We Make Mud

And then, One Day, the Rains

And then, one day, the rains, the rains stopped raining down on our muddy river town, and all that mud that made our town the muddy river town that it was, all of that mud, it all dried up and turned to dirt. And the river, yes, the river, too, all of that muddy river water that made our muddy river the muddy river that it was, even the river and the mud that was at the bottom of the river, after not too long, it too turned to dirt. Yes, Brother, it was so dry in our dirty river town with a dirty river no longer running through it that when us brothers, when we walked down to where our muddy river used to be, what we found there instead of a river, there was just this dirt stretching out as far as our eyes could see. Water, no, there was no water anywhere that us brothers looked. And so, us brothers, what we did was, we walked out and across and out into the dirt hoping that where the dirt ended there would be water there and there would be the makings of mud there for us brothers to make into mud. And so we walked, and we walked, and we kept on walking on and on, across this dirt, walking with our faces pressing against the made-out-of-dirt sky. Us brothers, for four hundred days and four hundred more nights, we walked: in search of water, a river falling from the sky. A bird flying above us brothers would not have seen us brothers walking across dirt. All it would have seen was just dirt being blown across dirt. One morning, though, us brothers, we stopped our walking, and we found ourselves standing at the edge of a field of corn. This corn, it was growing up all brittled and stunted and brown up from all of this dirt. It was so dry, this corn, that when one of us brothers breathed, just the breath of us brothers breathing would make those corned stalks start to break. Or when we snapped off a shriveled-up ear and ripped off its papery husk, so dry were those skins that up from our hands they would blow and float away in a wind that was barely blowing. Inside, there were no yellow kernels to be found by us brothers: only the cobs themselves which would crumb apart and turn into dust. So what are we going to do? Brother was the one of us brothers brave enough to ask. I said to Brother that maybe it was time for us brothers to find something else for us to love: something other than river, other than fish. Something other than moon and girl and mud. But maybe I wasn’t thinking is what I think now. Maybe there was so much dirt in my ears that I couldn’t hear what it was that my mouth was saying. But we don’t want to love something other than river and fish and mud was what Brother said to this. We love river, Brother said. We love fish. And mud, we can never get us enough of mud. I nodded my boy head at Brother. I know it, was what I said, and I shook my head so that my ears could better hear what my heart was wanting to say. You’re right, Brother, I said, and I looked down at our dust-covered boots. I saw dirt there and everywhere underneath our feet. Dirt. I said this word, to myself, but I did not like the sound that this word made. I did not like the way that dirt felt in my mouth. It felt dirty on my tongue, this word dirt. Dirt was no good. The only thing dirt was good for was for turning dirt into mud. I did not have to say this to Brother. This, Brother already knew this. Us brothers, we looked across all of this dirt that was here in between us. We looked with this look that us brothers had between us. One look with this look and the both of us brothers knew that we did not need to make with our mouths another sound about this. And so, us brothers, us knowing this, we dropped down onto our hands and knees, down into this dirt, and like this, with our faces and fists pressed against the hardness that was this earth, us brothers, we began to hammer, we began to pound, we began to speak.