A Human Donkey

A HUMAN DONKEY / David Ray The boy who tugs that cart along is ten perhaps, a human donkey put out to work. His bare feet pad on the hot tar of India. Great sweat drops roll off his brow. He's got a load of rolled canvas, the kind we've seen staked to corral a crowd eager to see a film or used for walls of privacy at weddings—this canvas is strong as ship sail, with bright swastikas appearing in every panel for good omen. It's heavy too, as that boy's effort shows. He leans forward as if into the wind and is almost tipped off the ground when he takes that awkward turn that will take him away from me, past an angled concrete delta, under giant billboard lovers who can only speak in Hindi. They kiss and yet manage to look out over the crowd of rickshaws. Smoke from the peanut stand obscures him now. He disappears in haze, a boy put out to labor, flagged with his blue bandana, tugging the flatbed cart that sets upon a truck's sheared-off axle, between two treadworn tires at least twenty years older than this boy who's been put out to work in India. 28 ¦ The Missouri Review ...