Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

And as we drove through the holler I could see the whole place. There was a moment when it felt like it was 1930 and I was traveling through time. I could see the mine. I could see people walking. There were houses everywhere.

It was all gone now. There were only mountains and a twisty-turny road with chug holes so deep you could bury your baby inside of them. For a while now you had to be careful because there was an abandoned mine shaft beneath the road. The state transportation officials were worried about the road caving in and cars falling down into this forever mine shaft. But now there was tall grass growing over everything and vines wrapping around old shacks and rusty railroad tracks and rickety bridges. There weren’t any of the old places. There wasn’t a coal mine. And there wasn’t a house here.

And there wasn’t…

And there wasn’t…

There was only a train station nobody stopped at and the New River rushing all red and full of river mud.

When we got back home I helped Aunt Mary to get Ruby ready for bed. I told Mary that Ruby was fine. It was just indigestion probably. I helped put Ruby into bed. I touched her hand and told her I was going now.

“Oh lordie, I’m feeling horrible,” she said. Then she clutched her chest. “I’m having chest pains.” I kissed her cheek and I said, “I’ll see you next week.” She told me my grandfather Elgie used to have nightmares begging for the whistle to stop.

She wasn’t dying.

She was lonely.

So I left and I heard Ruby shouting again, “Oh lordie, I’m dying.” I didn’t turn back. I wasn’t sure we were even born yet. We were all inside of a giant mother right then and we were waiting to be born. Just like tomorrow, at dawn, we will be held in the arms of the giant mother. We will find warmth and maybe even war there.

I want us all to be ready.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …

I went back to Bill’s mom’s apartment, and it was all the same. It was just an apartment full of the…

There was Reinaldo who always used to sneak into the bedroom and try on a pair of Bill’s mom’s crotchless panties. She moved out years before, but she still kept a pair of crotchless panties around. Bill used to get pissed and tell him to take off his mom’s crotchless panties.

There was the foreign exchange student Tiertha Timsina who arrived in Crapalachia knowing only two words of English. Tiertha had to get married before he turned 18 or he would be sentenced by the wise men in his village to marry a tree. Lee told him, “I know if I had to marry a tree — I’d sure as hell put a lot of knot holes in it if you know what I mean. I’d fuck the hell out of that tree.”

Tiertha and Bill bonded because they were both mountain boys. They talked about Sewell Mountain and the Himalayas and the elevations of the mountains of their birth.

We talked about the town of Lewisburg in the eastern end of the county and how we hated all the hippies who lived there who talked constantly about black bears and healing massage.

There was Six Toed Russell who snuck into bars and bet drunk lumberjacks. “Hey, I bet I have six toes on both feet.”

The rednecks didn’t believe and just said, “Whatever. The fuck you do.” So Russell popped off his shoes and there they were. There were two feet. And there were, count them—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, 12 motherfucking toes wiggling around in all their glory. Russell was always good at math.

And then there was Naked Joe. Naked Joe used to run into people’s yards and rip bushes out of the ground. “Fucking bush, I hate you.”

One time an old lady said she was going to call the law. He better quit tearing up her shrubs.

“The law,” Joe said. “Well you better tell your bush to quit talking so much shit.”

But then that evening we sat in Bill’s room playing Madden. Joe came into the room real quiet and then disappeared into the bathroom. A few minutes later he came into the room and stood behind us.

“Who’s winning?” he said. He put his hands on his hips and said, “Man this game is getting good.”

I felt something brushing against my back. I felt something sitting on my shoulder. I turned around and shrieked because right there was Naked Joe’s dick sticking in my face.

I always wondered why people called him Naked Joe and now I knew.

Then there was Bill in the middle of it all. He stood around during our backyard wrestling bouts. He pointed to the mountains around us. He pointed to Beelick Knob and said, “That’s Beelick Knob. Guess what its elevation is?”

Then he told us the story about the Greenbrier Ghost.

Then he pointed to another—“That’s Shafers Crossing. Guess what its elevation is?”

But no one listened.

Then he pointed to another mountain and we didn’t care again. Only Tiertha listened. He dreamed of his home in the Himalayas. But we didn’t, even though Bill was telling us about where we were from.

He was telling us about our mountains.

Then Lee Brown stopped by.

Lee was 6’5” 275 pounds. He was 18. He came from a whole family of big people though. His older brother was 6’6” and his father was 6’7” and his little baby brother Dave was 6’5” and his mom was the itty bitty runt in the family. She was only 6’3”.

Lee once drove all the way to Lewisburg just so he could sit in a trust-fund hippie restaurant and order a 15 dollar hamburger (raised without steroids or preservatives). He ordered, “Yes, I would like your 15 dollar hamburger but can I get it with the steroids and preservatives put back.”

They refused and he shouted, “What the hell kind of restaurant are you running here?”

I thought these were the perfect examples of American youth.

So we hung out that evening looking through the phone book so we could make prank phone calls. Lee and I were looking through the phone book for names. Then Bill pointed out over the mountains and he told us about the elevation of the mountains. He told us about the Greenbrier Ghost. We weren’t listening anymore because we were looking for names to call. I looked up Ruby’s old phone number. I wanted to call it and see if she would answer. Then Bill told us about Beelick Knob. He told us about Shafers Crossing. He told us about Sewell Mountain where his family was from. He told us about Stephen Sewell living in a tree, and running from the Shawnee through the rhododendron bushes before they finally caught and killed him in the woods. He was telling us about all of these places. He was telling us something important though.

He was telling about where we were from.

He was telling us about home.

We were just looking for numbers to call. We called 438-6794, but no one answered. We called 438-5812 but then it was busy. We called 438-6494 but then Bill started whining again.

He said, “Guys, I don’t think we should be doing this.”

“Oh be quiet, crotchless panties,” Lee said giving him hell yet again about the pair of crotchless panties.

“My mom does not wear crotchless panties.”

It was true though. One night Reinaldo and Lee came out of the bedroom after they went through her drawers and Reinaldo was wearing the crotchless panties over his boxer shorts. It was true. Lee reminded him of this, but Bill just kept arguing.

“How do I know you didn’t sneak crotchless panties in her drawer just to put them on that night — so you could make fun of me?”

Lee said: “Why in the hell would we want to take the trouble to sneak crotchless panties in here. I know you’re sensitive about it, but it’s not that big of a deal.”