Every Boy Should Have a Man (14 page)

She continued: “Even in your world, mans have many languages, but only those fortunate enough to have grown up with oafs and who therefore speak the language of the oaf are considered to be talking mans. But all mans are talking mans, just as all oafs are talking oafs! Don’t you understand? My mother was a talking man. She simply did not speak your language.”

He nodded his head out of politeness, though he found it unbelievable that all mans were talking mans.

This new world that she had escaped to had filled her head with some very strange notions—this new world where mans could marry and be called
husband
and
wife
. Hahaha. Could there be such a place? Would the great creator allow such an impossible, upside-down place to exist? A world where mans wore shoes? He tried to picture it in his head, but it was too much like a story for children.

Hahaha.

There was no understanding in him at all.

She continued: “We are the same beings, you and I, so we can have feelings for each other that are greater than master and pet. Thus . . . you were my first love.”

At last, there was understanding in his eyes.

“I was jealous when you fell in love with that girl, the one with the wicked brother who burgled me and sold me into the mines. But I am happy to know that I loved you. I used to think that it was a monstrous feeling I had for you, but now I know better.”

He nodded his head, but was unable to speak the words—to say that he had loved her too. They had come of age at around the same time, but she was a lesser creature, a pet, and the ideas that he’d had in his head about her back then—they were monstrous, as she had said, simply monstrous. How he had wished for her to leave his room and go live in her proper kennel that he and his father had built with their own hands, but if she had done that then he would have spent all of his time out there with her because he had indeed loved her.

Yet he did not say this, and there was no need for him to say it because she was his elder and she knew these things through having lived an unsheltered and precarious life. He was bigger, but she was wiser, having traveled widely in both the old world and the new. Thus, she was his master.

But he was big and, oh, magnificently beautiful. She gazed unabashedly.

He joked, uncomfortably, under her gaze, “In your world, I see they make shoes small enough for mans!”

It was enough to break the spell. “You silly pinhead!” she said, shaking her head.

“Hahaha,” he laughed.

“And,” she whispered to him, “that one there, the simpleton.” She pointed to the oaf. “He is Mike. He is my son from that oaf general I told you about who had his way with me.”

He looked at the little pinhead again, and then he understood all things.
The frecks
, he laughed to himself.
The frecks
!

“He has frecks like his mother,” he told her. Then he laughed out loud. “He is such a little thing for an oaf. What a shorty! Hahaha. They would tease him in school.”

“But in our world, he is considered quite big. And you are so big, Zloty. I had forgotten just how big you are, and so handsome,” said she to him.

“Oh,” said he to her.

His blush was interrupted as just then his mother, Gretjel, looked through the window as did his father, Uulfnoth, and they recognized their red-haired female man. She had returned to them! They came outside, running with arms outstretched.

His children were there, his boys, Tado and Zloty the younger, and his wife who was named Gretjel, as was his mother, but was called Grietjelaia so there would be no confusion.

They all came out and embraced and exchanged stories.

And all were happy with joy and wonderment.

* * *

Just before his female man and her family made their return to their world, they lined up and in perfect harmony sang a beautiful song for the boy of her childhood and his family.

And then they sang more songs, and they too were beautiful, for her family was made up of all singing mans, even the oaf, whose name was Mike, a big simpleton, who had the beard and sexual maturation of a twenty-four-year-old man, but the mind and manner of an eight-year-old oaf, for he was both man and oaf.

Gretjel, the mother, ran inside the house and brought out a new small singing harp, as the first was destroyed during the burgling of their home that originated the adventure, and gave it to their long- lost and now returned female man, and she took it.

She bowed to Gretjel. “Thank you,” she said.

Her husband Rufus had eyes that smiled and hands that rubbed together with glee when he saw the gift of the golden harp, which was priceless in their world. More wealth!
There can never be too much wealth
, he thought.

But his female man wife nudged him and he reached into his pockets, stuffed to bursting with stolen loot, and withdrew all the silver that he had nabbed earlier that day from a miserable old pinhead who lived in the caves near the hidden entrance to the portal between the higher and lower firmaments.

Rufus bowed graciously and gave the silver coins to Gretjel, the elder.

“Thank you,” she said, bowing in her turn. “But this is too much. We are simple people. We do not need this.”

Her husband Uulfnoth, whose eyes had smiled and whose hands had rubbed together with glee when he saw the silver being placed in his wife’s hands, shook his head with great energy and hurriedly spoke these words: “What my wife is trying to say is that she is grateful for your most kind and most generous and most thoughtful gift, which we are most honored to accept.” And he took the silver from his wife Gretjel’s hands and stashed it with a quickness in his pockets.

Everyone smiled knowingly.

After the tearful goodbyes were spoken, the female man and her family made the long journey back to the lighted hole in the firmament, and they descended the many thousands of stairs on what remained of what once may have been a tower built by mans who wanted to join with the gods, and they returned home to their world and all of its problems.

And they were happy.

And her boy, who had become a full-grown oaf with boys of his own and an oafen wife who shared his mother’s name, went back to his bed in his childhood home.

And he was happy.

____________________

And on the last day there shall come fire everlasting, and all things in the earth shall be burned, and then great heaven shall rain down her tears as on the first day when all things were born.

—Great Scripture

13

Jack

Jack made two final trips up to the realm of the oaf. He traveled both times with his stepson, the man-oaf Mike, who as he aged had become less simple and was beginning to show signs of true wisdom. Now at long last they understood that because he was part oaf, his cognitive development had only been delayed and not completely absent as they had previously thought.

The first trip took place six years after the triumphant journey with his wife and family—six years for the man, but only two years for the oaf. Jack returned from the first trip greatly disturbed, despite the large bag of silver he had pilfered.

He was troubled by what he had seen above the firmaments, and he would not talk about it.

A week passed. Then two. Finally his wife, whom he called Rose because of her red hair, pressed him hard until he said to her, “Zloty’s wife is dead. One of his sons is dead. It has been a year of winter. Winter has lasted for a year, but it is beginning to thaw. All of the crops are dead. It was a year with no spring, no summer, no fall. The poor have suffered the worst of it. Zloty’s parents are both ailing. He sent a message for you, and the message is this:

The conversation that we had when you visited remained in my head for a long time after you left, and I began to see signs that reminded me of your warning—not the deaths of my beloved wife and my beloved firstborn, but signs in great nature. You said that unlike other creatures, the oaf understands that he is destroying the world for selfish reasons and that if he were to correct his actions, he might halt the destruction. Are we destroying the world? Well, there is this present year of ceaseless winter. I have heard say that the wildernesses are flooded and that the rain is headed to the cities. This is destruction, is it not? But is it worldwide? Who is to say? Nevertheless, I would try to do something about it. So I united with several like-minded companions and we campaigned for an audience with the great leader, who after many months and much agitation on our part agreed to meet with us. He listened politely and with great patience about our need to mend our ways, to apologize to great nature by putting things back the way they used to be, and afterward he gave us assurances that if we did not end our fascination with these doomsday prophecies, he would have us arrested and severely punished. Well, I have another son at home and my parents to care for, so I relented. Now, do not you despair over us. The oaf is strong. We will survive. We also are a part of great nature. We are natural creatures. The great creator does not hate us. This is not his punishment of us for our wickedness and our indulgences. As the great leader and his advisors said, “Though for us it may be the last day, for the earth, it is not the end of days. For the earth, it is but a dark day.”

With tears in her eyes, Rose cried, “That’s it? That’s the message?”

“That is the entire message,” Jack said.

* * *

Jack’s final trip took place six years after that last one—six years for the man, two years for the oaf—and when he and his stepson the man-oaf returned, he would not speak of the trip at all, no matter how hard his wife pressed him.

He surrendered to her the large bag of silver and the bag of gold that was twice the size of the silver, and he told her, “We shall live out the rest of our days on these bags. We are wealthy for the rest of our days and all the days of our children, but I shall nevermore return to that world and I shall nevermore speak of it.”

It was the son, the man-oaf Mike, who told her about that final journey to the world above the firmaments.

He said, “The oceans cover the face of the earth. What little dry land exists is overrun with rats and other vermin, and their hunger is great. Where are the bovins and hosses and dogs and cats? Under the water. The sun is overly hot. Even the stars shine too hot. The ocean boils. To journey in the heat of the day is to risk death by fire. Better to journey at night. Life? We found a few mans piloting a boat and rode with them to see what was left of the world. They shared their food with us and we our provisions with them. Their meals were harvested from the sea—fish and the green weed that floats on the surface. We saw no birds while we were there. It is a world without birds. We asked the mans—for they were talking mans—where the cities and villages were.
Under the sea
, they told us. Charting our course by the stars, we rode with the mans to the place where your master Zloty once lived. The place where your master Zloty once lived was covered by the ocean. There was nothing for the eye to see but water. We sailed to a small island that was not covered by water, and the mans had set up a village there, but the water was rising. The man in charge told us,
You may not believe this, but this is the very peak of a great mountain, not an island, and soon, in a year, maybe two, it shall be covered. We shall have to find another place, or live forever on the boat
. On the island, they had silver and gold which they did give to us, for mans know not the value of silver and gold. In fact, the mans cursed the silver and the gold, believing that they were somehow to blame for the demise of their world, though they could not explain specifically how. After a few days, they returned us to the top of another high mountain—the same that has the cave in which the portal between the worlds is hidden. It must have been high tide. When we had arrived there in that world a few days before, the cave atop that mountain was dry land. But now as we were departing, the cave floor was covered with the ocean up to and over Jack’s head and so I carried him on my back through the cave and to the portal. We went through and managed to close the firmament door above us, but water gushed through it, raining down on our heads as we descended the stairs. It was a thing I never wish to see again. A world as it passes away. A world that is dying.”

“The day of the oaf is at an end,” Rose said, bitterly weeping. “Mother was right. Oh, fi, fi, fi, she was right.”

14

Mike

When Mike reached the age of 119 and a half, he weighed a slim 302 pounds. He had never been a big eater and thus had always kept his weight down: he stood 9'6".

He was 119 in man years, which was the age of forty or so in the reckoning of the oaf. He had the appearance of a very tall, powerfully built gentleman of middle-age years with a full red beard. He walked with a back that was erect and proud despite his years, for as an oaf, he was still in the first third of his life.

As an oaf in the world of oafs, he would have been called
shorty
.

Down here, they called him
big man
, listed him in
Guinness
, wrote textbooks and newspaper articles about him. A marvel of nature. A mystery of science. Ageless. A big
oaf
—and that last was not said as a compliment. It was said because he had never been able to excel at the sport of basketball—never been able to excel at any sport despite his gift of great size.

Solitude suited him. There were too many questions down here, and he didn’t like being a celebrity anyway—too many cameras, too many reporters, too many questions.

And his family was gone—mother, stepfather, brother, sister, and even the son that he loved—fi, fi, fi, the life of man is so brief.

And so Mike moved to the mountain to think—to the mountain, whose snowy peak touched the clouds that hid the portal between his world and theirs.

His home was on the mountain, and he had lived there three years, three man years, one oaf year, before he made up his mind to see his plan through to the end.