We Make Mud

The Hands that Hold the Hammer

Sometimes, us brothers, we hold our hands up to each other brother, and like this, with our hands raised in the air, us brothers, we tell each other what to do. Go get the hammer, one of our hands will say to the other brother. Go get us a handful of rusty, bent-back nails. Then meet me out back in the back of the backyard. One of us brothers will pick up with his picking-up hand the bucket of ours filled with fish. The other brother’s hand will close up to make itself into a fist, its fish-out-of-water thumb sticking straight up and out from its hand to say to the other brother, Good, Brother, I’ll meet you out back in the yard. Out back in the back of the yard, one brother’s hand will say to the other brother who is doing the listening, Give me your hand. Hold your hand up against this pole’s wood. Out back in our backyard, there is a telephone pole back there studded with the chopped off heads of fish. In the end there were exactly one hundred and fifty fish heads hammered and nailed into this pole’s fish-headed wood. Us brothers, we gave each of these fish, each one of these fish’s fish heads, each a name. Not one was called Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John was mine and my brother’s name. We called each other Brother. Brother, one of our hands says. This might sting, the hand that is talking warns. And then the hand that is doing the warning, it raises back with the hammer it is holding and it drives the rusty, bent-back nail through skin and muscle and bone. The brother whose hand takes the nail through skin and muscle and bone, this is the brother who doesn’t flinch, or wince with his body, or make with his boy mouth the sound of a brother crying out. Good, Brother, the hand that holds the hammer says. The hand that is holding the hammer and a handful of rusty, bent-back nails in its other brother hand, it takes his brother’s other hand and holds this other hand back up against this backyard telephone pole’s fish-head hammered in wood. This hand with the hammer held inside it, it lines up a second rusty nail for it to hit. But when this hammering hand raises back its hammer to hit, another hand from back behind us brothers raises up as if to tell us to stop. But this hand that is raising up from back behind us brothers’ backs, it is not telling us brothers to stop. This hand that is raising up back behind us brothers, this hand that is pushing open and pushing out through our house’s back-of-the-house door, it is the hand that is our father’s. What our father’s hand is saying, when it raises up like this, all it is saying to us is, You boys be sure to remember to clean up out here before you come back into the house. This house, it is our mother’s house. Our mother, she is in the back of this house in a bed that has become her body. Us brothers, our hands, we hold them up, as high as we can hold them, to say to our father Okay, we’ll clean up before we come back in. Us brothers, our boy hands, all four of them together, they could fit inside the fishing-man hands that are our father’s. Our hands, like brothers, they close in toward each other. They raise back the hammer. They line up that rusted nail.