Thew Corn Field

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 gasoline.

He flew over it for the third time, at lower and lower altitudes, the great sun of the plains that heated the cockpit, while the fuselage was covered with golden powder and the chickens down there flapped their cheerful wings.

Men like him were all in the cornfields, bent over working, their backs soaked with sweat, their sleeves rolled up over their burnished forearms. The women remained at home.

He unzipped the collar of his shirt, because it was like standing in the middle of the sun, big and yellow like a cornfield.

The first kid came out and stopped at the door. The slits in his eyes pointed restlessly at the plane that had been flying over his house for too long. He yelled 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 palms 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 yoke. He now could hear them.

“Madre de dios!” The woman made the sign of the cross, her breasts slipped away and her baby began to scream.

Henry Main had the sun in his eyes, but he could still veer, 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, it was his right, a sacrosanct right of him.

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 extra gear. 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, every 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, it 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 yoke down, happy with the screams, 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.