We Make Mud

We Did Not Call This Boy Brother

Us brothers, we knew of this other boy who lived in this town, in this dirty river town, though this boy, this other boy, us brothers, we did not call this boy brother. This other boy, he was different from us brothers. He was not one of us. What was different about this boy was, this boy, he’d never been, by the river, born. He died is what we are telling you. This boy died before he had a chance to breathe. This boy, he was a ghost is what we are wanting you to see. This boy, he was a ghost who lived not just down by the river: no, this boy, this ghost of a not-brother, he lived in the river, down at the river’s muddy bottom, down where mud goes when it sinks. This other boy, he haunted us brothers — he liked to scare away from us brothers all the river’s fish. Sometimes this boy, he liked to make like he was a fish, and he’d take into his boy mouth one of our mud-dipped, minnowy-tipped fishing hooks. This boy, he would tug, and pull, he would hook himself through his bottom lip, and then he would run, this boy would, down along the river’s bottom, and this would make us brothers believe that we had, there on the other end of our lines, hooked to our silvery hooks, a real live fish. A keeper, is what we called these fish: a fish big enough for us brothers to eat. But when we’d reel this boy up and in and drag him up ashore to the river’s muddy shore, this boy did not make like he was a fish about to be put into a bucket — a fish that was about to be made dead. Fish on! is what this boy, he’d holler up at us brothers, he’d unlip our fishing hooks, he’d spit them down into the mud. Fish off! is what he’d say to us brothers next, before diving head-first back into those muddy waters. But one night, us brothers, we couldn’t take it any longer: this boy making like a fish and then this boy getting off and going away from us. This one night, this other boy, he took into his boy mouth our mud-tipped, minnowy-dipped fishing hooks one too many times, so that when we felt that pull, that fishy boy tug, there on the other end of our line, when we reeled him up and in and plopped him down onto the river’s muddy shore: on this one night, with this boy looking up all fishy-eyed up at us brothers up from the river’s muddy banks, and with this boy already starting to grin at us brothers, Fish on! — what us brothers did different this night was this. We gave each other this look. There was this look that, us brothers, we sometimes liked to look at each other with this look. It was the kind of a look that hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing this looking. Imagine, if you would, that look. What are you looking like that for? is all that this boy could say. Us brothers, we said nothing to this boy asking us this. What we did say to this boy was this. This fish, Brother said, he is a keeper, Brother said. If you say so is what I said to Brother. I nodded my boy head. I wetted with spit and mud my fish-kissing lips. Then I reached inside my rightside trouser pocket and I fished out our fishing knife. This was the knife that us brothers used to gut out the guts of our fish, to cut the heads off of our fish. And this ghost of a boy, this making-like-a-fish boy, he knew what was coming next. He gazed up good and ready when I raised up this knife up toward the sky and held it like that so that, for a moment, the moon was trapped in the glinting of its silvered metal. And with the moon above us watching, the moon above our brother, I called this boy Boy. Boy, I whispered. Boy, I hissed. You are one of us now, I said. Are you ready for this, Boy, I said. Are you sure about this? This boy nodded with his head. If you say so, I said. If you want me to, I said. And then I chopped off his boy head.