by Chris Offutt
“You’ll speak the same language,” she said. “It’s a baby, not a bird.”
I nodded and left for the woods, pondering the wisdom of my wife. Fatherhood implies an automatic taming, the necessity of employment, a beginning of ownership. I’d expected glimmers of paternal anxiety but the onrush of fears was a box canyon ambush. I doubted my abilities to raise a child without ruining it. Although I trusted Rita implicitly, in my worst moments I worried that the baby might not be mine. At other times I was convinced that some long-buried Offutt gene would surface, producing a sideshow freak. Mainly, I was afraid that Rita’s love would shift away from me.
Most of our friends were single and none had children. Some envied the pregnancy, while others considered us brave, possibly stupid. We had no one to talk to, no models of how people dealt with kids. I mentioned this in a pokergame, and a guy derisively asked if I thought I was the first man to father a child. I said nothing because the answer was yes, that was exactly how I felt. I knew that drastic change was coming, but had no way to prepare for it.
My life’s progression had been a toxic voyage bringing me to the safety of the flatland, where I began each day by entering the woods along the river. I’ve become adept at tracking animals, finding the final footprint of skull and bone. Many people are afraid of the woods but that’s where I keep my fears. I visit them every day. The trees know me, the riverbank accepts my path. Alone in the woods, it is I who is gestating, preparing for life.
Where I’m from, the foothills of southern Appalachia are humped like a kicked rug, full of steep furrows. Families live scattered among the ridges and hollows in tiny communities containing no formal elements save a post office. My hometown is a zip code with a creek. We used to have a store but the man who ran it died. Long before my birth, a union invalidated the company scrip, shut the mines, and left a few men dead. Two hundred people live there now.
Our hills are the most isolated area of America, the subject of countless doctoral theses. It’s an odd sensation to read about yourself as counterpart to the aborigine or Eskimo. If VISTA wasn’t bothering us, some clown was running around the hills with a tape recorder. Strangers told us we spoke Elizabethan English, that we were contemporary ancestors to everyone else. They told us the correct way to pronounce “Appalachia,” as if we didn’t know where we’d been living for the past three hundred years.
One social scientist proclaimed us criminal Scotch-Irish clansmen deemed unfit to live in Britain—our hills as precursor to Australia’s penal colony. Another book called us the heirs to errant Phoenicians shipwrecked long before Columbus seduced Isabella for tub fare. My favorite legend made us Melungeons, a mysterious batch of folk possessing ungodly woodskills. We can spot fleas hopping from dog to dog at a hundred yards; we can track a week-old snake trail across bare rock. If you don’t believe it, just ask the sociologist, who spent a season like a fungus in the hills.
The popular view of Appalachia is a land where every man is willing, at the drop of a proverbial overall strap, to shoot, fight, or fuck anything on hind legs. We’re men who buy half-pints of boot-legged liquor and throw the lids away in order to finish the whiskey in one laughing, brawling night, not caring where we wake or how far from home. Men alleged to eat spiders off the floor to display our strength, a downright ornery bunch.
The dirt truth is a hair different. The men of my generation live in the remnants of a world that still maintains a frontier mentality. Women accept and endure, holding the families tight. Mountain culture expects its males to undergo various rites of manhood, but genuine tribulation under fire no longer exists. We’ve had to create our own.
Once a week, Mom drove fifteen miles to town for groceries, accompanied by her children. We visited the interstate, which was creeping closer in tiny increments, bisecting hills and property, rerouting creeks. We called it the four-laner. It slithered in our direction like a giant snake. Mom said 1-64 ran clear to California, a meaningless distance since none of us had ever crossed the county line. The completed road linked the world to the hills, but failed to connect us to the world.
I never intended to quit high school, but like many of my peers, I simply lost the habit. Education was for fools. Girls went to college seeking a husband; boys went to work. The pool hall’s grimy floor, stained block walls, and furtive tension suited me well. The only requirement was adherence to an unspoken code of ethics, a complex paradigm that I still carry today, A rack of balls cost a dime, cheeseburgers a quarter. I ran the table three times in a row one day, and afterwards could not find a willing player. Inadvertently I had alienated myself from the only society that had ever tolerated me, a pattern that would continue for years.
After a week of shooting pool alone, I was ripe for an army recruiter who culled the pool hall like a pimp at Port Authority. I was under age but my parents gleefully signed the induction papers. The recruiter ferried me a hundred miles to Lexington, where I failed the physical examination.
“Albumin in the urine,” the doctor said. “No branch will take you.”
I felt weak. Tears cut lines down my face. My own body had trapped me in the hills, spirit pinioned by the flesh. I didn’t know which was worse, the shame of physical betrayal or the humiliation of having cried in front of a hundred eager men-to-be. They moved away from me to hide their own embarrassment. I was subsequently denied admittance to the Peace Corps, park rangers, -the ranks of firemen and police. I’d never know camaraderie, or test myself in sanctioned ways against other men.
That summer I began to steal and smoke dope, and in the fall I had no choice but to attend college. The only school within the mountains had recently become a university. After two years, I quit and announced my plans to become an actor in New York. Jennipher, the one girl I’d had the courage to love, had married a quarterback and moved far away. My sisters considered me a hopeless redneck. My brother refused to live with me, and my father and I hadn’t spoken civilly in upwards of thirty-eight months.
Mom fixed me a sack lunch the morning I left. We sat quietly at the completed highway, staring at the fresh, clean blacktop. Mom was trying not to cry. I felt bad for being the first to erode the family, though I’d already been at it for a while. The road stretched to the horizon like a wide creek and I thought of Daniel Boone questing for space. The road in had become a way out.
Mom pressed a ten-dollar bill in my hand and dropped her head.
“Write when you get work,” she mumbled.
Birdsong spilled from the wooded hills. I began walking, the pack on my back angled like a cockeyed turtle shell. A pickup stopped and hauled me out of Kentucky. The hills relaxed their taut furls, billowing gently like sheets on a clothesline, I had a fresh haircut, two hundred dollars, and a grade school photograph of Jennipher. I was already homesick.
When I told drivers that I was heading for New York to be an actor, they grinned and shook their heads. A trucker pointed to the radio and told me to act like I was turning it on. I slept under a tree in Ohio and camped the next night behind a truck stop in Pennsylvania. On the third day, I entered the Holland Tunnel.
The world on the other side was so alien that my chief advantage was the ability to speak and read English. My accent’s raucous twang betrayed me. I vowed to eliminate the guttural tones, swallowed endings, and stretching of single-syllable words. Until then, I remained silent. Manhattan was filthy and loud but similar to the hills: packed with illiterate men, unattainable women, and threat of injury. I regarded avenues as ridges, and the cross streets as hollows. Alleys were creeks that trickled into the river of Broadway. New York wasn’t that big, just tall.
Like most groups of immigrants, Kentuckians abroad form a tight community that helps newcomers. Having left family and land, we could not quite rid ourselves of the clannish impulse dating back to the Celts. We still roved the civilized world, but no longer painted ourselves blue before the attack. I moved into an apartment on the Upper West Side with three natives of Kentucky. They were gr
aduates of the college I’d quit, older students I vaguely knew, struggling actors. They let me sleep on the couch. The halls between apartments were so narrow that if two people met, both had to turn sideways for passage. More people lived in my building than on my home hill.
The city seemed predicated upon one’s innate ability to wait, a learned craft, routine as tying a shoe. You had to wait for a buzzer to enter a building, wait for the subway, wait for an elevator. I stood for two hours in a movie line only to learn that it was sold out and the line was for the next showing, two more hours away. Groups of people rushed down subway steps, then stood perfectly still. They rushed onto the train, and again became immobile until their stop, whereupon they’d rush out. The waiting was more exhausting than motion. People hurried, I decided, not because they were late but because they were sick of standing still.
The simple act of walking became a problem for me. I kept bumping into people, often tripping them or myself. I’d never had this problem before, possessing if not grace, at least a certain agility and physical awareness. It seemed as if people rushed into my path. One Saturday I sat on a bench at mid town and watched pedestrians, seeking insight. My error was a long, steady stride, necessary to cover the open ground of home. I simply set myself in motion and put my legs to work. New Yorkers took quick, short steps. They darted and danced, stopped short and sidestepped, constantly twisting their torsos and dipping their shoulders to dodge people. Since everyone was likewise engaged, the whole comedic street dance worked. I took a bus home and practiced in my room. As long as I concentrated, everything was jake, but the minute my attention wavered, my gait lengthened and someone’s legs entangled with mine.
I spent another two hours observing foot traffic and noticed that most New Yorkers possessed a morbid fear of automobiles. They assiduously avoided the curb, which left a narrow open lane at the edge of the sidewalk. I began walking as close to the gutter as possible.
My roommates were seldom home. To show appreciation for having been taken in, I decided to wash everyone’s laundry. The laundromat was a narrow chamber, very hot. I was the only white person and the only male. Conversation around me was incomprehensible. I’d read about black dialects of the inner city and was pleased in an odd way that I couldn’t understand what was being said. English had been melted and recast into their own tongue. It reminded me of being home. I wanted to tell the women that my native language was equally enigmatic to outsiders.
Folding laundry was a skill I lacked, and I started with the sheets, believing them to be easier. My arms weren’t long enough to span the sheet and it dragged the floor. I tried to fold it like a flag, draping one end over the table and working forward. The table didn’t provide enough tension and again the sheet slipped to the floor. I sorted a few socks while considering the problem.
Controlling the four corners of the sheet was essential, which led to a plan of theoretic elegance. I doubled the sheet and held two of its corners. I spread my legs, mentally counted to three, and threw the sheet into the air, snapping my wrists. The sheet unfurled and arced back. I caught one corner but missed the other. Encouraged, I took a deep breath and concentrated, knowing that I needed a slight correction in toss and grab. As I threw the sheet, someone entered the laundromat, producing a strong draft. The sheet blew over my head and shoulders. I dropped one corner. Unable to see, I stepped forward, placed my foot on the sheet and not so much fell as actually pulled myself to my knees, I jerked the sheet off my head. Above the cacophony of washers and dryers came the pearly sound of women laughing.
They walked past me and started folding my laundry. Perfect columns of T-shirts began to rise on the table. With an unerring sense of size, the women sorted the pants into stacks corresponding to my roommates and me. They refused my assistance and talked among themselves, I listened carefully, trying to isolate a word or phrase, but they spoke too fast for me to follow. They moved to their own chores without looking at me, as if embarrassed by their benevolence. I approached the nearest woman and thanked her. She nodded.
“I’m from Kentucky,” I said. “It’s not like New York.”
“Nothing is.”
“How did you learn to fold clothes so well?”
“My mother taught me.”
“In Harlem?”
Her eyes widened and her lips drew tight across her teeth, I realized the stupidity of assuming that all blacks grew up in Harlem, like thinking all Kentuckians came from Lexington or Louisville. She bent to her work, her face furious.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe not Harlem.”
“No! Not Harlem.”
“Where, then?”
“Puerto Rico. I am Puerto Rico!” She lifted her arms to include everyone in the laundromat. “Puerto Rico!”
“Puerto Rico,” I said.
“Sí.”
I leaned against the table, absolutely clobbered by an awareness that they’d been speaking Spanish, During the next few days, I wandered the blocks near my building. It was not a black neighborhood as I’d previously thought. Everyone was of Hispanic descent, but I felt more comfortable here than among the white people. My culture had much in common with the Latin—loyalty to a family that was often large, respect for the elderly and for children, a sharp delineation between genders. The men were governed by a sense of machismo similar to that which ruled in the hills. There was one quite obvious drawback—to them I was just another white man.
The random progress of a nose-down dog dropped me into a job on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Belched from the subway each morning, I strolled the Bowery past dozens of men dirty as miners. Many could not speak. Each payday, I gave away two packs’ worth of cigarettes, one at a time.
For six months I worked at a warehouse in the neighborhood, the first full-time job of my life. I collected clothing orders for a professional shipping clerk with forty years’ experience. His passive numbness frightened me. I was a gatherer of shirts and slacks; he was a hunter of numbers. The day’s highlight was staring at a Polaroid of a nude woman I’d found on the street. Ancient priests of South America used fake knives and animal blood to save the sacrificial virgins for themselves. Up north I just wanted a goddess to worship.
After work, I saw a tall woman with a huge jaw being harassed by a junkie. I chased the junkie away. The woman smiled and led me to an abandoned subway station with a boarded entrance. A pink dress hung loose on her lanky frame. She pried three planks free and slipped in, motioning down the steps to a bare mattress. She wasn’t attractive, but no one else had shown me the least bit of attention. I followed her. A musty breeze from the bowels of the earth fluttered trash along the floor. I felt snug and primal in the dank urban temple. I would become an albino, a blind white harlot in service to Ishtar.
She asked for a match. When I lit her cigarette, she caressed my face and grabbed my crotch, lashing my tongue with hers. I slid my hand down her stomach and between her legs. My fingers hit something hard tucked low against her abdomen. I was accustomed to people carrying guns and it seemed natural for a woman alone in the city to be armed. The only feasible option was to gain control of the pistol.
I ran my hand up her dress, wrapped my fingers around the barrel, and gave a quick tug. She moaned low and very deep. I pulled again and suddenly realized the gun was made of flesh. My entire body trembled in a fury of incomprehension. I stood, unable to speak. She threw her purse at me and laughed a taunting cackle that echoed in the tunnel. I ran up the stairs, plunged through the opening, and fell on the sidewalk. Two men holding hands stepped off the curb to avoid me.
The following day, I called in sick to the warehouse and stayed in the tub all day. When the water cooled, I refilled it, still hearing that laughter throbbing in my head. I was sure I’d found a circus freak, a hermaphrodite, the only one in the city and perhaps the entire country. At nineteen, it was beyond my understanding that a grown man would impersonate a female. Not all transvestites are gay, I later learned, but mine was. This seeme
d a crucial difference between the city and the hills—Appalachian men could acceptably fornicate with daughters, sisters, and livestock, but carnal knowledge of a man was a hanging offense.
I ate lunch daily at a diner on Great Jones Street. The joint was a showcase of deformity—goiters swelled throats, and tumors jutted from bodies, stretching gray skin. Hair sprouted in odd places. The owner kept a sawed-off shotgun close at hand. One day a stray woman appeared in a booth. She was short and dark, wearing tight pants which I studied closely for a telltale bulge. She noticed my observation and I quickly looked away. She moved near.
“Are you a mechanic?” she said. “My car needs work.”
“No. I’m an actor. Are you a girl?”
“Everybody I know is bisexual now.”
“Not me,” I said. “Want to go to the museum on Saturday?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Just can’t. Why don’t you visit me in Brooklyn on Sunday.”
“Where’s Brooklyn?”
She laughed and spoke loudly to all. “He wants to know where Brooklyn is!”
The simple purity of Jahi’s directions enthralled me: Take the Flatbush train to the end and get out. Walk down the street and go left. Ring the second bell. Finding a place at home involved landmarks such as the creek, the big tree, or the third hollow past the wide place in the road. After the quantum mechanics of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn sounded like simple geometry. I bought a new shirt for the date. That she was black didn’t matter—she was female and I was lonely. We were both at the bottom of our republic’s fabled melting pot.