Ten Years OnWhen Manifesto the Great was born, the crowd cheered, celebrated, even talked of a new world.
James the Strong looked down at the pink bundle and expected to feel the same, but the only thing he felt was a mild repulsion, and when Aggie bent to feed him, James the Strong left the room to throw up.
Manifesto the Great was a long string of a baby who had the promise of height until the age of ten, when, like Arthur of the North, all growth stopped.?Aggie watched him mature with her heart in her mouth. Each day he looked more like his father, Arthur of the North, and she missed him so much . . .
What she wouldn’t give to sit under the sun, hold his hand, inhale the delicious scent of his hair, and talk . . .?James the Strong had no idea about proper talk or how to make her laugh.? In the early days, it didn’t matter. Making love was easy—it was all looks and sighs. James the Strong stopped talking at the mere flick of a shoe. Not now; he talked and never stopped, and it was the sort of talk that dried up every orifice in her body. When he opened his mouth, she just wanted to shut it again, but nothing would shut him up.? She could toss her bra out the window, swing from their bedroom chandelier naked, her family jewels pert and pristine like a sunflower, and he would still talk.
If only he had the mouth of his father, a man that made her laugh and think . . .
She sighed. ?she thought,
When the missing overwhelmed her, Aggie went to her secret drawer in the old room, the room where she’d stayed while caring for Wife-ie. No one went to that damp hole of a place. James the Strong even threatened to grow potatoes in it, and when Aggie protested way too much, he sent the Librarian to find out why.
The Librarian caught her with his usual feigning-an-emergency act, bursting in for a surprise effect (an entrance he was famous for and probably why most disliked him).? Aggie, with her back to him, was bent over an opened drawer, clutching a pair of old underpants.
She sniffed.
A tear dropped to the floor.
The door slammed shut.
Aggie, mid inhale, jolted and then turned, boxers swinging from her hand—nothing like the sort seen hanging out on the washing line.
“I recognize them,” said the Librarian.
He moved closer.
“So old-fashioned.”
He spied the “my Arthur” embroidered on the crotch.
Aggie covered it with her fingers.
“Don’t tell,” she whispered.
The Librarian stared at the ancient boxers that used to swing from the leader’s laundry.
Aggie looked at him. “It’s all I have of him.”
The Librarian moved closer, made to touch the boxers, and stopped. For a moment he inhaled, lost in thought.
“Hemp, after so many years, still holds it shape,” he whispered.
“Nothing but the best for Arthur.” She sighed.
“Nothing but the best,” muttered the Librarian.
She fingered the crotch, then folded it and placed it tenderly back in the drawer.
“He never wears underwear,” she said.
The Librarian jolted. “Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Pfff, him—everyone knows about the leader airing his family member,” said the Librarian.
“Real men swing, according to him,” said Aggie.
“There is merit in that theory—so I’ve heard,” said the Librarian.
“But not standing on a balcony in a leader’s toga.”Aggie caught his eye.?“
Quite,” said the Librarian.
“The masses talk of an eyeful and James the Strong in the same breath . . .”
He eyed Aggie.
“Not quite leadership material.”
He flashed a smile that stopped at the corners of his mouth.?“Your secret is safe with me.”
Aggie knew that look. Nothing was safe with it, especially secrets . . .
The Librarian knew which side his hemp was rolled on. They were living in exciting times—the city was expanding, they were building a better world, and Aggie, despite being a woman, made it all possible. She had a brain; solving problems and dealing with complaints was a breeze with her.? All he had to do was bide his time and wait for her to slip up, and the library would be his pleasure dome and James the Strong his leader.
The Librarian reassured James the Strong with one of his cryptic looks. And James the Strong, preoccupied and “run off his feet,” happily accepted the Librarian’s word.? The truth was, without Aggie, James the Strong couldn’t rule. The meetings confounded him, had him flopping onto his bed flummoxed with a spinning head. It was all that talking, information, and decision-making: he was expected to know everything and, in an instant, decide what to do.
It was Aggie who arranged all meetings to be held in the “action room” of the library where she could spy and listen. It was her idea to hold the meetings at night when the readers were tired and stuff them full of hemp biscuits and a nightcap, claiming that they would be “less likely to argue on a full stomach.” ?And it was her idea for James the Strong to “use your height, remain standing, and loom,” as she put it.
He needed Aggie, despite the fact that she was more interested in her son than bed-diving and “must we” was now her usual response, but her rebuffs were wearing him down.
Ten years of watching your woman obsess over a son as foreign as, well, a Foreigner had taken its toll on James the Strong. It was not that he hated his child, but did Aggie have to talk about him so much, and did he have to look so like Arthur of the North and so unlike him?
Where were the big hands, the swagger?? Desperate and confused, he was starting to question himself. He couldn’t understand why his son was not like him, why he was so . . . well . . . un-moldable, and whenever he asked Aggie, she’d clam up, pull a face.?She wouldn’t even listen, let alone answer, and the more he asked, the more she withdrew.
As the years passed, his embarrassment smoldered, and when Aggie talked of separate bedrooms, his embarrassment turned to anger. He, the great leader, was turning into a figure of fun . . .
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