The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix

  Patricia loved it. She asked Carter if he wanted to read along with her, but he told her he dealt with crazy patients all day, so the last thing he wanted to do was come home and read about crazy people. Patricia didn’t mind. The not-quite-a-book-club, with all its slow poisoners and murderers-for-hire and angels of death, gave her a new outlook on life.

  She and Carter had moved to the Old Village last year because they’d wanted to live somewhere with plenty of space, somewhere quiet, and somewhere, most importantly, safe. They wanted more than just a neighborhood, they wanted a community, where your home said you espoused a certain set of values. Somewhere protected from the chaos and the ceaseless change of the outside world. Somewhere the kids could play outside all day, unsupervised, until you called them in for supper.

  The Old Village lay just across the Cooper River from downtown Charleston in the suburb of Mt. Pleasant, but while Charleston was formal and sophisticated, and Mt. Pleasant was its country cousin, the Old Village was a way of life. Or at least that was what the people who lived there believed. And Carter had worked long and hard so that they could finally afford not just a house but a way of life.

  This way of life was a slice of live oaks and gracious homes lying between Coleman Boulevard and Charleston Harbor, where everyone still waved at cars when they went by and no one drove over twenty-five miles per hour.

  It was where Carter taught Korey and Blue to crab off the dock, lowering raw chicken necks tied to long strings into the murky harbor water, and pulling up mean-eyed crabs they scooped up in nets. He took them shrimping at night, lit by the hissing white glare of their Coleman lantern. They went to oyster roasts and Sunday school, wedding receptions at Alhambra Hall and funerals at Stuhr’s. They went to the Pierates Cruze block party every Christmas, and danced the shag at Wild Dunes on New Year’s Eve. Korey and Blue went to Albemarle Academy on the other side of the harbor for school, and made friends, and had sleepovers, and Patricia drove car pool, and no one locked their doors, and everyone knew where you left your spare key when you went out of town, and you could go out all day and leave your windows open and the worst thing that might happen is you’d come home and find someone else’s cat sleeping on your kitchen counter. It was a good place to raise children. It was a wonderful place to be a family. It was quiet, and soft, and peaceful, and safe.

  But sometimes Patricia wanted to be challenged. Sometimes she yearned to see what she was made of. Sometimes she remembered being a nurse before she married Carter and wondered if she could still reach into a wound and hold an artery closed with her fingers, or if she still had the courage to pull a fishhook out of a child’s eyelid. Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club.

  * * *

  —

  In the fall of ’91, Kitty’s beloved Minnesota Twins made it to the World Series and she got Horse to chain-saw the two pine trees in their front yard and lay out a scaled-down baseball diamond in white lime. She invited all the members of their not-quite-a-book-club over to play a game with their husbands.

  “Y’all,” Slick said, at their last meeting before the game. “I need to unburden my conscience.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Maryellen said, rolling her eyes. “Here it comes.”

  “Don’t talk about who you don’t know,” Slick shot back. “Now, y’all, I don’t like asking people to sin—”

  “If baseball’s a sin, I’m going to Hell,” Kitty said.

  “My husband, he…well,” Slick said, ignoring Kitty. “Leland wouldn’t understand why we read such morbid books in our book club—”

  “It’s not a book club,” Grace said.

  “—and I didn’t want to worry him,” Slick forged on, “so I told him we were a Bible study group.”

  No one said anything for a full fifteen seconds. Finally, Maryellen spoke. “You told your husband we’ve been reading the Bible?”

  “It rewards a lifetime of study,” Slick said.

  The silence stretched on as they looked at each other, incredulous, and then they all burst out laughing.

  “I’m serious, y’all,” Slick said. “He won’t let me come anymore if he knows.”

  They realized she was serious.

  “Slick,” Kitty said, solemnly. “I promise, on Saturday, all of us will profess a sincere and deep enthusiasm for the word of God.”

  And on Saturday, they all did.

  The husbands bumbled together in Kitty’s front yard, shaking hands and making jokes, with their weekend stubble and their Clemson logos and their Polo shirts tucked into their stonewashed jean shorts. Kitty divided them into teams, splitting up the couples, but Patricia insisted Korey be allowed to play.

  “All the other children are swimming off the dock,” Kitty said.

  “She’d rather play baseball,” Patricia said.

  “I’m not going to pitch underhanded just because she’s a child,” Kitty told her.

  “She’ll be fine,” Patricia said.

  Kitty had a strong swing and on the pitcher’s mound, she threw lethal fastballs. Korey watched her strike out Slick and Ed. Then she was up at bat.

  “Mom,” she said. “What if I miss?”

  “Then you tried your best,” Patricia told her.

  “What if I break one of her windows?” Korey asked.

  “Then I’ll buy you a frozen yogurt on the way home,” Patricia said.

  But as Korey walked to home plate, a bolt of worry shot through Patricia. Korey held the bat uncomfortably and its tip wobbled in the air. Her legs looked too thin, her arms looked too weak. She was just a baby. Patricia got ready to comfort her and tell her she tried her best. Kitty gave Patricia an apologetic shrug, then drew her right arm back and sent a fastball screaming at Korey in a straight line.

  There was a crack and the ball suddenly reversed direction, sailing in a high arc toward Kitty’s house, and then at the last moment it lifted, soaring over the roof, over the house, coming down somewhere deep in the woods. Everyone, even Korey, watched, frozen.

  “Go, Korey!” Patricia screamed, breaking the silence. “Run!”

  Korey circled the bases and her team took the game, 6–4. Korey was at bat for every single one of those points.

  * * *

  —

  Six months later, it became clear Miss Mary could no longer live on her own. Carter and his two older brothers agreed to take turns having their mother stay with them four months at a time, and Carter, being the youngest, took her first.

  Then Sandy called the day before he was supposed to drive down and pick her up, saying, “My kids are too young to be around Mama when she’s confused like this. We want them to remember her the way she used to be.”

  Carter called his oldest brother, but Bobby said, “Mom wouldn’t be comfortable in Virginia, it’s too cold up here.”

  Harsh words were exchanged, and then Carter, sitting on the end of their bed, jammed his thumb down hard on the portable phone’s hang-up button and held it there for a very long time before he said:

  “Mom’s staying.”

  “For how long?” Patricia asked.

  “Forever,” he said.

  “But, Carter…,” she began.

  “What do you want me to do, Patty?” he asked. “Throw her out on the street? I can’t put her in a home.”

  Patricia immediately softened. Carter’s father had died when he was young and his mother had raised him alone. His next-oldest brother was eight years his senior and so it had been Carter and his mother on their own. Miss Mary’s sacrifices for Carter were family legend.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We have the garage room. We’ll make it work.”

  “Thank you,” he said after a long pause, and he sounded so genuinely grateful, Patricia knew they’d made the right decision.

  But Korey was starting middle school, and Blue cou
ldn’t focus on his math and he needed a tutor and he was only in fourth grade, and Carter’s mother couldn’t always say what she was thinking, and she was getting worse every day.

  Frustration poisoned Miss Mary’s personality. Once she had doted on her grandchildren. Now, when Blue accidentally knocked over her buttermilk she pinched his arm so hard it left a black-and-blue mark. She kicked Patricia in the shin after finding out there was no liver for her supper. She demanded to be taken to the bus station constantly. After a series of incidents, Patricia learned she couldn’t be left home alone.

  Grace stopped by early one afternoon on a day when Miss Mary had already thrown her bowl of cereal on the floor, then clogged her toilet in the garage room with an entire roll of paper.

  “I wanted to invite you to be my guest for the closing night of Spoleto,” Grace told Patricia. “I have tickets for you, Kitty, Maryellen, and Slick. I thought it would be nice if we did something cultural.”

  Patricia ached to go. Closing night of Spoleto took place outdoors at Middleton Place. You had a picnic on a blanket on the hill facing the lake while the Charleston Symphony Orchestra played classical music and it ended with fireworks. Then she heard Ragtag yelp from the den and Miss Mary say something ugly.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t,” Patricia said.

  “Can I help?” Grace asked.

  And it all came out, how scared Patricia felt about Miss Mary living with them, how hard it was for her to sit at the table for dinner with the children, how much of a strain it was on her and Carter.

  “But I don’t want to complain,” Patricia said. “She did so much for Carter.”

  Grace said she was sorry Patricia wouldn’t make Spoleto, then left, and Patricia cursed herself for talking too much.

  The next day, a pickup truck pulled into Patricia’s driveway with Kitty’s boys in the back along with a portable toilet, a walker, bedpans, washing basins, large-handled plastic cutlery, and boxes of unbreakable plates. Kitty heaved herself out of the driver’s seat.

  “When Horse’s mother lived with us we wound up with all this junk,” she said. “We’ll bring the hospital bed over tomorrow. I just need to round up some more fellas to lift it.”

  Patricia realized that Grace must have called Kitty and told her the situation. Before she could call Grace to say thank you, her doorbell rang again. A short black woman, plump but sharp-eyed, her hair set in a stiff old-fashioned helmet, wearing white slacks and a white nurse’s tunic under a purple cardigan, stood on her front porch.

  “Mrs. Cavanaugh said you might be able to use my help,” the woman said. “My name is Ursula Greene and I take care of old folks.”

  “It’s very nice of you,” Patricia began. “But—”

  “I’ll also look after the children occasionally at no extra charge,” Mrs. Greene said. “I’m not a babysitter, but Mrs. Cavanaugh said you might step out from time to time. I charge eleven dollars an hour and thirteen dollars an hour at night. I don’t mind cooking for the little ones, but I don’t want it to become a habit.”

  It was cheaper than Patricia thought, but she still couldn’t imagine anyone being willing to deal with Miss Mary.

  “Before you make a decision,” she said, “let me introduce you to my mother-in-law.”

  They walked onto the sun porch, where Miss Mary sat watching television. Miss Mary scowled at the interruption.

  “Who’s this?” she snipped.

  “This is Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said. “Mrs. Greene, I’d like you to meet—”

  “What’s she doing here?” Miss Mary said.

  “I’ve come to brush your hair and do your nails,” Mrs. Greene said. “And make you something to eat later.”

  “Why can’t that one do it?” Miss Mary asked, jabbing a gnarled finger at Patricia.

  “Because you’re working that one’s last nerve,” Mrs. Greene said. “And if that one doesn’t get a break she’s liable to throw you off the roof.”

  Miss Mary thought about it for a minute, then said, “No one’s pushing me off any roof.”

  “Keep acting like that and I might help her,” Mrs. Greene said.

  Three weeks later, Patricia sat on a green plaid blanket at Middleton Place, listening to the Charleston Symphony Orchestra play Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks.” Overhead, the first firework unfolded until it filled the sky like a burning green dandelion. Fireworks always moved Patricia. It took so much time and effort to get them right and they were over so quickly and could only be enjoyed by such a small number of people.

  By the light of the fireworks she looked at the women sitting around her: Grace in a lawn chair, eyes closed, listening to the music; Kitty, asleep on her back, plastic wineglass tipping dangerously in one hand; Maryellen in her overalls, legs stretched out in front of her, taking in Charleston’s finest; and Slick, legs tucked beneath her, head cocked, listening to the music like it was homework.

  Patricia realized that for four years, these were the women she’d seen every month. She’d talked to them about her marriage, and her children, and gotten frustrated with them, and argued with them, and seen all of them cry at some point, and somewhere along the line, among all the slaughtered coeds, and shocking small-town secrets, and missing children, and true accounts of the cases that changed America forever, she’d learned two things: they were all in this together, and if their husbands ever took out a life insurance policy on them they were in trouble.

  HELTER SKELTER

  May 1993

  CHAPTER 3

  “But if I can’t get Blue to come to the table for supper when Carter’s mother eats with us,” Patricia said to her book club, “then Korey will stop coming, too. She’s already picky about food. I’m worried it’s a teenager thing.”

  “Already?” Kitty asked.

  “She’s fourteen,” Patricia said.

  “Being a teenager isn’t a number,” Maryellen said. “It’s the age when you stop liking them.”

  “You don’t like the girls?” Patricia asked.

  “No one likes their children,” Maryellen said. “We love them to death, but we don’t like them.”

  “My children are a constant blessing,” Slick said.

  “Get a life, Slick,” Kitty said, biting into a cheese straw, showering crumbs into her lap, brushing them off onto Grace’s carpet.

  Patricia saw Grace flinch.

  “No one thinks you don’t adore your children, Slick,” Grace said. “I love Ben Jr. but it will be a happy day when he leaves for college and we can finally have some peace in this house.”

  “I think they don’t eat because of what they see in magazines,” Slick said. “They call it ‘heroin chic,’ can you imagine? I cut out the ads before I’ll let Greer have a magazine.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Maryellen asked.

  “How do you find the time?” Kitty asked, snapping a cheese straw in half and sending more crumbs to Grace’s carpet.

  Grace couldn’t contain herself. She got Kitty a plate.

  “Oh, no thank you,” Kitty said, waving it away. “I’m fine.”

  The nameless not-quite-a-book-club had settled into Grace’s sitting room with its deep carpets and soothing lamplight. A framed Audubon print hung over the fireplace, reflecting the room’s pale colonial colors—Raleigh peach and Bruton white—and the piano in the corner gleamed darkly to itself. Everything in Grace’s house looked perfect. Every early American Windsor chair, every chestnut end table, every Chinese porcelain lamp, it all looked to Patricia as if it had always been here and the house had grown up around it.

  “Teenagers are boring,” Kitty said. “And it only gets worse. Breakfast, laundry, clean the house, dinner, homework, the same thing, every day, day after day. If anything changes even the slightest bit, they have a cow. Honestly, Patricia, relax. Pick your battles. No one’s going to die if
they don’t eat every meal at the table or if they don’t have clean underwear one day.”

  “And what if that’s the day they get hit by a car?” Grace asked.

  “If Ben Jr. got hit by a car I think you’d have bigger problems than the condition of his underpants,” Maryellen said.

  “Not necessarily,” Grace said.

  “I freeze sandwiches,” Slick blurted out.

  “You what?” Kitty asked.

  “To save time,” Slick said in a rush. “I make all the sandwiches for the children’s lunches, three per day, five days a week. That’s sixty sandwiches. I make them all on the first Monday of the month, freeze them, and every morning I pull one out of the freezer and pop it in their bag. By lunchtime it’s thawed.”

  “I’ll have to try that,” Patricia started to say because it sounded like a fantastic idea, but her comment got lost beneath Kitty and Maryellen’s laughter.

  “It saves time,” Slick said, defensively.

  “You can’t freeze sandwiches,” Kitty said. “What happens to the condiments?”

  “They don’t complain,” Slick said.

  “Because they don’t eat them,” Maryellen told her. “They either throw them in the trash or trade them to the dummies. I bet you money they’ve never eaten a single one of your freezer-burn specials.”

  “My children love my lunches,” Slick said. “They wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Are those new earrings, Patricia?” Grace asked, changing the subject.

  “They are,” Patricia said, turning her head to catch the light.

  “How much did they cost?” Slick asked, and Patricia saw everyone recoil slightly. The only thing tackier than bragging about God was asking about money.