Every Boy Should Have a Man Read Online Free Page A

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