Chris Offutt - No Heroes - A Memoir of Coming Home

It is wrong to play favorites, but every teacher does. I am now left with Sandra, a less talented writer, but more ambitious. The biggest favor I can do is help her transfer to a better school. No one suggested that to me, and for years I wondered why. Now I understand that good students are so rare that a professor wants to keep them for himself.

A sudden gust whirls the air with beads of white like the seed of a dandelion. Landscape is easily understood in winter when the sightlines are open. Without foliage you can see the folds of earth where the ridges dip into a hollow. The initial period following a light snow is ideal for learning the woods because it is impossible to get lost. All you have to do is follow your footprints home.

I have done that but there is no longer any home here, only what home was. Nevertheless, I am not a fool for coming back. Students seek my counsel when they have difficulty in other classes. One young man drives one hundred thirty miles a day to study fiction writing with me. Junior faculty members have approached me with the idea of beginning inter-disciplinary coursework in Appalachian Studies. There has even been covert talk of an MFA program in Creative Writing, which is nonexistent in Kentucky.

I rise and step into the deeper woods, transformed to a gleaming chandelier of white. Rabbit tracks cross a quilt of snow to a redbud, known in Kentucky as the Judas Tree. During ancient times it bloomed huge and lovely in the woods — white blossoms bigger than magnolias, a sweeter scent than honeysuckle, its trunk more stalwart than stone. The redbud ruled the oldest of the old growth forest. In his moment of desperation and sorrow, Judas hanged himself from the boughs of a redbud. Its limbs became withered and weak overnight. The redbud would never again bear the weight of a man.

I hope that I can forgive myself for Eugene’s decision the way the forest forgave the Judas Tree. I am reminded of the old story about the axe that entered the woods. Upon seeing it, the trees said, look, the handle is one of us.

Now I am a year in the Nicar Valley. The most beautiful countryside in Germany. The hills are just gorgeous. We have lice and we stink, so they gonna clean us up. On Christmas Eve they told us to disrobe. It’s winter and we are standing there cold. During this time they took our clothing and killed all the lice. Then a whole bunch of so-called barbers shaved our bodies.

We had to jump into a vat of Lysol. They sprayed us with something on the head. Then they had showers, ice-cold showers outside. You couldn’t walk because the whole thing was ice, the most slippery shit you ever saw. I somehow walked there and I stayed under the shower because the shower was much warmer than the outside air. I stayed as long as I could to warm up.

Finally they brought the clothes back and piled it up in that snowy winter night. Snow was falling all over the place. You didn’t feel the cold anymore. People were singing a Christmas song, it was very nice. The next day we didn’t work. Christmas.

We walk in the morning to work in an ammunition factory making bullets. My job was to form a piece of flat metal like a spring and push it inside the bullet. I did this and gave it to another worker. There was a woman guard standing behind us. She didn’t beat us. She was not a horrible monster like in other camps.

Some German women are working there, too. They were not prisoners, they were just regular workers, paid workers. When it came Christmas, I think what to do for those German girls. I took this flat piece of metal and I bend it out to make little people they can hang on a tree. I started to produce like there’s no tomorrow. I liked to do that. It was nice. You could do many things with the wire. You could twist it in all kind of ways. One day a big SS man came and asks, who takes this metal? This is very dangerous and we need it. Who is stealing it?

I thought this is my last day in that camp. They are going to shoot me on the spot.

He said, somebody is a traitor, doing this. It is a very serious matter. You better tell me who it is or the others will be punished.

So I said that I was not alone but others work with me, too. I want to just make a tree so beautiful. Then the German girls got up and they say she didn’t really do anything, we asked her to do it. He liked one of the German girls, so he said he would not do anything. But next time he kills the person who does it.

He didn’t do anything to me, because they stood up for me. They had a guilty conscience. I wasn’t the best girl in the world. I didn’t do it for love. I made those things for food. The German girls gave me food. I wanted food.

Paying late fees on unwatched videos is a fierce gouging in the guts. Each time it happened I swore never again. The old Malibu clung to the tight curves and charged through the dips in the road as I poured the coal to it and arrived at the video store just before closing.

In the parking lot I saw Lena, one of the few girls with whom I was friends in high school. My female friends liked the cool guys who drove cool cars — athletes, outlaws, musicians. The girls dated them but talked to me. I was funny and short, a mascot to their beauty.

Lena had been married twenty-three years and had four kids. She worked as a dental hygienist. Five years ago she moved to Flemingsburg because Morehead got too big.

“It grew so fast,” she said, “spreading up the hollows like floodwater. I wanted to raise my children in a small-town atmosphere. Clearfield used to be separate from Morehead, but now you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s nothing to get a bicycle stolen anymore.”

“I didn’t know that, Lena.”

“Morehead’s got all the problems of a big town, but none of the advantages. The traffic is terrible, and prices are high as a cat’s back. You go to Wal-Mart and don’t know a soul.”

“But why Flemingsburg,” I said. “It’s not a town, it’s a hollow with houses.”

“Oh, Chris,” she said, “you still make me laugh. You’re just as easy to talk to as ever. Maybe easier.”

“Well, I always liked you, Lena.”

“How come you never asked me out?”

“I didn’t think you’d want me.”

“Why do you think I always talked to you so much?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”

“You should have,” she said.

“I just wanted to get out of here, Lena. The only reason I stayed was failing the army physical.”

“The only reason I stayed was I got pregnant.”

“Maybe that’s why I never asked you out.”

We looked at each other, our eyes seeking purchase. The world ceased to exist in time and space. We were fifteen, afraid to kiss. We were twenty-five, young parents working hard. We were thirty-five, both wondering how our lives would be with different choices, pondering an affair with a stranger. We were forty-five and proud grandparents. At fifty-five we quit working and drove a gigantic RV around the country, a gray-haired couple making up for a life spent in one place. At sixty-five, we took walks together, arm-in-arm along the creek. In our seventies one of us died. The other mourned with a gradual withering like a leaf curling into itself before detaching from the limb and becoming part of the loam.

Time swirled back like a tornado, encircling us with the present, holding us fast to the tar of an immense parking lot.

“Lena,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

I stepped forward and hugged her briefly before turning away. After fifteen steps, I looked back and watched her drive toward Flemingsburg. To me, Morehead’s growth meant more things not to do. For Lena there were more people not doing those things.