Every Boy Should Have a Man (2 page)

* * *

It went well for two more days, days in which the boy played with his man that he kept under the bed, and the mother considered different approaches for talking to the father about the secret guest in their house.

On the third day, the boy, overcome by an adventurous spirit, decided to take the man out for a walk. He warned the man not to talk, of course, and the man agreed. He was a man with very good understanding.

They went to the market. They went to the square. They went to the field where other boys—the sons of wealthy families—were walking their mans. Everywhere they went, the boy received compliments for having such a fine, handsome, pleasant-smelling man.

Then they went to the green hill where boys were flying kites and workers were setting up for the next festival.

The mayor, who had come to inspect, was there with his wife. But the mayor was no expert on festivals: another election was coming and he was really there to collect votes.

The mayor’s wife, an avid lover of mans, spotted the boy and his man and came straightway over and announced: “That is a fine man you have there!”

The boy, who was enjoying all the attention, did not detect the false appreciation in her voice and answered boastfully, “Yes, he is a fine man. He is the finest man in the world!”

“Where does he get such fine bright cloths for his hair?”

“My mother made them. She is clever with her hands,” the boy said. “She makes all of our clothes too.”

“And does your man speak?” the mayor’s wife asked, her voice at last revealing her true emotion, anger. “Does your clever-handed mother make fine conversation with your man that talks?”

“No,” the boy heard his mouth say. “He does not talk.”

The mayor’s wife held him firmly by the shoulder and shook him as she spoke: “And from where did your clever mother
steal
this man that talks?”

“My mother did not steal him,” said the boy, pulling against her firm grip. He wanted to run away. He wanted to run far away from there.

But the mayor’s wife gripped him ever more tightly. “From where did your clever mother steal
my
man that talks?”

“He doesn’t talk. She didn’t steal him,” the boy stammered.

“We’ll see about that.”

Now there was a big commotion, and a crowd had gathered—the boys with their kites, the workers with their tools, and even the mayor bustled over.

The mayor proved to be more civil than his wife, because he did not want to scare off any potential votes from among the gathered workers, but the law is the law and theft of property is against the law. His wife, who still had a firm grip on the boy, had so many of them at home that she did not actually recognize this one as the man that had gone missing a month and a half ago, but the man could talk and the boy was obviously poor. That was evidence enough. It did not help that the man kept shouting at intervals, “I want to stay with the boy forever and ever!”

So his mother was called for.

At this point the boy was admitting that the man was not his, because he did not want to get his mother in trouble. He admitted that he had found the man wandering in the bramble.

But the mayor’s wife was demanding justice. There was talk of arrest and punishments severe.

The boy’s mother became distraught. The mayor, again trying to resolve things in a civil fashion, sent for the boy’s father.

The father appeared wearing the uniform of his labor with his head hung low. The father wore the uniform of a loader.

The mayor’s wife was issuing threats in a voice that had become hoarse from shouting, the mother was weeping softly with her hand on the boy’s head, and the boy was holding the man’s hand, or rather the man was clutching the boy’s hand and repeating, “I like the boy. I want to stay with the boy forever and ever. I like the boy. I like his mother too.”

The mayor pulled the father away from the throng and addressed him: “Do you understand what is going on here?”

The father answered sadly, “Yes, I do, sir.”

“My wife has every right, you know?”

The father sighed, “Yes, I know she does.”

“Do you have any idea the trouble you and your family are in if she pursues this? And you are completely in the wrong on this.”

The father nodded hopelessly, the worry lines on his face multiplying.

“But,” the mayor whispered, “she does tend to blow things out of proportion.”

“Does she?” asked the father.

The mayor pressed a finger to a dirt-caked button on the father’s uniform. “Now, we have an election coming up. There are big things that I would like to do. Big things for everyone. And I need votes. Everyone’s votes. Yours. Your neighbors’. Your fellow loaders’. I have big plans for everyone, but my wife—she blows everything completely out of proportion.”

The mayor put a hand on the father’s back, and turning, they faced the mother, the mayor’s wife, the boy, and his man. The mouth of the mayor’s wife was still flapping, but now they all looked exhausted, even the man, who kept repeating, “I like the boy. I like his mother too.”

“Now your boy—he looks like a fine boy. I believe him when he says he found the man. Who would be so unwise as to steal a man from
her
?” joked the mayor. “Her mans run off all the time. She has too many of them. She loves them to death but she can’t keep track of them. Frankly, I think she talks so much she scares them off.”

When the mayor laughed, it was a politician’s laugh, a laugh that put everyone at ease. The father, at ease now, laughed along with the mayor, whose hand was still on his back.

The mayor said to him, “Go home, you and your family. No harm was done. The man looks healthy enough. Your boy took good care of him. You have a fine boy there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re a union man, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, sir. I am.”

“Good! I’m all for that. Talk to your fellows. I sure could use their vote.”

* * *

They walked home in silence, the father, the mother, and the boy.

The boy could only imagine the great embarrassment he had caused his father—how terribly the mayor must have scolded him. He could only imagine the elaborate punishments that awaited. In his little hands were the pretty red pouch and the colored cloths his man had worn; in his heart, there was only sorrow.

When they got home, the father said nothing to the boy.

At mealtime, it was a good meal, made up of the excess they had taken from the festival. The father was still wearing his unwashed loader’s uniform—he never wore his uniform at the table, but he said nothing. He ate his meal in silence. The mother and the boy—they ate their meals in silence.

After mealtime it was evening, and evening turned to night in the silent home.

The wealthy do not understand the sorrows of the poor. The poor do not understand the sorrows of the wealthy. Another war would come soon.

That night in the home of the poor loader, the boy dreamt of a great festival that went on and on forever, and everybody had a man.

* * *

In the morning the boy went to school, and when he came home his mother was home from work early again.

He worried that something was wrong—that he had done something wrong again—but the sadness he had seen on her face the day before was gone and she was cheerful. He nevertheless was suspicious because it was not like her to be home at such an early hour.

When he got to his room, he jumped for joy. There was a man on his bed!

It was not as big as the man he had found that had run away from the mayor’s loud wife, nor was it as fine looking.

Later he would learn that it was also
not
a man that talked.

Nor was it one that was bred for the mines.

Nor was it a man that only a wealthy family could afford.

It was just an average run-of-the-mill man, and he loved her already. He ran and threw his arms around her neck.

It was a female man.

It was a female man with colored cloths in her hair, the red pouch covering her loins, and a note tied up in the red ribbon around her neck.

As his smiling mother looked on through the doorway, the boy opened his father’s note and read the words which retold an eternal truth:
Every boy should have a man
.
You
’
re a fine son
.
Love, Father
.

2

His Female Man

And the boy was happy with his man.

His man was fast. She could outrun all the other mans in the neighborhood.

His man was a good fighter. She could lick any other man in the neighborhood, but he did not let her fight too often because his mother did not approve of man-fights, which were considered by many to be cruelty to mans. His mother would be so angry after a fight that she would threaten to give his man away if he fought her again.

His man was loyal. She went everywhere he went and cried every morning as he left for school.

His man was ferocious. She showed her teeth whenever a stranger came too near him. To calm her, he would pet her head and kissy-coo her. “Down, girl, down,” he would kissy-coo until she became calm, and even then she would keep one eye on the stranger. His man did not trust strangers.

And though she was a man that could neither talk nor sing, she was a musically gifted man, they discovered, when she picked up Mother’s small singing harp one day and began to pluck the strings.

At first they were amused that the female man was trying to make the harp sing. The singing harp is a difficult instrument to play, even for someone like Mother who had had music lessons as a child, but after a few moments of amusement and mirth, Mother exclaimed, “Wait, I know that song! I know what she’s trying to play.”

She got up from her knitting, took the singing harp from the man, and plucked a few strings to show them, and the harp sang: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere . . .”

Of course, they all knew the song. They had all learned it as children. They sang the song along with the singing harp that Mother played and gazed in wonder at their female man.

But then the father said, “Maybe it was just coincidence. I know nothing about music, and sometimes when I touch the harp in passing, I will hear something that reminds me of a song I know. Give it back to her and see if she can do it again.”

So they gave her back the harp, and the female man set her fingers against the strings. They leaned toward her with expectation. She looked at them with innocent eyes. She had bright green eyes and fine red body hair. There were frecks of rusty-red color on her face and her shoulders and all across her chest, above and below her teats, and her arms were covered with rusty-red frecks, like rusty-red sleeves on a shirt. And that is why the boy named her
Red Sleeves
.

“Play it,” said the boy, petting her. “Play. Show them.”

She looked at him with her mouth open. There were a few tiny frecks above and below her lips too.

The mother urged, “Come on, girl.”

They waited and waited.

Leaning back in his comfortable chair and hiding his knowing smile behind the day’s paper again, the father let out a laugh. They heard him say: “Coincidence.”

“Play,” said the boy. “Come on, girl, play.”

“Maybe she’s hungry,” said the mother. “Maybe she’ll play if she eats something.” She got up and went into the kitchen.

“Play,” kissy-cooed the boy.

From behind his paper, the father said, “She’s a good fighter, though. If your mother wasn’t so set against it, I know someone, a professional, who could train her, then we could enter her in the big fights at the festival. Against what they’ve got, she would place at least third.”

The boy said, “First place! She can lick anybody’s stinky old man.” The boy kissy-cooed, “Come on, girl, play for me. Show them you can do it.”

They waited and waited.

The father lowered his paper and said to the boy, “Money is important, and she is but a man. If you earn money from making an animal do what it does naturally, how is that cruel? She is a good fighter.”

“The best!” cried the boy.

“Yes,” said the father, “and she should be allowed to fight! If we didn’t tell your mother, maybe we could sneak off to the—”

But the mother came back from the kitchen with a snack for the man. A big leafy stick of green vegetable. The man took the vegetable and devoured it.

“Play,” said the boy, rubbing the man’s stomach. “Show them you can play.”

The father chuckled smugly—a man of the poor does not play music. The mother, still hopeful, leaned in close for almost a minute and, when nothing happened, she went back to her chair next to the father where she had left her knitting.

And suddenly the singing harp began to sing: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere. Shall we call, shall we sing, of the joy everywhere . . .”

The boy clapped and laughed excitedly. “See? I told you!”

The mother said, “Whoever owned her before must have taught her to do it.”

The father nodded. “She knows all the words. She’s better than the trained man at the circus. She must be worth good money.”

“Whoever owned her before must have sat with her and trained her. Where did you get her?”

“She was a take-in. The kennel boss said her owners practically gave her away. But they were poor.”

“How old is she?”

“Her license says she’s fifteen.”

“In man years?”

“She was born five years ago, it says, so yes, she’s fifteen in man years.”

The mother got up and went over to the female man playing the singing harp and watched with fascination the nimble movements of the rusty-red-frecked fingers as the instrument sang, “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere, in the heart, in the heart, in the heart . . .”

The mother exclaimed, “That’s the way my music teacher taught me to play it! Repeat the
heart
part three times.” She rubbed the man’s head. “I don’t think she’s stolen. Sometimes the take-ins are stolen. Do you think she’s stolen?”

The father said, “She didn’t cost much.”