The Vampire Henry

by Michael S. Walker

  I drink blood to survive. I write to live.

  I remember the very first story I wrote for my father, all those years ago, that story about a World War 2 fighter pilot. I remember how proud I was of it, how elated I was that I had been able to sit down with a pencil and a cheap pad of paper and create a scene like that, fraught with danger and flack and heroism. I remember the annoyance that flashed across my father’s face when I handed him that story, the way his eyes narrowed and his face flushed. It was as if he saw the entire arc of my future in that one gesture. An ignominious arc at that. No son of his was going to be…a writer.

  And that’s when I really decided to be a writer. Because if my father was against it, there had to be something to it.

  And that’s what I did.

  When I was bumming around going hither and thither in America, besides trying to write stuff down in little composition books, I read a lot of other writers with a careful eye to what they did. How they made a story work. How they built a narrative brick by brick. I was like a twelve-year old child with a clock that he just had to take apart to see how the damn thing worked. The first thing I did when I landed in a new town, after I got a place to room, was find my way to the local library and get a card. I must have ten or fifteen library cards from places all over the U.S. Anyway, I read my way through all of the “canon” of supposedly great writers. Read everything from Chaucer to Mailer. And let me tell you, there’s a lot of dross in there, a lot of books I wouldn’t even bother to wipe my ass with. You ever read Ulysses by James Joyce? A lot of critics have branded that the greatest novel of the 20th century. Maybe that’s some kind of perverse joke or something. Because it’s unreadable. It really is. I think I made it through about twenty pages or so before I just threw the damn book at a wall. Went out and got a beer. I think one reason a book like that is rated so highly is that it gives college professors something to do with their time--explaining every metaphor, every arcane reference to their befuddled students. Like it was physics or something. Well I just don’t think you need to work so hard to feel something. And that’s all I want to do as a writer really. Make a reader FEEL something.

  So Henry, old boy…are there any writers that you actually like?

  Sure. Sure. A whole slew of ‘em were on the right track. Like some of Melville’s shorter stuff, although I think Moby Dick is a complete bore. Whitman’s good. Hemingway was good until he began to believe all the bullshit people said about him, and just started to parody his earlier style. Carson McCullers had it. Sherwood Anderson. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a perfect novel. Makes me want to quit every time I read it because there’s no way I can ever hope to top it.

  There’s one writer that stands above ‘em all in my estimation. And that is John Fante.

  “Who the hell is John Fante?” you ask.

  Well, I suggest you put down this crappy thing, go to the library and check out a copy of his book Ask the Dust. Start there. I remember the first time I read it, in some little library in Port St. Lucy Florida. I had never heard of him. Just pulled the book out of the stacks ‘cause I dug the title. Sat down in an uncomfortable wooden chair at an austere blond desk and started reading.

  And didn’t stop until I was finished.

  Here was the guy, the guy I wanted to emulate, the guy I wanted to write like. He just simply cut through all the bullshit, got to the heart of the matter. He could paint a scene in bold, primary colors--make you see it, hear it, smell it right away. Without having to think about it too much or pull out any reference books.

  And he was funny too. And I like funny.

  I took that book back to the crummy room I was renting. And reread it that very night.

  Fante wrote four or five other books that I think are right up there. But Ask the Dust is his best.

  If there is one writer I wish I could have met, it’s John Fante. It’s a crime what happened to him. He spent a large portion of his life eking out a living in Hollywood writing screenplays. Then diabetes claimed his life by increments. He went blind. And then doctors chopped off bits and pieces of him, trying to keep him alive. Until there wasn’t much left save his will to keep creating. Which he did, until the last.

  Yeah, start with Fante. There’s no one better.

  Whatever you do, don’t read Dracula.

  That’s a terrible book.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Well it’s settled now. Sara and I are going to Lancaster, CA in three days for my reading. We’re confirmed for a ten PM flight out of the airport. Once we get there we will be bedding down with Dr. Dawes and his wife Theo. She also teaches at the university--classes in political science. Dr. Dawes thought it rather curious that Sara and I both suffer from the same allergy to sunlight, that everything we do has to happen at night. But I explained that we met each other through an online support group for people with just such an illness. “OK Henry,” he chuckled. “Usually the reading takes place at six, but I’ll see what I can do to have it pushed to nine or so. Are you sure you aren’t really a vampire? I mean…you write about ‘em enough.”

  I explained that my allergy certainly makes me feel like one, and that’s why I write about bloodsuckers a lot.

  “OK. I thought vampirism was like your metaphor…your critique of our consumer culture. Kind of like what Romero’s done in the past with zombies.”

  “That too,” I said, wondering if I should go out and hunt after I hung up on him. Talking to Dawes certainly made me thirsty.

  Anyway, I’m glad we are going for this reading, but I’m scared shitless as well. Been going through my stuff, wondering what poems to take, wondering if I should read a story or two. It’s still hard for me to believe that people want me to stand on a stage and do this.

  Sara’s been busy too--packing our things, tidying up the house. (Though why this is necessary when we are leaving it is beyond me.) It’s good to see her in such fine spirits. I was worried. She really hasn’t been the same since that tragic Halloween party. She doesn’t want to go out and hunt with me again, and that really irks me. But now I’m too involved with preparing for this reading to press the issue. I actually stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a few poems yesterday, practicing. Thinking how incredibly uncharismatic I am when I’m not doing my vamp trick. It’s bound to be a disaster.

  Just as long as they come through with the 500 hundred bucks, I think I will make it.

  Goddamn Sara. I wish for just once she could stop being such a complete mess, bury her demons in deeper graves. Sometimes the bitch is more trouble than she is worth. Really.

  We take a taxi to the airport to fly to CA, and everything seems to be OK. We sit in the back laughing and joking with each other, holding hands. We look like a newly married couple on our way to our honeymoon trip. The driver, a Moroccan guy with frizzy hair named Abdul Hoddie (or something like that), even asks us if we are newlyweds. Although it sounds like he’s saying nudely weds. More cause for hilarity.

  We get to the airport and, still, all is well. I pay Abdul Hoddie, tip him. (My money is really dwindling down. I’m going to have to get another part-time job at this rate.) We get in the concourse carrying our stuff, take a people mover down a long long tunnel, get to the ticket kiosk, get our boarding passes. Everything is moving like clockwork. Plenty of time to get through security, sit and hold hands some more before the flight takes off. There’s a glitch when I pass through the metal detector, security pats me down and makes me take my shoes off, but other than that…none too stressful.

  “This is going to work,” I think.

  Then when we are getting ready to board, go down this tiny tunnel thing they have that connects the building to our plane like a steel and canvas umbilical cord, Sara starts to hyperventilate. Won’t get on the goddamn plane. Then she starts to cry, with all the other passengers standing around looking at her like she has lost her mind. And she has.

  “I can’t do it Henry. I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
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  I take her over to one of the plastic airport seats, try to calm her down, as the rest of the passengers file into the tunnel and on to the plane. I try to talk to her as sweetly and as reasonably as I can, realizing as I do that this plane is going to take off in a few minutes whether I am on it or no. And I am determined to be there when it does, with or without Sara.

  “Sara. There is no problem here. You know that. Thousands of people fly on airplanes, every single day. They don’t fall from the sky. It’s safer than being in my truck. Sara, we have to get on this plane. It’s taking off in a few minutes.”

  She starts to sob into my shoulder as I sit there helplessly, wondering if maybe I should club her over the head and carry her unconscious body on to the airplane.

  “I know…I know…I know, Henry. I just can’t…can’t do it. I keep thinking about the day they called about my parents. Some bitch on the phone kept…kept asking if there was anyone else she could talk to, anyone older. And I said no. I was the only one. I was…was all alone. And then she told me there had been a crash and that my…my parents were…” More sobs against my shoulder as I stroke her hair. A jet somewhere takes off, screaming, rattling the concourse as it invades the night sky.

  One of the airport ticket takers comes over to us, a young girl wearing a blue-striped uniform skirt, some kind of giant bow thing at her neck.

  “Sir…sir…we need you to board this plane now if you are going to. It’s taking off.”

  That’s it. There’s no more time.

  “Sara,” I say, standing up, “I’m going to California. Are you coming or not?”

  Sara looks at me with helpless, tear-stained eyes. Blinks. Shakes her head.

  “I can’t…I can’t Henry,” she says softly.

  “OK. I’m going Sara. That’s all there is to it.”

  And I leave her at the airport.

  I’m in the air now, winging my way toward the west coast. I keep thinking about Sara, hoping she’s going to be OK. Hoping she made it back to the house. Hoping she WENT to the house. You never know with Sara. Maybe she thinks I’ve abandoned her for good or something. I wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity just to…tend to her. Well, the first thing I do when I get to the airport will be to call her, make sure she is all right.

  I’m sitting in a window seat right now, looking out. We’re about two hours away from the airport. It’s very beautiful outside. We are flying above a giant expanse of cumulous clouds--a land of clouds that seems to stretch everywhere like some vast unexplored polar realm. I feel that I could very easily crawl through that window and go walking there. Claim that celestial firma in the name of Henry Lovell. First poet and vampire of the sky.

  From time to time I look around the tiny, dim cabin of the plane, at my fellow travelers all lost in their own histories and worlds. People who I will never ever see again probably. But who have come together with me, come together with the unfailing belief that this metal bird and its human pilots will get us thousands of miles across this country, all in one piece. Incredible really. There’s a businesswoman sitting across the aisle from me, seemingly oblivious to everything but the ghostly screen of a laptop computer she’s working some kind of spreadsheet on. She’s very beautiful, with black hair and long legs that remind me of Sara’s. Sara. I watch the woman’s chest rise and fall as she pecks at the keys of her machine, watch as she nibbles on one tip of the eyeglasses she wears, as she ponders the numbers she has plugged into her computer. I realize that my canine teeth are pulsing and I am starting to salivate. She would be a very sweet drink indeed. But no. That isn’t to be. And I’m really fine, blood wise. I’ve got a thermos with me, full of a few pints. If I need to drink, I’ll drink from there.

  Then, for some reason, I think about that scene in the book Dracula where the Count sails aboard this ship bound for his new hunting grounds in England. And he drains the members of the crew night after night until there is no one left but him. (One of the only chilling scenes in that whole damn book.) I imagine how I could attempt such a thing aboard this tiny plane without being discovered--the horror that would spread through this ship as, one by one, passengers started to turn up dead, their bodies drained of blood. Well, I could fly anywhere in the world and such a thing would not be necessary. Ever.

  I wonder if Charles Robinson Serling ever had to do such a thing?

  And then I think about Sara. Again.

  When I get to the airport in California, I am a bit disoriented, walking into this place where I have never been. It’s smaller than the airport back home. Dirtier.

  I exit the plane and stand in the boarding area, wondering what to do. Dawes told me that he would be there to meet me with his wife, but he didn’t say where he would meet me. I don’t even have a goddamn number to call him at. And speaking of which…

  I just start walking with some of the other passengers, looking for Dawes, looking for a phone so I can call Sara, make sure she’s OK. This is one of those times when a cell phone would very much come in handy.

  I reach the main concourse where there are shops and restaurants and immediately I spot Dr. Dawes and his wife, standing by a Cinabon. He’s almost as I pictured him to be: thin with a salt-and-pepper beard, brown eyes sparkling with humor and intelligence, prominent forehead. He’s wearing a purple jacket, tan pants. Standing next to him is a woman who must be his wife, Theo. She’s fat, with loose ringlets of blond hair, bifocals perched at the end of a putty nose. She’s holding a sign that says “Henry Lovell” on it. Only thought that happened on television.

  “I’m Lovell,” I say, going to them.

  Both of them beam at me, looking like Jack Sprat and his wife from the nursery rhyme.

  “Henry,” Dawes says, shaking my hand, and then actually embracing me. “I’m so glad you made it.” Then he looks around, his brow furrowing. “But I thought…wasn’t there someone supposed to be coming with you? Your girlfriend?”

  “A long story,” I say.

  “Well, there’s plenty of time for that in the car,” he replies. “Do you want a drink, or should we go and get your luggage now?”

  “Let’s just get my luggage and get out of here. I’ve had enough of airports for the day.”

  “OK.” Dawes’s wife still hasn’t said anything. Just standing next to her husband, smiling at me over her bifocals.

  “Do you know where there happens to be a phone?” I say. “I really need to call somebody.”

  I borrow Dawes cell phone and call home, hoping Sara is there. It’s after four in the morning. Dawn is not too far away.

  The phone rings three times and then goes to my answering machine. I never really bothered to record a proper message on it. Some robotic voice just goes: “Please leave a message at the sound of the tone…” And the BEEP.

  “Sara…are you there? Sara…pick up…it’s Henry. I’m in California at the airport and…”

  Clicks and fumblings at the other end. And then Sara is on the line. Something eases in my dead chest. At least she’s still there. She still exists.

  “Henry…Henry? Are you there?” she says. She sounds like she’s been sleeping. Or crying maybe.

  “I’m here, Sara. I made it to the airport.” And then a beat. “Are you OK?”

  “Oh, Henry…I’m sorry. You must hate me for…for earlier. I’m so fucking stupid.”

  “It’s OK, Sara. Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you are still there.”

  “Where else would I have gone? I love you Henry.”

  “I love you too, Sara. Are you sure…are you sure you’re OK, now?”

  “I’m going to be I think, Henry.”

  “Good Sara. Listen, I have to go…The Dawes are here with me. I’ve got to get my luggage. It’s close to dawn here.”

  “It’s just breaking here, Henry. I was going to go to sleep.”

  That’s right. I’ve totally forgotten about the time difference.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow baby. Before the reading, OK?”<
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  “OK, Henry. I love you Henry.”

  “I love you too Sara. Sleep well honey.”

  “Make sure to dedicate a poem to me tomorrow, K?”

  “I will Sara.”

  I press the end button on the tiny cell phone. Go and rejoin the Dawes to get my luggage.

  Thinking about Sara.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  So, the reading takes place the very next night, in this little theatre they have on campus. It’s named after some character actor who was famous in the 40s and 50s, was in a few classic comedies. Kindle was his alma mater. He also, I hear, used to tour this play Harvey across the country, playing an eccentric character whose best friend just happens to be a six-foot rabbit named Harvey. There’s an oil painting of him as his Harvey character standing next to such a beast. It’s in the lobby of the theatre and I get a glance at it as we go in.

  The theatre holds about one-hundred people or so and when we arrive at 8 it’s about three-fourths full. I’m surprised. Dawes is surprised.

  “To tell you the truth, Henry, I thought we might get like thirty people for this reading. It’s way better than I expected it to be,” he says, rubbing his hands together. He’s wearing the same purple jacket and tan pants as last night when he picked me up at the airport. His wife is seated out in the house already, with a friend of hers, waiting for the show to begin. I’m just hoping the show isn’t going to be me falling down, overcome by severe fucking stage fright.

  We’re backstage. It’s about ten minutes to show time. Dawes is standing next to me in this cavernous cement room where they keep props and scenery for various stage productions. There’s also a cage in one corner where they store costumes. I see capes and evening dresses, ostrich feather boas and top hats. I think vaguely about breaking into the damn thing, grabbing garb to wear. A tri-cornered hat or something equally ridiculous.