Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

Then the next night — he picked up the phone again.

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

There was quiet again. He kept going. He said, “Yeah this is Bill. Yeah. The guy with red hair who called you yesterday.”

Then he asked her the question again.

“You want to do something tomorrow?”

She told him the same thing as the day before. He still didn’t know what this meant.

He didn’t know this meant no.

He said, “Well what about the next day?”

It was quiet.

Then Bill said. “Oh that’s okay. What about the day after that?”

She told him that was Valentines Day.

So Valentines Day rolled around. Bill got this idea to get her some flowers. He was going to leave them on her door and surprise her. That evening I was going to take some books back to the library and Bill followed me down with the flowers he bought. When we got outside the wind was blowing. Leaves were blowing across the yard, and the wind was kicking up like hell. I even flipped up the collar of my jacket. Bill stood below the locust tree watching me walk away. Then he said, “Scott — do you know which door it is? I can’t tell from down here. You wanna go with me?”

I turned around with my books in my hands and said, “It’s just down there.”

Then I stood for a second…

Naked Joe was standing outside smoking a cigarette. He told Bill that he heard Janette was a party girl. Bill didn’t say anything. I told Joe to shut up, but he kept going. Then Joe told him that he bet he could go there tonight and get a blow job.

I told him to shut up again. Bill didn’t say anything, but just walked down the alley with his flowers. He was going to give them to her. Then I stood for a second and asked. “You want me to go with ya?”

Bill thought it over. “No. I’ll be all right.”

So I said okay and just turned around and started walking off to the library, but then I started feeling bad.

I turned around and told him to give me the flowers.

Then we turned and walked towards Janette’s. On the way down there Bill lost his nerve and decided to wait awhile.

“I think I’m just going to wait,” he said.

I told him not to be nervous. He told me he wasn’t nervous, but when I looked his hands were shaking. So I went off to the library.

It was an hour later when I got back that Bill finally got his nerve up and went to put the flowers on Janette’s door. Of course, by this time everybody was hanging out of Bill’s mom’s apartment chanting for him.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

So Bill took off through the darkness running like a burglar up on his tiptoes across the grass. He finally set the flowers down on the door of her apartment. And then he took off running the other way without realizing he set them down on the wrong door and had rung the wrong damn doorbell. He was so nervous he put them on the wrong door.

Lee was shouting to him out the window: “No, Bill. No. It’s the wrong door.”

He couldn’t hear us though. He just thought we were cheering him on, so he ran all the way back to us.

By that time the person who lived in the wrong apartment took them inside. So Bill had to go all the way back down to the wrong apartment and ask for the flowers back.

He knocked on the door. The door opened. He was talking. Then he had the flowers again. He put them beside the right door this time. He rang the doorbell.

Then I heard Lee whisper: “Look at that crazy, beautiful bastard.”

And when Bill got back upstairs, he called Janette and asked her if she had got them.

She said thank you — she did.

That night he couldn’t stop smiling. He sat in his bed and we drank beer and he told me about Scotland. He told me about how he dreamed of going to those mountains, how the mountains of Scotland looked just like the mountains of home. Then he talked about his family.

There was Uncle Dan, and the old man, and Jay, and Bill’s dad Butch who never crossed bridges. If he had to go somewhere it might take him days because he never would cross a bridge. He thought bridges were bad luck.

Bill’s Uncle Dan was agoraphobic and manic depressive. Bill also said he was a little bit schizophrenic. That was actually a diagnosis a doctor in the army gave him. “He’s a little bit schizophrenic.”

This was about the time Dan decided he needed to go and save President Carter. He started hearing all of these voices telling him that President Carter was in trouble and Dan was the only one who could help him. He was the only one who could save Carter from the demons and those motherfucking devil worshippers. He gave the demons and the motherfucking devil worshippers a name. He called them Republicans.

Of course, Dan hadn’t been out of the house for two years before this. Two years before he parked his red Chevy beneath an oak tree. He went inside and didn’t come out again until the very moment he decided to go and save Carter. The oak tree was hundreds of years old.

This car had not been moved since Dan went inside that day so long ago. But now he came outside, started the car, which started on the fourth try, and he took off. Then after he took off, the tree which had stood for hundreds of years, fell over, TIMBER , and landed right where the car would have been sitting. No one got hurt, but the tree came crashing down, like it was not the roots that had kept it up, but the car. It was proof that it was good luck when the hallucinations came. It was always good luck to listen to the voices inside your head and do exactly what they said.

So Dan took off down 81 to save President Carter. A police chase ensued. He ended up wrecking nine police cars. After he wrecked nine police cars they took him into this jail cell in some town. It was a county jail with a row of cells in it. Dan was all hopped up and manic. It was like he had super human strength. He went over and took hold of the sink and ripped it out of the wall. They took him out of that jail cell and put him in another one. He took hold of the sink in that cell and ripped it out just like the other. He finally ripped out another before the cops decided it was a good idea to handcuff him to the bed.

After that, they put Dan at the state mental hospital in Weston. He had been there for six months before he was allowed visitors for the first time. So the old man who always cooked for the boys spent three whole days frying chicken, mashing vats of potatoes, and cooking a giant chocolate cake. It was enough food for ten people. But he cooked it anyway.

The old man never spoke, and he never cussed. If you asked him how he was doing he would just nod his head yes. If a carpenter came into his lumber supply business and asked for a particular type of wood, the old man would just walk over to where it was at and show him. He never said a word, and he never cussed. Not a shit , not a damn , nothing.

So they took the food to Weston and called for Dan at the front desk. They were going to have a picnic outside. When they called Dan instead of just coming out by himself, he started waving for all of the mental patients to follow him. “You want some food? You want some food? You want some food?” The patients at the West Virginia State Mental Hospital in Weston answered with a resounding yes. So here he came with an army of crazy people behind him. There was a fat woman there. She picked up the whole cake and ate it in three or four bites. Her face was covered in chocolate cake.

The old man didn’t say anything to her. The old man didn’t say anything when they told Dan goodbye. He didn’t say anything when he drove all the way back home. He didn’t say anything when he pulled into the garage, but then finally he said something. He finally walked into the house and he said completely calm, “That fat bitch at the mental hospital ate my whole goddamn cake.”