PÁJARO LOCO
Roy Kesey

There was a green man on television earlier this evening. Mariángel was asleep on my chest, and I was watching the news, which is something I do often and well, and this is a story I once heard: An airplane was flying from Cape Town to Khartoum, and there was a storm, and a failure of some kind, mechanical or human, and the plane dropped thirty thousand feet into Lake Victoria. The subsequent search was done only for show, as of course there would be no survivors, and yet somehow they found one, miraculously, an old man from Malaysia, and it made no sense that he was still alive, the man losing consciousness as the plane fell, awaking while still in the air, unconscious again as they slammed into the water and the fuselage tore apart, and he woke a second time, was lying across some floating bit of wreckage, was terrified, had never learned to swim, and he felt something pull at his leg, turned and saw the crocodile, was ripped into the water, and the man kicked out—a single time, he later said, with all the strength he had—and for no reason the crocodile let him go, flipped him up to the surface and back onto the floating wreckage, and the following day, as he lay in the hospital, he was interviewed, a television crew had come from Nairobi to hear the story of the miracle, and the old man told what had happened, and the world marveled at his impossibly good luck amidst so much death, all of the world marveling except a woman sitting in an office in Kuala Lumpur, and this woman recognized the old man from pictures in her files and knew him for what he was, guilty of social-security fraud, convicted in absentia years before, and two months later the man was where he belonged, in jail back in Malaysia, my point being that when you are looking for someone you must always be alert, must take every opportunity, for you never know when or where you will see him.

And so I was watching, though nothing of interest—a new coach for the soccer team in Arequipa, a new disease for the dolphins in a Lima aquarium—and then Mariángel woke up. I turned the volume down and sang her carefully back to sleep. When I looked again at the television, the green man was simply there.

He had a kind and thoughtful face, and ran naked through a fountain; around the fountain were dozens of pigeons that fluttered and shat and copulated. I had no idea who the man was, or why he had painted himself. Seeing him leap, I wanted to turn the sound back up, to find out who he was and why he was so green, but I did not want to risk waking Mariángel again.

Because it is so hot I am wearing no shirt, and from time to time she takes my nipple in her mouth and tries to suck, even now while she is asleep. Her mother died almost a year ago, but perhaps all nipples smell the same. I have never considered the question before. On my chest there are rolls of fat that hang down like breasts, but they are hairy and misshapen and of course give no milk.

Mariángel falls asleep easily anywhere, but when she wakes in the night the only things that will put her to sleep again are the songs that I sing. Tonight I sang a medley of Carole King and Aerosmith, and she was asleep before the first chorus. I have a lovely voice.

Here my name is pronounced only incorrectly; my students and colleagues call me Hack, or Yack, or Chak. After the green man disappeared, the newscasters came back on, smiled and shook their heads, and then were sad and showed pictures of an earthquake in Chile. Later there were commercials for Cristal beer, and Hamilton cigarettes, and Always tampons. Now there is no news to watch on any channel, so I am watching Woody Woodpecker. Here he is called El Pájaro Loco. I am not sorry the sound is still turned down. I do not miss his laugh.

This morning on my way to work I saw five people riding on a single motorcycle. A baby about Mariángel’s age was sitting on the gas tank; a middle-aged man was steering, and behind him were a middle-aged woman, a thin young girl, and a boy about five years old. It was not a large motorcycle, but the people looked happy, and when I hear the ringing bell of the garbage truck and the grunts of the workers as they sling the bags into the air, it will be time to go to bed.