An old man with wings

On the third day of the rain, the Pelayos were inside killing piles of crabs. Later, Pelayo had to throw them into the sea across the rain-flooded yard, because his new born child had a fever overnight, and he thought it was the crabs that brought bad luck. In the middle of the day, when the light was very dim, Pelayo came home from throwing crabs and could vaguely see something wriggling and groaning in the middle of the yard. When he got closer, he saw an old man lying in the mud. He was hampered by huge wings and could not get up no matter how hard he tried.

Perayo, frightened by the terrible sight, ran to find his woman, Elizonda. His wife was putting a cold towel over the head of a sick child when Pelajo pulled her into the middle of the yard. The two men looked at the fallen man in amazement. His clothes were ragged, his teeth were scanty, and his old age, like that of a drowned rat, was pitiful. The pair of large vultures with dirty wings and sparse feathers lay motionless in the muddy water. They called in a neighbor who was a dab hand at math to see him.

'He's an angel,' she told them. 'I'm sure he's here for your child. Only because the poor fellow was so old that he fell to the ground in the rain."

The next day it was known that a real angel had been captured in pelayo's house. But the Pelayos did not believe her. All afternoon Pelayo stood guard in the kitchen with his nightstick, and at bedtime he dragged him out of the muddy water and locked him in the wire coop with the hens. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elizonda resumed crab hunting. After a while, the child woke up, his fever was gone, and he wanted something to eat. Out of compassion, the couple decided to put the angel on a bamboo raft and give him enough water and food for three days so that he could try his luck on the sea. But when they went out into the yard in the early morning light, they saw that all the neighbors had gathered around the chicken coop and were playing with the angel. They had no respect for angels and threw food at him through the barbed wire as if he were not a god but a circus animal.

The sensational news spread and alarmed Father Gonzaga, who arrived before seven o 'clock. When it was proved that the creature did not understand the language of God, nor did it know how to greet the messengers of God, the priest began to suspect that he was faking it -- that his miserable appearance had nothing in common with the noble angel. So the priest left the coop, and spoke briefly to the curious not to be blinded by innocence, reminding them of the devil's habit of deceiving lovers by putting on a mask during the carnival. However, he agreed to write a letter to his eminence, which in turn would write to the archbishop, who would report it to the Pope so that the Holy See could make a final decision.

The priest's caution did not work with the ignorant. Word of the angel's capture spread fast, and within hours the yard was more like a bustling market, and Elizonda bent his spine trying to sweep up the peels and confetti thrown by the onlookers. So she came up with a bright idea: wall up the yard and charge a nickel to see the angels.

Curious people come from far away. Pelayo and Elizonda were delighted, for within a week all the rooms of the house were filled with money and the pilgrims were lined up as far as the eye could see.

Father Gonzaga answered the questions in the freewheeling manner of a woman as he waited for the final verdict on the nature of the catch. But there was no word from the Vatican. The carefully worded correspondence might have continued interminably had an accident not put an end to the priest's troubles.

It turns out that one of the many attractions at the fair these days is a traveling exhibit in the village featuring a young girl who disobeys her parents and becomes a spider. Tickets to see the spider were not only cheaper than tickets to see the angel, but allowed the audience to ask any question about her sufferings and to observe her from side to side, so that no one would doubt the truth of this terrible fact. This is a fearsome Italian tarantula with a body the size of a sheep and the head of a sad young girl. But it was not her strange appearance that troubled her most, but the expression of anguish in which she related her unhappy story from the very beginning. Once, when she was almost a little girl, she stole out of the house to go to a ball, and when she came back from dancing in the forest, a sudden crash of thunder split the air, and out of the crack a terrible bolt of lightning burst and turned her into a spider. When the spider woman became famous, the Pelayo yard was as deserted as it had been during three days of torrential rain, except for crabs crawling around the house. The landlord and his wife had no regrets. They used the entrance fees to build a two-story house with a balcony garden and a high threshold, and Perayo built a rabbit warren near the village and quit his poorly paid job as village sheriff. Elizonda bought herself several pairs of high-heeled shoes and many shiny silk dresses. The only thing left unattended is the chicken coop. Occasionally the Pelayos wash the chicken coop with kliaolin disinfectant or use incense, not to compliment the angels but to banish the stench that has crept through the family.

The sun and rain brought down the coop. The released angel crawled around like a dying animal, destroying the vegetable patch. This winter, somehow, the angel aged a lot. He could hardly move. His inquisitive eyes were so dark that he often bumped against the stakes and shed his few feathers. Pelayo relented, wrapped him in a blanket, and put him to sleep in the shed. The Pelayos, who had always been calm, were alarmed at the thought that he was going to die, and even their learned neighbors could not tell them what to do with the dead angel.

But not only did the angel endure the harsh winter, but he began to recover as the spring came, and in December the pupils of his gloomy eyes gradually became bright again, and his wings began to sprout large hard feathers.

One morning elizonda was slicing Onions for lunch when she thought she felt a sea breeze break open the latch on the balcony door and blow into the house. So she put her head out of the window and was surprised to see the angel spreading his wings. He was so clumsy that he made a mess of the vegetable patch and nearly toppled the shed with his wings fluttering in the sun. At last it flew. Elizonda breathed a sigh of relief for herself and for him as he wobbly flapped the wings of the old vultures over the last roofs of their houses. As she sliced the onion, she watched him until she could see him no more, for the angel no longer disturbed her life, but was only a dim dot on the horizon.