There were things I didn’t write about Phil. I didn’t write about not having any money and asking Phil to drive me to the mall. It was December and the mall was far away. It was snowing but we took off in the late afternoon. We listened to Queen. We ordered our Chick-fil-A with our pennies. We sat and ate it and it tasted wonderful. It tasted like we would never be hungry again. Freddie Mercury is still amazing.
There is another story I didn’t write about Phil because it would make me look bad. This is one of the things I’m ashamed of. We were in high school and I saw him at one of the football games. I was hanging out with these two girls. We’d just come back from the woods and we were drinking whiskey out of a plastic Mountain Dew bottle. I was with two girls and I said, “You know what? You look like a Cro-Magnon man.”
A few years later I was drinking brandy in our room. We were roommates now. I was with two girlfriends again. I was laughing and having a good time being drunk. One of the girls wanted to leave because I kept kissing her friend and she kept kissing me back. Then Bill turned to me and there were tears in his eyes. He said, “So you think I look like a Cro-Magnon man, huh?” He started crying when he said it. It had been years but he was still hurt by it. I didn’t know what he meant for a few moments. I had forgotten, but he remembered. One day I will pay for these things.
So I took these shadows of my friends and placed them together. The generations are becoming one.
I actually worry I should change the names of the real people in this book. I worry they will track me down and kill me. That’s the problem with telling the truth. That’s the only thing I’m worried about, a beating. I’ll get it one day. That’s a fact. Maybe.
You can find re-runs of Walker, Texas Ranger on many channels. Check your local listings. It’s the best piece of art you’ll ever find. If you can watch it without irony, you’ll understand Nathan. It’s not a comedy. Remember that.
Nathan tried to take his life years earlier, not before his death. It was the early ’80s and I was a child, but it happened this way. I put the way he tried to take his life in the middle of the Rhonda story.
Nathan McClanahan, Elgie McClanahan, and Ruby McClanahan are buried on Backus Mountain near Layland, WV. Their graves are waiting for flowers. I haven’t visited them in years.
This book should not be thought of or included in a genre of literature called the Appalachian Minstrel Show. The names of writers who have written in this genre include Lee Smith, Mary Lee Settle, Silas House, and a list that goes on and on. They know who they are.
The recipe in this book is not Ruby’s recipe. Ruby didn’t use recipes. This is a recipe I googled. My wife said, “What is the problem with these women? They never write anything down.” You had to watch them to know. You had to be there to learn. If you cook this recipe you will be bringing someone else to life. Ruby’s cooking is forever lost to my generations.
I stole the title of the chapter YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A RECIPE from a Johnny Thunders song. I changed the word memory to recipe.
The line about the crazy ass rivers means the Tigris and Euphrates. Our whole entire fucked up world is because of geography.
I just realized that I never look at a painting and ask, “Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?” It’s just a painting.
I didn’t live with Bill during high school. I lived with my mom and dad. I lived with Bill (Phil) years afterwards. Actually my grandmother died after I lived with Bill. I lived with Bill at college, but college never appears in Appalachian books. We can’t admit these sorts of things. We can’t admit we’ve gone to malls. We can’t admit we’ve gone to restaurants. We can’t admit we dream our dreams. People won’t believe you.
The days are correct on Nathan’s funeral notice, but the years aren’t.
I’m not sure why I keep talking about skipping school. We went to school all of the time. I bought a book on film at a yard sale. It was published in the mid-sixties. I read about The 400 Blows and I wanted to be a bad kid. I wanted to skip school and escape from reformatories. I read Huck Finn. I wanted to be a runaway. I wasn’t running. I was a good kid. I listened to my parents. I loved them. I didn’t want to disappoint them. I didn’t want to break their hearts. I still feel like lighting out for the territories.
Dr. Mustafa Mahboob is still in Beckley. He is still accepting patients. You can look him up in the phone book and set up an appointment for psychiatric help today. It might make you feel better to talk to someone.
Lee Brown. I cut a couple of Lee Brown stories out of this book, but I want to put them back in. I won’t though. If you ever meet me, just ask me about them and I will tell you. I want him to be remembered.
Pit Row wasn’t below the apartment. We couldn’t look down from the window and see Pit Row. I’ve told the story this way for so long that I can’t move it back. Stories can actually rearrange continents if they’re told long enough. It’s actually in the Bible. Matthew 15:6–7 states, “If you only had the faith of mustard seeds and stories — we could move mountains and the location of gas stations.”
For actual cassette tapes of these prank phone call conversations — you should contact Sergeant First Class Charles Wayne Tiller at his air force base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As teenagers we taped them and he still has the cassette tapes. The last time I listened to one was about five years ago. We also have a prank phone call we made to Jim Leyland and Tommy Lasorda. If you called the Pirates ticket line 1-800-Go-Bucs and let it ring through without choosing any option, an operator would pick up. You simply had to say “clubhouse” and the telephone would ring into the managerial offices. Tommy Lasorda actually called Reinaldo a faggot. Tommy Lasorda was an obvious homophobe.
I wasn’t in high school when the Sago Mine disaster happened. I graduated high school in 1996. This happened years later. When this happened, I was living in the house I live in now. I was watching college football bowl games that entire week.
I wouldn’t put midget the dog on the list of things I’ve loved anymore. I really hated that fucking dog. I wouldn’t put Arlene Maguire or Tom Maguire into this list either. I understand why you divorced one another.
The police never questioned me. I was in the 9th grade when the school break-in happened. Besides, I never lived with Bill Terry. I lived with Phil Crookshanks. Bill Terry was the one who broke into the school with this kid named Alvin. No one knows who truly took a shit in the principal’s desk.
For the specifics of the murder you should see The State of West Virginia vs. Bill Terry. It should be on file in the Greenbrier County, WV, courthouse. If you have LexisNexis, I’m sure you can find it. Bill Terry was a good kid. He was shy. I’ve never met someone so shy. He had the blondest hair of any of my friends.
Once again, Mrs. Powell should have been nicer to her students and I wouldn’t have allowed her to be murdered in this book.
I was a substitute teacher at the school where my mother taught. My mom was a teacher. This happened to my mother, but I was standing there when it happened. The little girl didn’t show her a locket. The little girl showed her a pile of baseball cards and a cheap necklace. There were no initials, but the little girl was worried they belonged to the old woman Bill may have murdered. I told her to keep them, and then my mother agreed.