The Collected Works of Scott McClanahan Vol. I

by Scott McClanahan

So sometimes at night I just sat up in my bed and listened to all the mountain sounds. I’d leave a little night light on and listen to radio stations snapping and popping from as far away as New York or Atlanta. And sometimes I sat up with a candle light reading books by writers whose names I didn’t even know how to pronounce. So right before sleep I might shut my eyes and listen to the dogs barking outside—far away dogs, barking so loud like a ghost was walking among them. Sometimes I wished I was one of these dogs and sometimes I wished that ghost was me. And then at 11:30 the coal train came blowing through town just like every night. I listened as it blew and whistled and whispered. I imagined that coal train going somewhere just as I imagine it now, to Norfolk or the north. And then afterwards—Japan.