We Make Mud

Our Mother is a Fish: Revisited

One night, us brothers, we heard us a sound, from where we were down standing, down by the banks of the river, fishing with mud for our river’s dirty river fish, it was the sound, us brothers knew, of somebody or someone chopping wood. A tree was what us brothers figured it was. But what us brothers thought was a tree, it wasn’t a tree. What it was was, getting itself chopped at like this, it was the fish-headed telephone pole out back in the back of our backyard. Into this pole’s wood, us brothers, we liked to take the fish that we’d catch out of the dirty river that runs through this dirty river town, and when we’d chop off these fishes’ fish heads, us brothers, we liked to take them, these heads, and we’d hammer and nail, these fishes’ heads, into this pole’s creosoted wood. Us brothers, we liked it, the sound that the hammer made when we’d hammer and pound our rusty, bent-back nails through these fishes’ fish heads and into this pole’s dark wood. It was a sound that would sometimes make our father step out back into the back of the yard to be with us brothers. Sons, our father liked to call out to us brothers with this word. Us brothers, we’d both turn back our boy heads toward the sound of a father. We’d wait like this to hear what other words might come from out of our father’s mouth. It was always a long few seconds. The sky above the river, the sky above the shipwrecked-in-the-river’s-mud mill, it was dark and silent. Somewhere, though, us brothers knew, the sun was somewhere shining. You boys remember to clean up before you come back in, was what our father liked to tell us. But it was our mother now who was the somebody who was taking an axe to our fish-headed, back-of-the-yard pole’s wood. Us brothers, up from the river, we ran ourselves up to our mother to ask her what did she think she was doing taking an axe to this pole’s wood. What does it look like I’m doing? was what our mother said, and she kept on chopping with her axe — with our father’s axe — at this pole’s wood. Our fish heads, hammered and nailed into this back-of-the-yard pole with rusty, bent-back nails, some of these fishes’ heads shook and flinched and then fell from where they had been hammered and nailed by us brothers into this backyard pole’s creosoted wood. Us brothers, we looked up with our eyes at these fishes’ heads, open-eyed, open-mouthed, and it was like they were singing to us brothers. When we heard what these fishes’ heads were singing to us brothers, us brothers, we took our up-at-our- fishes’-heads looks and we looked these looks at each other. There was this look that us brothers sometimes liked to look at each other with. It was the kind of a look that actually hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing the looking. Imagine that look. We looked and we looked and then we opened up our mouths at our mother. Mother, one of us brothers mouthed out loud with our mouth. Fish, the other one of us whispered. These words, we wanted to believe it, would be enough to get our mother to stop her doing. But these words, to our mother, they were just words to our mother. And so our mother, with the axe in her hands, she kept on chopping at this pole’s wood. Us brothers, to our mother, we didn’t know what we were going to do, or how we were going to get our mother to stop her in her doing, until we looked back up and saw our fish. Our fish, our fishes’ fish heads, open-eyed, open-mouthed, they were looking down upon us brothers, they were telling us brothers what it was that we had ourselves to do. When these fish told us brothers what it was that we had to do, us brothers, we knew that this was what it was we had us to do. So us brothers, we took two steps to be with ourselves two steps closer to our mother, and then we reached out to our mother with our hands to take her hands into ours. Mother, us brothers said. Give us your hands, we said. Hold your hands, we said, up against this pole’s wood. But our mother, she was not a brother to us brothers. Our mother, she was just a mother. Our mother, because she was just a mother to us, because she wasn’t one of us brothers, she wouldn’t do with us what we’d just told. Bad, Mother, us brothers hissed into her mother ears. Us brothers, we looked with our eyes at our mother. We looked with our eyes at our mother the way that we sometimes liked to look with this look at the fish that we liked to fish out of the dirty river that runs through this dirty river town. This fish here, Brother said, and he looked back at me with that look. She’s a keeper, was what Brother said. If you say so, I said back to Brother. And then I took that axe out from our mother’s hand, this axe that was our father’s, and then I chopped off our mother’s head.