Scott McClanahan - The Collected Works of Scott McClanahan Vol. I

It’s the kind of dance where the guy puts his hands on the girl’s hips, and then the girl puts her arms around the guy’s neck. And then they move back and forth, back and forth until the song finally ends. Then the next song begins.

And then you’re trying to sneak off…to go do…you know what?…to go find hidden skin in the dark.

And so that night we were hanging around the gymnasium which was about ready to fall in. We were all standing around before we went inside. A couple of the guys were chewing and spitting spit into their styrofoam spit cups stuffed full of paper towels.

A couple of the girls were smoking cigarettes behind the pine trees — Nicole and Ammie. They were smoking something at least. I turned around and I saw him. It was Hernia Dog.

He looked so different now.

He looked so old.

“Ah shit — that dog’s still alive?” Randy said.

All the girls went, “Oh he looks so pitiful.”

But nobody tried petting him because of his nasty looking hernia.

And nobody wanted to touch him because he smelled so bad.

It looked like his fur was missing in patches too like he’d been burned.

“Oh God he smells so horrible,” one of the girls finally said. “He smells like he has cancer.”

And he did.

Everyone held their noses and Randy tried kicking him away, “Get the fuck out of here you old dog. Git.”

The dog ran a few steps, but he wouldn’t move. Darren tried spitting tobacco juice at him, but he just sat there.

The girls went, “Oh don’t. He’s just an old dog.”

Randy said, “Well I’m sorry. He just smells so bad.”

Then he stomped at him. But Hernia just sat and looked at us.

He wouldn’t move and it was like he wanted to tell us something, like he was trying to say goodbye.

And so I forgot about him. It had been years, and we were hanging around the Handy Place. We were all grownups now. I guess that’s what you’d call it. We were talking to Darren who had just got this girl pregnant. He was talking about how they didn’t have enough money to get rid of it.

Then out of nowhere Randy said, “Oh shit, I almost forgot.”

And then we were all quiet.

“You know that old dog with the hernia that used to hang around school?”

We all nodded our heads, “Yes.”

Then he said, “Well I swear to shit he finally did it. He finally did it.”

And now we listened.

We listened as Randy told us about how Hernia Dog had escaped from his chains.

And Randy saw him standing alongside the road.

And so Randy waved at Hernia Dog.

Wave.

But Hernia Dog just looked at him sad, like he was waiting on something.

Then Randy saw it coming. He saw what Hernia Dog was waiting on.

It was a coal truck, rolling up Route 60 at 60 MPH.

It was like Hernia Dog had been waiting just for this.

It was like he’d been waiting just for this all of these years.

And then — AHHHH.

So Hernia Dog took off running straight at the coal truck, running as fast as he could.

The coal truck stomped on its horn….errrrrrrrrrrrrr……..…but Hernia Dog just kept charging at it….straight for it…straight for it…

And so somebody tried to laugh. And then somebody shook their head like it wasn’t true. But then they stopped because we knew it was true. I stood and tried imagining it all. I thought about my childhood and I imagined Hernia Dog for one last time running straight at the coal truck.

Then I heard a coal truck from somewhere far away and it was honking its horn for us.

Can you hear it?

I don’t know if you’ve ever been a telemarketer before, but I have. I used to make call after call, working at this telemarketing place in Huntington, WV.

Hello my name is Scott McClanahan for the West Virginia Fraternal Order of Police.

Click.

Hello my name is Scott McClanahan for the Fraternal Order of Police.

Click.

Hello my name is Scott McClanahan for.

Click.

Hello my name is.

Click.

And you always had to do it in this deep voice so you could fool people into thinking you were a real state trooper, and not just some punk-ass kid.

The first day I worked there, I sat next to this guy named Matt. He was this older guy, probably about forty-five or fifty years old, and he had a family of four. He supported them on his seven dollars an hour. He was just this aww shucks guy, but once he got on the phone he was badass. One day I was sitting beside him as he shouted at this poor old woman, “You will give LADY. My best friend was killed in the line of duty last year. You WILL GIVE!”

Of course, we were just pretending to be police officers.

She finally ended up giving 150 dollars.

And he had all kinds of tricks too, like shouting, “Hey Sarge. I’ll see you out at the range in about 15 minutes.”

Then during the next phone call, he even started talking in this strange accent and the person gave him 75 dollars.

He looked over and said, “That’s why they call me the best.”

Then B-Dawg, the manager, shouted, “And tonight’s top caller and winner of 100 dollars is you know who? Matt.”

Then later that evening on our break, Matt said, “Yeah I always take the family to a nice restaurant each week on this. We always go to Wendy’s on Saturday night and have a good time.”

He meant this with no irony whatsoever.

Wendy’s was a nice restaurant to him.

When we got back from break I kept on calling. “Hello my name is Scott McClanahan with the West Virginia Fraternal Order of Police.”

On the other end there was this asshole from a rich neighborhood in California. He was shouting, “Hey you shit ass. What are you making, like minimum wage? I want to know how much of this goes to the police?”

I started my rebuttal, “Well sir because of the high costs of production.”

He cut me off.

“Yeah only about 5 percent goes,” he said like he read it in a newspaper story somewhere. “This is nothing but a scam. I know what you guys are doing.”

Matt just smiled like a kind father, pointed to my keyboard, and said, “Hit that button.” That button was F-4.

I hit F-4 and asked what it would do?

He said, “It’ll call him back every five minutes for the next five hours.”

And that’s just what happened.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

The dumb fucker didn’t even take the phone off the hook, but answered each time cussing and carrying on and getting ready to have a heart attack as his number bounced from caller to caller throughout the office.

Over the next couple of weeks I tried telling people about how wonderful it was being a telemarketer. I tried telling people how strange it was to sit calling somebody all the way across the country even though here I was in little piss ant WV. And when they picked up the phone, I was always taught to say their first name. This was so they’d think I was someone who knew them.

I said, “Hey Jerry” and a little girl voice said, “No, do you want to talk with him?”

“Sure.”

“May I ask who is calling?”

“It’s Scott McClanahan.”

And then on the other end I heard this little girl voice that said, “DAAADDD? Scott McClanahan’s calling.”

And here I was having my name shouted a thousand miles away.

Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever come across another Scott McClanahan age 21 in another part of the country. And maybe we were the same person, but we were living different realities. If I ever met myself I wondered…

What would he say?

What would I say?

Would he give me money?

Now these were the type of things I thought about walking home at night through the dark alleys of Huntington, even though friends told me it was a bad idea and I should walk the main road. I walked slow through the evening dark and passed women standing around smoking cigarettes.