Vampires in the Lemon Grove

The story begins with Clyde, a vampire, sitting in Santa Francesca’s Lemon Grove, an Italian lemon farm that’s too expensive for locals and sustained by tourist money. Clyde says, “In every season you can find me sitting at my bench, watching them fall. Only one or two lemons tumble from the branches each hour, but I’ve been sitting here so long their falls seem contiguous, close as raindrops” (3). Clyde’s wife, Magreb, is annoyed with the close attention that he gives to lemon watching.

When describing himself, Clyde says, “Most people mistake me for a small, kindly Italian grandfather, a nonno. I have an old nonno’s coloring, the dark walnut stain peculiar to southern Italians, a tan that won’t fade until I die (which I never will)” (3). Clyde sits on a bench in the lemon grove day after day, and the tourists that visit assume he’s “a widower, or an old man who has survived his children. They never guess that [he’s] a vampire” (3).

Fila, a teenage girl who works at the grove, “knows that [Clyde is] a monster. Sometimes she’ll smile vacantly in my direction, but she never gives me any trouble. And because of her benevolent indifference to me, I feel a swell of love for the girl” (4).