Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

And we never could get him down.

We were all losers, but Lee was different. Lee was the greatest loser of us all and he could prove it because he was the owner of the backyard wrestling battle royale championship belt. He WAS our champion.

Then Bill looked up at the twilight time sky and told us about the Greenbrier Ghost. Then he told us how he was going to fall in love. He told us we should all try to fall in love too. He told us that love was his destiny. Then he pointed to the mountain and told us the elevation. He pointed to another mountain and told us its elevation. Then we all sat and dreamed about climbing to the top of them and looking down at the giant fucking hearts below, pumping full of blood and love. It was the destroyer of all things — this LOVE.

Of course, Bill had been in love before. One day he passed by a girl at school. She smiled at him and he thought he was in love.

That night he asked me, “You know that blonde girl at school?”

I said, “What?”

He said, “You know that blonde girl?”

I told him that really fucking narrowed it down for me. He told me that she smiled at him today and she smiled at him because she liked him.

I just shook my head and looked at him and then I told him just because a girl smiles at you doesn’t mean she likes you.

He smiled and told me I was just jealous.

What the fuck?

That night he walked around the room and lifted his weights and flexed his muscles in the reflection from the dark window. He walked over to the mirror and rubbed his fingers through his thick red hair and said: “You know the girls like me because of my pretty red hair. They’ve all forgotten how my mother used to shave my head when I had lice.”

Then he made a muscle. I pretended not to listen to him.

Then he rubbed his hands through his hair some more and said: “You’re just jealous. You’re just jealous because you don’t have pretty red hair like me.”

Then he flexed his muscles in the mirror and took his shirt off with his big red nipples showing. I told him once again not to walk around without his shirt on. I told Bill his Bill titties looked like girl titties if you looked at them right. I told him not to show them to the blonde girl or she might have to question her sexuality.

What the fuck?

The next morning he woke up and sat at his desk. He started copying something into a notebook. I walked towards him and looked over his shoulder. I saw a W W W and then another W —all lined up in a row. He was writing W ’s?

I said: “What are you doing?”

Bill said: “I’m practicing my W ’s.”

I said: “Why the hell are you practicing W ’s?”

Bill said girls like guys with good penmanship.

What the fuck?

The next day he wrote a poem. It took him hours. That evening he wanted me to read the poem he wrote. He handed me the poem and I read it.

I read: “Oh my love/my darling. I hunger for your touch a long, lonely time.”

At first it seemed familiar, but I kept reading. “And time goes by so slowly and time can do so much.”

It was “Unchained Melody.”

I said, “It’s ‘Unchained Melody.’”

Bill said, “No it’s not.”

I said, “Yes it is. You just wrote down the lyrics to ‘Unchained Melody.’ That’s not a poem, that’s just writing down lyrics.”

He said, “No I didn’t.”

But he did. Then he started humming the song and I could see that he was different. He was different because he meant these words and his eyes said, “Where to? What next?” Then his mouth said the saddest word in the world: “Tomorrow.”

What the fuck?

BUT HE NEVER LOVED ANYBODY LIKE HE LOVED…

I didn’t know it then, but the poem was for her. Janette was this tall girl who lived in the apartments behind the gas station. You could see the door to her house from our bedroom window. She cleaned houses after she quit school and took care of an old woman who lived in the apartment next door. One day she made the mistake of saying hi to Bill when she passed him in the alley. She was being nice to him. She wasn’t ignoring him like everyone else and that’s all it took. Bill came in and told me Janette said hi to him. Bill told me he was finally in love. He told me that lice business was all behind him now and a girl liked him.

He even called up his grandpa on the telephone to tell him he was courting this girl. I sat on the bed beside the phone and listened to him talk to his 90-year-old grandfather.

“Hey, Paw,” he said. “Hey, Paw. How you doing?”

Grandpa couldn’t even hear at all so Bill started shouting at him louder.

He said, “Hey, Paw. I’m courting this girl.” He stopped. “Yeah, I’m still going to school.”

I laughed to myself at his use of the word courting . Bill saw that I was laughing at him. He laughed too but he kept right on talking.

So I said, “ Courting , Bill? Are you serious? It’s no wonder you can’t get any pussy.”

Then I stopped laughing because I wasn’t much better off. I wasn’t getting any pussy either.

Then Bill looked up Janette’s mother’s last name in the phone book. I asked him if he was seriously calling her after only saying hi to her. Bill didn’t answer me. He just dialed the phone.

He waited. He said, “Hey, Janette. This is Bill.”

And then there was quiet but he kept going.

“This is Bill. You know the guy with red hair?”

“No. Red hair. That’s right.” He was quiet. “Oh, you said hi to me today.”

Then Naked Joe came in and asked what we were doing.

I told him Bill was calling Janette.

Naked Joe said, “What the fuck? You can’t do that.”

Joe went over and started eating a bowl of our cereal. He just laughed and said, “That’s real great for a guy who asked Fat Jimmy to suck his dick.”

I asked him if he just came over here to eat our food.

Naked Joe said he was hungry. I told him to get the hell out of here. He finished eating his bowl of cereal and then he went home.

She still didn’t know who Bill was. He still asked her though. “Well I was just wondering if you want to do something tomorrow?”

The voice on the other line was talking.

Then Bill said, “Yeah with me. That’s what I meant. You want to do something with me tomorrow?”

She told him she had something to do the next day. He said, “Well okay, thanks.”

He panicked.

He hung up.

It was like he was thinking about Fat Jimmy again.

He was wondering if it was true.

A few months before, Bill got so drunk Lee had to ask Fat Jimmy to help carry him up to the apartment. Fat Jimmy was a big black guy who worked across the street at 7-Eleven. Lee messed with Bill the next day and told him that he asked to suck Fat Jimmy’s dick. Lee said Bill opened his eyes and looked at Jimmy. He told us Bill said, “Fat Jimmy, you want me to suck your ding dong. I’ll suck your ding dong, Fat Jimmy.”

When Lee told us that he laughed and said, “Man it made me uncomfortable as hell coming up the stairs like that and you offering Fat Jimmy sexual favors. Here Jimmy is just trying to help you out by carrying your drunk ass up the stairs and here you’re trying to seduce him. I think it made Jimmy uncomfortable too.” Of course, Bill freaked out and started to question his sexuality.

So now Bill was asking me again: “Do you think I really asked Fat Jimmy what Lee said I asked him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ask Fat Jimmy what Lee said I asked him about.”

I told him not to worry about it. We were all gay when it came down to it. Bill didn’t say anything.