Hill William

by Scott McClanahan

  THE LAST TIME

  I didn’t see Derrick for a year after this. Then one day there was a snow storm and the flakes were falling down, so I walked up the road and I saw Derrick outside shoveling. I didn’t know where he’d been. I waved and he said something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I didn’t ask him about the army or the girl who worked at Hardees and cut her hair with a knife or what he had been doing. I stood at the bottom of the snow bank and tried making conversation.

  Derrick was dressed in camouflage and had on a toboggan. He finally told me he was working in the woods cutting timber for a tree company.

  Gay Walter came outside and said “Hi” to me. He had just moved back after being thrown out of his apartment over Dollar General. He told Derrick to make sure he shoveled around the mailbox. Derrick looked up at him. Then he snapped and grabbed a hold of Gay Walter’s arm. Gay Walter was just wearing short shorts and a cardigan sweater over a turtle neck, but Derrick still pulled Walter in the snow and pushed him into a snow pile. Derrick took the shovel and raised it above his head like a sword, and started hitting Walter with it. It sounded like someone pounding their fist on the hood of a car.

  Walter shrieked, “Ah,” and tried getting away and out of the snow, but he ended up slipping and falling. Even in winter he was wearing flip flops.

  Walter flopped around in the snow and tried covering his head. Derrick kept beating him with the shovel. Derrick hit him in the back. He hit him in the head. He hit him in the legs.

  Gay Walter tried crawling and rolling away, but he couldn’t get away because every time he crawled Derrick would hit him with the shovel again and laugh. Gay Walter wasn’t laughing. Sissy wasn’t laughing either.

  Sissy ran out on the porch and screamed at Derrick to stop hitting Walter.

  Stop. Stop.

  She looked at me with a look like “Why are you just standing there?”

  I waved at her, but I didn’t do anything.

  Sissy ran into the snow barefoot and screamed and cried and told Derrick to stop hitting Gay Walter. Derrick was screaming something now. I couldn’t make it out, but then I heard what it was. “Why?”

  Gay Walter finally gave up and covered his head.

  Then Derrick stopped and walked back into the house. He was crying now. He was crying so hard snot was coming out and hanging from his nose like a glistening string. I saw something different then. I saw that Derrick was a little boy once. He was a little boy once like me. Then Gay Walter sat up on all fours and breathed deep and plopped his head back. His nose was bleeding and it bled into the snow where it made a strange shape. It made the shape of a tiny heart. Inside of this heart the blood bled the shape of a beautiful candle on a chocolate cake.

  We finally stood there together like little children again listening to the saddest song in the world—Happy Birthday.

  I kept hitting myself. I was losing weight. I was throwing up in the morning. I was a skeleton man. I hit myself.

  PSYCHIATRISTS AND MOUNTAIN DEW

  I was still hitting myself ten years later, when I sat down with Sarah one night and I told her everything about my life. I needed to see a psychiatrist. That’s what she said after we talked. I knew I needed to see a psychiatrist, but before I agreed I wanted her to hear a few things.

  She sat and listened to me tell her that, “1) I don’t want to have to get on any medicines, because as far as I’m concerned all shrinks are good for is getting you high. If people in the 12th century heard voices they were called saints. If it happens today they call you crazy. And 2) I don’t want to have to talk to someone who wears turquoise jewelry.”

  I told her that I didn’t even want to talk to anyone who had even thought about wearing turquoise jewelry, and beyond that someone who even thought it okay to associate with someone who wore turquoise jewelry. That went for people who went on and on about chakras and organic fucking food and the healing powers of the crystal shit. She giggled and agreed that it was fine and she would find someone for me to go see about the things I was doing to myself. Hopefully it would be someone who wouldn’t want to get me high and wear turquoise jewelry as they did it.

  The next morning when I got to work I went through some books Sarah had given me to help with my panic attacks. There were a couple of books about inner light, or finding your inner light, or wisdom, or finding your true path to wisdom, all written by people who from their pictures looked like they’d never even gone to the bathroom before. This is how fucking spiritual they looked. She also gave me this book called The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, complete with worksheets to complete if you were experiencing panic attacks and anxiety.

  Who in the hell would take the time to complete worksheets if they felt like they were getting ready to have a panic attack? The next day at work I took the book and threw it in the corner. But it wasn’t fifteen minutes later when I started feeling anxious that I picked it back up and started flipping through the pages and looking for a chapter that dealt with tightness in the shoulders and having a feeling in your stomach like you’re going to puke on yourself.

  I couldn’t find any with a chapter heading like that.

  I flipped through the book some more and then one of my co-workers peeked her head through the door, and I threw a newspaper over the book so no one could tell that I was reading a book entitled The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. My phone rang and I picked it up. It was Sarah, so my co-worker left. She said she talked with her brother and she had the name of a Christian counselor to talk with.

  I laughed, “What the hell is he going to do, baptize me? And what are you doing talking to your brother about my depression?”

  She told me she didn’t say it was me and said that the name of the counselor was Hamlet.

  I said “Hamlet? Is that not the worst name for a counselor there could be. I sure as hell know someone named Hamlet can’t help me. For fuck’s sake Sarah!”

  We both hung up.

  She called back fifteen minutes later with the name of someone who didn’t believe in medication and specialized in child trauma and PTSD. I called up the number and set up an appointment, took a half day off work, and drove over to her office the next week saying to myself the whole way over there, “Everything is going to be better. Everything is going to be better?”

  When I got there it was all different. I felt different sitting down in the waiting room of her office, in a child welfare center surrounded by toys and little dolls.

  They were the kind of dolls you see on 20/20 television investigations. It was the kind where the condescending therapist says, “And where did he touch you? Can you show me on our little doll here?”

  I waited for a few minutes and then a woman’s voice said, “Okay. Come on in.”

  When I went in I could feel this tightening in my shoulders and this pukey feeling in my stomach because there was mood music playing in the backyard. There was a tiny waterfall in the corner going trickle dickle. She was wearing turquoise jewelry.

  But still I sat down and told her all of my stories. I told her about Western Greenbrier county and throwing turtles and the deer Frank skinned and how I didn’t want her to confuse Rainelle with these artsy fartsy Lewisburg people. I told her about the street I grew up on, and playing football. I told her about how it happened. And then I said—penis—to a complete stranger. What a strange world. She sat as I was telling her all these things and smiled when she was supposed to smile and was serious when she was supposed to be serious. She asked me how I felt about telling someone, now that I told her. I took a deep breath and I told her that I felt fine.

  At the end of that session I asked her, “Well how do I pay you?”

  She said in a calm and detached voice. “Well, I typically charge my patients 120 dollars an hour, but I also offer a discount rate of 90 dollars a session for those unable to pay the higher rate.”

  I whipped out my checkbook from my back pocket and I told her in my thick accent. “Well, if that’s the case I’ll take the
90 dollars rate them.”

  I wrote her out a check and spelled her name all careful—S-A-N-D-Y and she sat quiet and uncomfortable as I wrote out the last name. BLAKE.

  Then I made a little literary joke, Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright, but she didn’t get it. I ripped the check out and handed it to her and she took it. She took a 90 dollar check for listening to my story and all my pain. I’d really told no one except a few people. She took my 90 dollars for listening to the type of stories she heard every single day. Penis!

  The next time I went to see her she did something that was strange for me. She had me do this role playing exercise where I pretended that all of my psychic pain was sitting on top of my shoulder. She asked me to visualize that that my pain was a ball. She repeated to imagine that it’s a ball sitting on your shoulder.

  I did.

  She told me that she wanted me to take the ball and hold it in my hands.

  I pretended that I was holding the ball in my hands.

  I took the ball, and she asked, “What do you want to do with it? What do you want to do to your pain?”

  I held the ball and I said melodramatically like I was on a TV show. “I want to shape it. I want to shape it into a sword.”

  I meant what I said.

  I laughed at how ridiculous I sounded. I laughed at how ridiculous I sounded telling this to a complete stranger. I was an asshole.

  Then I felt something else. I felt myself crying just a simple tear so small that she couldn’t even see. She sat in her turquoise jewelry and her hippy dippy sandals and in her calm and detached voice she told me how hard it was for her, how hard it was to hear about people telling the stories of their fucked up lives, day after day, and how most people came in and told how they’re broken and expected to be fixed, how after she’d done this exercise, the women always told her they wanted her to heal them. Then she told me she was glad that I was different and felt there was room for a breakthrough because I was someone who could imagine his pain a big red ball, hold it in his hands and shape it.

  We had about a half an hour left so I told her how uncomfortable I became around large groups of people even when there were people at my house, and she just told me that, “Well, obviously your house is being penetrated. It’s like your house is being penetrated all over again.”

  After that, whenever I was kicking shit or raising hell and Sarah was yelling at me, I’d tell her, “My house is being penetrated, Sarah. Don’t you understand? My goddamn house is being penetrated. Give me a break.”

  Even if I was having a bad day and not saying anything but being quiet, Sarah might say in her baby talk girlfriend voice, “Bubbies is your house being penetrated?”

  And I’d shake my head yes and look all pitiful.

  Then I told her about Sissy. I told her about when I was nine years old.

  We were all sitting around in Derrick’s bedroom when he said, “We should all get under the covers.”

  Derrick was on the one side of the bed, and I was on the other side, and Sissy was in the middle. Derrick was being nice to her and telling her just to lay still. I knew why he wanted her to stay put, but I didn’t say anything. Derrick was rubbing and moving against her, and Sissy giggled not knowing what was happening. She wondered if he was trying to tickle her or something, but then she knew.

  “Derrick,” she said scared and tried to wiggle away, but Derrick was holding her with his hands. She tried to kick once more but Derrick was bigger than she was. I sat next to them and watched Sissy trying to kick away.

  She might squeeze an arm free here, or a leg free there, but he grabbed it and put it back beneath him. She might squirm a leg free, but Derrick laughed like we were playing a game and held the leg beneath him too. She squirmed more and kicked and punched. Finally she stopped fighting. She was tuckered out by now, and there wasn’t anymore fight in her. She wasn’t crying either, just growling soft like this had happened before. Derrick tugged at her shorts, pulling at them until they were all wadded around her. He put his weight back down on her and he was groaning. I watched the sheets go up and down. His butt was bobbing.

  After Derrick was done fighting with her, he asked me if I wanted to try. I looked at Sissy but she wasn’t saying anything. She was just flopped there. She didn’t have any tears in her eyes.

  He asked me again. He asked me if I wanted to get on her. I thought about it for a second and then I did. I tried to move up and down like I saw Derrick doing, but I didn’t understand how any of it worked. Nothing was happening for me. I looked at Sissy and I thought she smelled funny. Not bad. She just smelled funny. She smelled like a little girl who liked to walk around barefoot even in the winter time, eating willy worms and playing in the dirt.

  She smelled like my friend Sissy smelled. I humped some more. I stopped and got off of her. I started talking about how we were going to watch Poltergeist on the free HBO preview that afternoon. I told her how I wished the free HBO weekend preview would last forever.

  She didn’t say anything.

  She wasn’t crying, but I took my hand and wiped away her tears.

  Even now I still reach across the years with my giant hand and wipe them away.

  After I was done telling the woman this I listened to the waterfall going trickle dickle. I watched her look down at her watch and I could tell she was bored. It was like she didn’t want to listen anymore to sad stories and I didn’t blame her. But before I left she gave me an assignment for the next week. She wanted me to spend a day in isolation—to do nothing for the whole day and see how I felt.

  She said, “A day of isolation is exactly what you need. I really think a day of isolation would work well for you.”

  She told me the day of isolation would make everything okay.

  THE DAY OF ISOLATION

  The next week, even though I didn’t want to, I took a whole day off from work and went to sit beside the New River at Prince, WV for my day of isolation. I thought that after my day of isolation everything would be fine.

  A whole day is a long time for anybody, so before I got there I tried doing a couple of things just to kill some time. I got in the car and after a few minutes driving I decided to use the bathroom at a gas station. A couple of minutes later I stopped and bought a Mountain Dew at another gas station. A couple of minutes after that I stopped again before I even got there. Around 9:30 I finally pulled up at the New River, parked the car, got out, and walked down beside the rushing water. I sat down on a rock and watched the river rushing more and now it was like 9:35. I pulled out my wallet and read a little note Sarah wrote to me: “It’s your pain Bubbies. Shape it.”

  I sat for another fifteen minutes. I breathed deep and tried to eliminate thoughts from my mind.

  Silence. Shape it.

  “Mmmm a drink of Mountain Dew would be good right now,” I thought.

  I took a drink. I breathed deep and closed my eyes. I heard something. It was the sound of hooting and hollering. Then I saw them. It was a bunch of whitewater rafters. It was a whole raft of out of town people celebrating how they had just conquered the last set of rapids on the New River. It was probably a corporate group doing a week long team building exercise or a bunch of hippies who decided to take a break from listening to shitty jam band music and drinking crappy wheat beers and complaining. I didn’t let it bother me.

  I kept sitting and watching the river some more and I watched the rafters disappear. I looked down at my watch. I tried forgetting about it. It was 9:45.

  I breathed deep and looked out and watched the river some more.

  I looked down at my watch and it said 9:47.

  I breathed deep again and had to go to the bathroom, so I went up beside the car and pissed.

  Then I sat back down inside the car and decided, “Hey, I should organize my CDs.”

  I took all the empty CD cases or CD cases stuffed full of 2 or 3 CDs and put them into the correct cases. I went through all of them until there were only 2 or 3 CDs I couldn’t find cas
es for. I looked down at my watch because it felt like 2 or 3 hours had passed. It was only 10:15.

  Shit.

  I waited a long time.

  I looked down at my watch.

  It said: 10:20.

  Shit.

  I waited a long time.

  Then I looked down at my watch.

  It said: 10:22. Shit.

  I shook my head and thought, “What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?” Then I said out loud, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I turned the engine on and put the car into drive, saying, “What a bunch of bullshit—a day of isolation.”

  I started talking in a quiet voice, “I mean the world’s full of pain and suffering. There’s no getting around it. That’s just the way it is. Deal with it.”

  I quoted to myself, “We wring the pain from the darkness and call it wisdom. It is not wisdom. It is pain.”

  I hit the gas, and took off down the road, driving all the way up the mountain, and then all the way back to Beckley—to my house, to Sarah who would become my wife in two years, to my books, to the couple of friends I had, to my parents, to my dogs, to my job, to my TV, to waiting for Sarah to come home, to chicken wings, to beer, to my basement, to a DVD player, to getting the mail, to our slow ass internet, to talking on the phone with Mom, to talking on the phone with Dad, to going to see my folks in Rainelle, to watching football games on Saturday, to watching NASCAR races on Sunday, to reading when I can’t sleep, to the dogs, to beer, to not being able to sleep, to watching wars on television, to watching buildings crumble, to watching oceans rising, to watching rivers rising, to watching coal mines exploding, to watching rivers rising, to watching what looked like the end of the world, to TV prophets, to the end of the world, to the end of the world, to my life, to my life, to my life.