Chris Offutt - No Heroes - A Memoir of Coming Home

I studied the contour of the hills against the sky and realized that I had been mistaken. Eastern Kentucky did have heroes after all. Mr. Ellington was one.

I finished the first draft at two in the morning and collapsed in bed. Rita read it until five A.M. then woke me to discuss it. At seven she went to bed while I got the boys fed and dressed and off to school.

Since reading the manuscript three days ago, Rita has been profoundly depressed. She cant sleep. She cries daily. She is volatile with the kids and me. Arthur had never related his war experiences. Irene had told them vaguely, often as bedtime stories for Rita, presenting her incarceration in a glowing light.

Today I suggest we go for lunch and Rita dresses up, unusual for her. I drive to a restaurant but she begins to cry and refuses to leave the car. At home, she crawls into bed and continues crying. I bring her a cup of tea, which she refuses to drink. After several hours of her tears, I have no choice but to call Arthur.

“I need your help,” I say.

“Uh oh. What’s wrong?”

“Rita read the book. It upset her because she didn’t know what happened to you.”

“Waugh, I didn’t advertise it.”

“I know, Arthur. I understand. The thing is, Rita is upset. She’s really upset, Arthur.”

“You want I should talk to her?”

“Maybe you can tell her it wasn’t as bad as you made it sound.”

“It wasn’t, Sonny.”

“No?”

“Much worse. Much much worse. You received the highlights only.”

“Don’t tell her that.”

“Let me talk to my daughter.”

I give the phone to Rita in bed. I try to comfort Sam and James, who are worried about their mother. They have never seen her behave this way and decide it is their fault. I assure them otherwise. The fault is mine, I realize. I have unleashed history on my own family, attacked my wife with the past. I am to blame for her misery.

I hear Rita say into the phone, “No, Daddy, it’s not your fault.”

Sam and James are making cards for Rita. The bold letters say “I love you. I’m sorry.”

It occurs to me that herein lies the problem: We all feel guilt, we are all to blame. The Holocaust is humanity’s tender scar. Everyone is sorry — the Jews, the Germans, all of Europe and America. Even my children feel the scalding of the past without knowing where the burn comes from.

They took me to another hospital in Ferdafink, Bavaria. I’m in a sick bay in a refugee camp. Now it’s more or less a month after the war. In the meantime, my friends are out there, doing things, collecting things, robbing things, shooting people. Everybody takes whatever is left of Germany.

Some of the electricians I work with found out that I’m in this hospital so they came visiting me. They said, we have a present for you downstairs. I go downstairs with them. They brought the guy who broke my arm. They had beat him up and bound him to a dolly, beat him up a little more, and brought the dolly to me. So I see this piece of flesh, it looks like a bunch of shit. I said, get him out of here, will you? I’m not interested. I got very mad. My friends thought it was cute. Not me. The war is over. My war is over.

Ferdafink was the place where refugees lived for a while. It was a Hitler Youth Camp that we take over. I didn’t have any clothing. Many people were going into the houses and saying, you are a German and I’m a Jew and I suffered, so you give me clothes. They were stealing clothes but I didn’t want that.

What I did, I took a blanket of the German army and made it an outfit. Many of the Jewish girls were rather heavy and short and they would not wear a blanket because they would not look so good. I was slim, I was tall. It’s warm and I don’t have clothing. I’m not going to steal anybody’s clothes.

In the refugee camp, a policeman started to attack me with hate. He said to Arthur, what are you doing with that German bitch? So Arthur knocked him down. They put Arthur in jail and I had some friends in Ferdafink and they got him out.

I am never far from Arthur since the Liberation. Even now. Never far.

I rise with the birds and step into the silky light of dawn. The sky is an old chalkboard in need of a wash. Morning mist lends a fragility to the land, as if the woods are draped with lace. The woods are heavy with summer, each leaf burdened by the weight of life. A rotten log breaks like cake beneath my boots. Landscape is imprinted in me with such ferocity that my very marrow is made of earth.

A great horned owl has lain in my refrigerator for six months since I found it on the interstate last fall. It was by the road, one wing aimed up like a tombstone to flight. The bird is eighteen inches tall with a wingspan of nearly three feet. The plumage is golden brown. Its tail feathers are stiff and strong, acting as a rudder for soundless travel. The claws are big as my hands, its beak as sharp as a blade.

The owls head wears the tufted feathers that give it a name. Native Americans consider owls bad luck. Ancient Egyptians thought they were good luck. To the Babylonians, hooting owls were the ghosts of women who died in childbirth, calling for their babies.

Fog turns the air white between the trees. Distant foliage is hidden as if by scrim. It is the varied sounds of the woods I will miss the most — leaves in wind, the rise and fall of distant locust, a jarfly’s rattle, the frogs at night, birds at dawn, the sharp sound of a stick snapping in cold air.

Owls are the only bird whose eyes face forward. They roam at night. They are big and loud, but kill in swift silence. Owls are so much like humans that we are afraid of them. A sudden rain spatters the woods, making a steady sound like a creek inside a cave. Distant trees are grayed by mist. A dead bird is in my arms.

I am tampering with the natural order since no crows will peck the remains, insects wont nest in its hollow bones. We have killed the owl’s only predator, the big cats, and now we are limiting its habitat. Owls fly along creeks. They do not understand bridges and an owl will often shatter its neck against the side of a truck. I have buried seven such owls around the country. They visit me in my dreams.

I hold the owl close to my chest to shelter it from rain. A terrible brush with man took its life, and its final touch should be one of kindness. I dig a hole and gently place the owl inside the walls of earth. I fill the space, set a rock on the dirt, and sprinkle last fall’s leaves over it. There is nothing to be said.

Everything I own is stacked in boxes. I look at the woods and want to remain. The owl lies below humped earth at my feet. I am saying good-bye.

Home is a feeling, nothing more. Home is illusory, like love, then it disappears. Once you leave, you become a stranger. I lost my home and that’s forever. I wouldn’t go back to Poland. It breaks my heart. They don’t want me there. All my memories are shadows, lousy shadows. That country is forsaken. Home is where I hang my head.

The truck is packed. The house is sold. The trees don’t care. These woods were never mine, they just lent themselves awhile. No one can ever truly own the woods any more than you can own another’s thoughts. Today my dream is to know the mind of a tree.

To that end I hereby decree that I will be buried in a pine box with an acorn in my mouth. An oak will grow from my head, pressing its roots like flowers within my ribs, piercing my skull and slithering deep into the earth. I want my boughs to shelter children a hundred years from now. I want to be a tree where pilgrims trek for knowledge. I want lovers to caress each other in the soft ground beneath my shade. I want to withstand snow and wind, rain and drought, fire and hail. I want to thrive in the woods and die in the woods, return to the woods and become born in the woods.