We Make Mud

Our Father Who Walks on Water Comes Home with Mud on His Boots

What our father is saying, what it is that our father keeps saying is, Where are my boots? Boots is what his mouth keeps on mouthing out. I took my boots off outside is what our father is saying, out back on the backyard steps is what he is telling us brothers what he did. I took them off just like your mother always tells us to do is how he explains it all to us. My boots, he says, they were covered in mud is why I took them off. But why? is what us brothers want our mouths to say to our father. But our father, he keeps on lipping with his lip. Where, where? is what he keeps asking. Where can my boots be? He looks at us, his sons, he looks to us brothers, as if we know the answer to this. Us brothers, we look back at our father but it is with a look that says that, us brothers, we don’t know. Who is what our father wants to be told, who would walk off with a pair of beat-up boots? There were holes in the soles of those boots, our father tells us. Us brothers, we nod with our boy heads to let our father know that we know. We can picture in our boy heads the way the steel of the steel toe used to shine up from under the mud. We are boys shaking our heads at our father to let him know how sorry we are about his boots. We are with our heads the both of us brothers shaking when we look down to where our father’s boots ought to be. There, where we are looking, there on our father’s feet, us brothers, we see boots. We see our father’s boots, all good and muddy, just like boots are meant to be. We see our father’s boots right there where our father’s boots are meant to be right there on our father’s feet. What we say to our father is, Father, we say, look down. Down where? is what our father says to this, and what he does then is he looks around, he is looking up and down and all around, but where he doesn’t look is down at his own two feet. Look down there, us brothers say, and we point down at his feet. You must’ve not took them off last night is what we tell our father is what most likely happened last night when he came home from a night with the river. It was a late night last night for our father and the river. We do not say to our father that we could hear him last night come into the house with his boots busting in through the back door smelling of river and whiskey and fish. What we do say to our father is something that us brothers, we find this funny for us brothers to imagine: it is funny for us brothers to even have to say. What we say is that it looks like to us brothers like maybe you wore your boots to bed. Our father’s muddy boots, worn to bed, worn to a bed with our mother asleep in it — the thought of this, the picture of this in our boy heads: this, us brothers, we can hardly believe it. It must not have been our mother who was the mother asleep in the bed beside our father. Our mother, our mother would have made our father take off his muddy boots back at the back door, back before he came walking into the house. But our mother, our mother, she isn’t our mother anymore. Our mother, asleep in bed, she is just this lump of a mother asleep in a bed with mud now dried in clumps upon its bedsheets. It, this bed, with this other mother asleep in it, it could be a bed made out of mud for all this other mother knows. Mud has got a hold of this mother now. This mother, she is this mother who is stuck in the mud now. And our father, with mud on his muddy boots, our father: he is walking on water now. He is walking back into our house. Sons, our father is saying. Our father, he is shouting out to us brothers, Boys, come here. Us brothers, us, our father’s sons, we come running when we hear the sound of our father. Our father, his voice, it is a raised-back hammer hammering the backs of our boy heads. We run and we stop and we stand up tall. We are standing with our boot heels touching waiting to hear whatever it is that our father wants to say to us next. It is a long few seconds. Outside the window, the sky above the river, the sky above the river where the black-husked steel mill sits shipwrecked in the mud, it is dark and quiet. Somewhere, I am sure, the sun is shining. Your boots is what our father says to us brothers next. Boys, he tells us, let me take a good long look at your boots. Us brothers, we do what our father says. We lift up the legs of our muddy-legged trousers. We look down with our father. This is us, the three of us brothers, looking down at our mud-covered boots. When our father sees that crust of mud crumbling on the bottoms of our boots, our father does not say another word. He drops down, onto his hands and knees, down on the floor, and begins to eat.