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

documents in their hands to be signed, and his father signed them wordlessly. His mother sat at the table, sighing with her head in her hands.
    After the signing was done, one of the professionals who had come with the group asked, “Where is the infant man?”
    The boy’s father said, “She’s in the back with her mother. There is a proper kennel in the back.”
    The professional asked, “Do we need light?”
    The father shook his head. “No. There is light back there,” he said, then led them through the grand room to the back of the house.
    The wealthy boy walked side by side with the poor, upon whose shoulder his hand rested. “You can come over every day to see her. You can bring your man over every day to see her. So it will be like your new home, except that it’s at my house. You can visit anytime you want, I promise.”
    Solemnly did the boys exchange their secret handshake.
    When they got there, the door to her proper kennel would not open. The female man had propped something against it and they could hear the baby man crying inside.
    The professionals looked in through the window and found her crouched down low. A plank of wood she had torn from an inside wall was angled against the door. Against this she pressed to keep them from entering.
    One of the professionals nodded his head and another smiled. “Smart little female man,” one said admiringly.
    They leaned against the glass of the window, and when it broke, they reached inside and grabbed her. One of them strapped the muzzle over her face. The other picked up the baby and handed it to the wealthy boy’s father.
    His mother quietly wept, his father stood there with a hand over his mouth, and the boy restrained in his arms his muzzled female man, who clutched desperately for her child.
    The boy shushed her and gently comforted, “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
    His mother quoted great scripture through her tears: “A mother gives life to her child. A mother gives her life for her child.”
    His father put his arms around his mother. “It’ll be okay, beloved. I promise.” He added gloomily, “She is but an animal.”
    His mother quoted scripture: “There is no sound in the world more sorrowful than a mother grieving her child.”
    When it was over, the boy stayed with his man in her proper kennel until she had ceased to weep. When she was finally asleep, he went back into the house and into his room where he sat by the window and stared out into the backyard. He fell asleep that night sitting up in bed by the window that looked out onto her proper kennel.
    And the candle in the window of her proper kennel no longer burned.
     
    * * *
     
    Before the boy went to school the next morning, he brought out her food, but she was despondent and would not eat.
    When he returned from school that afternoon and went straightway out to see her, she was asleep. He did not want to wake her, so he went back into the house.
    As they ate their meal that evening, his mother said, “I think it is so cruel to take her baby like that. In my head, I keep hearing the baby crying. The cry is so sweet. It makes me so sad.”
    His father said, “Well, she’s just an animal. She’ll probably forget all about it in a day or two. They’re not as attached to their children as we are.”
    His mother said, “The baby still cries in my head. I wish it would stop.”
    The boy jumped up from the table and ran out through the back door, shouting, “I hear the baby too, Mother, but not in my head!”
    His father hollered after him, “Where are you going?”
    They listened, but now there was silence in the back—there was not even the sound of the baby’s crying in the mother’s head.
    The boy came back inside holding the baby.
    His female man walked beside him.
    His mother gasped.
    The boy explained, “We should have fixed the glass window in her proper kennel, Father. She broke out and went and got her. When I looked in on her after school she was sleeping,