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

He said, “Getting a thumb cut off is a lot different than dying boy. Besides that, they reattached the thumb so it’s not like he even had his thumb cut off in the first place.”

He didn’t think I had the future seeing gift.

But I knew I did. I knew I did one night when I dreamed about being trapped at the Rainelle sporting goods store with all of these black bears. Unfortunately, the next day I had to go to the Rainelle sporting goods store and take a movie back. It was a sporting goods store, but like most local businesses they had about three different things inside. For example, you could rent a movie, buy a thirty-thirty rifle, get your twelve point stuffed by a taxidermist or even get a tan in the tanning bed if you needed one bad enough (NEW BULBS!). I knew my dream about black bears wasn’t a good sign, but I needed to take the movie back.

As soon as I went inside, I knew I should have trusted my dream. I smelled this weird smell in the place. My neighbor Bobbie B. was working there. He was about twenty. And there was this new kid who was working there too. He was only about eighteen.

Of course, my dad always told me again and again when I was a kid, “I never want you shooting guns with Bobbie B.”

He saw Bobbie B. coming out of the woods one day and didn’t approve of the way he was holding his firearm or something. So I was real careful around Bobbie B. at the sporting goods store.

I turned the movie back in, but as soon as I did, I felt this horrible feeling.

The new kid handed me back the change, except when he did, it all fell out of his hand and landed on the counter and then the floor, clinging and clanging all around us. It kept bouncing around and the new kid bent down on one knee and started picking it up. He looked up at me and started saying over and over again, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And it wasn’t like he was saying those stupid sayings we always say just to have something to say. How are you? I’m fine. How are you? Oh I’m sorry, etc.

It was like he was confessing something to me. It was like he was confessing something to me about his own life, like he was looking for help.

I kept whispering inside my head. “Something bad is going to happen here. Something bad is going to happen here. I need to leave.”

And when I looked up, guess what I saw?

I saw a stuffed black bear tied up beside all of the other taxidermy animals.

And you know what?

The black bear was staring at me.

I just left. I clamped my change into my twisted fist, and I started walking towards the door, past the new kid who whispered sorry one last time, past Bobbie B., who waved at me, past Ulysses Phipps who everyone called “useless.”

“Hey McClanahan,” Ulysses said, walking through the door. I just kept right on walking.

I didn’t know what was happening.

I didn’t know a lot of things.

I didn’t know Ulysses had been saving his money so he could buy a.44 Magnum.

I didn’t know he was obsessed with buying one of the most powerful handguns the world had to offer.

I didn’t know anything about it, but I could feel something was wrong, so I just let the door slam behind me.

I tried not thinking about it. When I was driving away I saw Bobbie B. come running outside. He was crying and he was covered in blood. He threw himself against the hood of his truck.

A couple of seconds later an ambulance came ripping into the parking lot. The Quinwood Volunteer ambulance never came zipping anywhere. It was the type of ambulance where you needed to check your pockets after they dropped you off.

So I just left.

Later that day my dad called and said, “Did you hear Bobbie killed a boy? I told you to be careful around him.”

“Who?” I said.

“That boy he worked with — that new kid who was working there.”

“What?”

“He ended up shooting him. That’s what they’re saying anyway.”

And so over the next couple of days I started putting together the story from a couple of different people. One person said Ulysses had come in to buy a.44 and he did. I knew that. Bobbie and the new kid sold it to him.

The new kid bent down over the counter and started filling out the license. Bobbie didn’t know it was loaded, and started messing with the trigger. It was either that or he thought it was a blank.

Another person said no one really knew. The gun fired. Bobbie B. shot the new kid. The bullet hit the kid in the neck, and then down, ricocheted off his collar bone and busted back up into his skull, before blowing the top of the new kid’s head off.

The new kid dropped to the ground.

Boom.

Bobbie B. freaked.

Ulysses left.

And then somebody else told me that Bobbie B. fell to his knees and started doing CPR. It was just like on television.

He started doing CPR like a crazy man, even though the top of the kid’s head was gone.

He just kept right on doing it, even though every time he did — blood shot out of the top of the kid’s head like a water fountain flowing red.

One one thousand.

BLOOD.

Two one thousand.

BLOOD.

He kept doing CPR until the cops came and pulled him off.

That evening Bobbie B. went home and tried to hang himself behind the locked door of his bedroom.

It didn’t work.

So after it was all over I wondered whether I could really see into the future or not. I looked through the Bible about people seeing visions in dreams and then interpreting those dreams. I thought that maybe I couldn’t see into the future and that I only connected things later.

This is how things usually work, right?

Some shit happens and then someone says I knew about it all along. I asked my mother and sometimes she laughed. But then sometimes she didn’t.

I asked my father and he always just shook his head “No.”

So I wondered.

I wondered about my grandma Ruby and her dreams. I wondered about the feeling I had in the Rainelle sporting goods store that day.

I started asking myself, was it true? Could I really see into the future?

So I ask you now — would you tell me I was wrong? Would you tell me I was wrong if I said I had a dream about you last night? And in this dream I saw into your future. I saw you living a long and happy life. In this dream I saw you walking out the door tomorrow and finding true love, if you haven’t already. I saw your children growing healthy and strong and throwing their arms around you saying, “I love you Mommy. I love you Daddy. I love you forever.” I saw you living there in this future world without pain, surrounded by children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and knowing one thing in this world, knowing that you will never grow old, and knowing that you will never die.

So I ask you now.

Would you tell me I am wrong?

So sometimes at night I just sat up in my bed and listened to all the mountain sounds. I’d leave a little night light on and listen to radio stations snapping and popping from as far away as New York or Atlanta. And sometimes I sat up with a candle light reading books by writers whose names I didn’t even know how to pronounce. So right before sleep I might shut my eyes and listen to the dogs barking outside — far away dogs, barking so loud like a ghost was walking among them.

Sometimes I wished I was one of these dogs and sometimes I wished that ghost was me. And then at 11:30 the coal train came blowing through town just like every night. I listened as it blew and whistled and whispered. I imagined that coal train going somewhere just as I imagine it now, to Norfolk or the north. And then afterwards — Japan.

So this is the end of the book. You should throw it in the trash and get up.