Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

I told him it was okay. I told him the same thing during history class the next period. I told him to keep his head down and just read his Crapalachia history book and it would be okay.

So we read about the accidents of history. We read about the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, which was a one-lane road that passed by our house. It was the way west. George Washington and the Virginians built it, but the New Yorkers built the Erie Canal. The Virginians found out that water travel is faster. The Virginians lost. Therefore, New York became New York. But imagine if we would have won. Imagine Crapalachia as the center of the world. Imagine skyscrapers rising from the mountains.

I read about how Governor Arch Moore kept 100,000 dollars in a refrigerator in his office because he loved cold, hard cash.

I read about how to stuff a ballot box. Have the party boss at the end of the road in a truck start with a blank sheet of paper that is the size of a paper ballot. Send the first guy in with the blank ballot stuffed in his pants. On the way out have him hide the real ballot in his pants and put the fake ballot inside the ballot box. Take the real ballot back to the party boss. The party boss fills it out and gives it to the next guy who goes in and slips the filled in ballot in the ballot box and brings out the blank ballot. This goes on all day. This goes on all day and then the men are paid in liquor. This is how you get them drunk and steal an election fair and square. This is democracy.

Then Frog raised his hand and told the teacher, “Do you know that Charles Manson grew up in West Virginia? His mother was a prostitute in Clarksburg.”

The teacher told him to be quiet.

Everybody laughed.

Frog told us again that it was true.

Then we read about how you build civilization. They built the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel by digging a big ass hole in the side of a mountain. They used a bunch of poor people to dig it. A poor person means either their skin was dark or their accents were thick. That’s the best way to do anything — get a bunch of poor people to do it. So they cut and cut into the mountain but there was a problem. They didn’t wet the dust from the cut limestone — so the men developed silicosis. The men started dying by the tens and then the twenties and then the hundreds and then — the thousands? Since they were poor the company just buried them. There was an investigation a few years later but no one cared. They were poor people. The official statistic was 476 but the truth is over 1,000 of the 3,000 men lost their lives in a few short days.

And then we read about the number of coal miners killed.

In 1931: 1,456

In 1932: 1,192

In 1933: 1,051

In 1934: 1,214

In 1935: 1,216

In 1936: 1,319

In 1937: 1,399

In 1938: 1,077

We read about the Farmington disaster and how the smoke rose from the mine and the miners’ wives ran to the mine to see if their husbands were dead. The wives waited outside the mine for their husbands, but their husbands never came. The company didn’t pay the miners for the half day they missed due to their death in the explosion.

In 1939: 1,062

In 1940: 1,361

In 1941: 1,226

In 1922 my grandmother’s uncle was stuck inside the Layland mine for three weeks after an explosion. When they pulled out the bodies, some of the shoelaces were missing. Some of the miners weren’t killed. Some of the miners were so hungry they ate their shoelaces. They died of starvation.

I read about how this proves something. It proves one thing. It proves that poor people are not smart, and only poor people are desperate enough to work in a hole and then thank god that they have a job working in a hole.

Then I read about what happens to bravery. William Marland was governor of the state of WV. He tried to put an excise tax on coal and the industry broke his ass down. He started drinking. He disappeared in the ’60s. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune was riding in the back of a Chicago taxi cab. He looked up at the name of the taxi cab driver. He said, “Hey you have the name of the former governor of West Virginia.”

The taxi cab driver said, “I know. That’s me. I was the governor of the state of West Virginia.”

He was an old man. He was a drunk. He tried to protect and help the people once. This is what happens to you. You wind up a drunk, driving a taxi cab in the city of Chicago.

We read and we learned and then we smiled the smile of killers. We had the smile of Charles Manson inside of us.

Later that day someone must have said something about Little Bill’s bald head and lice. But Little Bill didn’t say anything. Little Bill just walked over and smacked the guy upside the head. Then he started kicking him. He reared back with his leg and kicked. The dude on the ground didn’t saying anything else. The other guys the dude was with circled around. Little Bill laughed at them. Mrs. Powell was going to walk over and say something, but Little Bill shook his fist at her. He said, “What? You want some of this.” Then we knew. We knew Little Bill really was on his way to being King Kong Bundy.

We knew we wanted to get lice too — so we could shave our heads and kick the shit out of people who gave us hell.

I was getting tired of playing checkers with Nathan. I even told him a couple of months earlier that I wasn’t going to play anymore because he was always beating me. But here I was playing checkers again for some reason.

I jumped one checker and then waited. He made a move and then I made another move. He made a move and pointed to the toys in front of his chair. It was a ceramic hog with these giant testicles hanging down in the back. There was a rubber frog and a plastic puppy and a small stuffed alligator, but he kept pointing at the hog balls. Then he pointed at his chest. I finally said, “Gosh, Nathan, I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to move my checker. I wish you’d quit pointing at the hawg nuts. This is part of the reason I don’t like playing.”

Then Nathan turned the hawg towards Ruby so she could see.

He pointed to the giant testicles and then to himself.

Ruby whispered “shit” beneath her breath and then, “Nathan, you quit talking filthy like that. Can’t believe you put that filthy stuff out there.”

Nathan laughed and pointed at the ceramic hawg and then back to himself, which meant: I got big hawg balls all right, Mother .

I made my move and he laughed again and pointed to the newspaper. Then he pointed to his finger. He was saying, I’m going to get me a woman out of the paper without a ring on her finger .

Then he spread his arms wide. I said, “Nathan you can’t place personal ads for a big fat woman. No woman would answer that.”

Nathan laughed and spread his arms real wide. W ell if I’m going to get me a woman I want the biggest goddamn woman I can find. I want one so goddamn big I can’t even get my arms around her big ass . Ruby whispered “shit” beneath her breath and then he jumped my checker. He pointed to the newspaper again and then acted like he was writing. He was telling me that he was going to have me write to one after he beat me. Then I jumped one of his checkers and then another and then another.

I was winning. For the first time I was winning. “Maybe it was a good thing I took a couple of months off.”

I thought that it was because maybe he was bragging so much that he wasn’t paying attention. I jumped another checker and I said, “King me.” He kinged me. I started moving all over the checkerboard. He wasn’t even watching really.

My grandma told Nathan, “Well you’re going to talk so much no one is going to believe what you say. It’s going to be just like Mary.”