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

And that’s when it happened.

The belt caught the shirt sleeve and pulled his arm into the saw. Then it ripped his right arm right off below the shoulder — just like that.

When Johnny looked down at his right arm, he expected to see his arm hanging there. But it wasn’t like it was his right arm anymore. It was just this empty space and the end of a jagged bone where his right arm used to be.

So he stood for a second and watched his right arm gushing blood.

He looked back at Robert and watched him shriek. Then all shit broke lose.

Holiday ran over and shut the saw down.

Then the Pregnant Man ran over to the main office to call for help with his big beer belly bouncing all the way.

Robert shook scared wondering what to do.

But Johnny didn’t.

He looked down at his missing right arm again and then at Robert.

And then Robert whispered, “Oh darn. O darn.”

Of course, Johnny wasn’t listening to any of this now.

He was just watching Robert’s mouth moving scared. And it kept moving too, as Johnny walked over to the side of the building and sat down on an old folding chair. It was the chair Robert always sat at during their lunch breaks whispering words to Johnny like “queer.”

Everyone else ran around screaming and shouting and shouting and screaming.

Then Robert followed the blood trail over to Johnny and picked up an old towel. And then he knelt in front of Johnny and tried to put the towel around the bloody stump, but there was so much blood and Robert’s hands were shaking bad.

So Robert gagged gah and then he started crying.

Finally he was able to wrap the towel around the wound and try to get the blood to stop squirting.

“Oh gosh,” Robert repeated as Johnny sat waiting for the ambulance to come.

And then Johnny looked at Robert and asked him like it was nothing, “Can I have a cigarette?”

Robert gave him one. He reached into his shirt pocket with his left hand and pulled out the stolen cigarette. He packed the end — pack, pack — and pushed it into Johnny’s mouth. Then Robert took out his lighter and tried lighting it for him.

Light.

Nothing.

Light.

Nothing.

But then finally the lighter lit and the cigarette smoked. Robert put it back in his pocket with his shaky hands. Johnny leaned back smoking on his cigarette and smiling at his stolen lighter.

And then he was peaceful.

He sat and watched all the other guys standing around screaming and crying and cussing like they were scared. And then Johnny looked up at the pine trees, away from the sawmill and listened to the fire truck sirens blaring from the distance. He puffed on his cigarette some more and blew the smoke in a real slooooooooowwwww stream.

He smoked his cigarette and held it in his left hand and said, “It’s a beautiful evening. You know I’ve never seen such a beautiful evening before.”

And so he sat and smoked his cigarette some more and watched the sun go down.

And that’s what I’d tell you if I had to tell you about Rainelle.

I’d tell you all about pulling green chain, and the Meadow River Lumber Co. and Johnny who was Johnny once and then was Johnny no more.

I’d tell you about how he walks the streets now, searching for nickels in empty phone booths.

I’d tell you about the cigarette smoke and Robert sitting scared and sobbing, trying to keep his hands from shaking.

And then I’d tell you about those last few minutes when Johnny was just sitting in the chair waiting so peaceful.

He wasn’t crying or complaining or screaming or puking or praying to God, but for the first time in his life he felt something.

He felt happy.

And so he sat and smoked his cigarette, waiting for the ambulance to come.

It wasn’t my fault he threw a sandwich at my car. That afternoon I was just trying to get to work as fast as I could because I was late. I was driving down a chughole road and passing in between all of the cars, when the stop light turned red and I stopped. Shit.

So I whispered, “Come on. Come on.”

That’s when I saw him.

It was this homeless guy I knew. He had to have been about sixty years old, standing in front of the old homeless shelter, wearing this ratty old gray coat he always wore. He had a big bushy white beard that had a yellow tint to it. And he was holding a loaf of bread in one hand and this bologna sandwich in the other.

I guess they gave it to him in the homeless shelter.

I pulled up to the stoplight, right in front of the homeless shelter and he started shouting something at me in his homeless person talk. He pointed his sandwich at me and kept shouting.

I’d had a run in with him at the public library just a couple of days before when I didn’t give him any change.

Now he started throwing his shoulders forward like he was going to kick my car’s ass. I sat and thought, I’ve had enough of this. I wasn’t going to let him kick my car’s ass.

And with that I just raised my right hand and flipped him off with a real old-fashioned, middle finger, Fuck You. He didn’t react like most people did when I used the middle finger.

He wasn’t like the snotty-nosed kid in the drive thru at the bank who kept making faces at me and then made faces no more.

He wasn’t like the WJLS radio Big Dawg mascot who just stopped waving at traffic and dropped his head in defeat.

This was a guy who got all pissed off even more and raised the bologna sandwich he was holding in his right hand and threw it at my car as hard as he could.

Shoooooo — it flew through the air almost in slow motion. I watched it fly and I thought, “That bastard is throwing a bologna sandwich at my car.”

It twisted and it turned. It twisted and it turned, sailing through the air until it started sailing back down and then finally went — SPLAT — against the hood of my car. Then it sat on the hood like a wet rag. I looked at the homeless guy and then the homeless guy looked at me.

I threw open the car door even though the light had changed green and I screamed, “I’ll get you, you son of a bitch. I’ll get you for throwing a bologna sandwich at my car.” I was crazy.

But the homeless guy didn’t even hear me because he took off running like a fucking track star or something. A couple of the other homeless guys who were just hanging out laughed at me too.

It wasn’t a couple of weeks later after my girlfriend’s mom came to visit us for the weekend that I saw him again. For some reason or another we decided to walk around town and show Kim’s mom where we lived and impress her and let her know it was all right that her nineteen-year-old daughter was living with me. We started on our walk down the street and I saw him rumbling and bumbling up the sidewalk all drunk as hell.

I shook my head and thought, “What ever you do Scott, don’t lose your temper. Don’t even think about him throwing that bologna sandwich at your car. Kim’s mom is here and you’re trying to impress her.”

I was going to let him pass by and deal with it on another day, when all of the sudden he reached out with his gnawed up hand (like he didn’t even recognize me) and started talking his drunk talk and demanding money. He hit me in the chest with his hand.

I could tell he was scaring Kim’s mom, so I pushed him out of the way and said, “Get out of here buddy.”

He fell back a step and shouted, “Well fuck you, motherfucker.”

So I got up in his face and was like “What?”

He shouted again, “Well fuck you, motherfucker.”

Kim said, “Let’s just keep walking, Scott. Just forget about it. It’s not that big of a deal.”

And then Kim’s mom pretended like it wasn’t even happening and started saying, “Oh this is such a cute little town. It’s just so cute.”