253. Oklahoma Encounter

The Black U.S. President, the man said, represented pure evil while the White Pope represented pure good. A red intervention came to mind as I listened dangerously. I couldn't quite see the mist that shrouded the man, but it was there, a product of mental illness, Whiteness (mental illness), racism, trauma, and failure. I was listening to him report from a terrible place he'd invented. A low branch from an oak sapling made me stoop comically, and I looked down at red dirt. Oklahoma City, Ralph Ellison's birthplace. A starting- and stopping-place for Charlie Christian's guitar. The look on my face had apparently provided a wordless, recoiling rebuke.  The man forced a trembling smile, and mumbled to cover his tracks as he moved away, as I moved away. 

168. Ponca City, Oklahoma

Car broke down. It's sitting up high in the bay of a mechanic's shop. Mechanic's an inked biker.  He's probably done time because he has that kiln-dried look. His wife runs the office. She's pretty and pretty smart and out of place: a woman who falls in love with men who become projects.

Of course the heat's thick. It's Oklahoma, and it's summer. The office is an asylum of invoices touched by rusty dust. You want the mechanic to know enough to be able to let you get  back on I-35 and take it on in to OKC for some cold beer and glassy-eyed gazing at a baseball game on somebody's big TV--tornado-warnings cutting in at intervals.

You want her to stop talking, the mechanic's wife.  But she needs to let you know she went to college, too, and you feel sorry for her. In the bay, the mechanic lights a cigarette with a blow-torch and stares at you.