Every Boy Should Have a Man Page 5

  * * *

  “In the western forests, we hunted the mans of the forest to near extinction. They were not the most appetizing, being lean and tough-muscled, but they made the best pets, for their nature was loyal and they had the gift of speech and mimicry. They could work in the mines. They could be bred with other man-forms to produce singing mans, and musical mans, and art mans, and thinker mans, and seer mans for the blind. But the tygas began to disappear. Then the olyphant. Then the red-breasted sparrow. Then the spiny roos. The green grass became black sand. And you may venture a guess as to how we solved the crisis in the western forests. We apologized to great nature for our error and returned things to the way they used to be. We had tampered selfishly without considering the consequences of our actions. We look at great nature and we see chaos and disorder. But seeing is a way of not seeing. We think that we can go in and straighten out the randomness and bring order. Build a dam here. Build a bridge there. Remove this life-form in large numbers here because it looks prettier over there. Seeing is a way of not seeing. It is a paradox, but true: the randomness and seeming chaos of great nature brings vibrant life in all its forms; the order and straightening out that our kind imposes on great nature brings death and decay. It is a paradox, indeed: order is death; disorder is life. We are cursed to have to learn this lesson again and again. In order to solve the crisis in the forests, we brought back the mans of the forest. The green of grass is the skin of the earth. Man scratches the skin when it itches. Soon the tygas were back and then the olyphants, the red-breasted sparrows, and the spiny roos. The despoiled grass grew green again. The lesson here is take what you need from great nature, but don’t overtake. And don’t fix great nature—it isn’t broken.”

  “It isn’t broken,” repeated the boy who owned the female man.

  * * *

  That evening as the boy, his mother, and his father were eating their dinner, there came a knock at the door.

  The boy opened the door and there was his friend, the wealthy boy, but also his father.

  There were other people with them, some of them looking important in uniforms or professional clothes. There were documents in their hands to be signed, and his father signed them wordlessly. His mother sat at the table, sighing with her head in her hands.

  After the signing was done, one of the professionals who had come with the group asked, “Where is the infant man?”

  The boy’s father said, “She’s in the back with her mother. There is a proper kennel in the back.”

  The professional asked, “Do we need light?”

  The father shook his head. “No. There is light back there,” he said, then led them through the grand room to the back of the house.

  The wealthy boy walked side by side with the poor, upon whose shoulder his hand rested. “You can come over every day to see her. You can bring your man over every day to see her. So it will be like your new home, except that it’s at my house. You can visit anytime you want, I promise.”

  Solemnly did the boys exchange their secret handshake.

  When they got there, the door to her proper kennel would not open. The female man had propped something against it and they could hear the baby man crying inside.

  The professionals looked in through the window and found her crouched down low. A plank of wood she had torn from an inside wall was angled against the door. Against this she pressed to keep them from entering.

  One of the professionals nodded his head and another smiled. “Smart little female man,” one said admiringly.

  They leaned against the glass of the window, and when it broke, they reached inside and grabbed her. One of them strapped the muzzle over her face. The other picked up the baby and handed it to the wealthy boy’s father.

  His mother quietly wept, his father stood there with a hand over his mouth, and the boy restrained in his arms his muzzled female man, who clutched desperately for her child.

  The boy shushed her and gently comforted, “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  His mother quoted great scripture through her tears: “A mother gives life to her child. A mother gives her life for her child.”

  His father put his arms around his mother. “It’ll be okay, beloved. I promise.” He added gloomily, “She is but an animal.”

  His mother quoted scripture: “There is no sound in the world more sorrowful than a mother grieving her child.”

  When it was over, the boy stayed with his man in her proper kennel until she had ceased to weep. When she was finally asleep, he went back into the house and into his room where he sat by the window and stared out into the backyard. He fell asleep that night sitting up in bed by the window that looked out onto her proper kennel.

  And the candle in the window of her proper kennel no longer burned.

  * * *

  Before the boy went to school the next morning, he brought out her food, but she was despondent and would not eat.

  When he returned from school that afternoon and went straightway out to see her, she was asleep. He did not want to wake her, so he went back into the house.

  As they ate their meal that evening, his mother said, “I think it is so cruel to take her baby like that. In my head, I keep hearing the baby crying. The cry is so sweet. It makes me so sad.”

  His father said, “Well, she’s just an animal. She’ll probably forget all about it in a day or two. They’re not as attached to their children as we are.”

  His mother said, “The baby still cries in my head. I wish it would stop.”

  The boy jumped up from the table and ran out through the back door, shouting, “I hear the baby too, Mother, but not in my head!”

  His father hollered after him, “Where are you going?”

  They listened, but now there was silence in the back—there was not even the sound of the baby’s crying in the mother’s head.

  The boy came back inside holding the baby.

  His female man walked beside him.

  His mother gasped.

  The boy explained, “We should have fixed the glass window in her proper kennel, Father. She broke out and went and got her. When I looked in on her after school she was sleeping, but I thought I heard a baby. She had hidden her behind her body to keep her from my sight.”

  His father said, “Well, now, this is bad. She broke out of her proper kennel and broke into their house again. This is very bad.”

  “They’re coming again. You know that they are coming,” said his mother frantically. “How much more of this can I take?”

  “What are we going to do?” asked the boy.

  “There’s nothing we can do now but wait,” said his father.

  The female man had her hands out and the boy placed her baby gently into them. The baby made contented sounds as it received milk from its mother.

  There was still food on the table, but nobody was eating as they watched the female man nurse her baby and then rock her to sleep.

  There was still food on the table, and after a while the boy’s mother got up and put everything away.

  * * *

  It was three days before they came.

  This time they took both the infant and its mother.

  When they brought her back late that night, her eyes were red from crying and both her hands were bandaged.

  The professional who brought her back had papers for the father to sign and instructions on what was to happen next.

  “You will be billed for the broken lock on the house she burgled. You will be billed for the medicals of those she bit. She bit the father, the mother, and their boy. They are nice people. They don’t deserve this,” he lectured. “And this is the bill for her medicals.” He handed the father a folded card and a bottle. “This is the medication for her hands. Do not remove the bandages for two days. When you do remove them, rub this ointment generously on the place where her thumbs used to be. The doctor says that she should be back to normal in about a week. One thing is for sure—she won’t be stealing other
people’s property anymore.”

  They all heard the sound and looked up. The weeping female man was in the grand room plucking the strings of the small singing harp, but without thumbs she could not make it sing properly.

  The small singing harp sang, “Baabveee, baabveee, baabveee, baabveee.”

  It sounded vaguely like a song they knew. They could make out neither the tune nor the words, but it made them all very sad.

  She never touched the small singing harp again after that night.

  The wealthy boy continued to be the best friend of the poor boy, but his father would not let him keep his promise to have the female man come to visit and nurse her child.

  He explained, “My father says that she is dangerous. It would be bad to have her around the baby man. She might try to harm it.”

  After that the female man became deeply dejected, though she lived another four months—one full man year—before the boy found her unmoving and unbreathing on her bedding in her proper kennel.

  When they buried her in the backyard beside her proper kennel, the boy cried out, “Oh Red Sleeves, oh Red Sleeves.”

  The doctor said that she had died of a heart condition that was common among that breed.

  But the boy believed, and always would, that she had died of a heart that was simply and irreparably broken.

  * * *

  “We are the rulers of this earth, which the lord great creator did give us to rule. On earth there is none greater than we. That which we envision we can build. That which we desire we can have. All that we desire we can have. But should we have it all since we can have it all? Should we take it all? And if we take it all, then what becomes of it? And after it is gone, and there is no more, what becomes of us? No creature on earth can say us nay. We as wise stewards of the earth are the only creatures that can say us nay. We must learn to say us nay,” spake the sacred speaker.

  And the boy lowered his head to hide the wetness in his eyes.

  4

  His Musical Man

  After the female man died, the wealthy boy told the poor, “The baby man is yours. You can come to my house every day and watch them feed her.”

  And the poor boy did visit every day, for now he had no man of his own to love and his father possessed no discretionary money to purchase another.

  At the wealthy boy’s house, the poor boy was treated with a respectful sadness, even by the wealthy boy’s father, who regretted originating the cruel though legal actions that had led to the unfortunate ending. Each time the poor boy visited, the father sent him home with a gift of food or silver for his parents, which the poor boy always accepted with discomfort and reluctance.

  But the poor boy was not there for the generosity of the wealthy father nor even the friendship of the wealthy son. He was there for the infant baby man of his female man.

  Each day she came to look more and more like her mother, with the red frecks on her face and arms growing rustier, and the red of her hair becoming more like fire.

  The man’s year is three times faster than the regular year, so at the end of the first year the poor boy had watched the baby man go from cradler to toddler and utter her first words. She was a man that talked, as had been her lidless-eyed father before her.

  In the second year, the poor boy watched her grow from toddler into precocious childhood as she began early to display her natural gifts.

  In his grand room, the wealthy boy’s father had many instruments of music, enough for an entire orchestra, and the child man reached for the tinny drums and the colored flute and both the small and large singing harps, each of which she did play, for she was a musical man, as had been her mother before her.

  The music she played was always bright and cheerful.

  In her fourth year, when she was a budding prepubescent of twelve in man years, the child female man did become more melancholy, as did her music, as she went into heat and began to attract the attention of the man mans in the wealthy house.

  The wealthy boy, who was twelve in regular years, did not want her to be fixed as his father had threatened. He told his friend, who was also twelve, “My father wants to have her fixed, but I have a plan. Why don’t you take her? You still have the proper kennel your father built for her mother, don’t you?”

  The poor boy lit up. “That’s a great idea!”

  He exchanged the secret handshake with his friend and embraced him.

  * * *

  When the poor boy’s father came home, he found his son pounding nails into the roof of the proper kennel in the backyard.

  “I’m fixing it up. I’m getting a new female man,” the boy explained.

  His father’s brows and spirit lifted. “The one with the red frecks? The one who is the daughter of your old female man?”

  The hammering boy nodded.

  He heard the muttered words beneath his father’s breath: “It’s a good idea, I suppose. But how are we going to pay for it?”

  The boy stopped hammering nails. “It’s not that much money—she’s not a baby anymore and she’s housebroken domesticated. It won’t cost much. Anyway, there is the money I earn down at the mill.”

  The father nodded. Down at the mill. The boy worked with him as a loader for a few hours every day after school. The boy was a hard worker, not like some of the other goof-off boys who worked at the mill part-time. The father was proud of his son; every father should have a boy like him.

  He said to him, “Very good, but if you ever run short, come to me. Together we will find a way.”

  The boy went back to pounding nails and the father leaned against the fence and said, “It is not true when your mother tells you that I do not like mans. I like them just fine, but when I was growing up, my mother and I lived on the edge of the wilderness in a dwelling on the farm of a friend of my dead father. Our living was hard because we had very little money. It was not a farm with animals, but with grain. I was a small boy and lonely because there was nothing to do and no one to play with. Yes, the farmer had two dogs, but they were work dogs and not very good for companionship. One day I went to the edge of the wilderness and I spotted a little man man in the long grass. He was feral, but I was a boy and lonely, so I coaxed him with a gentle voice and the few grains in my hand that were to be my lunch. Eventually he came out and took the grain. He was a short, round man with thick fingers, pale skin, and a bad smell. He was feral, to be sure, but he allowed me to pet him as he ate the grains. And I petted him until he finished the grains, and then he darted back into the long grass and disappeared from my sight.”

  As the boy labored and the father told his story, the father remembered their female man with a miserable sadness that the boy heard in his voice. The boy on the roof of the proper kennel looked down at the father. The father with the pain in his heart looked up at his boy. Father and son looked at each other, and the boy asked for a plank of wood. The father reached for one in the stack beside the proper kennel and passed it up to his boy, who returned to his mallet but did not resume his work. He listened to the father tell his story.

  “The next day, I took my lunch to the long grass at the edge of the wilderness and my little friend appeared and ate the grains from my hand. I talked to him about whatever a boy of that age who is lonely talks about to a man and he seemed genuinely interested, for he remained quietly in place though he had finished eating and there were no more grains. So he was my friend and I went to visit with him every day. I grew very fond of him and I called him Fat One. One day when I got there, Fat One had brought with him another man. This man was taller than Fat One and with a fatter stomach, but with the same pale skin and a similar oval shaping of the eyes. I recoiled when I saw him, for his face made me wonder if he were dangerous. He had ugly bruises and gashes on his face as though he had been clawed by a predator or maybe even another man. I called him Ugly One and I fed him too, though I did not like him as much because of his damaged appearance and because he always rushed to grab the grains from my hand before
I could give some to my little friend Fat One. One day when I went to the wilderness, Ugly One was there alone and he rushed to snatch the grains from my hand. Where was Fat One? Where was my little friend? While Ugly One ate his fill of the grains, I went into the edge of the wilderness searching for Fat One. I only had to walk a few hla-cubits before I found him lying on the ground, bleeding from a wound in his head. I was puzzled. What happened? Seconds later, my bewilderment was solved when Ugly One, having finished his meal, ran to Fat One and hit his head with a sizeable rock and began to dance and laugh. Like all boys, I had been warned never to trouble a feral man because they bite and they have diseases, but I became angry and I lifted Ugly One by the neck and slapped his face with my hand, crying, Don’t do that! Don’t do that! When I dropped him, he screeched miserably and ran off into the wilderness, never to be seen by my eyes again. Well, now I had to do something. I could not leave Fat One lying helpless on the wilderness floor. What if Ugly One returned to finish the job? What if some other predator found him? The truth was that I had been hoping ever since I’d found Fat One that my mother would allow me to keep him as a pet. So I picked him up and took him home, where I explained all that had happened to my mother. She nodded her head as I spoke, and then she took him from me, washed and scented him so that the bad smell went away, and then she laid out some sheets for bedding and placed him upon them. That night I slept on the bedding with my little man man Fat One beside me. In the morning when I awoke, he was doing much better and we played together all day. The friend of my father who owned the farm came to visit and he and my mother looked on as we played. And the friend of my dead father said, The man cannot stay in the house. He will have to stay out in the yard. My mother had a queer, sad look on her face, and she said to me somberly, He will be safe in the yard. Then she commanded me to take a nap and I did, and when I awoke from the nap, it was time for supper. I ran to the window to see my man in the yard, but could not. Well, it was a big yard. I would go out after supper and we would continue our play. So I ate my meat soup with grains that was set before me and thought nothing more of it. Afterward I ran back to the door, and my mother stopped me. Where are you going? she asked. To play with my man, said I. And my mother had tears in her eyes as she explained what had been done. The friend of my dead father had a great appetite for man, but they were scarce and dangerously feral in that part of the earth and thus expensively sold by the trappers and hunters. But a feral man made a pet of by a boy dwelling on his property? Indeed, it was his property, as was every beast living on it. He considered the gift of the quarter portion of Fat One that he had given us to make our soup quite a grand gesture on his part. My mother warned me that if I hoped to avoid sadness, I was never to bring home another man until our situation was improved or until the friend of my dead father had made of her a wife. The warning was unnecessary, for my stomach had already been forever turned.”