The Sarah Book

by Scott McClanahan

  SCOTT

  McCLANAHAN

  Tyrant Books

  9 Clinton St

  Upper North Store

  NY, NY 10002

  Via Piagge Marine 23

  Sezze (LT) 04018

  Italy

  www.NYTyrant.com

  Copyright © Scott McClanahan 2017

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9885183-9-1

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and organizations portrayed herein are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.

  Cover design by Erik Carter

  Page design by Adam Robinson

  For Julia

  Portions of this book have been plagiarized

  PART ONE

  There is only one thing I know about life. If you live long enough you start losing things. Things get stolen from you: First you lose your youth, and then your parents, and then you lose your friends, and finally you end up losing yourself.

  I was the best drunk driver in the world. I’d been doing it for years. One morning Sarah came home from work and went back to bed. I tucked her in tight and kissed her forehead and told her not to worry about a thing. I told her to drift off to dreamland and not worry about her night shift and everything would be better when she woke up. Then I shut the door behind me and snuck down the stairs. I dodged the piles of basement junk and walked to a tiny room where we kept the out of tune piano from Sarah’s childhood. This is where I kept the big bottle. I took out my empty water bottle from my back pocket and then I opened up the piano top. The wood creaked eek and popped open like a monster’s mouth. “I’m worried about you,” Sarah told me a few weeks before. I thought about that now as I reached inside the open upright piano and pulled out the bottle. The piano keys tickled out a tune as I twisted off the bottle top and held the empty water bottle up to it and filled the water bottle full. I listened to its love song. I screwed both lids back on tight and then I put the big bottle back and shut the piano top shut.

  It was time for my favorite part. It was time to drive. I drove down the street and through red lights and stop signs shouting stop. I zipped alongside cars at seventy miles an hour and thought, “We’re all just a few feet from one another. We’re all just a few feet from finding out the physics of death.”

  Sometimes I said this stuff out loud and sometimes I didn’t. I slipped onto the interstate and watched the white lines pass and remembered my friend who used to laugh like a maniac when I got in the car and shouted, “I’m the best drunk driver in the world” and then hit the gas. And you know what, he was right. It was like his reflexes were improved or something. Or it was like he wasn’t all tense and nervous and could drive like he wasn’t driving. I asked him once what his secret was to never getting pulled over and he told me to be invisible. I whispered this wisdom now, “Be invisible, Scott. Be invisible.”

  I drank from the water bottle full of gin and I chased it with water from another water bottle and then I did it again. I reached down into the glove box and pulled out the mouthwash. I popped the top and giggled once and gargled it down. Then I drove towards the blue sky and the purple mountain majesty and spit the mouthwash back into the mouth wash bottle. I listened to the radio and I looked for a CD and I felt what I never felt. I felt calm and I felt glowing and I felt invisible. And so I drove up the interstate hill. Invisible. Then I heard Iris talking.

  “Oh shit,” I said. I’d forgotten about the kids. I looked into the back seat and there was my son Sam and there was my daughter Iris sitting in the backseat. I was always doing stupid shit like bringing the kids along and forgetting about this or doing shit like putting the kids in the car and not even knowing I was putting the kids in the car. I shouted now, “You guys alright back there? You all just sit back and enjoy the drive. Maybe we’ll go over to Grandma and Grandpa’s. You want to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s?”

  They did. I threw my arm in the air and shouted: “Let’s go to Grandma’s.” The kids laughed in the backseat and so I shouted it again, “Let’s go to Grandma’s,” except this time they didn’t laugh. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let them ruin my day with their grumpiness. So I took a sip of gin again and then I chased it with water again and I saw the whole world go wild. I saw how nervous I was every day that Sarah was going to catch my bottles. I saw how nervous I was Sarah was going to find my hiding spots. And so I drank it down. I imagined myself drinking all of the skin of the world and all of the blood of the world and the spirits of all my friends and I was drinking the air. I was melting my children and I was drinking them too. And they tasted great.

  I kept driving to Grandma’s and that’s when I saw a cop car parked beside the road. Shit. Shit. Hit the brakes. Hit the brakes. Speed gun. We passed the cop. I looked up in the rear view mirror and I thought, “Don’t move. Please.” I imagined myself invisible. Then I saw the cop car inch forward and then pull out onto the interstate. I saw the cop car lights flip on and start flashing. Red. Blue. White. Red. Blue. White. I drove for a moment and then I remembered my neighbor the cop who told me one time, “It’s what people do after they get pulled over that gets them arrested.” I slowed down and pulled alongside the road just a few feet from the cars whipping past us at 70 MPH. We were all so close to killing one another, always. The cop car pulled behind me. I watched him in the rear view.

  He sat in his cop car for a second and so I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out three pieces of gum I always kept in there. I popped them in my mouth to help cover up my smell and I watched the state trooper stand up out of his car and then he kept standing up more and even more until he stood tall. He walked tall towards me and I watched him touch the back of my car to leave his fingerprints in case I shot him and drove away. I rolled the window down and the cop said, “License and registration please.”

  But I was ready for him already. I always kept my license and registration and proof of insurance in the passenger seat so if I was ever pulled over I wouldn’t go stumbling all drunk through the glove box looking for them. I reached for it now and kept repeating inside my head, “Don’t shake. Please don’t shake.” I always sat in parking lots when I was drinking and practiced talking without slurring my words or shaking my hands. But now here I was and my words were slurring and my hands were shaking too. I was barely able to hand him my stuff without dropping it. The cop didn’t say anything. He bent over and looked in the car.

  Then he stood beside the car and looked at my registration. He looked at my license. He looked at my proof of insurance. And then he leaned over a little bit like he smelled something on me. I was sure he could smell it. The kids kicked and talked to themselves in the back seat.

  “Just a second,” he said and walked back to the police car and sat down. It was finally over and Sarah was going to know. Iris and Sam started crying a little bit.

  “It’s okay guys,” I said. “Everything is fine.” But I knew it wasn’t. I saw him coming back and asking me, “Sir, have you had any alcohol today?” And then, “Would you please get out of your vehicle for me?” I saw Sarah coming to the police station to get the kids and I imagined child protective services showing up and questioning her. I would cry when I told her what happened and how I lied all the time and how I put the children in danger and how I was destroying the life we made together. I would tell her how I was destroying our lives.

  And so I watched him finally get out of his car and walk back to mine. I waited for him to ask me, “Sir, would you get out of your car?” But he didn’t. He handed
me back everything I had handed him just a few minutes before. Then he looked in the backseat and instead of arresting me, he said, “Well, hello kiddos. Will you guys help me make sure Daddy doesn’t go too fast today?”

  I took the license and registration and the proof of insurance. The kids didn’t say anything back.

  And so he walked away. And I wasn’t caught. I was too afraid to say thank you. The children were actually crying now. Snot was running out of their noses. I said, “Babies don’t you cry,” but my words were so slurred you couldn’t even understand them. I reached to change the CD playing but my hands were shaking so bad I finally just stopped. I pulled back on the interstate and drove on and I smiled and started to weave between the lanes on the interstate lines. I smiled and listened to the children cry and I felt the world glow. I threw up in a plastic bag from Walmart and I threw it out the window. The children were still crying, but I didn’t care now. I was free and I wasn’t caught and I was driving our death car so fast and unafraid. I was destroying our lives now and it felt so fucking wonderful.

  A few weeks later, I burned this Bible. I looked over at my friend Chris and said, “Hey man we should burn a Bible.” Of course, we’d been fucking around like this for a while now. A month before we were going through the Taco Bell drive thru and our order total came up 6.66. So every time I went out with friends and wanted to freak them out, I’d start talking about how I felt the devil was after me. I’d say, “Like seriously, I think the fucking devil is after me.” Then I’d stop at Taco Bell and order my devil order and it’d come up 6.66 just like always and everyone would go holy fuck and lose their shit.

  Maybe this was a sign. Maybe Satan was trying to tell me something. So I started looking for a Bible to burn. Chris thought it wasn’t a good idea and that Sarah was going to find out. I told him not to worry about Sarah. I was a grown-ass man and if I wanted to burn a Bible then Sarah couldn’t tell me not to.

  I looked through the basement bookshelves and at all the Bibles we owned. There were three of them. There was a Bible from the Gideon’s and there was a Bible with a black cover that had been my childhood Bible. Then there was another Bible on the bottom shelf. This was the newest Bible. This was the Bible someone got us for our wedding.

  I reached down and pulled it off the shelf. It was one of those big plush white Bibles and it had Sarah and Scott McClanahan on the corner in gold. It’s the kind of Bible you see on people’s coffee tables or at somebody’s Grandma’s house. “I don’t think we should,” Chris said, but I didn’t listen to him. So I put the Bible on the table and opened it to the book of Daniel. He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual. I walked over to another part of the basement where Sarah kept her father’s old tools. I looked around for a while and then I finally found some old lighter fluid and matches.

  I took the lighter fluid and squirted squirt squirt on the Bible pages and then I took a match and it lit. Then I blew the match out. “O shit. Let me do something.” I turned off the lights.

  Chris repeated, ”We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  But I just lit another match and let the match drop drown on the Bible and then there was a ripping sound and the Bible blazed bright.

  My face glowed in light. I saw myself in the reflection from the window and there was a halo around my head.

  The flames spread across the pages like ocean waves and then burned from red to brown to black. I put out the bits of dark embers and that was it. Nothing happened. It was the same as when I drank in the car and the devil didn’t have anything to say. Then Chris and I laughed. But then we heard Sarah upstairs and we panicked. I shut the Bible shut. The paper crinkled and wrinkled. Then I slid the Bible on the bottom shelf and she came down the stairs.

  A month later I’d already forgotten about it. I don’t know why, but I’d just put the burned Bible back on the bottom shelf instead of throwing it away. Sarah and I were downstairs with one of Sarah’s friends. I was working at my desk and Sarah was showing her friend the new floor we put down in the basement.

  “O it looks nice.”

  “Yeah it looks really nice.”

  They were saying this type of shit. So Sarah’s friend looked at the shiny floor and then she looked at all of my books on the shelves and she said, “So many books.” Sarah shook her head and said, “Yep, he likes books.”

  Then Sarah’s friend saw something on the bookshelves that interested her.

  I heard Sarah’s friend say, “O god, we used to have a Bible just like that when I was a kid. I used to love those big plush Bibles.” I flipped around and watched the woman pull the burned Bible off the shelf and hold it. Sarah told the woman that she got the Bible a couple of years before as a wedding present. Then Sarah’s friend opened up the Bible and the burned pages crackled and crinkled and popped up into the air.

  Sarah’s friend said, “Oh God.”

  Sarah said, “What the hell?”

  I was caught. Sarah took the Bible from her friend and then Sarah was quiet. I didn’t say anything.

  I tried to think up what I should say. When I was in the 6th grade my friends and I stayed up late and drank a whole bottle of cheap wine my parents kept in the back of one of the cabinets. After we were done, instead of throwing the bottle away I just put the empty bottle back in the cabinet. The next summer my mother was cleaning and she came across the empty bottle I had put back in the cabinet.

  She said, “What happened to this bottle of wine, Scott?”

  I said, “It must have evaporated.”

  She believed me.

  When Sarah asked if I knew what happened to the Bible,

  I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if I should lie like I did when I was in the sixth grade and say I didn’t know what she was talking about and give her a look like she was fucking weird. But I told her the truth. I told her Chris and I had burned the Bible. At first she just stood and looked at me like she was confused.

  Then she said really quiet, “Why would you do that?” Sarah’s friend just stood and grinned a grin like she didn’t know what to say.

  But then Sarah started screaming, “Why would you do that? Why would you fucking do that?” Then she started shouting, “That’s the Bible Mary Jo got me for a wedding gift.”

  And then Sarah’s friend said, “I can’t believe you would do that, Scott.” And Sarah screamed some more at me and then she stormed up the stairs.

  That night Sarah was still pissed and shouting, “Why would you do that?”

  I tried to defend myself again. I told her it wasn’t a big deal. It was funny. We didn’t believe in any of this shit anyway, so what did it matter. I told her we were just bored.

  Then Sarah said it just creeped her out. She wondered if there were more things I wasn’t telling her about, people I was talking to. A different life I was leading. She told me you don’t mess around with shit like that even if you are joking.

  Then she told me she wanted it out of the house. She told me she didn’t want the burned Bible in the house another minute. So I told her I’d put it in the trash in the morning but that wasn’t good enough for her. She told me to get rid of it. I got up and went into the kitchen and got a garbage bag out. Then I swung the garbage bag open and it poofed out poof and full of air. I went downstairs and put the Bible inside of it. Little specks of the burned Bible fell off slow like snowflakes falling. Then I pulled the garbage bag string and tied it tight. “I’ll put it out in the trash,” I told her, but that wasn’t good enough. She told me she didn’t want the garbage men to see it. I yelled and told her that it was pretty fucking ridiculous to care what the fucking garbage guys would say.

  But then I said, “Ok, Ok.” I put my clothes back on and picked up my keys and I told her I’d get rid of it somehow. I left the house in darkness and I searched for a place to toss the Bible. I looked at the full moon and drove down the road.

  I drove to the gas station and got out to throw it away but ther
e was a guy with his back to me pumping gas in the stalls beside mine. I tried to push the big Bible in the trash can beside the gas pumps but the trash can was stuffed full of trash and so the big Bible wouldn’t fit. I tried to put the big Bible in sideways but it still wouldn’t fit. The guy who was pumping gas beside me still had his back turned towards me and didn’t seem to notice. I heard laughing and it was the man beside me pumping his gas. He turned towards me and I saw his face and I saw his skin. He looked burned. The face was thick with scar tissue and the mouth looked melted and sculpted into a look of pain. So I just dropped the burned Bible down on the ground and the burned man just looked at me.

  So I fled. I got in my car and I fled so fast away. I looked up at the full moon and I watched clouds slipping over and above it and below it all like knives. I saw the clouds make ghost shapes in the sky and I saw how silly it all was. And nothing happened.

  It was done and I wasn’t at a crossroads surrounded by an army of angels from hell. And I didn’t see the future. I didn’t see how my life was going to fall apart and how soon I’d be sick with swine flu. I didn’t see how Chris’ uncle would commit suicide two months after that and I didn’t see how Chris would get divorced within the year. I didn’t see how my daughter would be born so sick and small. And I didn’t see how Sarah would say soon that it was over. And there wasn’t the sound of ghosts haunting me. And there wasn’t anyone showing me the future of my life and how everything I knew and loved would disappear soon. And there wasn’t anyone there with a pitchfork and there wasn’t the smell of sulfur. There wasn’t the promise of a future apocalypse and the sound of things screaming or the weeping and gnashing of teeth. There wasn’t a crossroads and there were no souls to sell. And there wasn’t any such thing as Satan. There was only me. All Hell.

  The first time I met Sarah Johnson she told me I was going to shrink my penis.