Peter Markus - We Make Mud

There are people here in this town, in this dirty river town with this dirty river running through it, who will be quick to tell you that what happened to our father, when he walked out into the river, was that he, our father, in the river, drowned. But us brothers, we are here to tell you this: that our father, when he walked out into the river, no, our father, he did not die. He lived is what our father did. Our father was saved, that night, when he walked out into the river, when he walked out across the river’s muddy water. Yes, our father, he is right now safe and sound and he is more than just alive, down on the bottom of this dirty river, down here where the rest of this dirty river’s dirty river fish live like the dirty river fish that these fish are and will always in the river be. Us brothers, we go to see and to be with our father on those nights when the river’s other dirty river fish aren’t, for us brothers, biting. Those other dirty river fish, we tell this to ourselves, we tell this to each other, they must be hanging out, these fish must be hanging down, down at the muddy bottom of the muddy river’s bottom. And so, on nights like this, us brothers, what we do is this: we take two deep breaths down inside of our boy mouths, and us brothers, like this, we dive down to the river’s bottom. Us brothers, here in the river, down where the water down here is thick and dirty with mud and river and fish, the way we like it to be, us brothers, see, we can breathe. When we open up our boy mouths, this river’s muddy water, it turns to air. It is like this with our father, too. Our father, he was the one of us who taught us brothers how to under the river’s muddy water breathe. Breathe in is what our father told us, the first time we came down to the river to see him, down here at the river’s bottom. Don’t worry about breathing, our father to us brothers said. All you got to do is believe. Believe what? was what Brother wanted to know. And what our father said to this was, Believe in the river, he said. Don’t you see, our father asked us. Our father said, The river is like sky. Then he told us to dive inside. Us brothers, we sometimes do what it is we are told. And so, dive inside, this we did. When we did, when we dove head-first down into the river, the river shattered into a billion pieces. Each broken piece became a star.

There is a river flowing inside Girl’s body that floats up out of Girl whenever Girl breathes. Brothers other than us might say, that’s no river, that’s just some girl breathing out her girl breath, but us brothers who made Girl and us brothers who believe Girl, we know a river when a river’s what we see. No, yes, us brothers, we know better than to say no to what we see and what we say and what we believe to be true. So what us brothers say instead of us saying no is we say Girl. We hop up on board of our made-out-of-mud boat and we oar our way down along this muddy river that flows, just like a river flows, up and out of Girl’s mouth. Us brothers, we float our made-out-of-mud boat down this made-out-of-mud river. We row-row-row our boat singing songs that float up from the bottom of our boots. Girl breathes a river is what us brothers sing as we dip our mud oars into this muddy water, this muddy river where, sometimes, in some places, it is so muddy that our paddles become shovels digging down into dirt. And this boat that is us brothers’? It is no longer a boat for us brothers to row in. What this boat becomes is, it becomes a tractor. And back behind us, in our mud-tailed rooster’s tail of a wake, we spit out from our singing fish mouths songs that turn into seeds, then seedlings, that turn into full-grown trees: trees that rise up and leaf up from the bottom of this river’s bottom: so many islands of so much green growing in the middle of so much water: so much water that looks so much like mud that it must be mud. And this, brother, are you picturing this? This muddy river that we are now floating down, that we are going down: it is a garden. It is ours for us brothers to keep.

Once, us brothers, we caught us a fish with a fish head so big, us brothers, we couldn’t cut off this fish’s head. This fish, fished up and out from the dirty river that runs through this dirty river town, when we tried to cut off this fish’s fish head, this fish, it would not die. Us brothers, with our fish-cutting knives fished up out of our trouser pockets, we couldn’t cut through it, this fish, this fish’s big head. We took turns, us brothers did, trying to cut off this fish’s big fish head. We even worked us brothers together, cutting at this fish’s head like brothers, one brother holding onto each end of the knife and each of us brothers sawing, back and forth, back and forth with this fish-cutting knife. Us brothers, we’d seen pictures of men with big men beards, lumberjacks with boots laced up to their knees, cutting down trees like this, working the big-toothed saw blade between them together, cutting down trees so big these men could actually stand up inside the cut that they were making to make a tree come falling down. Us brothers, we sawed like this, back and forth and back and forth, cutting and cutting, chopping and chopping, the knife’s silvery blade singing between us, in our hands, until our hands began to bleed. But this big fish with its big fish head, this fish, it wouldn’t die, its fish head, it wouldn’t let us cut it off. Even when, us brothers, after a time, we took our knife and we stuck it, we stabbed it, straight down into the top of this fish’s big fish head, even still, even then, this fish, it didn’t stop its living. This fish, with this fish-cutting knife sticking up and out from the top of its big fish head, us brothers, we washed our hands of this big fish. Back to the river, us brothers, we hissed these words into the eyes of this fish, and like this, us brothers, we each of us stuck our arms, in up to our elbows, up and inside the big red gills of this big, big-headed fish. And like this, each of us brothers, each one of us standing by the sides of this fish, we dragged this fish back to the river. Go, Fish, we said to this fish. Be free, we said, and we pushed and we rolled this big, big-headed fish out into the river’s muddy water. Like this, this fish, it swam away, it did not say to us brothers thank you or goodbye. But wait, us brothers, we called out to this fish after we’d just told it to go back away. Our knife! us brothers, we cried out after and out to this fish. You forgot to give us back our knife! Our knife, the knife that we used to cut off the heads off of our fish, this knife that we used to gut the guts out of our fish, it was still sticking up and out from the top of this fish’s big fish head. This fish, with its fish head still on it, it didn’t listen to us brothers. To this fish, us brothers, we could not say to it, Good, Fish. Us brothers, we stood there like this, on the muddy edge of this dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, and we watched this fish, out and into our river, this fish, it swam itself away. After a while, us brothers, the only part of this fish that we could see was the sticking-up knife, sticking up out of this fish’s big fish head, cutting through the mud that was the river. And then, after a little while more, there was no more knife left for us brothers to see, there was only the river with this fish somewhere down inside it, there was only the moon in the sky and the mud of the river holding us all in this place.

One night, us brothers, we lifted up our fishing knives up to the moon and we sliced it open, we gutted it, the moon, just like we would a fish. Yes, the moon, it was a fish, floating up above us brothers in that rivery dark, and out of the moon’s big white beautiful belly buckets of fish guts came rivering out. Us brothers, we were up to our boy necks in fish guts and more fish guts. The river, too, it was a river of fish guts and rivering fish guts. Up out of this river of river and guts it was Girl who came walking up to us brothers, to see what it was us brothers were up to and doing, with our boy heads just barely sticking up out of all of these guts. The moon, us brothers, we lifted up our heads up to say these words to Girl: the moon, we told this to Girl, it is a fish. Girl looked up. She looked up to the sky, at the moon up in the sky, and then she looked back down at us brothers: us brothers just a couple of sticking up brothers sticking up from the river’s mud and the moon’s fish-gut heads. You can’t gut the moon, Girl said. She shook her girl head. The moon, it’s not yours for you brothers to keep. When Girl looked with her made-out-of-mud eyes down upon us brothers, we could see that her eyes, they were not their usual muddy moons. Girl’s eyes, the look looking out from the insides of them, us brothers, we could feel the sun inside of them burning out. It was Brother’s idea, Brother looked at me and said. Brother was the brother of us brothers, Brother said to Girl, who made us do what it was that we did. I looked at Brother then. 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. Look: I took back that look. I did not shake my head at Brother. I did not say to Girl that Brother was the brother of us who was making all of this up. Girl just stood there, for a while, above us brothers, and then, after a little while more, she reached down toward us brothers with her muddy girl hand. I’m only going to ask you this once, Girl said to us brothers then. Which one of you brothers did it? Girl said. Which one of you boys raised up your knife to make the moon into a fish? I looked up at Girl. I looked back over at Brother. I waited to see what was about to happen to us brothers next. It was a long few seconds. The sky above the river, the sky above the steel mill — it sitting shipwrecked there in the riverbank’s mud — it was dark and it was quiet. Somewhere, I knew, the sun was shining. I nodded. I knew right then what it was that I had to do. We were brothers. So I was the brother of us brothers who lifted his hand up. It was me, I said this with my mouth. I was the brother, I said this to Girl, who turned the moon into a fish. I am the brother of us who made this fish-gutted mess. Girl looked down at us brothers and she ran her girl fingers through her made-out-of-mud girl hair. You give me no choice here was what Girl said to us brothers next. Up at Girl, I nodded my boy head. Then I closed both of my eyes. I did not see it, but I knew what it was that she was doing, when Girl reached down with her hand and took the knife from out of my hand. I could hear her take it, this knife, with mud and more mud and fish guts dripping off it, and she ran it, dragged it, Girl wiped it, onto her girl leg. Then Girl raised it up, into the sky above us brothers, into the sky above the river, and she chopped off Brother’s head.