Peter Markus - We Make Mud

Years later, when we are no longer boys, when we are brothers big and grown up to be brothers who are now men, we will sit down by the river’s still-muddy banks, and one of us brothers big enough now to be called Mister will say to the other just as big brother: Girl always did like me best. We will the both of us brothers say that we were, by Girl, the best-liked brother between us. Us brothers, we will fight with our fists, we will duke it out, down by the river, to prove to each other, to prove to Girl, which one of us brothers was Girl’s bestest brother, which one of us brothers Girl would have picked if she’d had to pick just one of us boys to do her girl things with. Picture the two of us grown-up-to-be-big brothers rolling around in the river’s mud. See us walking out onto the river’s water just so we can prove it to each other that walking out across the river’s water can still be, by us brothers, done without us drowning. Imagine the moon, always big and full as it always was for us brothers, watching over the both of us: an eye, a lighthouse, a magnet, a hubcap, it is a skinned apple, it is a brother, it is a sister, to the both of us. But I was the brother, one of us brothers will say. No, I was the one. Us brothers, we will bat it back and forth like this, and this we will not stop, not until the stars fall burning from the sky: not until the sun refuses to rise and shine: not until Girl steps up out of the mud of the river to put an end to us brothers’ fighting by saying, to the both of us brothers: I am large. I began as mud. I am of two mud hearts. I am big and I am girl enough for the both of you brothers. Here, brothers. And here Girl will hold out in her girl hands a heart in each hand that is a heart that is pumping away with mud. I am giving you both back your heart, Girl will say. To this, us brothers, we will both of us cry out, No, and No! On this, us brothers, we will both of us agree. We will see, us brothers, eye to eye. Okay, okay, Girl will say when she sees that this is so. Girl will hiss, Then quit all of this. Girl will insist that us brothers get along. Girl will make us brothers shake hands. Girl will go on to say, Go on now, brothers. Girl will nudge us brothers both a little closer. Kiss, Girl will tell us, and make mud. Girl will push us brothers out into the river. See the sky, Girl will say. Girl will force us brothers to let go of the moon’s lit-up rope. Hold on to each other, Brothers. Girl will then push us brothers out from behind, out over the river’s muddy edge. This, we will hear Girl whisper, into our ears. This is how you learn how to fly.

This is how the story, the story of us brothers, this is how it ends. It ends as so many of our stories always do, at night, with us brothers running down to the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town. And so, this is how this story begins too: it begins with a river, and it ends with a river, and through it all there is the mud that holds this river in its place. So this is the river. This is us brothers. This is the story that is and will always be the both of us. It begins one night. One night, us brothers, we run ourselves down to the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town. Here, at the river’s muddy shore, us brothers, because we are brothers, we drop down onto our hands and knees, down in the river-made mud, and down here on our hands and knees, down here where dirt and river kiss to make mud, us brothers, we bend down our heads, we close our boy eyes to the muddy darkness inside our own heads. Like this, us brothers, we take the muddy river’s water into our mouths. We drink. We drink dirty river from dirty river, we breathe in buckets of rusty river water, we drink and we drink and we keep on with this drinking until there is no more river for us to drink. We drink, that is, until the muddy river turns into muddy mud. When it does, when the muddy river water turns to even muddier mud, like this, us brothers, picture us brothers, this will be the last you might ever see of us brothers: are you with us? Are you watching this? Are you down on your hands and knees drinking with us brothers? Now listen to us sing.

One day, us brothers, we get it into our boy heads to go with our hammers out back into the back of our yard, out back to where our fish-headed telephone pole is back there studded with the chopped off heads of fish. Back here we go with our hammers but not with our fists filled with rusty, bent-back nails, and here we start to unhammer and unnail, from this backyard pole, all of those fish heads that have been hammered and nailed into this telephone pole’s wood. There are exactly one hundred and fifty fish heads hammered and nailed into that pole’s creosoted wood, and so we take all one hundred and fifty of those fish heads down from where they have been hammered, and we put these fish, these fish heads, into our mud-rusty buckets and go — us brothers, we run with our buckets, one bucket hanging low off of each one of us brothers’ arms, we go with these buckets filled up to their rims, we run ourselves down to the river, and one by one, fish head by fish head, we throw each one of these fishes’ heads back into the river’s muddy water. Fish, we say to these fish heads. Go back where you belong. Us brothers, we watch these fish heads float away and down the river, one by one they bob and they drift away on their way out to the lake, though when we get down to the last two fish, us brothers, we do not want to let these fishes go. We hold onto these last two fish, these last two of our fish heads, and we give each other this look. There is this look that us brothers, we like to look at each other with this look. This look, it’s the kind of a look that actually hurts the face of the brother who is doing the looking. Imagine that look. It’s while us brothers are looking at each other with this looking look that, out of the corners of each one of our eyes, the eyes of us brothers that are facing the river, us brothers, this is what we see: we see fish, we see fish heads, that have turned back into fish: fish with fish bodies and fish with fish fins and fish with fish tails to go along with their fish heads. These fish, they are swimming back upriver to where us brothers, we are standing, there on the river’s muddy edge, and these fish, they are flopping themselves down into the mud that is muddy in and on and around our boot’s feet. These fish, they are looking up at us brothers, up from this mud, with a fishy look on their fish faces that tells us brothers, Take us, brothers, home. Put us fishes back in our place. Nail us fishes back up and back into that back-of-the-yard pole. Us brothers, we give each other the look. We nod at each other with our boy heads. These fish, Brother says. These fish are keepers, Brother says. If you say so, I say to Brother. And then, fish by fish, brother by brother, us brothers, we fish our hands into our trouser pockets, we fish our knives up out of our pockets, we take each of us brothers turns cutting off, fish by fish, fish head by fish head, each of these fishes’ heads.

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.