The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix

  The moment it came out of her mouth she wished she hadn’t said anything. He studied her for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  They stood for a moment, face to face, as she processed what he’d said, and then she burst out laughing. After a second, he did, too. He let go of the casserole dish and she pulled it to her body, holding it across her stomach like a shield.

  “I’m not even going to say I’m sorry again,” she told him. “Can we start over?”

  He held out one big hand, “James Harris,” he said.

  She shook it. It felt cool and strong.

  “Patricia Campbell.”

  “I am genuinely sorry about that,” he said, indicating his left ear.

  Reminded of her mutilated ear, Patricia turned slightly to the left and quickly brushed her hair over her stitches.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose that’s why I’ve got two.”

  This time, his laugh was short and sudden.

  “Not many people would be so generous with their ears.”

  “I don’t remember being given a choice,” she said, then smiled to let him know she was kidding.

  He smiled back.

  “Were the two of you close?” she asked. “You and Mrs. Savage?”

  “None of our family are close,” he said. “But when family needs, you go.”

  She wanted to close the door and stand on the porch and have an actual adult conversation with this man. She had been so terrified of him, but he was warm, and funny, and he looked at her in a way that made her feel seen. Shrill voices drifted from the house. She smiled, embarrassed, and realized there was one way to get him to stay.

  “Would you like to meet my family?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” he said.

  “I’d consider it a personal favor if you did.”

  He regarded her for a split second, expressionless, sizing her up, and then he matched her smile.

  “Only if it’s a real invitation,” he said.

  “Consider yourself invited,” she said, standing aside. After a moment he stepped over her threshold and into the dark front hall.

  “Mr. Harris?” she said. “You won’t say anything about”—she gestured with the casserole dish she held in both hands—“about this, will you?”

  His expression got serious.

  “It’ll be our secret.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  When she led him into the brightly lit dining room, everyone stopped talking.

  “Carter,” she said. “This is James Harris, Ann Savage’s grandnephew. James, this is my husband, Dr. Carter Campbell.”

  Carter stood up and shook hands automatically, as if he met the nephew of the woman who’d bitten off his wife’s ear every day. Blue and Korey, on the other hand, looked from their mother to this enormous stranger in horror, wondering why she’d let him into their house.

  “This is our son, Carter Jr., although we call him Blue, and our daughter, Korey,” Patricia said.

  As James shook Blue’s hand and walked around the table to shake Korey’s, Patricia saw her family through his eyes: Blue staring at him rudely. Korey standing behind her chair in her Baja hoodie and soccer shorts, gawping at him like he was a zoo animal. Miss Mary chewing and chewing even though her mouth was empty.

  “This is Miss Mary Campbell, my mother-in-law, who’s staying with us.”

  James Harris held out a hand to Miss Mary, who kept sucking her lips while staring hard at the salt and pepper shakers.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said.

  Miss Mary raised her watery eyes to his face and studied him for a moment, chin trembling, then looked back down at the salt and pepper.

  “I’ve got a photograph,” she said.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” James Harris said, pulling his hand back. “I was just returning a dish.”

  “Won’t you join us for dessert?” Patricia asked.

  “I couldn’t…,” James Harris began.

  “Blue, clear the table,” Patricia said. “Korey, get the bowls.”

  “I do have a sweet tooth,” James Harris said as Blue passed him carrying a stack of dirty plates.

  “You can sit here,” Patricia said, nodding to the empty chair on her left. It creaked alarmingly as James Harris eased himself into it. Bowls appeared and the half gallon of Breyers found its place in front of Carter. He began to hack at the surface of the freezer-burned ice cream with a large spoon.

  “What do you do for a living?” Carter asked.

  “All kinds of things,” James said as Korey placed a stack of ice cream bowls in front of her father. “But right now, I’ve got a little money put aside to invest.”

  Patricia reconsidered. Was he rich?

  “In what?” Carter asked, scraping long white curls of ice cream into everyone’s bowls and passing them around the table. “Stocks and bonds? Small business? Microchips?”

  “I was thinking something more local,” James Harris said. “Maybe real estate.”

  Carter reached across the table and put a bowl of ice cream in front of James, then fitted a thick-handled spoon into his mother’s hand and led it to the bowl of vanilla in front of her.

  “Not my area,” he said, losing interest.

  “You know,” Patricia said. “My friend Slick Paley at book club? Her husband, Leland, they’re into real estate. They might be able to tell you something about the situation here.”

  “You’re in a book club?” James asked. “I love to read.”

  “Who do you read?” Patricia asked as Carter ignored them and fed his mother, and Blue and Korey continued to stare.

  “I’m a big Ayn Rand fan,” James Harris said. “Kesey, Ginsburg, Kerouac. Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?”

  “Are you a hippie?” Korey asked.

  Patricia felt pathetically grateful that James Harris ignored her daughter.

  “Are you looking for new members?” he continued.

  “Ugh,” Korey said. “They’re a bunch of old ladies sitting around drinking wine. They don’t even actually read the books.”

  Patricia didn’t know where these things came from. She’d chalk it up to Korey becoming a teenager, but Maryellen had said they became teenagers when you stopped liking them, and she still liked her daughter.

  “What kind of books do you read?” James asked, still ignoring Korey.

  “All kinds,” Patricia said. “We just read a wonderful book about life in a small Guyanese town in the 1970s.”

  She didn’t mention that it was Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People.

  “They rent the movies,” Korey said. “And pretend to read the books.”

  “There wasn’t a movie for this book,” Patricia said, forcing herself to smile.

  James Harris wasn’t listening. He had his eyes on Korey.

  “Is there a reason you’re being fresh to your mother?” he asked.

  “She’s not usually like this,” Patricia said. “It’s all right.”

  “Some people use literature to understand their lives,” James Harris said, continuing to stare at Korey, who squirmed beneath the intensity of his gaze. “What are you reading?”

  “Hamlet,” Korey said. “That’s by Shakespeare.”

  “Assigned reading,” James Harris said. “I meant, what are you reading that other people didn’t pick out for you?”

  “I don’t have time to sit around reading books,” Korey said. “I actually go to school and I’m captain of the soccer team and the volleyball team.”

  “A reader lives many lives,” James Harris said. “The person who doesn’t read lives but one. But if you’re happy just doing what you’re told and reading what other people think you should r
ead, then don’t let me stop you. I just find it sad.”

  “I…,” Korey began, working her mouth. Then stopped. No one had ever called her sad before. “Whatever,” she said, and slumped back in her chair.

  Patricia wondered if she should be upset. This was new territory for her.

  “What book are y’all talking about?” Carter asked, tucking more ice cream into his mother’s mouth.

  “Your wife’s book club,” James Harris said. “I guess I’m partial to readers. I grew up a military brat, and wherever I went, books were my friends.”

  “Because you don’t have any real ones,” Korey mumbled.

  Miss Mary looked up, right at James Harris, and Patricia could almost hear her eyes zoom in on him.

  “I want my money,” Miss Mary said angrily. “That’s Daddy’s money you owe.”

  There was silence at the table.

  “What’s that, Mom?” Carter asked.

  “You came creeping back, you,” Miss Mary said. “But I see you.”

  Miss Mary glared at James Harris, fuzzy gray eyebrows furrowed, the slack skin around her mouth pulled into an angry knot. Patricia turned to James Harris and saw him thinking, genuinely trying to puzzle something out.

  “She thinks you’re someone from her past,” Carter explained. “She comes and goes.”

  Miss Mary’s chair scraped backward with an ear-grinding shriek.

  “Mom,” Carter said, taking her arm. “Are you finished? Let me help you.”

  She jerked her arm out of Carter’s grip and rose, eyes fixed on James Harris.

  “You’re the seventh son of a saltless mother,” Miss Mary said, and took a step toward him. The wattles of fat beneath her chin quivered. “When the Dog Days come we’ll put nails through your eyes.”

  She reached out and pressed her hand against the table, holding herself up. She swayed over James Harris.

  “Mom,” Carter said. “Calm down.”

  “You thought no one would recognize you,” Miss Mary said. “But I’ve got your photograph, Hoyt.”

  James Harris stared up at Miss Mary, not moving. He didn’t even blink.

  “Hoyt Pickens,” Miss Mary said. Then she spat. She meant for it to be a country hawker, something sharp that would slap the dirt, but instead a wad of white saliva thickened with vanilla ice cream and speckled with chicken oozed over her lower lip, then rolled down her chin and plopped onto the front of her dress.

  “Mom!” Carter said.

  Patricia saw Blue gag and clap his napkin over the lower half of his face. Korey leaned back in her chair, away from her grandmother, and Carter reached for his mother, napkin outstretched.

  “I’m so sorry,” Patricia said to James Harris as she got up.

  “I know who you are,” Miss Mary shouted at James Harris. “In your ice cream suit.”

  Patricia hated Miss Mary at that moment. Someone interesting had come into their home to talk about books, and Miss Mary wouldn’t even let her have that.

  She hustled Miss Mary out of the dining room, pulling her beneath the armpits, not caring if she was a little rough. Behind her, she was aware of James Harris rising as Carter and Korey both started talking at once, and she hoped he was still there when she got back. She hauled Miss Mary to the garage room and got her seated in her chair with the plastic bowl of water and her toothbrush and came back to the dining room. The only person left was Carter, sucking on his ice cream, hunched over his bowl.

  “Is he still here?” Patricia asked.

  “He left,” Carter said, through a mouthful of vanilla. “Mom seemed weird tonight, don’t you think?”

  Carter’s spoon clicked against the bottom of the bowl and he stood up, leaving his bowl on the place mat for her to clean up, not waiting to hear what she had to say. In that moment, Patricia hated her family with a passion. And she wanted to see James Harris again, badly.

  CHAPTER 8

  That was how she found herself a little after noon the next day, standing on the porch of Ann Savage’s yellow-and-white cottage.

  She knocked on the screen door and waited. In front of the new mansion across the street, a cement truck dumped gray sludge into a wooden frame for its driveway. James Harris’s white van sat silently in the front yard, the sun spiking off its tinted windshield and making Patricia squint.

  With a loud crack, the front door broke away from the sticky, sun-warmed paint and James Harris stood there, sweating, wearing oversize sunglasses.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” Patricia said. “I wanted to apologize for my mother-in-law’s behavior last night.”

  “Come in quickly,” he said, stepping back into the shadows.

  She imagined eyes watching her from every window up and down the street. She couldn’t go into his house again. Where was Francine? She felt exposed and embarrassed. She hadn’t thought this through.

  “Let’s talk out here,” she said into the dark doorway. All she could see was his big pale hand resting on the edge of the door. “The sun feels so nice.”

  “Please,” he said, his voice strained. “I have a condition.”

  Patricia knew genuine distress when she heard it, but she still couldn’t make herself step inside.

  “Stay or go,” he said, anger edging his voice. “I can’t be in the sun.”

  Looking up and down the street, Patricia quickly slipped through the door.

  He brushed her aside to slam the main door, forcing her deeper into the middle of the room. To her surprise, it was empty. The furniture had been pushed up against the walls along with the old suitcases and bags and cardboard boxes of junk. Behind her, James Harris locked his front door and leaned against it.

  “This looks so much better than yesterday,” she said, making conversation. “Francine did a wonderful job.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “I saw her on my way out the other day,” she said. “Your cleaner.”

  James Harris stared at her through his large sunglasses, completely blank, and Patricia was about to tell him she needed to leave when his knees buckled and he slid down to the floor.

  “Help me,” he said.

  His heels pushed uselessly against the floorboards, his hands had no strength. Her nursing instincts kicked in and she stepped close, planted her feet wide, got her hands under his armpits, and lifted. He felt heavy and solid and very cool, and as his massive body rose up in front of her, she felt overwhelmed by his physical presence. Her damp palms tingled all the way up to her forearms.

  He slumped forward, dropping his full weight onto her shoulders, and the intense physical contact made Patricia light-headed. She helped him to a pressed-back rocking chair by the wall, and he dropped heavily into it. Her body, freed of his weight, felt suddenly lighter than air. Her feet barely touched the floor.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “I got bitten by a wolf,” he said.

  “Here?” she asked.

  She saw his thigh muscles clench and relax as he began to unconsciously rock himself back and forth.

  “When I was younger,” he said, then flashed his white teeth in a pained smile. “Maybe it was a wild dog and I’ve romanticized it into a wolf.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Did it hurt?”

  “They thought I would die,” he said. “I had a fever for several days and when I recovered I had some brain damage—just mild lesions, but they compromised the motor control in my eyes.”

  She felt relieved that this was starting to make sense.

  “That must be difficult,” she said.

  “My irises don’t dilate very well,” he said. “So daylight is extremely painful. It’s thrown my whole body clock out of whack.”

  He gestured helplessly around the room at everything piled up against the walls.

  “There’s so much t
o do and I don’t know how to get a handle on any of it,” he said. “I’m lost.”

  She looked at the liquor store boxes and bags lining the walls, full of old clothes and notebooks and slippers and medications and embroidery hoops and yellowed issues of TV Guide. Plastic bags of clothes, stacks of wire hangers, dusty framed photographs, piles of afghans, water-damaged books of Greenbax Stamps, stacks of used bingo cards rubber-banded together, glass ashtrays and bowls and spheres with sand dollars suspended in the middle.

  “It’s a lot to sort out,” Patricia said. “Do you have anyone to come help? Any family? A brother? Cousins? Your wife?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you want me to stay and talk to Francine?”

  “She quit,” he said.

  “That doesn’t sound like Francine,” Patricia said.

  “I’m going to have to leave,” James Harris said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I thought about staying but my condition makes it too hard. I feel like there’s a train already moving and no matter how fast I run I can never catch up.”

  Patricia knew the feeling but she also thought about Grace, who would stay here until she had learned all she could about a good-looking, seemingly normal man who had found himself all alone in the Old Village with no wife or children. Patricia had never met a single man his age who didn’t have some kind of story. It would probably prove to be small and anticlimactic, but she was so starved for excitement she’d take any mystery she could.

  “Let’s see if we can figure this out together,” she said. “What’s overwhelming you the most?”

  He lifted a sheaf of mail off the cross-stretcher breakfast table next to him like it weighed five hundred pounds.

  “What do I do about these?” he asked.

  She went through the letters, sweat prickling her back and her upper lip. The air in the house felt stale and close.

  “But these are easy,” she said, putting them down. “I don’t understand this letter from probate court, but I’ll call Buddy Barr. He’s mostly retired but he’s in our church and he’s an estate lawyer. The Waterworks is just up the street and you can be there and change the name on the account in five minutes. SCE&G has an office around the corner where you can get the electric bill put in your name.”