"How do you like your eggs, Melissa?" Mrs. Lafontaine asked, carrying in a platter of fresh biscuits.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Lafontaine," I said, "but I'm really not hungry today."
"Oh, but you must have something! You're much too thin, girl."
I shook my head. "No, really."
"Mrs. Lafontaine is right, young lady," interjected Mr. Andrews thoughtfully. "You must have something. That Henrich girl – the gymnast – starved herself to death last year. And a nice little gymnast she was too. Even if they make them wear those revealing costumes."
"Perhaps a little tomato juice." I yielded with great reluctance.
"Has anybody seen Josiah?" Zacariah, the oldest of Emily's horde of younger brothers, interrupted. He was nearly fourteen and dark olive with thick black hair cropped at his shoulders. The complete opposite of both Emily and her father. I wondered where he got his looks. Probably the proverbial milkman Mama always referred to, when she was feeling gossipy.
"He's probably out Tom-Catting around," Mrs. Lafontaine remarked with distaste. "I swear! That cat is worse than the postman. 'Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night' keeps him from the ladies."
"That's enough!" Mr. Andrews interrupted sharply.
Mrs. Lafontaine changed the subject. "I finally met the two women who bought the old Simms place." Mrs. Lafontaine started picking up empty plates and dirty napkins as she prattled on. "That Joyce Strandwick is one of those women," she said, giving Mr. Andrews a look that was simply pregnant with meaning. "Her hair's in a crew cut, men's pants and shirt – I thought she was a man at first. It's shameful, Joseph. Absolutely shameful!"
Mr. Andrews's eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. "Keep the boys out of the far south pastures. I don't want them getting exposed."
"The worst news, Joseph, is the Oregon initiative failed to pass."
Mr. Andrews scowled. "I expected it would. Hoped folks would have enough sense to vote for it. Folks are just too easily misled these days. Queers own the networks ... propagandizing our youth." He folded his cloth napkin, laid it next to his plate and pushed angrily away from the table.
All the time he said this he stared at Emily. I couldn't help thinking that if looks were daggers he would be murdering her. All the color faded from Emily's face as I watched from the corner of my eyes, pretending to sip at my tomato juice.
"The good Lord saw fit to punish Sodom and Gomorrah for their perversions! And all who practice them are subject to his law." He spat, and the intensity of his glare made Emily shrink in her chair.
At that moment I hated Mr. Andrews. I didn't know what was going on, but I really didn't need to … I just hated him. Only my old promise to Mama (which was wearing thin) and my uncertainty about how Emily would react kept me from showing Mr. Andrews exactly how I felt about him and all his narrow-minded, stiff-necked kind.
"Well, what can you expect in the last days, Joseph?" Mrs. Lafontaine said with a deep sigh, "All we can do is hold ourselves apart and wait for the Rapturing."
My stomach tightened. How could Mama have been so heartless as to dump me with people like these? There would be a reckoning this time when Mama returned.
"Amen, Mary. Amen." He turned his gaze to me. "As no doubt your fine mother told you many times."
I nodded. "That's why we moved to Montana."
"Your mother's an unusually godly woman for times like these! I'm proud to have a woman like that for a neighbor. Handsome widow-woman like her ought to have a husband. No shame in remarrying. Just haven't found the right woman until now."
Was he hinting that he was interested in Mama? It certainly sounded like it. I wished Mama had decided to stay in Montana this winter just so Mr. Andrews could discover exactly what kind of woman she was!
When I asked him about a key for my room later that day Mr. Andrews proved very understanding – he attributed my desire for a key to the "natural needs of a god-fearing young lady to feel her virtue was safe in strange surroundings." (What I think he really meant was that he had an extra key and it wouldn't make much difference if I had one too.) So when I returned to my room late that night, I locked the door, but I also wedged a chair tightly under the knob just in case.
There had been nothing at dinner that I could eat since Mama and I have such unique dietary habits, but I picked at my food to avoid controversy. Then I slipped out of the house while they slept and went foraging up the road in Twin Springs. I came upon one of those isolated gas stations with the owner's home behind it that dot the rural highways. From the snowmobile tracks, frozen over and partially filled in, I saw that someone had left and not yet returned. I persuaded the lock to open and entered through the front door and up the stairs. I peeked into each room: three little girls slept in one and two young boys in another. The main bedroom beckoned to me and I entered. A young woman, not yet thirty, with a fine-boned, almost beautiful face woke suddenly as I entered. She sat up, dragging a big, gleaming gun from under her pillow.
Our eyes met and she hesitated. She raised the gun sluggishly, trying to hold it steady. "I'm a dream, my sweet one," I murmured persuasively, compelling her to look deeper into my eyes.
The woman made a last small effort to resist me, but all that she could manage was to twitch her shoulders as if to pull back. My gaze imprisoned her mind and soul as securely as if they were chains. The hand which held the gun slid down the side of the bed and hung strengthlessly. It was only a matter of moments before the weapon's weight would force it to fall from her grip to the floor. But I felt impatient. So I sat down beside her, pulled the gun from nerveless fingers and tossed it aside.
The woman whimpered low as I stroked her dark hair, kissed the pulse points in her throat and opened her nightgown. I slid my hand around her round ample breasts. Her nipples grew hard beneath my touch as I lifted her left breast to my lips. Then her whimpers became moaning as my fangs broke the full, ripe skin and I drank the sweet, tingling nectar within.
The next morning Emily arrived early with a book under her arm. She was enveloped in an ankle length wool skirt and a loose, almost shapeless, sweater as protection against the frigid Montana winter. She came and stood behind me as I sat at the dressing table, brushing my long reddish chestnut hair. Emily reached out and covered my hand, stopping the brush.
"Let me do that," she said softly. "And I'll help you pin it up. Father thinks women who wear their hair down are wanton. He believes the sight of a woman's hair hanging down incited men to lust."
"That's crazy, Emily!"
She stroked my hair as she brushed it, smoothing the tangles into a flawless, burnished sheen. I could see the thoughtful frown on her face reflected in the dressing table mirror.
"I think so too." She said with a firmness that bordered on defiance.
"I suppose that's why I've seen you wearing skirts in the snow. Most girls I know, you couldn't pry them out of their jeans once the weather got cold. Or any other time for that matter."
"Wearing pants usurps the authority that God granted to men." I could tell she was quoting her father by the stiffness of her words and the way she said them.
"Oh shit!" I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. "Well, I guess I'll have to find a way into town for a new wardrobe. I've got more jeans than dresses! Can't have the household in an uproar."
Then Emily did something that, considering all the care she had lavished on my hair, I never expected: She pulled and twisted it into a tight unattractive knot like her own and Mrs. Lafontaine's. However, I said nothing, figuring it was another one of those interminable "don'ts" that dominated life here.
Emily smiled. "Come on, get dressed and let's go outside. Mrs. Lafontaine has fixed us a basket lunch."
"We're going to have a picnic – out in the snow?!"
"No, silly!" Emily laughed. It suddenly occurred to me that in the day and a half since I arrived I had never heard her laugh. All the other girls I have known her age laughed frequently. Some were even – Goddess forefend! – giggle-maniacs! But
Emily was so serious she was almost somber. This was such a pleasant change.
"A picnic, yes. But not in the snow!" she said, moving to stand impatiently at the door, arms folded, an expression of deliberate mysteriousness on her face.
I put on a long wool skirt borrowed from Emily and, partly out of defiance wore my jeans underneath. While subzero temperatures didn't, as a rule, do me any harm, I much preferred to be warm.
I carried the basket and Emily carried her book as we crossed the wide yard toward the barns. A thin layer of ice-crusted snow crunched under our boots. I wasn't enthused about a picnic in a barn – I love horses and critters as much as any expatriate city girl can learn to, but don't want to eat with them.
To my relief Emily rounded the barn and I saw for the first time a wondrous sight: a magnificent greenhouse! My midnight expedition had carried me away from the barn, not toward it. Otherwise I would have seen this the night before.
It was like walking into permanent summer. It was warm and humid, but not unpleasantly so. Here everything was hydroponics and grow-lights. The outer rooms along the glassite panels were filled with fruit trees set in tremendous pots that bore year round: apples, oranges, lemons and limes, and, most wondrously, cherries. There were tomato vines heavy with fruit and bell pepper stalks so lush with green, red and yellow peppers they looked like wax fruit. And there were isles of potatoes and other root crops in deep beds. No wonder Mr. Andrews went into town so seldom! The ranch was practically self-sufficient.
There was a middle hall that ran the length of the greenhouse through a series of doors and chambers. Emily led me to a small door at the back of the greenhouse. Carefully stenciled on the door were the words: "EMILY'S ROOM."
"My fourteenth birthday present," she said with sudden blushing embarrassment. "Father isn't as harsh as he seems."
She opened the door and led me into a virtual fantasy land of lush ferns. I fell in love with it instantly.
"Sit down," she said, indicating a delicate French Provincial tea table and chairs.
"It's so beautiful, Emily!" I said settling the basket on the table. I turned and hugged her impulsively. But she winced and moved away.
Then I saw the tears running down her cheeks, she bit her lip, trying not to cry.
I put my hand out helplessly, "Emily, dear Emily, I am sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."
I reached out to touch her again and she flinched away. "Please don't."
A terrible suspicion hit me. Before she could move I had both her hands imprisoned in mine and I had pulled up her sweater and blouse.
Long wide angry welts – the kind that a belt or an old-fashioned razor strap leaves – ran across her flawless white skin. The edges were crusted with blood.
Mrs. Lafontaine's picnic in the green house idea must have been an attempt to comfort the girl and get her away from her father for awhile. Better to die than to live a life like hers.
Em – suddenly she wasn't Emily anymore, but someone else, someone I was falling madly in love with – had curled up in a little fetal ball, weeping brokenly, her face flushed with humiliation.
"Your father?"
"Yes," she said so softly even my sharp hearing could barely make it out.
"Does this kind of thing happen often?"
"Not often ... well ... more often since I…" She hesitated. "Since I started developing. He says I'm like my mother. He found me ... I borrowed a pair of your jeans." Her voice came up just a little, almost a whisper now. "You weren't there – and a blouse. The crimson one with the…"
"Plunging neck line?" I supplied. It was my "fuck me" blouse. I only wore it for those special occasions. I could imagine her father's reaction to that combination! "And your hair was down?"
Em nodded. "Father caught me trying them on. I was looking at myself in front of the mirror. He didn't knock." Her voice was still soft but no longer a whisper. "He called me a harlot – like my mother."
Tears were starting in my own eyes as I got up and wedged the chair back under the doorknob, then came back to Em stroking her brow. "It's going to be all right, Em. I'll make it all better." And Hell be damned if I let him hurt her again! I released her blonde hair, stroking it. I kissed away her tears, pressed my lips to her forehead. The warm humanness of her set me tingling.
Then I leaned over her tear-streaked face, stared into her eyes and willed the pain away. I looked deeper and deeper, drawing her awareness in until nothing existed but the depths of our eyes – the mirrors of our souls. I hadn't Mama's subtlety and skills. But I couldn't bear to let Em hurt and had to reach deeply to block off the pain.
Em heaved a trembling sigh and relaxed.
As I started to sit back, Em impulsively pulled me to her and kissed me on the mouth – her tongue sought mine in a long hungry plunge.
Then I knew, for the first time in a long life, that I had met someone I couldn't continue without. And it frightened me. I knew that if I could not control myself, our love meant that Emily would die. Of course, I could bring her into the family. But that would make Mama so furious that I winced to think about it. And Mama was right sometimes: some people could handle it and others could not.
"I love you, Em." I whispered into her ear.
"I know. I love you too, Missy." Em smiled up at me with such adoration I wanted to cry.
I kissed her fingers and started up her hand to her wrist, but when I felt the pulsing of the vein in her wrist, I felt suddenly dizzy and ravenous. I released her hand, tears of longing and frustration in my eyes. I stood and turned away.
"Missy! Come back. I love you."
"You don't know what you're asking, Em. You don't know."
"Don't you love me?"
"More than anyone I've ever loved before."
"Then make love to me, Missy."
"Em, I can't. My ways are death."
"I don't understand."
"I don't want you to."
That night I visited the young woman at the gas station again, but I left feeling unsatisfied and strangely empty.
"Aren't you two spending an awful lot of time out in the greenhouse?" Mr. Andrews inquired, buttering a piece of toast.
"It's so beautiful out there!" I said, pressing my gaze into his. After a moment, he broke the glance and looked.
That worried me. Some people were resistant to me, especially men.
"Oh, Joseph," Mrs. Lafontaine chided him gently. "I gave them permission to do their studies out there after we finish in the mornings."
"And do they finish?" he demanded sharply.
"Yes, of course!" she replied, "And if anything Missy is a good influence. Emily's showing a steady improvement in her composition and math."
"I'm not certain the greenhouse is healthy. There's an outbreak of some kind of anemia. Six cases in the last week."
"They were all at the edges of town," Mrs. Lafontaine pointed out. "They were exposed to it, if you ask me."
"Maybe I should cancel the girls' shopping trip," Mr. Andrews said thoughtfully.
I saw the disappointment flit across Em's face and vanish. She was as good at hiding her feelings from her father as the proverbial Japanese.
"Nonsense! None of the afflicted were good Christian households!"
That depends on your definition of Christianity, I thought smugly.
"True. None of the Brethren have been touched by it." So the shopping trip wasn't canceled.
Mr. Andrews took us into town in his snowmobile to shop as a special treat. Mama had sent me a letter and a large sum of cash. I offered half of it to Mr. Andrews to cover my room and board and he refused it, saying I was no trouble at all and he would feel insulted if I insisted. He also made it plain that he didn't take money from women. An archaic attitude, but I didn't feel inclined to argue.
It was a warm day for a Montana winter, a full 20 degrees warm. A wall of snow piled onto the sidewalks by the snowplows often forced us to walk in the streets. There were a few cars and an occasional snowmobile. Bu
t the stores were open and many of the owners had swept the walks clear enough for customers to find their way inside.
Whenever we could find a cleared sidewalk Em and I stepped onto it, feeling safer despite the infrequent automobile traffic. We stopped for a minute and watched a big truck go by salting down the plowed streets. It reminded me of upstate New York when Mama and I were living there a few decades ago. It doesn't seem that long at all! I smiled at the sweetness of the memory.
Just then we heard a loud continual honking begin. A procession of long, dark cars – with their headlights on in midday and black flags draped on their hoods – began passing by.
"Oh God! Make them stop!" Emily cried. I turned and saw her half-bent over with her hands to her ears.
"Em?" I was stunned. The cars continued to steer past us, their horns becoming a hammering cacophony that clearly frightened Em.
"I hate funerals! I hate them!"
She twisted away from me when I reached for her. I frowned. "Em, its just a funeral."
"It depresses me. They had a funeral like this when my mother died. I didn't want to go but my father made me. Then he beat me later for throwing up when he made me kiss her body. They are burying Mrs. Bennett. She died a few days ago. It was all so sudden! Now two more women are showing symptoms. Father says it's AIDS breaking out again because there's so much sin in this town."
"Shhh," I soothed. "That's nonsense. Please, Em, I don't like seeing you so upset."
Em shook her head, sighing sadly. "I can't help thinking how tragic it is. She was so young. So was my mother. I often wonder if I'll die young too?"
"Come on, Em." I took her gently by the arm. "Let's go inside the yardage shop and look for some patterns and material. It won't be as loud inside."
"Why does everyone have to die?" She threw her arms around me in the street.
"Shhh! Stop talking about it and in a minute you'll stop thinking about it." I disengaged though I wanted to kiss her fears away.
I, Vampire Page 9