Every Boy Should Have a Man

by Preston L. Allen

  The father, having finished his story, sighed and went into the house.

  The boy, disturbed but undeterred by his father’s story, hefted his mallet and resumed his hammering of nails.

  * * *

  When the boy arrived at his wealthy friend’s house, only the wealthy father was at home and he bid him come in. They passed through the great house and to the back where the proper kennels were set up. Her kennel door was already open, and the boy reached inside and she came to him. She was pretty with her red hair in bright green hair cloths and her loins covered by a green pouch.

  As he leashed her, he said, “You’re going to live with me now.”

  She answered, “Yes, they told me.”

  The look on her face was not exactly joy, and he said to her, “You don’t want to come live with me? You don’t like me?”

  “I like you very much. I guess it will be okay.”

  The boy glanced up at the wealthy father, who shrugged, and then he said to the little female man, “I thought you liked me.”

  “I like you just fine.”

  “But . . .”

  “But that place is where my mother died.”

  “I liked your mother very much,” he said.

  “Yes, they told me. But you’re very poor. Will I be able to eat every day?”

  The poor boy flinched.

  The wealthy boy’s father smiled.

  “Yes,” the poor boy insisted, “we have food enough for you,” though he knew there would not always be food enough for themselves. “You will eat every day. I am working at the mill to make sure that you are well fed. You will eat better than we do. Does that answer all your questions, little man?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “What now?”

  “Instruments.”

  “We have a small singing harp.”

  He saw the look on her face. One small singing harp?

  He said, “It’s the one your mother used to play . . . and I will work to purchase new instruments for you. In time you will come to own every instrument that exists. I promise.”

  It was a promise they all knew he could not keep, so the wealthy boy’s father added, “And what he does not own, he is free to borrow from me.”

  She nodded at that, but the look on her face . . .

  “What now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What? Tell me,” the poor boy said.

  The red-haired female man hid her face in her hands.

  “What?” he said. “What?”

  She blushed. “Well, it’s just that I have someone here that I like. Will I be able to see him from time to time?”

  “No!” said the boy.

  The wealthy father shook his head. “No man mans for you. That’s why we’re sending you away. We’re sending you away to keep you out of trouble. If we don’t send you away, then we are going to have you fixed.”

  Now she was sobbing in big gulps. The poor boy rubbed her head and she peered at him through her tears. “What does that mean? Fixed? I’m not broken, am I?”

  The wealthy father called the poor boy over and said to him, “I have some things for you. Some food for her. Some cloths for her hair. A few leashes. And some things for your parents.”

  The poor boy shook his head. “I’ll take the things for her and the food for her, but not the silver. You have already given enough.”

  “The poor do not understand the heavy burden of silver,” the wealthy boy’s father said. “I am ashamed of what I put you through. You’re a nice boy, my son’s best friend, and your parents are good people. I was unkind and I acted selfishly. Please take this silver from me and give it to your parents.”

  And the poor boy took the silver for his parents.

  * * *

  When he got her home, his new female man seemed reluctant to go out to her proper kennel. Instead, she stayed in the house, exploring the rooms. When she finished exploring, she picked up the small singing harp and made it sing: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere . . .”

  The boy was amazed. “That song, your mother used to play that song.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “But how did she tell you? She’s dead.”

  “Mother is she who gives all to her child. She’s ever with me, telling me things.”

  At first, the boy believed her words and pondered their significance. Then it came to him that he was talking to a man. Sometimes they spoke sense, but more often than not they spoke nonsense that had the appearance of being sense. The boy knew that nothing that is dead can still be with us. But he smiled and decided to play along with her.

  “What sort of things does she tell you?”

  “She tells me that you are very nice and she loved you very much. You took very good care of her. You stood by her side in her trouble.”

  “Hmmm. Very nice. What else does she tell you?”

  “That you are correct. She died of a great sadness in her heart.”

  The boy was no longer comfortable playing this game. He was starting to have a strange feeling. “How do you know that?” he demanded.

  “She told me.”

  “But she is dead.”

  “She is with me now at this moment. I am filled with her.”

  He looked at her, and her green eyes had strangely darkened.

  “She says that it was cruel of them to take her infant away. She was a mother, but not a mother. It was cruel of them to remove her thumbs. She had hands, but no hands. She could no longer make the small singing harp sing her heart’s pain. She wept every night until the night she died.”

  “This is dreadful,” said the boy.

  “Truth is often dreadful,” said his man.

  The boy was weeping. “Does she tell you any good things?”

  “She tells me good things, but those good things are for me alone, and not to be shared.”

  “Okay.” He sniffed back tears.

  “But she does not want you to weep.”

  “I can’t help it. I miss her. I’m sorry how she died. I wish I could bring her back and save her life.”

  “Wait, I do have a good thing that I can tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “She touched the heart of the father of the wealthy boy. He is afraid of me. He is afraid of you. That’s why he insists that you take his silver.”

  “Really?”

  “She commands him to do it. He is afraid that she will kill him. But she can’t do that. She is dead. It doesn’t work that way. There is no need to fear the dead.”

  “That’s very funny,” the boy said, and he laughed a small laugh.

  She added, “I want those instruments in his house. I want every instrument in his house. He is afraid and he will give them to you if you are patient and ask for them one at a time.”

  “Okay,” said the boy, laughing. “We will take all of his instruments. Hahaha. One at a time.”

  His female man laughed with him, and then she said, “I will tell you a good thing that my mother told for me alone and not to be shared. But she trusts you. I trust you. So I will share it with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “This world will die one day.”

  “What does that mean? Is that true?” He peered into her green eyes, which were now as dark as a forest blackened by fire.

  “This world will die one day and all of this shall pass away. But I will not die here. I will die somewhere else.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I do not know,” the female man said, “but it is what my mother told me and she does not lie.”

  And then she finished her song: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere. Shall we call, shall we sing, of the joy everywhere? Come, my friends, let us sing, of the joy everywhere. There is joy, there is joy, there is joy everywhere.”

  * * *

  And the day became evening, and his parents were at home, an
d they were happy to have a musical man in the house again. She made the harp sing for them as they ate their meal in happiness, and when evening became night, she slept under the boy’s bed.

  This went on for many weeks.

  When the boy asked her if she wouldn’t be more comfortable sleeping outside in her proper kennel, she told him, “I am afraid. Bad things happen to mans in proper kennels in this neighborhood. From what I see, some of them are desperate in this neighborhood. They are so poor and so hungry. To you I am a man, but what do you think I look like to them? Food. I could be stolen and eaten. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  “No,” the boy told her. “That would be dreadful.”

  “Yes it would be,” she said.

  And they laughed together.

  * * *

  In four years, when the boy turned sixteen, his red-haired female man was eight in regular years but twenty-four in man years and in outward appearance. And in that year, the boy found a girl who was about his age and in the natural course of things he began to spend less time with his female man.

  He would get up in the morning and feed her, then rush off to school, then after school he would work his hours at the mill, then he would come home and feed her, then don his finest garments and venture out with the girl with whom he was in love.

  There were smiles all around the house, but there was a strain too.

  One evening as he dressed, his twenty-four-year-old man said, “You know, I created a new song for you. Would you like to hear it?”

  He said, “That sounds like a great idea. When I get back, you’ll play it for me.”

  “Going out again?” said she.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” said he.

  He was prepared for a fight.

  This time she surprised him by saying: “Have fun.”

  When he got back that night, he was too worn out, he told her, to listen to the song and he fell asleep right away. She played the new song to an audience of herself, then folded herself under his bed and went to sleep.

  In the morning when they awoke, she asked him if he would like to hear the song she had created for him.

  He said, “Sure. Play it.”

  She sat down with the small singing harp in her lap and began to make it sing, but there was a noise from beyond the room. Someone was at the door. When they opened the door, it was the girl with whom he was in love.

  She said, “I came by to walk with you to school. Hey, that’s a man! She’s a cute one. Is that a singing instrument thing she’s got? I always wanted a musical man, but, you know, my father could never afford one. All we ever had growing up were regular old run-of-the- mill mans. How did you guys get so wealthy?”

  “We were blessed,” the boy said. “She can talk too.”

  “Well,” the girl said, “she must cost a lot. Tell her to say something. I love the way they talk. I see them all the time at the festival and the circus. Tell her to say something funny.”

  The boy looked down at his man, and she grumbled, “Okay, so now I’m a circus performer.”

  The girl looked at the boy, then back at the man, then back at the boy. “Is that it? Is that all she can say?”

  “She can say more than that, can’t you, girl?” he said, winking at his female man.

  She scolded, “Hurry on your way to school, little children, before you are late.”

  The girl said, “That is soooooo cute! I love the way they talk. Can I bring my little brother over to play with her?”

  The boy said, “Well, I’ll have to ask my parents.”

  His female man quipped, “Well, maybe you should ask me. The answer is no. Goodbye now. Have fun at school, children.”

  The girl said, “That is soooooo cute! You are soooooo lucky to have her. She must be worth a lot of money.”

  The boy, sensing the shortening temper of his female man, who was known to bite on occasion, nudged his girl toward the door and they left for school.

  His female man was named Red Locks because of the red hair on her head, but often the boy believed they should have named her Red Mouth because of the sassiness with which she sometimes spoke to him—and the painful man bites she sometimes gave him.

  * * *

  When the boy came home he fed his man, and the harp was in her hand as he dressed to go out again. He promised her, “Tonight when I come home, you can play the song you created for me as many times as you like. I will listen.”

  “Will you?”

  “I promise.”

  “Will you?” said she who had been disappointed so many times before.

  “I promise, I promise, I promise,” said he who had disappointed.

  “Okay, I’ll try to wait up. If I’m asleep, wake me. An artist must have her sleep, you know?” She batted her eyes at him.

  He petted her head. “You’re still my favorite girl, okay?”

  That made her happy and she waited up well into the night for him, but when the hours grew too long for her determined but limited constitution, she fell asleep.

  She awoke with the next day’s sun and pouted as he dressed for school. “You did not wake me last night as I told you to.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “Pinhead!” she called him.

  “Who is the man and who is the master!” he fired back.

  She shook her head from side to side and clucked her tongue with sadness as she set the small singing harp on her lap and played the song he hadn’t asked her to play: “The way you treat me, the way you treat me, the way you treat me, my heart is unclear. The way you treat me, the way you treat me, the way you treat me, my heart is soooooo unclear.”

  At the completion of her song, he sat down on the ground beside her. “That is beautiful,” he told her because he mistook the melancholy in the tune for cheer and he hadn’t really been listening to the words. “You are the best musical man in the whole wide world.”

  She smirked.

  “The best,” he said with a wink.

  She said, “I have to be honest with you. I don’t like your girl and neither does Mother.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mother says that she is no good for you.”

  “What makes her say that?”

  “She is hungry. She thinks you can feed her.”

  “Oh, I see. But your mother is wrong this time. I am a poor boy. I can’t feed anyone. She is with me because she loves me. She is beautiful. Don’t you think she is beautiful?”

  “This girl is beautiful like a poisonous flower. Her beauty is there to draw you to the poison.”

  He shook with laughter. “Oh, but wait. This is my man and my dead man talking to me. Hahaha. What a pinhead I am! For a moment there, I was almost listening to you. I have to go to school now. Goodbye and thanks for the lovely song.”

  He reached to pet her head and she grabbed his finger and bit it.

  “Ouch!” he cried out. “Sneaky man!”

  “Listen to me!” she screamed.

  “You bit me! I should muzzle you!”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You will do no such thing, you big oaf! How dare you threaten to put the muzzle on me. Ask her about her brother! Mother said to ask her about her bad little brother!”

  Then, with violent possession of the small singing harp, she dove angrily under the bed.

  And he kissed his finger where she had bitten it and left for school, an odd little smile on his face.

  * * *

  After school the boy went to the mill to work his hours.

  After the mill he came home and ate a meal with his parents while his musical man played—the tinny drums this time. Over the years they had acquired most of the orchestral instruments in the wealthy boy’s father’s house because of his fear. But she had never played the drums at mealtime before.

  She drummed to make you want to shake your hips.

  His father looked up from his bowl. “She’s drumming tonight. It’s nice, though.”
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br />   His mother said, “She’s very talented.”

  The father said to the boy, who now wore no smile on his face, “You and your girl aren’t going out tonight?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “What happened?” his mother asked.

  The boy shook his head. “At school, we had . . . sort of a fight.”

  “Well, that happens. That’s nothing to worry about. That’s nothing at all,” his mother said. “When your father and I were young—”

  “Leave him be. Let him eat,” said his father.

  And his female man drummed to make you want to shake your hips.

  In his bedroom that night, he told his man, “She says her brother, her little brother, has been recently released from incarceration. He is a thief. The authorities have him on their list. But that doesn’t mean you are right. He may be bad, but she is my girl. She wouldn’t do a thing like that to me.”