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

the tiny being in his mother’s arms. He exclaimed, “She’s got lidless eyes like the singing man and frecks all over her face like her mother!”
    His female man made a weak plaintive sound in her throat and held out her arms, and the boy’s mother placed the baby in her arms, and she held her child and kissed its face and nuzzled its wisps of bright red hair. She smiled warmly as she blessed the infant’s pinkish face with kisses.
    The boy and his family watched the female man and her child, and she fed her child, and a sweet sound came from its chest, and it rested its head on its mother’s chest and went to sleep.
    In the morning, before the sun rose, she came into the house and lifted the small singing harp from its pedestal. They followed her out to the proper kennel and looked on as she played the harp for the child. The harp sang a familiar lullaby: “Go to sleep, go to sleep, all is well, all will be well when you awaken, sweet one.”
    There were tears in the boy’s mother’s eyes, and his father held her. “Don’t cry, sweet one.All is well,” he told her. “All will be well.”
    She said through sighs, “I sewed some cloths for the baby’s hair. For when she has more hair.”
    “Maybe they’ll allow her to keep them,” the father comforted.
    “But will they allow her to keep the baby?” the mother sobbed.
    The father breathed a gloomy sigh. “All will be well,” he said.
    It was early in the morning before the sun, and the father went to work, and then the mother, and the boy looked in on his female man and her baby man one more time and then latched the door of the proper kennel with its proper lock and went to school.
     
    * * *
     
    “In the western forests, we hunted the mans of the forest to near extinction. They were not the most appetizing, being lean and tough-muscled, but they made the best pets, for their nature was loyal and they had the gift of speech and mimicry. They could work in the mines. They could be bred with other man-forms to produce singing mans, and musical mans, and art mans, and thinker mans, and seer mans for the blind. But the tygas began to disappear. Then the olyphant. Then the red-breasted sparrow. Then the spiny roos. The green grass became black sand. And you may venture a guess as to how we solved the crisis in the western forests. We apologized to great nature for our error and returned things to the way they used to be. We had tampered selfishly without considering the consequences of our actions. We look at great nature and we see chaos and disorder. But seeing is a way of not seeing. We think that we can go in and straighten out the randomness and bring order. Build a dam here. Build a bridge there. Remove this life-form in large numbers here because it looks prettier over there. Seeing is a way of not seeing. It is a paradox, but true: the randomness and seeming chaos of great nature brings vibrant life in all its forms; the order and straightening out that our kind imposes on great nature brings death and decay. It is a paradox, indeed: order is death; disorder is life. We are cursed to have to learn this lesson again and again. In order to solve the crisis in the forests, we brought back the mans of the forest. The green of grass is the skin of the earth. Man scratches the skin when it itches. Soon the tygas were back and then the olyphants, the red-breasted sparrows, and the spiny roos. The despoiled grass grew green again. The lesson here is take what you need from great nature, but don’t overtake. And don’t fix great nature—it isn’t broken.”
    “It isn’t broken,” repeated the boy who owned the female man.
     
    * * *
     
    That evening as the boy, his mother, and his father were eating their dinner, there came a knock at the door.
    The boy opened the door and there was his friend, the wealthy boy, but also his father.
    There were other people with them, some of them looking important in uniforms or professional clothes. There were