Rotten Peaches

Chapter One

Chapter One

Lightning flashed across the ominous grey horizon. Rain hammered the windscreen, sticking like petroleum jelly despite the Mini’s hard-working windscreen wipers. One minute Thelonious was being cooked alive, the next he was being drowned.

Trying to find a weather update, he fiddled with the radio tuner until he came to a station with a decent signal, only to end up being treated to another country crooner. This time the song involved a bottle of whiskey. Either these singers all sounded alike or this was the same fellow he’d heard at the diner—the one in love with his pickup truck. After listening through an interminably long advertisement for a church ministry at another station, Thelonious found himself being chastised by an overwrought speaker more concerned about hell and damnation than peril on the highway. As if on cue, a loud c***k of thunder shook the Mini.

Thelonious could barely see the taillights of the pickup truck in front of him. Suddenly it braked, causing him to slam his wide flat foot down onto the Mini’s built-up brake pedal. The little car went into a fishtail. Thelonious’s paws gripped the steering wheel so hard he heard the cartilage pop, the baritone blare of a horn from a lorry driving too fast in the adjacent lane sending his heartbeat into the danger zone. Finally he regained control. Using more caution than a doddering granny stepping into the crosswalk of a busy intersection, he switched lanes to pass the pickup, which now created an even bigger hazard by slowing to a crawl.

A stained mattress stood upright in the truck’s open back, ready to flip over onto the highway. Thelonious shook his furry head. If it wasn’t furniture it was logs, lumber or steel tubing stacked aiming outward like missiles ready to take down the enemy. As he passed the pickup, he dispatched an angry growl through the rain-slicked window at the driver, whose features were hidden by a thick beard and a trucker hat. Thelonious hoped the man wouldn’t get behind him and tailgate—something that seemed to be as common in the South as the unsafe transportation of household goods on public roadways. It was madness trying to drive in this weather. The next exit with a motel and he was out of here.

The prospect of somewhere new had been the main appeal. When the offer had come in to do a photography book on the American South, Thelonious had accepted immediately, barely reading his contract or the fine print pertaining to his allowable expenses. In hindsight he wished he’d negotiated the terms, but he’d been desperate to get out of the shabby bedsit he’d been living in after his post-Norfolk trip to the continent. He hadn’t made it much farther than the port of Rotterdam before he realised how silly he was being and returned to British shores. By then the authorities already knew who was responsible for the murders of those village publicans in Norfolk. Thelonious T. Bear was officially in the clear.

Although his travel allowance covered the cost of a hire car, it did not cover the cost of a trans-Atlantic shipment of a personal vehicle, not even if said vehicle had been modified for the driver’s special physical needs. Thelonious had checked every car hire company with locations in Georgia, but all they could offer were minivans for the disabled—and even these were impossible to come by. Well, Thelonious didn’t want to drive a minivan, thank you very much. And he wasn’t disabled—he was simply small in stature! He needed his Mini Cooper, especially since he planned to stay for a while after he’d completed his assignment. America was a big country—he wanted to explore it. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had anything to hurry home to other than a mouldy storage unit in north London.

Although there were plenty of billboards on the interstate, those promising a bed for the night now seemed to be in short supply. Instead billboards for church ministries competed with billboards for p**n emporiums offering free truck parking, free coffee and “live” nude dancers. Thelonious was pretty sure he knew who’d win that contest. Suddenly he saw an exit sign—and it listed a choice of accommodations, not to mention fast-food joints and restaurant chains serving fare certain to add extra flab to his midsection. “Yes!” he cheered, raising a fisted paw into the air. One of those all-day breakfasts would go down a right treat. Better still, a plate heaped with buttered samphire fresh from the Norfolk tidal marshes. Though the last time Thelonious had described it to a waitress in the hope that something similar could be had here, she’d brought him a bowl of something she called “greens.” The stuff was green all right, and probably tasty if you liked tangled bits of grass boiled in salty water.

Thelonious merged onto the busy connector road leading to the motels and eateries, one of which was a waffle emporium that covered the region like horse dung on a stable floor. He gazed longingly toward the car park, which was almost full. He could visualise all the happy diners inside chowing down on their stacks of waffles and their bacon and eggs and hash browns. As he debated whether to join them, the rain came down even harder, slashing diagonally across the Mini’s windscreen and forming deep pools along the edges of the roadway. A line of vehicles materialised behind him as they too, fled the interstate. At this rate he might not be able to find a room, especially if he stopped off to eat. Rather than risk it, Thelonious pulled into the driveway of the first motor lodge he came to, cringing when a speed bump scraped the Mini’s underside. The only empty parking spaces within easy reach of the lobby were those reserved for the disabled. Maybe he should’ve rented one of those specially modified minivans after all? At least he’d always be guaranteed the best parking.

The clerk at reception was busy on the telephone. He cast a suspicious eye on Thelonious as he came clanging into the lobby with his suitcase, camera bag and folding metal stepladder, which he’d secured to the suitcase with a bungee cord while standing in the bucketing rain. Water from his deerstalker hat trickled beneath his shirt collar, forming a torturous line down his back and sneaking under the waistband of his trousers. Propping his dripping suitcase against the reception desk, Thelonious clambered up onto it and attempted to make eye contact with the clerk, who seemed determined to ignore him. A white plastic nametag pinned to one dandruff-specked navy-blue lapel read ZEKE.

Thelonious cleared his throat, hoping the motor lodge’s employee would take the hint and serve him.

“Yep. That was some tornado we had this mornin’,” Zeke said into the phone, continuing to take no notice of the new arrival. “Wife says it done took the neighbour’s roof clear off. Ah guess the good Lord was watchin’ over us. Even the chickens is fine, though the coop’ll need fixin’.”

“Excuse me, but I’d like a room!” Thelonious’s growly voice sounded gruff even to his own ears, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. Most of his kind hadn’t even mastered the art of speech yet.

Zeke gestured with a thumb toward the clock on the wall behind him. “Check-in ain’t till three.”

They were a whopping fourteen minutes shy of the hour. “But it’s nearly three now!”

The clerk stared at Thelonious with pink-rimmed eyes. “Ah gotta go,” he grumbled into the receiver before banging it down. “Y’all got a reservation?”

“Not exactly.”

Removing a pen from a pen cup holder on the countertop, Zeke used it to dig around inside one of his protruding ears, then returned it to the cup for the next lucky employee or customer to use. Thelonious had a sudden mental image of the clerk sitting up in a tree plucking on a banjo. He hoped the rooms came equipped with good security bolts on the doors.

“Either y’all got one or not. So which is it?”

“No. I don’t have a reservation.”

“Then Ah need to see if we got any rooms left. Thare’s a big fah-works display in town tonight. Folks comin’ from all over to see it.”

“Fireworks? In this weather?”

Zeke nodded. “Restaurant’s full up on dinner reservations too, so y’all won’t be able to git in to eat.”

The “restaurant” to which Zeke referred was a small coffee shop located off the lobby—and not a very appealing one at that. It looked like the sort of place that served tinned soup but called it “homemade” because it came with a mass-produced bread roll and a pat of margarine instead of the usual packets of Saltines. Thelonious reckoned he’d be better off taking his chances with the waffle restaurant or getting a pizza delivered to his room.

“I’d appreciate your looking,” he said, struggling to keep his tone polite. Why did he have to grovel for something he’d be paying good money for?

Zeke pursed his fleshy lips together as if trying to decide whether to check availability or tell the prospective guest, who was dripping water all over the floor, they were fully booked. He spent a long time clacking away on his computer keyboard, his pink eyes darting from the screen to Thelonious, who feared he’d get pneumonia if he had to wait here much longer. The icy blasts of air conditioning from the ceiling vents were chilling him to the bone. The motor lodge should’ve had a health-warning sign posted by the entrance.

“Looks like y’all’s in luck. Ah got a room ready to go. Last one, too!”

“I’ll take it!”

“Oh. Just so’s y’all know, it’s a suite. So it’s gonna cost a little more.”

“A suite? But I don’t need a suite!”

“’Fraid it’s all Ah got. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine, whatever.” At this point Thelonious would’ve agreed to a storage cupboard had it been on offer.

Zeke leaned over the counter to give Thelonious the once-over, his expression indicating that he didn’t much like what he saw. “It’s on the first floor.”

Handing over his credit card, Thelonious filled in the registration form he’d been given, hoping he wasn’t using the same pen the clerk had used to clean out his ear hole. Between that monsoon he’d driven through and the aggro over a room, he was so stressed that he forgot the first floor in America was actually the ground floor. Therefore he had a wasted trip struggling up the stairs with his burdens before discovering that the room numbers began with 2, whereupon he had to drag everything downstairs again. Thelonious felt a right mug as he clattered back into the lobby, his ill-fitting trainers squeaking and squelching as he looked for the corridor leading to his “suite.”

Observing all from his post of authority, Zeke’s suspicious demeanour was now replaced by amusement, which added a dash of character to a face as bland as the grits Thelonious would never eat again, not even if the alternative meant starving to death. He pointedly ignored the clerk as he toddled past, the camera bag on his shoulder banging painfully against his hip as he wheeled his suitcase and stepladder behind him, disappearing into the bowels of the motor lodge.

Thelonious’s suite was located near the lift he didn’t know existed and across from an alcove with an ice machine and vending machines selling cavity-inducing snacks and cloyingly sweet soft drinks. Zeke was probably pissing himself with laughter for having fobbed off a room nobody else wanted on an unsuspecting guest. Just as Thelonious wondered how much worse things could get, he heard a baby crying. And it sounded very close by.

Freeing the folding stepladder from its bungee cord, he set it up by the door and climbed up to insert the key card. “Open Sesame!” he chuffed, waiting for the little red light to turn green.

The light remained red. The baby’s cries got louder.

Thelonious tried again, pushing down on the door handle with such force he thought it would snap off in his paw. He let out an angry roar, which was surpassed in volume by the now-squalling infant. Hitching his camera bag onto his sore shoulder, he dragged his suitcase and its clumsily reattached stepladder back up the corridor and into the frigid lobby. The puddle of rainwater he’d left at reception was still there; with any luck Zeke would slip in it and break his neck. Clambering onto his suitcase, Thelonious slapped the key card down on the counter, nearly upsetting the container of pens.

The clerk’s face was buried in a magazine with a glossy cover photo of a man and a boy dressed in camouflage gear. The pair beamed with pride, posing with their rifles and the carcass of a freshly killed deer. Thelonious could almost smell the blood oozing from the page and wished it belonged to the murderous hunters instead of their innocent victim.

“Y’all need somethin’?” mumbled Zeke from behind his hunting p**n.

“I can’t get into my room.”

“Did y’all put the card in the right way? A green light’s ’sposed to come on.”

“It didn’t.”

“No green light?”

“No.”

“Hmm…”

“The card probably needs re-coding.”

“Way-ell, Ah don’t know…” Reaching for a pen, Zeke resumed his ear poking. “Should be workin’ fine.”

“It isn’t working at all!” snapped Thelonious, seconds away from ripping the clerk’s head off. He might be more advanced in his species, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hear the ancestral call.

Snatching up the key card, Zeke disappeared with it into the back office.

As Thelonious teetered on his suitcase awaiting the clerk’s return, a rain-drenched young couple with a baby entered the lobby. After some hesitation, they made their way toward reception. The man held what appeared to be a printed reservation; he kept reading and rereading it as if uncertain he’d come to the right place. Setting down the baby carrier, the woman grabbed the paper from his hand, looking it over as well. Upon seeing Thelonious, the infant’s face pinched up into an angry red ball, its toothless maw summoning forth a wail capable of bringing down buildings. Grabbing up baby and carrier, the couple glared accusingly at Thelonious.

Zeke finally reappeared, all but throwing the key card at Thelonious. “If it don’t work, thare ain’t nothin’ else Ah kin do.”

Shoving the card into his trouser pocket, Thelonious hopped down from the suitcase, rearranged his gear and started back in the direction of the corridor he’d just come from, though not without first treating the couple to an extravagant display of his teeth. The woman’s sharp intake of breath kept him chortling all the way to his door, though his amusement quickly ended once he’d entered his “suite.” Indeed, the only thing suite-like about it was the musty-looking sofa and coffee table that had been wedged into an extra few feet of living space. The standard motor lodge décor offered no surprises and was as questionably hygienic as Thelonious had come to expect in his travels. The soggy patches he’d left on the carpet were probably the closest it had been to a cleaning since the place was built. Unfortunately, the moisture soaking into the fibres also made the room smell of wet dog.

Pulling back the drapes so he could open a window, Thelonious was greeted by a vista of overflowing rubbish bins. Despite the odour of damp inside, the smell outside was surely worse. He could see a run-down playing field in the near distance and behind it a billboard partially obscured by trees. The words “Risen” and “Jehoshaphat” were visible.

Thelonious stripped off his sodden garments and toddled into the bathroom. One look at the miserly showerhead convinced him to run a bath. A folding card on the bathroom counter asked guests to please be “green” by reusing towels and bedding. Thelonious wasn’t fooled. It was all about higher profits and saving on overhead, not saving the environment.

Freshly bathed and in his pyjamas, he phoned out for a pizza, then climbed into bed with the telly remote. A film before bedtime sounded just the ticket. The screen filled with the shiny face of a middle-aged man who looked as if he made a habit of lurking around schoolyards. Waterfalls cascaded down his cherubic cheeks. “Jesus needs you to save the orphans!” he pleaded, his high-pitched voice quaking with sobs. “Heaven awaits those who give!” The camera changed angles, revealing a packed auditorium. Several ushers were sprinting up and down the aisles with plastic buckets. Audience members filled them with envelopes and cash.

The camera returned to the stage, pulling back to reveal a blonde escapee from a doll factory standing reverently behind the speaker, her painted face matching his in its wretchedness. She flung her chubby arms outward as if to embrace the audience. “Praise the Lawd!”

“Hallelujah!” cried the crowd, the camera panning over their ecstatic faces. The man on stage was now weeping uncontrollably along with his plasticised companion. A toll-free phone number appeared at the bottom of the screen, urging viewers to call in with their credit card information.

Thelonious pressed the channel button on the remote. He tried to go higher, then lower, even inputting numbers at random. The preacher refused to budge. Even the OFF button couldn’t get rid of him. Clambering down from the bed, he fiddled with the manual controls on the television’s front panel. The preacher wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he’d begun to sing a hymn, his cloying voice making Thelonious feel as if he needed another bath. He yanked the plug out of the electrical socket. So much for that film….

After a greasy pepperoni pizza (he’d ordered anchovies), Thelonious was snoring in minutes. Not even the crying baby and the occasional rattle of ice from the ice machine could rouse him. He awakened the next morning to a shard of sunlight coming through a gap in the curtains. Lumbering out of bed, he pulled them open the rest of the way. The world was washed clean by the rain; even the rubbish bins had been emptied.

On duty at reception was Zeke, who looked as if he’d never gone home, his navy-blue lapel having received another snowfall of dandruff in the night. His pink-rimmed eyes were riveted to a mini TV behind the counter, so he didn’t bother to glance up when Thelonious returned his key card. Someone on the television was talking about a bank robbery, though Thelonious forgot about it as soon as he stepped outside into the brilliant morning sunshine.

As he drove out of the motor lodge’s car park, a patrol car entered at the opposite end, coming to a lurching halt in front of the lobby. Had Thelonious not turned onto the connector road leading to the interstate, he might’ve seen Zeke hopping up and down in front of a sheriff’s deputy and pointing in his direction.