J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

Brandon changed the subject. “I heard Davy telling the doctor that you’re writing books. Is that true?”

Diana flushed. “I’m trying,” she said. “Nothing published yet, but I’m working at it.”

Brandon frowned as a trace of memory surfaced. “Isn’t that what your husband. .?”

He broke off the question as soon as he saw the pained expression on her face, but it was too late. The damage was done. He berated himself for blundering and making things infinitely worse rather than better.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what Gary was studying before he died. Writing. As a matter of fact, he told me that on our very first date. That he was going to write the great American novel someday.”

Brandon Walker thought he already knew the answer, but he asked the question anyway, just to be polite. “Did he?”

Diana Ladd stood up abruptly and swept both coffee cups off the table.

“No. Gary never finished anything he started,” she said bitterly, heading toward the kitchen. “He had a very short attention span.”

They were still in the booth at the I-Hop, drinking their eighth or ninth cup of coffee. The waitress was growing surly.

“You’re shitting me!” Gary Ladd exclaimed in delight. “You’re going to be a writer, too?”

After hearing about Gary Ladd’s Pulitzer Prize ambitions, Diana Lee Cooper shyly mentioned her own interest in writing. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” she added, surprised to find herself confiding in this semi-stranger.

Diana’s desire to write wasn’t something she confessed to others openly or often. People in Joseph, Oregon, laughed uproariously at the very idea. Here at the university, she always felt unworthy, underqualified. But Gary Ladd didn’t seem to share that opinion.

“Hey, that’s great,” he said, giving Diana’s shoulder an encouraging pat accompanied by one of his engaging grins. “What say we do it together-matching typewriters on a single table, right?”

She laughed and nodded. “Right.”

From near the cash register, the waitress glared at them pointedly. Garrison Ladd grabbed Diana’s hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go before they throw us out.”

On the way outside, Diana glanced down at her watch. “Oh, my God,” she said in dismay. “I’m late.” She started for her bike with Garrison Ladd right behind her.

“Late for what? Where are you going?”

“Ushering. I have to get home, change, and get back down here in less than an hour.”

“Ushering?” he asked. “What’s this about ushering?”

“At Robinson Hall. It’s my second part-time job,” she explained. “I make three dollars a night.”

November’s early darkness was settling over Eugene, bringing with it a chill winter rainstorm as she knelt on the wet ground and struggled with the stubborn lock on her bicycle chain.

“Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You work in the English Department fifteen hours a week, and you usher in the auditorium as well. Do you have any other jobs I don’t know about?”

“Only the newspaper,” she told him.

“What newspaper?”

“ The Register-Guard. I deliver ninety-six papers during the week and a hundred-ten on Sundays.”

“When do you find time to eat and sleep?” he asked.

“When I can. I told you, I have to pay my own way. This is what it takes to stay in school.”

“That may be, but you sure as hell don’t have to ride that thing home in this downpour. Don’t be stubborn. Let me load it into my van.”

She accepted gratefully. The radio was on as they drove toward the rambling house off Euclid where Diana lived in a tiny apartment over a garage. They were almost there when the local announcer began a public-service listing of all the functions for that evening that had been canceled or postponed in a show of respect for the slain president. Among them was the performance of the Youth Symphony scheduled for Robinson Hall.

“Damn.” Diana bit her lip in disappointment and fought back tears. There went another three bucks she wouldn’t have come next payday. Along with the other two she had missed by not working all afternoon at the department, payday would be very short indeed in a budget that was already tight right down to the last nickel. At this rate, how would she ever accumulate enough money to buy next semester’s books?

“That means you’re off tonight?” Garrison Ladd was saying.

Not trusting herself to speak, Diana nodded.

“What will you do instead?”

“Study, I guess,” Diana answered bleakly. “I’ve got some reading to do.”

“How about dinner?”

“Tonight? Isn’t that. .”

“Tacky?” he supplied with a wink. “You think just because somebody knocked off the president, the rest of us shouldn’t eat?”

“It does seem. . well, disrespectful.”

“From what I hear about JFK himself, he’d be the last one to want us missing out on a good time. Come on. I’ll take you someplace special. How about the Eugene Hotel? They have terrific steaks there.”

Diana found herself salivating at the very mention of the word steak . She hadn’t tasted one since the previous summer’s rodeo-queen supper. Her school budget seldom made allowances for hamburger, let alone steak. She let herself be enticed.

“All right,” she said. “But I’ve never been to the Eugene Hotel. What should I wear?”

“We’ll manage,” he said.

Despite Iona’s warnings about not inviting men up to her room, it didn’t seem polite to leave Garrison Ladd waiting outside in the cold car while she went up to change. After all, he was an instructor at the university. Surely, someone like that was above reproach.

She started having doubts though when, after closing the apartment door behind him, he stopped just inside the threshold and didn’t move.

Diana turned back and looked at him. “Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll go into the bathroom and change.”

He studied her curiously. The undisguised appraisal in the look made her nervous. “What’s the matter?”

“Come here,” he said, crooking his finger at her.

“Why?”

“Just come here.”

Against her better judgment, she did as she was told, walking toward him slowly, woodenly. What was going on? she wondered. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she shouldn’t be here in her room alone with this man.

Diana stopped when there was less than a foot between them. “What?” she asked.

“Has anyone ever told you how lovely you are?”

“Come on,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t give me that old line.”

She started to move away from him, but he caught her wrist, imprisoning her hand in his and drawing her closer. With his other hand, he brushed the hair back from her face and then traced the slender, curving jaw with a gently caressing finger.

“It’s not a line,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

“People in Joseph don’t talk to the garbageman’s daughter that way,” she said stiffly. Tentatively, she tried to free her hand, but he didn’t let it go.

No doubt about it. Her mother was right. She’d made a serious mistake in inviting him up here, and she didn’t know how to get rid of him. She tried again to loosen his grip on her wrist, but he held firm.

“They don’t? How do they talk to her?”

Now Diana was genuinely scared. Her apartment was a long way from the main house. If she yelled for help, no one would hear her.

“Let me guess,” Garrison Ladd continued, still holding her captive. “They’d probably say something gross, like ‘Fall down on your back, honey, and spread your legs.’”

At once hot, humiliating tears stung Diana’s cheeks. This was the very thing she had hoped to escape by running away from Joseph, by running away from home. Those words, those exact same words, were ones her father had shouted at Iona in one of his drunken, raging tirades when neither one of them knew their daughter was in the house.