No Heroes (17 page)

Our children attended a grade school with the improbable name of Tilden Hogge. Rita visited the school every day to help with classes in reading and music. Sam and James walked half a mile to catch a bus that carried them ten miles over a narrow winding road known throughout the county for disastrous car wrecks. They spent an hour and a half in transit.

The principal was a former high school football coach who never had a winning season. As sports editor for the school paper, I attended all the games, and sometimes the coach drove me home afterward, long rides through the dark woods. His compensation for a lifetime of county service was command over a grade school. All the teachers were women. They wore dresses to school, because, as one told me, the principal preferred to see them in formal clothes.

One day Sam came home extremely upset. I assumed he'd been in a schoolyard battle and prepared to explain the duality of how fighting is bad but sticking up for yourself is good. I was wrong. He hated school. He was bored and unchallenged. No one was allowed to ask questions. The gym teacher punished kids by refusing to let them drink water or urinate during gym class. Lunch recess lasted fifteen minutes, the only break in seven hours.

I asked Sam if there was anything else.

He shrugged.

“Are you mad about something,” I said.

He nodded.

“At me,” I asked.

He nodded, staring at the floor.

“It's okay to be mad at me,” I said. “But you should tell me why.”

He looked at me full on, his eyes damp and scared.

“Because you brought me here,” he said.

I hugged him hard, my mind overwhelmed by a crush of memory—years of hating school, the boredom that turned me into a discipline problem, the anger I had at living in a place with no art classes. In twelve years of education, we never had a field trip.

The next day I visited Tilden Hogge to speak with Sam's teacher, and quickly ran afoul of the rules. Parents were not allowed to enter a classroom, even after school. A painted stripe on the floor was a barrier over which no one could cross, similar to minimum security prisons. Talking with a teacher required an advance appointment made through the principal's office.

The next afternoon Rita and I followed procedure and met with the teacher who assured us that Sam was very well behaved and always polite.

“Thank you,” I said. “But I'm concerned with his attitude about school in general, not his behavior while he's here. He's a kid who always loved school. This is the first time he didn't.”

She was surprised at his unhappiness, and said she couldn't imagine why he would feel that way. She suggested it was due to being a new student.

“He's changed schools before,” I said. “He's always adjusted easily.”

She told me again how well behaved he was.

“What I'm concerned with,” I said, “is that he just doesn't like school anymore. He's always loved learning. I want to try and help him appreciate school again.”

She said she thought that was important, and gave us some advanced math workbooks. Rita thanked her and we made an appointment with the principal for the following day. As we drove home, Rita said she didn't think we'd made ourselves clear to the teacher.

“I agree,” I said. “It's tricky. I don't want to complain and have her take it out on Sam.”

“It's more like you don't want to hurt her feelings.”

“You're right. I come back here and I revert or something. I don't want to make waves. Sam is suffering the same way I did. I feel powerless to help him.”

The following afternoon we met with the principal in his office. He asked about my siblings. He said he'd read my first book and liked it.

“Thank you,” I said. “Sam has always loved school and excelled at it until recently. I'm worried about him.”

The principal told us that Sam was a good listener, didn't run in the halls, and had a fine attendance record.

“I'm glad to hear that, but my concern is his loss of enthusiasm. He doesn't like school and doesn't want to go.”

The principal said that all kids went through that. He said that I was the same way.

“In high school, yes. But Sam is a third grader. I want to head him off so he doesn't have problems in high school.”

The principal asked what problems Sam had at other schools.

“None,” I said. “That's the whole deal. He only started having them here.”

The principal said that Sam was a model child, and he wished all the kids were as well behaved as he was. He suggested that I work with his teacher on this.

“Okay, thanks for your time. One more thing. I want my boys to be allowed to drink water during gym.”

The principal winked at me and said he'd keep an eye on Sam and that I had nothing to worry about.

We left the school numb and frustrated. Rita began to cry in the car. She felt betrayed by local people who'd told us that Tilden Hogge was an excellent school. As it turned out, many teachers in the region sent their children to the few private schools that were available. When I was a child, my own teachers' kids attended Breckenridge, a twelve-year school operated by the university as an enticement to hiring faculty who were concerned about the quality of public schools in Appalachia. Breckenridge was closed now, but some Rowan County teachers put their kids in a Christian academy. Rita and I believed that religion was best taught at home rather than the classroom and neither of us felt qualified to begin home-schooling. We resolved to work with Sam on all manner of outside projects.

A few weeks after Sam's tears, a local newspaper ran a story inviting people to visit an archaeological site at Poppin Rock and help search for artifacts. Some college students had organized an amateur dig, sanctioned by the state, hoping to find evidence of a nineteenth-century town. Sam was very excited about missing a day of school to hang out with cool college kids. Rita decided to join him. She didn't understand why I was so steadfast against going, and I didn't tell her.

When I was a child, I also went to Poppin Rock in the company of a local college student. He had long hair and a beard. We parked on the main road and crossed a fence, trespassing I later learned, and walked through the woods to high cliffs. He pointed to black marks on the rock walls and said they were made by ancient fires. We climbed to a narrow ledge where he gave me a spoon to search the loose dirt for artifacts. I don't recall finding anything, but he discovered the skeletal remains of a baby, which scared him so much that we left in a hurry. He said it was bad luck.

Rita came home from the trip weary and streaked with dirt. Sam was ecstatic. He'd discovered the best item of the day—a hundred-year-old bottle, fully intact. For the first time in months, he was enthusiastic about going to school. He had a story to tell his classmates and a digging tool for show-and-tell. He wanted to be an archaeologist when he grew up.

After supper I read to him in bed. He wondered if you could really dig to China. I asked if he thought a Chinese person could suddenly appear from the earth holding a shovel. He grinned. His eyes closed and I kissed his sleeping face, hoping the ghost of my lips would haunt his days.

A week later an official letter warned me that if my son continued to miss school, legal proceedings would be brought against my family. I made an appointment with the truant officer. Rita wore a dress and I wore a sports coat. We took a clipping from the Ashland paper featuring a photograph of Sam proudly holding his artifact. The truant officer was a pleasant man from the western part of the state who tried to be charming. I introduced myself as a university professor and Rita as a musician who did volunteer work at Tilden Hogge and the public library. The truant officer began talking about “these hill people” and how they required special attention.

“I am one of these hill people,” I said. “I grew up in Rowan County. I resent the way you're talking about families you're supposed to be helping.”

The truant officer smiled and said that I must miss Breckenridge, the former private school for the children of professors. Closing it was a shame.

“No,” I said. “I went to the county schools. Now what can you tell me about this threat from the law?”

If Sam missed any more school, the truant officer was compelled to notify the county attorney, who was in turn compelled to initiate legal proceedings. He said that his hands were tied.

“We're taking him to a museum next week in Lexington,” I said. “I've made arrangements for Sam to have a special meeting with a curator. There has to be a way out of this.”

The truant officer suggested that providing an excused reason for missing school was one way.

“You mean lie,” I said. “You want me to teach my kid that lying is right.” He said nothing. Rita and I stood, bade him good-bye, and politely left the office. Hills surrounded town like the walls of a pit. Eastern Kentucky teachers commonly taught at the same grade school they had attended as a child, as did their teachers before them. Many had graduated from MSU. This insular practice made it hard to stay aware of fresh approaches in the classroom. My difficulties teaching college stemmed from trying to break student patterns that began in grade school, the very patterns that I had been taught. I performed well in school because I excelled at memorization. Teachers gave me excellent grades, in part for making their jobs easier, a method that still held true in the hills.

A recent statewide legislation, the Kentucky Education Reform Act, known as KERA, was designed to improve the schools by breaking down such outdated methods as placing the desks in rows, a discipline originating in nineteenth-century Prussia. KERA was attacked by teachers throughout the hills. Some older teachers preferred to resign their positions rather than conform to higher academic standards. Learning new ways to teach required too much effort. It was not the children who were ignorant, but the teachers. Many were fighting to stay that way.

Having been exposed to more progressive classrooms, Sam could not adapt to the oppressive climate of Kentucky. He said school was like an old movie where the teacher stood in front of the class and lectured, and the students couldn't ask questions. I realized that nothing had changed since I was in school. I had come home to help my people and wound up hurting my son.

No one in my family ever asks about my work. Each book I publish scares them until they read it and feel a certain relief that I didn't tell the worst. I know that Arthur leaves out the worst parts, too. He fears that telling his story might provide fuel to the forces of Holocaust Revisionism who will proclaim him a liar. He believes that nothing can halt the repetition of genocide.

“All the books about the war are full of lies,” he says.

“Why, Arthur?”

“When the victims write about their experience, there is a tendency to make themselves sound better than they were. Remember, Sonny, no heroes.”

I ask why he agreed to this book, and he says he worries about it: Did he get the English right? Does he come off like a whining victim? I tell him that no one can dispute the truth. Since he does not think of himself as a victim, he will not be viewed that way. Finally, I assure him that I cut out all his whining.

He chuckles, a brief sound letting me know he recognizes my attempt at humor.

“Last night,” he says, “I could not sleep. It disturbed me that my thoughts are on paper. I don't want to say nothing nasty about you, Sonny, but do you understand what I tell you? Maybe I don't use the right words. It makes me feel scared, a strange feeling. I hope you have written my heart.”

“I did my best, Arthur. You told your story. That's all anyone can do.”

It occurs to me that I am treating Arthur the way my editor deals with me when I call under the grip of prepublication anxiety. Arthur wants to know if I worry about reviews. I dust off the ancient adage and trot it out for his perusal: A good review is helpful, but a bad review is better than no review.

“Besides,” I say, “reviews don't matter.”

“Sonny,” he says, “I think you are lying a little.”

“You're right, Arthur. But there's nothing we can do. We have to hope for the best and accept what they say.”

“Who reviews books?”

“Very few people make a living at it. Some are professors. Some are writers.”

“Other writers review books?”

“It's a way to make extra money. I do it, too.”

“Like the Jewish Police.”

“What do you mean?”

“In camp they help their friends and hurt their enemies.”

“I don't know if it's as simple as that.”

“Let me tell you something, Sonny. Something I learned in life. Everything is simple. So simple. Much simpler than you think. Help your friends, hurt your enemies.”

“Do you have any enemies?”

“No, Sonny. I have outlived them all.”