He Called Me Puddin’
My friendship with John Henry Faulk, the feisty Texas humorist, survived a little jealousy and a lot of pain.
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“Cactus, honey, where’d you get that Dobie essay?”
“Johnny, it just came to me at my typewriter.”
“Cactus, I heard him deliver those same ominous words about fifteen years ago.”
“Then maybe he’s talking to us, Johnny. Let’s keep him alive.”
So we started experimenting with a dialogue between Dobie, played by me, and his protégé, John Henry Faulk. An independent television producer, Conrad Ricketts, wanted to film us. He rented Willie Nelson’s Austin Opera House and started publicizing Two Lone Stars three weeks hence. We didn’t even have a script! We went to a far-back pasture at the LBJ Ranch. On a chilly November day Johnny and I sat in rocking chairs outside an old Hill Country limestone house in the warming sun. I started stirring Johnny’s Dobie memories as my wife-to-be, Peggy Davis, took notes. As Texas Longhorns grazed around us, Dobie came to us.
We played to a packed house. Director Ken Johnson did such a magical job of making me resemble Dobie that tears came to Johnny’s eyes when he first saw me. As we prepared to go on stage I said, “Johnny, we’re a couple of ancient matadors entering the ring with the goddam bull one more time.” We were only slightly gored. The audience was friendly and kin enough to enjoy it. The film did not sell.
The performance needed a lot of polishing, but we kept working on it and presenting it wherever we could. It kept getting better and better, and the audiences loved it.
The problem was, we didn’t. We had a chemistry problem. I, the protégé of John Henry, became Dobie, the mentor of my mentor. And my mentor did not enjoy the audience’s joy over his mentor.
“Dobie wouldn’t say something like that!” he’d point out.
It was true, I had changed Dobie somewhat. I had viewed miles of the man on film in conversations with others. You could grow hair during his pauses for thought. Out of necessity, I picked up the tempo, emphasizing Dobie’s natural wit and giving him lines that made him funnier than he was.
I had struggled becoming Dobie. But now I had him. I knew it. The audiences knew it. Our next director, Nan Elkins, knew it. John Henry didn’t want to know it. Later, Liz told me that John Henry was incapable of accepting anyone else as Dobie except himself.
He began rewriting the script onstage. He would not only change the lines; he’d suddenly throw a new character at me. During a performance in Corpus Christi, Johnny refused to go on for the second act. “You’re getting all the laughs out there. You don’t need me for the next act.”
I was devastated by Johnny’s displeasure. More than anyone, he was the person I wanted to please. It was he who had given me the confidence to be out there as a performer. It was he who had given me the assurance that had I so chosen, I could have made it in the big time.
Even after his death, his criticism continued. Recently I was viewing a tape of a show we had done at Southwest Texas State University. In one sequence I was onstage alone. As I spoke my lines, an electronic gremlin had allowed Johnny’s backstage comments to be recorded on the video soundtrack, though unheard on the P.A. system. “Listen at Cactus. That stuff is for a Rotary or Kiwanis club.”
I had been in awe of John Henry. The Dobie production made me realize that I had placed him on the same pedestal where he had placed Dobie, and it was higher than reality. Now I saw his insecurities in plain sight; I saw that he was human. Over time, that realization only deepened our friendship.
I continued on with J. Frank Dobie without John Henry. As for Johnny, he didn’t need a cast; he was one. So, he gathered all his familiar friends around him, the people from his mythical Pear Orchard, Texas—Cousin Ed Snodgrass, Mrs. Edith Walters, Mayor Grumbles. And he did what he did best—a one-man show. A New York producer saw it and began making plans for an off-Broadway production. Money was raised. A staff was hired. Rehearsals began. Once again, the goose was hanging high.
Once again, plop!
A malignant tumor of the pharynx. The doctor at M. D. Anderson told Johnny and Liz the bad news: inoperable. I knew the cold fear he was feeling, but he covered it with typical Faulk wit. He named his cancer Judge Robert Bork, after the right-wing nominee for the Supreme Court. “We’ve got to get rid of Bork,” he announced. The treatments—radiation, then later chemotherapy—took a terrible toll on his incredible energy. But suddenly, unexpectedly, the tumor began to shrink.
Once again into the sunshine. Back to work. Blessed work. Blessed applause. Blessed life. But the sunshine soon dimmed. The tumor was back.
The New York project fell through. But a new producer, a Texan named Mark Leonard, came on board and helped Johnny simplify the presentation so that even though his strength was failing, he could pull it off. Night after night, he played to packed houses at Austin’s Live Oak Theater. It was a masterful performance. As he finished as one character, the lights would dim while he remained on stage. Liz, dressed in black to remain unobtrusive, would come from behind the curtain. She would change his costume by adding a shawl or another hat or coat. Then she would whisper the opening line of the next character into his best ear. She would give him a loving pat on the back, slip backstage, and once again Johnny was in the spotlight.
Paul Pope of Corpus Christi’s fine PBS television station wanted to bring Pear Orchard to the nation. Johnny went to its studios and taped his show before a live audience. He was spent, ill. He was not at his best. He had trouble remembering his lines. But the show was in the can.
I called our friend Bill Moyers. “B, Johnny is not going to make it. The nation needs to see him and remember him.” Bill came to Austin. He interviewed Johnny at his home for three hours. It was juicy. It was pure First Amendment, damn the rascals, love America, funny, profound John Henry Faulk. So the nation sampled John Henry’s rare talent, but more important, we were reminded what a great American this man was.
Johnny fought on. He tried new treatments from new doctors. He tried special diets, even psychic surgery. During his losing fight, I attempted to do for him what he had done for me. “You’re going to be fine, John Henry,” I told him. “You have the power within you to lick this thing.” And he would say, “Attaboy. We’re gonna do it!” Even when there was no hope, I tried to prop him up. I now wonder if it was fair to continue to encourage him. But he wasn’t ready to surrender, and I wasn’t ready to lose him.
When his energy would allow, we took strolls down the hike and bike trail. He received strength from the waves of affection that always greeted him. “Morning, Johnny. Good to see you out.” “Hang in there, John Henry.” One morning he said to me, “Cactus, boy, I just can’t believe that one of these days I won’t be a part of all this, watching the sun come up, listening to the birds singing, seeing the happy faces.” I said, “Johnny, you’ll always be a part of this.”
The brightest spot in the last few weeks of his life was a reunion with his and Lynne’s three children. They and Johnny had been lost to each other for a number of years. But now they came from Canada to be with their father.
Shortly before he died, I took John Henry for a ride in my old Suburban, which had so often carried us up in the hills. Dobie used to say, “You’ve found your place when the land talks to you.” The Texas Hill Country spoke loudly to us. We rode up and over Mount Bonnell, with its sweeping view of Lake Austin. Then up Bull Creek, where so often we had picnicked. But the lake didn’t glisten that gray day, and the creek didn’t sing. We made conversation. We talked about fishing trips to Baja California and the magical days in England. We flew again to Bill Kuykendall’s ranch in Mexico. We sat again in rocking chairs on the stage of an opera house older than both of us in Columbus, Texas, and ad-libbed a two-hour show before an enthralled audience. We talked about our brotherhood. I told him how deeply he had touched my life. But now he was tired. He wanted to go back to Liz and his children. And I wanted to be away from him—the sadness of him, the paleness of him, the fading of him. I drove him home. When we arrived, I got out, opened his door, and took his arm to help him out. As he pulled himself erect, I squeezed his arm affectionately.
He patted my cheek and said, “Thank you, Cactus … my sugar pie puddin’.”
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