“I love my man,” the boy said, playfully pinching the man’s ear as he chewed his food.
“He’s a very fine man, indeed,” the mother observed. “I loved my man too, when I was a little girl. But my father, your grandfather, he didn’t like him at all.” The mother spoke in a calm, sad voice. “When I was about your age, I got my man. We found three little mans aimlessly wandering around the schoolyard. Juveniles with no adult that we could see. They were part of a litter, we guessed, but they did not all look alike. Two were pale and stout — one was brown, and he was tall like this one, though not so handsome. The teacher decided to put our names in a hat. The first name she drew was mine. I chose the brown one. He had dark brown skin and coal-black eyes. Because there was a lighter spot on his cheek, I called him Bright Cheek. I brought him home on a leash that the teacher gave me. My mother took one look at him and shook her head. Your father is not going to like this one bit, she warned. But I begged and pleaded, so she cleaned him up, fed him, and then sewed pretty cloths for his hair and a pouch for his loins. That same one there that your man is wearing.” She pointed to the pretty red pouch. “Then we placed some bedding on the ground so that he would have a place to sleep. When my father came home and saw the man, he started yelling right away and did not stop until the morning. No mans! I hate mans, they are messy and smelly and they carry diseases! he kept yelling. I cried and cried. The only reason he resisted throwing the man out into the street that night was because it was stormy and there was a law about cruelty to mans. When morning came your grandmother got up and prepared the man, and she helped me take him back to school. The teacher put the names in the hat again, all except mine, and I watched as another girl won my man and took him home. I cried and cried.”
“I’m not going to let Father give my man away!” the boy shouted.
“Well, we’ll just have to keep him under the bed until I can talk to your father. I’ll try to talk to him.”
“I’m not going to let Father give him away! I’m not going to let anybody take him. I’m going to keep him forever and ever,” said the boy, with the resoluteness of an innocent. “And I’m going to call him Brown Skin!”
The boy hugged the man’s neck as he spoke. The man gazed up at the boy with what could pass for understanding. The mother noticed and a horrified expression appeared on her face. She said to the boy, “Can he talk? Is he a man that talks?”
The boy, who was usually very honest, saw the look on his mother’s face and told a small lie: “No. He can’t talk.”
The mother seemed to relax after that, her pleasant smile returning, and she began to pet the man, who was already being hugged and petted by the boy. The mother was smiling, but she muttered under her breath and mostly to herself a warning: “Only the wealthy own mans that talk. We don’t need that kind of trouble.”
It went well for two more days, days in which the boy played with his man that he kept under the bed, and the mother considered different approaches for talking to the father about the secret guest in their house.
On the third day, the boy, overcome by an adventurous spirit, decided to take the man out for a walk. He warned the man not to talk, of course, and the man agreed. He was a man with very good understanding.
They went to the market. They went to the square. They went to the field where other boys — the sons of wealthy families — were walking their mans. Everywhere they went, the boy received compliments for having such a fine, handsome, pleasant-smelling man.
Then they went to the green hill where boys were flying kites and workers were setting up for the next festival.
The mayor, who had come to inspect, was there with his wife. But the mayor was no expert on festivals: another election was coming and he was really there to collect votes.
The mayor’s wife, an avid lover of mans, spotted the boy and his man and came straightway over and announced: “That is a fine man you have there!”
The boy, who was enjoying all the attention, did not detect the false appreciation in her voice and answered boastfully, “Yes, he is a fine man. He is the finest man in the world!”
“Where does he get such fine bright cloths for his hair?”
“My mother made them. She is clever with her hands,” the boy said. “She makes all of our clothes too.”
“And does your man speak?” the mayor’s wife asked, her voice at last revealing her true emotion, anger. “Does your clever-handed mother make fine conversation with your man that talks?”
“No,” the boy heard his mouth say. “He does not talk.”
The mayor’s wife held him firmly by the shoulder and shook him as she spoke: “And from where did your clever mother steal this man that talks?”
“My mother did not steal him,” said the boy, pulling against her firm grip. He wanted to run away. He wanted to run far away from there.
But the mayor’s wife gripped him ever more tightly. “From where did your clever mother steal my man that talks?”
“He doesn’t talk. She didn’t steal him,” the boy stammered.
“We’ll see about that.”
Now there was a big commotion, and a crowd had gathered — the boys with their kites, the workers with their tools, and even the mayor bustled over.
The mayor proved to be more civil than his wife, because he did not want to scare off any potential votes from among the gathered workers, but the law is the law and theft of property is against the law. His wife, who still had a firm grip on the boy, had so many of them at home that she did not actually recognize this one as the man that had gone missing a month and a half ago, but the man could talk and the boy was obviously poor. That was evidence enough. It did not help that the man kept shouting at intervals, “I want to stay with the boy forever and ever!”
So his mother was called for.
At this point the boy was admitting that the man was not his, because he did not want to get his mother in trouble. He admitted that he had found the man wandering in the bramble.
But the mayor’s wife was demanding justice. There was talk of arrest and punishments severe.
The boy’s mother became distraught. The mayor, again trying to resolve things in a civil fashion, sent for the boy’s father.
The father appeared wearing the uniform of his labor with his head hung low. The father wore the uniform of a loader.
The mayor’s wife was issuing threats in a voice that had become hoarse from shouting, the mother was weeping softly with her hand on the boy’s head, and the boy was holding the man’s hand, or rather the man was clutching the boy’s hand and repeating, “I like the boy. I want to stay with the boy forever and ever. I like the boy. I like his mother too.”
The mayor pulled the father away from the throng and addressed him: “Do you understand what is going on here?”
The father answered sadly, “Yes, I do, sir.”
“My wife has every right, you know?”
The father sighed, “Yes, I know she does.”
“Do you have any idea the trouble you and your family are in if she pursues this? And you are completely in the wrong on this.”
The father nodded hopelessly, the worry lines on his face multiplying.
“But,” the mayor whispered, “she does tend to blow things out of proportion.”
“Does she?” asked the father.
The mayor pressed a finger to a dirt-caked button on the father’s uniform. “Now, we have an election coming up. There are big things that I would like to do. Big things for everyone. And I need votes. Everyone’s votes. Yours. Your neighbors’. Your fellow loaders’. I have big plans for everyone, but my wife — she blows everything completely out of proportion.”