No Heroes (20 page)

First time in my life I decided to run away. The whole time I am in camp, people are pushing me. They said, you go this way, so I go this way. If they want to kill me, they kill me. I am offered, I am here. Do what you want.

We slept in the hay and when we wake we hear Russian soldiers. We came out, holding each other. They give us food, give us a place to sleep like human beings and some clothing. We walked to a train under their protection.

When I come out of the straw, I couldn't believe it. It was something that you can't explain. Can't describe. I can stand up and nobody's killing me. I am alive. It's like the best song or the best music or the best art or the best anything. I am standing there and breathing the free air.

Each spring MSU gives a small award to an Appalachian writer. I had been nominated the previous year but members of the English department had protested that my work was of insufficient quality. The last winner had published many mystery novels. This year my supporters prevailed and an award luncheon was scheduled. University protocol required me to include department colleagues, the dean, and any academic alliances that were ready to go public. I departed from convention and invited people from Haldeman, including my childhood buddies Faron and Roy. In forty years we had never seen each other dressed in fancy clothes. Each of us wore a sports jacket, our best jeans with a belt, and shirts with collars and sleeves.

“Goddam, Chris,” Faron said, “you look like a Christmas turkey—plumb full of shit.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and you look like a pup who shit on the porch.”

“Well, boys,” Roy said, “both of you all look like shit that took a shit.”

Many of the people had not seen each other in a while. A few had never been on campus before. I chose a table in the corner near the kitchen, leaving the places of honor for my guests.

The kitchen staff served shrimp cocktail as an appetizer, which I took as a form of culinary flattery. Unfortunately, I am allergic to shellfish and set mine aside to wait for the main course. A few others were doing the same. The staff cleared the table and began bringing sponge cake and coffee.

Rita leaned to me and said, “That's it?”

I glanced around the room at everyone else frowning in hasty conference with their tablemates. I told the kitchen staff that my kids wouldn't eat shrimp and asked for large turkey sandwiches, which I surreptitiously slipped to Faron and Roy.

The president of MSU gave his song and dance about the award and I stepped forward for the five-hundred-dollar check.

“Thank you all for being here,” I said. “It has meant a lot to come home as a teacher because so many teachers have made a big difference in my life. Some of you are here now. One isn't, my favorite teacher, Mary Alice Jayne. She taught me to read. I'd like to donate this check to the Rowan County Public Library in Mrs. Jayne's name. I'd also like to request the money be spent on children's books.”

The Haldeman people clapped, their eyes damp. Never before had someone given university money to the county with such alacrity. A few days later Frankie the librarian called me to arrange for official paperwork. She took me in her office, where she told me that she wasn't sure how to handle the check because it was the largest donation the library had ever received. Hearing that, as we say in the hills, just broke my little heart. She said each book would receive a small card pasted in the front that said it was given in the memory of Mary Alice Jayne. She asked if I wanted my name on it and I declined.

I left the library and passed a man walking with a familiar gait. I stopped the car and Harley got in as if he was expecting me.

“Hey, Harley,” I said. “Want a ride?”

“No, I just need me a little rest is all.”

“Where's your car?”

“I broke up with my girlfriend and the car went, too.”

“What happened?”

“Well, she got to where she was wanting me to do things all the time. I couldn't live my life and be with her. Treating her good wasn't enough. Know what I mean?”

“That's why most people break up, Harley. They want to control the other person.”

“I had enough of that at home. If I want that, I can go back to the house.”

“I know.”

“She thinks so much of her own hide, she'd gut herself just to keep it.”

“Still not drinking?” I said.

“No, I had me what they call a slip right here lately, but I'm all right now. They said I'm in with a rough bunch, but I don't know no others.”

“You know me, Harley.”

“You're rough as a cob, Chris.”

“You sure I can't run you somewhere?”

“I don't have nowhere to go right now. You reckon they'd let me stay at the jail, you know, for old times' sake?”

“I don't know. It won't be the same sober.”

“Damn sure won't, will it?”

“I was thinking of going to Haldeman if you want a ride.”

He nodded and we drove east into the hills so steep you'd skin your nose climbing out. With Harley in the car, Haldeman seemed to transform to its former glory. My mind was thankfully free of memory; I only felt our shared past.

“Stand on it, Chris,” Harley said. “Let's see what this rig is made of.”

I mashed my foot to the gas pedal and held it there. The Malibu jumped forward as if kicked by a giant. Harley was laughing. I forced my attention on driving instead of the land flashing past like speeded-up film. The needle on the speedometer topped a hundred and hovered in the redline with nowhere left to go, but I could hear the big engine continuing to strain. In Haldeman, I slowed for a couple of turns and turned into his hollow. Harley stopped me.

“Best not come up the creek,” he said. “They don't know this car.”

“Reckon they'll shoot?”

“Can't tell, Chris. If I saw this car I might shoot you for it. It'll flat fly.”

He left the car and leaned in the open door.

“One thing, Chris. When you go back, you know, into all that out there. You're still yet a Haldeman boy.”

“I know it.”

“Keep your ass wiped.”

I aimed the Malibu toward town, feeling like a pilgrim in my own country. Haldeman had been abandoned in the name of progress. The feds shut the post office and retired the zip code. The grade school was closed. The only store sat vacant. The roads were blacktop and town water replaced the wells. The bootlegger was gone, the poolroom burnt down, and the poker game moved elsewhere. The steel train rails were peeled from the earth and the cross-ties hauled away. The rail bed was ideal for trailers, which stretched through the hills like cattle cars tethered to the land. Nothing was left of Haldeman except geography.

Time had mown my hometown down.

Each day we taped, Arthur talked for several hours. The sun faded behind the hills and the room became dark. I didn't want to interrupt by suggesting a light. Eventually we sat in utter darkness. The kids were asleep, the house quiet. Arthur wanted to take a drive. We went outside to my car and he stood on the driver's side, befuddled and confused.

“Tell me,” he said, “why is this wheel here?”

Relating his story had returned him so firmly to Europe that he expected the steering wheel to be on the opposite side of the car.

“It's okay,” I said. “We're in America. It's okay.”

“I hate okay,” he said. “In this country, everything is okay. I talk to my daughter, she says the baby is okay. Her husband is okay. The new job is okay. Everything is okay but I know nothing. In Europe okay was the first word I learned. They said, do you speak English, and I said, okay. Then I learned fuck you. The next time somebody says something is okay, I'm going to say fuck you.”

“Okay.”

“Fuck you.”

Arthur laughed for a long time.

My former teacher, Frank Conroy, called to offer a visiting position at The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. I accepted without hesitation. Rita was ecstatic at the prospect of a return to the only place she'd ever liked living. Eleven years ago, broke and desperate, I'd left Kentucky to attend graduate school in Iowa. Now Iowa was again bailing me out of the hills like my own private French Foreign Legion.

We sold our house within a week, accepting earnest money pending closure. The realtor assured us that the buyer's loan was in the bag. I drove a car held together by duct tape to Iowa City and found a small house in the neighborhood Rita preferred. An Iowa bank granted a loan without my needing to lie, and I quickly closed on the house. Two weeks later, the sale of the house in Kentucky fell through. I suddenly found myself unemployed with no savings, and a quarter of a million dollars in debt. For the next two weeks, I didn't sleep and Rita didn't eat. We could live on credit cards until my Iowa job started, but the salary wouldn't cover two mortgages. Worse, we'd missed the brief window of house-selling in Morehead. The only people who move to Rowan County with intent to purchase a home are professors or doctors, and real estate deals occur for a single month. That month was long past. Our house had sat vacant for a year before we bought it. Now we faced the same problem.

The realtor blamed everything on the buyer, Dale Greer, a man I'd vaguely known years before. He'd had an illustrious career in television before settling in Morehead as a professor. I called him and asked if I could come by and talk. He grunted yes and I drove to his house. He invited me in and we eyed each other warily like two tomcats who might be enemies. I breathed long and deep to ease my way out of the tension.

“Look,” I said, “I need to sell my house. I'm in a bad jam. I already bought one in Iowa and now I owe two banks a fortune. When the sale here fell through I had to get what they call a bridge loan and the interest is killing me. Do you want my house or what?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want it.”

“So what's the problem?”

“You tell me, Chris.”

“I don't know, Dale. That's why I'm here. The realtor tells me you're uncooperative, that your loan's no good, that nobody can get along with you.”

“That's a laugh. The realtor said you were an asshole.”

We stared at each other without speaking. Behind him I could see out the window into a neighbor's yard that appeared vaguely familiar. I recognized the furniture but not the view.

“That's Mary Alice Jayne's house,” he said. “I saw you over there before she died. Your kids, too.”

“She was a good lady.”

“My wife looked in on her once a week.”

“The whole county took care of her.”

Again we stared at each other. We'd shifted from cats to a couple of dogs trying to get along.

“I should have called you sooner,” I said.

“The realtor told me not to talk to you.”

“Same here, Dale. I thought maybe you were trying to mess with me on the price.”

“I can see how you might think that way, but it's not true.”