Nick

I just bought a new pair of shoes and proceeded to the food court on the west end of the mall. On the way there I saw a man selling peaches. Now this was fairly odd, since I’ve never seen a man selling peaches in a mall before. I wanted to talk to him. His name was Roosevelt, which is pretty funny since I have a teddy bear named Roosevelt, and this man resembles a teddy bear in more ways than one. Roosevelt (the man not the teddy bear) was a short portly. He large glassy eyes, and it was sometimes hard to tell if he was looking at you. Turns out he had a strange eye condition with a really long name that I can’t remember right now, but I do remember him telling me that only fifteen people in the world are diagnosed with this condition every year. Anyway, Roosevelt was selling peaches. He grew them himself in his backyard. His backyard was in Georgia. “So what brings you to Chicago?” I asked him. He explained to me that the love of his life had moved from Georgia about 3 weeks ago, so he loaded up his peach truck, with peaches of course, and headed to Chicago to win her heart. Too bad she had no clue who Roosevelt was. Her name was Clara, she was from the same small town as Roosevelt. She had only met him a couple of times, but Roosevelt fell in love with her when he first sold her a peach on a fateful Sunday afternoon after the morning sermon by Father Thomas. Ever since that day Roosevelt was set on marrying that beautiful woman. Roosevelt had a real strange way of talking, like his tongue was too big for his mouth. Roosevelt told me over her beauty and even showed me a picture that he clipped from his yearbook. I wasn’t that impressed, (she must not be very photogenic), but I played along, gasping for a breath, clutching at my heart and rubbing my eyes. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I said to my new friend, “No wonder why you want to marry her.” “Yeap,” he replied, “Someday we’ll be married and we’ll live in a house on the beach and sit in the sun and drink iced tea. Our kids will play in the surf and our dog Alfred will dig in the sand.” “Whoa, you really got everything planned out don’tcha?” “Yeah, me and Alfred go way back, I just want him to be happy.” Obviously this guy had no idea I was talking about him and Clara, but I didn’t want to get into a whole mess. I decided to buy this lonely peach salesman a cup of coffee, but he doesn’t like coffee, so we got some ice cream. I had pistachio, and he had peach. Over our ice cream we discussed Clara. She had moved to Chicago to go to college, and Roosevelt, though selling her many, many peaches, never actually had a conversation with her. This poor little teddy bear shaped man had probably gotten his hopes up, only to be crushed by the harsh reality that was bound to be realized. So as the conversation went on I asked him about his plan of action. He had decided to go visit her dorm later on today, and since we’ve become pretty good pals he invited me to come with. I kindly accepted his offer and over we went to the college dorms. When we arrived an absolutely insane party was going on. People were everywhere, the hallway was crowded, there was loud music playing, body parts flailing, I could here the drunken chants of “Chug, Chug” in the distance, and worse of all it was a theme party. It was a party themed party, clearly these poor kids were running out of ideas. We slowly pushed our way down the hall, Alfred leading the way. I told Roosevelt to leave his dog in the car but he wanted to bring him with. Finally we arrived at our destination, room 21D, the door was decorated with pictures of peaches and peach trees. Clearly Clara and Roosevelt were meant to be, the whole way to the dorm Roosevelt would not stop talking about peaches. This was a little frustrating but I did learn a good recipe for a peach cobbler, and it was the best peach cobbler I ever had in my life, just like Roosevelt said. We stood outside the door. Heard screaming. Coming from inside. It was Clara. I threw open the door and could not believe what I was seeing. One of the guys from the room down the hall was forcing himself on poor little Clara, hips trusting, lips smacking, it was disgusting. Roosevelt was completely appalled by this sight. Alfred darted toward the man and started to gnaw on his pant leg. It all happened so fast. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Roosevelt reach into the pocket of his old suit coat and pull out a succulent peach, about the size of a baseball. Roosevelt reached back and whipped the peach across the room, planting it in the forehead of the man from down the hall. The peach exploded in an array of golden colors and completely knocked him out cold. Roosevelt ran to Clara, and from the look in her eyes, and I think the look in Roosevelt’s eyes, I couldn’t tell because of his one in a billion eye disorder, I knew I was not wanted there. I walked out the room down the hall through the party themed party and out of the dorms. I had gotten a letter from Roosevelt about a week ago. It said that he was doing fine, he convinced Clara to move back to Georgia with him, and they bought a house on the beach. Clara was pregnant and Alfred had puppies (Alfred was a girl). Everything was great. I recently read in an issue of Forbes that Roosevelt is now the number one peach salesman in America, he had created a peach enterprise based out of his little backyard in Georgia. Only difference is that now his backyard is over a hundred acres. THE END