What the Fish of the River Tell Us to Do
In our room, at night, in the dark, us brothers, we do not sleep. What we do, at night, in our room, in the dark, is we stare out our bedroom’s window. Through our bedroom’s window, us brothers, we can see out back into the back of our backyard. Out back in the back of our backyard, us brothers, we can see our fish. We can see the fish, we can see those fishes’ heads, fish heads that are hammered and nailed, with rusty, bent-back nails, into our back-of-the-yard telephone pole. This back-of-the-yard telephone pole, it is studded with the chopped off heads of fish. These fish heads used to be fish with fish bodies living in the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town. Our town, it is a dirty river town with a dirty river running through it. Those fishes’ heads, they stare back at us brothers, open-eyed, open-mouthed, and it’s like they’re singing to us brothers. When these fish sing like this to us, us brothers, we listen to what these fish say. What the fish say to us brothers, when they sing like this to us, they say, Brothers, don’t leave. It was our father’s voice, it was our father who came home from work that day and told us we were leaving. When our father told us we were leaving, our father, he meant it, we were leaving for good: this dirty river, this dirty river town. Us brothers, we did not want to leave. We did not not want to leave behind this dirty river town or this dirty river where us brothers always liked to run down to it to fish. We did not want to leave behind the fish-headed telephone pole out back in the back of our backyard. There were exactly one hundred and fifty fish heads hammered and nailed and singing out to us brothers from the split black wood of that backyard telephone pole. We gave each of these fish each a name. Not one was called Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John was my and my brother’s name. We called each other Brother. Brother, I liked to say. Brother, I said, the night our father told us we were leaving. Give me your hand. Let’s show those fish how we’re going to keep ourselves from going away. Stay, I said, to Brother. Stand right here is what I said to him then, and then I walked with Brother out back into the back of our yard. Out back in the back of our backyard, that backyard telephone pole, it was sticking up, it was standing up, like the backbone of some stuck-in-the-mud fish. When I said to Brother, Give me your hand, Brother did like I told. He gave me his hand. I held Brother’s held out hand back up against the wood of this fish-headed backyard telephone pole. In my other hand, I was holding onto our father’s hammer. In my mouth, I was holding with my teeth a couple of our father’s rusty, bent-back nails. This might sting, I said to Brother. And then I raised back with that hammer. I drove that nail right through Brother’s hand. Brother didn’t flinch, or wince with his body, or make with his mouth the sound of a brother crying out. Good, Brother, I said. I was hammering in another nail into Brother’s other hand when our father stepped out into the back of the backyard. Boys, our father called out to us brothers. Us brothers, we turned with our boy heads back toward the sound of our father. We waited to hear what it was that our father was going to say to us brothers next. It was a long few seconds. The sky above the river where the steel mill stood shipwrecked in the river’s mud, it was dark and silent. Somewhere, I was sure, the sun was shining. You boys be sure to clean up before you come back in, our father said to us then. Our father turned back his back. Us brothers, we turned back to face back each other. I raised back the hammer. I lined up that rusted nail.
Stones that Float
There are stones along this river’s muddy bank that do not sink. They float, though in us brothers’ hands, these stones, they feel heavy to us brothers — feel the way that we believe stones should feeclass="underline" hard, solid, things made from the dirt to be out over the dirt thrown. Throw them into the river, though, and these stones become boats that float on top of the river. Us brothers, we don’t know what to believe when we see a thing like this happen. This hasn’t always been the way with us brothers and stones. There was a time when, us brothers, we remember stones that used to sink. We’d throw them up and above and into the river and watch them disappear. In the darkness of the river we’d hear these stones go plunk and plunk. Maybe now it’s the river and not the stones. Maybe it’s that the river is more mud than it is water now, and the stones that we are throwing aren’t really floating. Maybe what these stones are doing is, they are just sitting there the way that stones sometimes sit in the mud: sit, and sit, for years, for centuries, until us brothers come walking up and along the river’s muddy shore and reach down with our muddy boy hands to pick the stones up from the mud. We pick the stones up from the mud so that we can throw them, so we can see a stone in flight, can stand and watch this thing without any wings rise above this earth.
We Eat Mud
Us brothers, we kept reaching down, with our hands, down into the mud. We kept on with our hands reaching down, into the mud, and when we did, us brothers, we kept on pulling up mud. But then once, when we reached with our hands down into the mud, us brothers, we pulled up Girl. We pulled Girl up, out of the mud, until Girl became a tree. Us brothers, up this girl tree, up, us brothers, we climbed. We climbed up this girl tree that used to be Girl, this tree that used to be mud, until us brothers got up to this tree’s top. Up here, at the top of this tree, us brothers, out of tree branches and tree leaves, all the color of mud, we made us a nest. In the sky above our heads, there was a cloud up there in the shape of a bird. This cloud, it was so shaped like how a bird is shaped that it became, it turned into, it was: a bird. This bird, it flew over to where, us brothers, we were standing up watching with our heads lifted up to see. When this bird that was once a cloud was close enough for us to touch it, us brothers, we reached out with our hands to touch it. We touched it. We touched this bird that was once a cloud once shaped in the shape of a bird, and when we did, this bird, it started singing. Then, this bird, this bird that, it was singing, then it and its singing, it flew away. When it came back, this bird, a little while later, like a good bird that always comes back, its bird mouth was filled with mud. This bird, with its bird mouth filled up with mud, this bird, it wasn’t singing. What this bird did, even though it wasn’t a bird singing to us brothers anymore, it flew back up close to us brothers above us our boy heads. Us brothers, looking up at this bird, we opened up our boy mouths. When we did this with our mouths, this bird, it opened up its mouth too, it started back up singing. And like this, with mud dripping down from this bird’s singing mouth and down into ours, us brothers, we began to eat.