No Heroes by Chris Offutt Page B

communication.”
    â€œSon, you ain’t changed a bit.”
    â€œHey,” I said. “You seen Harley around?”
    â€œThat’s one old boy could use some carotene. I pity the world if Harley gets saved. He’ll dry a river out and wear the preacher down. I got to go, son, I can’t be dark getting home. Makes me nervous to drive at night.”
    â€œAll right,” I said. “See ya.”
    He strode away clutching the video. I envied Jimmy Joe for knowing exactly what he wanted—the comfort of familiarity. You can drive five hundred miles in any direction and eat the same food, put the same gas in your car, sleep at the same hotel, watch the same TV show, and admire the same bland print screwed to the wall. Freedom is terrifying. Taxi Driver is soothing.

Arthur Loses an Eye

    The food dispersed to the prisoners was lousy. Sometimes the soup we got was decent. In the evening you could stand and get coffee. It wasn’t really coffee, just black water, but it was hot. They take some corn, roast it, then brew it, and make coffee out of it. You could drink it. It tasted bitter, but it had some nutrients in it.
    I am waiting to get coffee in a long line of prisoners standing in front of the kitchen. Naturally the Jewish Police were keeping order, so a guy wouldn’t go twice for food. They’re walking back and forth with whips, about six feet long, like for animals. Every so often the whip goes over the prisoner’s head. Everybody knows that. We are standing and—pow— the end of the whip takes my eye. It came over the back of the head. The tip hit my eye. That’s it. I was blind from then on.

The Worst Thing for Irene

    The worst thing was being alone.
    I was lucky. I was never beaten up. My finger was hit once with a hammer. Just for fun. I was working on something in the paper factory and I put my finger there, and he came and hit me. It broke the finger. It was not that I was punished. He was just playing. The hammer was laying there next to me so he picked it up and hit. I was not physically abused. But I saw killing, a lot of killing.
    That was the worst thing.

College Students Now and Then

    Two activities that give me genuine happiness are writing alone in a room and walking alone in the woods. In Kentucky I combined them by hiding a series of collapsible camp chairs among the trees. Each morning I walked a different route, moving from one chair to another. I also began writing longhand in small notebooks, exactly as I’d written many years before, recording prolonged journal entries about daily events. I had no plan, no hope, no motive to my writing. It was merely a habit that evolved into a discipline. I tried to write what came to mind. Sometimes I sat for hours without writing a single word.
    The joy of nature is its constant reminder of how humans no longer belong. We can do nothing as perfect as a bird flying through the precise center of a small space between branches. Alone among the trees, I desire nothing. I try not to seek, which frees me to see what is revealed. Each day I empty the cistern of my mind and let the woods refill me. I want what is here to become who I am. I want to carry the secrets of the trees.
    On the mornings I wrote in the woods, I entered the classroom wearing muddy boots and a plaid coat matted with burrs. Kentuckians were accustomed to the idea of walking in the woods as a necessary part of life. A few students told me they had followed my example and begun writing in the woods. One of these was Eugene, who often lingered after class.
    â€œHow you doing in your other classes,” I said.
    â€œAll right, I reckon. Sometimes I don’t think I’m cut out for school.”
    â€œI know the feeling. What are you cut out for?”
    â€œWell, that’s just it. I don’t rightly know. Sometimes I can’t stand to be at home, but I don’t know where else to go. That’s why I’m in