Read Online No Heroes by Chris Offutt - Free Book Online

T-shirt. His body was marked by tattoos and piercings. Portable stereo headphones dangled around his neck. I asked his name.
    â€œEugene from Martin County.”
    I shook his hand and he frowned.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I said.
    â€œNo teacher ever did that before.”
    â€œI’ll have to speak to them about that.”
    â€œDo you like to read?” he said.
    â€œSure do,” I said. “You?”
    â€œYes and no. Not what they make you read, but what I like.”
    â€œI know what you mean. What do you like to read?”
    â€œShort stories.”
    â€œMe, too. Is there any writer you like?”
    â€œI’ve read James Still, Gurney Norman, and Chris Holbrook.”
    â€œGood. You started with the Kentucky writers and now you can expand from there. Why don’t you let me bring you a couple of books next class?”
    â€œBuddy, you got a deal.”
    He nodded and left. I realized that if I were nineteen today, I’d be tattooed like a comic book, with more metal hanging off me than a tackle box. Any play I wrote would have a hip-hop score. I watched Eugene leave, feeling as if I’d found the student I came home to teach.

Sam and James Learn About the Holocaust

    Sam is reading Maus, a comic book about the Holocaust that depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Rita worries about the effect on Sam because she learned of her parents’ experience at age twelve by watching a film that featured footage from the camps. Until then, she had no idea what her parents had endured.
    I think reading Maus is a good way for Sam to understand history. Later I’ll explain that his grandparents were mice. Every couple of pages Sam asks a question. I decide to sit across the room and transcribe our conversation in the same manner as when talking to Arthur on the phone.
    â€œHow do you know you’re a Jew?” Sam says.
    â€œBecause your mom and dad are Jews.”
    â€œKnow what I’d do? I’d tell people I’m not a Jew.”
    â€œSome people did that.”
    â€œI’d leave.”
    â€œSome did that, too.”
    â€œWhat’s a dictator?” Sam said.
    â€œA boss with an army who makes people do what he wants.”
    â€œThat’s stupid.”
    â€œWhy?” I said.
    â€œBecause you couldn’t say he was a bad boss, right?”
    â€œThat’s one of the problems all right.”
    â€œDid all the Germans hate the Jews or did they just do what Hitler said?”
    â€œA little of both.”
    â€œWhy didn’t they kill him?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThis guy in here, the little mouse guy. They knew he was a Jew and it was World War II. So why didn’t they kill him? I mean, these people had the power to kill him and they hated him. So why not?”
    I shrug and he goes back to reading. His grandfather has pondered the same question every day for fifty years. Arthur craves a reason for his survival. Irene admits the truth more readily than her husband. She says survival was random and she was lucky, but Arthur doesn’t want to believe it is that simple.
    Sam goes into the other room and James sits in the same chair—my chair—and opens Maus. He cannot read but he studies the pictures very carefully. He is five years old and wants to be an artist when he grows up.
    â€œWhy is this comic book in black and white?” he says.
    â€œWhy do you think?”
    â€œBecause it was made before color.”
    After a few minutes, James brings the book to me. He points to a scene of mouse prisoners and cat captors. One prisoner has been promoted to the boss of other prisoners, what Arthur called the Jewish Police. He is drawn with the face of a pig.
    â€œIs this guy a pig?” James asks.
    I tell him yes and he wants to know why. I wonder how to explain the cultural metaphor of a pig as a cop. I tell James the guys a pig because the cat and mouse faces were already used. That satisfies him and he