The Oxboy Read online

  “You had better get them duplicated before the boy goes to school,” my stepfather replied.

  The people of this town have known one another for a long time, and many are related by marriage. On holidays I see them gather in groups in the park, where they eat and drink. To them we are outsiders, strangers, as my stepfather also comes from a distant part of the country. We live quietly and do not disturb anyone, so we are tolerated.

  My mother and stepfather sent me to the local school when I was seven. When they told me I was to go, I was in a panic. I could not touch my supper, nor could I sleep. My mother thought I was getting sick. I spent the next day in bed, where I tossed and turned anxiously while my mother sat in my room sewing a shirt for me to wear to school and talking to me in a low, quiet voice. Sometimes she sang to me—songs of the meadow that she sang when we lived with my father.

  Toward the end of the afternoon we heard the school bells ring, and then the shouts of the children as they ran down the dirt roads.

  “What is the matter?” my mother asked. “Why do you look so frightened?”

  “What will I do about my papers when I go to school next week?” I said, burying my head in the pillow.

  My mother touched my arm and said, “My poor child, I should have told you sooner. Your father has been very brave. He has left us something for you.”

  “My stepfather?” In two years he had never given me anything except a little gun he had carved on my birthday the year before.

  “Your real father.”

  This was the first time my mother had spoken to me of him since we had left our home. “When was he here? Did you see him? What did he say?”

  She shook her head. “No one saw him,” she answered. “Not even I.” She went out of the room. In a moment she was back, holding a silver sheet like the one she had shown the blue hunters. Thousands of tiny lines were etched on its surface and seemed to constantly change color and direction. “This is yours,” she said.

  For a moment I could not comprehend her words. How could I have papers? If this document told the truth, if it said that I was the son of an ox, I would be killed.

  “Read it to me,” I said to my mother.

  The certificate was covered with hundreds of names thickly mapped. A living tree, gnarled and tangled, with deep roots. The names she read meant nothing to me. The only ones I recognized were hers and mine.

  “Who are these people?”

  “They are your ancestors.”

  My mother pointed to red seals in the center of the page and on all four corners.

  “What do they say?”

  “Certified Pureblood,” my mother answered.

  She pointed to a name linked with mine. The name was Albertus, and it was written in large curling letters.

  “Who is he?”

  “Your father.”

  “Is that his real name?” For I had never known my father’s name.

  She nodded.

  “How did he get this?”

  “I don’t know,” my mother said. “I found it one day under my laundry basket in the yard. It couldn’t have been anyone but your father who put it there. No one else knows about you. And there were hoofprints in the yard. I covered them up, of course.”

  My father had come, and I hadn’t even known! “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It is best not even to talk of your father.” The back door slammed and we heard my stepfather’s heavy tread. “We must never speak of him again.”

  My mother hurried downstairs, and I lay on my bed, studying the paper and its almost incomprehensible maze of names, thinking of my father.

  How had he come by this paper? Who had put it together? How had he gotten his name stamped with the blood seals? And how had he even found us? He must have had friends—human friends, or animal friends of unusual ability—helping him. Then he was, perhaps, not lost and hungry, as I had often feared him to be. And he was thinking of me, his half-human son.

  I rolled the document carefully and tied it with a scrap of string. All night I slept with it in my hand, while the name Albertus sounded through my dreams.

  Pure Blood of the Human Race

  Every morning for five years my classmates and I have formed a large circle around a mosaic of a man and a woman standing in front of a fruit orchard with the trees all in bloom. In blue and yellow ribbons twined above their heads is written: FATHER ADAM, MOTHER EVE. PURE BLOOD OF THE HUMAN RACE.

  The teacher nods and we begin our daily chant.

  “We are human. We are nothing but human.

  “Our natures will never be degraded by contact with the animal world.

  “Animals are a lower form of life.

  “Animals stink. They are stupid. They have no souls.

  “Animals and humans must never mix.”

  Then the teacher tells us the story we know so well by now: Once, a long time ago, men and women married animals. And from these pairings sprang all nature of evil—women with slashing talons and beaks, who killed human men; men who barked instead of talked and lapped up food with their tongues; children who crawled on the ground like snakes and hissed and bit their mothers. And even more unnatural: animals who recited poems and calculated the distance to the stars; animals who dared to set themselves up as the equals of men.

  The teacher steps back and we recite: “But animals will never be the equals of man. And man must never descend to the level of animals.”

  We circle around the mosaic of Father Adam and Mother Eve. The sun bounces off the tiles and makes eyes gleam and lips shine and skin glint like hardened armor.

  “The blue hunters with their shining swords will go into the forests, along the rivers, and among the crowds of cities. They will search out all tainted blood and destroy it.

  “And we will be free, and pure, and cleansed.”

  At these words we fall to the floor, limp, as though released from a terrible hand.

  “Pure blood of the human race!” we cry. And I think of my father, a mixed-blood ox. Has he found his brothers and sisters of the forest? Or has my father let some farmer yoke him to a plow for a few mouthfuls of moldy hay?

  In school I am always afraid. The other students are so much quicker than I am. I am more at home in a grassy meadow than in a stifling classroom. Perhaps the others also dream of sky and sun, air, and grass. I do not know.

  My classmates mostly ignore me. Sometimes they make fun of my laugh. It is more like a snort, they say. I hear them call me Broadshoulder when they think I am not listening, and make jokes about my coarse hair and large feet and hands. When they pair us up to dance in circles, no one wants to be my partner. Still, the others don’t dare to actively taunt me, because I am stronger than anyone in the class.

  I cannot seem to learn from books. Numbers confuse me. I am lost on the great maps, with their cities, towns, and rivers. Only the velvety dark green of the forests attracts me. On the maps, forests shrink back from cities and towns. Surely this is a lie. It is the cities and towns that shrink at the approach of the forests.

  We read every day about the stupidity of animals and the cleverness of men. I stumble over the words when it is my turn to read. The teacher tells me I am defiling the story, that I don’t deserve to read it. Once when I was much younger, only seven, the teacher—angered by my slowness—called me a dumb ox. Some of the students smirked and grinned and pointed behind their hands.

  The blood rose to my face. I felt exposed and so terrified that I wet my pants. The teacher stared at the dark stain running down my leg. Now, I thought, she will turn me in to the police. But instead she took me to the bathroom, cleaned me up, and hissed an apology. I was stupid, she said, exasperating, would try the patience of Mother Eve, but she shouldn’t have called me an animal.

  I often wonder if there are others like me. I once saw a little boy running down the street suddenly lift up and fly over a puddle, then land again on his feet and continue running as though nothing unusual had happened. In class I
wonder if the little girl with her hair tied up in braids and the clean scrubbed face has an oriole for a grandmother. Or perhaps the boy who always wins first place at our games has wolfs blood running in his veins. Is our teacher first cousin to a cat? I think that a few of the others must hide invisible scales or fur or tails. Surely I cannot be the only one.

  None will say, and I cannot tell. Perhaps it is for the best. If I cannot penetrate their secrets, they cannot penetrate mine.

  I had one friend for a short time—a boy named Noah, whom I invited to my house. He was a sturdy boy, calm and happy, who had a talent for jumping and throwing a discus. Together Noah and I slid down haystacks, chased each other up and down the dirt road that runs behind our house, and picked wild berries and ate them until we were smeared with juice.

  Sometimes when we had finished sliding and chasing and eating, we sat on a pile of stones in the middle of the meadow and talked. “Where do you think they live?” Noah asked one evening, pointing to the forest.

  I knew that he spoke of the mixed animals.

  “A secret lair?” I spoke as though I did not care where they lived, but my heart was pounding fast.

  “The blue hunters would track it down,” he said.

  I thought of my father. “They must take refuge somewhere.”

  “The blue hunters would keep them on the run.”

  “Perhaps they have scouts to warn them,” I suggested. “The hunters have not yet destroyed them.”

  Noah shrugged. “Their numbers are dying every month, every day. That is what my father says.”

  I had seen Noah’s father around town, a rough man with a loud voice. “He heard that in the pub,” I said scornfully.

  Noah gave me a searching look. I had said too much. Now he will turn on me, I thought. But instead he leaned close and spoke in my ear. “Sometimes I wish I might help them.”

  Long-hidden words and thoughts rushed forward. They seemed to choke me, so that I could not speak at all.

  Noah jumped off the pile of stones we were sitting on. He looked frightened, and I knew that he had taken my silence for disapproval.

  “You must never tell anyone,” he pleaded. “Most of all my father.”

  I nodded, clambered down the rock pile, and the two of us began to make our way home in silence.

  “Look!” cried Noah suddenly, pointing to the field we had just left.

  I turned and saw a great white ox standing perfectly still in the dim blue twilight.

  The animal was so beautiful … I ran to it and flung my arms around its neck. The animal spoke quietly to me. “Do not put me or yourself in danger. Please go away.”

  It pushed me away and galloped toward the forest.

  I walked back to my friend. Noah’s face was pale and wondering. Now, I thought, we will speak openly. Instead he said, “You touched that bull.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I saw you!” He shoved me hard. “Smelly ox boy!”

  I shoved him back. He punched me in the stomach, and I hurled myself at him. We rolled in the dusty road.

  “Animal lover!” he shouted.

  “You are too!” I retorted.

  Noah picked himself up and ran down the road. We did not speak to each other ever again. But he never told anyone how I had embraced the ox. Nor did I betray his secret.

  A Family Meal

  Every night my stepfather sits on the front steps or in a chair by the fire and whittles with a small sharp knife from which little curls of fragrant wood erupt and fall. Once I reached out to gather them, but my stepfather put one heavy-booted foot down and stamped on the shavings.

  He looks much like a wood carving himself. I think that his mother must have mated with a scrawny tree to have produced such a lackluster, awkward son.

  After working all day at the glass factory, my stepfather doesn’t want to move or talk, but when my mother comes in the room, he mutely follows her with his eyes. My mother is tall and slender, and my stepfather buys her rings and scarves and sometimes a bracelet or two. She puts them on when he is home, but when he has gone she takes them off and wears the plain dress she wore when we lived with my father.

  My mother no longer sings all day as she once did. Still, from time to time a smile crosses her face, and I imagine that she is thinking of my father, somewhere deep in the forest.

  One night my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes, when my stepfather entered. He was a little late, which was unusual.

  “See what I have!” Proudly he held out a thick package of gray paper dripping with blood. “Meat. Freshly killed.”

  My mother froze, while I stared at the red blood seeping through the paper.

  We never ate meat. No one did. Only the wealthiest had it occasionally. Meat had to be certified fit for human consumption—that is, one hundred percent animal—before anyone was allowed to eat it. That was a long and expensive undertaking.

  “We’ll have a good meal tonight!” said my stepfather. “It’s good beef,” he said. “Pureblood. Janney Peters showed me the papers. Haven’t seen the likes of this in a long time. I paid a good amount for it, let me tell you.”

  This was the longest speech I had ever heard my stepfather make, but my mother made no move to take the meat.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Take it and cook it.”

  My mother touched the package with outstretched fingers.

  I stood up. “I won’t eat it.”

  “What?” my stepfather said. “Don’t you know I paid half a week’s wages for this meat?”

  I reached into my pocket and clutched the pearly stones my father had given me long ago. “I won’t eat it.”

  “You will.”

  I lowered my head. “I won’t.”

  My stepfather’s face darkened and his eyes darted from me to my mother. “You’re …” he began. He seized my hand and opened my palm, searching it as though to find a clue to this unnatural resistance. I was holding one of the pearly stones.

  “He still plays with these childish things,” my stepfather said in disgust.

  I did not answer, and he pushed me away. “The boy is not normal,” he said.

  My mother stood up. “I’ll cook the meat,” she said. “My son will eat it.”

  I watched her take down the big iron frying pan, and then I ran to my room.

  But even there, in the attic with my door shut, the smell of burned flesh filled the room, entered my eyes and nose and mouth, until I ran to the window and tore it open and stood there taking great breaths of fresh cold air.

  I heard a knock on my door, and my mother entered. “Come to the table.”

  “No,” I began, but then stopped. Her voice was stern, but her eyes were frightened. I followed her downstairs and into the kitchen.

  My stepfather was sitting expectantly in his carved wooden chair and did not look up as I slid into my seat. I watched my mother give him the largest piece of meat, then fill his plate with potatoes and greens. Then she put a small piece of meat on her own plate and an even smaller one on mine.

  “Ah,” said my stepfather with a sigh of contentment.

  My mother forced a smile. I watched her pick at the food on her plate and finally put a morsel of meat into her mouth.

  “Delicious,” said my stepfather.

  My mother nodded.

  I nibbled at the potatoes and greens. It was hard to look at the meat, and the smell made me gag. Finally I pushed the plate away.

  My stepfather glared at me. “What’s the matter with this boy? He’s not normal, I say!”

  I dropped my fork and stood up. My stepfather also stood up. He raised his hand.

  My mother had gone pale, but she said gently, “Please eat your food, both of you. It is very good.”

  My stepfather sank back into his chair. I too sat down. I put a piece of meat into my mouth. And I thought, This is my father. My stomach rose up, my throat closed, I gagged.

  My stepfather was watching me. I t
ried again. I forced myself to chew the nauseating food once or twice. When my stepfather looked away, I spit it into my lap.

  Suseen

  I fell in love with a girl from my class. Her name was Suseen and she had glossy brown hair that hung in heavy curls down her back. I waited for her every day after school and followed her faithfully home. I didn’t try to hide; I walked openly behind her. She and her friends would glance back at me and giggle.

  After Suseen said good-bye to her friends and went into her house, I would linger in the road a while longer. Sometimes one or more small children would press their faces against a window to stare at me, but sometimes I caught a glimpse of Suseen walking from one room to the next. She lived in a much bigger house than ours. Her father ran a mill, and her cousins owned a large bakery.

  Suseen was a good student, and in school when I stuttered over the day’s reading, The Wise Man and the Evil Snake or Tales of Ridicule, the teacher often called on her to read the story as it should be read.

  “He mangles the text as though he were wrestling with one of the Impure,” the teacher said. The others would laugh, Suseen included. But sometimes as she picked up the book, Suseen would glance at me quickly, and I would see sympathy, not scorn, in her eyes.

  One day the teacher told our class to bring our papers to school in three days. A special guest was coming—the police commissioner. He would examine our charts and award blood-purity certificates. The class would trace its human forebears as far back as possible, and the child with the longest lineage would win a prize.

  The police commissioner was thin and dark-haired with moist, narrow eyes. “Does anyone have anything they want to tell me?” he asked as he stood at the front of the classroom.

  We all looked nervously at one another. “No?” He winked at us and his eyes gleamed knowingly. “Only pureblooded humans here, I see.”

  Perhaps he meant to put us at ease, but he only increased my terror. I looked down at my father’s name, Albertus. Was there something in that name to identify him as a pureblood animal?