Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

I knew it that evening when my aunt said—“I know it’s the wrong thing to say but I just wish it would all be over. I’ve got so much to do at work. I know that sounds terrible.”

But I knew what she meant. Bill and Lee were going to drink beer on Friday and I wanted to drink too. I didn’t want to disappoint them, and there was a part of me wishing she would just die. I knew that the dying were selfish, and the living were too.

I would have been all right if I would have just left it like that — if I didn’t go back. But for some reason I did, and it was all a big mistake. I went back that Wednesday and the death rattle had started. She just looked gone, groaning full of death. And so I left that day thinking she wouldn’t make it through the day. But she did. She made it through the day and then she made it through the next day. She kept fighting and fighting some more. I stayed at my uncle’s the whole week. Then one morning I was sleeping when I heard the phone ring. It rang and it rang and I was awake all of the sudden. I heard my uncle’s voice in the other room half asleep.

“Okay.

“She did.

“Okay.”

And then he hung up.

My aunt went “Stanley” in this scared voice, but he didn’t say anything back to her. He just went into the other room where my Uncle Terry was sleeping and he opened the door and told him.

My Uncle Terry said real quick like he was awake, like he was embarrassed to be sleeping, “Oh I thought she would. I thought she would.”

Then he stood up and put his pants on.

They both got dressed and went into the kitchen. I got up and went into the kitchen and they were standing at the door. My uncle was the 7th son of a 7th son and my Uncle Terry was the baby of the family — a baby born blue who would have died if he hadn’t been the first of her babies born in a hospital. I stood in my underwear and they stood in their coats and it was the strangest thing. Both of them just reached out and shook my hand. They shook my hand like they didn’t know what to do. Their mother had just died and they were different now. They were free?

It wasn’t until later that evening, when they were planning the funeral, that I heard how she died. My Aunt Bernice said that it was at 4 o’clock in the morning and she was in the back room folding clothes (Leslie and Bernice were staying at the house that night and taking turns taking care of her). She was folding clothes and then all of the sudden she heard a noise in Grandma’s bedroom.

She listened and then Grandma said, “Good morning!”

So Bernice walked into my grandma’s bedroom not believing what she heard. Grandma hadn’t talked since Wednesday. After hearing Ruby say good morning, Bernice looked closer and Ruby was dead.

So after I heard about this, I just sat around and thought about what it meant. I didn’t get drunk with Bill or listen to him talk about the Greenbrier Ghost or hang out with the crazy fuckers or make prank phone calls. I thought about how strange it was that somebody would say “good morning” and then die. I thought to myself that maybe this explained something about death. I thought maybe she was saying good morning to the angel of death who was coming back to get her now. I thought maybe it was the spirit of Nathan she was saying good morning to and he was taking her away. But then I thought that maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just the last little bit of oxygen escaping from the brain and it meant nothing. Maybe my Aunt Bernice didn’t even hear her right. Maybe my Aunt Bernice made it up. Maybe it was just a groan of death that sounded like “good morning.” And yet there was still something about all of this that said everything to me.

At the funeral the next day we all gathered around the grave beside Nathan’s grave and Elgie’s grave. My cousin’s wife sang a song about how Jesus loves us, complete with backing vocals on a cassette tape. She keyed the tape to start, let her head drop down dramatically, and then she started singing. Then her daughter stood beside her and did the sign language for the song. She moved her hands together like it was a bird flying into the sky. She moved her arms to portray the waves. It was sign language. And there was something kind of funny about it because there wasn’t one person who knew sign language there, but we all understood the signs. We were all deaf for a moment.

…So the preacher preached a eulogy about how Ruby waited to die. She took care of Nathan his whole life. And she never left him — even when people told her she should put him away in a home. She didn’t leave him because he was her baby. At the end of it all, she waited until he died. She waited all those years until he died so she could die too. Then he said that blessed are the peacemakers, but even more blessed are the caretakers.

So just like at Nathan’s funeral the Wallace and Wallace guy brought out a box of doves to fly away home and the preacher said, “We’ll now release a dove which is a symbolic representation of Ruby’s soul flying home to heaven.”

And so they opened up the bird box and nothing happened.

We waited.

And then this sleepy-looking dove just crawled out, except it didn’t even look like a dove really but just a fat pigeon that somebody had painted white.

It had a look on its face like, What the fuck? Seriously, people. What the fuck? It’s way too cold to be doing this today .

So the Wallace and Wallace guy tried to shoo it but it wouldn’t shoo.

So the preacher repeated: “We’ll now release the dove.”

The Wallace and Wallace guy shooed it again. Finally the dove shot high up into the air and out and over our heads, but instead of flying away it just landed on top of this chain-linked fence. And so the Wallace and Wallace guy tried shooing it again and everyone giggled and gathered around in a circle throwing up their arms and shouting “shoo-shoo” at the bird high above. I shouted, “Shoo.” We were all shooing.

But it wouldn’t shoo.

And so it was.

I went back to Bill’s mom’s apartment. I had already missed too much school that week and I needed to go the next day. Bill told me he was going to skip again. I told him he was never going to graduate.

That night I dreamed that she didn’t die. I dreamed she secretly escaped from the casket. I dreamed that she was back in Danese, WV, and she had kidnapped the devil. She was poking him in the ass with a pitchfork. She was stabbing him in the chest with the pitchfork, but there wasn’t any blood and there wasn’t any pain screams. There wasn’t any agony. He was just whispering…

GOOD MORNING!

I went to school. I told myself I needed to start going to school and get out of this place. When I got home Lee and Bill tried to do something for me to take my mind off Ruby. We decided to have a backyard wrestling battle royale. Naked Joe wrestled Reinaldo. I wrestled Russell and busted a chair over his head. I was next matched with Reinaldo and he pinned me before losing his next match to Bill. Then we ended the royale with a no holds barred, winner take all against Lee. Whoever could get him down would win the backyard wrestling championship belt.

Bill got ahold of him by the neck and I got ahold of him by the legs and we tried pulling him down. Lee flipped Bill off of him. Reinaldo jumped on his back and Lee threw Reinaldo off his back as well. I was wrapped around his leg and he started walking around like I was a small child and he was my father giving me a ride. Bill jumped on his back again, but there wasn’t any use. Lee flipped Bill off his back and threw me off his leg like he was kicking off a heavy boot and then he laughed and shouted: “Come on, ya little skinny bastard. Come on, you OCD bastard.”