We Make Mud

Boy’s Tongue: Revisited

And then there was this other time when, us brothers, we fished a fish out from the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, and this fish, when we stuck our knives up inside of this fish, to gut the guts out of this fish, to cut off this fish’s fish head, inside of this fish there was a tongue up there inside the insides of this fish. This tongue that was stuck up inside of this fish, it wasn’t a fish’s tongue up inside of this fish. This tongue, it was too big for it to be a fish’s tongue. This tongue, what it looked like to us brothers, it looked like to us brothers that it was a human’s tongue, this tongue, it could have been the tongue inside the mouths of one of us brothers. But this tongue, it wasn’t the tongue of one of us brothers. Us brothers’ tongues, when we opened up our boy mouths toward each other to see inside of each other’s mouth, we both of us brothers saw each of us brothers’ tongues down on the insides of our mouths. But Boy, that boy born without a tongue in his boy mouth, that boy whose mouth was a hole in his face that he fed food into, that boy who was born with teeth and a full head of hair, maybe this tongue was the tongue that was meant to be born into that boy’s mouth. Maybe this fish, maybe it was the fish that was the fish that ate Boy’s tongue. Maybe this is why Boy didn’t get born with a tongue of his own on the inside of his mouth. Who of us can really say? So what we did, then, was this: we took this tongue that we found on the inside of this fish when we stuck up our knives up inside of this fish, to gut the guts out of this fish, to cut off this fish’s fish head, and we went looking to find Boy, to see if maybe this tongue was the tongue that Boy was not born with. When we found Boy, down by the river, Boy was out walking back and forth across the river’s muddy water, going back and forth like this, across the river, like a stone skipped between the river’s banks. It was as if on each of the river’s two sides there were two boys taking turns skipping stones out across the muddy river. When Boy saw us brothers, when we called out to him, Hey, Boy, Boy took off across that river’s muddy water like he was part dog, part fish. Boy came running up to us brothers where we were the two of us standing there in the mud along the river’s muddy banks with his boy mouth opened up wide and with no tongue inside of it hanging at us brothers out. It’s true, us brothers, we were the brothers who taught this boy more than just a few tricks. It was us brothers who taught Boy how to walk on water. It’s true, too, that Boy drowned the first time that he walked out. Boy floated face-down, down the river, but then he walked upriver back, back to us brothers. Good, Boy, us brothers said to this boy. We scratched Boy’s back. We pulled a bone out from the back of Boy’s hand and we threw it out into the river. Boy, we said to Boy. Go fish. Boy took to that muddy river’s muddy water like he was part dog, part fish. Boy came walking back to us brothers with that bone sticking out from both sides of his boy mouth and then he flopped his boy body down right in front of us brothers on the river’s muddy shore. Yes, just like a fish. Good, Dog, we said to this boy. Boy, we said to this boy, but we did not hold out to him this tongue that we found up inside of this fish. Let us see inside of your mouth, we said. Open up even wider, we said. Boy, being the good boy that he was, Boy did what he was told. Good, Boy, we said to Boy twice more. We scratched Boy’s back. We took a bone from the back of Boy’s hand and we stuck it inside his mouth, to hold his boy mouth open. Then, what we did next was, we took that tongue that we found stuck up inside of that fish that we fished up from this dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, and we stuck this tongue down into the insides of this boy’s open mouth. When we did this with this tongue, this tongue, down inside on the inside of Boy’s mouth, what happened to Boy was this: Boy, with his mouth opened wide like this, with the bone from the back of his boy hand stuck in his mouth to hold his mouth wide open like this, and with this tongue stuck down on the inside of his wide-opened mouth, Boy, this boy, he started up singing. Boy sang, and he sang, and he kept on with this singing, and then this boy, singing like this, singing like a fish, he would not, he could not, get himself, or get the tongue on the inside of his mouth, to put a stop to his singing. Us brothers, we didn’t know what we were going to do, or how we were going to get this boy to stop with this singing, until we turned back away from the river and stood back facing back toward our house. Our house, in our house’s backyard, out back in the back of our house’s backyard, there was 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 wood. Each one of these fish, each of these fish’s fish heads, each one was given a name. Not one was named Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John was mine and my brother’s name. We called each other Brother. When us brothers turned back away from the river to face back toward our house, it was then that we knew what we had to do. So we took Boy by his hand, we took this singing boy, back to our backyard, and we walked with this boy up and back until the back of this boy was backed up against this backyard pole. Boy, we said to Boy. It’s time to stop all of this singing. And when Boy could not, when this boy did not stop with his singing, even when we took that bone from the back of his hand and pulled it like a tooth from his wide-opened mouth, we knew there was only one thing left for us to do. Brother held Boy’s head up against this fish-headed pole. Up above our heads, those fish heads, with their fish mouths open wide, they looked down upon us brothers. Us brothers, we looked down with our heads, we reached down with our hands, down into the fronts of our trouser pockets, to fish out from down inside of there what we knew would get Boy to stop. And like this, with our knives in our hands, us brothers, we chopped off this boy’s head.