We Make Mud

Good, Mother

Our father is not with us.

Our father isn’t with us, but our mother, we know, is, so us brothers go into our house to see her.

Mother, we say. Mother.

Our mother says the word, What.

She says what twice.

Once for each of us brothers.

It’s time for bed, we say.

Us brothers, we say this just once.

We each of us brothers take hold of one of our mother’s hands. We walk like this, with our mother, back into the back of our house, back to where the back bedroom is where our mother and our father both go to go to sleep, back to where they both sometimes go when they want to be away from the other.

We lay our mother down into this bed.

Into this bed, our mother, she lays her body down.

When our mother is one with this bed, us brothers, we pull the covers up and under her chin.

Our mother’s hands, our mother, she folds them into each other on top of where her rising up and down with breath chest is hiding underneath the bed’s bed-sheet.

Sleep good, Mother, us brothers say.

Us brothers go outside, then, into the dark, out back into the back of our yard, back where our father’s shed is with our father’s tools, his nuts and bolts and screws, his hammers and nails, his mud-rusty buckets and sharp-toothed saws, and those bottles of his half-filled up with whiskey.

Only us brothers know what we are going outside to get: for us to get what we need us to get for our mother to not want to take us away from this dirty river place.

The river.

The fish.

Our fish-headed telephone pole.

The mud that us brothers love to make.

Our mother.

When we come back in, us brothers, in our hands, we are both of us holding in each one of our hands a hammer and a handful of rusty, bent-back nails.

We go back inside back to where our mother is back there in bed doing what looks to be sleeping.

Our mother, we see, she is not sleeping.

Our mother’s eyes are moons in a mud-blackened sky.

Our mother’s bed is a held-out hand with a body that is our mother’s held up in it.

Our mother who does not know what it is she is saying when she is saying to us brothers that there is a sky not stunted by smoke.

Our mother who always made us brothers wash the mud from our hands and from off the bottoms of our muddy boots.

Our mother who said to us brothers that she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere was the word she said, so long as anywhere was west of here.

West where? was what our father wanted to know.

West of all this muddy water was what our mother said.

Somewhere, our mother said to us brothers, where there’s not so much mud and smoke and steel.

Us brothers, we couldn’t picture a sky bigger than the sky outside our backyard. We did not want to imagine a town without a dirty river running through it where we could run down to it to fish. Us brothers, we did not want to run or be moved away from all of this smoke and water and mud.

Mother.

Look here.

Our mother, she is ours.

Us brothers’.

We kneel ourselves down by the side edge of our mother’s bed.

If it looks as if we are praying, take a look again.

Us brothers, what we are doing is, we are taking our mother by the both of her hands, and then we take these hands that are our mother’s, we take these hands that we are holding, and then we hold them back up against the back part of this bed, back where our mother’s head, it is now resting back up against this bed’s mud-colored wood.

Or is it lumber?

This might sting, us brothers warn.

Us brothers, we give each other this look.

There is this look that us brothers, we sometimes like to look at each other with this look. It is the kind of a look that actually hurts the face of the brother who is doing the looking. Imagine that look.

Brother, one of us brothers says, you can go first.

No, you can go, Brother.

Then: let’s both of us both go both of us at the same time.

Us brothers, we both nod with our boy heads yes. Then we raise back our hands that are holding these hammers, and then we hammer those rusty, bent-back nails right through our mother’s hands.

Our mother doesn’t wince, or flinch with her body, or make with her mouth the sound of a mother crying out.

Good, Mother, we say.

Us brothers, we are hammering in two other nails into both of our mother’s hands when our father walks into the room.

Boys, our father says.

When we hear this word boys, us brothers, we turn back with our boy heads toward the sound of our father.

We wait to hear what it is that our father is about to say to us brothers next.

It is a long few seconds.

Outside the window, the sky above the river where the steel mill sits shipwrecked in the mud, the sky is dark and silent. Somewhere, I am sure, the sun is shining.

You boys be sure to be careful, our father says to us, not to wake up your mother up from her sleep.

Our father turns back his back.

Us brothers turn back to face back our mother.

Our mother’s eyes look up at us brothers, but we cannot tell you what it is that they see.

Us brothers, look at us brothers: we raise back the hammer.

We line up these rusted nails.