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13arrr:d OwL CHRIS OFFUTT Born in 1958 in Haldeman, Kentucky, a day-mining town, Chris Offutt earned a B.A. in theater at Morehead State University and an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa. His books to date include a novel, The Good Brother (1997); a memoir, The Same River Twice (1993); and two short story collections, Kentucky Straight (1992) and Out ofthe WOodr (1999). The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a James Michener Grant, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and one of Granta's 20 Best Young American Fiction Writers, Offutt has published stories in Esquire, GQ DoubleTake, The Oxford American, Story, and elsewhere. His story "Melungeons" was reprinted in BestAmerican Short Stories, and several others have appeared in that annual's list of "Distinguished Stories of the Year." He has lived in New York, Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico, and Paris, France. In 1998, he, his two sons, and his wife, Rita, moved to Rowan County, Kentucky, where he taught creative writing at Morehead State. They currently live in Iowa City, where he is a visiting faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and completing a third collection ofstories. In a review of Out ofthe WOodr, Frederick Smock notes Offutt's central theme: "Throughout these stories there runs a tension-taut as a trip-wire-between staying and going. But it's also not that simple. More often it's a matter of getting thrown out and not having any place to go back to, or longing to go but not having the gumption." The stories, Smock continues, are "about our connection to the land, and what happens when that connection is stretched beyond what love or remembrance can bear." "Barred Owl" exemplifies this struggle. First published in DoubleTake in 1996 and included in Out ofthe WOodr, the story portrays the long reach ofhome and some ofthe consequences ofliving out of its range or denying its call. • Seven years ago I got divorced and left Kentucky, heading west. I made the Mississippi River in one day, and it just floored me how big it was. I watched the water until sundown. It didn't seem like a river, but a giant brown muscle instead. Two days later, my car threw a rod and I settled in Greeley, Colorado. Nobody in my family has lived this far offour home hill. 360 CHRIS OFFUTT I took a job painting dorm rooms at the college here in town. The pay wasn't the best, but I could go to work hungover and nobody bugged me. I liked the quiet of working alone. I went into a room and made it a different color. The walls and the ceiling hadn't gone anywhere, but it was a new place. Only the view from the window stayed the same. What I did was never look out. Every day after work I stopped by the Pig's Eye, a bar with cheap draft, a pool table, and a jukebox. It was the kind ofplace to get drunk in safely, because the law watched student bars downtown. The biggest jerk in the joint was the bartender. He liked to throw people out. You could smoke reefer in the Pig, gamble and fight, but if you drank too much, you were barred. That always struck me odd-like throwing someone out of a hospital for being sick. Since my social life was tied to the Pig, I was surprised when a man came to the house one Saturday afternoon. That it was Tarvis surprised me even more. He's from eastern Kentucky, and people often mentioned him, but we'd never met. His hair was short and his beard was long. I invited him in. "Thank ye, no," he said. I understood that he knew I was just being polite, that he wouldn't enter my house until my welcome was genuine. I stepped outside, deliberately leaving the door open. What happened next was a ritual the likes ofwhich I'd practically forgotten , but once it began, felt like going home with an old girlfriend you happened to meet in a bar. We looked each other in the eyes for a spell. Tarvis nodded slightly. I nodded slightly. He opened a pouch of Red Man and offered a chew. I declined and began the slow process of lighting a cigarette while he dug a wad of tobacco from the pouch. I flicked the match away, and we watched it...

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