No Heroes by Chris Offutt Page B

his sunglasses. This last part I considered a stroke of genius. The music included “The Blank Generation” by Richard Hell, who was not only a Kentuckian but had been born in the same hospital as me. For a few years we had lived half a mile apart in Lexington. After graduation my plan was to leave Kentucky forever. Now I was back at MSU and Richard Hell was fifty years old.
    I checked the time and went upstairs to teach another class in much the same fashion as the first. Afterward I walked to the old courthouse and ate a sack lunch. A torpor settled over me like a quilt of sand. It was as though I were inhabiting the past and the future simultaneously, encased in a swaddling that forbade access to the present. I couldn’t be a teacher until shedding the memory of being a student.
    My graduate fiction writing class met in the same room where I’d been interviewed, with comfortable chairs surrounding tables pushed together. The students included a transfer student from China with extremely limited skills in English. Another was a nontraditional undergraduate who was older than me and tried incessantly to establish common points of reference through geography, event, and people’s last names. Another man wanted to tell me what he found objectionable with my books. One young man admitted that he was trying to raise his GPA by taking an easy course. Two women were high school teachers who would get a pay raise after completing the class. We talked briefly about the kind of writing we were interested in pursuing, a gamut that included horror, science fiction, romance, and “Little House on the Prairie type books.” After class the nontraditional student lingered.
    â€œEver hear of Andrew Offutt?” he said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs he kin?”
    â€œHe’s my father.”
    â€œI heard he was at a party with some guy with only one arm. Your daddy yelled out he was going tear that guys other arm off.”
    I nodded and the guy left.
    I’d become accustomed to Andy Offutt stories all my life. Everyone in the county told them. In fact, my father told this same story often, each time with a rising pride that I never fully comprehended. The one-armed guy had been an MSU administrator, now retired.
    The late-afternoon class was Intro to Creative Writing, filled with sophomores and juniors. One student set the tone by claiming that expecting him to turn in assignments interfered with his artistic freedom. He then stomped out, slamming the door. Everyone waited for my reaction.
    â€œWell,” I said, “I think we just found a real writer. He knows as well as I do that it’s impossible to teach writing. I can help you all learn to revise, but you have to write your own first draft. Any questions?”
    A young man slouching in the back row raised his hand and spoke. “You care what we write about?”
    â€œNope. No rules.”
    â€œGood, I don’t like rules.”
    â€œMe, neither,” I said. “And neither did the guy who left.”
    People laughed and I told them about painting the curbs in front of the very building we were in. A young woman named Sandra said she understood “no rules,” but she didn’t always know what to write about.
    â€œThat’s a good question,” I said. “This morning a friend of mine suggested that I tell you all to write whatever’s on your mind.”
    I told them about Harley and their attention became downright perky when I mentioned that he had some dope.
    â€œWrite what you care about,” I said. “Write what hurts you. If there’s someone whose approval you want, write about that person.”
    â€œWhat if that’s all the same person?”
    â€œThen you’re lucky,” I said. “You have a lifetime’s worth of material.”
    I ended class shortly after that. The student from the back row ducked back into the room. He wore a flannel shirt over a gangsta-rap