Strange Peaches
Strange Peaches by Edwin "Bud" Shrake
The door to the parlor of Francis Franklin's hotel suite was open a few inches, and we heard clucking noises inside. It was not uncommon for Franklin to have chickens in his suite. We heard a flopping sound, as though a great fish had been tossed onto the carpet, and Franklin's voice cried, "Oh, get down in it, baby!"
I held back from going in, but Gretchen Schindler pushed open the door. She laughed hoarsely and screamed, "What the fog are you doing, Francis?"
"God dawg, pussy has ruint his brain," Billy Bob Teagarden said, shoving past Gretchen and disappearing into the room.
Colonel Burnett looked quickly at me, wanting to share his anticipation. The Colonel was a tall man in his middle fifties with short white hair that lay close on his skull. He had purple pockets beneath each eye, so that he always appeared to be recuperating from a beating. Annoyed when I didn't grin or wink or slap him on the shoulder, he grabbed the arm of Jerre, a red-haired hooker, and dragged her inside with him.
I scratched the back of my head against the plaster in the hall. For the past week, traveling across the country on a promotional tour for the television series Six Guns Across Texas, in which I starred as a genuine, authentic, pistol-shooting, shit-kicking cowboy, I had been taking Bennies at the rate of about ten a day to keep my mouth and head working, and whenever I did try to lie down for a few hours I would get a rerun flash that would snatch me right back up again. In New York the night before, on the Tonight show, sitting there with all those cameras aimed at my face, an Italian starlet at one elbow and a blind man who whistled bird calls at the other, I had found myself saying that in fact I had a very low opinion of my TV series, and planned to quit it immediately and go home and make a movie about Texas in partnership with my good friend Buster E. Gregory, who knew how to take pictures, and we would tell what the place was really about as we lived it, not the crap people were supposed to believe if they watched Six Guns Across Texas. I hadn't intended to announce that just yet, but when you take a lot of Bennies you don't always know what you are about to say. Now, in this Washington hotel hallway, I could feel my heart plunging through my back against the wall. I'd probably had fifty martinis and Scotches since I'd last tried to eat anything but an Almond Joy, and I was entering that strange, illusory country where soon I might hop sideways to avoid a man in a black leather cape, or catch from the edge of my eye the flicker of a creature that had not been there an instant ago. All I really wanted at the moment was to keep from patting any invisible dogs and get back to Dallas.
On the wall outside Franklin's suite was a painting in an ivory-colored frame that had cherubs carved at each corner. The painting showed a shipwreck at sea in a storm, the ship rolling its masts down to the waves, and the lifeboats swamping, and men clutching at broken timbers, and, far up in the right corner of the canvas, the sun faintly starting to cut through the clouds. My mother had a painting like that on the wall of her living room in Dallas beside "The Last Supper" and a picture of Jesus praying in the garden at Gethsemane.
"John Lee, come see what this big fool is up to!" Colonel Burnett called from the doorway with a glass of whiskey in his hand.
The Colonel and Billy Bob Teagarden were lobbyists who worked for Big Earl, the ninety-three-year-old Dallas billionaire, and his kind of simple-minded son Little Earl, and for Francis P. Franklin. Colonel Burnett represented the Republic of Haiti and Big Earl's family interest there in sugar, coffee and sisal, and had at one time influenced the prosperity of ranchers and sugar-cane growers in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Billy Bob and the Colonel both put in a word in Congress now and then in behalf of oil producers, pipeline and heavy-construction companies and any other enterprises favored by Big Earl, Little Earl and Franklin.
"Better have a cocktail before you witness this scandal," Colonel Burnett said, giving me the glass. Gretchen's furry laugh came from behind him, and Billy Bob Teagarden was giggling through his nose. The clucking had ceased, replaced by a crackling sound, as though newspapers were being crumpled for the fireplace.
"John Lee, old cock! Hidy! Hidy!"
Hearing Franklin's voice, Colonel Burnett stepped aside. I saw Franklin lying on the floor with his feet together and his arms out-stretched in a crucifixion posture. He wore only a pair of sagging Jockey shorts with orange stains on the pouch. At one time Franklin had been the tallest pilot in the United States Air Force. Laid out on the floor, his six-foot-eight-inch body covered nearly half the width of the room. His chest and stomach were stacked with paper money. Money had scattered all over the parlor. The carpet crunched with it. Money littered the coffee table, the couch, the bar and several chairs. Looking down at my shoes, I saw that all of the money was one-hundred-dollar bills.
"John Lee Wallace, old cock!" said Franklin.
Franklin's hands closed on two bunches of bills. Moaning and clucking, he rubbed the money on his face, his chest and his stomach. He lifted the elastic band of his shorts and crammed money into the pouch.
"Gretchen, baby, come get your dinner," Franklin said.
"I'd like to get nailed on a bed of hundred dollar bills," said Billy Bob Teagarden.
"I've did worse," Jerre the hooker said.
Jerre yanked off her high-heeled shoes and waded in money. She raised her skirt and the tail of her mink coat so she could kick money into the air. Gretchen dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through money, flinging batches of it over her head. Franklin sat up and pushed her and she rolled over on her back, wallowing in money, groaning and laughing. They were like children playing in a pile of leaves. Franklin hauled himself up to a cross-legged position. Hundred-dollar bills floated off him. Colonel Burnett filled glasses at the bar, pouring Scotch dark as Darjeeling tea. Winding up like a baseball pitcher, Billy Bob, in his green silk suit, waded money balls and hurled them against the red velvet drapes, shouting "Low outside corner! Strike three! The mighty Koufax!" His expression was considerably happier than it had been an hour earlier when we had picked him up in Colonel Burnett's rented limousine outside a federal courts building.
I drank a couple of swallows of the Scotch Colonel Burnett had given me and, wincing at its iodine taste, looked over to see Franklin staring curiously at me. He still sat cross-legged in the heap of money, round-bellied and thin-chested, long arms reaching out to either side and fingers idly stirring money as though making rings in a pool.
"I read in the paper in New York that you were here for Billy Bob's trial, so I decided to come down to Washington and ride home with you," I said.
"Then you didn't know it's my birthday?"
"Not until I ran into the Colonel in the lobby of the Dupont Plaza this morning," I said.
I had remembered then that Franklin was a Virgo. He used to make fun of the signs. If someone mentioned astrology, Franklin would recite Virgoan traits–they are said to be neat, orderly, dependable, thrifty, painstaking, modest, hypercritical and so on–and would demand to know how any of these fit him.
"John Lee, goddamn, I was being flattered that a big star like you had come specially for my birthday," he said. "Anyhow, this'll make it a hell of a party. You can stay at my house."
"A girl's meeting me, Francis."
"Same old John Lee! You just coming down for a visit? It's been a long time since we've seen you and that maniac Buster Gregory running around naked in public and doing rain dances and causing floods. I can't say it's been dull, but we've missed your craziness."
"Buster and I are going to make a documentary movie about Texas, mostly about Dallas," I said. "We're going to tell the truth about it."
"That's a peculiar effort," said Franklin.
"Maybe you'd like to invest in our movie if you have any spare cash," I said, glancing at the carpet of hundred-dollar bills.
"John Lee, I don't ever use my own money for anything, you know that. Besides, what kind of truth are you talking about? Any kind of truth you and Buster try to tell is liable to make a movie that is way too far-fetched. Take my advice and get yourself a reasonable angle."
Franklin looked at me in a manner I took to be odd and maybe hostile, but I considered I might be misled by the Bennies and weariness. An oddly proportioned bug, a flying worm or tadpole, wiggled through the air in front of my face. I clutched at it. Franklin suddenly chuckled.
"Catch it, old cock, it might be real!" he shouted.
My Library
