The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “What about a stake through the heart?” said Rosa.

  “Hey, that’d kill anybody! No matter what kind of wood you used. So would cutting off my head, whether you stuffed my mouth with garlic or not. In fact, if I got a last request about it, I’d rather you stuffed it with pistachio nuts.”

  “Making an Unliving Will,” said Donna.

  “I’ve got two theories about it,” the vampire went on. Now that they’d booted him up, he seemed more than happy to go on talking.

  Yes, Rosa thought, and why did Jeff get him started? Or had it been Donna? No, it was Jeff. Just to get us off the subject of my diamond dove?

  “One,” Clement was saying, “is that all those things only affect Undead vampires, and maybe, if I ever do get old and die naturally and become Undead myself, they’ll start affecting me then. My other theory is that they only affect wicked vampires. I mean, going around biting people’s necks and sucking their blood without their permission has got to be pretty sinful, doesn’t it? We vampires develop super sensitivities, so maybe bad consciences make us super sensitive to sacred things like crucifixes and holy water.”

  Rosa said, “Garlic and silver aren’t holy things.”

  He replied, “Maybe they were once upon a time, clear back in the mists of history.”

  “Or maybe,” said Donna, “it’s all just more good, oldtime superstition that people made up to make themselves feel safe. Like all those old medieval medicines that couldn’t really cure anything.”

  “Some of ’em could,” said Jeff.

  Rosa let him and Donna squabble for two or three minutes about old folk remedies that did or didn’t work, while she took a few sips of root beer and pinched the upper end of her plastic straw out of shape.

  Jeff had already known about the specially-lined pocket in her beltcase, and Donna could have seen it when she took the necklace off and put it away. Or Jeff could have told her about it.

  There was an old check-system for baskets, but hardly anybody ever used it. The kids liked to say that they might as well trust one another as the checking attendants, and the honor system usually worked very well, because this was the first time all year Rosa had heard of anybody losing anything from any of the plastic-coated metal shelves with lockless sliding doors around the open pool area.

  Maybe they were all in on it together. “All right, guys,” she said at last, cutting into something or other Clement was saying about garlic in cough medicine, “the joke’s gone far enough. If you’ve got it, I’d really, really like it back now.”

  Donna, who had finished her sundae, said, “Oh, for the love of Elvis!” and took a drink of water.

  “Look, Rosie,” said Jeff, “if the offer’s still on, I’d really, really love your class ring, but I don’t have your dove necklace. I’m broken down with sorrow about it—especially if it’d get me your ring—but I really, really don’t have your necklace!”

  “We didn’t steal it,” said Donna, “and I’m getting sick and tired of you hinting that we did. You just lost it, that’s all. Anyway, if you insist on thinking somebody stole it, why one of us? There must have been fifty or sixty people in swimming while we were there.”

  “But you were the only ones who knew what it was and where I put it.”

  “How do you know?” said Jeff. “Somebody else could have been looking your way when you put it away. And we saw Joe and Tamiko and Shining Trout and a bunch of other kids from school there, didn’t we?”

  Donna went on, “Maybe you put it away so quickly that it slipped out again without your noticing it, and somebody picked it up out of the plastic grass.”

  “I would never handle it so carelessly! And nobody had turned it in at Lost and Found.”

  Clement suggested, “Maybe someone turned it in after we left.”

  “I’ll go check again while you people are at church,” Donna said wearily.

  Rosa’s heart jumped at the hope. “Look, guys, I never wanted to accuse you of stealing it. I’m really sorry if it sounded that way. All I meant was, I thought maybe, if you were playing a joke on me ...”

  “Dry it up, huh?” said Donna. “I told you I’d go check again while you’re at church.”

  Clement gave his watch another look and stood up. “Speaking of which, I’d better get going if I want to make that Reconciliation before Mass. Jeff, why don’t you and Rosa stop off at the pool with Donna, if you don’t want to get there too early and sit around?”

  Rosa felt torn. She wouldn’t be able to rest till she knew about her necklace, but if Donna was using this as an excuse to “find” and return it without ever having to own up to taking it in the first place, then Rosa couldn’t very well go back to the pool with her ...

  Donna added, “I can also ask if anything’s turned up in the filters yet. And see if they’ve got forms that you can fill out for them to watch the filter system for your stuff. They do back home.”

  “Thank you,” Rosa told her. She put as much feeling into it as she could. It was really a plea to Donna to “find” her dove again if she had taken it. “I’ll go on and light a candle to St. Jude.”

  “St. Jude for lost objects?” said Jeff. “You mean St. Anthony, don’t you?”

  “To both of them,” said Rosa. “If it fell off in the water and got into the filters, it’ll need St. Jude to keep it safe from getting broken.”

  Clement turned to Donna and explained, “Jude is the patron saint of impossible causes, and Anthony is the patron saint of lost objects.”

  “Hey, don’t you try to clutter my memory banks with all that junk!” said Donna. “And don’t go lighting any of your candles for me, either. If I find it, I want the credit.”

  It was still threatening to drizzle outside, but also finally showing signs that it might clear up in time for a couple of bright hours before sunset. St. Kateri Tekakwitha Church was cattycorner to the Sundae Palace, with a corner of Maplehaven Park between. As soon as they’d crossed the first street, Donna peeled off to cut across the lawn to the municipal pool in the middle of the park. The others kept on along the sidewalk, not saying much. Jeff whistled, and Rosa didn’t talk because she was determined not to pester him anymore about her necklace unless Donna didn’t come back with it.

  As they reached the sidewalk in front of St. Kateri’s, they saw old Ms. Archer at the top of the steps, about to open the door. She was another one who got Reconciled almost every week. When they hailed her, she turned and waved back, greeting all three of them by name before she went inside. “I see she remembers you,” Rosa said to Clement.

  “We’ll remember you, too, Rosa,” said Jeff. “Even without any keepsake. You’ve been here the whole school year, and Clem only comes for a month in the summer. But I’m still hoping for that class ring.”

  Already halfway up the ramp, Clement paused and called back, “Shall we go in?”

  “Go on!” Jeff called up.

  “Looks first, brains second. Besides, you’ve got candles to light, and I’ll have to wait till Ms. Archer is through, anyway.”

  Running up the ramp after Clement, Rosa wished she could have enjoyed her last Liturgy at St. Kateri’s without worrying about her dove. It was such an awesome church! The whole back wall behind the altar was dominated by a huge darkwood cross that went from floor almost to ceiling. She wasn’t sure if you could really call it a crucifix, because the Figure was Christ the King, robed like a priest in triumph, rather than Christ dying in agony. But He was white wood, and the whole cross was framed with a series of dark arches that made it all seem something like a deep, mysterious cave.

  Clement carried his manners so far that he hung back at the concrete balustrade and let them go in first. The guitar players were already in front, tuning up, dwarfed by the huge cross. A dozen other early birds were finding places here and there in the pews. The Reconciliation Room was in the back of the chu
rch, not up front as it was in Rosa’s parish back home, and somebody was already in it getting Reconciled, because Ms. Archer was in a back pew waiting for her turn.

  Behind her, Rosa heard a sharp gasp and a funny splash.

  She looked around. Clement was clutching his right wrist and rubbing his fingertips on his tunic more like he was trying to dry them off quickly than like he was in the middle of making the Sign of the Cross. There were some large splashes on the edge of the holy water font, like he had jerked his hand out too fast.

  “What’s wrong?” said Rosa.

  “Nothing. Nothing. I’m okay.” But his whisper sounded very strained, and when he lifted his right hand to his left shoulder, he kept hold of the wrist with his other hand. Like he was using his left hand to push his right one. Ms. Archer was looking too, now, a puzzled frown on her wrinkled face.

  As Clement tried to force his hand to his right shoulder, Jeff turned around, muttered, “Hey!” or something, and started back. He had been standing directly in front of Clement in the aisle, between him and a full view of the cross. As Jeff stepped out of the way of the big cross, Clement gave a sudden cry of pain and fell down on his hands and knees.

  Ms. Archer exclaimed, “What’s wrong?” and started to her feet.

  Clement lurched up, turned, and fled, staggering like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, knocking heavily against the side of the door as he got through.

  “Is he all right?” asked Ms. Archer. “He’s never acted like that before ...” Other people were turning around to look, too, and the guitar players had paused in their tuning up.

  “Clem!” Jeff started to say aloud. “Clement Czarny, you clown—”

  From outside, they heard a muffled scream.

  Jeff at her heels, Rosa dived back outside.

  The clouds had broken to let the sun shine through. Clement was sitting hunched up in the shade of the porch railing and the evergreen shrubs growing beside it. He had his cape up over his head and seemed to be trembling.

  “Czarny, you dumb clown—” Jeff began again, but Rosa told him,

  “Just a minute. I want to check something out.”

  “Okay. Just about a minute, and then I come in and start shaking the dummy up. Making a scene like that in church!”

  She went over and sat down on her knees in front of the vampire. “Okay, Clemmie, this is me. Rosa Reyes.”

  He moaned.

  “You’re the one who stole my dove necklace, aren’t you? Just to test your theory about wickedness being what makes vampires allergic to crosses and holy water and stuff!”

  She thought that, beneath his cape, he nodded his head.

  “Where is it? You didn’t…throw it away or anything?”

  He seemed to shake his head no. Then his arm moved, opening up his cape but still holding it out for a sunshade. “It’s in my breast pocket,” he said.

  She reached out in relief, but caught her hand back. How would it look, feeling around in the pocket of a boy she had only just met that morning? Up here on the church porch, too! “You get it out and give it back to me.”

  “It’s got a silver chain.”

  “That didn’t stop you from stealing it in the first place. And what’ll you do if you don’t find out now? Steal something else sometime just so you can doublecheck how it makes you react to silver?”

  Very slowly and carefully, he reached into his pocket and felt around for a minute.

  “And handle it carefully!” she told him. “I don’t care if it burns you or not. I don’t care if it burns your fingers off. If you drop it and break it, I won’t forgive you, and then you’ll have to go through your whole life cringing away from crosses and sunshine!” But she cupped her hand and held it near enough to catch her necklace right away.

  He finally found it, pulled it out, gave a sigh of relief, and held it over her hand. He didn’t let the chain go until the diamond dove was resting safely in her palm.

  “Maybe silver isn’t sacred enough anymore,” he said.

  “Looks like sunshine is,” she pointed out, searching the dove for any signs of damage. “How does it feel on you now you’ve given this back?”

  He lowered his cape slowly and nodded. “Okay. It isn’t comfortable, but I can handle it again.”

  The dove was safe, nothing broken, nothing knocked off. Letting out her own sigh of relief, Rosa fastened the necklace back around her throat. Her fingers shook just a little.

  “Hey!” called Jeff.

  “It’s all right,” she shouted back. “He wasn’t trying to make a scene. He just stole my necklace and got punished for it, that’s all. We’ll be right with you.”

  “I was even going to make a bad Reconciliation about it,” said Clement. “To round off the experiment ...”

  “And then you were going to give it back?”

  “Well ... no. If I’d planned to give it back to you, it wouldn’t really have been stealing, you see.”

  “It’d still have been mean enough to be some kind of a sin.” Standing, she held out a hand to help pull him to his feet. “Well, what are you going to do now?”

  “Go in and make a good Reconciliation.” He shrugged. “I guess if I want to go on living a normal life, I’ll just have to be a saint.”

  “Saint Dracula! That’ll be a first!”

  “How do we know? Maybe it’s just the wicked vampires who get famous. Maybe somebody really saintly was a vampire all along and nobody ever—”

  “Come on,” she said, turning to rejoin Jeff and go back into church. “I want to get Reconciled myself now. For mean thoughts. You’re the only one I never really seriously suspected.”

  * * * *

  This might serve as an exhibit to the principle that authors are the poorest judges of their own work. I always thought it should have found a market, but the collective editorial opinion said otherwise. For years I tried to figure out ways of recasting it to make it more palatable to an editor; among other ideas, I toyed awhile with the thought of using the “raconteur” technique, with Cousin Donna as the teller. Perhaps because I, myself, like it as first written, I never got around to any such heavy rewriting, so that is the way I decided to include it here.

  THE BIGOT AND THE BARITONE

  This may be rooted in something or other that happened in one of parishes where I have lived, but whatever it was lies buried too deeply in my memory for ready retrieval.

  Walking into Our Lady forty-five minutes early for choir practice that Thursday evening, in order to get some private prayer in before other singers started showing up, he heard Mother Lizzie in the choir loft arguing with M. Robertson, head of the music ministry.

  “He stays in the choir!” the madre was saying. “We’ll find the money somewhere else or do without.”

  “Yes, I hate the thought of losing my best baritone. But the dissension could split the whole parish into factions—”

  “Good! Let it! If we’ve got enough bigots here for a faction, let them come out of the closet and be known.”

  Stepping far enough down the aisle for them to see him from the loft, he turned and looked up.

  “Clement!” M. Robertson called down a little too quickly. “My goodness, you’re here early! Did you forget the time?”

  They might have cut off any argument about anything because of any third party coming in. But this argument had to do with a baritone in the church choir. And being a baritone in the church choir, he couldn’t help calling up, “What were you talking about just now? If you don’t mind me asking ...”

  “Nothing for you to worry about, Clement,” Mother Lizzie replied, much too quickly and definitely.

  “I’m coming right up,” he responded. Conversations shouldn’t be shouted in a church, even an empty one.

  All the way up the stairs, he tried to think that maybe it really was something t
hat didn’t concern him. Who was he to think that the head music minister would call him her “best baritone” after a grand total of two rehearsals and one weekend’s liturgical services? But things had happened before. Once in Valparaiso, although he’d been just a kid then and there’d always been room for the argument that it was only because his voice was changing; and again in Madison, the time he’d volunteered to serve as a lector, which would have put him up there in front of everybody.

  He thought that the moment he emerged in the loft, the pastor and the music minister cut off a debate in very low voices. He greeted them formally, saying, “Good evening” in the really rotten mock-Lugosi accent he almost never used. “Uh ... Maybe this is going to sound paranoid, but you were arguing about me, weren’t you?”

  “No,” the madre replied at once, “we were arguing about somebody else. Somebody who needs a good object lesson in Christian love.”

  “Somebody who wants me out of the choir?” he asked.

  “Somebody whose opinion means less than nothing,” said Mother Lizzie, “as long as the rest of us want you in.” Her words, and the stricken expression on M. Robertson’s face, had already told Clement that his guess was right.

  “I understand, Mother,” he told her, amazed how calmly he was taking it. “And it isn’t worth polarizing the parish about. I’m dropping. I’d just like to know ... who is it?”

  “No,” said the madre, “I don’t think you do, Clement. Not really.” And promptly began trying to argue him into staying with the choir. Noticing that M. Robertson kept quiet, he argued back,

  “It isn’t because I want to get even or anything like that. It’s because if I don’t know who it is that wants me out, I’ll be suspecting everybody. Anyway, I already know it’s somebody with money, some big parish benefactor.”

  The most that Mother Lizzie would agree to was that she’d think about it awhile. Then she launched into another argument about why Clement should ignore the whole thing and stick with the choir. If the music minister had joined the madre at that point…but she didn’t. She just sat there looking unhappy, and Clement got out as soon as he could, before any of the other choir members arrived. All he would have needed was to polarize them, too. Besides, it could have been one of them.