To make her understand, he knocked on the wooden fence that ran the perimeter of their backyard and shook his head.
“Don’t go over the fence,” he repeated. “Obey me. Obey me.”
The next morning when he went to feed her before school, he caught her climbing down the fence and ducking into her tent. She had just returned from wherever it was she roamed at night.
He spanked her and scolded her harshly. When he set out her food, she still had tears in her eyes, but he was at the end of his patience.
“You’re going to get us in trouble! Don’t force me to tie you up or lock you in the house!” He pounded the wooden fence. “Don’t go over the fence! I know you understand! Obey me! Obey me!”
She stared at him blankly, then went back to her food.
He went into the house and came back out with an extra bowl of food and set it beside the first. “Now give me a hug,” he said to her.
He held open his arms and she came for her hug. He lifted her for her hug. She is getting so heavy, he thought.
“You’re my best friend in the whole world, you know?” He kissed her cheek, petted her head, and set her back on the ground.
She looked at him with perfect understanding.
She went back to her food and he left for school.
When the boy got home from school that day, his mother had left a note: Meet me at the kennel.
He checked the backyard. His female man was gone. He threw down his school sack and ran to the kennel.
They had put his female man in a large cage with several other mans.
She was not the only female, but she was the biggest of the dozen or so mans in there, most of whom were screaming wildly at the top of their lungs or running around in circles like mad mans.
One man, a pale talking one with dark sun spots burned into his cheeks, was proclaiming over and over, “I didn’t do it. I would never ever do it. Please believe me.”
His female man ran to the front of the cage as soon as she saw the boy and he reached through the bars and petted her on the head. “It’s going to be okay, girl. Don’t worry. Mother and I will get you out of here.”
The boy turned to watch his mother, who stood a few paces away talking to the boss of the kennel.
The kennel boss had a long oval face and eyes that were set far apart. He was munching a green leafy vegetable as he talked to the boy’s mother. The mother was doing a lot of head shaking as her mouth opened and closed. The kennel boss inhaled another large green leaf into his mouth and crunched it between large, crooked teeth.
“It’s out of my hands,” he explained to the mother. “When the man becomes a danger to society, then the law has to step in.”
“I assure you,” said the mother, “this is all a misunderstanding. She is the most gentle of creatures. She is well mannered and well trained. She is a danger to no one. Mans get out of their yards all the time and wander. It is their nature. This is no reason for them to be destroyed.”
The boy grabbed his female man’s hand through the bars of the cage when he heard that. Destroyed.
The leaf-munching kennel boss raised a finger. “I never spoke that word. I only said that putting her down is one of the options, and not even the most desirable or most likely of options. It all depends on the injured party — whether or not they want to pursue it. But the charges are serious. A home was broken into. A child was bitten.”
The boy reached his arms into the cage and hugged his man. A child was bitten.
“You see,” said the mother, “it’s words like that that scare me. We love our man, and I assure you that she is incapable of doing the things you claim she has done.”
The kennel boss shoved the entire vegetable into his mouth and it made a crunching sound. “I simply read the record to you, ma’am.”
“But she is incapable of — ”
“Ma’am, I know all the old sayings — Train your man to be playful with children, but cross with thieves. There is no creature more loyal than a man. A happy man is a well-fed man, but a cross man keeps the home free of sneak thieves. Every boy should have a man. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you are like so many owners of mans. You are incapable of seeing him for what he is. Man is a predator, first and foremost. He is but good at two things: hunting and making baby mans. He is a predator. He is a carnivore. That’s right. He is no different from us. And don’t look down at me because I do this job, ma’am — I have degrees in animal science. Times are hard, so I must work here, but I am no pinheaded oaf. I have seen the studies. We keep mans from eating meat because we fear what they’ll do if they get a taste for it. Remember, ma’am, we are meat too. I know some of them have interesting talents and they make good pets, but truth be told they are wild beasts and should be left to roam the forests for us to hunt. It wasn’t too long ago that they were our top food source. You don’t look wealthy — I bet you eat your fill of man, right? The meat is plentiful, inexpensive, and tasty. I love to eat man, though I don’t want man to eat me or my children. But the wealthy — oh, they want us to protect man, to bring him into our homes as pets, to hug him. Oh, they say that it is the great creator’s will that we give up eating meat altogether, they say it is the great creator’s will that we all turn vegetarian. Vegetables are nice — I like vegetables just fine. But man is meat and meat is good to eat,” he said with a loud crunch. “Like my mother used to tell me, Stop playing with your food and eat him.” The kennel boss grinned.
The mother said, “You are a stupid oaf.”
“We’ll see who is the stupid oaf when the injured party gets here,” came the muttered retort.
The kennel boss picked up a brass cup and slurped whatever liquid was in it and gargled it to help suck free the strands of green from the vegetable that had gotten stuck in his ugly teeth. The mother turned away in disgust.
“Don’t worry,” the boy comforted his man, “Mother and I will free you.”
The boy hugged his female man through the bars, and the frantic little man man proclaiming his innocence ran over to them and grabbed one of the boy’s hands and kissed it. “I didn’t do it, kind sir. They have the wrong man. You and Mother must free me too. You must. You must.”
Just then the kennel boss came over and rattled the cage noisily with the brass cup, and when the frantic man didn’t back away from the bars, the kennel boss reached in and slammed the cup against his head.
Pock!
The frantic man released the boy’s hand and retreated to the safety of the center of the cage, holding his head and crying, “It is a lie. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”
The kennel boss said to the boy, “Take your hands out of the cage, boy. They may look pretty, but some of these mans will snap your fingers off.” He pointed to the frantic man proclaiming his innocence in the center of the cage. “That one there maimed his master, a boy about your age. Chewed two of his fingers clean off. Don’t let him fool you. His kind has a reputation for turning on you. Now scoot. Get away from that cage.”
The boy ran to his mother, who put her arms around him. “It’ll be okay.”
Tears rolled out of the boy’s eyes. “She didn’t do it, Mother.”
The mother kissed him on the head and assured, “All will be well once the injured party gets here.”
In walked a wealthy boy wearing expensive clothes and his equally well-dressed father.
As he walked past the mother, the kennel boss sneered, “At last, they’re here. The injured party.”