Chris Offutt - No Heroes - A Memoir of Coming Home

I sent a letter of resignation to the chairman of the English Department, who was not sad to see me go. The MSU administration had never supported creative writing, and was planning to have me teach Freshman Comp instead. None of my colleagues said good-bye.

Word of my leaving spread rapidly through the county. No one local was surprised due to twenty years of familiarity with my cycles of departure and return. For a while, my decision fed Morehead’s grapevine. I fielded questions constantly.

“I hear you’re going out to Hollywood,” someone told me. “Be the next George Clooney. He’s from over here in Mason County, you know.”

“They say you got rich off your books and bought a car so fancy no one can work on it.”

“Somebody told me you’ve got in good with the governor and you’re heading up to Frankfort.”

“I heard at the video store that the college fired you. They say you ran your mouth like a motorboat.”

My response was the same to everyone. I grinned, ducked my head, and said, “Don’t reckon.”

In private, I had a difficult time with my own feelings— I wanted out of the hills for the sake of my wife and kids, while desperately wanting to stay for myself. I felt supremely comfortable in the woods, but nowhere else. The fact is, I’d essentially failed as a teacher. Most of my work was remedial, even on the graduate level, and I didn’t know how to give my students what they required. My chief difficulty was accepting that my students needed to be educated in how to be educated, and I simply wasn’t up to the chore. I had long recognized that a colossal problem here was the pervasive sense of shame. Now I felt ashamed for having failed to ease that burden in others.

My impending departure disappointed my students more than anyone but they accepted the news with typical Appalachian fatalism. After class an older student stayed to talk. She was my age, recently divorced, with a son in his twenties. She often missed class because she drove an hour to school and worked half-time out of the county.

“I don’t blame you, Chris,” she said. “But that’s More-head. If it’s something good, it don’t last long.”

“I tried,” I said. “I’m just not sure I did any good.”

“You did,” she said. “You gave us hope. This school doesn’t have a lot of that. These old hills don’t either.”

“You’re a good writer,” I said. “Stick with it.”

“No one ever told me that before. You’re somebody here even if you don’t know it.”

I nodded, unable to speak. She left and I sat in the classroom until dusk turned the air dark. I was embarrassed by my naïve dreams of return. It now seemed ridiculous that one of my long-term goals had been to run for political office. I felt like a hypocrite for abandoning home so soon. I had followed the historic path of every prior attempt to help the region — VISTA, church groups, the War on Poverty — arriving full of energy and plans, and swiftly becoming overwhelmed by the problems entrenched within the hills.

I clung to my students’ disappointment as a balm to my own sense of despair. Perhaps providing hope was better than I had imagined.

I met an American tank column. A Jewish fellow from New York gave me a submachine gun because he recognized that I was a Jewish prisoner. I liked that machine gun. I wanted to feel the metal on me. That was a very nice weapon, very handy. The weapon they shot all those guys with on that hill in Plaszow. Very little recoil. Very well designed.

I walked into a house to get rid of my camp uniform. The potatoes on the stove were warm. Very nice house, beautiful piano in the living room, nice clothing, and a flight jacket. I took the flight jacket, played the piano for a while, took the potatoes, and walked out of the house.

I want someone to talk to because now I’m lonely. Everybody’s gone. I don’t want to get caught outside. I want to go for the night into a house. I knock on the door and a woman opens it and she told me not to shoot.

I didn’t want to shoot anybody. I had just gotten out of prison. I was hungry and cold. I hadn’t eaten in days, and I looked like a mess. I smelled. I weighed less than a hundred pounds. I said, could you warm the potatoes for me? I don’t want any food from you. Just warm the potatoes for me.

She said she had no coal. She didn’t want to let me in, but her daughter lets me in. They gave me a room. The room was warm. I hadn’t slept in a bed in five years. They gave me this beautiful room with this beautiful view. But I heard a noise. I said, who’s in the cellar? She said, nobody. I want to know what’s going on in the house, because I didn’t want to go to sleep and get killed. So I opened the door to the cellar, and it was full of German soldiers. They said, please don’t shoot.

They had enough of war. And I had enough of war. I didn’t know who they were. SS. Army. Air force. I didn’t shoot. I closed the door and went to bed prepared to die. I never slept that well in my life.

The next day an ambulance drives me to a makeshift hospital in a beautiful hotel taken over by the Americans. I was dying. Finally I was dying. I waited all that time, but the nurses didn’t let me. The Americans brought me back to life.

I wasn’t happy. I don’t feel good, I’m very weak. I don’t want to go out in the world. I get a doctor to sign that I have TB and I go to a sanatorium. I had a bed for myself. I befriend the doctors, I befriend the nurse. Everything is okay. One problem, I really don’t have anything to live for, because I don’t think that anybody’s alive out of my family.

One day a young boy comes and says are you Arthur Gross?

Yes, I’m Arthur Gross.

Is your wife Irene?

Yes.

Your wife is in Kraków and I came to Germany to look for you. She will be so happy to know that you’re alive. I’m going back to Poland to tell her.

That was that boy my wife saved, Elie Kupiec. A couple weeks later, somebody called me from the office. There’s a lady waiting for you at the gate. And there she was! She looked very good to me, very good to me. She always looked clean and combed. My beautiful wife.

After the war I came to Kraków, looking for Arthur, and there was nobody there. Nobody I know. In ghetto, when I feel like a little unsure of myself, Arthur always said, after the war go to Kraków and we meet. So I did. But no Arthur.

And then somebody like six foot tall approached me and asked me if I know Irene Gross. I said, that’s me.

He said, do you remember me?

No.

You saved my life. I would like to repay you.

It was Elie Kupiec, all grown up. No more fitting under the clothes. He went to Germany and came back to Poland and told me Arthur is in a TB sanatorium.

I packed myself and to Arthur I go. I went on a train. The border we had to go across at Czechoslovakia. The soldiers were watching like they always do. We were walking on the side, away from the soldiers. We cross at night a fence. There was a hole. I was not very physical but I climbed through, somebody was pushing my tush in the back. It was scary. Very scary. The dogs were around and barking like crazy. There was a lot of yelling. Other people were going across and were caught. It was night. We ran until there was a German village and there we stopped. I was twenty-two. Pretty young.

The next day I found Arthur. He was weak like they killed him. He was very good-looking. He still is, but he was really good-looking then.

I showed him my wedding ring. He couldn’t believe it. He said, is it the same one?

Yes.

How could you keep it.