My Father, the Pornographer : A Memoir (9781501112485)

by Offutt, Chris

  The movers were coming at the end of the week, and we were behind on preparations. I set aside my feelings. It wasn’t difficult. I hadn’t cried, hadn’t allowed myself to feel sorrow. There was simply too much to do. I went upstairs and tucked the Baggie in my suitcase. I still had boxes to fill, arrangements to make. We were low on packing tape. The gutters needed cleaning. I had to cancel the phone, talk to a lawyer, pay final bills. I could mourn later, be irritated later.

  I’d spent the summer organizing everything into two groups: one for Mom’s new place, a duplex in Oxford, Mississippi, and the rest bound for my house a few miles away in the country. Her load was furniture, clothes, and kitchen goods, while mine was Dad’s desk, books, guns, and porn. I walked the rooms of my childhood home one last time, knowing I might never see them again. Empty, it was no longer Dad’s house. I saw it as my parents had in 1964—the broad staircase, beautiful woodwork, and turn-of-the-century light fixtures. The living room seemed enormous without bulky furniture, centered around a fireplace with a mahogany mantel and carved posts. A good home for kids.

  My father chopped firewood every day until age sixty, primarily using a long-handled double-bit ax. For tough hardwood, he resorted to a heavy maul. Dad stored the tools outside, exposed to weather, which rendered them worthless. I intended to keep his ax. The chipped blade was dull and rusted. I loved the hickory handle, split at least twice and crudely repaired with small nails, ragged duct tape, and wire as loose as bangles on a wrist. I knew my father had made these repairs, because my mother would have known to use screws for the wood. She’d have wrapped individual pieces of wire instead of one long piece destined to unravel quickly. The ax represented a part of my father separate from all other aspects—the outdoors. Splitting wood was the only activity I ever witnessed him doing outside, and, more important, the only task he’d ever let me help with.

  My initial job was to gather pieces of bark to use as kindling. As I got older, I hauled armloads of firewood to the house. Next I graduated to placing a log upright on the chopping block, turning it in just the right way for Dad to see a knot. At age ten, I wielded a hatchet to trim small branches off the logs and split softwood for kindling.

  Dad talked as he worked, calling each log a warrior, describing his combat. A heavy piece of oak with multiple hidden knots was a log that fought back. A stroke that split the log cleanly at a single blow was a beheading. Bark was blood. Chips were body parts. If he misaligned his aim and cut off a small strip of wood that flew across the yard, he said his opponent had thrown a dagger. This was partly for my entertainment, but it went deeper for Dad. As I watched him split log after log, sweat running down his face, vapor puffing from his mouth, I understood that he had entered an illusory realm in which he was determined to defeat an army of soldiers one by one. His competence increased as the foes became more real in his imagination. It was important that I remain silent, a squire to the knight. Afterward, Dad set the ax head on the ground and leaned on the handle, breathing hard from exertion. He stared at the plain of battle with an expression of triumph.

  My car contained guns, bundles of cash I’d found hidden about the house, and boxes of vintage pornography. If I got pulled over and searched, I’d probably go to jail. If I had a wreck, money and porn would litter the interstate, mixed with my funeral suit, my grandfather’s rifle, a shotgun, three hundred rounds of ammunition, the remnants of my father’s ashes, and whatever was left of me.

  The last items to pack were Dad’s ax, the old maul, and a broadsword that wouldn’t fit in a box. Without plan or forethought, I carried them to the edge of the hill. Mom had cast the ashes in three distinct areas, now little more than gray streaks in the ground. A few tiny piles of sediment lay beneath blown leaves. I pushed the sword blade through the ash into the soft earth and pounded the hilt with the maul. I did the same with the ax. I placed the heavy maul on a pile of brush. I’d acted on impulse and now spoke without filter. “I know you were curious about the afterlife. Just in case there is one, I figure you’re here and know what I’m doing. The sword is for Andy. The ax is for John Cleve. The maul is for Turk Winter. I figure you’d appreciate this. Okay, Dad. See you.”

  A flash of silver metal glittered on the ground. I picked it up and wiped it on my pants to clean the dirt. It was a stainless-steel disc used by the crematorium to identify the corpse and later placed with the ashes. Number 179. An odd number. Square-free. A safe prime.

  Dad.

  Chapter Eleven

  MOM IS circumspect about details of her early years in Haldeman, stressing only that she was never unhappy: “That was where I was and I accepted it.” I can’t imagine it was easy—she’d grown up in a city of more than fifty thousand people, in a tightly knit community of working-class Irish, with many relatives. In Haldeman she lived on a dirt road in the woods with four young children and no friends or family nearby. Dad was gone every day and many nights, working as a salesman.

  To a large extent, my mother was on her own in a foreign environment. I was Mom’s sole source of aid, her little helper. She depended on me, and soon my siblings did, as well. Mom was the shepherd and I was the loyal guard dog, protecting my ragtag flock of three. Mom often said she liked it best when I got sick instead of my siblings because I didn’t need her ministrations, preferring to go off alone like a dog and lick my wounds.

  Naturally we all wanted my mother’s attention, but they received it more directly than I did. On me she bestowed a special appreciation for daily assistance and making her laugh. It was less a mother/son relationship and more like that of a senior and junior partner in a shared enterprise. There was a bliss to our closeness as we worked together to get through the day. Mom and I lived in fear of Dad, but each of us knew he loved us best. He remained in love with her throughout his life. I was his favorite child, the golden boy of the family. In his eyes, I was always firstborn son, prince to the king, a successor.

  I spent very little private time with my father, which made those experiences intensely meaningful. When I was thirteen, he took me on a long drive in his car. He was extremely quiet, which was unusual. A few times he began speaking, then faltered and trailed away in a mumble. After an hour or so we returned home and he gave me a pamphlet on frog reproduction. In retrospect I understand that he had tasked himself with explaining the birds and bees to his son but was unable to follow through.

  In 1971 he took me to the movie Billy Jack. He’d seen it the week before and believed its message of a lone man fighting social injustice would convey a valuable lesson. I was thrilled that he wanted to spend time with me. What I most recall is my father’s pre-movie commentary on behavior in a theater, which began with the choice of viewing position. Never sit down front, where you’d have to strain your neck looking up. Don’t sit in the back, because that was where people talked. The middle was no good, because most viewers sat there and you’d be hemmed in. The best seat was three quarters toward the rear, near the aisle, behind and to the side of a couple. No one would sit beside them and block your view. I listened attentively, and we entered the theater. We were the only people there.

  He whispered his instructions after we sat. Never buy popcorn, which was overpriced and stale. If you bought candy in a bag, it was best to open it in a swift rip, because the long, slow sound of tearing paper was distracting. Boxes of candy presented another problem, particularly jawbreakers. You had to open the box in a way that allowed it to be reclosed. If the structure of the box prevented that, it was crucial to hold the box upright to avoid spilling the candy. The issue was not waste but disturbance. The sound of jawbreakers rolling down the sloped theater floor was deeply offensive to Dad.

  The movie impressed me with its use of the word “fuck” and a blurred image of a female breast. The character Billy Jack used martial arts to fight for the rights of hippies and Native Americans. After the movie we went to the restroom and stood at the urinal. Dad told me that I was an alpha male. I nodded. He asked if I knew what that me
ant and I shook my head. He explained that an alpha male was more or less the boss dog of any outfit. It meant that beautiful women liked to talk to you, and men naturally looked to you for orders. He said that beta males were plumbers, doctors, mechanics, and engineers. Below them were delta males, which included everyone else.

  He explained the three types of alpha—I was an alpha three and Billy Jack was an alpha two. Dad waited long enough for me to understand that I was supposed to ask who was an alpha one, which I did.

  “Me,” he said, and zipped his pants.

  I went to the sink, but he told me I didn’t need to wash up.

  “Alphas don’t piss on their hands.”

  Years later Dad fondly recalled Billy Jack as the last movie we saw together. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was the only one.

  Chapter Twelve

  LIKE MOST young couples, my parents responded to situations as well as they could with limited information, conforming to convention and social expectation. They were good Catholics, both virgins when they married at age twenty-three.

  Mom was a McCabe and a McCarney, from Lexington’s tough Irish-Catholic community. Her grandfather, a career bartender, was known for having shot and killed a drunken customer. Other family members were bookies and gamblers. Her uncle embalmed the great racehorse Man o’ War. Her great-uncle studied for the priesthood, and her aunt became a nun. In high school, Mom began caring for her ill mother, a responsibility that steadily increased for four years. As eldest daughter, she took over the household—preparing meals for her sister and father—and began working at a bank.

  At age twenty-two, she met Dad at a Catholic Youth Organization dance. On their subsequent first date Dad wore a suit and took her to the nicest restaurant in town. She was flattered by his attention—he was handsome, funny, and very smart. He behaved like a gentleman, which meant “not trying any funny business.” They were the same age, born a few months apart. At seventeen, Mom had lost her mother. Dad’s father had died the same year. They’d endured loss and economic deprivation, but they also shared a strong hope for the future, motivated by the prosperity and enthusiasm of the 1950s. Ten months after meeting, they were married and remained deeply in love the rest of their lives. I never heard them argue or even disagree.

  Dad sold products for Procter & Gamble, supplying to small country stores, then coming home and writing late into the night. My mother read Dr. Spock and cooked from cans. In the evenings they drank martinis. Energetic and ambitious, my father moved into the insurance business and was offered a promotion selling policies to college students in the eastern hills. Not yet thirty, he related well to undergraduates. With three kids and a pregnant wife, he could bring his own circumstances to bear in a sales pitch: If something happened to me, what would my wife do? Who would feed my kids? You should ask yourself the same questions.

  In 1963, weary from driving a hundred miles a day, Dad moved the family to a small rental house in the conservative town of Morehead. My parents strove for upward mobility in a place that offered little in the way of a toehold. They socialized with college professors and doctors. Mom was intimidated by their levels of education but learned to hide it behind an increasingly polished patina of appropriate conversation. Dad was contemptuous of medical personnel, whom he referred to as “body plumbers.” He believed himself far more intelligent than the professors and considered a Ph.D. nothing more than a union card to teach.

  A year later Dad learned about a home for sale ten miles away, located on a ridge in the former mining community of Haldeman, population two hundred. The deceased town founder, L. P. Haldeman, had built a pair of fine homes and used the smaller house to entertain while living in the big one. His primary residence was for sale. It was a large house, solidly built fifty years before. The asking price was low due to a significant drawback. Situated at the bottom of the hill directly below the house was a factory that manufactured charcoal. The kilns produced a toxic smoke.

  Dad drove the family out of town, following a creek fed by rain gullies clawed into the hillside. Gleaming railroad tracks ran on a raised bed of fist-sized gravel. There were no road signs. We crossed railroad tracks and immediately smelled smoke. In the sole wide spot available, lodged tight to the base of the main hill, was the enormous charcoal factory, pumping black smoke into the sky. Dad left the blacktop for a steep dirt road that ascended a hill beneath a canopy of trees. Rocks bounced against the car. At the top of the hill, Dad stopped in a flat spot where six ridges merged like spokes to a wagon wheel. Surrounding the crossroads were more trees, their bottom leaves coated with charcoal dust. My parents consulted directions and followed a dirt road that faded to a set of ruts with grass growing in the center. At the end of the road stood the house, surrounded by the Daniel Boone National Forest.

  The windows lacked curtains and the interior was dim. Without furnishings, the house reverberated from our footsteps and echoing voices. There were three rooms downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs. It had been built with indoor plumbing, rare for the early 1900s in the hills, and had a bathroom on each floor.

  Mom wandered as if in a trance, her belly swollen with child, exclaiming again and again how much space there was in the house. Dad strode with purpose. The house was just what a young man needed for a growing family. He was not concerned that his wife had lived all her life in Lexington and had no idea how to raise children in a rural setting. He didn’t mind not knowing anyone in the community. He ignored the empty mines, old train tracks, trash-filled creeks, and charcoal smoke. He didn’t know Haldeman had the highest rate of unemployment and illiteracy in the county, among the highest in the state. Less than a mile away was a bootlegger, which spawned gunplay, arson, and drag races that often ended in spectacular wrecks. None of it mattered to Dad. The large house was a long way from the log cabin of his youth. He bought Mr. Haldeman’s home and lived there for fifty years.

  Late at night after everyone else went to bed, my father listened for evidence of Mr. Haldeman’s ghost. At the slightest creak, Dad spoke aloud: Hello, is that you? He believed that directly addressing a spirit would provoke a response. Even as a child, I found it odd that he put forth such effort to communicate with the ethereal world but not his kids. He was always disappointed that the house remained silent, that the ghost ignored him.

  During the 1960s, Appalachia experienced the biggest out-migration in its history due to economics. Hundreds of families moved to Michigan and Ohio for work. This diaspora made room for people such as my father, who needed a great deal of psychic space. We were the first new family to arrive in Haldeman in more than thirty years. Many of our neighbors lacked conventional plumbing. They grew subsistence gardens, raised hogs and chickens, and hunted for food. Some families grew a small tobacco crop for cash and gathered ginseng from the woods to sell. Many received welfare assistance. No one went to college, and very few finished high school. It was not uncommon for men to go about armed. The sound of gunfire became as normal to my ears as that of barking dogs. I learned to discern the differences in pitch among shotgun, pistol, and rifle.

  My parents enjoyed their lack of local history and began severing relations with their own families. I grew up without direct benefit of cousins, uncles, aunts, or grandparents. Relatives were what other people had, not us. Mom and Dad scorned our neighbors as ignorant and unsophisticated. They taught my siblings and me to consider ourselves better than the families who surrounded us, the children with whom we played, and the culture we came to identify as our own. My experience was similar to that of children of career diplomats from the colonial era—we lived in the big house, we had extra money, we mingled with the locals but never fit in. We even spoke a different language, what my father called “the Queen’s English,” instead of the grammatically incorrect dialect of the hills. Other kids learned to hunt and fish; I learned to speak properly.

  The surrounding hills held rich veins of dense, flinty clay, ideal for manufacturing sturdy firebrick to line blas
t furnaces for steel mills. In 1903 Lunsford Pitt Haldeman founded the Kentucky Fire Brick Company and hired men to lay narrow-gauge rail for mules to haul hand-dug clay to the brick plant. Business flourished through the 1920s, with the brickyard being the largest employer in the region, producing sixty thousand bricks per day, each stamped “Haldeman Ky.” The company town had brick roads, a public garden, a barbershop, a baseball diamond, and a train depot. There was a tennis court, several horseshoe pits, and a neatly cropped field for playing croquet. Workers were paid in a combination of cash and scrip, a form of credit against wages that could be exchanged only at the high-priced Company Store.

  In the 1950s, General Refractories purchased the old brick factory and converted its kilns to manufacture charcoal. This was accomplished by burning railroad ties that were heavily soaked in creosote, an oily liquid obtained from coal tar and used as a wood preservative. The resultant char was sent north, chipped into briquettes, bagged, and sold for summer barbecues across the nation. The constant heavy smoke increased Haldeman fatalities among the elderly and infants. Everyone coughed. At night the humidity produced fog that blended with the smoke to create an opaque smog that car headlights couldn’t penetrate. Dad walked ahead of the car with a flashlight to illuminate the way for Mom to drive. Storekeepers in Morehead could identify us by the acrid smell of smoke on our clothing, and they used it as a means to discriminate against us. Haldeman people were at the bottom of a pecking order that didn’t start very high. Plus, we literally stank.

  The factory stood two hundred yards from the grade school. Smoke drifted through the air as I walked to school, obscuring the woods like a lethal morning mist that never lifted. In 1968 my parents organized a small group called Struggle Opposing Smog, or SOS. To get attention, they withheld their children from the first week of school, drawing national media coverage for the unique boycott. Special devices were fastened to the smokestacks to measure the amount of particulates spewing forth. After two days every gauge broke, with their final readings listing higher pollution rates than those in Detroit. The charcoal factory shut down. Some people admired my parents for their effort, while others resented the loss of employment. None could deny that the quality of air had improved.