Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

Author:Karen Russell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

Washington or oblivion

Secret deals get brokered behind the Barn, just north of the red sloop of the bunny hutch. A number of the presidents are planning their escape for a day they are calling the Fourth of July.

“The country is drowning in sorrow,” Adams snorts. It’s high summer. Oats fall around him like float-down snow. “Our country needs us.”

After several months of nickered rhetoric, Adams has convinced a half dozen of the former presidents to be his running mates in a charge on Washington. Whig, Federalist, Democrat, Republican—Adams urges his fellow horses to put aside these partisan politics and join him in the push for liberty. He wants the world to know that they have returned. “It is obvious, gentlemen: of course we’re meant to lead again. It is the only thing that makes sense. What other purpose could we have been reborn for? What other—”

Adams is interrupted by a storm of hiccups. Behind him, Fitzgibbons is hitching Harding to a child-size wagon. He helps the girl into the wooden wagon bed. Fitzgibbons grins as he hands the child the reins, avuncular and unconcerned, his big arms crossed against his suspendered chest.

“And tell me,” Rutherford asks quietly, “tell me, what evidence do you have that the country needs us to lead again? They seem to be getting on just fine without us.”

Now Harding is pulling the girl in miserable rectangles around the bare dirt yard, hiccupping madly. “This—hiccup!—is—hiccup!—Hell.” The girl waves a dandelion at him like a wilted yellow scepter. “Giddy-up, horsie!” She laughs.

Aside from Rutherford and Harding, the other presidents are in ecstasies. “Surely the term limits of the Twenty-second Amendment won’t apply to me anymore. This rebirth is the loophole that will let me run again, Rutherford.” Eisenhower grins for some invisible camera, exposing his huge buck teeth. “And win.”

Oh dear, thinks Rutherford. That smile is not going to play well on the campaign trail.

“With all due respect, sir, I fear you might be seeking the wrong office? I think there are some, er, obstacles to your run that you perhaps haven’t considered?”

“Obstacles?” A fly buzzes drowsily between them and lands on one trembling whisker. “Now, give me some credit, Rutherford. I’ve put a lot of thought into this. Let me outline my campaign strategy for you …” Eisenhower has made this speech before.

“And what about you, Rutherford? What are you, a stallion incumbent or a spineless nag?”

Rutherford blinks slowly and doesn’t answer Eisenhower. Both options are depressing. He doesn’t want to return to Washington, if there even is a Washington. He just wants a baaa of recognition out of this one ewe.

“Neither. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving my wife.”

“Baaa!” says the sheep. She is standing right behind him. Her head is a black triangle floating on the huge cloud of her body. Rutherford has been training the sheep who might be Lucy to follow him. He holds his own supper in his mouth and then drops clumps of millet and wet apple cores to coax her forward.

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