Scranton Roy - I Heart Oklahoma!

Also by Roy Scranton

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

War Porn

Were Doomed, Now What?:
Essays on War and Climate Change

Copyright 2019 by Roy Scranton

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of f iction. References to real people, events, establishments,

organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used f icticiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Parts of this novel have been published in different form in 12th Street , LIT , and LVNG .

Excerpt from History and Biology in the Anthropocene: Problems of Scale, Problems

of Value by Julia Adeney Thomas, from The American Historical Review

(2014) 119 (5): 1587-1607. Used by permission of Oxford University

Press on behalf of the American Historical Society.

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scranton, Roy, 1976 author.

I heart Oklahoma! / Roy Scranton.

ISBN 978-1-61695-938-8

eISBN 978-1-61695-939-5

I. Title

PS3619.C743 I25 2019 813.6dc23 2019003466

Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Ted and Sharon

The stranger asks no greater glory till life

is through than to spend one last minute

in wilderness.

Charlie Starkweather

You lie, changin shape, makin promises. Get a new skin. Be a man. Be a woman. Start over. Yeah, start over. Wipe the slate clean and sing, sing in my ear like nothin matters, walkin down a dirt road and the nights as long as you are, one step after another leavin someone I love and you wont shut up, dust god like memory, wind son rain, once upon a time I mighta got loose a you but now its late and every night I lay down to hear you brushin on the screen whisperin swerve dappled monochrome down in the trees afeared or was it hopin in the sudden plunge, your curves in my crotch, your hum in my jaw, like somehow if wed just go on forever wed never die.

So theres this guy and gal drivin down the highway and maybe one picked tother up or maybe they been lovers for years and now, only now, succumbin to their feral dreams, can they see who at last they truly are. His names Jack and her names Jane and maybe theyre alone or maybe they got someone else along, some witness to make it real, some audience, some third sex name Jesse, and theyre cruisin Nebraska and Oklahoma and Illinois and Texas and maybe they had good reasons for leavin, maybe they dropped a string of bodies behind em and robbed banks or maybe a dream died or a kid or maybe its no moren the fact that their lives failed to cohere wherever they was livin, or maybe they think its passin time, a holiday, maybe they think someday theyll pull up the exit ramp and come off the road back to the suburbs and their endless hours of windshield starin, gas-station midnight snacks, state park bathroom grottoes and back-seat sex, trash bag hangin off the cigarette lighter, slow spin through the tuner at 2:00 a.m. catchin voices like bugs writhin in the mind a god, hot air blowin through the window, Gideon Bibles, soft shoulders, mergin and lanes endin right, detours, orange caution loose gravel slow children yielding and no thru trucks, snowcapped mountains, cataract canyons, Ozarks and Ohios and Mississippis and Missouris will all come to a point on the horizon where its the end of the line but no, no, youll never stop they just think so, but still I pray maybe if I nail you bleedin to the page youll let me go

I. Holiday Road

Let us take a simple example. A man who travels by automobile to a distant place chooses his route from the highway maps. Towns, lakes and mountains appear as obstacles to be bypassed. The countryside is shaped and organized by the highway. Numerous signs and posters tell the traveler what to do and think; they even request his attention to the beauties of nature ... Giant advertisements tell him when to stop and take the pause that refreshes. And all this is indeed for his benefit, safety and comfort; he receives what he wants ... He will fare best who follows its directions, subordinating his spontaneity to the anonymous wisdom which ordered everything for him. Herbert Marcuse

Reality has no audiencewait, tilt back, get more of the sky.

Ive got the sky. How much sky would you like?

I want him framed.

Hes framed. Fleet of foot and bearing his caduceus, he juts, chiseled limbs bursting from the faade, veiled in shifts of tattered steam, god of speed framed in blue.

Okay. Just keep rolling. Jim started over. He could feel the flicker, the fortune in the cookie from lunch: Travel will bring you luck. Fuck, ohReality has no audience, the world no eye. We are the warp and woof, the quanta of its waves, the thing itself: deep surface... Deep surface. We are the wave... Surface. Wave. Wave, surface. He exhaled sharply. Hows that sound?

Im not the writer, Remy said, running the camera.

Jim turned and looked down the glowing red-eyed stream of fleeing UberATs. Christ, I hope she says yes.

Youre going to pay her, right?

Yeah, sure. All artists fucking care about. Worse than Wall Street. You still rolling?

Yeah, Remy said.

Nexus of roads, speed and space. Only in space do we become substantial, only in time do our lives take on meaning. Can you see yourself seeing? Can you look inside your eye?

Are you asking me?

No, keep rolling. Can you look inside the eye? Reality has no audience. Jim turned again and squatted on the sidewalk. Foot traffic split around the two, the click and slap of heel and sole, nowhere stares plugged into screens catching the blaze of towers burning down the West. How was that? I just made that up. I just riffed off what I was thinking.

Im not the writer. Ask Suzie.

Shed say its pretentious. Shed say its pretentious and what do I know from space and time.

Is Carol coming?

Carol left ten days ago. Left a half carton of Silk.

Oh, Jim. Im sorry, I

Fuck that. Been a long time coming. Some people cant fucking roll with the punches, yknow? Cant fucking adapt, adapt to change. Like fucking monkeys, adapt or die. She wants the old James, the golden days, but its all space and time now.

Thats nice with the sun going down.

You dont think its too baroque?

Its all in the editing. Right now it looks pretty sublime.

Sublime, Jim repeated, tasting it on his tongue. I want medieval... You see that documentary about the bears?

Which one?

Fucking bears. Its just adaptation. These fucking polar bears are all gonna die because they have to swim all the fucking way out in the water to eat fish or baby seals or whatever and its too far and all the ice is melting. The polar ice cap is melting. Imagine whiteness for miles, collapsing into encroaching black seas. So they have a choice, right, adapt or die, and theyre gonna die because theyre fucking bears. But thats the difference, see. Were not bears. Were like fucking not evolve maybe but whatever, pick up a stick, you know, duh duh duh. Ascend. Go west.

A bearded wreck swaddled in layers of sweatpant and plastic bag spun off the sidewalk into traffic shaking his paper cup, strips of foil glittering on his newsprint shawl like antimissile chaff. An UberAT swerved, honking, missed by inches. Jim watched, not quite tense but interested, wondering if hed catch the whack and slam of body and street, hobo skull rebounding off yellow lines, the empty cars collision sirens keening. He thought to tell Remy to film it but no, wrong beginning. Wrong end. Why they do that, he half thought, on purpose? Or they so far gone past whats purpose, it isnt real? Everything meant but barely conscious, rationality of pure instinct. Sure, but which is more human, then, the wreck or the robot car? All secret agents of the brighter hive. Deep surface, Jim thought. Thats good.