Boy’s Tongue
One night, us brothers, we are down by the river that rivers its way through this dirty river town, fishing for the river’s dirty river fish, when up to us brothers walks that boy who, us brothers, we call this boy Boy — boy born without a tongue on the inside of his boy mouth, that boy Boy, he walks right up to us brothers and in his boy mouth, that hole in his face where Boy used to feed food into, that place where no words, only boy grunts, used to come grunting out of that grunty space, and down there, us brothers, we can see, when Boy opens up that hole of his opened wide open at us brothers, we see a tongue down there in the place where no tongue used to be. What’s that? Brother says. Where’d you get that? is what the both of us brothers want to be told. How, we say. When, we ask him. Who’d you get a tongue from? us brothers, with our mouths, we push with our own tongues this mouthful of words out. Like this, the both of us brothers, we poke around with our boy tongues down and around inside our own boy mouths, just to make sure that Boy did not take out our tongues from the insides of our mouths. I got it, Boy tells us, I took it, Boy says, and here he is a boy grinning back at us brothers with a big boy kind of a fish-kissing grin. I took it, I got it, I cut it out, Boy tells us, from the mouth, Boy says it, of a fish. A fish, us brothers say this fish word back down at Boy. What kind of a fish? is what we want to be told. Boy holds out his hands out in front of us brothers to show us what kind of a fish this fish was. It was a big fish is what Boy says to us brothers next. It was big, Boy says, and it was silver shining, he tells us, and when I held this fish up in my boy hands the scales from this fish stuck to and glittered back sparkly in my hands. Boy holds his hands up close to us brothers so we can see that his hands, it’s true, Boy’s hands: they look like they’ve been dipped in stars. Look with us at Boy. Us brothers, we have this look that we sometimes like to look at each other with. It’s the kind of a look that actually hurts the eyes of the brother who is doing the looking. Imagine that look. Come closer, us brothers, we say these words to Boy. Open up, we tell him. Let us take a look inside: to get us brothers a better look at that fish tongue down on the inside of your mouth. Just like this, to us brothers saying for Boy to do so, Boy does what he is told. This boy we call Boy, he takes two steps up closer to us brothers and then he opens up his boy mouth for us brothers to see inside. What we see, when we take this look close into Boy’s opened up mouth, we see a tongue down there inside of there that is moving around down there, it is flopping around in there, yes, just like a fish. Open wider now is what us brothers say next to this boy. Then, we say, wider, we say. Open up wide, we say, as wide as you can make your mouth go, we tell him. Here again, Boy does what he is told. Good, Boy, we say to Boy. Boy’s mouth, that hole in his face that he used to feed food into, that place where no words used to come mouthing out, it is opened up so wide now, for us brothers to see down inside it, that it is a hole that is swallowing up whole the head that is this boy’s whole boy head. Boy’s head, it is more of a hole right now than it is a head right now, and Boy, this boy with his mouth opened up wide, he is making sounds come out of this hole in his face, this space with that fish’s tongue flopping around down inside it, and this sound, us brothers realize then, it is the sound of a fish that is a fish that it, this fish, it can sing. This fish’s fish tongue down inside of Boy’s opened up mouth, it is the tongue of a singing fish, and this boy Boy, he is now no longer just a boy, but he is a boy who can sing. Sing, this boy, he is a singing boy, this boy is. And us brothers, hearing these singing sounds coming out from Boy’s wide open mouth, we look at each other with that look. There is that look that us brothers sometimes like to look at each other with. It is that look that actually hurts the eyes of the brother who is doing the looking. Look at us brothers looking with this look. This fish here, Brother says, looking at me with this look. It’s a keeper, Brother says. If you say so, I say back to what Brother has just said. And just like this, us brothers, with our boy hands fishing down, up to our wrists, down into the insides of Boy’s mouth, us brothers, together like this, we pull, we tug, we yank, we rip, this fish, this tongue, this song, out from the insides of Boy’s mouth. When Boy sees what us brothers have to him just done, when he sees his fish tongue held out, like a fish, out in the space between us brothers, Boy opens up his mouth to speak, to say to us brothers, What have you just done? and Why would you want to do it? but nothing, nothing but a grunt, that is, comes out at us brothers grunting out. Boy grunts and he grunts and he keeps on grunting at us brothers, until us brothers, we know there is nothing else for us to do. We reach with our hands down inside our front trouser pockets, to fish out the knives that are down there waiting for us brothers to fish them like this up and out, and then, just like this, with these knives raised up above our own boy heads, we cut, we slice, we chop and we chop, until we chop off this boy’s head. Boy’s head, down in the mud down here by the river, it is sitting there, down in the mud, the way that only a cut-off head can sit in the mud down by a muddy river’s muddy shore. The eyes in Boy’s head, they are looking up at us brothers, and Boy’s mouth, that hole in his face where Boy used to feed food into, where no mouthy sounds could once upon a time ago come out at us mouthing out, this boy mouth, it is as quiet now as any hole is dark and quiet and making not a sound when it is a hole filled up with mud.
Boy’s Tongue: Revisited
And then there was this other time when, us brothers, we fished a fish out from the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, and this fish, when we stuck our knives up inside of this fish, to gut the guts out of this fish, to cut off this fish’s fish head, inside of this fish there was a tongue up there inside the insides of this fish. This tongue that was stuck up inside of this fish, it wasn’t a fish’s tongue up inside of this fish. This tongue, it was too big for it to be a fish’s tongue. This tongue, what it looked like to us brothers, it looked like to us brothers that it was a human’s tongue, this tongue, it could have been the tongue inside the mouths of one of us brothers. But this tongue, it wasn’t the tongue of one of us brothers. Us brothers’ tongues, when we opened up our boy mouths toward each other to see inside of each other’s mouth, we both of us brothers saw each of us brothers’ tongues down on the insides of our mouths. But Boy, that boy born without a tongue in his boy mouth, that boy whose mouth was a hole in his face that he fed food into, that boy who was born with teeth and a full head of hair, maybe this tongue was the tongue that was meant to be born into that boy’s mouth. Maybe this fish, maybe it was the fish that was the fish that ate Boy’s tongue. Maybe this is why Boy didn’t get born with a tongue of his own on the inside of his mouth. Who of us can really say? So what we did, then, was this: we took this tongue that we found on the inside of this fish when we stuck up our knives up inside of this fish, to gut the guts out of this fish, to cut off this fish’s fish head, and we went looking to find Boy, to see if maybe this tongue was the tongue that Boy was not born with. When we found Boy, down by the river, Boy was out walking back and forth across the river’s muddy water, going back and forth like this, across the river, like a stone skipped between the river’s banks. It was as if on each of the river’s two sides there were two boys taking turns skipping stones out across the muddy river. When Boy saw us brothers, when we called out to him, Hey, Boy, Boy took off across that river’s muddy water like he was part dog, part fish. Boy came running up to us brothers where we were the two of us standing there in the mud along the river’s muddy banks with his boy mouth opened up wide and with no tongue inside of it hanging at us brothers out. It’s true, us brothers, we were the brothers who taught this boy more than just a few tricks. It was us brothers who taught Boy how to walk on water. It’s true, too, that Boy drowned the first time that he walked out. Boy floated face-down, down the river, but then he walked upriver back, back to us brothers. Good, Boy, us brothers said to this boy. We scratched Boy’s back. We pulled a bone out from the back of Boy’s hand and we threw it out into the river. Boy, we said to Boy. Go fish. Boy took to that muddy river’s muddy water like he was part dog, part fish. Boy came walking back to us brothers with that bone sticking out from both sides of his boy mouth and then he flopped his boy body down right in front of us brothers on the river’s muddy shore. Yes, just like a fish. Good, Dog, we said to this boy. Boy, we said to this boy, but we did not hold out to him this tongue that we found up inside of this fish. Let us see inside of your mouth, we said. Open up even wider, we said. Boy, being the good boy that he was, Boy did what he was told. Good, Boy, we said to Boy twice more. We scratched Boy’s back. We took a bone from the back of Boy’s hand and we stuck it inside his mouth, to hold his boy mouth open. Then, what we did next was, we took that tongue that we found stuck up inside of that fish that we fished up from this dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, and we stuck this tongue down into the insides of this boy’s open mouth. When we did this with this tongue, this tongue, down inside on the inside of Boy’s mouth, what happened to Boy was this: Boy, with his mouth opened wide like this, with the bone from the back of his boy hand stuck in his mouth to hold his mouth wide open like this, and with this tongue stuck down on the inside of his wide-opened mouth, Boy, this boy, he started up singing. Boy sang, and he sang, and he kept on with this singing, and then this boy, singing like this, singing like a fish, he would not, he could not, get himself, or get the tongue on the inside of his mouth, to put a stop to his singing. Us brothers, we didn’t know what we were going to do, or how we were going to get this boy to stop with this singing, until we turned back away from the river and stood back facing back toward our house. Our house, in our house’s backyard, out back in the back of our house’s backyard, there was a telephone pole back there studded with the chopped off heads of fish. In the end there were exactly one hundred and fifty fish heads hammered and nailed into this pole’s wood. Each one of these fish, each of these fish’s fish heads, each one was given a name. Not one was named Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John was mine and my brother’s name. We called each other Brother. When us brothers turned back away from the river to face back toward our house, it was then that we knew what we had to do. So we took Boy by his hand, we took this singing boy, back to our backyard, and we walked with this boy up and back until the back of this boy was backed up against this backyard pole. Boy, we said to Boy. It’s time to stop all of this singing. And when Boy could not, when this boy did not stop with his singing, even when we took that bone from the back of his hand and pulled it like a tooth from his wide-opened mouth, we knew there was only one thing left for us to do. Brother held Boy’s head up against this fish-headed pole. Up above our heads, those fish heads, with their fish mouths open wide, they looked down upon us brothers. Us brothers, we looked down with our heads, we reached down with our hands, down into the fronts of our trouser pockets, to fish out from down inside of there what we knew would get Boy to stop. And like this, with our knives in our hands, us brothers, we chopped off this boy’s head.