Boy
Peter Markus

We see Boy. Boy is down by the river -- us brothers, we can see this -- but what Boy is doing, down by the river, us boys, this, we can not see. What we can see is Boy's back: it is facing us brothers, and Boy's face, his eyes, his nose, his mouth with no tongue inside it -- it is just a hole that Boy puts food into, where no words ever come out -- Boy's face, it is away from us brothers facing the dark. But Boy's face, even though we cannot see it, us boys know, because we know Boy, that his face -- it is raised to gaze at the moon. That face that is gazing down from the moon, that moon face, even a blind boy would see. Or maybe a boy born blind, marbly eyed, maybe a blind boy could see the moon's face so much better. All we know for sure is what our own eyes tell us to see. Us brothers, our eyes, we believe that our eyes see more than most eyes see. This is just a thing we have come to believe. But one more thing about us brothers believing: we don't have to see a thing, us brothers, to believe it to be true. But us brothers, we know this other thing too is true: that most people -- are you like most people? -- these people, they need to see a thing in order to believe it. It's because of this, us brothers, and what we say to this is, Look. See Boy. See Boy with his back to us brothers. Boy's shadow, it is made to be bigger than Boy is, it is made big by the way the moon's face shines its moon light down onto Boy's face. Boy, see Boy's shadow -- it is floating face down on top of this river. It is a bridge for us brothers to walk across. See Boy, the body, not the shadow of Boy, reach down with his boy hand down into the mud that he is standing in, and see that he is up from the mud picking something up into his boy hand. Us brothers, we can't see it, what this something is that Boy has reached down to pick up into his hand, though we can see that it's something that Boy is getting ready to throw. See Boy reach back with his hand that just a moment ago was the hand that was reaching down into the mud, and watch Boy crow hop and throw whatever it is that he is holding out into the river's dark. Listen: this thing that Boy has just thrown, when it hits the water, it doesn't make a sound. Whatever it was that Boy was in his hand a moment ago holding, whatever it is that Boy was throwing into the river's dark, when it meets the river's muddy water, it doesn't make a splash. No, there is only that sound of us brothers breathing when we run ourselves down to the river so that we can with our eyes better see. When Boy sees that it's us brothers who are running down to the river, he turns and then he turns back around. It's only us is what Boy's body is saying to us. We've been watching, is what us brothers, with our mouths, we mouth this to Boy. We tell Boy we saw him, Boy, we saw him picking something up, though picking up what, and him throwing that something out into the river's dark: this, us brothers, this we do not know. We can not fill in this blank with us knowing. Boy points with one hand up to the moon floating whitely above us, but it's Boy's other hand that we make our eyes see. It's the hand of Boy's that is reaching back down towards the mud, and it's up from the mud picking some other thing up. What this some other thing is, it comes clear to us brothers what it is, when the moon's moon light lights up for us what this something else is. What this something else is is, it is a picture, it is a photograph. But no: it is not a picture of us. What it is, this picture, is it's a picture of Boy: it's a picture of Boy back when Boy was a boy littler than the boy that he is now. In this picture of Boy, Boy is just a baby -- he is just a baby Boy -- and in this picture, Boy's mouth, it is a hole with a whole lot of light shining out. Boy's mouth, that hole on Boy's face with no tongue inside it, it is a moon in this picture, it is a lighthouse light -- it is the marbled eye of a walleyed fish. And in this picture, standing on both sides of Boy, with a hand holding on to each of Boy's hands, there is with him in this picture a man and a woman who are, we can see, a father and a mother to this boy Boy: this boy that us brothers, we do not yet call him Brother. No, this boy, us brothers, we call him Boy. There are other pictures like this picture, too: pictures stuck picture side up in that mud at Boy's feet. But it is Boy's hand that we, us brothers, with our seeing eyes, this is what we stare at. Boy's hand might as well be, to us brothers, a star that has fallen. This is what we see. When Boy reaches back with his stone throwing hand to do to this picture whatever it is he is wishing to do to it: to throw it, this picture, into the river, out into that rivery dark, yes, this is what it seems to be what Boy is aiming to do. But instead, what happens is, this picture, and the other pictures like this picture, this picture, it does not do like what a stone would do if a stone was skipped, if it was thrown, out into the river. This picture, in the wind that blows in with the river, it blows this picture right back into Boy's face. See Boy with his hands right now empty handed, he is standing facing the river, and with his head he is shaking, he is hanging his head low. What this, what his head, is saying to us brothers is that Boy does not know what to do. Us brothers though, we know exactly what it is Boy should be doing. We drop down on our hands and knees, down into the mud, here at Boy's feet, and we pick up, one by one, all of these pictures. When we're done, from the mud, picking up all of these pictures, we say to Boy: Come with us. We take Boy by the hand, down along the river, down to where there is this bridge down river here that crosses out across the river. It's a bridge where no one is supposed to ever walk. Us brothers, we walk with him out to where this bridge is, and we walk out, above the water, half the way across. Here, we say, for you. And then we hand over into Boy's hand all of the pictures that us brothers have been holding in our hands. Now open up your hands, we say to Boy. Boy, we tell Boy, it is time to let this all go. Boy nods, because Boy is the good boy that he is: he listens to what us brothers have to tell him, and he lets the pictures in his hands go. Fall, these pictures -- they all fall floating into the river below. If you could see what the eyes of us brothers did see -- this is what we'd want you to see. See a hundred boy faces of Boy, open eyed, open mouthed, a hundred of these boys float face down on down the river. Our hands in our pockets, we cannot help but fish them out to wave to these boys bye bye. But when we look closer we see, in Boy's hand, we see, there is still this one picture left: it is a picture that Boy cannot let go. This picture, this one picture that is left, this picture that this boy Boy has not yet let go of, we see it: it is a picture of us. This picture is a picture of us brothers, from back on the day when we first gazed our eyes upon this boy Boy: that day when us brothers, we taught Boy to walk on water. We taught Boy to believe. I can still picture it, the way Boy floated face down down the river. Like most boys, Boy didn't believe enough. But then Boy came back a second time. Just like that, he walked up the river back: back to us brothers. Good dog, Boy, us brothers, we said this to Boy. That was the day when Brother turned to me after Boy came walking up the river back and what Brother said was, he said, This boy here, Brother said, this boy is a keeper. If you say so, I said to this, and I reached into my trouser pocket, I fished out the fishing knife that was hiding inside there. Brother took Boy by the skin of Boy's neck. Here, Brother said, and he stood Boy in the moon light. That knife in my hand shined its own light into his ear. I'm not imagining this when I say that what Boy heard inside of his ear: it was singing. And when I cut off his boy head, Boy did not even wince, or flinch with his body, or make with his mouth that sound of a brother crying out. Good, Brother, I said. Boys. We now hear the sound of this word -- a voice, a sound -- calling out to us: boys. Boys, this voice calls this out. Us brothers, we turn back around to face the sound of this word: boy. We look around in that dark above the river to see who it is that is calling out to us -- not as brothers, but as boys. This sound, the way that the "s" sound in that word boys floats in that space above the river: it hangs in the air as if the air is a river and it, this sound, is a fish, a picture of a fish, floating on this river's top -- this sound, the voice of it, it sounds too much like the way our father used to sound when he used to call out to us to come home to eat. In the river's dark, we see our father, across the water, he is walking towards us. Us brothers, us, our father's sons, we wait to hear what it is that our father is going to say to us next. It is a long few seconds. The sky above the river where the steel mill sits shipwrecked, it is starless and quiet. Somewhere, I am sure, the sun is shining. I believe, our father says to us, and he reaches out towards us. That picture, he says, that belongs to me. He takes the picture from out of our hands and looks into the faces of us. Then he turns with the picture still in his hand and he walks across the river, back to the river's other side, walking and walking and walking on, until he is nothing but the sound that the river makes when a stone is skipped across it.

1996 © 2004