WE DID NOT CALL THIS BOY BROTHER
BY PETER MARKUS
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Us brothers, we knew of this other boy who lived in this town, in this dirty river town, though this boy, this other boy, us brothers, we did not call this boy brother. This other boy, he was different from us brothers. He was not one of us. What was different about this boy was, this boy, he'd never been born. He died is what I am telling you, this boy died before he had a chance to breathe. This boy, he was a ghost is what I am wanting you to see. This boy, he was a ghost who lived not just down by the river: no, this boy, this ghost of a not brother, he lived in the river, down at the river's muddy bottom, down where mud goes to when it sinks. This other boy, he haunted us brothers—he liked to scare away all the river's fish. Sometimes this boy, he liked to make like he was a fish, and he'd take into his boy mouth one of our mud dipped, minnowy tipped fishing hooks. He would tug, and pull, he would hook himself through his bottom lip, and then he would start to run, down along the river's bottom, and this would make us brothers believe we had, there on the other end of our lines, hooked to our silvery hooks, a real live fish. A keeper, is what we called them: a fish big enough for us brothers to eat. But when we'd reel this boy up and in and drag him a shore the river's muddy shore, this boy did not make like he was a fish about to be put into a bucket—a fish about to be made dead. Fish on! is what this boy, he'd holler up at us brothers: he'd unlip our fishing hooks: he would spit them in the mud. Fish off! is what he'd say to us next, before diving head first back into these muddy waters. But one night, us brothers, we couldn't take it any longer: the teasing: this boy making like a fish and then him getting off and going away. This one night, this other boy, he had taken into his boy mouth our mud dipped, minnowy tipped fishing hooks one too many times, so that when we felt that pull, that fishy boy tug, there on the other end of the line, when we reeled him up and in and plopped him down onto the river's muddy shore: on this night, with boy looking up all fishy eyed up at us brothers up from the river's muddy banks, and with this boy already starting to grin Fish on!—what us brothers did different then was this. We gave each other this look. There was this look that, us brothers, we sometimes liked to look at each other with this look. It was the kind of look that hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing this looking. Imagine that look. What are you looking like that for? is all that this boy could say. Us brothers, we said nothing to this boy asking us this. What we did say to this boy was this: This fish, is what Brother said, he is a keeper. If you say so, is what I said to Brother. I nodded my head. I wetted my lips. Then I reached inside my trouser pocket and I fished out my fishing knife. This was the knife that we used to gut out the guts of the fish, to cut the heads off of the fish. And this ghost of a boy, this making like a fish boy, he knew what was coming next. I raised up this knife up towards the sky and I held it high so that, for a moment, the moon was trapped in the glinting of the silver metal. And with the moon above us watching, with the moon above as our witness, I called this boy Boy. Boy, I whispered, you are one of us now, I said. And then I chopped off this boy's head. [Forever after at http://eyeshot.net/markus.html]
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