Published in 2013 by This Land Press, edited by Jeff Martin, and lauded by The Paris Review as “the literary equivalent of a high-wire act,” Imaginary Oklahoma is a collection of flash fiction stories about Oklahoma by writers who may or may not have ever been here. In 46 stories to commemorate the 46th state, some of today's most important writers, each paired with an artist, provide their take on "the Oklahoma of the imagination."
We're proud to bring some of these stories to The Pickup—some with This Land Press’ accompanying podcast episodes—to help you dream your own Oklahoma dreams.
The man stood at the crossroads. Cold sun cocked at noon, and he couldn’t tell in what direction the roads dwindled to sky. The fields were corn but so drought- struck the plants were miniature. He didn’t know how he got there, where he was going.
Something about his wife, maybe. Lilian? he tried to call, but his throat was dry, and he could only rasp.
He took a foot from one slipper and looked at it. It was bloody, one toenail ripped off. He thought he had probably been walking a long time. It was pleasant to stand. The sunlight warmed his shoulders and the wind blowing through his clothes wasn’t so cold.
When he looked up again, the sun had just gone down. It was twilight now.
On one of the roads, a speck was growing. He saw first that it was red, then that it was a pickup. And now there was sound, a wash of engine and some kind of thumping music. The truck slowed and stopped.
There were two boys looking at him. Hair sun-blond, noses freckled. Waft of bourbon. On the seat between them sat a toy bat, rubber on the outside and an aluminum core.
Hey, old man, the driver said, and the other boy flicked off the music. What’re you doing all the way out here?
The old man cleared his throat and said, Wife.
She left you here? said the boy in the passenger seat.
Like an old dog, said the driver out of the corner of his mouth. Tired of his stink. The boys laughed.
And now the old man could smell himself, terrible, sweat and piss and his own loose bowels. He felt ashamed.
Lilian? he whispered.
Darkness fell on the road. The driver flicked on the lights and the old man blinked. He seemed even frailer, illuminated so.
The driver said, Let’s have some fun, and reached for the bat and the handle of his door.
But his friend had seen the tag on the man’s wrist and recognized it from visiting his own grandfather. He said, Nah. Not worth it. Let’s get waffles.
The driver put the truck in gear and they moved off. The boy in the passenger seat turned on the music again and watched in the rearview as the old man became a blot on the darkness, then a distant moonlit point. Dementia, poor soul. At the Dairy Palace, he went to the bathroom and called his uncle the sheriff about the escapee, then, duty done, put him from his mind.
But something clung to him, an echo under his conscious thoughts. And, at the soggy end of winter, when his girlfriend broke up with him for a boy in Chicago she’d met online, the heartbreak whipped itself into a terrible energy. He packed his bags in the darkness and left a note for his mother. Kissed his sleeping brother. At dawn he took off, in no particular direction, toward something urgent, something unknown.
