Osahon Okundaye
-
Posts
2 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Osahon Okundaye
-
-
Jim McCarthy (jmccarthy@dystel.com)
Assignment 1.
Oslo is a black cowboy, supposedly freed after the Civil War, who searches the country for something he cannot name. He wonders what place, if any, he has in America.
Assignment 2.
John “Soap” Carlysle is the child of a white and monied rancher in the prairie town Jubilee. His family runs the town and they run it like a fiefdom. Soap knows that he will inherit the kingdom, but everyone else knows it too. He’s never had to work in the stables, and his distance from the dirty work is why people derisively call him Soap. He’s worried that he’s a small man and wears what he thinks is an important man’s personality. When Oslo appears, Soap is threatened by the black man’s quiet competence. He works to undermine, and eventually kidnap Oslo to preserve the natural order of things and his own uneasy sense of self.
Assignment 3.
There is No California
Assignment 4.
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead. Sweeping historical novels that explore how racism sunk into America, even across its different landscapes and people.
How Much of These Hills Is Gold, C Pam Zhang. A literary re-invention of the western genre, told from the perspective of people who, by law, were excluded from the American dream.
Assignment 5.
Oslo joins a cattle team heading west, which would bring him closer to the egalitarian paradise called California. On their long drive into the mountains, he is kidnapped and sold into a life more grim than even he had imagined.
Assignment 6.
Internal - Oslo is looking to escape the burden of racism but he learns that freedom is not the absence of external control, but finding purpose in the doing of something. In one example from the book, Oslo’s revolutionary mentor is killed during a messy escape from the military. He asks another disciple what to do next with no real plan of his own. The other disciple excoriates him and calls him a lost dog. With danger all around, Oslo is paralyed and decides to get drunk.
Social - Reaching California is finally possible, but Oslo concludes that whatever happens in California will be the same as what happens everywhere else in America. He decides to return to Jubilee to cause havoc and at least let the establishment know that they too can be reached.
Assignment 7.
Jubilee is a fictional frontier town somewhere in the lower Utah basin. It is necessarily dusty, too dry to grow much more than brush. It is a small town made of iron and wood, mostly a collection of homes and storefronts with shacks and stalls sprinkled in between. There are not more than half a dozen large buildings in the whole town and the two biggest are the saloon and the jail.
The town is held together by streets that alternated between gravel and earth. Everyone, even the ladies, wore boots as they went about the day. The roads were paths of circumstance, decided by the earliest settlers and then followed by hundreds more who called themselves pioneers.
Town life is full, or as full as it could be at the end of America. Oslo tours Jubilee and passes a trapper haggling with a man at a butcher stall over whitetail pelts. Glistening cuts of meat tied with string hang from the sideboards. Flies circle over the buckets of entrails nearby.
There is No California
in New York Write to Pitch "First Pages" - 2022, 2023, 2024
Posted
Oslo Jones felt the mule stumble beneath him. Its breath came in wheezing burbles. Another day’s ride and it would be completely lame. His teeth gritted against that future. They had been together since he left home. He thought of their nights under the stars. He thought of their days passed on empty stomach. He thought of their kinship, completely unfettered by questions. Oslo loosened his grip on the reins and sighed. There wasn’t far to go now.
An intruding wind picked up and trail dust surrounded them in dancing plumes. Carried on a stiff breeze, those dust clouds could taunt a rider for miles. Oslo hunched his shoulders to make himself small against the gust. The mule could do nothing but limp and Oslo was sorry for it. Down the trail a bit, a carved wooden sign stood crooked: “Jubilee 5 miles.”
The sun had begun to dip in the sky. Beneath the dimming light, far-off mountains looked stolid and indifferent. Beyond the dust, the wind carried only the normal trail noises: hooves dragging over packed ground, tall grass rustling in the breeze, and at last the sound of trickling water.
They reached the stream minutes later. By then Oslo was on foot, carrying the saddlebag over his shoulder. He led the mule slowly as its flanks heaved under each breath. Its lameness was more pronounced. By the time it reached the water, Oslo had pulled off the saddle and blankets and let them drop in the grass. The sun continued to sink, its rays flirting about the distant peaks. Gold light fell over the stream and the mule drank from it peacefully. Oslo watched from under a tree a dozen yards away. Time to rest, he thought. He let the mule drink for a good, long while.
His mind turned over his years on the trail. Life as a rancher put him astride hundreds of horses. Cattle outfits usually had a remuda of dozens of horses at their disposal. A rider could put 100 miles behind him in a day over three horses. In his early days, Oslo would ride into a ranch, wave to the foreman, change mounts, swallow some whiskey and take off on whatever the boss had him chase.
When he joined his first cattle outfit, Oslo brushed his mule carefully. He always did when facing something new. A greybeard watched him for a while before approaching.
“There’s companions and machines,” the old man said, “and they’s for different things. I don’t call my lasso Sally like I don’t keep my woman in a barn. I hear there’s a natural sentiment between you negroes and animals; but in this trade, if you ain’t killing your animals regular, you ain’t doing your job.”
Since that encounter, Oslo made sure to end each day’s work the same way. He would return to whatever ranch, wash and then eat. And whenever the ranch went quiet and all the other hands to sleep, he would head to the stables to sit with his mule and talk about the day.
The mule had finally satisfied itself at the stream. It turned back toward Oslo and lay in the grass under the waning sun. Its head was just a few paces from the end of Oslo’s boot. In the deep purple of dusk, its big honest eyes blinked, then fluttered, then closed. A slight smile played across Oslo’s face as he shifted his weight against the tree.
“Thanks Ophelia.”
The gunshot rang out and blackbirds scattered from the branches above him. They were a momentary jumble of wings but found their level and flew ahead to the sun easing behind the mountains.