Every Boy Should Have a Man

6 The Bridge

The sun still rested in its dark bed when the boss was awoken by a jangling as of much metal. He quickly opened his eyes, for he thought someone might be troubling his silver. At the entrance to his tent stood a wide oaf in a scarlet tunic of brass.

He announced, “Today, you shall not go to the mines, but to war.”

“Huh?”

The boss still had much sleep in his eyes. He wanted to roll over on his cot, but in the face of this visitor with the sword at his side there was only seriousness. The boss, accustomed to being the one who barked the orders, was reminded of his manners.

“What am I to do?” he implored with all due politeness.

“Gather your oafs and your mans,” the soldier said, and then he explained to him what and why.

Afterward the boss ran into the tent of his red-haired female man and shook her awake. She looked around. “It is still dark.”

“Early-morning darkness is the best time for war, it seems.”

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What is war?”

“War is like a battle in the fight yard, a battle with all of your companions against all of the other’s companions, but with blades that chop and much more blood.”

She nodded as though she had understanding. “And we chop them in order to gain collective victory. I have heard many oafs talk of this war thing,” she said. “But don’t people fall in war?”

“Yes. Yes,” he said, and he thought, Oh great creator! but she is a clever little man.

He continued: “And if your companion is to fall, then you are to chop whoever did fell him. In other words, if I am to fall, you must set upon whoever felled me, you understand?”

She said, “Oh, so now I am your companion?”

“Yes!” he insisted. “Are we not companions?”

She hesitated. “I guess.”

The memory of the trick played on her with Yellow Fellow was still fresh in her mind. The look on her face asked a question.

“What is it, little man?”

“When you fall, what am I to do then?”

He corrected, “If I fall, and hopefully that will not happen, but if it does… well, I guess you are to join with other mans whose oafs have fallen and set upon whoever it is that is setting upon them.”

She frowned. “All this setting upon and setting upon, what does it really mean?”

He bumbled through poetic, grandiloquent, rambling answers that he could see from her expression she found less than convincing, but as he talked the confusion on her face disappeared and a kind of respectful boredom settled in.

Obediently, she went into each tent of mans, roused them, and they all came out, whereupon they lined up in order to be told what the oafs required of them so early in the morning.

Was the food wagon again to be delayed? Were they all to be eaten? What a grand meal that would be, for every tent had been emptied and every man assembled.

And is that snow on the ground? But it is not even the season. Wait! That’s not snow, though it shines as white. It is the gleam of blades reflecting the light of the moon, blades so unlike the dull gray tools used in the mines. Blades for labor, no doubt. But labor of what kind?

And just what is this thing called war that Red Man told us about when she roused us from our needful slumber?

They waited quietly as they had been trained by the cudgel and the lash to do.

“War,” said the wide oaf in the jangling tunic, “is where you’re going today, because the army said why not use talking mans as soldiers? Why not use them to fill the gaps where soldiers who are dead used to be? They can take orders. They can hold a sword.”

That made sense to the boss, and he nudged his female man, who was standing at his elbow. “Isn’t that true?”

“Yes. We can certainly take orders,” she said.

It took a few minutes of blows to the head and kicks to the gut, but the wide oaf finally taught them to stand at attention. Other oafs passed through the columns of mans and draped over each small body a tunic of brass, which clattered and tinkled musically when the man moved about in it. There was wonder in the eyes of the mans as they looked at the symbol on the breastplate.

The boss draped a tunic over his female man, and she said, “What is this black star?”

The boss silenced her with a finger. “Shhh. Listen to him.”

“That,” the wide oaf announced to all, “is your standard. Your standard is how you know what side you’re on. In war, you can’t go in there and chop just anybody. The goal of war is to go in there and chop anybody not wearing your standard. Now look at that standard. Anybody not wearing that standard, you chop him, and be he oaf or be he man, you chop him good.”

Each man looked at the standard. It was a black eight-pointed star on a scarlet background.

The boss looked down at his female man, and she said, “I like the part about chopping oafs, boss. Don’t you?”

He smiled back uncertainly. The usual weariness in her eyes was replaced by a twinkle that could be taken for playfulness, or malice. He could not decide which.

Another oaf said to the wide one, “It’s time.”

The wide oaf commanded, “Hurry now! Grab a sword as you pass. Chop anybody not wearing your standard. The enemy is poor, he is savage, and he is polluting the earth with his foul presence. They want what we’ve got, and we’re not going to give it to them, and that’s why we must win this war. Nobody wants to live in a world where the poor don’t know their place. All praise be to the great leader! Now bow your heads!”

The oafs bowed their heads.

“Oh great creator, protect us as we do your will. And if we fall in battle, remember us evermore in your kingdom to come!”

“Verily in your name!” the others said as one.

“Verily in your name!” the wide oaf said. “Now move out! Fight for freedom! Fight for your side!”

The boss was first among poets, and he whispered to his female man: “A slayer of the innocent and the merciful of heart, is war. Stay close to me and you shall live. Ah, war. When this is over, there are more battles to be won in the fight yard. There is more silver to be taken from the careless and the unwary.”

Then the mighty host of mans and oafs hoisted the standard of the black eight-pointed star and lumbered off to war, their scarlet tunics of brass singing.

And the female man came to know what war was, if war was shivering in the cold dark morning as she followed the standard for two hours up a steep mountain trail.

If war was metal projectiles pinging and popping all around her like angry applause.

If war was fire sprouting like bright red flowers too hot for fingers to pick.

They came to a broad, wooden bridge and made it halfway across. Over the noise of battle, there rose the pounding of drums, the pealing of trumpets, and a battle cry like a great screeching fowl, as tunics of black swarmed down the mountain. The enemy!

War had become bursting shells, foul smells, and bodies pressing against bodies, each side thrusting with sword and bullying with battle axe to establish a position of dominance on the bridge. The bodies were packed in tight and were heavy. The bridge, weighted to its limit, swayed. They pressed against each other, metal clanging against metal, each side pushing forward with javelin, battle hammer, pick-stick, and bludgeon to drive the other back or knock the other off the bridge.

As the bridge swayed, the female man’s side was pushed back and back and back. She struggled to hold her position as well as keep her balance. The strain was too much. Twisted slantwise, she was still falling. She would tumble into the murky water. And her side was still being pushed back. Back.

Just as she felt herself going over the edge, her feet met solid ground again. But it was muddy ground, and slippery. She swung her blade and lost her footing. The blade was whacked from her hand. She reached down to retrieve it and could not believe her eyes. Where was the earth? Where was the earth? The fertile earth had been turned to crimson mud.

“Oh lord great creator, not this!” she wailed.

To her right, the female man Gold Braid was felled by an arrow. To her left, the musical man Yellow Fellow was trampled underfoot by sandals of brass. Ahead of her, the wide oaf stepped into a nest of bursting shells and was set ablaze. As all around her oafs and mans fell, she took a blow and went down.

But the boss was first among gamblers, and he raised his sword. “After war there is much silver! Rise up! Strive on!”

The female man climbed back to her feet.

The boss clanked his sword on his shield proudly. “That’s how it is with war, my little red top! The battle is not to those who fall last, but to those who rise back up first.”

Then he felt a sudden pain as his belly was torn by a blade thrust into it. He shouted a profane oath and cried: “Undone — and on the first day of battle!”

His belly was split in two. All that had been in it was coming out. Ideas rampaging through his brain, he struggled to come up with an adage to sum up the strange quality of his situation, but he found it difficult to organize his thoughts. A battle raging in the belly is war? War is a belly split in twain? War is a belly with its silver spilling out?

When he went down, he scowled as the enemy who had felled him extended a hand to his little female man. He grimaced as she grabbed back. He shouted, “No, little man! That’s not how it’s done!”

He looked on helplessly as the enemy lifted her, kissed her cheek, and carried her back across the bridge, sheltered within his brass tunic of war. The boss did not know what to make of the scene. It was difficult to think with his stomach on the ground beside him. The words to describe it he struggled to find. Just before he died they came to his lips: “Compassion for one’s enemy is a most rare and beautiful thing.”

And the poet closed his eyes.

Almost as soon as he had closed them, he revised the adage: “Compassion for one’s enemy is rare, beautiful, and almost as wondrous as a belly full of silver.”

And the gambler opened his eyes nevermore.