No Heroes Page 3

  Rita loved the house, the private bath, the view of the woods. Never before had each boy had his own bedroom. The kitchen was big, the appliances new. We had a guest room, two bathrooms, a large garage, and a balcony overlooking a pond. The finished basement held a separate room that was ideal for writing.

  The first night we ate pizza and went to bed early. James stirred in his bed, half asleep. I moved him crossways on the mattress and smoothed the old quilt. It was frayed and falling apart, but he insisted on sleeping with it despite the heat. A year before he asked why we owned such a ratty blanket, and I was embarrassed by the truth—it was all we could afford. Instead I told him it was my blanket as a child. Our family had no actual heirlooms, and this secondhand quilt was all he knew of an imagined past. Kentucky would give him history.

  In two months I would turn forty years old. I felt fortunate to have everything I wanted—a family, a career, a house in the woods of home. The world at large called me a Kentuckian, but in the state, I was from Rowan County. Within that realm I was a Haldeman boy, and to the people there I was from the first hill above the school.

  During the next few weeks Rita and the boys explored Morehead and visited my parents at the other end of the county. We unpacked slowly. I had never felt so happy, so enthusiastic for life. I intended to grow old here. I would be buried among the trees. Wildflowers would grow on my grave. Until then, I would help young people understand themselves, and provide an example of the potential for life beyond the hills. I had come home to give as much as possible. Eventually I might move into politics. As an insider, I knew more than anyone what the hills needed. Just as important, I knew what we didn’t need—no more sympathy, no more mindless federal programs, no more assistance by outsiders.

  Morehead State University is a poor school in a poor state. Forty percent of people don’t finish high school, a low number compared to the surrounding area. Eastern Kentucky offers no models for success, no paths for ambitious people to follow, no tangible life beyond the county line. Doing well is a betrayal of mountain culture. Gaining money means you have screwed somebody over and going on vacation implies you don’t like living here. Most glaringly absent from eastern Kentucky is a sense of pride. I hoped to fix that.

  A month after our arrival, Rita’s parents visited. They emigrated from Poland in 1946 and have lived in New York ever since. The first time I met them was on my birthday when Rita and I were dating in Manhattan. Her parents joined us at a restaurant. They were nearly seventy and still working twelve-hour days. Arthur was a chief draftsman for an architectural firm in the World Trade Center. Irene counseled terminal cancer patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. Over supper, Arthur mentioned that his brother had the same birthday as mine.

  “He must be a great guy,” I said.

  Everyone stared at their plates. A palpable tension filled the air. I didn’t know what had happened until Irene spoke.

  “He was,” she said. “He was a nice boy. He died in the camps. So sad.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Just as rapidly the discomfort faded and the meal progressed with renewed cheer. I cursed myself for having forgotten that both her parents were Holocaust survivors. Everyone else in their family had been murdered by the Nazis. Arthurs brother simply disappeared, leaving Arthur with the wisp of hope that his brother was still living.

  Arthur drives German cars. He shops as if he’s still in Europe, with stops at the bakery, the deli, the fruit and vegetable stand. He chats with the shopkeepers like they are close friends. He and Irene seldom disagree, but when they do, they speak Polish. They enjoy giving presents. They never laugh.

  Mirrors line the walls of their duplex. The bathroom has three mirrors, and one entire wall of the dining room is paneled in reflective glass. I wondered if this lent the illusion of space or reminded Arthur and Irene of their own existence. Their youth was spent in deprivation wearing rags. Now they are always impeccably dressed and groomed, hair combed, nails clipped, necks scented with cologne. I have never seen Arthur without his shirt tucked into freshly pressed pants held in place by a shiny belt. Irene’s hair invariably appears beauty shop perfect. Her clothes fit well, are tasteful and stylish.

  Arthur and Irene have drawn a line through time— before the war and after the war. For fifty years they lived under the protection of the Statue of Liberty. In Kentucky, they each agreed to tell me their story. I went to town and bought a microcassette recorder. I began to listen.

  Arthur Goes to War

  I was drafted in 1939. They sent me to the border of Germany and Poland, not far from my house. The war started there in September on my twentieth birthday. The war was over in the first couple of days.

  The Luftwaffe just came from nowhere. A lot of noise. The whole countryside was one big perpetuation of light and explosions. We took many casualties. The Germans dug themselves in. We were trapped. They sent me and another guy back through German lines to get help. There were woods, there were fields, there were farmhouses. Very picturesque. It’s beautiful.

  I was crawling and the Germans were talking rather casually. I had a rifle but I had to get rid of it. I was afraid of making noise. I was crawling all night in the potato fields. I have never seen such a full moon. A beautiful night, like daylight. I crawled and crawled. Every time I touched a dead soldier I felt relief. Every time I touched a soldier who was not dead, I felt bad. My friend chose the wrong direction. I never saw him again.

  Headquarters was gone so I joined a new unit. The next day we were attacked. The unit was destroyed and everybody was dead. I went to the city I used to live in and found my father. He was angry because he thought I deserted. No, I said, we lost.

  I didn’t take off my boots for a week, and when I did I found a piece of shrapnel in my foot three inches long. I sat in a wheelbarrow and my father pushed me. The German army got us. They saw that my leg was hurt, so an injection I got. They said the war is over, you guys better go home. They gave us food. They gave us a ride to a hospital in Kraków. The hospital is impossible. There was no space. I was tagged to be amputated. I dragged myself to the outhouse, and felt a warmth in my leg, very funny feeling, and the pain eased up. Everything just burst open and pus came out, a real mess. I get a stick and drag myself home. I was laid up, and this was still within a month after the war started.

  All the Jews had to report to the government, otherwise you couldn’t get any food. You couldn’t buy food in the store anyhow without an ID card. And on the ID card, naturally, it said, boom, Jew. Shortly after the ID cards came out, all the Jews have to wear visible signs on their clothes. In Kraków it was a blue band, white Star of David, which I wore very proudly. But then it was inconvenient.

  After they forbid Jews from travel, they took an old part of Kraków, threw a wall around it, collected all the Jews and brought them there. They created a ghetto. The conditions were just appalling. No plumbing. No heat. No food. People were sick. People died of malnutrition, typhoid, dysentery. They were bringing in every day Jews from the surrounding cities. The way they put cattle into a corral, they corralled men. It was inhuman.

  The Germans created a Jewish Police with complete power over everybody. Whatever had to be done was done through them. They were willing to do the dirty work for the Germans. The Jewish Police pushed people into the arms of the German SS guards. You’re told by this guy, the same religion, same nationality, same language, you’re told to go. This is deplorable, it’s indescribable. A nightmare. You can’t defy these guys who are wearing batons, and they don’t wait for you to make a decision. They hit you with that stick.

  My mother came home to us one day and said, the police have your father and I go to him. You are big boys; you’re on your own. She told me to take care of my brother. She never came back. I never saw my mother and father again.

  Irene Goes to the Ghetto

  In ghetto I was seventeen. I know Arthur already ten years. Everybody has to work someplace, slave lab
or. They give me a job with a family and I’m supposed to be their cook and iron their shirts and all this. I think that’s the end of my life because I don’t know how to do these things. So lucky me, there was a main maid who was Polish, but nice. Very unusual. She showed me how to iron the shirt and what kind of food they liked and how to prepare it.

  My mother was in the line to live or die. I had my father’s Iron Cross. It was the highest authority medal that existed in Germany. He received it in World War I. He was a colonel in the Austrian army and he saved many German lives. I showed the Iron Cross to the person picking who would live, so she let my mother go. Three months later they choose lives again. But this time it is SS man. He was mad that I showed the Iron Cross. He took the Iron Cross and shot my mother in front of me. My mother was killed before my eyes. On the street. The SS. By the pistol.

  Then they sent me to an apartment that the Germans took over from the Jews. He came with his family, the name of Jore. He was the director of a construction company for the army. When I came in first time, I saw there was a piano, and I played pretty well yet. I remembered the Chopin waltz, and I played and he came and said, oh, you’re playing piano. They started to ask me questions and give me a lot of bread and tea, just because of one piece on the piano. I never played it again. Chopin saved my life.

  Nine-Mile at the Video Store

  There is a short stretch of highway between 1-64 and More-head, where a new Wal-Mart has slowly gnawed the town to bits. Morehead storefronts hold nothing but tape on the window cracks. A harebrained remedy to the loss of business was realigning Main Street so that it slithered like a snake. A triangular-shaped wedge of concrete protruded from the corner of every other block. These giant slices of cement pizza ran six blocks, forcing cars to weave a zigzag pattern. People said the cops should use Main Street as a means of testing drunk drivers—anyone who could drive it was sober.

  This beautification project transformed Morehead into an obstacle one must circumvent on the way to the mall. You can take the bypass through town, but the lack of traffic lights and turning lanes makes it slow as grandmaw. What we really need is a bypass for the bypass.

  The video store at the mall has replaced the general store as the place to visit with neighbors. Aside from church, it is the only place where families see each other. People from two counties away come to Morehead for Wal-Mart, but only locals rent videos. Foreign movies are not available in Rowan County, unless you count Road Warrior. Documentary films are confined to hunting, fishing, and National Geographic. Action movies occupy the most shelf space, then thrillers, westerns, and comedies. Porn movies are kept in a back room, but the town is too small for anyone to risk being seen going in or coming out.

  While walking the stores aisles I study people near my age, narrowing their features to seek the ghost of who they once were. Anyone on either side of forty receives my wave. The other day I nodded to a man whose posture I recalled. We called him Nine-Mile because he could run fast. He hit puberty in fifth grade and began sleeping in class until high school, where he became a star athlete. Nine-Mile played three sports, drove a Dodge Charger, and dated the prettiest girl from the other end of the county. I admired him tremendously but he ignored me.

  These facts entered my mind like an exploding time capsule. His voice was casual, as if we’d seen each other last week instead of two decades ago.

  “If it ain’t Chris Offutt,” he said. “I heard you was in. You doing all right?”

  From a great distance, I heard my voice’ tell him I was picking up videos for the kids. He pointed out his seven children and smiled with pride. Their ages spanned twenty years. One of his young boys ran to him, clutching an empty movie box.

  “Put that back, honey,” Nine-Mile said. “You’ve seen that before.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes siree, you have. That movie’s the best thing since eggs, but run and get you a new one.”

  The boy hurried to the shelf. Nine-Mile turned to me and spoke.

  “His memory’s about as long as his pecker.”

  “I have the same problem.”

  He laughed and I gestured to the videotape under his arm.

  “What movie you getting?” I said.

  “I’m bringing back Deliverance. You seen it?”

  “Yeah. The music in it’s good.”

  “I didn’t like it one bit.”

  I stepped closer, eager to hear his opinions. I despise the movie’s stereotypical depiction of rural people. Nine-Mile’s disdain was a pleasant surprise.

  “How come you not to like it?” I said.

  “At the end when that old boy gets shot with a crossbow, the arrow sticks out of his chest. As close as he was, it’d go right through him.”

  “I never thought about it,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m a bow-hunter. When I see something in a movie that’s supposed to be real but ain’t, I’m done with it.”

  “What about the way those country people were?”

  “A pretty rough bunch, if you ask me. I’d not fool with them. They’re from so far back in the hills they went toward town to hunt.”

  I laughed as he scanned the aisles for his kids.

  “You still writing books?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good trade. It’s nice to see a Haldeman boy make something of hisself.”

  “I just worked hard and got lucky is all.”

  “Do you print them up yourself?”

  “No, there’s a company in New York that takes care of that for me.”

  “I see,” he said. “You subcontract it out.”

  “Something like that.”

  “How long’s it take to write a book, Chris? About a month?”

  “Longer for me. What makes you think a month?”

  “That’s when they change the paperbacks at Wal-Mart.”

  The conversation stopped, but I knew he wanted to talk. We both stood awkwardly. I studied his large hands, once so adept with a football and basketball, now gnarled and battered like old tools. He was missing two fingers.

  “What are you doing these days?” I said.

  “I’m a logger and a tobacco farmer. Guess I’m what you’d call an endangered species. I’m getting out of farming. No money.”

  “What’ll you go into next?”

  “I don’t know. I ain’t thought that far ahead.”

  A child began to cry and Nine-Mile smiled apologetically and hurried away. Like many generations before him, he was engaged in the only industry offered by the land where he was born. Stores give credit until the tobacco harvest and every fall the new clothes on schoolkids will tell you how the prices are running at the burley auction. Nine-Mile lived on land his family had always owned and made a living from.

  He retrieved a five-year-old girl and held her against his chest. Nine-Mile’s face softened to the boy I remembered, and it occurred to me that I should have lived in an earlier time. I’d still have the same personality, the same ancient soul. Born in the eighteenth century, I’d lament having missed the wonders of the seventeenth. If I were living in the Renaissance, I’d probably feel nostalgic for the Middle Ages. Continuing this way would make me a Cro-Magnon in a cave envying his brethren who still lived in the trees.

  I left the video store with several movies for the kids. The afternoon sun leaned into the hills across the parking lot, surrounded by chain stores that manacled the land. Across the vast sea of black tar stood Wal-Mart. People were excited when Wal-Mart first arrived until the low prices killed local stores. Now there is nowhere else to shop. It cares as little for its customers as the old company store in my hometown did. The only difference is that scrip is legal in the form of a charge card. If Wal-Mart doesn’t carry an item, you are compelled to do without. People accept this with typical mountain resignation, putting a melancholy forward spin on it with a new slogan: Everything’s at Wal-Mart. Technically that’s true, because if something isn’t there, it does not exist here.


  Behind Wal-Mart like a ramparts to the hills is the first planned development in Rowan County. The neighborhood was such a success that the Church of God closed its doors in town and built a new one behind the mall. It is now known as the Wal-Mart Church of God.

  One is tempted to say that Wal-Mart killed what was once a thriving town. One could just as well blame the interstate. The real culprit is the end of the rail industry. This was preceded by the decline of the riverboat era, the invention of the horseless buggy, the westward expansion, the discovery of the Cumberland Gap, the European invasion, the Puritan pioneers and subsequent waves of immigration, the voyages of Columbus, the Viking explorers, the landbridge walkers, the death of the dinosaurs, and the great breaking apart of the continents.

  All of this ruined Morehead in twenty years.

  Arthur Meets Irene

  I knew Irene when she was ten years old. We used to go for vacations together. She was just a girl. I was a boy. I found Irene after they shot her mother. She wasn’t even crying, she was just laying there. There were at least eight, nine people in the room. And that room was ten by twelve feet. The beds were separated by a curtain for some kind of privacy. The smell was magnificent. Electricity was on and off. I spent the first night with my wife in this Devils kitchen. What do you say to somebody who’s lost everything? She couldn’t save her mother; she was just devastated. What do you say to her? Let’s make the best of it? I said nothing. She just laid there in my arms. The next day I told her, you’re gonna be with me as long as we can.

  Irene Finds Freedom