Every Boy Should Have a Man

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 man. 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.

A short distance away, concealed by the rise of a low hill, their two missing mans were found, but entangled in such a way as the poor boy had never seen. The pale-skinned man in blue with the nearly lidless eyes was riding the back of his female man, who was emitting a rhythmic, shushy breath through her mouth.

The poor boy asked, “What are they doing?”

“I don’t know,” replied the wealthy boy, “but I don’t like it. I think she’s hurting him.”

“But he’s on top.”

They watched for a few more seconds until the man with the lidless eyes contorted and began to groan. The female man closed her eyes and yelped, burying her face in the grass.

The two boys had seen enough. They shouted harsh commands and spanked their mans, separating them.

Then they replaced their loin pouches, said goodbye to each other, and went each to his own home.

That evening, the boy was wroth with his female man.

When she came to him with big, apologetic eyes, he shook his head. When she came to him and rested her head on his chest the way she did when she wanted to be petted, he pushed her away.

When she brought the small singing harp into his room, he said, “Okay, girl, you want to be friends again? Okay. Good girl.”

And in the boy’s bedroom his female man played the small singing harp and made it sing. He did not know why, but she was playing the same song over and over. He did not recognize the tune, though it was beautiful and vaguely familiar.

Evening became night, and eventually the boy fell asleep.

It was only the next day, as he was on his way to school, that the boy realized the song that she had been playing was the song he had heard the three mans in blue singing earlier that day at the field.

She began to change after that, but the boy did not notice until a month later.

Her diet had shifted. She was eating more often — she was stealing their food. She would even steal a piece of dried meat from the cupboard once in a while, which was cannibalism. She was gaining weight.

He took her to the field on a day when there was no school, and she lost two fights in a row.

He found a stick and spanked her with it to make her fiercer. He made her growl and show her teeth. He sent her into two more fights and she lost them both. Four in a row. That had never happened before.

“Maybe you’re sick,” he told her as he walked home holding her hand. Her eye bruised, her nose leaking blood, she was too exhausted to flinch when they were pelted with pebbles and provoked with jibes and hoo-haws by the wealthy boys who had triumphed at last over the poor boy and his mighty champion.

As tears spilled from her emerald eyes, the boy promised her, “You’re sick, but when you feel better we’ll be back. We’ll teach those guys a lesson.”

Yet her tears kept falling. He had never seen her like this.

He gave her what he thought was ample time to heal — a week — and he took her to fight again. But she had lost all interest in fighting and refused to do it.

He spanked her with the stick to make her fiercer, he even poked her with the stick, but she let the other mans pummel and scratch her flesh until she was shedding blood along with her tears. She would not lift a hand to her own defense. Each time the boy was forced to stop it by crying surrender. It was another bad day at the fights. She lost three in a row that day.

The wealthy boys cackled with glee and pinked their tongues rudely as the poor boy walked his badly beaten fighting man home in a hail of pebbles and hoo-haws.

And she was playing the small singing harp every evening in his room — the same song the three singing mans in blue had sung that day at the field.

When he went into the backyard to feed her one morning before school, she was not there.

He went to her sleeping tent under her favorite tree, and she was not there. He went back into the house to look for her because on evenings when it was cold, she would come inside and sleep under his bed or under the couch in the grand room near the fire. He looked everywhere in the house, and she was not there.

He said to himself, Now, I hope she didn’t jump the fence again.

Puzzled, he went back outside, and she was in her tent as if she’d been there all along.

She was grateful for her food, which she devoured, and then she held out her bowl to him for more. He replenished her bowl with vegetables and grain, and as he watched her eat, he said, “I see you’re very hungry. I guess you jumped the fence to go look for food. Don’t do that. The authorities will pick you up. You’ll get in trouble. If you’re hungry, come into the house and wake me. Okay?”

To make her understand, he knocked on the wooden fence that ran the perimeter of their backyard and shook his head.

“Don’t go over the fence,” he repeated. “Obey me. Obey me.”

The next morning when he went to feed her before school, he caught her climbing down the fence and ducking into her tent. She had just returned from wherever it was she roamed at night.

He spanked her and scolded her harshly. When he set out her food, she still had tears in her eyes, but he was at the end of his patience.

“You’re going to get us in trouble! Don’t force me to tie you up or lock you in the house!” He pounded the wooden fence. “Don’t go over the fence! I know you understand! Obey me! Obey me!”

She stared at him blankly, then went back to her food.

He went into the house and came back out with an extra bowl of food and set it beside the first. “Now give me a hug,” he said to her.

He held open his arms and she came for her hug. He lifted her for her hug. She is getting so heavy, he thought.

“You’re my best friend in the whole world, you know?” He kissed her cheek, petted her head, and set her back on the ground.

She looked at him with perfect understanding.

She went back to her food and he left for school.

When the boy got home from school that day, his mother had left a note: Meet me at the kennel.

He checked the backyard. His female man was gone. He threw down his school sack and ran to the kennel.

They had put his female man in a large cage with several other mans.

She was not the only female, but she was the biggest of the dozen or so mans in there, most of whom were screaming wildly at the top of their lungs or running around in circles like mad mans.

One man, a pale talking one with dark sun spots burned into his cheeks, was proclaiming over and over, “I didn’t do it. I would never ever do it. Please believe me.”

His female man ran to the front of the cage as soon as she saw the boy and he reached through the bars and petted her on the head. “It’s going to be okay, girl. Don’t worry. Mother and I will get you out of here.”

The boy turned to watch his mother, who stood a few paces away talking to the boss of the kennel.

The kennel boss had a long oval face and eyes that were set far apart. He was munching a green leafy vegetable as he talked to the boy’s mother. The mother was doing a lot of head shaking as her mouth opened and closed. The kennel boss inhaled another large green leaf into his mouth and crunched it between large, crooked teeth.

“It’s out of my hands,” he explained to the mother. “When the man becomes a danger to society, then the law has to step in.”

“I assure you,” said the mother, “this is all a misunderstanding. She is the most gentle of creatures. She is well mannered and well trained. She is a danger to no one. Mans get out of their yards all the time and wander. It is their nature. This is no reason for them to be destroyed.”

The boy grabbed his female man’s hand through the bars of the cage when he heard that. Destroyed.

The leaf-munching kennel boss raised a finger. “I never spoke that word. I only said that putting her down is one of the options, and not even the most desirable or most likely of options. It all depends on the injured party — whether or not they want to pursue it. But the charges are serious. A home was broken into. A child was bitten.”

The boy reached his arms into the cage and hugged his man. A child was bitten.

“You see,” said the mother, “it’s words like that that scare me. We love our man, and I assure you that she is incapable of doing the things you claim she has done.”

The kennel boss shoved the entire vegetable into his mouth and it made a crunching sound. “I simply read the record to you, ma’am.”

“But she is incapable of — ”

“Ma’am, I know all the old sayings — Train your man to be playful with children, but cross with thieves. There is no creature more loyal than a man. A happy man is a well-fed man, but a cross man keeps the home free of sneak thieves. Every boy should have a man. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you are like so many owners of mans. You are incapable of seeing him for what he is. Man is a predator, first and foremost. He is but good at two things: hunting and making baby mans. He is a predator. He is a carnivore. That’s right. He is no different from us. And don’t look down at me because I do this job, ma’am — I have degrees in animal science. Times are hard, so I must work here, but I am no pinheaded oaf. I have seen the studies. We keep mans from eating meat because we fear what they’ll do if they get a taste for it. Remember, ma’am, we are meat too. I know some of them have interesting talents and they make good pets, but truth be told they are wild beasts and should be left to roam the forests for us to hunt. It wasn’t too long ago that they were our top food source. You don’t look wealthy — I bet you eat your fill of man, right? The meat is plentiful, inexpensive, and tasty. I love to eat man, though I don’t want man to eat me or my children. But the wealthy — oh, they want us to protect man, to bring him into our homes as pets, to hug him. Oh, they say that it is the great creator’s will that we give up eating meat altogether, they say it is the great creator’s will that we all turn vegetarian. Vegetables are nice — I like vegetables just fine. But man is meat and meat is good to eat,” he said with a loud crunch. “Like my mother used to tell me, Stop playing with your food and eat him.” The kennel boss grinned.

The mother said, “You are a stupid oaf.”

“We’ll see who is the stupid oaf when the injured party gets here,” came the muttered retort.

The kennel boss picked up a brass cup and slurped whatever liquid was in it and gargled it to help suck free the strands of green from the vegetable that had gotten stuck in his ugly teeth. The mother turned away in disgust.

“Don’t worry,” the boy comforted his man, “Mother and I will free you.”

The boy hugged his female man through the bars, and the frantic little man man proclaiming his innocence ran over to them and grabbed one of the boy’s hands and kissed it. “I didn’t do it, kind sir. They have the wrong man. You and Mother must free me too. You must. You must.”

Just then the kennel boss came over and rattled the cage noisily with the brass cup, and when the frantic man didn’t back away from the bars, the kennel boss reached in and slammed the cup against his head.

Pock!

The frantic man released the boy’s hand and retreated to the safety of the center of the cage, holding his head and crying, “It is a lie. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

The kennel boss said to the boy, “Take your hands out of the cage, boy. They may look pretty, but some of these mans will snap your fingers off.” He pointed to the frantic man proclaiming his innocence in the center of the cage. “That one there maimed his master, a boy about your age. Chewed two of his fingers clean off. Don’t let him fool you. His kind has a reputation for turning on you. Now scoot. Get away from that cage.”

The boy ran to his mother, who put her arms around him. “It’ll be okay.”

Tears rolled out of the boy’s eyes. “She didn’t do it, Mother.”

The mother kissed him on the head and assured, “All will be well once the injured party gets here.”

In walked a wealthy boy wearing expensive clothes and his equally well-dressed father.

As he walked past the mother, the kennel boss sneered, “At last, they’re here. The injured party.”

The wealthy boy and his father lingered at the display cages at the front of the kennel, pointing at this or that man with sighs and hoo-hahs of amazement at the sheer beauty and diversity of them. And indeed, they were beautiful and diverse. In color, they ranged from the crystalline pale of a sea bell to the golden yellow-brown of a burnt meat stick. In size and shape, some were longish and thin, others smallish and thickset. In countenance, some were peppered with frecks, some with birthmarks and sunspots, others unstained. And their noses! They were generously bulbous, impertinently pointed, gallantly winged, impudently pugged, or nobly sloping like an oaf’s. One had a face so normal-looking that but for his size, he could have walked near undetected in a crowd.

The wealthy boy pointed to this one with a gleeful utterance. The wealthy father asked the kennel boss to open the cage, and with keys a-jangling, the kennel boss did so.

Observing this, the mother felt better about their prospects for a happy resolution. Luck is on our side, she thought. The injured parties are lovers of man.

Then her son exclaimed, pointing to the wealthy boy, “I know him!”

“Where do you know him from?” asked the mother.

“From the field. He has three singing mans. He is my friend.”

“What were you doing at the field after I told you not to go back there? Man-fighting again, after I told you not to?”

“Yes, Mother,” the boy quietly admitted.

“Well,” she said, “maybe it will work out.”

The boy and his mother watched as the kennel boss removed the selected man from its cage, leashed it, and filled out the forms and had the father of the wealthy boy sign in various places. To complete the transaction, there was an exchange of silver.

“I just love mans,” they heard the wealthy father say with a laugh. “And we already have so many of them at home.”

The mother and the boy waited patiently, not wanting to behave impertinently, and so it surprised them when suddenly the wealthy boy and his father announced their thanks to the kennel boss and then exited the kennel without a word to them.

The mother stiffened at the offense. “What is going on?”

Without acknowledging her, the kennel boss swept the entire kennel floor with a short-whiskered broom while humming an ugly tune before ambling over to the main cage, unlocking it, and unceremoniously expelling their female man.

The boy took his female man into his arms. She was happy to be out of the cage and happy to be hugged.

The kennel boss said to the mother as she signed the release form in the designated places, “His boy says he is a friend of your boy, so no harm done. It was only a scratch anyway. But they do have a few demands. You will pay to have the latch on their door repaired, or they will have her thumbs removed. You will build her a proper kennel with a proper lock to keep her at home — a proper lock which they will inspect upon completion, or they will have her thumbs removed. Finally, you will surrender the baby man — or mans — as soon as it, or they, are born.”

The boy, hugging his female man, glanced up and echoed, “Baby man?”

“What baby man?” the mother asked sharply.

The kennel boss had refilled his cup and now he took a long slurping sip from it, gurgled, and gave the stuff caught in his teeth another good suck through. “Your man is pregnant, in case you didn’t notice. As I told you, they are only good for two things, hunting and giving birth. She has been sneaking out of your yard to take company with one of their mans. Now she is pregnant and her litter belongs to them,” he proclaimed airily.

The mother seethed. “That is the very height of cruelty to mans! I will not sign to have her give up her child!”

“But you have already signed, Madam Pinhead Oaf!” taunted the kennel boss, snatching up the papers the mother had signed and waving them in her face.

When she lunged for them, he pushed them into a drawer, locked it, and coolly ordered her and the boy to take their man and leave.