Before the sun goes down

by James Ryder

  “You got a girl in Kingston Flats?” he asked.

  Then it was my turn to look burdened. “No...I don’t,” I said, aware that my cheeks were starting to burn.

  He looked at me and a faint smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “You a virgin, Austen?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry, I just thought since you blushed...”

  Without realising it my body language had become defensive. I didn’t want Landon Rutherford knowing anything about my private life. “I just don’t think it’s something you talk about with strangers...”

  “Am I a stranger?” he asked.

  “Well, we’re not exactly friends, are we? You didn’t speak to me in High School and you don’t speak to me in Chicago so...”

  Landon lowered his head, perhaps out of shame. Then he lifted it again and said, “Would it surprise you to know that I didn’t speak to you in High School because I thought you looked down on me? I always felt a little stupid around you.”

  I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow sceptically.

  “It’s true,” he insisted. “You were always the smartest in class. And I wasn’t. We both know how I got into Chicago and it wasn’t because of my intellect.” He managed to laugh off the brutal truth of his limits with a defiant smile. “Though, I like to think they accepted me for my smile.”

  I laughed. His charm certainly could take him anywhere, I realised.

  “But no,” he said, resuming that melancholic expression, “I always thought you were so smart, Austen. It’s quite intimidating, you know? It can make a guy feel kinda stupid and it can make him put up walls to hide that stupidity from the outside world...”

  I felt like a heel for making him feel that way. Although I wanted to tell him that it hadn’t been my intention to make him feel inadequate, I knew I couldn’t say that in all honesty because I had wanted him to feel stupid next to me. But that was just my own insecutrity running away with me, I knew. Touched by his honesty, I thought the only way I could reciprocate and perhaps mitigate the effect of my behaviour was to be honest with him myself.

  “I don’t have a girl in Kingston Flats or in Chicago,” I said, tentatively, picking at the grass beneath me as I spoke. “I don’t like girls.”

  It took a moment for Landon to fully realise what I was telling him, and to his credit he didn’t react negatively when he did. All he said was, “Oh” and he nodded his head understandingly. Then he lay back down on the grass and closed his eyes again.

  The sun shone down on him and he looked golden god. I stared at him for a long time, fascinated and nervously excited at being so close to him.

  Miss Rigsby came outside carrying two glasses of homemade lemonade on a tray for us. We sat on the porch and drank them while she played records again. I wanted to ask Landon what he thought about my admission, but Miss Rigsby kept talking about her youth and kept changing the records and waltzing around the porch with an imaginary partner. When she played ‘The Look of Love’ I noticed that Landon was again staring off into the distance as he swung gently on the porch swing. He was a million miles away.

  “I just love this song, don’t you?” Miss Rigsby asked as she curled her arms around one of the porch pillars. “It’s so romantic.”

  I offered her a smile but I couldn’t take my eyes off Landon. His eyes were closed and his head was turned upwards to catch the last of the sun before it travelled off the porch entirely and left him in the shade. His golden skin glistened and a little patch of perspiration lay in the depression between his collarbones. I felt a sudden desire to reach over and lick it with my tongue.

  “Mercy me, Mr Austen, you look quite flushed!” Miss Rigsby said suddenly. I quickly looked away and tried to stop the colour rising in my cheeks. Had she seen me staring at Landon? Had Landon caught me looking?

  “You do look flushed,” Landon observed as he opened his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. “It’s just hot.”

  Miss Rigsby fetched some more lemonade and I drank it. Nothing more was said of my flushed expression because Mr Fonthill returned from the funeral he’d been obliged to attend that day. There was nothing worse that burying a man on a hot August afternoon, he said, because there were so many damned flies. And sitting in a hot parlour with a hundred other mourners while the preacher said prayers was akin to torture, he added, though he felt blasphemous for admitting it. Still, it was his duty to pay his respects to the bereaved family who’d lost a soldier son. As Fonthill removed his jacket I spotted the sweat stains under his armpits, darkening his white shirt. Then he drew a white handkerchief across his forehead to mop up the perspiration dripping from his damp hair.

  As we sat in Miss Rigsby’s kitchen I wondered if I should ask him when he could go to the next town over to get a new tyre for Landon’s car, but I didn’t. I didn’t want Mr Fonthill to fetch a new tyre. I wanted to remain in Hopeville another night with Landon.

  It was Mr Fonthill who brought the subject up himself. “I’ll be able to go over to Clarksboro tomorrow right after church and get that tyre for you boys,” he said, “and once I put it on ya’ll can be on your way. How does that sound?”

  “Thank you, Mr Fonthill,” Landon said, smiling faintly.

  The sun fell slowly that night. Miss Rigsby had decided to make a “real supper for you gentlemen” and banished us from the kitchen until we were called. Landon decided to honour her efforts by dressing up for the occasion, so he took a bath and put on his tuxedo. I had no such attire and had to make do with my tweed jacket which I usually wore to my lectures or when I was interviewing someone vaguely important person for the college paper.

  Landon drew the bath himself and climbed into it, leaving the door that connected the bathroom and the bedroom ajar. I went out onto the porch that wrapped around the upper floor of the house, though I could still hear the splashing of the bath water. Downstairs, Miss Rigsby had put on another record, this time an old classic, bluesy number full of lazy saxophones. The gentle melody of it floated up through the house.

  “She’ll be sad to see us go tomorrow,” Landon called from the bathroom.

  I wasn’t looking forward to it either. “I know. She has certainly looked after us.”

  “I almost feel like staying a while...”

  “Me too,” I said. I was hoping he’d suggest postponing our departure a little longer, but he didn’t. After a pause the splashing of the water resumed and the hope faded.

  The dining table was adorned with freshly cut peonies and fine crystal glasses which had been passed down the female line of Miss Rigsby’s family. It was too hot to eat anything heavy, so Miss Rigsby had produced a light salad, followed by Largemouth Bass served with her mother’s fish sauce. This was followed up with a homemade apple pie and two dainty glasses of port. With no room left for anything else, Landon and I refused Miss Rigsby’s offer of some candied walnuts, much to her disappointment.

  “Well then I shall take myself off to the next room and allow you two to talk of politics as gentlemen should. I hope you’ll join me a little later for coffee?” she said, before swooping out of the room like a true southern belle.

  Landon smiled after her and whispered, “I bet she has a copy of Gone with the Wind at her bedside.”

  “I’d put money on it,” I said.

  We avoided talking about politics that evening. Somehow we both knew that it would only spoil the pleasant atmosphere that seemed the envelope us. Perhaps Miss Rigsby’s rundown house cast a spell on us, or perhaps the sticky Southern heat had simply got to us, but I think Landon and I were suspended in a curious netherworld that evening. It was as if the future was far away and neither of us was in a hurry to get there. I can’t explain it. Looking back at it with the distance of time I’m inclined to romanticise it a bit maybe. Or perhaps that strangely beautiful night was all too real and I can only think of it now as a dream because it hurts too much otherwise.

  We heard Miss Rigsby play an old fashioned record from
the next room.

  “She’ll want to dance again,” Landon said.

  “I don’t know how,” I lamented, anxious that she might corral me into another waltz, or worse, a foxtrot.

  “I do.”

  “You know how to dance?”

  “Yes, of course. All rich folks know how to dance,” he teased.

  I blushed. “I’m sorry about criticising you about things like that...”

  “I was only messing with you,” Landon explained, gently. “You want me to teach you?”

  “Teach me what?”

  “How to dance.”

  Before I could respond, Landon quickly stood up and took my hand, pulling me out of my chair. Smiling cheekily, he placed my hand on his shoulder and he put his on my waist. And then to the echoing sounds of ‘Guilty’ sung by Al Bowlly, Landon guided me around the dining room floor. At first I was embarrassed and I knew my face was turning bright red. I kept my eyes on the floor, pretending to care about the steps, but really I couldn’t bring myself to look at Landon’s face because I knew I would only fall in love with him if I did. I think Landon sensed this. After a few steps he stopped directing my steps and simply hummed the tune. My body became less rigid and I allowed myself to feel the music, which helped me move with Landon’s rhythm. Confidence took root in me and I managed to lift my head again and look into Landon’s eyes. First I smiled defensively, just in case this was all just a lark and he was about to burst out laughing. Then I saw that he wasn’t smiling at all — Landon was staring into my eyes and searching for that side of me I kept completely hidden from everyone, my innermost vulnerability. And in that moment I wanted desperately to reveal myself to him.

  Silently, without speaking, I took a deep breath and returned Landon’s gentle stare. We stopped dancing then and simply allowed ourselves to see each othr. I could feel we were on the threshold of something.

  The record stopped next door and I heard Miss Rigsby saying, “I’ll put on another one, don’t worry” through the wall. “I just have to pick one.”

  For a long moment we heard nothing and it seemed that all we could do was part again. Landon ran his hands through his hair and he picked up his port glass and drank it. I gripped the back of my chair to stop myself from trembling.

  “Come and help me choose another record” Miss Rigsby called.

  When we joined Miss Rigsby in her drawing room she asked me to dance with her and I happily obliged. When I caught Landon’s eyes, I rolled my own and playfully threw a look heavenwards for deliverance. That amused him. I couldn’t help but feel a pulse of excitement electrify my body at the thought that he might want to make love to me that night. Surely the moment we’d shared in the dining room was a prelude to something more, I thought. As Miss Rigsby continued to regale us with further tales of her dancing past, I allowed myself to hope. I thought about what it might be like to stand close to Landon, to feel his warm breath on my neck; I pictured myself peeling his shirt off his body and touching the hard muscle of his chest; and I let myself savour the imagined anticipation of kissing him. And then, as the surge of desire moved through me, I gave in to the heady pleasure of visualising what it would be like to feel Landon’s body on top of me, my legs raised up so he fit between them, and his deft penetration of me. I wanted him.

  Would he hold me afterwards? Would he tell me that this was his first time with a man too? Would he reach out for me in the night and pull me close to him? All these questions swirled through my mind, dizzyingly and intensely. I was sure he could read my thoughts when I glanced over at him.

  Landon looked utterly composed, if a little thoughtful.

  “Oh, I just adore dancing!” Miss Rigsby was saying. “And I haven’t danced with a gentleman in so long. There really is nothing quite like it to uplift a girl’s spirits. I feel like a young girl again. Look at me, Mr Rutherford, I believe I am blushing. It’s times like these that a girl needs a fan.”

  Landon humoured her and said the colour in her cheeks became her.

  “Such charm!” she declared. “I declare, if some girl doesn’t snap you up there is simply no romantic justice in this world. Indeed there is not.”

  He looked at me then and smiled.

  The doorbell rang. Astounded that someone should call so late in the evening, Miss Rigsby went to answer it, and a moment later she ushered Mr Fonthill into the room. He bowed his head, removed his hat and turned the brim of it around in his hands.

  “I’m sorry to be interrupting y’all, Miss Rigsby, but I had some good news here for Mr Rutherford and Mr Austen,” he said.

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “Yes, well it turns out that when I made a telephone call this morning to Mr Mason over at the garage enquiring if he had a tyre for a convertible car he said he didn’t. But it just so happened that he then made a telephone call over to Clarksboro on other business and asked them if they had any tyres fitting that description and they did. He got one of the Bleeker boys to bring it back with him when he got off working at the saw mill. It arrived at the Hopeville garage not half an hour ago and I put it on that convertible car of yours myself. I just come from there this second to let you boys know. If’n you boys want I could take you over there and you could be on your way and be in Kingston Flats by morning.”

  He looked so proud with this accomplishment that I felt very ungrateful for not smiling at him. The truth was that I felt Mr Fonthill had cheated me of the night I hoped to have with Landon. All I managed to say to him was, “You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble...”

  He took that as a sign of my appreciation. “It was no trouble, Mr Austen. I was glad to help. When Mr Rutherford here told me he was heading home to join up and fight for his country I thought it was the least I could do to help him fulfil that sacred duty.”

  Landon stood up slowly and shook Mr Fonthill’s hand. “You’ve been very kind to us and I’m very thankful for all you’ve done. How much was the tyre?”

  A conversation followed in which Mr Fonthill told him how much the tyre had cost and Landon insisted on adding the same amount of money again for all his trouble. Mr Fonthill rejected Landon’s offer of money out of politeness at first, but eventually he accepted it. Then he turned his attention to Miss Rigsby and asked her to make up our bill for staying in her house. I heard none of it. All I heard over and over again were the words ‘join up’ and ‘fight for his country’.

  Silently I crept upstairs and changed into my old clothes and packed my bag angrily. Then I stepped out onto the porch and listened to the night. Somewhere in the distance I heard a dog barking and it angered me.

  Landon appeared in the room.

  “You’re packed already?”

  Turning to face him, I said, “You’re joining up?”

  Landon bowed his head and proceeded to throw his clothes into his suitcase. “Yes, I am. When I get back to Alabama I’m going to enlist in the military, in my father’s old company.”

  I was so dumbstruck by this news I didn’t know how to respond. I had no right to expect to be told that he intended to go off to Vietnam and fight, but I felt as if I’d been betrayed nonetheless. In the space of a few short hours I had fallen in love with Landon Rutherford.

  “I was going to tell you...”

  My defensiveness quickly reasserted itself and I shook my head. “It’s none of my business what you do... You can join up if you wish and not tell me. I’m not...”

  “It’s just that I didn’t expect to um...”

  I wiped my eyes. From the porch I saw Mr Fonthill leave the house and climb into his pickup truck to wait for us. “He’s taking us to the garage now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Landon said.

  “Then we should go.”

  “Wait...” Landon said, reaching for my arm.

  I yanked myself away from his reach, grabbed my bag and headed down the stairs.

  We were silent during the short trip to the garage. Mr Fonthill talked the entire time about a relative of hi
s who’d gone over to Vietnam to fight and come back after two tours of duty with a piece of metal lodged in his shoulder blade. When he went through the metal detectors at airports he made them ping, he said. Landon smiled and nodded at Mr Fonthill when it seemed necessary, but I rolled down the window and stared out into the growing darkness.

  Within twenty minutes we’d loaded up the car and set off for Alabama. Mr Fonthill gave us directions and handed over some foil-wrapped sandwiches Miss Rigsby had made for us, as well as several bottles of cola for the journey. He thought it shouldn’t take more than five hours to get to our destination on such a fine night. The moon was indeed high in the sky and it made driving easy. I concentrated on the road and didn’t say much. At midnight I turned on the radio to alleviate the oppressive silence. Landon glanced at me and then looked away again. There was a lot I wanted to say yet I didn’t have the words or the courage to say them. Still, I kept thinking about them as we drove through each small town, passed sign after sign that announced that we were getting ever closer to Kingston Flats. Mr Fonthill had evidently filled the tank with gas as a goodwill gesture, so we didn’t even need to stop. It was just an endless journey filled with silence and unexpressed feelings. By the time the sun came up we were less than an hour away from Kingston Flats. Landscapes started to become familiar again and in time I drove down streets I recognised, until eventually I came to a stop outside the impressive mansion in which the Rutherford family resided. It was the largest house in town.

  “Here we are,” I said finally.

  Landon remained sitting in the passenger seat for a long moment and after a few failed attempts at speaking, he eventually said, “I’ve never been in love, Austen. I mean, I’ve fooled around with girls because it was expected of me, but I’ve never been in love. I have kissed a guy before. It was two years ago at one of my parents parties. I kissed one of the hired waiters. My father saw me and said I was a...said I wasn’t a real man. Ever since then I’ve wanted to prove to him that I am. That’s why I had so many girls in Chicago, you know? But he wasn’t likely to hear about those. The only way I could prove to him that I am a man is...”