I Heart Oklahoma!

by Roy Scranton

  Abelard barked at nothing.

  Later, sitting by the fire and feeding him a hot dog, she thought back through the pines and campground and was filled with an unexpected sense of loss. Not for anyone in particular, not for Jim or Steve or New York or Dad, but something vague and structural in the sense of parties meeting and slipping away, the contingency of it all, sudden clashes and moves in disparate space, like without Oklahoma there was nothing, which is ridiculous, she knows. She had people in New York, contacts, longtime friends, but then, there, honestly, it was one thing and then another and was there anyone she still knew from the old days? And did she ever really care? The city was so far behind now, all the way across the country, back through the mountain passes in the dark night, back through the trees, invisible, glowing, waiting there at the edge of the continent, a sprinkle of lights over a stab of black schist, seawalled sprawl at the edge of America, and what did it have to do with her, or she with it? Much as she’d left Oklahoma behind, turning her back on the width and breadth of Middle American plainness, she’d now turned her back on New York, on the starry-eyed hubris of the Empire State and the mad scramble up the maze, the dumb clutch at the brass ring, the money and greed and ambition and exception that powered the city in waves of mindless faddishness, but she couldn’t turn her back on America, could she, still here, still her, still making its way down the new century that already felt so terribly old. And west? What was west?

  It’s where you start over.

  Abelard looked up and she absentmindedly fed him another bit of hot dog, thinking about these last few days, years, this life, Jim and Remy and Jim’s fierce dream and crazy escape—rupture? evasion?—and how she’d never lost the sense she had of something mysterious coming to life when he’d stood there in the bar and opened his map across the table, giving them the nation at a glance, its secrets and truths plotted across the grid in blue rivers and lines of rising peaks, flyover junctions and suburbanized metropoles, nowheres and dreamlands, hints scrawled in crazed graffiti, and how at the same time the map meant it was there, there it was, given and pre-owned, already been chewed, and even for all that space, there was a way you couldn’t go anywhere anymore, somehow, where they weren’t already looking. It’d all been fenced off. And what this had to do with Caril Fugate and Charlie Starkweather, with guns and the Sinaloan War and Whitman and Trump and Oklahoma City, how somehow it all meant something she couldn’t quite grasp, couldn’t quite put her finger on, something big and important and dying, maybe already dead, and how her chest seemed to open at the pain of the past and the promise of tomorrow, the clear impossible anything rising in the sky, the great big lie she still wanted to believe in, her lover, America, the road.

  That’s why, typing at the hotel the next night at the edge of the edge of the mountains, almost there now, that’s why this now, the screen, that’s why she exists, why she thinks and breathes and talks, why she’s heading across the country writing heading across the country, why there’s a second life, why another life, why you start with The Word, why the word was, why the word was in the beginning, why you start over, that’s why she types what happened was, but no, that’s not right. Start over.

  What happened was.

  How it all started was like this.

  It started out with Charlie and I.

  Start over.

  Charlie and me. Start over.

  What happened was that we were driving out across Wyoming.

  We were, we was. We was drivin cross somewheres. What happened was we was drivin out across the country, somewheres in Wyoming. Start over.

  What happind was, we was on a lonely stretch a road somewheres in Wyomin and it was the first time I’d ever seen the mountains ever, all dark and high against the edge of the prairie and I thought how we got to go over them, there ain’t no way, and I felt sad and angry cause we knowed they was after us, we heard all about us on the radio.

  Start over. Do it again.

  What happind was we was on a lonely stretch a road somewheres in Wyomin and it was the first time I’d seed the mountains ever, all dark and high against the edge of the prairie, and I thought how we gotta go over em, there ain’t no way I thought, and I’s sad and angry cause I knowed they’s after us, we heard all about us on the radio, and Charlie says they knowed what kinda car we had and he said they’s looking for us for sure now, so we stops at this car, I think it’s a Buick, just out on the road and Charlie gets out and walks up like a big sheriff and all that like he always done and I sees him talking to the man in the car but he won’t open the winder so Charlie comes back and he gets the twenty-two and takes it and shoots in the winder and shoots the man again must a been ten times. I reckon he just went crazy. I thought, he just gone crazy and got all scared cuz a last night he made me do it with him when I didn’t want to so I thought what if he tries somethin now and he’s all crazy? That’s why I got outta the car when that man come by. First there’s the one man who drove by and turned around and come back and I thought Charlie you better shoot him too and he gets outta the car and walks up and Charlie points a gun at him and the man grabs it and they start rasslin then that deputy come up in his car and I run up to him and says, “Take me to the police,” and he says, “Get in,” so I did, then I tole him how Charlie killed a man there and he asks me who that is and I just looked at him funny and said: “That there’s Charlie Starkweather.”

  I member at the beginnin when he tole me he killed Bob Colvert, he said some others done it but I knowed right away he was the one cuz even if he was scared he couldn’t help but make a little grin like he done something bad, and he took me and we drove around town and I made him tell me all about it, how he said he walked right in with his shotgun and said you just put that money in that bag there then he made Bob drive him out by Bloody Mary’s where he said he was just gonna leave him tied up but Bob tried to hit him and grab the gun so he just shot him bang like that. He said it was awful cold and dark, it being December and all, and nighttime, and I asks him what’s it feel like killing a man and he says it feels good, real good, like its the first right thing I ever done. And I says the second right thing, you dog, and gives him a kiss him on the cheek. Then we parked and he kissed me up some and he asks me you want to touch the gun and I say yes, and he takes it out from under the seat and I look at it and thought, that’s how you kill a man right there, with some black metal, just a piece of the world like a tool or a hammer, and that’s how Charlie done Bob Colvert. He just took him out and shot him like a dog.

  When Charlie dropped me off at home my ma come at me soon as I was back sayin “Where you been with that Charlie Starkweather” and “I don’t know what you two do driving around in his car but it ain’t right and you better watch out,” nagging on me and making it sound like me and Charlie was the worst sinners in all Nebraska, like there weren’t a hunnerd other kids running around doing worse’n us, and I wanted a tell her “You don’t even know what we’re doing, you old hag, you don’t even know what we do!” I wanted a tell her, “Charlie just killed a man, you dried-up nasty witch, what you think a that? Howabout we kill you?” I didn’t say it, a course, I wanted to, and then later on we did. Charlie shot her in her stupid pinched-up old face but she wasn’t dead yet, so then he smashed in her head with his rifle. That was later on, though, and I never told anyone nor will I ever but I don’t mind saying now even for all the years I spent at York which weren’t so bad oncet you got used to it, I’m glad he done it, glad he went and shot her cuz she was a mean old nasty hag who needed somebody to shoot her five or ten times even. It ain’t so’s you could shoot her enough to be done with her what she needed done to her. And he killed Marion too and he had it coming that sumbitch and I’ll tell you about that when I comes to it but that day, I mean to say, after Charlie tole me he done killed Bob Colvert, I member coming in the parlor room and Marion’s watching TV and fixing at some business, one a his projects like he was alwa
ys working on, this thingamajig he had all apart with a screwdriver and was trying to fix it, doing tiny little work with his big old hands, like one of them giants from a story trying to make something normal size, and I stood in the door looking at him and Betty Jean on the floor and the man on the TV was talking about how Russian Sputnik falled right outta the sky into the Pacific Ocean and he says how folks in California saw it fallin t’other night and thought it were a UFO like in the movies but it weren’t, it were just them Russians spreading their Communist lies.

  I thought about that and how it seemed real beautiful to me cuz I seen shooting stars before, and to watch it burn and slide across the sky like a smeary trail a golden red falling from space like the bloody tears a heaven, it must a been beautiful, Commie or not, it don’t matter if it were Chinese or if it really were a UFO like they thought, it must a been glorious. You don’t get to see something like that all the time in a life. A life ain’t such a long thing and it ain’t so full of beauty neither, it’s mostly dumb bossy people yelling at you and cold winters and things you thought would happen that turn out wrong, but if you get something beautiful like that you oughta hang on to it.

  Like after we killed all them and we were living in the house just Charlie and me, we was just kids then but it was like our honeymoon, real beautiful ’cept for him wanting to do it all the time. But I ain’t even there yet. First we had the money he took from Bob Colvert and the gas station and he bought candy and sodas for me, he took me to the pitchers most every day that week, we saw The Parson and the Outlaw and Escape from San Quentin and we saw Man in the Shadow and Last of the Badmen and Pickup Alley and Domino Kid, we’d go see a pitcher then go back and sit in Charlie’s room and he’d say the lines from the pitcher in his mirror and practice drawing a gun like he’s a big sheriff, and I told him “You look just like him, Charlie. Just like.” Those was beautiful times too, I member, fore everything got confused, and we’d sit in his room drawing pitchers and eating candies and then he’d practice his knife throwin, just like them Indians did, he said a friend of his knowed a real Indian who tole him the secrets a throwin knives.

  He wanted to do it real bad all the time but I tole him we wasn’t married yet so all I let him do was stick it in a inch was all, and if he was gonna make milk he had to do it on the floor or in his hand. He was real sore bout that but it hurt real bad, even a inch, and also I weren’t gon have no baby, not with us not even being married in the eyes of the Lord, but it didn’t matter anyway cuz everbody thought we was doing it like two little sinners, my ma was at me and Marion too and at last they tole me not to see him no more, so one day I comes home from school and most days Charlie waits for me and I go with him but I din’t see him that day till I was nearly home and I knowed they was prolly watching me so I din’t talk to him but came around and Nig was barking like nothing and it must a been Charlie he was barking at and I come in and Ma says “Where you been at?” and I says “School” but what I want a say is “Why don’t you go die, you nasty old witch?” Then she says “Charlie been around and he’s acting all funny, and Marion says he can’t come around no more.” I says “You can’t do that we’re in love,” and she says “I bet you are you little harlot, I bet you know all about being in love with Charlie Starkweather,” and I says “You don’t know nothin bout nothin’,” and she says “Look here Miss Mouth, you better watch who you’re talking to or you’ll get some of what I gave Charlie. It’s bad enough you got knocked up, we don’t need him messing around” and I says “I ain’t pregnant, Ma, we ain’t done nothing,” and she says “Don’t try to tell me what I see, you little hussy, I know a baby belly when I see one, and you listen here, Marion tole him he can’t never see you again and the same goes for you” and then I says “It ain’t like that” and that’s when Charlie comes in the screen door and Ma says “There’s the little egg-sucking dog right now. How you like knocking up little girls, huh, mister?”

  Well he just looked at her real mean-like and says “I ain’t come to talk” and she says “I thought I told you not to come around here” then she ups and slaps him in the face, just like that, and he grabs her and hits her back and a chair gets knocked over and she starts screaming like a crazy woman, then Marion come in saying you little so-and-so and grabs him to throw him out the door but Charlie rassles him and they wind up on the floor shoving and hitting each other and Marion pushes Charlie off and gets up and goes off then Charlie goes off too and I follered em into the parlor where Betty Jean was playing on the floor and then I sees Charlie come back with a twenty-two and then Marion comes back in the front door, the front door what was really in the back, what we used, in our yard out to the street, but we always went in and out the kitchen door in the back what was by the gravel lane, but then Marion comes in and he got a clawhammer in his hand and blood in his eye like he finally gonna give Charlie what he thought and I screamed “No, Charlie,” and that’s when Charlie shot him in the head. He stopped where he was and looked at us mean as cuss but kinda confused and then fell right down on the dresser, he dropped the hammer and fell over like he was dead. Then Ma comes in with a kitchen knife saying “I’m gonna kill you, Charlie Starkweather,” and I says “No, Ma, no!” and Charlie backed up toward Marion and did something with his gun and I grabbed at Ma saying “No, don’t,” and she slapped me in the head and knocked me over then Charlie shot her right in her dumb old witch face. Bang! She kinda tripped over herself and looked around, then she looked over at Betty Jean and started walking across the room, and Charlie just stared at her, still pointing his gun, and she looked at Betty Jean and fell right over. Then she rolled over and looked up at him and his face turned all bad like he was gonna puke his guts up and he smashed her head with the butt of his rifle. That’s when I realized Betty Jean was crying like she always does, god I hated her crying like a little meanie so I says “Shut up!” and Charlie looked over at me then at Betty Jean then went over and hit her in the head too and she fell over and shut up. I saw Marion still moving then so I got the knife Ma had and went over and stabbed him in the neck hard, but the knife wouldn’t go in far so I hit it with my hand then moved it around back and forth in his neck, like when you can’t get the joint in a chicken, trying to cut him up inside, and he was making funny noises in his mouth like a hiss and a chuckle and his eyes was looking at me and he was bleeding all over and I dug that knife in, moving it around in his neck, thinking you die you dirty sumbitch. Charlie just stood there looking at me and I got up and went over to Betty Jean cuz I didn’t want her to wake up so I stabbed her in the neck, too, and I turned and said “Look at what you done, Charlie Starkweather!”

  Betty Jean was only two and a half and she was the nastiest little thing you ever saw in your life, always screaming and in your business, always messing herself and sticking her fingers in everything.

  Weren’t no good in any of em, nothing worth saving on this world or in heaven, and Charlie did the right thing even though at the time I was awful sore at him for making a mess, and I’s scared and angry and I din’t know what was gonna happen. I says to him “What are we gonna do now, Charlie?” and he says “I don’t know, let me think” he says, then he sets his gun down and goes and turns on the TV and sets down in Marion’s chair. I member the Mickey Mouse Club was on and it was Monday so it was Fun with Music Day and they was singing songs and seemed so happy and cheerful. Charlie wouldn’t normally watch Mickey Mouse cuz that’s just kids’ stuff he’d say, but he sat there staring at the TV and I went and set on the love seat watching too then they had on “Walt Disney Presents: Annette,” which was a part of the show, all about this country girl name Annette what was Annette Funicello, who was what Marion called a guinea broad, and she was from the country like us but she moved to a big city with her hoity-toity aunt and uncle, who was saying “You must use your dessert spoon for dessert, you silly girl.” I laughed some, cuz even though it was kid stuff it was still funny, and when Charlie heard me laugh he looked o
ver like he’d slap me upside the head but then he laughed too, and we both laughed and looked at each other, then we watched some more TV. After that show was over there was a cowboy show on and we watched that then it was dark outside, so Charlie said he might as well clean up the mess he made. When he got up he pointed at two pieces a carpet by the dresser and says “I brought them over for your ma but she din’t even say thank you. I thought she’d like em, and they was free cause they was samples I took off the wood, and I brought em over and all she said was ‘You can’t see Caril no more.’ What kinda thanks is that?”

  “You scared for what you done?” I asks him.

  “Naw, I ain’t scared” he says.

  “What a we do?” I asks him.

  “I don’t know” he says “but I know Marion Bartlett ain’t gon stand between you and me no more. You and me’s free as scouts on a prairie.”

  Truth tole I don’t think he went crazy when he shot that man in Wyomin. I ain’t never tole no one the truth bout what happind, not the whole thing, and I ain’t never tole no one what I done or ain’t done, and sometime thinking back it gets confused, cuz sometimes I know I done things and other times I think I din’t do that, I can’t a done that, that was Charlie. Like how I just tole you I stuck a knife in Marion’s neck, I just membered it was Charlie done that, not me. Wasn’t me. I din’t do that.

  But that day when he shot that man in Wyomin, I din’t think Charlie was crazy at all, at least no more than he was already, not since that first day, but he kept wanting to do it and then he was doing it with all them other women and I knowed he couldn’t get us over them mountains, I knowed we was caught, and I thought my one true and only hope is to tell the deputy that’s Charlie and he kidnapped me the whole time. Charlie was a dirty little sneak and he kept doing them other women and I’d kill him right now myself he came here today and he weren’t already dead, I’d kill him and stab him in his neck and shoot him in his dirty face, stupid bowlegged sumbitch, I’d kill him to death. I’m glad he got his, frying in that chair, cuz he was a dirty little egg-sucking runt and needed to die, which if I’d a known then, when it started, I’d a just shot him too and said he killed everyone, officer, then shot hisself, he just went crazy, but when he killed Ma and Marion and Betty Jean I thought he’s a big sheriff and I thought he’s real brave and strong to do all that killing.