Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen Page B

day I went to the edge of the wilderness and I spotted a little man man in the long grass. He was feral, but I was a boy and lonely, so I coaxed him with a gentle voice and the few grains in my hand that were to be my lunch. Eventually he came out and took the grain. He was a short, round man with thick fingers, pale skin, and a bad smell. He was feral, to be sure, but he allowed me to pet him as he ate the grains. And I petted him until he finished the grains, and then he darted back into the long grass and disappeared from my sight.”
    As the boy labored and the father told his story, the father remembered their female man with a miserable sadness that the boy heard in his voice. The boy on the roof of the proper kennel looked down at the father. The father with the pain in his heart looked up at his boy. Father and son looked at each other, and the boy asked for a plank of wood. The father reached for one in the stack beside the proper kennel and passed it up to his boy, who returned to his mallet but did not resume his work. He listened to the father tell his story.
    “The next day, I took my lunch to the long grass at the edge of the wilderness and my little friend appeared and ate the grains from my hand. I talked to him about whatever a boy of that age who is lonely talks about to a man and he seemed genuinely interested, for he remained quietly in place though he had finished eating and there were no more grains. So he was my friend and I went to visit with him every day. I grew very fond of him and I called him Fat One. One day when I got there, Fat One had brought with him another man. This man was taller than Fat One and with a fatter stomach, but with the same pale skin and a similar oval shaping of the eyes. I recoiled when I saw him, for his face made me wonder if he were dangerous. He had ugly bruises and gashes on his face as though he had been clawed by a predator or maybe even another man. I called him Ugly One and I fed him too, though I did not like him as much because of his damaged appearance and because he always rushed to grab the grains from my hand before I could give some to my little friend Fat One. One day when I went to the wilderness, Ugly One was there alone and he rushed to snatch the grains from my hand. Where was Fat One? Where was my little friend? While Ugly One ate his fill of the grains, I went into the edge of the wilderness searching for Fat One. I only had to walk a few hla-cubits before I found him lying on the ground, bleeding from a wound in his head. I was puzzled. What happened? Seconds later, my bewilderment was solved when Ugly One, having finished his meal, ran to Fat One and hit his head with a sizeable rock and began to dance and laugh. Like all boys, I had been warned never to trouble a feral man because they bite and they have diseases, but I became angry and I lifted Ugly One by the neck and slapped his face with my hand, crying, Don’t do that ! Don’t do that ! When I dropped him, he screeched miserably and ran off into the wilderness, never to be seen by my eyes again. Well, now I had to do something. I could not leave Fat One lying helpless on the wilderness floor. What if Ugly One returned to finish the job? What if some other predator found him? The truth was that I had been hoping ever since I’d found Fat One that my mother would allow me to keep him as a pet. So I picked him up and took him home, where I explained all that had happened to my mother. She nodded her head as I spoke, and then she took him from me, washed and scented him so that the bad smell went away, and then she laid out some sheets for bedding and placed him upon them. That night I slept on the bedding with my little man man Fat One beside me. In the morning when I awoke, he was doing much better and we played together all day. The friend of my father who owned the farm came to visit and he and my mother looked on as we played. And the friend of my dead father said, The man cannot stay in