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The sticking out’s tongue, primitive version

TRANSLATION NOTE: Please read the comments (*) at the end of the post to clarify the meaning of some terms and a brief explanation of certain typical Centro American fauna and flora referred in this text.

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clip_image001Here is one of the best stories told by my father, readjusted to its true origin … origin from which I can only remember, and sometimes seems never have existed. But, just like my father used to, I need when I hear the cicadas.

It was from the edge of the ravine that saw it flying at the twilight of the little prayer. It looked like a heron elongated descending Las Trancas gorge, towards the meetings with the Araute River. Since it was backlight, evening resigned himself to temporarily believe in the dark wading bird tale seeking the round mere, a place with high cliffs, where Torogoz (*) lives.

But the next day the news sparked the legend: a steer dead on the Llano de Vargas without scratches, without hits, and without tongue. It was when Don Marcos, called by us Maco (just as grandma used to call him), remind the history and told it to me by penultimate time.

It was a dark summer night with heat dripping in the ribs and the guacos’ (*) roving sing was in search of wayward hens in the balls’ trees (*). The slow-cricket (*) silence was broken, and not by boring cicadas; it was like a bull’s bellowing, which lowed desperate in the murky distance. Maco stood up and walked to the gorge, behind the latrine night was even blacker, with no new stars, like any boring April without romance, and the voice of his wife in the echo of silence:

-This Bull is crying, must have been tangled in a wire.

His far away hopes that Uncle Noah could attend the bull ended when he decided to well tie his left shoe; returned home for a twenty-two rifle, the hunter’s lamp and a box of ammunition.

He descended to the door all at once, shook his lamp to awaken its light, as he took the straightness by Don Catarino ranch, just falling to La Cachirula mere.

He heard the chaste eunuch silence while it was sung another song but with the same chorus:

– Ah! Catocho the night, took you again in the Church (*).

He went down with care, remembering old slips with stealth kisses flavor, the breath of the ocote (*) and welcomed rush landings from potential in-laws. Even more soon, he was crossing the river, blew out the lantern by the well known cult habit, while he repeated with the liver:

– It is better recalled the copante (*) with the foam’s clarity and noise of the stones.

Arriving at the scene of the bull, a few meters from the trapiche (*), he tried to reason the equation (*); the animal ran around a scrub and every third part of the ellipse route threw its deadly yell. Maco, approached to the trajectory in the dark, ready to ignite the lamp that had already placed on the forehead. Rifle in hand, attempted to resolve the derivative of the animal, which after a half hour threshing grass already had marked a lane.

If only he had gone up his eyes, had seen the mysterious winged, which from above controlled the bull with a narcotic smell coming down as dew and penetrating the nose at the rhythm of an owl’s disparate flutter in the tabanco (*).

It was the Sticking-out tongue, which in its wrong attempt to vary the genre chose a bull resistant to dogma; a cow would had been asleep in minutes, and then, falling gently would have covered the neck to double back with his serpentine jafa (*), squeezing until tongue get out at tradable size, tasting it and removing the bad rumination flavor, eating her tender udder as dessert.

The minutes of the Feathered Serpent ended prematurely; Maco lit the lamp, at the time he gun pointed the bull, which with no options, reacted by dropping in tangent direction onto Uncle Noah’s farm. When it came to the transom door launched a yell and another one when jumped it, by the sound of broken branches it did not stop while being at great distance going through the reed’s place beyond the quitacalzón tree (*). When Maco, belatedly raised the view looking for illuminate the winged reptile, it was gone. Only descended its dew and was barely able to rescue a gray cobblestones feather which by its stinking smell definitely belonged to the Sticking-out tongue.

Maco returned as a sleepwalker, trying to spin his brain wheels while a cold sweat line featured his back in vertical. He reached the house, saved the gun, shoes, and the lamp, powerless to such a puzzle, felt asleep and dreamed he was swimming in the pool of The Little Mermaid, with a sky navigated by Avatar’s movie animals, but in 2D.

The next day a brown cow was dead on the farm of Don Jesus Orellana, without traces, without blood, without tongue.

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TRANSLATION NOTES:

  • Torogoz: It’s a bird of singular beauty, declared National Bird of Nicaragua and San Salvador countries.
  • Guaco: It’s a bird which belongs to the family of herons.
  • Ball’s tree: The popular name of a Centro American tree called Jícaro, which fruit has the form of a ball.
  • Slow-cricket: And author’s license creating a word which merge the words cricket and slow. Its meaning alludes at the time used for a cricket to emit sound.
  • The night, took you again in the Church: a popular saying which means it’s another time you can rest like everybody do.
  • Ocote: A pine, tree that was established as national symbol of Honduras country.
  • Copante: irregular wood slabs used to cross a narrow river.
  • Trapiche: a mill used to process sugar cane.
  • He tried to reason the equation: A saying which means trying to understand what was happening.
  • Tabanco: the space between the false-roof.
  • Jafa: a colloquial term in Honduras that means “the rest” or “the other half part”.
  • Quita calzón tree: a tree with the particular characteristic that when it drops a sort of pollen it causes in the person under its branches a terrible stinging which makes one gets out its underpants.

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