The Sarah Book

by Scott McClanahan

  We are alive.

  That night I sat and watched the History channel documentaries about long ago. Sarah rested in the hospital with the baby and I watched the stories of the Macedonian phalanx and the rolling rumble of death. I watched how Alexander cried when he was a boy because his father was victorious and would leave him nothing to conquer. I watched the story of the Battle of Cannae and how 50,000 men were killed in a single afternoon. 100 each minute. I watched the soldiers of Napoleon rage their way across Europe. I watched the stories of how soldiers were trapped in the rocks of Gettysburg and their eardrums exploded from the sheer noise. I watched how 100,000 and then 200,000 and then 300,000 and then 400,000 and then 500,000 and then 600,000 died on this ground beneath us. I watched the stories of the World Wars and how more people were killed in the 20th century than all of the other centuries combined. I watched documentaries on Mao and Hitler and Stalin and the Gulag. I watched the story of the battle of Stalingrad and a million more dead. I watched the story of the dropping of bombs and mushroom clouds and 90,000 dead in a single afternoon and how many of their shadows were left on sidewalks after they were vaporized. I watched the same death pour through it all and the skeletons and the bodies of zombies rose like mountains. And they were all in love with something. And I wondered if these wars were love letters of some sort. Love letters that said nothing.

  PART III

  We started calling the place we lived the apartment of death. My friend Chris moved in with me because he was going through a divorce too. So it was a real cheerful place to live. One night we were sitting around and Chris was going on about how our wives were probably on drugs and this is why they were divorcing us. “Like seriously on drugs. Seriously. Either that or fucking nervous breakdowns.” I laughed and said, “Yeah it has nothing to do with us.” I was drinking and watching YouTube clips over and over again. My record was watching the Guns N Roses “November Rain” video fourteen times in a row before Chris begged me to stop.

  And nothing lasts forever even cold November rain. And nothing lasts forever even cold November rain. And nothing lasts forever even cold November rain. And nothing lasts forever even cold November rain.

  But then we heard something out behind the apartment and it sounded like bottles breaking or somebody shuffling something around next to the dumpsters.

  I went and looked out the window at the dumpster behind the apartment. It was dark and snowing and the snow glowed golden beneath the street light. I didn’t see anything so I walked back into the living room and Chris started doing this character he always did called the dumb racist. It was this guy who always watched TV and made racist comments but he was so dumb he always got his stereotypes mixed up. The dumb racist was not to be confused with another character Chris did called the racist spider who was a spider but was also a racist.

  I sat back down at my seat and the dumb racist said, “Those fucking Irish micks with their big dicks.” And then. “Yeah whatever. Those Native Americans sure can do some fucking math.”

  I laughed a little but then I heard the clinking outside in the trash again.

  I went over to the window and looked out once more. Snow was covering everything but then I saw something moving in the snow at the bottom of the green dumpster. I saw 1,2,3,4,5 kittens just like that.

  “What is it?” Chris said.

  I said, “Kittens. It’s a bunch of kittens and they’re hungry.” So I went to the fridge but all I could find was a bottle of ketchup and some beer. We had hot dogs in the bottom of the fridge from when I first moved in and they looked disgusting but I thought it would be okay. So I went outside in the snow and all of the kittens took off running. The snow was falling down from the streetlight and I took the wieners and I broke them up into chunks and then I threw them on the ground. They disappeared into the snow. “Where’s the mother?” Chris asked. I told him I didn’t know and then we went back inside and turned the lights off. We waited and watched the kittens come back and I said, “Maybe they don’t have a mommy. Maybe they are orphans like us.” I pointed out how the kittens were all solid black except one. The one who wasn’t black had a white neck and face.

  The next morning I put the hot dogs out for the kittens and walked away. And again the kittens came scrambling to eat the hot dog chunks out of the snow. I had an idea. We went out that evening to buy the kittens the best food I could afford, but instead I decided to pretend I was a bunny first and buy some beer. “What do you mean?” Chris said. I told him he was going to tape me with his phone and I was going to pretend being a bunny. So Chris laughed and I laughed and he got out his phone and hit record. I stood outside the gas station and he pointed his phone at me.

  I put my hands up in a bunny pose and I said in a child’s voice. “I’m a bunny. I’m a bunny.”

  Then I started hopping.

  I hopped inside the store and I hopped by the customers getting coffee and I hopped past the candy and potato chips and then I hopped into the beer cooler. I said, “I’m a bunny.” And then I took the beer with my little bunny arms and hopped over to the counter and bought the beer. The girl behind the counter said, “What are you?” I told her, “I’m a bunny.” Then she looked at me like she was scared, but I thought that was silly because bunnies don’t rob gas stations and kill people.

  We put the beer in the car and then I walked over to Kroger. I stopped pretending to be a bunny and Chris stopped filming me as I pretended to be a bunny because we had kitty supplies to buy. So we went and found the meat section and I looked out at the whole aisle of meat. There were sirloin steaks and there were ribeye steaks and pork loin and rump roasts of beef. Eenie meenie minie moe. I finally picked up two thick Black Angus steaks and Chris just shook his head. I asked him if the steaks didn’t look good or something and Chris just shook his head and told me we couldn’t buy steaks for kittens. Kittens couldn’t eat steak. I said, “Oh yeah” and then I put them back. He told me we should look for hamburger then. We looked through the stacks of hamburger until we found a pack of expensive, organic hamburger patties that cost 12 bucks together. I told Chris that this was perfect and then we started for the front of the store. But then my phone rang.

  It was my father. I picked it up and my father asked me what I was doing. I told him that Chris and I had found some orphaned kittens and I was going to buy some nice hamburger for them. My dad said, “I don’t think a guy with money problems should be buying expensive hamburger for kittens. Do you?” I’d had about enough of his shit so I got mad and said, “Daddy, I only buy the best for my kittens.” Then I hung up.

  Chris didn’t know what to say. I paid for the hamburger like I always did with everything. I paid with a credit card and I told Chris that I liked paying for things with a credit card because it felt like life. Credit cards were like hearts. One day someone would come collect on our debt of life and the ones with the largest debts had lived the deepest lives. I was down 44,000 dollars by this point and I was getting cut off now.

  We went home and Chris cooked the hamburger for me. We mushed it up with a fork and then we put it on a small plate and we took it outside and set it down next to the dumpster and then we went inside. We waited and watched out the window and we didn’t see anything. But then Chris said, “Look.” Slowly the little kittens started to appear. They moved like dots against the snow and started to eat. We watched them and we grinned like children. The snow was falling again and we didn’t talk about what had been going on. We didn’t talk about how Chris’ wife was pregnant with another man’s baby. We didn’t talk about the night he got sent to the hospital because he was suicidal. We didn’t talk about how a few weeks after he moved in I was passed out upstairs and I didn’t hear him knocking on the door outside the apartment because I’d locked him out.

  An hour or two later when he came back, I started crying. I begged him not to die. Then we went to see a movie and I cried through the whole thing. We joked about it a few weeks later as our night of apocalypse, but we didn�
�t think about this night of apocalypse. We just watched the kittens eat and then the next day we fed them the same and the day after that. I talked about it with friends so they would think I was a good person. This is what people do.

  The next day I woke up and I was late. I didn’t have time to put the hamburger out for the kittens. I put my clothes on and got out to my car. I looked over at the plate in front of the dumpster and it was empty. I started up my car to let it warm up and then I pulled out the scraper to scrape off all of the ice. I went scrape scrape scrape on the front window and then I moved to the side and went scrape scrape scrape. I put my hands up to my mouth and I tried to blow them warm, but my breath blew out like a ghost. Then I got in the car and threw the scraper in the back. I started to back up towards the dumpster and then I saw a streak of black pass by. I felt a tiny bump, bump. I stopped the car and got out and I walked over to the dumpster.

  I stood over the dead kitten. It’s hind legs were shaking shake, shake. It shook some more like it was doing some strange death dance. And then it stopped. It was the kitten with the white face. I named it Blackie. So I was going to bury it but then I realized I was going to be late for work. I couldn’t be late for work because I’d been late for work a lot recently. So I got back in my car and told myself I’d come back and bury it later. But when I came back that evening it’d already been run over again. The garbage truck had picked up the dumpster and now the kitten was crushed flat. I didn’t do anything. This is how nothing takes care of nothing.

  I made it a new monument that evening. A true one. When I came home again the next evening I whipped the wheel wide and I ran over the kitten lump. The next morning I backed up and watched the dumpster grow larger. I ran over this death. The morning after that I came back home and ran over it again. Then the next day I ran over it once more and I knew if I ran over it enough then maybe one day it would all be gone.

  I thought we were going to get robbed. Chris and I had been living in the apartment behind the mosque for a month now and people were getting robbed all the time. One night we were coming back from eating chicken wings when we saw this guy hanging out in the mosque parking lot. “Fucking meth heads,” I said as we pulled into our parking spot in front of the apartment building. I had just been telling Chris about how I caught this woman going through our mailbox that day and stealing our Captain D’s coupons. “Fucking coupons,” I said. “You don’t mess with a man’s coupons.”

  Chris put the car into park and looked back at the weird guy in the parking lot. He was just standing back there watching us. “See, he’s probably just waiting for us to get out of the car or he’s already stolen a bunch of our shit.” Chris laughed and asked me what we even had in our apartment that they could steal. I told him I had all of my books packed up in boxes. 5,000 volumes. The greatest small volume library in the state. Chris looked at me and said, “Yeah I hear people are trading stolen copies of St. Augustine’s Confessions for pills all the time now.” I didn’t pay any attention to him and told him that they better not steal my Sid the Science Kid DVDs. “I need those DVDs when the kids come over.” Then I sang the song, “I got a lot of questions and big ideas, I’m Sid the Science Kid.”

  But Chris didn’t laugh. He turned the engine off and the headlights disappeared and the front of the building became black. Chris was just about ready to get out of the car when I stopped him. “No. Just wait. That guy is still back there.” Then I watched the guy standing in the parking lot and watching us still. The guy looked nervous too and kept looking around. “I don’t know,” I said, but then Chris got out of the car.

  “No. No. No. Don’t,” I said but Chris was already out of the car. So I got out of the car too even though I didn’t want to. I picked up my plastic bag with the six pack inside and shut the door behind me. I looked up at the apartment window where Diablo Jr. lived. I thought if we had problems I could shout for him to help us. Diablo Jr. was a local professional wrestler who was always fucking this fat woman who lived next door.

  Chris shut his door and walked around to the car and watched the guy. Chris hit the lock button on his keychain and the lock locked and the lights on the car flashed and locked again. The horn honked honk. Then I walked to the back of the car and watched the guy. He still kept looking around, but then I remembered I’d forgotten my chicken wings. I had Chris unlock the door again. I reached in and picked the box of chicken wings out. “You’ve even made me paranoid,” Chris said, looking around. And then I said, “You know what happens if you look up the word paranoid in the dictionary? It’s the same as cynicism: A deep and profound understanding of human nature.” So Chris and I started to walk. We only had a key to the back door so we had to walk around to the back of the apartment building. That’s when we saw the guy following us.

  “Fuck. He’s following us,” I told Chris and we started walking faster. Chris walked even faster and passed me and then I tried to walk faster too and catch up with him. I heard footsteps stomping fast behind us. The guy was walking faster too.

  “Fuck,”I said. Chris looked back and then I looked back too. Chris took his keys out of his pockets to have them ready to unlock the door. But the footsteps kept following us and so Chris walked faster and then I walked faster too like I needed to go to the bathroom really bad. But I couldn’t keep up with Chris and felt jealous because Chris was a faster walker than I was. The guy was still following us.

  I saw inside my head the TV headline and news story: Two divorced dads were robbed at gunpoint last night. The loneliness and desperation of their lives were made small compared to the desperation and loneliness of another. Authorities say the only thing missing from their pathetic apartment of death was a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions and a number of children’s TV show DVDs.

  I looked back and the guy was still following us except he was shouting something.

  “You have the key?” I asked.

  Chris said, “Yes, yes” and the keys kept jangling from his hand and pointed out like a knife. Then we were at our porch and then we were up the steps and at the door, but it was too late. The robber was standing next to us. It was so dark I couldn’t see his face. The robber said something but I couldn’t hear what he said. I watched his hands to see if he had a knife or a gun, but I didn’t see any.

  I shouted scared, “What do you want?”

  The guy said, “Asalamalakim.”

  Then Chris and I looked at each other and we laughed at how stupid and scared we were. He wasn’t here to rob us. He was just one of those strange things you call friendly and he was wishing us welcome and peace.

  He said, “I’m sorry to bother you and I hope I didn’t scare you, but do you have the keys to the mosque?”

  He continued, “Someone was supposed to meet me here tonight and unlock the mosque for me. The Imam said the person with the key lived in the apartments behind the mosque.”

  I shook my head no and told him it wasn’t us.

  Chris kept chuckling at how stupid we were and then the guy said, “Well since I have you gentlemen here. I would like to invite you to stop by the mosque this Friday afternoon for our first community welcome event.”

  He told us there would be food and fellowship and we were both invited. Then he asked if I was a father.

  I said, “Sort of ” and he told me to bring my children. He told us they would have what they call a “jump house” for the children. He thanked us and we thanked him and we parted.

  Chris and I went inside the apartment and we both laughed our asses off at how we thought we were getting robbed. Chris told me that I was like an old woman I was so paranoid. I laughed and told Chris maybe we should go. There were other things we should do too like actually getting a garbage can instead of just having a trash bag hanging off the door of the closet. Maybe I should finally organize all of my boxes of books or at least move them out of the closet and into a storage space. Maybe I should go back to the psychiatrist and change my medicine or actually get something t
o help me sleep. I thought, “Sleep. O if I could only sleep.” Then maybe we should tear down our Ike Turner shrine. Our friend Kendra was coming to visit us soon and we knew she wouldn’t put up with an Ike Turner shrine. But perhaps tonight. For tonight maybe someone was trying to tell me something.

  The man had come into our minds like a thief in the night and asked questions I’d never asked before. Do you have the keys to the mosque? I laughed and told Chris that someone was trying to tell me something. Chris said, “Who?” I said, “God. The one of many names.” I imagined a pilgrimage I would be taking soon. So Chris and I said goodnight like we did every night. We said goodnight like we were both going to bed when in reality we would simply sit on our beds behind closed doors and pretend we weren’t alone. But being alone was what we were good at now. That and self-pity. Chris shut his door and I shut my door too and then I turned on my computer. Chris sent me a few texts about the name of someone he was trying to think of when we were eating chicken wings.

  I went to the DVD player and put on my Sid the Science Kid DVD and turned off the lights. I sang the Sid the Science Kid theme song, “I got a lot of questions and big ideas. I’m Sid the Science Kid.” I took my medicine and sat on my bed and bundled all of the pillows beside me and pretended they were little kids. My kids. I did this sometimes when I was lonely and missing them. I watched Sid the Science Kid and pretended they were here. Sometimes I’d say, “Only three days until I see them” or, “Only two days until I see them.” Or, “Only one day, Tomorrow.” That one day would be tomorrow soon. I sang along with Sid the Science Kid and I started to ask him questions and Sid the Science kid said things back to me.

  I said, “Sid, why do you continue on your Faustian search for knowledge?” Sid laughed and said, “For wisdom and empirical evidence that even children can understand.”