ppoli61

@ppoli611674629039 · 28 Nov 2020

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The corn field

#shortstory 

By looking closely, Henry Main could even see the chickens pecking around the barn. An isolated farm, made of mud, straw and pieces of tin, after an hour of endless fields, as deserted as his life, after an exhausting search that almost used up all the petrol.
For the third time, at lower and lower altitudes, the great sun of the plains heated the cockpit, while the fuselage was covered with golden powder and the chickens flapped their cheerful wings.
Men like him were all in the cornfields, bent over, their backs soaked with sweat, their sleeves rolled up over their burnished forearms. The women remained at home.
He untied the collar of his shirt, because it was like being in the middle of it, in the sun, big and yellow like a cornfield.
The first kid came out and stopped at the door. The slits of his eyes pointed restlessly at the plane that had been flying over his home for too long. He shouted something.
Here, Main thought, now they will come out.
And, in fact, one after the other, the others also came out. Two children with bare feet, an old man with his finger raised, a girl with untidy braids, a woman with a newborn on her breast. All with their noses up, their eyes wide open, the white palm of their hands stretched out towards him, as if they were calling him, as if they were expecting him for dinner.
He went down even further, almost touching the roof with his wing, almost catching the words on their mouths, his forearms trembling in the effort to hold the wheel. He could hear them now.
"Madre de dios!" The woman made the sign of the cross, her breasts slipped away and the baby began to scream.
Henry Main had the sun in his eyes, but he could still turn, he could avoid them, he could save the house.
But it wouldn't have been fair. No not at all.
All his life he had waited for, it was his right, his sacrosanct right.
They had refused him, laughed at him, abandoned him, when instead a woman like that, beautiful in that way, would have to nurse him, rock him with love, or squeeze her legs around his hips, give birth to children, as happened to others, to all the others who always came first, who always had an edge. Except with the plane, however, the plane was his redemption, no one else knew how to make certain twists, certain turns, certain dives that roused cries of admiration from the crowd.
Then, however, each time the plane returned to the ground, the roof was raised with that noise that was the sound of defeat, and his life once again became one immense, sterile, expanse of rubble and solitude.
Henry John Albert Main wanted to end it, but he wouldn't die without a family, just like a dog, no, that wasn't fair.
He spun and flipped over them. He saw them open their eyes wide, heard them scream and felt joy, satisfaction. He pressed the wheel down, happy with the shouts, happy with the sun, the chickens, the barn, happy with everything.
He fell slowly twisting on himself, aiming at that mother's breast, on which, finally, he was descending, with love, with infinite love.