Chris Offutt - No Heroes - A Memoir of Coming Home

My editor inquires if Arthur is excited that I am writing a book about him. I don’t know, I say. I get off the phone and call Arthur and tell him my editor wants to know how he feels about the book. He says that he wears a nightshirt to sleep in. It is not so long, the nightshirt, and sometimes he has to pull it down to cover his uh-ohs. The book makes him feel like the nightshirt is rolled up. I tell him that is the nature of art. I ask him if he wants me to roll his shirt back down. It’s not too late.

“No,” he says, “but one thing.”

“What?”

“No heroes.”

“Why not?”

“Heroes are not human.”

“What about Moses?”

“He’s no hero! He’s all confused. God was always mad at him. God tried to kill him three times. He’s no hero. He didn’t want to go up that mountain. God had to talk him into it. If God would talk to me, I would run to do it. If that happened to you, Sonny, what would you do?”

“It would terrify me. I’d think I was crazy.”

“I’d be the happiest man in the world. God bothers to talk to me — to me! I’d know what life was for. What is the reason to live — kids, build the Empire State Building, make a painting, eat? Then a meteor hits the earth and we are gone. Humans are nothing. If God talked to me, I could die in peace.”

We say good-bye and hang up. Kentucky is a long state composed of two sections — the hills and the blacktop. All our heroes come from the blacktop. The Appalachian region claims no heroes, and the inhabitants have learned to live without the hope of one. During college I walked the streets of Morehead with a button pinned to my jacket that read “No Heroes.” I wore it proudly, eager for everyone to see my late-seventies political stance. I read Rimbaud, listened to the Clash, and wore sleeveless cowboy shirts. I left to change the world, but as much as I tried, I was no hero, either.

As a kid I never liked school, I was just good at it. Teachers helped me at every stage — Mrs. Jayne in first grade, Mrs. Hardin in fifth grade, Mr. Ellington in seventh. Mrs. Walke and Mrs. Slone looked after me in high school. During college I entered the province of men — Marc Glasser, Bill Layne, Joe Sartor. My goal as a teacher was to emulate the best ones. I hoped every student would eventually remember me as the teacher who’d made a difference, the one who took an interest, listened, and cared.

In the meantime, I couldn’t decide what to wear to the first day of class. Blue jeans and boots, of course, and a short-sleeve shirt because the humidity was like breathing through a wet wasp nest. I finally settled on my most conservative shirt — blue paisley with red trim. It was the kind of shirt I’d never have worn as a student because people might think I was a sissy. In my new role I wanted to set an example that was contrary to mountain dress for men.

I drove the Malibu proudly, enjoying the attention its rumbling engine commanded as I deliberately cruised the length of campus, giving a little extra gas in front of the administration building. Many people believe that the education problems in eastern Kentucky are due to the quality of instruction at Morehead State University. Over the years, MSU went from being a beacon in the wilderness to a dim light shining primarily on itself. The mission statement of serving the region is impossible to meet as long as the university kowtows to coal companies for financial contributions.

The students were my people, from my hills, at my school but I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I parked at Mrs. Jayne’s house and gathered breath deep into my lungs. I can do this, I said to myself.

I walked briskly to campus, sweating through my shirt, stumbling twice over minuscule imperfections in the pavement. My assigned office was in a small house that had been a private medical office. Instead of framed diplomas on the wall, I hung a map of eastern Kentucky counties. I opened my notes and reviewed my lecture to each of the four writing classes: Creative Nonfiction, Advanced Undergraduate Fiction, Graduate Fiction Writing, and Intro to Creative Writing. I had taught these courses elsewhere, but it was my first experience teaching four classes in one day.

Just before nine o’clock, I left my office and drank coffee from a Styrofoam cup, watching students stroll to class. The majority were quiet and clean-cut and I wondered what became of the contemporary version of myself — long hair, ragged clothes — and how I would recognize the ones I came to help. Hip-hop music spilled from low-rider pickups driven by boys with their hats on backward. Many cars had tinted windows embellished with gothic script. “Only God can judge me,” read one, a line from a Tupac Shakur song, the perfect phrase to embody hostile rebellion in the Bible Belt. Kentucky has 120 counties, more than any other state, and license plates display the drivers home county. Those cars playing the loudest were from deepest in the hills, and I knew that some of the drivers had never seen a black person except on television.

I dumped my coffee and headed for class, entering the stream of people. I stopped in front of the English building and reminded myself that I was a teacher now, not a student. The bushes rattled behind me. “Hey, Chris,” someone said. Out stepped Harley, a boy I’d grown up with in Haldeman, now in his late thirties. His breath smelled of whiskey. I’d not seen him in over a decade.

“Damn, Harley, you like to scared me to death.”

“The law went by a minute ago is all.”

“Are they hunting you?”

“I forgot if they are or not. I just always hide.”

“Well,” I said. “They ain’t around right now.”

“I got half a joint in my pocket if you want to come up in the woods and burn one with me.”

“I can’t, Harley. I start a new job today.”

“They say you’re a schoolteacher now.”

“I just fell into it.”

“They’re hard up, my opinion.”

“You working?”

“Hell no,” he said. “I get the crazy check.”

“You ain’t crazy, Harley.”

“I know it, but the State don’t. And don’t you go telling them nothing, either.”

“You’d best get up in them woods,” I said. “Come on, we’ll cut through the building.”

“Son, we ain’t allowed in the college.”

“I am, Harley.”

I led him into the English building, through a hall thronged with students to the rear exit. He put his head down as if in custody, walking in a slow way to make sure he didn’t make a mistake. We went outside and he pointed to the tree line at the top of the hill.

“That’s my spot,” he said. “You come up later and we’ll burn one. I got beer up there, too.”

“What are you doing in town this early?”

“College girls, Chris, college girls. They are good to look at in the sun.”

“Do you ever talk to them?”

“No. They’d not talk to me. They’re too stuck up.”

“Maybe you are.”

“You shit and fall back in it, Chris. If I’m stuck up, what are you?”

“I’m just a Haldeman boy, same as you.”

“That’s all I’ll ever be, but you’re a schoolteacher. By God, they ain’t no better thing to be unless it’s a doctor, and then you got to dig around in folks’ guts all day. What are you teaching anyhow?”

“You know, writing and stuff.”

“They say your books are good, Chris. I’ve read at them without much luck.”

“Watch the law, Harley.”

“I don’t need to,” he said. “I got you watching out for me like old times.”

He patted his pocket containing the half joint, wiggled his eyebrows, and trudged up the hill. After a few steps he turned back.