We Make Mud

The Dead Man’s Boat: Revisited

We are down by the river, fishing for fish, when we see what it is that we see. What we see is there is a man, walking across the muddy river’s muddy water, this man, he is walking right up to us brothers. Boys, this man says. Brothers, he adds. I’m looking for my boat. Have you seen it, my boat? is what this man with his man’s mouth says. This man, his mouth, it is a hole in his face with a fish sticking its fish head out of it. When he sees us looking at him like this, like he is a man with a fish sticking out of his mouth, he spits this fish out into the river. This fish, when it hits the river, into the river it swims away. We see lots of boats is what us brothers say next to this man. There are lots of boats running up and down up and down this river with people inside them fishing for the river’s fish. But us brothers, we say to this man, we do our fishing standing right here on the river’s muddy shore. Us brothers don’t need us a boat. Must be lots of fish in this river if there’s lots of boats fishing this river for fish is what this man says to this. It wouldn’t be a river without the fish that make the river what it is, is what us brothers say then to this. Brother adds, What’s your boat look like? That might help us to tell you if we think we’ve seen it. If one of you brothers stood on the other brother’s shoulders, you’d need two more brothers of you to be as big as my boat is big, this man says. That’s big, Brother says to this. It’s big enough is what this man says then to this. What else? Brother asks. What else do we need to know? My boat, this man tells us, it’s made out of steel. Steel, us brothers say. A boat made out of steel? Us brothers, we give each other this look. There is this look that us brothers sometimes like to look at each other with. It’s the kind of a look that actually hurts the eyes of the brother who is doing the looking. Imagine that look. Maybe, we say, to this man, it sank, we say, to this man. This man, when we say this to this man, he looks down at us brothers with eyes that are made out of steel. What makes you say that? is what this man says to us brothers then, looking at us with this cold steel look looking out from his cold steel eyes. Steel sinks is what us brothers say to this. Like stones, we tell him, and we reach down to the river’s muddy bank and pick up from the mud into our boy fists two fist-sized stones that we throw out into the river. Both of these stones, when they hit the river’s muddy water, these stones turn into fish. Us brothers, we don’t say anything to this man about this. What we do say, though, is this. Mister, we say. Maybe you should look with your look beginning at the bottom of the river. Start looking there is what we tell him. This man, he looks the look in his cold steel eyes down upon us brothers, us standing down by this muddy river’s muddy shore, then he looks his look up into the sky above the river where the sun is somewhere shining. This man, he is nodding with his man head as he searches the above-the-river sky, looking there, into the clouds, so it looks like to us, for his boat made out of steel, then he turns and walks out into the river from which, he just a little while ago, came walking out across it, like a stone that somebody skipped. The river, this time, it does not hold this walking man up. The river, this time, it is a fish’s big fish mouth opening up and swallowing down inside of it a fish as small as a man’s last breath.