Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

Of course, Bill was still hopped up about Janette as he was telling me these stories. He was still sitting in his fake kilt without his shirt on and watching Braveheart on the VCR. I even caught him mouthing the last words of the brave warrior William Wallace. “Freedom.”

I asked him if he just said “freedom,” but he denied it. I asked him why he was wanting to watch this crap movie again and why he was putting a towel around his waist like a kilt? He told me that Janette would love him now.

He told me he was going to move to Scotland with Janette.

Then he watched the movie some more and mouthed the word again. Freedom.

I didn’t tease him about anything because he was happy that night, but then he started talking about his dad Butch.

Butch had the biggest head you’ve ever seen. He wore an adjustable cap, but the cap was always on the last ring and about to pop from his giant pumpkin head.

The first time his dad lived away from the mountain he was working in a sawmill that was about an hour away. One day he was off so he decided to walk to the post office. It was winter time and there was ice all over everything. Butch was wearing flip flops and he ended up breaking his face. He started walking down the steps of the post office and there was some frozen water on the steps. He slipped and fell. But as he was falling he looked up and there was one of his flip flops going end over end up uP UP into the air in slow motion. It went so far up that it landed on top of the post office. He broke his jaw and his cheekbone and he knocked out a couple of teeth. He broke his goddamn face.

So Butch walked back to his apartment and called the old man. He said, “Pa, I just broke my face. I think I need help. I think I need you guys to come here and help me and take me to the emergency room.”

The old man was real calm and said, “Well that’s okay, son. It’s a bit late to be driving. We’ll be down tomorrow to get you.”

His son just broke his face, and lived only an hour away, but the old man said he’d be there in the morning to get him.

Then Bill and I laughed and said we should go to the post office and find the flip flop and return it to his father. We imagined it still sitting there after all of these years, on top of the post office and just waiting to be worn. We knew the foot who walked with it would finally walk free.

Then Bill laughed. He said — they weren’t gone from us. There are no such things as ghosts, because they do not haunt us. He told me Ruby was not gone from me. He told me Nathan was not gone from me.

They are here right now.

They are holding our hands and whispering a whisper we will whisper one day. They are whispering — FREEDOM.

But then the next morning Lee came over to the room and woke Bill up.

He said: “Bill, get on up and look out the window — it’s Janette.”

I got up and looked out the window and I saw what was happening. It wasn’t good. It was Naked Joe. I told Lee, “No, let him sleep. Don’t tell him.” Lee kept shaking Bill awake. Bill got up though and went over and looked out the window, down towards Janette’s apartment. And what did he see, but Naked Joe giving Janette a kiss and leaving her apartment. She was reaching into Joe’s sweatpants and rubbing his dick. Then they were laughing. He’d spent the night with her. Bill just sat there looking out the window for what seemed like the longest time, not saying anything.

It was as if he was seeing our families from the past cross those lonely oceans to live in mountains, and as they crossed that ocean — it wasn’t the word freedom they were whispering. There was only one word they were whispering now, a word we will whisper one day too, oh SHIT!

So Bill started losing all kinds of weight after Janette. It was like a whole new Bill. There was an FB time in Bill’s history and then SB time. Fat Bill and Skinny Bill. He looked like one of those bobbing head dolls with his big head and this skinny body.

I turned around one day and he looked different.

“Goddamn,” I said.

He went to school in work clothes with about four t-shirts or so beneath it. For lunch and dinner all he ate were peanut butter sandwiches. He ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. On top of that he drank 9 glasses of water and that’s what started it.

I sat in school and I read about how everything changes even in Crapalachia. I read about how the miners became machines, and the loggers became the machines and the tiny roads turned into interstates and the towns became fast food drive thru’s and gas stations and the people became people to serve tourists and let the tourists laugh at their accents.

I read about how people charged money to take people down the river. They charged people money to go mountain climbing. The people worked in restaurants so that tourists could laugh at their accents. They were paying for something that was given for free. The people from here didn’t have to run a river to prove that it existed. They didn’t have to climb a mountain just to climb it. It was enough that the river was a river and the mountain was a mountain and inside of them were mountains too.

In the evenings, Bill sat and talked about how people hurt one another. He talked about how he heard voices sometimes and how hard it was to think the same thing over and over. I asked him if he ever thought about suicide. He said, “Yeah.” Then he asked me if I ever did. I said, “Every fucking day.”

The next morning Bill started checking his weight all of the time. He brought in this scale and sat it on the floor. In the mornings he got up and walked over to the scale. Then he stood up on the scale. Then he checked his weight. He got down off the scale and walked back over to his bed. Then he got a drink of water. Then he walked back over to the scale. He stood up on the scale again. He checked his weight. Then he did it all over. He did this all the time—50 times a day.

We went to school and he went over to the cafeteria and instead of eating a sandwich, and a salad, and a hamburger like he used to eat, now all he did was eat a peanut butter sandwich and drink 9 glasses of water. He was always drinking water. He drank one right after the other until he had filled his stomach up. It was something else to watch, him drinking all that water and getting all grumpy and mad.

Then we went into class and we read about The Greenbrier Ghost, we read about the Hawk’s Nest disaster. We read about how our place was changing. I read about the Sago Mine disaster and the men who survived an explosion only to have so little oxygen left they all went into the corner of the mine shaft and hid behind a giant rubber curtain. The giant rubber curtain was supposed to protect them from carbon monoxide. They put on the breathing mask, but there was only an hour of air left. They spent what time they had left writing letters to their children and wives. The letters went like this:

Tell all I’ll see them on the other side.

It wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep. I love you. Jr.

Your daddy didn’t suffer.

After Bill lost all the weight his personality really changed. It seemed like any little thing that happened would just set him off. One night in the room he was bitching and complaining about how something was wrong. Bill and Lee started getting into it.

Lee said something that pissed Bill off and then I shook my head and said: “What the hell happened to you? This new skinny Bill is pissed off all the time. I want fat Bill back.”

He started looking out the window all of the time. He kept looking down to the building where Janette lived. He did this once, and he walked away. Then he did it again, and then he walked away. He did it a million times.