Before the sun goes down Read online

  Before the sun goes down

  Copyright © James Ryder 2017

  Cover art design: James Ryder

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by James Ryder

  Dream Lover (States of Love #1: Louisiana)

  Carver’s Cove (States of Love #2: Maine)

  Hard Feelings (States of Love #3: California)

  Stallion (States of Love#4: Texas)

  Merrywood Hall

  Dedicated to all my readers.

  J.R.

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  Before the sun goes down

  a short story

  The first time I really had a proper conversation with Landon I didn’t like him. I can remember that quite clearly. It was at Wanda Bell’s end-of-semester party. This was in 1968 and we were both at Chicago University. Landon was studying business management and I was studying political science and journalism. We’d known each other since we were kids because we came from the same small town in Alabama, but we moved in very different circles. Landon’s father, Landon Rutherford III, was the owner of the cotton mill, the biggest employer in town, and my father, Hal Austen, ran the local newspaper. That meant that Landon spent his time in country clubs, while I spent mine setting the typeface on the ancient printer in my father’s office and getting covered in ink. There was no profit to be made in the Kingston Flats Chronicle — my father lived off high-minded journalistic integrity rather than money.

  Landon and I barely saw each other at Chicago University either. Again, our crowds were very different. He spent a lot of time with the jocks and debutantes, while I lived in the library with the swots. I was happy there, but as I said, we did meet at Wanda Bell’s party. Wanda was a kook, a bohemian type who mixed with everybody. She was somewhat ditzy, her hair was a tangle of red curls and she always had way too many bangles dangling from her wrists. The big draw at a Wanda Bell party was that she had the best pot on campus. Nobody knew where she got it, but it made her a popular girl.

  “Try one, honey; you’ll love it,” I remember her saying to me when I showed up and she offered me a joint. I’d come with my friend Mia, who was a budding journalist on the college paper. She wanted to write a piece about pot parties and she’d dragged me along for moral support. I didn’t fit in and I didn’t want to try Wanda’s pot. I was pretty square.

  Anyway, after successfully turning down one of the joints Wanda was offering on a serving tray, I found a quiet corner and watched the party from the sidelines. Mia was busy interrogating the guests and indulging in the hostesses offerings.

  That’s when I saw Landon storming across the garden and jumping into the swimming pool. But before Landon reached the pool, he slipped and took a tumble, spraining his ankle before hitting the water.

  Everyone came running out to help him. Wanda thought it was hysterical. Landon laughed it off too because he’d had a few beers. Then the pain kicked in.

  “I should go to the hospital to get it checked out,” he said.

  The only problem was that nobody wanted to take him because they were all paranoid they’d get arrested for being high. So, since I was the only sober one there, I volunteered to drive Landon to the emergency room.

  We took Landon’s car. It was an open-topped, blood-red coloured Firebird convertible, a recent birthday present from his father. Landon bitched and moaned about my driving skills, or lack thereof, the whole way to the hospital.

  “You’re gonna break the stick,” he kept staying as I ground the gears a little hard. My class-based resentment of Landon’s easy life was maybe being taken out on his gearbox. After all, it was common knowledge that Landon’s father had pulled some strings to get Landon into Chicago, and Landon didn’t even try to study. There were rumours that he paid other students to write his papers for him too. That bothered me.

  “Sorry, I’ve never driven a convertible before,” I told him.

  “Yeah well, you should be a little gentler with her. She’s my pride and joy,” he said. He was sobering up now and he looked pissed off.

  At the hospital the doctors confirmed the sprained ankle. When he came out to the waiting room he told me he’d been advised him not to do any driving for several weeks while it healed. He was on crutches and the foot was bandaged.

  As I drove him back to his fraternity house, Landon became annoyed. “This is fucked up!” he said. “I’m supposed to drive home tomorrow, to Alabama. Now what am I gonna do?”

  I wasn’t exactly sympathetic to Landon’s problems. To my mind he wouldn’t have gotten his ankle sprained if he hadn’t been trying to show off at Wanda’s. And I told him so. “I guess you’ll have to rough it on the bus like the rest of us regular folks,” I said.

  Landon frowned at me. “You don’t understand. I have to take my car back. I can’t leave it in Chicago.”

  “You can’t do without your precious toy for a few weeks over break? Poor little baby!” Naturally he didn’t take my mocking tone too well and he called me an asshole. But in my defence, I had been taking the Greyhound for two years, so it wasn’t exactly a hardship for him to do it, I thought. Still, when I pulled up outside his fraternity house and got out, Landon caustically said, “If you’ve messed up my gearbox I’ll be sending you the bill.”

  He didn’t say thank you for taking him to the hospital, he didn’t offer to reimburse me for my time; he threatened to charge me for damaging his precious gearbox.

  Now, I thought that would be the last I’d hear from Landon Rutherford. But, the very next morning the landlady in the house where I rented a tiny room told me he had called and wanted to speak to me.

  “Hey look,” Landon said, “since you’re going to the same town as me why don’t we travel together. You can drive and I’ll pay for food. How does that sound? I just really need to get my car down to Alabama. You’d be helping me out.”

  The idea appealed to me. Going down to Alabama in Landon’s car meant that I’d not only save money on a bus ticket, I wouldn’t be on the Greyhound timetable either. I could stop and rest whenever I wanted. Moreover, I wouldn’t be stuck in a cramped bus spending a sleepless night next to snoring strangers. On the other hand, I would have to put up with Landon’s obnoxious personality and sense of entitlement. I decided to take that chance.

  “Fine, I’ll go with you,” I told him, hoping I wouldn’t regret my decision.

  We set off that afternoon. For the first few hours we didn’t speak as we drove out of Chicago and the cramped cityscape gave way to the open farmland of Illinois. It was hot and Landon rolled the window down and stuck his head out to enjoy the breeze. After a while he put on his sunglasses and turned the radio on. The Who’s ‘I Can See For Miles’ was playing. It seemed apt. Since the road was basically a straight line the ride got quite boring pretty soon. We did pass a Greyhound, though. I assumed it was the bus I should have been on. Landon eventually fell asleep in the passenger seat. I guess that was his hangover catching up with him.

  Hunger woke him again an hour later and he suggested we stop at one of those small town diners for something to eat. He ordered a steak, fries and milkshake, while I had a ham sandwich.

  “You can have whatever you want,” he said, “I said I’d pay.”

  While this w
as true, I thought I’d be beholden to him in some way if I let him buy me a rib—eye, so I told him I wasn’t that hungry. Once we’d started eating, Landon asked me what I thought about Chicago. I told him I was enjoying it, that I found some of the work pretty hard, but that I loved the journalistic experience I was getting at the college paper. We’d published some interesting pieces about the war in Vietnam, I explained, and I hoped to build up a portfolio of writing which might help land me a job on a paper in New York or Washington when I’d graduate. That was my plan anyway.

  “Jesus, you have a plan?” Landon asked, almost appalled at the fact that I had ambition and focus.

  “Some of us have to work for a living,” I told him, “so yeah, I have a plan. We can’t all live off our rich fathers.”

  Landon took exception to that. “Hey, just because I was born with Rutherford as a surname doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that.” He looked pretty pissed at me in that moment. I wanted to tell him that it was precisely because his name was Rutherford that nobody had ever spoken to him like that, but I didn’t. We ate the rest of the meal in silence. When the bill came I made a point of paying for my half.

  Afterwards I went to the grocery store next door and bought some provisions. I was determined not to let Landon pay for any of my meals throughout the journey, so I bought some bread, peanut butter, and some soft drinks. I’d make that last me for the rest of the time we were going to be on the road.

  I drove for several more hours until it was almost nine o’clock. Then exhaustion got the better of me. I assumed we’d just sleep in the car, but Landon decided we’d get rooms at a motel. Since I lived on a very tight budget at school, I didn’t have enough money for that. So, while Landon got a room I said I’d stay in the car and he said, “Fine, please yourself.”

  I didn’t count on the fact that it would get so cold. I’d brought my coat with me, and a blanket, but it wasn’t enough to ward off the Illinois chill. Eventually I had to swallow my pride and knock on Landon’s motel room door.

  “Thought you’d change your mind,” he said when he let me in.

  That night we slept in the same bed. At least, Landon slept. I stared at the ceiling most of the night because I felt like I’d lost some sort of battle with him — the convenience of Landon’s money had destroyed my principles, I thought. It was easier having money; you could sleep in a warm bed. That annoyed me that night.

  That’s what I told myself. I think the real reason I lay awake was that I was aroused by his body lying next to me. Landon was a handsome guy, masculine and lithe. At one point he kicked off his blanket and I got a look at his tight white underpants and his bulge.

  We started late the next morning. Landon slept in and when he appeared at the diner across the street he looked downcast. I asked him what was wrong and he said it was nothing. “Sometimes I don’t sleep so good, that’s all.”

  “You snored all night!”

  “I have bad dreams sometimes...”

  “What about?” I asked.

  Landon shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. He ordered pancakes and honey and he devoured every bite. And I mean he savoured every bite like a man on death row enjoys his last meal. Afterwards he even licked his fingers. At the time I thought he was deliberately being uncouth just to annoy me.

  “I thought rich folks had manners,” I told him.

  Landon laughed at that — snorted really, and put on the best redneck voice he could and said, “Mercy, I got plenty of manners, mister. I always say excuse me when I get sick in the back of somebody else’s car.” I must admit that made me laugh. I hadn’t expected Landon to have a wry sense of humour, and for the first time in his company I smiled.

  “Ah, so you can smile,” Landon said to me that morning. I think that was when I started to relax the hard-edged stance I’d adopted around Landon Rutherford. He wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. There was something breezy and carefree about Landon, a sense that life wasn’t to be taken too seriously. But there were also hidden depths too.

  As we drove through the Illinois state lines, skirted Indiana and made our way into Kentucky, we started to have real conversations for the first time. I got onto the subject of Vietnam which was the topic of conversation for everybody in America at that time. I was against it. I thought it was criminal that President Johnson was sending young American men over to the other side of the world to get killed fighting in a place nobody could even find on the map. I told Landon that I’d written countless articles ridiculing the administration for their involvement, castigated them for the fact that military contractors were making money out of the deaths of American soldiers, and called anybody who joined up a fool. Landon didn’t share my point of view.

  “If anybody chooses to serve their country they’re not a fool,” he said. “They’re brave, patriotic Americans and they deserve your respect. My father fought on the Second World War to defend the freedom of people like you to call them fools.” He was very angry about it. A vein in his neck pulsed as he spoke and his eyes burned with intensity. I’d never seen Landon Rutherford look so impassioned. Landon was the easy-going joker, the hedonistic jock who liked to have fun and never took anything seriously. It shocked me to see him so riled up.

  That’s when we got the flat tyre. I guess we were quarrelling so much that I wasn’t paying attention to the road. I’m not sure what we hit; I think it was a branch, but whatever it was it was sharp enough to puncture the wheel. And Landon didn’t have a spare. So, as night fell, we realised we were in the middle of nowhere and had no idea how far away the nearest town was located. Landon said he would walk to it, but that was ridiculous given his ankle, so I said I’d go.

  Half an hour down the road I hailed down a passing truck. The driver was an old-timer who was as thin as a rake and wore a crumpled straw hat. He offered to take us to the nearest town, which turned out to be Hopeville, a one-street place with a gas station and a general store and not much else. One of the houses in the town rented out rooms. Miss Rigsby, who ran the ‘hotel’ as she called it, was sixty or so and she was thrilled to have two ‘handsome guests patronising her establishment’.

  We stayed there that night. Still smarting from out quarrel earlier that evening, we didn’t speak much as we undressed. Landon hobbled to the bathroom and washed himself at the sink. I took out my old typewriter that I carried everywhere and started typing up a formal invoice.

  “What’s this?” Landon asked when I thrust the typed sheet into his hands.

  “It’s an invoice for whatever I might owe you for this trip,” I said. “I don’t want to owe you anything, so I want you to list every penny you spend on my behalf on here so I can pay you back.”

  Landon was insulted by this and he threw the piece of paper at me. “Go to hell, Austen,” he said, and then he jumped into bed, turned off the light and closed his eyes.

  The next morning we were informed by Clyde Fonthill, the man who’d picked us up the night before that he’d have to drive into the next town to get a replacement wheel for Landon’s convertible. They didn’t have them in stock in the local body shop. The only problem was that Mr Fonthill wasn’t going to be able to go over to the next town because he had a funeral to go that afternoon. That meant that Landon and I didn’t have much hope of getting out of Hopeville for twenty four hours.

  In the meantime, Eulalie Rigsby treated us like royalty while we waited. She made us a big breakfast of fried bacon, eggs, waffles, and coffee and orange juice. I don’t think she got many visitors so she liked to make an effort when she did. She also treated us to tales of her youth when she was “the best dancer in Mayette County” and attended every barn dance she could. Eulalie also took delight in showing us her well turned ankle as proof.

  “It’s better than mine is at this moment,” Landon said.

  She wanted to dance and since Landon wasn’t up to it, she enticed me to spin her around the floor when she put on a record of an old waltz. I felt awkward and I could see L
andon’s shoulders rising up and down with laughter. I immediately stopped dancing and blushed mightily. Miss Rigsby fluttered her eyelashes and said, “Why, Mr Austen, you simply take my breath away!” I felt so insecure I didn’t know whether she was teasing me or whether she was serious.

  Later that day, Landon and I strolled around the orchard in her garden. We couldn’t go very far, of course, so eventually we sat under an apple tree. Landon seemed thoughtful. I was still nursing the embarrassment I felt when I danced with Miss Rigsby earlier.

  “Tomorrow we’ll make it to Kingston Flats if we get away early.” I thought I detected a hint of disappointment in Landon’s voice when he said this, as if he was suddenly not in a hurry to get home after all.

  “It shouldn’t take too long if we don’t make any stops...” I said.

  “What will you do when get home?”

  “I’ll probably help my father out on the paper,” I explained. “He always needs help. He only has Old Horace helping him, and he’s pushing eighty. If I run things or a while Pa can have a rest.”

  “Kingston Flats’ very own Ben Bradlee.”

  “I guess so. It won’t go to my head, though. Miss Cunningham, Pa’s secretary, knows how to cut you to the quick and put you in your place if she thinks you’re getting too big for your boots.”

  Landon smiled. “I think I remember her. She scolded me for riding my bike too fast down Main Street one time.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “It sounds like a nice life, though. Your father must think a lot of you to let you loose on the paper.”

  “I guess so.”

  Silence fell between us. Landon seemed strangely nostalgic for Kingston Flats and for the first time I thought I saw a hidden sensitivity in him, a melancholy even.

  I asked him what he’d do when he got home. At this he furrowed his brow and stared off into the distance as if his immediate future were some unknowable but impending burden he wanted to resist but couldn’t. With the muscles on his face clenched, Landon merely shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject.