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.
What Our Father is Here to Tell Us
This is us brothers. This is us brothers doing what we are always doing. This is what we did. You: look here. See us brothers out back in the back of our backyard. We are cutting off the fish heads off of the fish that we have just fished out from the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town. And this here is our father. See our father, how he steps out back into the back of our backyard, and watch how he keeps stepping closer back toward where the two of us brothers are standing back here with our fish-cutting knives held in our hands until our father, he stops stepping back and then he just stands there for a while staring at what, us brothers, at what, his sons, what we are doing: us with our knives held in our hands, us brothers, us, our father’s sons, us who are chopping off the heads off of our fish. This is us brothers doing what us brothers love to do best — us brothers fishing and us brothers getting all good and muddy and us brothers chopping off the heads off of our fish. And now, now look over there. There is a shed back here in the back of our backyard. This shed, it isn’t made out of mud: it’s made out of wood, what our father likes to call lumber, and us, our father’s sons, we like it, the way that that word lumber, we like it how it comes lumbering out of his, out of our father’s, mouth. And look: look. There is a garden back here too that is right now mostly just mud, just the way we like it. And there is a telephone pole too that is creosote-coated, this sticking-up-toward-the-sky pole that all up and down the sides of it us brothers have hammered and nailed into its black tar wood all of the fish heads that us brothers have cut off from all of the fish that we’ve fished out of the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town. Each of these fish heads each has been given by us brothers a name. Not one is called Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John is my brother’s and my name. We call each other Brother. Our father, he calls us brothers Son. When our father hollers out to us brothers that word Son, the sound of it, that word, the way that it hangs in the air between us, it is a sound that we can’t help but turn our heads to. When we hear that sound, us brothers, we both of us brothers know that we are crossing that river together. Son, we hear our father say to us now, our father, he who is right now staring at us brothers and he isn’t saying anything more. Maybe there is nothing more for our father to say to us, his sons, than this word Son. But no. No, there is something more for our father to say to us, his sons, which is why he is out right now in the back of our backyard staring at us brothers with this stare that he is staring at us with. But what our father is about to say to us brothers, us brothers, we don’t want to hear it. What it is he is about to say to us brothers, these sentences of his, they have words inside of them like leaving and going and for the best. After our father says what he says, our father tells us brothers that he, that we, that he and our mother, they don’t expect us brothers to understand. Us brothers, we look at our father. We look up at and we look into his man’s face and we nod with our boy heads because it’s true. What we understand, now and forever, is that, us brothers, we won’t ever understand — not now, not then, not ever. But this, we do not say this to our father, not with our mouths. We do not say this to our father’s face. We’ll save that for later. Now we just nod and we keep on with this nodding so that our father thinks that us brothers and our noddings means that, us brothers, we are okay with what he has said. Us brothers, we are not okay with what our father has just said to us brothers. But our father does not know that we are not okay with what he has just said. What our father does, to us brothers, to our nodding, is our father, he nods his head back. Good, Sons, our father says to us brothers, and then he turns away his face and starts walking back to our house with our mother there inside it. When the back door slams shut, us brothers, we know that now it is us brothers back to being just us. Us brothers, we turn to face off with each other. This is us brothers nodding our boy heads at nobody but us. Us brothers, we both of us know what it is that we have to do next. So we go, us brothers, not so slow, over to the backyard shed with our hands now hanging knifeless by our sides. When we come back out from the inside of this shed, in our hands now we are holding in them each a hammer and a handful of rusty, bent-back nails. Watch as us brothers walk this walk back to where our backyard’s fish-headed telephone pole, it is a lit-up lighthouse shining in the moon’s nighttime light. In the light of this light, see the two of us brothers take the other one of us by the hand. Brother, this might sting, Brother, the both of us brothers warn — we warn this to each other, we warn this to ourselves. Then the both of us brothers raise back with our hammering hands, we hold back our hammers. We line up those rusted nails.