Hill William

by Scott McClanahan

  I made sure my mom was in the back bedroom and I snuck into the bathroom. I looked in the bathroom cabinet at fifty tubs of stuff she had stuffed underneath.

  Is that it?

  Is that it?

  I wasn’t sure. There was a tub of lotion looking stuff in the back, but the label had been ripped off. It was old. This was it?

  I took off out of the house and back to the woods where Derrick was waiting. I had the lotion stuffed in my coat. When I got back to the woods, he looked excited. I pulled out the tub of Vaseline from the side of my coat and showed it to him.

  “Will this work?” I said and held it high in the air.

  He looked puzzled. He looked at it.

  “I’m not sure what that is,” he said. “I don’t know if this is Vaseline.”

  He gave it back to me.

  But I was so excited I wanted to show him it would work. He told me I should try it first. So I did. I pulled down my pants and put some on my penis. I put the lotion back in my pocket and I stood in the woods with Derrick watching me. Derrick asked to look at the lotion again. I handed it to him and just as I did I started feeling this tingling. I started feeling something else. Derrick looked at the lotion and then he smelled it.

  He said, “I don’t think this is Vaseline.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  I started to feel burning. It was a burning like I felt on my chest when I started getting the croup cough and my mom put this stuff on me to make me breathe free.

  It wasn’t Vaseline.

  I ran into the house and turned on the bathwater before my mom could find out. I turned on the bathtub, took off my clothes, and hopped into the hot bath. I was still burning.

  My mom was wondering why her son, who didn’t like to take a bath but maybe once a week, was now taking one in the middle of a rainy Saturday.

  “O god she is going to find out,” I thought.

  She put her head through the door and started to say something. Before she got it out I started crying because I thought she knew all about it—about Derrick, the woods, looking at dirty magazines, and the Vaseline that wasn’t Vaseline but burned. I started crying a baby cry that sounded like a laugh. I cried and tried to make up a story real fast about what to tell her.

  I sat in the bath and made up this stupid story about how we were trying to build this tree stand and we were trying to get a board between the limbs. I told her the Vicks Sauve was in my pocket and somehow it got opened on my chest.

  I sniffled.

  I thought up the biggest lie.

  I sniffled. “And then it got on my…”

  I cried like I was ashamed to say the word. “And then it got on my privates.”

  My mom went, “Ohhh” and bent down on her knees to help wash my privates. I sat and thought, “She believes me. She believes my lies.”

  I thought up more I could tell to have people believe me for the rest of my life.

  “I’m feeling just fine. I’m really feeling good.”

  “No, damnit, I haven’t been drinking.”

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it really was good.”

  “Everything works out for the best.”

  “I love you.”

  “This too shall pass.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the fat woman growing. I was locked inside a room and the fat woman kept expanding. She came all the way across the room and covered up the whole floor until there wasn’t room for itty bitty me. I tried to stop her from growing but I couldn’t. I tried pushing against the skin like it was a giant balloon, but I slipped off the soft and flabby flesh. I took out a match and lit it. I put the match against the flesh flab and then I heard something. I heard a little voice. I couldn’t tell what it was. Then I heard something cry.

  It was the fat woman’s voice. I looked for the fat woman’s face but there was so much fat that the face was covered up now. The match went out and the whole room was full of skin. The walls started cracking. They snapped and popped. I was pushed up by the fat filling up the air and then the roof came off. The walls crashed around us. It kept growing and growing until it spread across the yard and then down the valley covering up the old company houses. I was riding it in a fat fold. People screamed from below but I didn’t hear them. It wasn’t too long before they were covered up too and made silent. I was sailing on top of the skin now, covering the mountains and the towns, the rivers and the hollers. People screamed and so I sat until the fat spread across the country and became its own country. Once it was so—I stood up straight. It wasn’t a body anymore. I stuck a tiny flag into the flesh and I was no longer me, but I had become a brave new ruler of a brand new beautiful world. I was its emperor.

  BUT THERE WERE GOOD TIMES TOO

  There were times we set the woods on fire. At first Derrick took his mother’s lighter and lit the shit out of the leaves, click click, and then they finally lit.

  We watched the leaves burn across the ground for a second and Derrick shouted, “Put it out. Put it out.”

  I tried stomping and I tried stamping out the fire before it spread up the tree trunks and tree tops and went over the hill. I stomped here and I stomped there and I shouted, “Shit. Shit.”

  Derrick started stomping too with his big boots. The flames flickered and almost got away from us, but then it was out. We breathed out of breath. We laughed excited. We smiled.

  We caught our breath and Derrick said, “Let’s do it again.”

  He lit the leaves again and this time they took off. The leaves lit red and shot so fast up the tree like a torch covered in kerosene. I watched the fire hop from tree to tree in the tree tops. Then it was all aflame and we were inside a beautiful candle flame.

  We ran away.

  The fire trucks would be coming soon. We watched them come and fight the flames and then we watched them call the Army reserve in the next day, and the mountain became a mountain of fire. We sat on the Anger’s porch and we said nothing. We said nothing and smiled, watching the fire mountain we made go sparkle sparkle.

  And then the next week Sissy and I found the turtle. Sissy was Derrick’s younger sister who never wore shoes and whose feet were rougher than tree bark. She always had a brown dirt ring around her mouth. We were walking up towards the dirt pile and over logging roads when we saw it. It was a box turtle. We laughed and passed it back and forth. We carved our initials in its soft belly with my pocket knife. We carved an SA and WM. We carved Derrick’s initials too, DA, and then a W for Gay Walter. The shell belly bled a little. We were done with carving now. I tried to feed the turtle some grass, but the turtle wouldn’t eat.

  Then I said, “Let’s see how far we can throw it.”

  She said, “The turtle?”

  My eyes smiled “Yeah.”

  She looked at me with her willy worm lips and she said “yeah” too.

  I stood up and Sissy stood beside me. We were doing it.

  I raised the turtle high into the air and then with all my strength I ran forward like I was throwing a shot put, and I let the turtle fly. It sailed through the air—the first supersonic turtle who ever lived. Then it fell to the ground where it crashed and bounced. It bounced again. We ran towards the turtle and we wondered what we would find.

  Tracy shouted, “Is he dead? Is he dead.”

  I was worried he was.

  We looked at the turtle for a long time. He moved. He wasn’t dead.

  He was doing something else. It was like he was smiling—something like smiling.

  So we went to find Gay Walter. Gay Walter was Derrick and Sissy’s step-brother who came to live with them a couple of years before because he had been “abused.” Gay Walter was always painting his fingernails red and smoking cigarettes and gossiping with the women on the street about soap operas and husbands.

  “He’s sweet, he’s just a little bit sissifie
d,” My mom told my dad one night. “He’s just sensitive.”

  So Sissy and I went and sat at Gay Walter’s feet and watched him paint his fingernails and put medicine on his in-grown toenails. His swollen and bloody toes were wrapped in toilet paper. He was wearing flip-flops and a bathrobe and he had a towel wrapped around his head because he just washed his hair.

  “What have you all been doing?” he asked.

  So Sissy and I told him about throwing turtles.

  “What?” Gay Walter said and then he laughed. He told us we shouldn’t have done that. He told us we should be kind to everything in this world, especially the little things.

  He lit a cigarette and turned the radio up. It was a song by Alabama called, “Roll On.” He stood and held his bathrobe tight against his body like a gown. Then he picked up his hair brush and started singing, “Roll on family, Roll on through, Roll on Momma like I asked you to do.”

  He sang the song and I saw he was no longer Gay Walter but someone else. He sang and we watched and we listened and he was no longer on a porch in the mountains, but he was on a stage somewhere. He was no longer lip synching to the radio, but he was our own private superstar. He was singing our song and we were singing along.

  The next day I sat on the side of the mountain and watched Gay Walter walking through the welfare apartments in middle town with his pet hamster. This was before they started clear cutting the trees and strip mining the mountain.

  He was sweet talking to it, “O you’re such a sweet little hamster, sweetest little hamster in the world.”

  Then the Redneck showed up along with his eleven year old son, Eddie Harris. The Redneck was this old guy who was always drunk and shitting his pants brown and yelling curses at Walter when he saw him.

  The Redneck started shouting at Walter, “Well look at that little Anger faggot.”

  Eddie Harris didn’t say anything but stood beside his dad who kept shouting, “I bet that little faggot is a cocksucker. You a little cocksucker faggot?”

  Walter acted like he didn’t hear him at first and walked faster, but they wouldn’t stop.

  The Redneck and his son picked up some chunks of broken cinder block and threw them at Walter. One of the chunks hit Walter in the head.

  Walter threw his hands up and screamed, “Ahhh.”

  He touched his head and then his dyed blonde hair was streaked red with stripes of blood. Walter screamed again and started running slow but with style.

  The Redneck told Eddie, “Go knock the shit out of that queer, son.”

  That’s just what Eddie did too. He ran over to Walter and caught up with him and hit him in the side. He hit him so hard Walter dropped his hamster. Walter bent over to pick it up. Eddie Harris hit him in the nose. Gay Walter’s hamster was getting away, but finally Walter grabbed it. He held it both hands. Then Eddie hit him in the back. Walter took off running and Eddie chased him.

  “That’s right, son,” the Redneck shouted. “You chase him.”

  But Gay Walter was running fast now and kicking his skinny legs out long.

  “Go Walter Go!” I shouted from the hilltop. Gay Walter kept running and Eddie Harris couldn’t keep up. Eddie Harris finally stopped because Walter’s feet had become feet of fire and nobody in this world could catch him anymore.

  PICKING BLACKBERRIES

  I didn’t want my mom to find out about anything. One day we stopped at the Handy Place after school and I saw this Bill Elliot ball cap. It was one of those fake hats you see at gas stations that cost like $15 and I wanted this ball cap bad. I asked her for it everyday when we stopped, but each time I asked for it she would never get it for me. For some reason though I saw that today was different. So I asked her if I could. At first she said no but then she grabbed it and put it up on the counter with our pop bottles and beef jerky and bubblegum. The cashier rang it up but I guess it was more expensive than we thought.

  My mom searched through her big purse, but she didn’t have enough money. So Mom put back her pop, and even then she had to go looking through her purse for a couple of extra nickels to pay for it all. We finally got it, and on the way home I felt so bad for making her get me a crappy old ball cap that I didn’t even want really.

  When we got home I felt even worse because she was acting strange like walking in and out of all the rooms in the house and then walking into the living room. Then she went walking into the kitchen. Then she went walking from the kitchen and the living room into all of the other rooms in the house. Then just a couple of minutes later she was going through these little orange pill bottles she took sometimes (she knew something was wrong). She held one of the orange pill bottles in her hands and looked down at the label.

  She kept staring at it and then she turned to me and pointed to her Diet Coke and said, “Hey Scott. Is diet pop alcohol?”

  I looked at her and giggled, thinking she was joking, but then I saw that her eyes were just wired and she was looking at the pill bottle now and she wasn’t joking.

  I told her. “No, pop’s not alcohol.”

  She said, “That’s what I thought. I thought pop wasn’t alcohol.”

  I shook my head thinking, “Good God, what a weird world.”

  Fifteen minutes later she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes.

  I said, “It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right.”

  I sat and watched her on the couch and I said again, “It’s going to be all right.”

  I decided to go outside and do something to cheer her up. There were all kinds of blackberry bushes on the side of the mountain where we lived. Sometimes I looked up at the mountains and I felt trapped in a mountain grave. I felt myself being consumed by a mountain mouth. I walked to the top of the hill where the blackberry bushes were and I thought, “I can pick some blackberries and that will make her feel better.” I was wearing my Morris the Cat T-shirt that I bought with 10 proofs of purchase from cans of Nine Lives cat food. I was wearing Velcro tennis shoes that I bought at Shoe World. It might not seem like it now, but you weren’t anything in the mountains back then if you didn’t wear Velcro tennis shoes. I was fast without my Velcro tennis shoes on but I was especially fast when I was wearing them.

  I stood eating the blackberries and putting the blackberries into my Morris the Cat T-shirt to take back home to my mom. I was using my T-shirt like a container to hold them together. But I was also eating more of the blackberries than I was keeping. I ate the blackberries and I whispered the poem my mother always whispered to me…

  The little toy dog is covered with dust,

  But sturdy and staunch he stands;

  And the little toy solider is red with rust,

  And his musket moulds in his hands.

  Time was when the little toy dog was new,

  And the soldier was passing fair;

  And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue

  Kissed them and put them there.

  I put a blackberry in my shirt, then I ate a blackberry.

  “Now don’t you go till I come,” he said,

  “And don’t you make no noise!”

  So, toddling off to his trundle bed,

  He dreamt of the pretty toys;

  And, as he was dreaming, an angel song

  Awakened our Little Boy Blue—

  Oh! The years are many, the years are long,

  But the little toy friends are true!

  I ate another blackberry.

  I decided to save one.

  I ate one.

  I saved one.

  I finally had enough. I thought, “It’s going to be all right now. It’s going to be all right.”

  I took off back down the mountain to take the blackberries back to my mom. As I was walking back home, my shirt all full of blackberries, I got excited and started walking faster. I was coming down a mountain, so as I started walking faster I felt myself picking up speed, and then picking up more speed, and before I knew it I was running, and before I knew it again I
was running even faster, and then I was running so fast that I couldn’t slow down. The mountain was running me.

  I couldn’t stop.

  My legs were kicking out wild beside me.

  They were going everywhichway and I couldn’t stop. I tried to stop but I couldn’t stop. I fell face flat forward against the ground.

  I sat up and looked down at the ground. There were blackberries all broken and bruised on the dark dirt stained purple. There were blackberries resting against the rocks too. I looked down at my chest and there were blackberries mashed against my chest. They were sticking to my shirt like loogies.

  I held up my arms and I went, “O god.”

  I knew the world was so full of shit sometimes.

  I was only ten years old but I knew it.

  I started to cry a little baby cry.

  I walked back home and I cried even more. By the time I got all the way back home to my mom you couldn’t even understand what I was trying to say. It was one of those cries where all of the words start blending together and all you can hear is some crazy crying sentence. It was,

  “Iwasgoingtopickblackberriessniffforyoubutthen felldownsniffandtheywentallover.” I wanted to tell her I hoped to make her feel better.

  I wanted to tell her I spent all of this time picking them just for her. I started babbling and my mother tried calming me down. Then she did something beautiful.

  My mother was always someone who believed in miracles and now here she was making a miracle just for me.

  She picked the smashed blackberries off my Morris the Cat T-shirt and tried eating them.

  The blackberries were all caked in dirt, but my mom ate them and ground the grainy berries between her teeth and said, “No, they’re good. They’re really good. Thank you for picking them for me.”

  My mom ate the dirty blackberries and whispered, “It’s going to be all right. Why are you crying? It’s going to be all right.”

  She gave me a dirty blackberry and I ate it too. I felt the little pieces of dirt crunching between my teeth like diamonds. I whispered like I whisper sometimes now, “Yeah, it’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right.”