Death of a Chicken by Mark Jacobs

This morning, I watched my son-in-law kill my chicken. Before leaving for work, he wrung its neck in the backyard out by his garage. He wrapped the limp body in a plastic bag, looking around to see if he was being observed by one of the neighbors, as though he were committing a crime. Then he placed the bag in one of those large green trash containers that are abundant in this place. He must have known I was watching, but did not turn to acknowledge me.

A small thing, you will say, a thing of trifling consequence. Nevertheless, the event—I consider it an event—caused me distress. I did my best not to let my daughter become aware of my sadness. When I am quiet, she jumps to the conclusion that I am homesick and exerts herself to cheer me up. Her belief is that I can stop being homesick by contemplating our great good fortune. We live in a wealthy country of limitless possibilities. One of your grandchildren, she tells me, might grow up to become president of the United States. Whatever the source of my sadness, imagining my granddaughter or my grandson as president of this enormous country does not diminish the feeling.

I have been told that a city ordinance forbids homeowners from keeping and raising any species of fowl, including chickens. Such ordinances must be respected. And yet I enjoyed, for the month that it was in my possession, the company of a rusty red hen with a plump breast and bright yellow feet.

When I was a boy we boiled and ate those feet, sucking the nourishment from them despite their being hard on the teeth. When I was a boy, living in a village called Potrero Yapepó, in the Department of Itapúa in the southern region of Paraguay, many things were different. Jacinta – my daughter, married to Nelson, who killed my chicken – sometimes lectures me. It’s wrong, she tells me, to think about the past as much as I do. Not a sin, but still a mistake. Many people of my age worry they will lose their mind. Not me. I have lost so much more than that.

When Nelson drove off to work, I went into the house where Jacinta was drying her hair with a blower, getting ready to leave. Nelson is a butcher at a supermarket; he often returns home smelling of meat. Jacinta sells cosmetics in a large store that specializes in women’s apparel. She smells of perfume and is careful how she dresses, being in the public eye. I consider her to be quite beautiful, although she scarcely resembles her mother, who was much shorter, though beautiful, and died before we came to this country. The children were at school. They leave early, with a great deal of commotion that I consider unseemly. Jacinta kissed me on the cheek, going out the door.

“What’s wrong, Papito?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

She shook her head and clucked. She couldn’t stay and fuss over me. Americans live by the clock. My daughter was born in Paraguay but is close, very close, to being American. So is Nelson, although it comes less naturally to him.

I don’t mind being alone. There are times when I crave the solitude. I think more clearly in the peace and quiet of an empty house. A certain amount of my thinking goes on in a place where I am not aware of it, only of its results. I want to say it’s underground, but that’s just a way of saying I don’t really know. Underground was where the decision to go see Nicanor took place.

I walked. One thing I am not good at is getting around Arlington. The city perplexes me. I never know how one place connects to another. It’s better when I walk. Walking, I identify landmarks. Getting to the house of Nicanor’s son, Armando, was easy for me. I’ve visited a number of times. He lives on Arcadia Street, on one corner of which stands a gas station run by Salvadorans. When you walk past, you hear their music thumping from the bays as they work on the automobiles entrusted to them for repair. I do not dislike their music, but it’s not mine.

I was relieved when Nicanor met me at the door. I never know what to say to Armando or to his wife, Maria Jesús, or their children. I remind them of Paraguay. They are sentimental about the land of our birth, but would not go back, not to stay. In their minds, I stand for a certain failure to adapt to the new life we have been offered. This can inspire sympathy, but also, I sometimes feel, a measure of contempt.

“It’s about time, Justo,” Nicanor huffed, as though he were expecting me. It’s the way he talks. He does not wish to be seen as taken by surprise. He grasped my arm, and we headed back in the direction I had just come from. “Come on, we’ll be late.”

I had a pretty good idea where we were going, but said nothing about it. We walked companionably, discussing unimportant matters.

Nicanor is a vigorous old man; there is no denying it. His hair is the richest, sleekest silver, and his complexion is red in a healthy, not a sickly way. He has a barrel chest and practically no belly beneath it. He is the kind of old guy who deceives himself, thinking he is still attractive to women despite his years.

We walked six blocks to the Kuntur, which is a Peruvian restaurant. It’s famous in Arlington for roast chicken, and golden empanadas, and good Peruvian beer. Lunch hour, it’s always crowded. It can put you in a good mood, just watching people go in, hungry and enthusiastic for the fare on offer. This, I think, is also American in its way.

Next to the Kuntur rises a building in not good condition, containing five floors of apartments. All of them, or most of them, are occupied by people from Central and South America. On the top floor in one of the larger apartments lives a bald man they call el Cojo because of a bad limp he acquired back in Paraguay when a horse fell on him. He is a touchy individual whose path to the United States led through shadows. Because of the limp, his work options are limited. Some afternoons, he hosts a card game attended by a shifting group of men from home who, for one reason or another, are not presently employed or work a later shift.

I seldom go to these games. On the one hand, people are convivial, and we speak a language I consider the most perfect tongue in the world. Yopará is a mixture of our country’s two languages, Spanish and Guaraní. You can say anything in Yopará, you can dream in it, and the next morning, tell your family exactly what was in your dream, with precise and accurate words. All that is to the good. Nor am I opposed to the drinking of cane whiskey. There are ways and means, in this city, to get one’s hands on the Paraguayan brands we are fond of. The card players vie with one another to bring the best. You can’t condemn the whiskey because some men drink more of it than they should. Look, rather, to the man.

What disturbs me about el Cojo’s afternoon poker games is this: they are the occasion of a dangerous nostalgia. The stories people tell about home may be true, the feeling with which they tell them may be genuine, but the effect of the telling and the hearing is to create a memory you should not trust. It’s like stepping onto a rotten floor. Put your foot down wrong and you’re stuck. You can’t go forward, you can’t go back.

I am as guilty of making and repeating this mistake as the rest of the men who play poker at el Cojo’s near the popular Peruvian restaurant.

We played. My luck was indifferent, neither hot nor cold. Tepid, I suppose, is the word. After a while, somebody went into the kitchen and fried sticks of manioc. We ate the fried manioc along with odds and ends of things found in el Cojo’s cupboards, including several large cans of hearts of palm, which was a food to be had back at home and delicious by association. Despite being somewhat irritable, Jorge – I should call him by his real name – is a generous man and would feed the world if he could. At a certain point, I don’t remember exactly when, I went into one of the bedrooms and lay down. The whiskey ran like a small river through the landscape of my mind, seeking its level. I was conscious of a stone pressing on my heart. The weight of it made me aware again of being unhappy. This past month, I took great pleasure, mornings, tossing feed for the chicken in the backyard, refilling its water bowl, watching the creature hunt and peck and scratch the grassy earth with its elegant yellow claws. I sat in a plastic lawn chair and watched it for quite a long while.

Nights, I do not sleep as well as I did when I was younger. I drop off without difficulty, but often wake in the bleak hours and cannot go back to sleep. In the morning, I rise early regardless. This means that I am seldom at my best during the day; I am groggy or distracted. I start a thought and then cannot follow it to its conclusion. I mention this to explain why I slept so hard in Jorge’s spare bedroom that afternoon. It does not, however, explain the foul temper in which I woke.

The game was still going on, although some of the players had changed. A carpenter from Encarnación was there. Felipe has big ears and is gruff, but I happen to know that his son, now in high school, has repeatedly been arrested for offenses of increasing seriousness. Felipe works days and must have stopped by the apartment when he knocked off the job, which meant I had slept a long time.

In the mood I was in, almost anything could have set me off. I allowed it to be Nicanor. He was in fine fettle, drinking enough to loosen his tongue and winning hand after hand. The greedy triumph with which he raked in the pot reduced the pleasure of the game for others.

“You’re lying,” I told him once, at the conclusion of one of his stories.

“Say what?”

It was a story about conquering the affections of a beautiful woman who lived two towns over from his, back home just south of Concepción. Not only was this woman ravishing, but she was married. Not only was she married, but her husband was a professional man. A lawyer with a thriving practice. They lived well. Not only did she succumb to Nicanor’s flattery, but she swore she would leave the lawyer and go with Nicanor to Buenos Aires, where he would get a job in construction. He described her body in such intimate detail that several of us felt uncomfortable.

“It’s a lie.”

As I said, Nicanor does not like to be surprised, and my calling him out was the last thing he expected from me. I am known as a peaceable man who keeps his own counsel. I have, to my knowledge, no enemies. The players placed their cards on the table, face down, and stared uneasily at us, waiting to see how Nicanor would respond.

“Take it back, Justo.”

He smiled as he spoke. It was an ugly smile.

“I won’t take it back.”

“Say you’re sorry, or I promise you, there will be trouble.”

I knew we weren’t going to come to blows. We are two old men whose legs betray them, whose upper bodies have lost the strength they once enjoyed, whose life experience has taught them the futility of fighting. Still, something would come of it.

Good. I wanted something to come of it.

Until this morning, I had been giving thought to purchasing a second chicken. It had occurred to me that my red breast might like company. Not that I know what goes on in a chicken’s head, but it was possible the hen was aware, in its birdy way, of a lack in its life. I’ll stop at two, I promised myself. I won’t let my feelings for the chicken get out of control. I don’t want to create a problem for Jacinta and Nelson, nor do I intend to flout the Alexandria ordinance. But two hens? Two would be just right.

“Why should I say I’m sorry?” I asked Nicanor. Perhaps my smile was as ugly as his. You’ll have to ask one of the other players. Regardless, my voice was steady. “There is no need to apologize for telling the truth.”

We were on our feet. Nicanor was cursing me. I kept my mouth shut, but it nevertheless expressed the disdain I felt – I must have felt it for a long time, for years – for this cocky man who, contrary to what he believed, or said he believed, was no longer attractive to women of any age or category. When he lunged in my direction, Felipe the carpenter rose and grabbed him, holding him by the arms so that he couldn’t take a swing and make a fool of himself. For form’s sake, Jorge, our host, made a show of clamping onto me.

I had nothing to say. Not to any of them. How do you speak if a stone is on your heart? You lack the strength of utterance. I made my way to the door, then down the hall to the elevator. I rode the elevator to the first floor, crossed the lobby, and stepped outside into twilight and into the different way the city feels when the day is done. Where had it gone?

It was September. Still warm in Virginia. Some nights, the humidity hangs on, the way it hangs on at home, although the city air smells nothing like home

I began walking. My head ached slightly, but I had not drunk too much caña; I had consumed just enough to be able to play cards without thinking overmuch about the chicken. From el Cojo’s apartment, I knew the way home. Had I taken the route I know, I would have made it to Jacinta’s with no difficulty. Why I did not remains a mystery to me. In any event, I wandered. Inside ten minutes, I had lost my bearings. The streetlights came on, the cars in the streets drove with their headlights on, there was a heavier bass line in the music you heard from cars and the windows of apartment buildings.

How many of these people, I wondered, have already become American?

When I left home in the morning, I had neglected to bring the telephone that Jacinta gave me. I often forget it. I could have stopped somebody on the street and asked to borrow a phone. Surely someone would say yes to a polite request from a vejestorio like me. But I could not remember my daughter’s number or the number of my son-in-law. There is seldom a reason to call them. On the rare occasions when I do, the contact information is programmed into the machine. This is undeniably a convenience, but has the inconvenient side effect of causing me to ignore the numbers. I simply press the button and make the call.

My sense of direction was off. Of course, I cannot be certain, but I had the impression that every time I came to an intersection, a cross street, any place that called for a decision, I made the wrong one. This led to a certain amount of anxiety, which I believe was the reason I forgot the name of the street on which we live. I stopped, tried hard to summon it, couldn’t.

I continued to wander. I was somewhat worn out despite having slept soundly in Jorge’s spare room for quite a long time. The rubbery lassitude in my legs felt strangely pleasant.

This never happened to me at home. Getting lost, I mean. It never happened when I lived in the country. To this day, I can visualize with strict detail the place I grew up and lived as boy and man. A road runs through Potrero Yapepó, coming from the pueblo of San Pedro and continuing to the pueblo of Yuty. Say you are on the bus. Entering Yapepó from the San Pedro side, you pass the school on your left. Next to the school, you come to don Alvaro’s almacén where, if you are a customer, you have to look sharp not to be overcharged.

Just before the road bends, on the right stands the chapel, which Lelia, one of the schoolteachers from the old days, caused to be built with her own money. She never married and was able to save. I wonder whether Lelia is still alive. As the chapel went up, brick by brick, her health went down. There seemed, to me and to others, to be a connection.

After the bend, again off to the right, but now three hundred meters down in a dip in the footpath, you see our house. The house and home of Justo Flor. There is more to say about the place than I am prepared, at present, to give voice to.

Stay on the bus as it leaves Yapepó and you come to another small, spreading out village with no center to speak of called Campo Florido, and then, not much farther on, one more. Leandro Oviedo is where you cross the Tebicuary River and begin the final leg of your journey to Yuty.

I would like to be on that bus.

I would like to be able to tell you with forceful words just how much of Potrero Yapepó and the territory around it remains fixed in me, heart, mind, and memory. I see the fields—no more cotton, any more; it has been replaced by soybeans—the sagging fences, the board houses, and the lath-and-mud houses with their dirt patios and manioc patches off to one side. The cattle eating grass, the horses doing the same but picking up their heads more often, looking around as though aware of a threat the cattle do not perceive. Motorcycles buzzing up and down on the road, people in chairs under bitter orange trees drinking cool tereré through an aluminum straw on a hot morning. Dogs with sharp ears, cats with long tails, chickens with herky-jerky movements of their feathery bodies.

This is the kind of remembering that Jacinta tells me is bad for me to keep doing. I believe her, but find it difficult to refrain from casting my mind back.

I would like to be on that bus.

I came to a small park. A pleasant and inviting place. It was new to me, I was sure I hadn’t been there before. There was a playground for kids, there were benches for adults. I sat on one of the benches, facing the street, trying to remember the name of the street where Jacinta and Nelson and their children live. Where I live. No luck.

It felt good to sit down, but resting, I became aware of a slight headache and an ache in my shoulders as though I had been digging with a shovel. I thought about Nicanor and regretted that our friendship was spoiled. It would be a long time before either of us made a move to reconcile with the other.

Neither of us has a long time.

An idle thought arrived: why is it, I wondered, that Paraguay continues to be a poor country? The usual answers people give to that difficult question are abstract, no me convencen.

Unable to remember the name of my street, fatigued as after great labor, I stayed where I was on the bench for some time. The night moved on the way it must, like an animal no fence can restrain. At home, Jacinta would be worried. She could trace me as far as Jorge’s apartment. After that, there was no trail for her to follow. It seemed strange even to me that I had not brought my phone.

No watch, either, so no idea of the time except that it was late.

After a while, a handful of young men showed up at the park. They were Latinos from somewhere around Alexandria, that was clear. They wore expensive sneakers and pristine white T-shirts. They smelled of cologne. Many of them wore gold chains around their necks, which gave them, in my eyes, a feminine appearance. Not that I was about to make a comment to that effect.

They swarmed me. I was an obvious target, old and unable to defend myself. I sat with my hands folded in my lap, refusing to respond to their taunts. One of them blew smoke from his cigarette into my face, which made me cough. My helpless sputtering made them laugh. Let them jeer, I thought, but that was as far as the thought would travel.

They were speaking in Spanish, but their accents were foreign to me. Central American, I guessed they were, with maybe a Mexican or two. Did it matter?

I was calm. It did not seem likely that they would hurt me, only that they would vent their frustration on me. I could take it. Yes, it was a humiliation. Perhaps this is the purpose of an old man, to be the butt of young men’s complicated antagonism. I believed I could wait them out, and they would move on to their next quarry.

Maybe I would have been proved wrong. Maybe they would have decided in their pack mind to do me some physical harm. But after I had endured five or ten minutes of their harassment, a city police car pulled to a stop at the curb alongside the park. No siren, but the lights were flashing. It was a handsome vehicle, new-looking, the body white with a bold black stripe. Out of it stepped a policeman who must have years of experience dealing with young men in gangs.

They left me alone. They did so with reluctance, expressed in curses. They faced the officer. He spoke to them in a distinctly strong and level voice. Whatever he said to them, it did not sound threatening; it sounded matter-of-fact, as though he were merely listing the offenses they might be found guilty of. Inside five minutes, they were gone.

I continued sitting. The policeman came over to me and asked whether I was okay. That much I understood, but no more than that.

He was a man of middle age and had the face of a soldier, by which I mean the appearance of a person who has no doubt of the need for and value of his work. He realized quickly that I speak no English.

“Un momento,” he said, raising a finger.

He spoke into his radio. Soon, a second police vehicle pulled up behind the first. The officer driving that car would speak Spanish, I had little doubt.

He did. He was a compact, muscled man with dark skin. Young. From his accent, I thought he must be Central American, like the young men who had been chased off by the first policeman.

I’m not real good with accents. I couldn’t tell a Peruvian from a Bolivian if you put a gun to my head.

“Are you all right, sir?” he wanted to know. “Did they hurt you?”

“They didn’t hurt me. I’m all right.”

“What is your name?”

“Justo Flor.”

“And you are?”

“Paraguayan.”

He nodded as though that explained something that had been worrying him. That’s silly, I know it, but there is no point trying to stop thoughts from occurring to you. Let them come, let them go. Keep what’s useful. The rest will evaporate.

“Where do you live, señor Flor?”

Not many people address me as señor Flor. A novelty. For a moment, I wondered whom he was talking to.

“Here.”

“Here?”

“In Alexandria.”

“What street?”

That was all it took, a simple question posed by a polite policeman. The name of the street came back to me as though it had never left in the first place.

“Maple Street. Number fifty-one.”

He nodded gravely and asked, “Is there someone at home who can come pick you up?”

“My daughter, Jacinta. My son-in-law, Nelson. I forgot my phone.”

Another nod, lighter in mood this time. “There are days when I wish I could forget mine.”

He took his own mobile telephone from the shirt pocket of his uniform and handed it to me.

“I don’t remember the number,” I said, feeling ashamed.

I’m not senile, just inattentive. I handed back the phone.

“No problem,” the policeman said.

Watching us, the first officer said something in English, then got into his car and drove off. In the warm, mild September night, I felt a surge of relief. It was like jumping into a lake of peace. You don’t mind getting wet.

Sandoval, that was the surname of the policeman who handed me his phone. It was on his uniform shirt.

“Jump in, señor Flor. I’ll drive you home. Your people will be missing you. You don’t want them to worry.”

It is my opinion that Officer Sandoval is American, or so close to being American that people will assume he is.

As for me, I will never be American. I remember too much.

I rode next to the policeman in his gleaming white car. There was a small computer affixed to the dashboard. The screen was busy and bright with things I did not understand. It took me a moment to formulate the statement I wanted to make, but eventually I got it out.

“This morning.”

“Yes?”

“My son-in-law.”

“Nelson.”

“Yes, Nelson. He killed my chicken.”

Officer Sandoval nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. He knew all about the Alexandria ordinance forbidding the keeping and raising of fowl inside city limits. Perhaps, in the course of duty, he had been called upon to enforce it. His hands gripped the wheel. We drove on. I carried my sadness with me the rest of the short way to Maple Street. I was fond, you see, of the chicken.