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

And now after reading this who knows what car will be coming for you tomorrow.

I was staying at my grandma’s house in Texas that summer when something shook me awake. At first I didn’t even know what was going on, so I just closed my eyes and tried going back to sleep.

But then I felt something shake me again and say, “Hey boy. Get up. I want to show you something.”

It was my uncle.

My uncle was only ten years older than me, so he wasn’t even like an uncle really. A couple of days earlier, he stopped by and told me we should hang out and spend some time together.

So that’s why I got up out of bed now and tried looking for my shirt and pants in the darkness of my grandma’s house.

Is this them?

Nope.

Is this them?

I was having trouble trying to find my things. My uncle just clicked on the light switch for me, and my wake-up eyes burned with black spots — pop pop pop.

But then I whispered, “What’s going on?”

I wondered if maybe he wanted to go scuba diving in the bottom of the backyard pool or maybe just watch some TV. But he didn’t say anything. I put my pants on and found my boots and asked again, “Where are we going?”

My uncle just flipped off the light switch and said, “We’re going to go see THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN TEXAS.”

“What?” I whispered all excited and laughed.

And then he told me how he’d seen this stripper out at a bar just a couple nights before and this is what she was calling herself. He told me how the Cowboys were in town for their training camp and they heard about her too. They brought about half the team out to see her and he’d never seen anything like it. He’d never seen such a bunch of guys with their mouths so open. She was dressed in a cheerleader outfit and everyone was stunned. STUNNED. STUNNED.

So I finished putting on my clothes and followed him out to his truck and got in beside him, imagining what she looked like.

I imagined her in a blue Dallas Cowboys cheerleader outfit with silver tassels.

I imagined the white and blue pom poms bouncing back and forth.

I imagined the white boots and the white jacket and the high leg kicks.

Then I imagined what she looked like without these things.

I finally stopped imagining it all, as we took off down the road, and I thought about what my mom always said about this part of Texas, “Oh Godforsaken land. I don’t know why anybody would want to live out here.”

I whispered this to myself as we drove for a half hour through the dust, past the oil wells, and then down a rutty old back road, which kicked up even more dust and made the truck go bounce, bounce, bounce, until we finally pulled up to this double wide trailer, covered in Christmas lights and with a shack built on the side of it.

There was a sign out front that said:

TONIGHT. THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN TEXAS. $3 DOLLAR DRAFTS.

“Well here we are,” he said, stopping the truck, and grinning a shit-eating grin. “I told you.”

I got out of the truck and walked towards the front door and went inside. There was probably about eight or nine folks hanging around inside.

There was an old woman serving drinks, and a couple of rednecks in cowboy hats. There was a chubby salesman talking up a storm and somebody’s little daughter sitting up on top of a broken pinball machine. The little girl was eating one of those orange push up thingies. There was a Mexican girl up front dancing on the stage to a slow country song.

“Is this a strip club?” I asked, confused because I’d never really seen one before, let alone been in one.

My uncle just took a long drag off his cigarette and said, “Kinda.”

So we sat down at a table and my uncle held up two fingers for them to bring him some beer and waited for the prettiest girl in Texas to come on.

But right then there was just the Mexican girl dancing back and forth on the tiny stage.

Then there was another girl over on the other side of the stage dancing too, except she looked fucked up. Her eyes were all glazed over and there was this burn all the way down her shoulder like somebody had spilled a hot pot of coffee on her. I sat and watched the girls as they kept dancing on the crappy, makeshift stage, back and forth, and up and down.

I asked my uncle, “What’s wrong with their eyes?”

My uncle couldn’t hear me because of the music.

So I asked again, “What’s wrong with their eyes?”

He just squinted and looked up at her. “Oh they’re high. Haven’t you ever seen somebody high before?”

I didn’t say anything.

I sat and watched them dance some more and start taking off their tops, but I couldn’t hardly look at them I was so uncomfortable. I’d only seen a naked woman a couple of times before anyway. The first time was at my buddy’s house, when his mom came out of the shower one day not knowing we were inside. Then there was another time, one summer, when I played spotlight with this chubby girl in the woods. So now, I tried playing it cool and imagined what the prettiest girl in Texas was going to look like. I imagined the silver tassels, and the white boots, and the white and blue pom poms.

Then the song ended and the girls left the stage.

It was quiet and my uncle smiled. He said, “You ready?”

I was ready and the people in the bar were too. So we waited.

We waited and then the place went black. Another country song started playing. It was quiet and then the spotlight shined on the stage and showed the outline of a woman’s face.

It was her.

THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN TEXAS.

She didn’t look like the other girls though. She was older than the rest of them and real skinny, so skinny that her long neck looked even longer. She had a stripper outfit like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader all right, but she didn’t have any pom poms at all. And her white boots just looked all dirty, scuffed up, and old. When the spotlight pulled back she was standing with her right shoulder to us, snapping her fingers and swaying back and forth in her cheerleading costume. And that’s when I saw it.

She didn’t have an arm, except for a stub that ended just above the elbow. She was wearing a sock on the stub with a little pasty at the end. I understood.

This was the whole act. She didn’t take off any of her clothes, but she just kept pulling on the sock real sexy like. At first I didn’t know what to think. The prettiest girl in Texas just kept shaking her stub up on the stage so that the tassels flipped, and flopped, and twirled around and around like a propeller. My uncle lit another cigarette and watched her like there was nothing unusual about this. Then he leaned over and told me about what had happened to her.

She was sixteen years old and riding a motorcycle.

A truck was coming.

It was raining.

There was screeching.

Brakes.

A crash.

The bike went sliding down the road in a trail of sparks.

Flying.

And they found her about half an hour later in a mesquite bush.

After he told me this, he leaned back in the chair and watched her some more. I watched her too. I watched her keep reaching over and pulling at the end of the sock. By this time it was like the music wasn’t playing anymore. There was just the woman, pulling on the sock. Then she stopped. She just pulled on the sock some more, but real slow and drawn out. Then she did it one more time, and it came off, and she was just standing in front of us all, holding the sock in her hand and letting her bare nub hang free.

My uncle leaned over and whispered, “This is what I wanted to show you. This.”

I looked over at him thinking he was going to laugh somehow and this was all a joke. But it wasn’t a joke because there was sadness in his face.