I looked at the locket again and then I told her: “No, this couldn’t have belonged to the woman. I know for sure. You just keep it.” Then I handed it back to the little girl. And the little girl went back to her desk and got ready to leave. She put the locket on because this wasn’t the possession of an old woman who had been murdered, but this was the thing that her mother’s boyfriend had given to her. This was the sweet thing that made her feel loved, and this was a chain that made her feel beautiful. This was a golden thing that made her feel like a movie star.
A SHORT HISTORY OF CRAPALACHIA PT 3
So I went home that night and I did something strange. I went through my old books and I picked one out from long ago. I opened it up and I read about Buffalo Creek.
It was February. It was morning. It was 1972. The Pittston Coal Company built a sludge dam on the side of a mountain above a mountain town. I read about how they built the dam to keep it full of toxic coal refuse. This refuse was like muddy black water, thick as oatmeal. One morning the dam broke and the water went rushing down into the valley.
I read about how the disaster killed 125 people. I read about how parents tried to save their children. One father was putting his children on top of their house. He was trying to put his wife up there too, but then the house broke apart like toothpicks. They were all hanging onto their father and being washed away in this giant muddy river. Then a car came barreling towards them in the flood water and knocked into their father. He lost his grip on their mother. The children were still hanging onto him. He was able to swim to safety and put the children on a bank. The last time they saw their mother she was floating down the river and screaming for help. They were their own mother now.
I read about roadways being washed away. I read about people seeing train tracks bent and wrapped around oak trees, coal train cars lifted on top of trees.
I read about how the survivors described it as a giant thirty-foot wave of water.
I read about bodies in trees. I read about the body of a young boy in a tree thirty feet above the ground. He had his hands up in front of his face like he was trying to protect himself.
I read about another body of an old man. There was a dog beside him. The man was dead but the dog wasn’t. The dog was protecting the body of the old man. It growled and bit at any rescue worker who tried to get close. The dog did this for days.
I read about how they didn’t find people with injuries. They found only people who were dead or ones who were left without a scratch. One house was destroyed and the house beside it was still standing with the car left untouched in the gravel driveway.
I read about the rescue workers using a bulldozer to push through the mud. They found an artificial leg, but they didn’t find the person who the artificial leg belonged to. They came across all of these baby dolls with their little baby doll hands reaching out of the mud. The rescue worker pulled out one baby doll by its hand. They freed it. Then he pulled out another baby doll hand. They freed it. Then they saw another little baby doll hand and pulled at it. It wasn’t a baby doll hand. It was the hand of a five-year-old girl. She had already been dressed that morning. She wasn’t in her pajamas. She was wearing a pink dress. They cleaned her up and tried to comb her muddy hair and put her in a body bag.
Three days later they found the body of a woman sitting against a tree. I read about how the rescue workers couldn’t believe they had not found her earlier. They had walked past her body perhaps hundreds of times. How could that be? They even ate lunch beside that tree one day and still didn’t see her. She was sitting against the tree and looking out at the river and she was dead. There was some sand in her mouth, but her body was untouched. There were no bruises. There were no broken bones. There were no gashes on her head.
I read about how two days later the rescue workers were walking past a row of caskets in the morgue. They looked inside one casket and there was the little girl in the pink. And in the same coffin right beside the little girl was the woman they found sitting against a tree. They didn’t know that these bodies found days apart were more than just bodies. The woman sitting against the tree was a mother. The little girl in the pink dress was her daughter.
I read about how the Pittston Coal Company said it was an act of God.
Then I looked up from the book and put it away. I saw all of the people I had known and loved being washed away in that flood. I saw Ruby and Nathan. I saw Stanley and Mary. I saw my uncles and my aunts and all the McClanahans. I saw Bill and his family. I saw Lee and all the crazy fuckers. I saw Sarah. They were all being washed away and they were all doing something else. They were all screaming.
AND NOW…
My water keeps rising. My water keeps rolling.
SO I FAILED
My home was gone. So I decided to write this book. I tried to remember all of the people and phantoms I had ever known and loved. I tried to make them laugh and dance, move and dream, love and see. I put some of them together and twisted our time together. I tried to bring them back, but I couldn’t. I started digging on the mountain years ago. I pushed the shovel down deep into the rocky ground and I cut out clumps of dirt and stones hard as gall.
My wife even asked me one morning, “What the hell are you doing.”
I didn’t say anything to her, but I took the dirt and stones and I put them in plastic bags. Then I traveled. I went to Pittsburgh, PA, and Chicago, IL, and Atlanta, GA. I went back to Pittsburgh, PA. I left my dirt there in the streets. I went back to Chicago, IL. I went to New York City. I went to Washington, DC. I went to Charlotte, NC. I went to Raleigh, NC. I went to Oxford, MS. I went to Ann Arbor, MI — the home of Iggy Pop and the ever beautiful Elizabeth Ellen. I went to Portland, OR. I dreamed of China. I dreamed of India, Berlin, Paris, London. I went to Seattle, WA. I went to New York City and I dropped my dirt. I went to New York City. I went to New York City for a third time. I went to New York City.
I gave my dirt away to the people I met. I called it magic dirt and they laughed. They put it in flower pots and the flowers grew. I dropped the stones on the sidewalks. I told them I was going to make the whole world Crapalachia, but they didn’t believe me. They thought I was only joking. I think of Sarah asking me why I was doing this.
I told her I was putting blankets in the trees for our children, so that no matter where they went — they would always be home. The whole world would become this place. It would take a million years and it would take a million trips, but I would rearrange the world.
She said, “That’s impossible, Scott, and it’s also crazy.”
I told her that’s why I needed to do it. I told her that was the only reason to do anything.
So now I put the dirt from my home in my pockets and I travel. I am making the world my mountain.
So we have to come to the end. Listen: Your heart is beating. Isn’t that amazing? Your heart believes in you. I believe in your heart too.
I wanted to write a book about all the people I knew and loved before I forgot them, but I see that my book is something else now. I see that I have been praying a selfish prayer for myself. I see that I have been praying this prayer…
Please tell me I existed. Please tell me I was born. Please tell me I sang, and laughed, and danced, and saw and dreamed. I am beyond fucking memories now. It is a time for forgetting. God bless the forgotten. God bless the forgetful.