale. She looked up from her magazine long enough to say, “Make your choice carefully.” She then returned to her reading with a gentle shake of her small head.

Locating peafowl is a remarkably simple task. In less than an hour I found a cock for sale about a two-hour drive from our place. It was a nine-month old Indian Blue. I called, and the farmer assured me it was a calm and loving bird. He was asking 500 dollars. “For another five,” he said, “I will blow your mind.”

“I can’t afford to have my mind blown,” I told the farmer, but I wondered if maybe I
couldn’t afford not to, either.

“We hatched and raised a true specimen of a bird.”

“I’m just looking for a bird,” I said.

“This is a pure white Indian Blue,” he said. “There’s a beauty in the way that doesn’t make any sense. Believe it.”

“White?” I asked him.

“It’s a mutation,” the farmer said.

“Mutant,” I said.

“To the East Indians, there’s some spiritual significance to the white ones,” he said.

“They represent the soul.” He paused here and I heard him breathing. “To be honest with you, Buddy, I might be making that part up,” he said.

“I live in a small house.”

“It’d be a pity to break up a good thing,” the farmer said. “The white bird is your bird’s companion.”

“Companion?’ I asked.

“I think they’re gay,” the farmer said. “Gay birds,” he said and hung up the phone.
My wife had moved from the living room to the back deck. I watched from the window as she dragged one of the deck chairs over to a thin strip of sunlight, where she sat and turned her face to the warmth. It was March and we were all anxious.
The peacock was on a turkey farm. I had printed out a map and found the place with little trouble. There were some difficult turns and once a street changed names on me without notice. But I arrived a full ten minutes before I had planned. My tires crunched up the gravel driveway. I watched a plume of dust rise in my mirror. The farmer came out of the small house at the end of the driveway, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hat. There were a dozen or so horses in a pasture behind the house. I got out of my car. The farmer did not remove his gloves when he shook my hand. “You found it,” he said. He had an uneven scar on his upper lip beneath a thin moustache. I assumed this was the result of a cleft palette operation, but you never can tell about these things. I once met a man with only one ear.

“No trouble at all,” I told him.

He pointed toward a tobacco shed beside the house and asked, “Do you know about birds?” There were large gaps between the planks on the tobacco shed through which I watched dust and sunlight beam out toward the grass. There were a few patches of snow left. The door to the shed was open and I could in the brightness make out the shimmering blue feathers of one of the peacocks as it poked its head through the opening to size me up. I told the man the truth, which was that I knew only what I had read online. “I guess I should have mentioned it on the phone,” I said. “Is that my bird?”

“They take care of themselves mostly,” he said. We entered the shed. Above the dirt floor, three peacocks were perched on a low-hanging beam that appeared to have been fastened between the walls for this purpose. One of the birds screeched. It’s a sound I still go looking for when I have the time and my heart is empty.

“Noisy,” the farmer said, “but beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” I said.

“Here’s your gay birds,” said the farmer. He pointed a gloved hand at the two peacocks, which were sitting beside each other on the far end of the perch. “Take a look at that,” he said. The white peacock hopped down from the perch. It sent up a cloud of dust. “Can’t separate love like that, friend,” the farmer said. “I told them you were coming.”

I caved.

By check, I paid the farmer his one thousand dollars, knowing that I did not want this white and unusual creature in my life. I desired beauty, not incongruity.
The farmer helped me load the birds into the back of my car. They each took a seat. As he said goodbye to the peacocks, the farmer held each of their small heads in his rough hands and told them to behave. It was a tender and intimate moment. I was embarrassed for the way it transpired as well as mournful for what I was about to have to do.

The birds honked and screeched the entire trip. I enjoyed the presence of these magnificent beasts, but did not want two of them. The problem of one too many peacocks late on a Thursday is unenviable. I thought about turning around, going back to the turkey farm with the birds, insisting on my money back. But a deal is a deal and a man’s responsibility is his own. So I drove to a place I know where there is quiet and open space. It is a nature reserve. Hunting is not allowed. Of course I know that peafowl are seldom hunted, but accidents can happen. I parked the car and opened the back door on the white bird’s side. He screeched at me. I took him by the neck and carried him into the trees until I could no longer see my car. There, I released him, gave the dirt a kick in the bird’s direction with my boot. “You’re free,” I told him. “Go on.”

Peacocks are intelligent birds. This one fanned his feathers and turned slowly around in a circle. He kept an eye on me as long as he could. Then he walked in the opposite direction and was gone behind a small stand of bare alders.
Back in the car, Profitt had relieved himself on my backseat. I was angry, but the shimmer of his feathers immediately calmed me and I forgave him this transgression as I am sure he will eventually forgive me mine.

As I drove, Profitt begun pecking at my shoulder in a way that reminded me of my wife warning me against some great danger, which is how I knew I had chosen the right name. I began to give the bird a tour of the area. I said, “Profitt, there to the northwest is a reservoir that provides us all with water. To the south is the town where I grew up and where my parents lived until they died. This is what makes a person, Profitt, proximity to all this. Your new home,” I said. I waved my hand over the dashboard, indicating the vastness of our lives.

Profitt squawked at me. I sensed a sadness in this beautiful creature, a dulling, perhaps, of his colorful plume. So I told all manner of lies. “He’ll be better off,” I said. “That place is quiet and safe,” I said. “Don’t worry so much,” I said. This set off in the bird a wild and frightening display of mourning. I immediately conceded the fight and turned around. I drove back to the reserve where I had left Profitt’s companion. I thought of my wife then, waiting for me at home with her magazines and her patience and her familiar if uninspiring physical beauty. And I thought of the farmer, free of these birds I had so willingly burdened myself with. There is an algebra to my desires and I know its variables now by the tenor at which they shake my heart.

At the reserve, I parked the car and opened Profitt’s door. He would not face me and he did not move. There was no sign of the white bird. I gripped one of Profitt’s legs and pulled him from the car. His wings flapped madly. “You win,” I told him. “You win.” I set him on the ground and he composed himself, turned his long neck so that his head was tilted to one side toward my close leg. Then he pecked at the car door for a moment and sat down on a tuft of grass, complacent and I believe mesmerized by the splendor of his new home.

Jensen Beach lives in Massachusetts with his family. His fiction has appeared or soon will Necessary Fiction, The Lifted Brow, PANK, Everyday Genius and the Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc). Two of his stories were recently named to the Wigleaf Top 50. He helps edit Hobart and can be found online at jensenw.blogspot.com.