It's ten after four in the morning and I just woke up because I finally figured it out. Forty-four years old, in my sleep, I figured it out. They called him “Sundown” because he was dim, not very bright.
I could never figure out why they called him Sundown.
I was 6 years old and we lived at 404 Grandview Boulevard in Muskogee, Oklahoma where Mrs. Hamilton was my first grade teacher and I played with RG Wilton on the playground during recess and I got in two fights with Dan Beck and won them both by getting him in a choke hold until snot came out his nose. President Kennedy had been assassinated the previous year when we lived in Beaumont. That's how I can always remember the year when a thing happened. All I have to do is remember the house or the town or the school because we moved every year except for Muskogee where we lived for 2 years.
His real name was Duane and he was in his early twenties, I guess, and I was a little bit afraid of him. You could tell that he was always trying to fit in with my Dad and Al Pinkerton and Ron the manager from Sears who never once saw me but who had the foofy little poodle who was trained to go and sit wherever he pointed his ink pen. I remember Ophelia Pinkerton who was my sister's age and more than a little overweight and how she dialed the adjustment on the bathroom scales backwards by fifteen pounds when her mom promised her those expensive new boots if she would lose some weight. Ophelia had to cut the boot-tops off just above the ankles because her legs were too fat to fit inside. I remember the teenage girl who pulled out her guitar in the clubhouse of the Muskogee Round-Up Club and sang “In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home” so badly that I was embarrassed for her but now I realize that country music is supposed to be sung like that. To call it a clubhouse was a laugh. It was really just a filthy old one-bedroom house that was on the farm where they built the arena for the Muskogee Round-Up Club, which is where I jumped down into the hole they had dug for the footings of the new grandstands and didn't see the re-bar sticking up from the ground. I still have the scar on my knee.
I guess that's why I'm so angry about the misspelling I noticed four days ago on the Oklahoma State University sign at Hill's Café, redneck central for every posing rodeo-circuit four-wheel-drive tobacco chewing moron in the area. I mean, even though it was just some pompous thing from the athletics department it still represents a major university and that doesn't speak too well of higher education. But then nobody ever said that OSU was good for much besides veterinary medicine and maybe those guys don't need to spell right anyway. “The Power and the Glory of the Oklahoma State University Athletics Department will Never be Intrusted to the Meek or the Timid.” Aside from being a stupid, pretentious, and redneck thing to say, everyone knows that entrusted isn't spelled with an “i” unless you're a good football player I guess. Then you can spell it any way you want and they'll give you a passing grade and a degree and pay your tuition, too.
I've never liked cowboys or athletes but I always felt bad for Duane because he wasn't stupid due to misplaced priorities like a redneck or a jock, he was physically stupid. Organically, I mean. Like he had a high fever when he was a baby or something.
I can't remember Duane's last name. I'm not certain I ever knew it.
# # # # end of chapter one # # # #
Roy H. Williams
PS – Although this new work of fiction has been completed and is receiving wonderful feedback from those who have read it, Sundown in Muskogee is not yet available for pre-order. Beagles Visit the Seven Sisters, the startling conclusion of the Free the Beagle trilogy has likewise been completed but it's not quite ready for delivery either, though you will find an amazing offer at FreetheBeagle.com. Right now all our energies are being poured into Thought Particles: Building Blocks of Perceptual Reality (a new persuasion audio-book) which should start shipping in about 6 weeks. – RHW