Good, Mother
Our father is not with us.
Our father isn’t with us, but our mother, we know, is, so us brothers go into our house to see her.
Mother, we say. Mother.
Our mother says the word, What.
She says what twice.
Once for each of us brothers.
It’s time for bed, we say.
Us brothers, we say this just once.
We each of us brothers take hold of one of our mother’s hands. We walk like this, with our mother, back into the back of our house, back to where the back bedroom is where our mother and our father both go to go to sleep, back to where they both sometimes go when they want to be away from the other.
We lay our mother down into this bed.
Into this bed, our mother, she lays her body down.
When our mother is one with this bed, us brothers, we pull the covers up and under her chin.
Our mother’s hands, our mother, she folds them into each other on top of where her rising up and down with breath chest is hiding underneath the bed’s bed-sheet.
Sleep good, Mother, us brothers say.
Us brothers go outside, then, into the dark, out back into the back of our yard, back where our father’s shed is with our father’s tools, his nuts and bolts and screws, his hammers and nails, his mud-rusty buckets and sharp-toothed saws, and those bottles of his half-filled up with whiskey.
Only us brothers know what we are going outside to get: for us to get what we need us to get for our mother to not want to take us away from this dirty river place.
The river.
The fish.
Our fish-headed telephone pole.
The mud that us brothers love to make.
Our mother.
When we come back in, us brothers, in our hands, we are both of us holding in each one of our hands a hammer and a handful of rusty, bent-back nails.
We go back inside back to where our mother is back there in bed doing what looks to be sleeping.
Our mother, we see, she is not sleeping.
Our mother’s eyes are moons in a mud-blackened sky.
Our mother’s bed is a held-out hand with a body that is our mother’s held up in it.
Our mother who does not know what it is she is saying when she is saying to us brothers that there is a sky not stunted by smoke.
Our mother who always made us brothers wash the mud from our hands and from off the bottoms of our muddy boots.
Our mother who said to us brothers that she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere was the word she said, so long as anywhere was west of here.
West where? was what our father wanted to know.
West of all this muddy water was what our mother said.
Somewhere, our mother said to us brothers, where there’s not so much mud and smoke and steel.
Us brothers, we couldn’t picture a sky bigger than the sky outside our backyard. We did not want to imagine a town without a dirty river running through it where we could run down to it to fish. Us brothers, we did not want to run or be moved away from all of this smoke and water and mud.
Mother.
Look here.
Our mother, she is ours.
Us brothers’.
We kneel ourselves down by the side edge of our mother’s bed.
If it looks as if we are praying, take a look again.
Us brothers, what we are doing is, we are taking our mother by the both of her hands, and then we take these hands that are our mother’s, we take these hands that we are holding, and then we hold them back up against the back part of this bed, back where our mother’s head, it is now resting back up against this bed’s mud-colored wood.
Or is it lumber?
This might sting, us brothers warn.
Us brothers, we give each other this look.
There is this look that us brothers, we sometimes like to look at each other with this look. It is the kind of a look that actually hurts the face of the brother who is doing the looking. Imagine that look.
Brother, one of us brothers says, you can go first.
No, you can go, Brother.
Then: let’s both of us both go both of us at the same time.
Us brothers, we both nod with our boy heads yes. Then we raise back our hands that are holding these hammers, and then we hammer those rusty, bent-back nails right through our mother’s hands.
Our mother doesn’t wince, or flinch with her body, or make with her mouth the sound of a mother crying out.
Good, Mother, we say.
Us brothers, we are hammering in two other nails into both of our mother’s hands when our father walks into the room.
Boys, our father says.
When we hear this word boys, us brothers, we turn back with our boy heads toward the sound of our father.
We wait to hear what it is that our father is about to say to us brothers next.
It is a long few seconds.
Outside the window, the sky above the river where the steel mill sits shipwrecked in the mud, the sky is dark and silent. Somewhere, I am sure, the sun is shining.
You boys be sure to be careful, our father says to us, not to wake up your mother up from her sleep.
Our father turns back his back.
Us brothers turn back to face back our mother.
Our mother’s eyes look up at us brothers, but we cannot tell you what it is that they see.
Us brothers, look at us brothers: we raise back the hammer.
We line up these rusted nails.
Burning Up: Revisited
This house, our house, it is a dark house when us brothers are not inside it. Our mother, she likes to keep this house this way, with the lights inside unlit around her. At night, when us brothers go outside to go down to the river fishing, we like to leave with the lights in our house left on burning. We like to picture this, our mother, pushing up from her bed to make the lights in the house go dark. But one night, when us brothers leave with the lights in our house still glowing, we see, three hours later, when we are making our way back home from the river, we see that the lights in our house, there is this other kind of a light burning out from inside of our house. Our house, as we make our way even closer to it, we see that our house, with our mother there inside it, it is burning up on fire. There is this other kind of light shining out from around our house. This light, it is the light of fire. Come on, us brothers, we say this to each other, and then we run in our boots back to our on-fire house. In our muddy brother hands, us brothers, we have our muddy buckets hanging and banging up against our boy hips. Our buckets are filled up the rims of them with fish. Us brothers, we run with these muddy buckets filled up with fish and we do not stop with this running until we are within a muddy bucket’s throw of our house. When we run ourselves out of breath running home like this, we give each other this look. There is this look that we have between us brothers. It is the kind of a look that actually hurts the eyes of the brother who is doing the looking. Imagine that look. This look, with this look, what it says to the brother who isn’t doing the looking is, What should we do now? Us brothers, we know what we should do now. We should run with our muddy buckets back down to the muddy river to bucket up into our buckets some muddy river water for us to throw onto our house. But us brothers, we can see the looks of our house, that it is too late for us to do this. This would do us, our house, with our mother there inside it, no good. So what we do do is, we do this: we take what is down inside our buckets — the fish that we have fished out of the dirty river that runs through this dirty river town — and we take these fish and we hold these fish by the heads of these fish up close to the fire. These fish, they are still alive and gilling at the sky for air. The fins of these fish, finning upwards in our hands, they are still kicking. But alive, these fish, alive these fish are not alive for long. Not if it is up to us. And it is up to us. It doesn’t take long for these fish to cook up good and smoky. Us brothers, we know that these fish are done being cooked when we hear our mother’s voice calling out from the inside of our house telling us brothers that something is on the stove burning. Boys, our mother says. What’s that smell? We got it, Mother, us brothers, we holler this out to our mother from this side of the fire. Don’t you worry, we say. Go back to sleep, we say. It’s just us cooking up our fish. Then us brothers, we say to our mother, that we’re going back down to the river, we say, to go fish us up some more fish, we say, but this time, we tell her, we’ll be sure to turn out all the lights.