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.”
“Maybe they were trying to get rid of her because she was stolen,” suggested the mother. “Only the wealthy can afford a musical man.”
The father folded the paper in his lap. “Maybe they didn’t know she was musical. Maybe that’s why they sold her so cheap. They didn’t know. Her license looks real. It’s not easy to forge a man license, is it?”
They both looked at the man playing the singing harp and at the boy who was staring up at them with worried eyes. The mother inhaled a deep breath. “Well, she may be stolen. What are we going to do?”
The father got up and patted the boy on the head. “She’s ours now, and we’re going to keep it like that. We just won’t tell anybody that she is a musical man.”
The boy smiled, the mother let out a relieved breath, and the father squatted on the ground with his family and listened enraptured as the female man made the small singing harp sing. The father patted the man’s head and mused, “She must be worth some good money.”
The female man knew ten songs that they remembered from their early childhood, and she played them one after the other, and they were all very happy.
* * *
When the boy would take his man out for a walk, he would try to follow his mother’s wishes and avoid the field where the boys from wealthy families walked their mans, but sometimes the temptation was too great.
His man was the best fighter and the wealthy boys, showing off their expensive talking mans in their fabulous hair cloths and fancy loin pouches, needed to be taught a lesson that only the biggest, bravest, strongest, most ferocious man in the whole wide world could teach.
The rules were simple. No leashes. No biting. No gang-ups.
The boy, like a proud but bored spectator who has seen it all before, lay on his side with his head propped up on an elbow as the action proceeded.
His female man had already beaten six of them in a row, and this last one was about to cry surrender. She had this last one by the neck. She could snap his neck easily if she wanted, but she was content to hold his neck under one arm and punch him in the face with her free hand. The boy knew he should head back home before his mother began to worry, but he hated to call a fight in the middle, especially a slaughter like this.
He would make up an excuse to tell his mother.
While all around him the wealthy boys shouted encouragement to the doomed combatant, the poor boy arose from his place on the ground, stretched, yawned theatrically, and smirked. Nobody ever hooted and cawed for his man. Even though she was the best, she was a man of the poor. But this would teach them a lesson.
Six in a row and soon to be seven.
His man was punching the face of the man of the wealthy boy. The face of the wealthy boy’s man was puffy and red. The female man landed two more hard blows, and the face of the wealthy boy’s man dripped tears now as well as blood.
That was enough. The wealthy boy tapped the poor boy on the shoulder. “We surrender.”
The poor boy said, “No. He has to say it.”
The female man landed another hard blow and two teeth jumped from the mouth of the wealthy boy’s man.
“But maybe he can’t talk,” said the wealthy boy to the poor. “He gets frozen when he’s scared and he can’t talk! We surrender!”
The poor boy snorted. “All right, girl. Let him up.”
She released the wealthy boy’s man and he fell on his face crying out, “Thank you for sparing my life.”
As his victorious female man came running over to him, the poor boy turned to the wealthy boy and laughed. “See? He can talk. He’s not frozen at all.”
The wealthy boy, who was bigger than the poor boy, stepped toward him. “You think that’s funny?”
The rest of them balled their fists and stepped toward the poor boy too.
The poor boy’s female man showed her teeth and hissed at them dangerously, and they stepped back.
The poor boy laughed. “Watch out. She gets angry when people I don’t like get too near.”
The wealthy boys and their beaten mans took another step back. As the poor boy and his female man departed for home, they heard bad names being shouted at them.
Bully!
Poor boy!
Cheater, cheater!
Pinhead!
Pinhead oaf!
The boy turned his head to show them the big smile on his face and to pink his tongue at them, but really it made him sad to be called such things. He was not a bully or a cheater—his man was just better than everybody else’s. And he couldn’t help it if his parents were poor. They were still the greatest parents in the whole wide world.
He ran so that he could get away from the things they were shouting. He ran until he heard a different sound, which was music.
At the far end of the field, only minutes away from his neighborhood and home, there was another boy—a wealthy boy—sitting on the grass while his mans, three of them, sang to him.
Each man had a different appearance, so the poor boy guessed that they were not from the same litter. The first man was tall and brown with hair that grew in a circle around his head, the second was shorter with a very round belly and his skin was pale, and the third was short and round and pale like the second, but his brown eyes were large and nearly lidless. All three of them wore blue cloths in their hair and matching blue loin pouches. They were three little man mans in blue.
The three mans were singing in a way that was very pleasing to the ear. It was like the trained mans he had once seen at a circus, the way they sang. One voice was high-pitched, another was low, and the last was somewhere in between. Their song was very beautiful.
The wealthy boy did not seem arrogant or mean, so the poor boy sat down on the grass next to him and listened to the beautiful song of the singing mans in blue.
His female man seemed quite affected by the music; her eyes were closed as she listened, and her hips moved back and forth. The boy shouted a command, and she sat, but even while sitting, her hips continued to move.
The wealthy boy smiled at the female man. “She likes it. Maybe she is in heat.”
The poor boy said, “What is in heat?”
“I’m not sure,” the wealthy boy said, “but I used to have a female man who acted that way when they sang, and my parents said she was in heat. And then they had her fixed.”
“What is fixed?”
“I don’t know,” laughed the wealthy boy. “But after she came back, she cried every time they sang. I think it has something to do with babies.”
“Babies?”
The wealthy boy pointed to her moving hips. “She’s a female m
an. She can have baby mans.”
The poor boy hadn’t thought of that, but he liked the idea.
“She’s the best fighter in the whole world. She’ll have lots of fighting baby mans.”
The wealthy boy nodded. “I saw her fight. She’s very good.”
The poor boy nodded. “She’s the best in the world.”
“Is she going to fight at the circus?”
“My father wants her to, but my mother says no.”
“She should fight. She’s good. She would win.”
“She beat seven in a row today. She beat them bloody. She knocked their teeth out. But my mother says it is cruel.”
The wealthy boy grinned. “Yes, I saw it.”
“Would you like her to fight one of your mans?” the poor boy offered.
The singing mans had stopped singing for some time now, and two of them were sitting on the grass listening as the boys talked.
The wealthy boy shook his head. “No, no, no, these are not fighting mans. These mans are very delicate. The circus pays us to have them sing.”
The poor boy laughed and said, “Coward.” But he said it in a way that was friendly and not mean.
“My sensitive and delicate little mans would be eaten alive if they tried to fight yours,” laughed the wealthy boy.
“She would eat them for lunch,” laughed the poor boy.
“I didn’t know mans were cannibals.” The wealthy boy snorted with mirth.
“She only eats sensitive and delicate singing mans dressed in blue,” kidded the poor boy. Then he said, “Where is your other man? Isn’t one of your mans missing?”
The poor boy was right. The one with the lidless eyes was missing.
And the wealthy boy asked the poor, “Where is your man?”
The poor boy turned to the empty space beside him. His female man was gone.
* * *
Every Boy Should Have a Man Page 2
