Crapalachia: A Biography of Place

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For Sarah

“Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.”

—Robert Penn Warren

There were 13 of them. The children had names that ended in
Y
sounds. That night I couldn’t sleep so I got out Grandma’s picture books and I learned about my blood and the names that ended in
Y
sounds. There was Betty and there was Annie and there was Stirley and there was Stanley and there was Leslie and there was Gary and there was Larry and there was Terry.

Ruby said: “I like names that end in
Y
.”

They all grew up in Danese, WV, eating blackberries for breakfast and eating blackberries for lunch and watching the snow come beneath the door in the wintertime.
Holy shit it’s cold.

 

There was my Uncle Stanley who I never heard say anything except “sheeeeeeeeeeeeet” and who I saw at the hospital one night talking to this other guy about how the state of West Virginia was making people wear a helmet now if they rode a 4-wheeler. He was all pissed off about it and told the guy: “I mean they’re gonna let them bunch of queers get married now, and I can’t even ride my 4-wheeler without a helmet on.”

 

I flipped the page of the picture book and there was my Aunt Betty. She came over one day and sat at our table and told us this story about Elgie. She didn’t hold back. She told us the story about how he was trying to get his pension from the mines. But before he got it, he had to fight for a couple of months. He finally got a letter that went… “
Dear Mr. McClanahan, we regret to inform you that we’re unable to approve you at this time. Please send your response within seven days and we’ll schedule another hearing.
”

Elgie didn’t even say anything.

He just took it down to the outhouse and wiped his ass with it. Then he put it back into the envelope, sealed it up, and sent it back. My Aunt Betty was talking like this was an acceptable thing to do. She was telling this story to her 4-, 5-, 6-year-old and 8-year-old nieces and nephews. This was an acceptable story to tell 8-year-old kids.

We were learning.

 

There was my Uncle Leslie who was tough as hell. How tough was he? That’s what I asked Grandma once. She told me too. She told me about how there was this guy called The Toughest Man in Fayette County and he was this ex-con and beat the hell out of any man who ever messed with him. Leslie and The Toughest Man in Fayette County got into it one day about something. And so Leslie kicked the fuck out of The Toughest Man in Fayette County. It was because The Toughest Man in Fayette County always used vulgar language in front of women.

I asked Ruby, “Well how old was Leslie at the time?”

Ruby was quiet and then she said, “Eleven.”

 

There were cousins too. There was my Cousin Bonnie who had this little boy from this man named Ernie. And Ernie had been in jail and made his living cockfighting. And so I saw them down at Pizza Hut and I looked over at Ernie and he was holding little Paul in his arms and smacking him in the face. SMACK. SMACK. He was smacking him hard. Everybody in the Pizza Hut was horrified because there was little Paul and he wasn’t crying about it. He was laughing.

He was laughing because he loved getting slapped in the face.

There is one thing you’ll never know about my Uncle Nathan. You’ll never know just how sweet he was. You’ll never know how alive he was.

 

Then I looked at pictures of my uncles like Uncle G. My Uncle G. was always trying to kill himself, but something always went wrong. One time he was working in a factory up north and living on Lake Erie. He bought a boat and a shotgun and some shells and decided to go out on the boat on a Saturday morning and end his life. He said goodbye to all of his friends and he told his wife it was the end. He had enough guts now. He wanted people to know this time he was truly going to make it happen. So he cleaned the shotgun and went out in his boat. He shined the boat up the day before. He cranked the motor and went out into the middle of the lake. He sat and looked out over the shining water and thought about his life. He knew this was the end. He clicked off the safety, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He was still alive.

 

He cracked open the shotgun and he saw it wasn’t loaded. When he cleaned it earlier, he took out the shells. He left the shells on the bed.
Shit.

 

He took his boat back home and he knew things were different now. He never tried to take his life again.

 

There were stories about little boys getting ear infections, and Ruby not having enough money to take them to the doctors. So they just twisted and turned and flipped and flopped in their sick beds crying for days until their eardrums popped
poof
and they eventually went deaf.
What did you say?

 

My dad was working at Kroger when he was 19 years old, and one day in a store meeting, the manager was saying the names of these guys who broke into the store and stole a bunch of shit. He said the name of one of the robbers: “Stanley McClanahan.”

Then he asked my dad, not thinking. “Do you know him, Mack?”

My dad said: “Yeah, he’s my brother.”

So the room grew quiet and the manager later apologized to him.

 

There was my Uncle Grover who suffered from depression and schizophrenia. And instead of taking him to the doctor they brought in a faith healer and had someone hold him down and tried exorcising his demons. This was the way it was done. DEMONS. There was a picture of Elgie’s family I found—all eleven of them lined up in a row and so I asked my grandma, “Well who’s that and who’s this?”

She said—“That’s so and so and she killed herself.”

Then I said, “Well who’s this and who’s that?”

Ruby said, “Oh that’s so and so—she killed herself.”

And out of the 11 children, 5 of them committed suicide.

And so I asked, “Well what happened to Elgie’s father?”

She said: “Oh one day he was rocking a baby in his lap and then he put the baby down and went out behind the Johnny house.” Then she whispered so Nathan couldn’t hear: “And then he shot himself.”

 

I flipped through the picture book and I saw it all. Some of them stayed and had children and some of them went to other places. Some went north to places like Flint, Michigan, and Cleveland, Ohio, and worked in factories. And some worked for General Motors in Flint, Michigan, and some worked in steel mills in Cleveland, Ohio. And the girls went to Washington, DC, and worked as secretaries. And some stayed and became convicted felons, and one married a school teacher named Audrey Karen and had a baby named Scott. And some married wives from faraway places with different accents and had children with different accents too. And so they went to faraway places like San Francisco, California, and Washington, DC, and Richmond, VA. And New York City, NY. And they never saw one another and they did what everyone does, they started living the same old boring fucking story. It’s a story full of death and dying, living and life, tits and ass and balls and dicks and pussy. It’s an old, old, old story that always begins—they begat and they begat and they begat.

 

 

Now a million crazy babies explode from our smiles and start running all over the world so wild and screaming, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

 

SHIT!

I didn’t want to see her after the operation, but she said I had to. Ruby had her gallstones removed the day before and now she was at home sitting up in bed with this plastic pill bottle beside her on the table. I walked slow and scared to her. I walked with a little-boy walk and she propped herself up on the bed. I moved sideways with a slow step and then another slow step and then another. Then she took her plastic pill bottle and shook it in my face. It rattled like a rattle except it was full of something strange.

“What is it, Grandma?”

She shook them again and said, “They’re my gallstones. All 21 of them. Doctor cut them out of me and let me take them home. He wouldn’t let me take home the biggest though. He said he wanted to keep it on his desk.”

Then she shook the pill bottle in my face
a rat a tat tat
. She said, “I’m going to make a flower bed with them.”

Then she handed me the pill bottle and told me to put them in the flower bed. “Don’t you eat them now, Todd.”

I shook my head like she was crazy.

Then I went over to the window and opened the pill bottle and I put the gallstones in the bottom of a flower pot. “Nothing is growing,” I told her. She told me they would. I didn’t believe her.

 

The next day a flower was blooming.

 

And now…

I don’t know who named AIDS cat AIDS cat, but Grandma always hated him. She always said, “You better stay away from them hogs,” but AIDS cat never listened. He was AIDS cat. He had big patches of hair missing and he was all bony and skinny and looking like he was going to die any minute.