The problem with some vampires is that they're evil and want to destroy the human race. But these are the minority of vampires.
The problem with most vampires is that they're bored and immortal. The only way an immortal can be bored is if he or she has given up on pursuing virtue. Pursuing virtue is very hard and will occupy all your time if you let it, and will at times of course be experienced as tedious, like everything, because of our nature. But if you give up on virtue and you can't die there's nothing to do. And so most vampires try to drown the boredom that arises from abandoning virtue by submitting themselves to their passions. Like I've said, the great passion of some vampires is the destruction of the human race. But most often a vampire who abandons him or herself to passion will try to make out with beautiful people late at night. But when they make out with people late at night, the people they make out with inevitably become vampires. And then these new vampires, quickly achieving new levels of boredom, also submit themselves to their passions and seek beautiful people to make out with late at night. Eventually, I suppose, all beautiful people will be vampires.
Unless the minority of vampires succeeds in destroying us all before that can happen.
But the point is that vampire stories are a typology for what is actually the struggle deep in the hearts of so many people, and especially the young. It is the struggle between what is actually boring and what is apparently boring. And when the tortuous heart rejects what is apparently boring for what is actually boring... Well, one way to think of it is that we get to where we all are today, with the apocalypse ever upon us and post-fictional post-musicians attempting to save us all from what we think reality is.
But I should get back to what happened yesterday.
Horace showed up in the morning. He told me a fascinating story, which I will let him relate, when he has time.
But he solved part of the mystery for me. He told me that in the middle of the night, right before we drove to Nebraska, he called the Hawk Center mayor's office on a payphone and left a message saying that we were coming to help.
"What exactly did you say?" I said.
"It was actually about vampires," he said.
"How very interesting," I said.
He said, "I said something like: 'Alas for your town and its complexity! If it were simple it would see a solution near at hand! But it has abandoned the naturally occurring high-fiber availability of lying down on your lawn for the low-impact jazzercise of the Old West dime store shoot-em-up novels. Alas that this world is full of poor, confused vampires, more sad than terrifying, more khaki than black, pale because they lack light, with hair slicked by the sickness of their souls! My name is Horace Gardener. My brother and I are in a band called the Gardens. We will shortly be arriving to help you. Bye.'"
"Did you know the mayor reacted badly to your message?" I said.
Horace said, "No."
After that, we got up from Winfield's and walked outside. The street was empty at first, but then one by one some store owners walked out of the stores and waited on the street. They all had plastic grocery bags in their hands.
"I think they have money in those bags, Sebastian," Horace said.
I said, "Were you serious about what you said about the lawns?"
"You know," said Horace.
"I think it's a good idea," I said. "Let's go talk to one of these store owners."
We walked up to one. She looked at us nervously.
"What?" she said.
"Do you own this gift shop?" I said.
"Yes," she said. "You should probably get off the street unless you have a plastic bag full of money somewhere."
"Do you know how soon the bikers will be here?" I said.
"Probably pretty soon," she said. She looked very awkward, with a hat that was probably trying to look goofy and independent, but which made her look like a Balkan refugee. I was filled with pity for her.
"My dear sister," I said. I realized I was starting to talk like Horace. "We want to deliver you from all of this. But there's only so much we can do here, with so little time." I inhaled deeply and looked out at the street lined with scared people. "Where's the place where we can go to talk and have all the tornado warning speakers broadcast it?" I said.
She hesitated, and looked at me, and then at Horace.
"Mercy awaits," said Horace.
She told us.
"Thank you," I said. Horace kissed her hand. Then we ran. It was three blocks away, in the mayor's office.
"I'll make a diversion," I said to Horace as we ran. "I'll try to start an ideological argument with the mayor. While he's distracted, perhaps you could grab the microphone in the back office of his room and tell people what to do."
We got to the building where the mayor's office was. The front of the place was deserted. We ran up the stairs. The mayor's door was opened. We burst in. He was looking out his window.
I said, "Mayor, I am Sebastian Gardener and I have come from the dusty empty plains of middle America to announce the transformation of all things, which is upon us now as ever. Now, tell me, where do you stand? With us or against us?"
The mayor seemed confused for a moment. He was a bald man wearing suspenders and a white shirt and a red bow tie.
"You!" he said. "The Gardens!"
"A fact," I responded. "Now, prepare to defend yourself with words. Do you deny that things exist? I ask you not about your mind but about your life. How do you sleep at night, on your stomach, on your back, or in the secret wish that you will never again awake, or do you simply desire that you will have lucid dreams so you can fly around and do who knows what? Against what and whom do you struggle when you struggle? And begin by telling me this: where is your courage, with what does it lie? I wish you nothing but good, yet I must know the answers to these questions, your honor! Now, answer!"
To be honest, I had been thinking the mayor would engage me in a lively discussion at this point. But he simply shouted, "Security!"
But while I had been talking, Horace had calmly walked past the mayor into the back room. Suddenly I heard the tornado warning speakers turn on and feed back a little.
"Hey!" said the mayor. "Get out of there!" He made a move toward the back room.
"Stand and deliver!" I said. I mostly said it to catch the mayor off guard.
It seemed to work. The mayor looked quizzically at me, and Horace started speaking through the tornado warning speakers. This is what I remember him saying:
O you citizens of this earth! O you who stand in fear awaiting your diminishment! O you who are lost and look to your leaders, who promise much and give little! There is a power within you, there is a power without you. Of this I could say much, but later. For now, try this: put your money away--along with your fear!--and do not lose heart. Lie down on your lawns. Face up. Don't move. I think that will probably confuse the bikers. That's all. Thanks. In His Holiest Name. Outtie.
I heard someone coming up the steps behind me, so I said, "Horace, I think the cops are coming. We should probably run."
And with that Horace came bursting out of the mayor's back room, and then we both went careening down the stairs, past a bewildered, kindly-looking old security guard, and out onto the street. Everywhere, there were people lying at the ground, their eyes looking up to heaven and the swirling clouds of day.
Horace and I hid behind a panel truck to watch what would happen. Just a moment later, a squad of motorcycles came rumbling slowly down the street, past the courthouse, past the gift shops and little restaurants. Everywhere were the people lying down.
The bikers looked very, very confused.
They passed.
We watched them.
They drove down the main street toward the Interstate. And they didn't come back.
After about twenty minutes of silence, the townspeople got up and clapped each other on the back and laughed and hugged each other. Horace and I kept hiding behind the truck, then after a while we walked unobserved to where he had parked his Buick.
We got in.
Horace put this keys in the ignition but didn't turn them.
"There's nothing stopping the bikers from coming back," he said.
I thought about this, and then said, "There never is really. But by the same token, there is nothing stopping you or me from becoming a biker either."
"There may be," said Horace.
Then he started the car and we started driving back to Sioux Falls.
After we'd been on the road for a while Horace said, "What exactly does 'by the same token' mean?"
"I guess that's something I haven't thought about," I said.
Horace took us through a turn, then said, "One more thing to do, then."
Best to all of you. Horace should write about his time apart from me soon. Really, I thought it was an interesting story. And Horace writes so well. And Leo probably should be posting things to let us all know about his speaking tour.
Right, Leo?
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