Jbstearns, Vampire: A Life In Eight Ages

JB Stearns

JB Stearns

Vampire:

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

© 2009 by JB Stearns/Karen Courtenay Spear Ellinwood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be published, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. Please contact the author at [email protected]

Meta Data for Library of Congress JB Stearns, 1961 – JB Stearns, Vampire: A Life in Eight Ages JB Stearns – unpublished manuscript Year created: 1999; Revisions: 2000, 2001; 2009. Fiction – Vampires; romance; Faeries; Fae; history; US Civil War; art; mystery.

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

Dedication I write this in honor of my grandfather, A.H. Spear, Sr. and his love of history, art, and the subtle expression of love and memory. We spent many hours talking of life in other worlds, in other times, culturally enigmatic but always intriguing. His love and confidence in me encouraged my success in law school, life, and family. I also commit this to the honor of my great, great, great grandfather Junius Brutus (J.B.) Stearns, with whom my grandfather felt a certain kinship – beyond blood. JB’s life resonated with my grandfather, his stout heart and courage to live his life on his own terms and to ignore his father’s disapproval going on to lead a productive and creative life and of a length and richness that most men did not know in his era. My grandfather had a few regrets in not having summoned that kind of courage in his own youth. He found it in his own 8 th age in his love for investigating and recording the history of things of ordinary usage, seals, stamps, coins, and books.

NOTE: The similarity between the artist JB Stearns and the Vampire protagonist of this novel ends with the name and the few borrowed facts surrounding his life and death. The real JB Stearns was not a Vampire and there is no intent to sully posthumously his reputation as an artist or human being. This writing is intended as an honor to his innovativeness, creativity, and imagination and his dedication to the concept of equality before it was fashionable or safe to embrace.

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

Junius Brutus Stearns was born Lucius Sawyer Stearns, 2 nd July 1810, and died 17 September 18851. JB Stearns was admitted to the National Academy of Design in 18492 and a member of the Council of the National Academy of Design in 1851 for his painting entitled Millennium. He remained an esteemed member until his death3. He was killed in a horse and carriage accident on the way home from the theatre 4 on the 102nd anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. He is now famous for his fivepart series on George Washington, in which he depicted him as a farmer, statesman, general, bridegroom, and in death5. He named two of his sons after him: Junius Brutus Jr. and Lucius Sylvester, and another two after other famous artists, Michael Angelo, and Raphael Conegio. They were all pall bearers. His daughter was aptly named funeral services were held at his home at 106 South Second Street and he was interred at Cypress Hills Cemetery, on Long Island 6.

1

New York Times (21 September 1885). The Funeral of Mr. Stearns. National Academy of Design exhibition record, 1826-1860, Vol. 75,Part 2. New York Historical Society. Retrieved from The Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/stream/nationalacademyo752nati/nationalacademyo752nati_djvu.txt. 3 National Academy of Design exhibition record, 1826-1860, Vol. 75,Part 2. New York Historical Society. Retrieved from The Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org/stream/nationalacademyo752nati/nationalacademyo752nati_djvu.txt. 4 New York Times (19 September 1885). The Death of J.B. Stearns. 5 Husch, G. E. (2000). Something Coming: Apocalyptic Expectation and Mid-Nineteenth Century American Painting. NH:University Press of New England; also, Mark Edward Thistlewaite, The Image of George Washington: Studies in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American History Painting (New York: Garland, 1979). 6 New York Times (21 September 1885). The Funeral of Mr. Stearns. 2

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

Foreword My father kept his diary close for most of his life. Often I heard my mother say women had loved him for his language. He was handsome, forever young. But he had endured many lifetimes. His tongue, as he would say, derived from a more elegant century. I loved him. As did my mother. I believe he would have approved this publication. I added the title, having agonized over finding the right few words to describe him. He was a man, he was Vampire. He did not take to his 8 th age of life, as he called it, like a duck to water – pardon the overused phrase. He truly came to it reluctantly. Not merely skeptical, but afraid. As he would tell it, as he did tell it many times, he saw it also as a new beginning, a new lease on life. He was, by turns, excited and afraid, wondrous and reproachful. He had over a century to think about its effects on his mind and on his heart. My father was JB Stearns, born July 2, 1810, a much acclaimed painter of his day. The New York Times reported him killed in a horse and carriage accident on September 17, 1885 – two years hence the centennial of the signing of our Constitution dated 17 September 1783. You could hear him laugh, amused at the synergy between his first life’s work and the date of his passing. You see, he was most famous for his series of paintings of George Washington, our first President. JB, as he liked to be called in this life, painted a series of six – some say five – paintings of President Washington, including one entitled, Washington as a Statesman. Notably, he imagined Washington addressing the Constitutional Convention at the signing in Philadelphia. While the more famous depiction of this even was in the hand – or brush, of Gilbert Stuart, my father’s is by far a more remarkable painting. It hangs in the Museum of the University of Virginia and can be seen on the Internet – he used to laugh at that, at many different sites, including those offering rather expensive reproductions or framed posters. At that he was appalled. I thought it curious that my father had painted a so-called shadow series of Washington, one in which, for example, he had presented a rather elegant, beautiful Black man and woman, a couple, in fancy dress as he used to say, at George and Martha’s wedding. This couple, of unknown origin, did not appear in the original. My father tells me a Frenchman consigned him to paint it in 1858, two years after he completed the original. He traveled to France personally to deliver it. On board the train, a weasely character – as my father told it, broke into the luggage car and stole it, leaving behind the empty canister. The Frenchman, a noble of sorts, forgave my father and paid for the investigation after the Railway had dropped the case. I am cynical, my father’s daughter, and so I believe it was a conductor who engineered its theft. Be that as it may, my point is that my father had many sides to him, and even at least two or three lifetimes packed into his first real life. The world did not consider him famous for this second series. Shadow is perhaps less

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE than sensitive adjective, but in those days and again in the 1970s, shadow was a disdainful description for African Americans. The art world in the late 1800s and early twentieth century was not sensitive. Abolitionists and Englishmen, Frenchman and polite company, understood the effect language could have. As did those not so noble and not so polite. Hence, the name for the series still under investigation. Art historians claim to have no idea why my father would have painted such a series, depicting Blacks as Free Men in those days when the United States of America held them slaves. My father said they are unwilling to admit the obvious, that he did not share in the beliefs of a majority of this country of his time, of that time. My father cried when Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. He decried how long it took for someone not only to notice but to say loud and clear that Black men and women of his early days were “involuntary immigrants” in a “caste-like” society. It was John U. Ogbu who said that. It was 1978 – 120 years after the elegant Free Black couple attended George and Martha’s wedding in my father’s imagination. My mother says JB Stearns was – is, a puzzle. More, an enigma, as he cannot truly be explained or solved. She loved him for it. Loves him still. It was mom’s broken heart that drove me to the attic to retrieve my father’s diaries, diaries that spanned two centuries, from horse drawn carriages and the bloodiest of wars this country has known to talk of populating Mars. My father would not have liked mom’s description. Modesty was, in fact, one of his best traits. By far, not the only endearing one. His father was not so loving, to put it mildly. My father had not always had his name. He created it, from a long dead 5th century painter of Rome, Junius Brutus. My grandfather, he was sure, had been appalled. JB, as he liked to be called in this century, was born Lucius Sawyer Stearns, belonging to a “good” family of Vermont, and quite possibly related to T.S. Elliot – the S stands for Stearns – same spelling. This is something I need to investigate. There just isn’t enough time. After a row with my grandfather, Lucius was never heard from again. Ever. Some say – even today, that he disappeared. My father merely shed his name and re-birthed himself in New York. Lucky for my mom. And me. JB married Emmeline Heath Taylor. They had 5 children, four sons and a daughter, Edith. Five siblings I will never know, two sons bearing his names, one Lucius and the other Junius Brutus. I have met, however, two of their great, great, great grandchildren. They’re not famous. But they are welcoming. I could not tell them of my father’s real life, as I like to call it. The one in which my mom and I played a major part. He calls it his eighth age. Dad was always, is – I hope, a fan of Shakespeare. Now his family will know him. You will know him. Through his words, his thoughts, his lovely mind. I give you my father.

Estrella Edith Stearns

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

PART I María de la Gracia, my maker I shall not want

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

JB STEARNS DATE: 8 NOVEMBER 1999 It’s always the extremists, the fringe, that grab the attention. In the Battle of Bull Run, the first one, our men forged lines we thought impenetrable. The London Times assumed we were beaten and the Republic a piece of history. It was the so-called New York “rowdies” and Boston abolitionists who drew the world’s attention and the sword. For those of us struggling to maintain our balance in quick-blood, these were our heroes. As soldiers we had to have the conviction to put arms to sharp tongues or risk fatal failure. Any hesitancy on our parts to deliver a murderous rage upon our brothers was viewed as a failure of loyalty. Although fraternity persisted across the lines, our mothers, sisters, and daughters caused hesitant hearts in battle. None of us desired to incur the risk of losing more than our corporeal lives or to cause our families – our women, especially, to endure a loss so profound that none would speak of it willingly. The realization set quickly upon us that in such times a hesitant heart could take your life. We thrust awkward swords to the hilt, withdrew them at rapid rates and, in succession, buried them again and again in the bellies of our countrymen. The cries of pain following every battle bore a wound in me so deep, I could not bear to hear the persistent pleas of so many brave men who would just as soon go back to battle with gangrenous limbs than succumb to the saw. A dear friend, Ralph Everett Ellinwood, snubbed this fate. He made the Hobson’s choice to refuse surgery – a benign word for the gruesome procedure that would have severed his lower leg – mounted his horse, and rode three days to an Army Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia – alone. It was reported that he did not survive long after his arrival. In a matter of days, gangrene traveled his leg beginning from the entry wound at his ankle and to the knee. He remained in critical care for several weeks before he died. That was the official report. The women who attended us were no less brave. Perhaps, more so. In the days before Fort Sumter, we had shielded our women too often from the realities of war, the stories our forefathers passed to us. We ingrained in our female companions, our mothers and daughters, countless times, their place was not on the battlefield. We had lied. Our mind’s eye could foresee our desperate need for their care, but our mouths refused to utter it. We denied ourselves the kind assistance of our so-called fairer companions, which would have alleviated a great deal of angst and terror. Our wives and daughters, cousins and sisters, had begged our permission to travel with us, albeit an hour’s journey behind. Had we anticipated the horrors of the fields of war, we might have enrolled our women in this effort sooner. But we did expect our reluctance in battle and did not wish for our women to perceive this as cowardice. We should have trusted them.

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE There were, of course, professional women in aid of injured troops, the highly skilled nurses who left the safety of local patrician doctors’ offices to ensure our recovery. Their task always having been to clean up the artifacts of our deleterious wake. But, our chivalrous proclivities would render us ineffective in the end. We did not have sufficient medical supplies, physicians or nurses to heal our wounds and return us to battle. Some of us died. Others died slowly. Still, others survived but at terrible cost. Perhaps we had been wise, after all, in refusing our women access to surgery. I would have voted to bar young men as well, if I could have. My ears could not determine which was more painful: the cries of soldiers whose legs were barbarously severed from them in the name of medical aid, or the shrieks of women and men whose souls could not countenance the process. There were women of strong stomach among us. No doubt of that. There were some who endured better than some of their male counterparts the unyielding howls of once stalwart soldiers. Those women, the ones who could saw a leg as soon as sew a hem, were both endeared to and feared by us. They represented something which our own family women had hidden from us – their superior strength. Hindsight is wiser than we anticipate. I know now that my own wife had superior strength. She birthed five children, in our bed, in winter storms and summer torrents, alone on two occasions, and without me at her side on all. She nursed and cooked, nourished and cleaned, and counseled and continued to bed the man whom she knew would not be there a sixth time. Men are cowards in this respect. At least, we were then. Nowadays, we attend the births of our children, most of us, share household chores and child care responsibilities. I watched – nay, I joined – the shift in the distribution of family duties, but not in the locus of familial power. That remains, justly, with the women. The current war – or wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan, the conflicts in Pakistan, and the persistent inequities that lead to military engagement, remind me of the American Civil War. I was not alive in the Revolutionary War, but the Civil War was no less revolutionary. Through the odd friendship of a Confederate Lieutenant from a Florida regiment, I came to understand that the men of the South had, indeed, believed they were revolting against an unjust, patrician government. My disagreement with this tenet – and their principles – is intact. But, I do understand the sentiment and the purpose with which these men fought. Theirs was no less than the tenacity of the so-called insurgents who wish us away and put arms to their opposition. It was no less than the loyalty of we Americans who fought for the Union or soldiers today who believe they are fighting to preserve American principles or the freedom of the Iraqi or Afghani peoples. Young men fail to grasp that wars are, typically, the making of men whose minds are fixed on the prize and not on their sacrifice. Many pens have bled onto the pages attempting to explain, justify or vilify President

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE Lincoln’s choices or the Confederate opposition. In the end, wars are the ultimate autopoietic machine. They reinvent themselves, seemingly without change in cause or circumstance. The phenotypes of war are distinguishable, but their genotypes synonymous. History grows itself, claims Timothy Ingold, a wise and, surprisingly, modern anthropologist. We mere humans play a willful and, oft times, menacing part in history’s more destructive tendencies. Vampire history is no different. It plays out in iterative cycles paralleling the world’s war record. All creatures have unique qualities in this order. The quest for the ultimate weapon in times of war is unrelenting. In times of peace, tenacious corporate scoundrels persevere. We Vampires were the ultimate weapon, and the ultimate human sacrifice. There are many theories of how we came to be. I do not pretend to know our exact origins. I know only, now, how we are made. I can tell you this: The reason for our genesis was none other than the familiar promotion of corporate pursuits secured by war. Among these, the protectionist policy Manifest Destiny quietly sacrificed a Nation’s pride to create the genocidal machine that struck the nation generated remarkable Outbreaks of Vampirism. Such outbreaks were widespread in countries seeking to expand their borders. Once used to further these human material objectives, nuclear and electromagnetic weapons render us obsolete. We now are the shunned and occupy no place in human affairs, except as feared predators. We are called The Undead. We are undead, but not without vulnerability. As is true for humans, a stake through the heart will do us in. The ordinary bullet, the ordinary blade, and the lack of ordinary nutrition do not eliminate our existence. You fear us because we cannot die in ways to which you are accustomed. You fear us because we can make you in more than our image – we can make you, like us, undead. History tells us that humans have hunted the Holy Grail for thousands of years. Not the Holy Grail of Christian lore, but the Holy Grail of life itself – the secret to endowing humans with eternal life. The old adage, be careful what you wish for, comes to mind. When you receive this ‘gift’, the concept quickens as you imagine your families growing old without you, your love surviving their frail bodies, and your friends no longer holding you in their confidence.

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE Comment on JB Stearns, Reluctant Vampire: A Life in 8 Ages on JB Stearns’ WordPress blog at www.JBStearns.wordpress.com, or, visit JB at www.bloodsacrifice.net.

Read other stories and a preview of JB’s first novel, Blood Sacrifice: Refusal to Protect online at www.bloodsacrifice.net.

© 2008-09 JB Stearns

JB STEARNS, VAMPIRE

The author, JB Stearns, is a lawyer and educator in Arizona. Junius Brutus Stearns (1810-1885) serves as a nom de plume and derives from the author’s great-great-great grandfather, an artist and member of the National Academy of Design and served as a Lieutenant in the of New York’s 12th Regiment during the Civil War. The elder JB Stearns painted the now famous series of George Washington, which includes Washington as a Statesman, also the subject of a 1937 United States Postage Stamp. The original oil painting is hanging at the University of Virginia. The author JB Stearns writes fiction in spare moments. Previous works include Blood Sacrifice: Refusal to Protect, a story of a mother’s refusal to protect her daughter from her father’s sexual misconduct and the lifelong aftermath of tragic relationships and consequences rippling through generations of women, and men, in the Callahan family.

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. -

Shakespeare, As You Like It (Jacques, Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

And then there arrives the eighth, In which he must choose between living regret, or Living fear, between gripping life or a living death The eighth age is upon me, neither embraced nor chosen. I live it. I do not breathe. I savor it. I do not bleed. I cherish it. For it is in this age, that I met my wife. And my new child born of her Fae blood, The best of my life in Eight Ages. -

JB Stearns

STEARNS’ ATTIRE REEKED OF THE WET-DOG, METALLIC SCENT OF BLOOD. THE ATTENDING PHYSICIAN ABANDONED HIM TO THE CARE OF HIS NURSE, MARIA, IN WHOSE CARE STEARNS IS TURNED VAMPIRE. AS IF THAT WERE NOT MAGICAL ENOUGH TO SUIT ANY NON-BELIEVER, THE LOOKING GLASS HELD UP TO HIS VIEW REVEALED THE POWER OF MARIA’S BLOOD – A RARE BLEND OF VAMPIRE AND FAE. INSTEAD OF PRESERVING THE ASPECT OF A

75 YEAR OLD MAN, MARIA’S INTENDED GRANDFATHERLY FIGURE TURNED 35 YEARS YOUNG. THIS NEW WOULD HAVE TO PROVIDE THE COVER TO ADDRESS THE SIGNIFICANT SOCIAL DIFFICULTIES OF POSED BY THE STATUS OF AN UNMARRIED WOMAN WHOSE WORK EXPOSES HER TO NUDE MALE BODIES, GORE, AND THE STUFF OF HORROR NOVELS.

KNOWN NOW AS JB, THIS RELUCTANT VAMPIRE TELLS HIS OWN STORY OF THIS 8TH AGE OF HIS LIFE. JB’S DAUGHTER, ESTRELLA STEARNS, BECOMES THE INTERLOCUTOR IN

JB’S

SELF-REFLECTIVE DIALOGUE.

THIS

VOLUME IS

CORRESPONDENCE, POSTAL ARTIFACTS, NEWS CLIPPINGS, AND DRAWINGS.

ESTRELLA’S

COLLECTION OF HER FATHER’S JOURNAL ENTRIES,

JB’S WORDS REVEAL THE TRAGIC LIFE OF AN INVOLUNTARY EXISTENCE,

THE COMPLEX CONSEQUENCES OF A NEW FOUND LOVE, AND A SECOND CHANCE AT FATHERHOOD APPROACHED WITH A AND A MODERN LEVEL OF ENGAGEMENT.

© JB Stearns 2008-2009 © 2008-09 JB Stearns

19TH CENTURY DEVOTION