Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo, worked from sunup to sundown until, at the age of 87 and a half, he closed his eyes forever. His generosity became evident when 2,875 people attended his wake. Everyone wept and sobbed as they recalled the departed old man’s acts of kindness:
“Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo fixed my roof without charging a single penny,” said Doña Melba in a broken voice.
“Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo visited me in the hospital when they took out my tonsils,” said Silverio, the town’s butcher.
“Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo found my lost cat,” said Juanito, letting out a shriek so high-pitched that it was heard in the neighboring town.
“Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo helped me find a job and a girlfriend,” said Filiberto, the baker, as he touched his heart.
That Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo this, that Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo that. They all had a story to share between tears and sobs. However, the one who cried the most of all did not whisper a word; he just stood in a corner looking at the coffin.
All the attendants knew each other, however, no one knew the man who cried the most.
The man had two arms and two legs and was dressed in ordinary clothes, but there was something about him that made one doubt his human nature.
The next morning, everyone went to bury Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo. In the middle of the ceremony, Doña Melba, unable to resist her curiosity, approached the unknown man and asked him:
— Are you a relative or friend of the deceased? It shows that he loved him and misses him very much.
I am neither relative nor friend. What’s more, I never knew him or me, but he did a very good thing for me,” the man answered in an ethereal voice.
Doña Melba walked away very confused, but she did not take her eyes off him during the remainder of the ceremony.
Then the man reached down to scratch his calf. Doña Melba clearly noticed that he did not have a foot but a rooster’s foot.
As was well known, every night Don Pedro Pablo Pérez Páramo lit a candle for the most lost beings in the world.
And it is believed that the most lost beings are the ghosts and only they wander the world with a crow’s foot.