Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen Read Free Book Online

to the mayor’s wife. He was a runaway. I had to give him back. But then my father bought this one for me.”
    “She’s beautiful,” the wealthy boy said. “I like her hair cloths. Where did you get them?”
    “My mother made them,” the poor boy answered.
    And they watched their mans and smiled with fascination when the one with the lidless eyes sang to the female man, “There is no reason to fear. I will always be here. I will always be here.”
    She made a cooing sound and touched his face with the back of her hand.
    “There is no reason to fear,” he sang, holding a high, beautiful note.
    The wealthy boy said to the poor, “I think we’re going to have to separate them before they go at it again and we get in trouble.”
    The poor boy agreed. “It’s time for us to get home anyway. Thanks for the snacks.”
    The compassionate wealthy boy waved it off. “It’s nothing. You want more?”
    “If it’s not too much trouble.”
    And the poor boy opened his sack, and the wealthy boy dumped all of the treats from his own sack into it. They shook hands as friends.
    Then they created a secret handshake that only they two would share.
    The poor boy said, “I’m sorry she bit you. She doesn’t like strangers.”
    “It didn’t hurt all that much. I’m sorry about what my father’s doing to you and your man, and I hope we can always be friends.”
    “Friends forever and ever,” the poor boy said.
    And the poor boy and his female man left the circus grounds and went home.
     
    * * *
     
    “In the frozen regions of the north, we hunted the mans of the snow unto near extinction. Then we began to notice that the great white beos were vanishing too—and the great northern deer, and the great white wulf. The only creature on the increase was that pest, that vermin, the great white rat. It seems that the mans of the snow kept the great white beos in check. Left to their own devices, the great white beos overhunted the great northern deer—without the deer, the great white wulvs also began to decline in number, and then the beos too, as they were eating up their entire food supply, the deer! So, we emptied our zoos and reintroduced the mans of the snow to the icy frozen regions of the north. Twenty years later, their number is again close to what it once was, and not surprisingly the great white beo, the great northern deer, and the great white wulf have returned to plenteousness. The only creature whose number has declined is the pest, the great white rat. Great nature was set in motion by a lord wiser and mightier than we. He created nature and made of it a perfect balance. And in the frozen north, the mans of the snow are important to keeping the rigid line of balance on the scales of that life system. Without balance, there is death and decay. Remove mans and the ice melts into bloody water. A world without mans is a world without us all.”
    The boy nodded his head, silently mouthing the sacred speaker’s words: Perfect balance. A world without man . . . a world without us all .
     
    * * *
     
    The baby man—there was only one—was born with much wailing and pain.
    She was born at night—she was, like her mother, a female man—and the boy stayed by his window peering at the candle in the window of her proper kennel until the cries of a mother’s agony were replaced by the sweeter cry of the newborn baby man.
    As soon as he heard that, the boy ran outside and into the proper kennel where they all were gathered.
    His mother was holding the baby female man in her arms and kissy-cooing her, and his smiling father was looking over his mother’s shoulder and kissy-cooing too. His father hadn’t mentioned anything about the cost of anything since she had gone into labor three and a half hours ago.
    His father gushed, “She’s beautiful. She’s absolutely beautiful. The miracle of birth.”
    “She’s beautiful like her mother, with red hair,” the boy’s mother said.
    The boy pushed between them to see