Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  Early the next evening, barely forty minutes after sundown, Jules and Doodlebug zoomed onto the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, heading north for Covington. Jules pushed his reluctant auto to sixty-eight, thirteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit. With its jellied suspension, the Lincoln hit the long bridge’s expansion joints like a palsied old woman.

  Doodlebug, dressed in a scarlet cocktail dress, gripped his armrest tightly and winced as they flounced over each joint. “May I speak plainly?”

  Commanding a steering rack as responsive as an asphyxiated flounder, Jules didn’t dare take his eyes off the road or even one hand off the wheel. “I wish you would. I never won no prizes for my big-time vocabulary.”

  “I think this trip is a bad idea.”

  “I don’t remember askin‘ for your vote.” Jules swerved to avoid a low-flying seagull, causing the Lincoln’s bald tires to wail. “Say, weren’t you the one who just last night was sayin’ stuff like, ‘Jules, you’re the responsible party here,’ and ‘Jules, I want to help you get whatever it isyou want’? Was that bullshit, or what?”

  Doodlebug sighed. “I wasn’t ‘bullshitting’ you, Jules. But my definition ofhelp includes unbiased feedback regarding your decisions. If I held back, then Iwould be bullshitting you.”

  Now it was Jules’s turn to sigh. “Okay. Shoot. I can see I’m gonna get an earful whether I like it or not.”

  “I think our time this evening would be spent much more productively if we had a heart-to-heart with Maureen.”

  Jules scowled. “Jeez,again with that! We’ll get around to it, okay? First things first. We’re on a real tight deadline with this recruitin‘ trip, remember? I’ve got a digital timer tickin’ the seconds away that’s hooked up to three gas canisters, all waitin‘ for me on the other side of this damn bridge.”

  Doodlebug smoothed the wrinkles from his dress. “You know, it wouldn’t be such a tragedy if that gas goes off and you aren’t there. The authorities would pass it off as a politically motivated prank. We can still turn around.”

  “Why are you so damn set against this mission? Is it just because it wasn’tyour bright idea?”

  The smaller vampire frowned. “Jules, I have enough bright ideas of myown — I never feel jealous of someone else’s. Why is this a bad idea? Two reasons. One: You don’t need any followers. Two: Even if you did, these definitelyaren’t the sort of followers you want.”

  Jules squinted as the high beams from an eighteen-wheeler hit him dead in the face. “So I don’t need any followers, huh? Have you bothered tellin‘ that to the dozens of goons Malice X has sicced on my tail?”

  “You don’t need to beat dozens of goons, Jules. You just need to beat one man.”

  Jules snorted. “Ixnayon the philosophy, okay? This mission ain’t up for no debate. My mind’s set in concrete.” He glanced at his watch, dimly illuminated by the sickly green dashboard lights. “Shit! Look what time it is already! If we don’t pick up the pace, that crowd’ll fall asleep and wake back up before we even get there.” He mashed the creaky accelerator pedal a bit closer to the rusted-out floorboards, brutalizing the already breathless Lincoln.

  Doodlebug reached into his purse and applied some fresh powder to his forehead. “Oh yes, we mustn’t keep your neo-Nazis waiting.”

  “Look, they ain’t neo-Nazis, okay? They’re white supremacists.”

  “Oh! Of course. Howcould I have overlooked such an important distinction?”

  The dirt parking lot outside the American Veterans Union Hall was about half full when Jules pulled up. He checked the lot for television trucks. If reporters were there when the gas went off, he’d just have to recruit them, too, and hope for the best. To his relief, no marked media trucks or vans were evident.

  He checked his watch again by the Lincoln’s dome light. “We’re in luck,” he said. “The gas is timed to go off at nine-fifty. It’s only nine-forty. We still got ten minutes.”

  “Oh joy,” Doodlebug said, straightening the straps of his dress.

  “Let’s go inside. I wanna see what’s goin‘ on.”

  The hall wasn’t especially crowded. Jules pushed aside a sinking sense of disappointment as he estimated the gathering at between twenty and twenty-five persons. It would have to do. At least they were nearly all men. Only two women were in attendance. One of them was wearing aTimes-Picayune badge and typing notes on a laptop. Jules was pleasantly surprised to find a coffee urn and Styrofoam cups on a table near the back. He stationed himself next to the urn and listened to the proceedings.

  “Point of order! Point of order!” a man not far from Jules shouted as he leapt from his chair. The speaker was a short man shaped like a papaya, wearing a faded T-shirt emblazoned with the logoBUCHANAN FOR PRES ‘ 96/’00/‘04/’08.His face was flushed; he beat the air as he spoke. “The reason we’re here tonight is to officially draft Mr. Knight as our candidate for parish councilman! This is not the time or the place to be discussing the creation of ethnic homelands!”

  “Now, George, I couldn’t disagree with you more!” The tall, thin man at the podium also beat the air as he spoke; the two of them looked like they were playing a game of invisible paddle tennis across the room. “If we’re to have any hope of drawing Mr. Knight into this race and then winning it, we’ve got to havevision! The old standbys-our ‘Three W’s’ of Welfare reform, Wasteful government, and Waco-they’re not gonna cut the mustard this time. Folks are tired of the same-old, same-old. They wantinnovative thinking! They want leadership that isn’t afraid to stand up to the real problems facing America!”

  A man wearing a Mighty Ducks cap raised his hand to speak. “What I want to know is, do we hafta give thewhole island of Manhattan to the Jews?”

  “Bill, you have a problem with that? Itis crowded, disease-ridden, and filthy, after all.”

  A number of audience members mumbled their agreement with the moderator. Bill shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Well, see, I’ve got this elderly aunt who lives in Battery Park. Can’t we just shove the Jews over into the Bronx with the Puerto Ricans and keep Manhattan for us whites?”

  The thin man at the podium wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Look, you need to keep in mind that Mr. Knight has already put a tremendous amount ofcareful thought into the exact geographic division of North America. Now, is there any more discussion on this issue before we move on to the next item on the agenda?”

  The lone female participant, a worn-looking woman in the advanced stages of pregnancy, raised her hand. “Yeah. I’ve got something to say. Not to stir the pot more than it’s already been stirred, but I’ve got a real big problem with handing Mississippi over to the niggers. Them gambling casinos in Gulfport and Biloxi are the best thing to happen to this part of the country inyears. I’ll bedamned if I’ll vote for any man who plans on handing those beautiful casinos over to the niggers!”

  The hall erupted into a cacophony of angry shouts and competing calls to order. Jules checked his watch, then nudged Doodlebug. “Time for us to take our ‘cigarette break,’ pal.”

  “Thank Varney! Any longer in here and I’d have to scrub myself down with lye.”

  They waited outside beneath the gloomy shadows of the pine trees. Jules sweated with nervous anticipation; would his setup work as planned? Three minutes later Tiny Idaho proved his worth as a gadget man. The shouting from inside suddenly changed to raucous and deranged laughter. Thirty seconds later the only sounds to be heard were crickets chirping and the rumble of traffic from the highway.

  Jules rubbed his hands together with glee. “It worked! Am I a hotshot planner or what?”

  They went back inside. Unconscious bodies were grotesquely sprawled across chairs, tables, and the floor, their faces still twisted with the muscle spasms of laughter. To Jules, it looked like the aftermath of one of the Joker’s rampages from a 1940s Batman comic. He felt tremendously proud of himself. He quickly counted the bodies: twenty-three. Then he headed for the door.

  “
What are you up to now?” Doodlebug asked.

  “Wait and see, pal. I got this all planned out to a T.”

  He returned a minute later, his arms full of stacks of disposable aluminum baking pans. He set these aside, then began arranging the slumbering bodies on shoved-together chairs, laying out each victim so that the head and neck dangled below the rest of the body.

  Jules glanced archly at his companion. “Are you gonna help me, or are you just gonna stand there and watch?”

  “Neither, actually,” Doodlebug said as he sat himself down by the door and pulled a folded copy ofThe New Yorker from his purse. “This isyour show. I’m just along for the ride, remember?”

  Jules grumbled darkly, but he continued with his work. After twenty minutes he had all the bodies in proper position, aluminum baking pans on the floor beneath their necks. Now came the tricky part. He had to actually drink enough of their blood to ensure that they’d become vampires, but not so much that he’d succumb to the gas’s effects and fall unconscious himself.

  One of the women began to stir. It was the reporter from theTimes-Picayune. He’d hoped she would’ve left before the gas went off, but now he had no choice but to do her. He knelt by her side and unceremoniously chomped down on her neck. She moaned quietly. Her blood had the same metallic, off-taste he remembered from his kayaker victim in the cab. He allowed himself to swallow two mouthfuls-any more than two would be pushing his luck-and then he sucked hard but spat the blood into the pan below. He sucked and spat and sucked and spat until he got a good, steady flow going. Then he let gravity do the rest of the work.

  The job rapidly turned into a race against time. He hustled from one side of the room to the other, biting, sucking, and spitting as grunts or twitches of wakefulness called to him. Several times he had no choice but to stop and sit for a minute. Even in small individual doses, the cumulative effect of it all caught up with him, and he giggled as the room shifted around his spinning head.

  Finally, Jules was done. He slumped against the rear wall, a few feet away from where Doodlebug was still sitting with his magazine. He felt dizzy and more than a little nauseated. But he was very satisfied with himself. He’d planned his work and worked his plan. Now there was nothing more to do but wait a couple of hours, the time it would take for his recruits to reawaken as fledgling vampires. The nucleus of his army of vengeance.

  TheTimes-Picayune reporter was the first to stir. Outside, a trucker blasted his air horn. The woman slowly rubbed her face and mumbled. “Honeeee… honey… turn off the alarm, will you? It’sirritating…”

  Roughly in the order in which Jules had serviced them, the newly born vampires mumbled and stretched and worked the kinks out of their necks and backs. The ex-moderator was the first to attempt to stand. He clung to the podium and swayed like a drunk on a three-day bender. “What… what the hell happened?” He stared across the room at the other slowly unclouding faces, who in turn glanced about them and looked at each other with wide, surprised eyes.

  “We… were we all asleep?”

  “I remember laughin‘ like the dickens about somethin’ or other…”

  “What’s with theseholes in everybody’s neck?”

  “Red gravy in pans all over the floor-?”

  “Hey, Waldo, you’re white as a brand-new bedsheet!”

  “Boy, am Ithirsty — ”

  Jules stepped smartly to the podium and shoved the ex-moderator aside. He beamed with triumph. “Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the happy and growing ranks of the undead!”

  The ex-moderator slumped into a chair and rubbed his sore neck. “And who the fat fuck are you?”

  “Me? I’m your new leader. My name is Jules Duchon. And I”-he struck his puffed-out chest like a Roman centurion-“am avampire! Now, thanks to me, all ofyou are vampires, too! I can see from your faces that some of you are havin‘ a hard time believing me. Well, just look at the fang marks on each other’s necks. The mark ofmy fangs! You feel thirsty? It’sblood that you thirst for! In just a few minutes, you can exchange pans and have your first drink. Feel each other. Go ahead; don’t be shy. Your skin is the temperature of this room. Since the air conditioner’s been running all night, your hides must be pretty darn cool by now.”

  “He’sright!” the pregnant woman shrieked. “I’mcold! I ain’tnever been cold in July in south Louisiana before!”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Jules reassured her. “Just drink plenty of hot coffee.”

  “But-but wait a minute!” TheTimes-Picayune reporter stared at her white arms with horror. “Ican’t be a vampire! I’m a rabbi’s wife, for God’s sake!”

  “Holy mackerel! My skin reallyis white!” The man wearing the Buchanan T-shirt lifted it up and insisted that his neighbors take a look at his alabaster belly. “Look at this! Is this incrediblyexcellent or what? I’m the whitest man on the North Shore!”

  Immediately, all members of the audience began comparing each other’s skin tones and arguing over who, in fact, was the whitest of them all. This contest went on for a few minutes, rising in volume and vociferousness, until the ex-moderator grabbed the gavel from the podium and banged it against the seat of his chair.

  “Now simmer down, people! Just simmer down!” He waited until the last arguments died away, then turned toward Jules. “I think it’s high time we asked this man why he came here tonight and did this to all of us.”

  Jules took a deep breath and expanded his chest to its maximum diameter. “I have recruited all of you to fight in a great crusade! A crusade that all of you will have big-time enthusiasm for. The great city of New Orleans has become infected with the foul, nasty, horrible,foul plague of-Negro vampirism!That fair city, so historic, so important to good white folks everywhere, is practicallyoverrun by colored, bloodsucking hordes! They pollute the air with their so-called rap music and destroy all that is good and pure about white culture! We MUST put an END to this ABOMINATION! Are you allwith me?”

  The rousing cheers Jules fully expected to hear never came. Instead, the man wearing the Buchanan T-shirt said, “So you want us to go back over the Causeway with you to New Orleans and clean that place out?”

  “Well…sure! ” Jules smiled as brightly as he could.

  The self-proclaimed Whitest Man on the North Shore laughed so hard that his dentures, already displaced by his new fangs, flew out of his mouth. “You… wantus… to go back to that cesspool of miscegenation and niggraism? After we spent half our lives making enough money to get the hellaway from there?”

  “But-”

  Others in the audience vigorously nodded their assent. “Let New Orleansrot!”

  “They can all kill each other off for all I care!”

  “Damn rich white folks over theredeserve it for lettin‘ those niggers breed out of control!”

  “FuckNew Orleans!”

  Jules waved his arms wildly. “Wait! Just wait a minute! Look over there!” He pointed dramatically at the window on the eastern side of the building. “In just four or five hours from now, thesun’s gonna rise over the horizon and come through that window, andnone of you know what to do about it! You know what that sun’ll do to you? It ain’t nice!I’m the only one here with the know-how to teach you how to escape the sun-how to live asvampires! And if y’all don’t do exactly as I say-I ain’t teachin‘ none of you doodly-squat!”

  The new vampires stared at each other, their pale faces twitching with uncertainty. But then the ex-moderator stood and strode to the podium. “Listen, folks! We don’t need this man! I’ve read every book Agatha Longrain has ever written, cover to cover, three times! I know everything there is to know about vampires!”

  The man in the Buchanan shirt shot to his feet. “More good, Christian white folks are moving to St. Tammany every day! Who’s to say we can’t form our own colony of white vampires overhere, where there’s an endless and ever-growing supply of pure, unpolluted white blood?”

  A man in a black suit, who hadn’t said a word previously, was th
e next to rise. “I own a funeral home in Mandeville, folks! I have, in stock, a full line of magnificent coffins that I will be happy to sell for one penny over invoice to every person in this room!”

  It was all slipping away. Jules looked beseechingly at Doodlebug, still sitting in the back of the hall with hisNew Yorker on his lap. Doodlebug slowly shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Then he put his magazine aside and stood on his chair.

  “Whatgreat ideas everyone has! I can justfeel all the positive energy flowing in this room. But I’m sure you’re all terribly,terribly thirsty. I remember how it was whenI first became a vampire. Well, I know just the thing! Nothing, butnothing, beats the zing of drinking yourown blood. It’s incredibly reviving and refreshing! Everybody, check the floor next to your chairs. There’s a baking pan there that’s filled with your own blood. Trust me, it’s a treat like no other!”

  Like a pack of ravenous hyenas, the newborn vampires grabbed the pans of blood off the floor and lifted them to their thirsting lips. The red gore ran freely down their faces and necks, staining blouses and T-shirts and polyester neckties alike. The room was filled with the sounds of slurping, gulping, and sweetly satisfied sighs.

  Those satisfied sighs didn’t last long, however. They were quickly displaced by surprised yelps of pain, then agonized screams, then the wails of dissolving banshees. Before Jules’s horrified eyes, twenty-three newborn vampires were reduced to twenty-three puddles of smoking, bubbling goo.

  ELEVEN

  “So the conquering heroes have returned.”

  Maureen didn’t even bother looking up from her copy ofLadies’ Home Journal as Jules and Doodlebug stepped into her dressing room. “Where’s your glorious army, Jules? Out in the club watching the floor show? Or did you recruit so many soldiers that you had to leave them outside?”

  “Don’t ask,” Jules said, staring sourly at his companion.