Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

“Do you have any tampons or maxi pads that you need to throw away.” Nathan still wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t laughing at anything now.

I took his sweatpants off and looked at them. “It’s okay, Nathan. There’s nothing on them. We’re okay.”

Then I folded them and put them on the side of the sink too. I took out about thirty paper towels and I put about half of them beneath the faucet and made them wet. Then I turned to Nathan. He was looking away.

I said, “Do you think if I stand you up — you can lean against my shoulder?” Nathan moved his hand which meant yes. I took hold of his arms and picked him up. He leaned against my shoulder. A piece of crap fell out of the leg of his shorts and hit the ground. Nathan groaned. “It’s okay,” I said. I took one of the wet towels and picked it up and dropped it in the toilet. Then I took his boxer shorts and slid them down.

“Okay, lift your leg,” I said. I slipped them off.

He groaned.

I was sweating now.

Then he lifted his other foot and I slipped them off and threw the underwear away.

I felt Nathan getting wobbly, so I stood up.

He grunted ughhh . I threw my arms around him and held him up. He was breathing heavy. I was trying to keep him up, but he went down on his knees and then on his side. “Okay. Okay,” I said and tried to help him down. “I know it’s hard for you to stand like that.”

Ughhh , he grunted and pointed at the paper towels.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” I whispered. I took the white towels and I wiped him. Then I threw them in the trash. Then I took the dry towels and wiped him some more. I picked up his fresh pair of boxer shorts and put them on him. They were all bunched under his hip because of the cold floor. Then I took his sweatpants and socks and shoes and put them on too. I helped him sit back up. Then I turned to lift him. My arms were too tired.

Ughh , Nathan said.

I stood up and tried to catch my breath. “Okay, just give me a second.” Then I put my arms underneath his armpits and heaved him up into the wheelchair.

In the end I just stood there and caught my breath. I threw away the rest of the paper towels. I patted Nathan on the back, but his head bowed.

“You ready?”

I twisted his nose like I always did, but he didn’t smile.

He took his finger and pointed it to himself and then pointed it to me.

“What did you say?”

So he took his finger again and pointed it at himself and pulled the trigger.

I knew what he was saying.

“You’re wanting me to shoot you?” I said.

He nodded his head yes.

He was wanting me to shoot him.

I giggled but then I stopped.

He wasn’t joking.

So I pushed him out of the bathroom.

His eyes were saying, You should be staring at me. I’m beautiful .

His eyes were saying— Life is not short. Life is way way way way way way way way way way too long .

I was over at Little Bill’s when the phone rang. It was my Uncle Stanley. He said they had to rush Nathan to the emergency room.

I borrowed Little Bill’s car and I drove all the way back through the dark mountains until I came to the interstate, and then I turned my high beams on and sped towards the hospital, thinking to myself, Please don’t let him die yet.

I flipped my high beams off because there was a tractor trailer passing in the other lane.

He passed, so I flipped them back on again and whispered, “Please don’t let him die until I get there.”

I wanted to see him die.

But he wasn’t dead yet. He was on the 3rd floor of Appalachian Regional Hospital and my Uncle Stanley was standing in the corner of his room. So I walked over to his bed and stood beside Stanley. Nathan was just there in the bed. His eyes were closed. There were tubes coming out of his nose and tubes coming out of his mouth. There was a shit smell in the room because the nurse had just changed his pants from where he shit himself. His breath was heavy. Every time he breathed— huh —it sounded like somebody was knocking the wind out of him— huh —every time he breathed.

It scared me— huh —the way he breathed like that. HUH . So I just stood and listened to Nathan breathe his booming breaths— huh . I thought that everything I thought about death was wrong.

I shook my head and followed Stanley into the waiting room where we sat and waited for something to happen.

And then we went back and forth, back and forth. At the end of the hallway there was a crazy old woman who didn’t even know where she was at and she kept shouting, “Louise. Louise.”

The nurse came over and said, “There’s no Louise here, honey.”

Then the nurse said: “Why don’t you help fold these quilts for your babies.”

The old woman picked up these hospital towels and started folding them.

The nurse said: “Yeah, you’re doing a good job folding these quilts for your babies.”

I thought, This world is crazy.

We walked around for another three or four hours going back and forth to Nathan’s room every fifteen minutes or so.

And then the last time I went into his room before we left, Aunt Mary was leaning overtop him crying and telling him, “You just fight, Nathan. You just fight.”

She left.

I stood at the foot of the bed and told him inside my head, No, Nathan. You go ahead and die.

Nathan just kept breathing his booming breaths, HUH HUH .

Then Stanley said: “Well we might as well go.” So about 4:00 that morning we left the hospital and drove all the way back to Danese.

I drove behind my uncle’s truck and saw a dead deer on the side of the road. At the bottom of Sandstone Mountain I saw an old guy walking through the darkness with a backpack. He turned towards me and lowered his thumb and it looked like Nathan, traveling somewhere. I shook my head and drove all the way back home trying to stay awake. When we finally got home we hadn’t so much walked through the door and the phone rang.

My uncle picked it up and said, “He did. Okay. Thank you.”

Then he hung up and his voice was all choked up and full of tears. “That was the hospital. He died. I’ll have to tell mother.”

I went “Oh” and my Uncle Stanley walked outside.

So that morning I started planning for Nathan’s wake. I asked Ruby what she wanted him buried in. She told me she wanted him buried in sweatpants and a sweatshirt just like he always wore.

She said, “He never liked those suits and ties — awful things.”

So I went over to Wal-Mart and bought him a white sweatshirt and a pair of white sweatpants.

And then I took them up to the cashier who said, “Did you find everything?” thinking I was just a guy buying a sweatshirt and sweatpants.

She didn’t know I was a guy who was shopping for clothes to bury his uncle. That afternoon when I took the clothes down to Bob Wallace, I said, “I need to get him a t-shirt too so that he won’t get cold.” The funeral home guy just looked at me.

Then I laughed because he was just a dead body now and it didn’t matter if he was cold or not.

So all of the children and all of the grandchildren and all of the great grandchildren and all of the mothers and all of the uncles’ uncles and all the cousins and all of the cousins’ cousins — they all came in and we had a wake. That night we walked into the wake where the casket was.

And then I walked up to the coffin too and looked down at Nathan. I whispered, “What are you now?”

The coffin was so full of stuffed animals that my Uncle Stanley said: “Need to tell people to quit putting stuffed animals in there. It’s gonna be so full of stuffed animals they’re not gonna be able to see the body.”