Shane Alan Noecker
Men With Briefcases Are Shocking Me
Satchel Thompson read an article in a leading health magazine in which the author, a university researcher and medical doctor, argued that inactivity, not old age, caused people to die. So that year, the year he turned sixty-six, Satchel started exercising daily, really for the first time in his life. The following spring he watched a television program about a scientist who had greatly prolonged the lives of rats by almost fifty percent by feeding them half the amount of food that they would normally consume. The scientist believed that the effects would be similar in humans. That week Satchel cut his food intake to one thousand calories a day. He was now seventy-six, and as his friend Dr. Royer liked to say, healthy as a pit bull bitch.
Satchel bagged groceries at Byerly's twelve hours a week. He had invested well and did not need to work, but, now that Sara was gone, he needed something to get him out of the house. It was another way of avoiding inactivity. He used most of the money to hire a maid service to vacuum and dust his two-story house -- cleaning was something he hated to do -- and he sent the remainder to his granddaughter, Meghan, a sophomore at Carleton College, imagining as he licked the envelope that she spent the money on liquor and birth control pills. In the short notes which he sent along with the checks, he informed her that the check was to be used for something fun. It was fun money. Sometimes he wrote instructions on the For line of the checks -- For "neither books nor tuition," For "God's sake go out and have fun." He smiled to himself as he wrote these things.
Tuesday was his favorite day to work, because on Tuesdays he bagged behind his favorite cashier. Donna had retired from teaching high school social studies only five months before, and like Satchel, she didn't need to work, so she did not have the downcast eyes of the retiree workers who had been cashiering or bagging for years and who genuinely needed the money. Donna did not show her stone-smooth smile to customers only, like those downtrodden bastards with one foot in the grave, who only showed their pleasant sides to customers and the managers as if this pleasantness was what they were getting paid a dollar above minimum wage an hour for and they didn't want to give any away for free.
She was a young retiree, only sixty-two. This was one of the reasons Satchel liked bagging for her. She had energy. She was not like the other female cashiers. She was beautiful. The wrinkles around her eyes were still soft, and though her breasts had enlarged with age, somehow the rest of her had not. She still stood up straight, still stepped with confidence with those round calves of hers. She smelled like flowery shampoo, rather than make-up or antiseptic.
Donna worked so that she would have money to travel. She had been to all the European capitals, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, Brazil, and Japan. She liked to travel with a tour group. She was saving money toward a trip to Thailand. A friend of hers had gone the previous winter and had just loved it. Every time Donna worked with Satchel she taught him a new Thai phrase. He cheerily repeated, "Where's the bathroom?" or "I need a doctor," in Thai, while glancing at her bosom. Sometimes she caught him and pretended to be appalled. This was part of the banter between them, part of the fun of Tuesdays. She played the prude -- Satchel was never actually sure how much was playing -- and he played the scoundrel. He cursed a lot out of habit -- usually nothing stronger than damn or Chrissake -- because in the business circles in which he had made his living this had been expected of a man. Donna practically keeled over dead every time he did.
He did not tell his daughter about his first date since Sara's passing, but in the letter he sent to his granddaughter, Meghan, along with her fun money check, he wrote three sentences referring to it. Had a date this weekend. Am sure it wasn't as exciting as your dates. Must be strange to think of your grandpa out on a date, eh?
He and Donna had gone bowling, and then ate dinner together at a Chinese restaurant. The reason for choosing the restaurant was obvious -- Donna was going to Taiwan, which was the same as China.
"Thailand, not Taiwan," Donna said, right in front of the lovely young hostess.
"Are you sure there's a difference?" he asked. He turned to the young Asian woman. "Miss, is there a difference between Thailand and Taiwan?"
"Hardly," the young woman said.
Satchel had decided that they should go bowling, because bowling was what was referred to in the literature as a "lifetime sport." A person could bowl -- and, in this way, avoid inactivity -- at any age. Donna was height-weight proportionate and her cheeks still held a hale ruddiness, but at their age, Satchel knew he could not assume that thinness and good color meant a person was healthy enough to canoe around Moore Lake or hike through the Springbrook Nature Center, two things which he would have rather done.
Bowling turned out to be a poor choice. Canoeing would have been better. Donna's cardiovascular health was excellent. She rode twenty minutes on her stationary bike every day. However, she had terrible arthritis that was especially pronounced in her finger-joints. Her knuckles were so swollen that she could not fit her fingers into the holes of any of the brightly colored bowling balls, which were the only ones light enough for her to lift. She was a good sport about this. She laughed, and she made do by palming a pink six-pound ball and rolling it underhand down the lane. Twice her ball did not have enough spin or momentum to push past the pins. An attendant came down each time and tapped the ball the rest of the way with his foot, purposely knocking over a few extra pins with the follow-through of his kick. Even counting these extra pins, Donna bowled a meager fifty-two. Satchel bowled a two-twelve. He was grateful when the date was over. He went home and ran four miles, hoping to clean out the cigarette smoke which he swore he could actually feel staining his lungs.
The next weekend they ate at the same Chinese restaurant, because Satchel really liked the chicken and broccoli there. Their conversation started similarly to the conversation of their previous date, in which they exchanged personal statistics and anecdotes that they had told throughout their lives. This was more personal than the immediate, day-to-day stories they told to each other at work about the weather and what had happened to them on their way to and from work, but it was still superficial. On this second date they started to tell more personal stories, which were not all humorous. Satchel's stories featured Sara, his two children, Satchel Jr. and Julie, and his granddaughter, Meghan. When he told stories about Sara -- the time she had sung karaoke at his company Christmas party with her fly unzipped, the time she had tried to learn to swim without any help and had almost drowned herself -- even if the story was humorous, Donna nodded gravely, because she understood that Satchel still missed Sara and because on their previous date he had not told one story about her. Donna's own stories were about her trips or her students. During her thirty-year career as a history teacher at Fridley High School she had secretly loved students who mouthed off to her, because they seemed to have more life in them.
"This kid completely refused to do his work. I had already talked to the parents and they were no help. So I said to him, 'If you think not doing your work is going to hurt me, you're wrong. And if you think standing up to me makes you big you're wrong. I'm just a high school teacher. I'm small fry.' And he said to me, 'I heard you do it with sheep, miss.' Now, I could have had him expelled right there, but he wouldn't have learned anything. He wasn't a bad kid. 'Where did you hear that?' I asked, very deadpan. 'A sheep told me,' he said. I said, 'Now, you and I both know that sheep don't talk to anyone but their lovers.' He shut right up, and all the other kids laughed, and for the rest of the semester he did all his work."
They were delving deeper and deeper with each story, it seemed, and toward the end of the meal, Donna felt comfortable enough to tell Satchel about her relationship with Jesus Christ. She told him it was a romantic relationship. "We are his bride," she said. "He loves us like a bride. All you have to do to be the bride of God is to call upon his name. Isn't that exciting? Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"
Each time she said the name, her voice grew louder and more pitched. Satchel felt embarrassed. He looked around the restaurant at the young people playing at eating fried rice with chopsticks. No one seemed to have noticed that his date was loudly proclaiming the name of Our Lord.
"Whosoever shall call upon his name shall be saved," Donna said. "Sometimes I go throughout my day just singing his name. Jesus. Jesus."
"That's nice," he said.
Satchel was a Catholic, but he hadn't been inside a church since Sara's funeral. He kept his mouth shut about his own religious beliefs, because he didn't want to put a wedge between Donna and himself before he bedded her. If she ever asked him about what he believed, he decided he would be very vague. He watched her red mouth moving. He wanted to stopper it with a kiss. She evidently loved talking about God. The way she romanticized her relationship with God, Satchel wondered if she might not still be a virgin. He knew she had never married. She still had the high, distancing laugh of a virgin. The idea of it! He thought he had deflowered his last virgin fifty years ago! He could not help but smile at her from across the table and say, almost under his breath, "Praise God."
After dinner they drove to the Springbrook Nature Center near Satchel's house. They walked a ways, and then sat down on a slatted wooden bench. Two squirrels hopped around a scarred oak tree. One squirrel rooted in the soft dirt at the base of a tree. The other squirrel continued to hop around, trying to get the first squirrel to stop burying acorns and play.
"I have something I want to tell you, but I'm not sure that you'll believe me," Donna said.
Here it comes, Satchel thought. She is a virgin.
"You can tell me," he said. He put his arm lightly around her.
"I just don't know how you'll react."
"You can trust me, Donna."
"I know I can," she said. "I feel that I can trust you. There are people who follow me around. Men with black leather briefcases. They have small devices in their briefcases that they use to shock me. I don't know how it works. I know they can shock me from far away."
"Why do they shock you, Donna?"
"I don't know," she said. "I know it's called behavior modification. I'm doing something that they don't want me to do and so they shock me to try to get me to change. But I don't know what I'm doing wrong, so I don't know how to change. It seems pretty sick to me, to shock an old woman, but not to these people."
"But Donna, why do you think they picked you out of all the people on the planet? What makes you important enough to follow around?"
"Don't you think it's sick to use a device to shock an old woman? Right on her arthritis?"
"Yes, I do. Why are they after you, though? You, specifically?"
"I can't tell you any more just now."
"I mean, think about it Donna, when did this start? Were they chasing you around as a little girl?"
"You don't believe me, do you?" she said. She kept shaking her head. "They like to shock me right here, where it hurts the most." She pointed to the swollen joint of her index finger. "Why they would shock an old woman on her arthritis, I don't know. You'd have to be sick, sick, sick to do something like that."
"I believe you, Donna," he said. "I really do."
He pulled her closer against himself and she made her body small and rigid. He liked the feeling of her warmth against him. And he did believe her. That it was really happening to her.
They got up from the bench and started to walk past the twisted trunks of tornado-ravaged oaks and elms. The keepers of the nature center had erected educational signs near the most horribly damaged areas, where a tornado had cut a swath through the woods the past summer. The signs told the date of the storm and the species of the trees.
Satchel admired with pleasure the loopy way that Donna walked. Her smallness made her walk seem very girlish still. She was oblivious of her own small-boned beauty.
Donna squeezed his hand suddenly.
"They just shocked me," she said.
Satchel heard someone coming down the woodchip path around the next bend.
"In here," Satchel said. He pulled Donna off the path and into a small, spruce tree bower. They crouched down.
"They'll find us," Donna said. "We need to get away from here."
She said this loudly, right as a young jogger with headphones ran past. Satchel recognized the neighbor kid from across the street, home from college for the summer. The kid looked straight at where they were crouching and following him with their eyes.
"I don't think he saw us," Satchel said.
"Are you sure?" Donna asked.
"Yes," Satchel said.
"Thank you, Jesus," Donna said. "Did you see the tape player he was carrying? I'm sure that's what he uses to shock people. The shocking device itself is very small, and I'm sure he could have implanted it inside the headphones."
"I'm sure you're right," said Satchel. "But he's gone now."
Something small scuttled across the floor of pine needles behind them.
Satchel turned Donna's head with his hand. He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. She did not pull away, but her mouth was dead and unmoving. When he pulled away, he saw that her eyes were now closed. He helped her to stand up.
Satchel did not understand how someone who never made a mistake totalling a shopper's purchases, who could still drive fearlessly in the city, and who could carry on an engaging conversation about American history, could also be so batty in one small crevice of her brain. His wife Sara had had Alzheimer's, but she had just slipped away, slowly forgetting everything she had learned until she was like a young daughter of the Iron Range again. She never concocted strange stories about people shocking her. This was altogether different. This was not smooth, easy dementia or vague, formless paranoia. This was elaborate. This was a story.
Satchel had been quite disturbed by what Donna had told him, but only when he had actually seen her living out this story, running from his neighbor out jogging, did he begin to understand what it meant. He wondered if maybe he could have seduced her that afternoon in the pine needles. But he had needed to go home where he could be alone and think about Donna's strange revelation.
He hoped that what Donna had told him about the men who followed her was a one-time confession that would bring them closer together and never be mentioned again. He hoped her Jesus-obsession would be like that too. Because her fantasy was frightening. Donna frightened him. He was frightened by how specific and elaborate her fantasy was, how her power to imagine, to concoct, still functioned so strongly, but functioned outside of her control. She had ceased to differentiate between fact and fiction. It was wonderful to think that the imagination was the most powerful force in the universe, that if you believed, you could move a mountain into the sea, but who the hell really thought that? Who the hell wanted to think that? Satchel liked his mountains right were they were.
He wasn't sure that he could continue to see her. If he bedded her now he would be too conscious of her smooth arthritic knuckles sliding over his naked body to enjoy himself. The pain in those joints had driven her to madness. How did he know that he would never begin to start thinking that way? Could psychosis be sexually transmitted? Was that such a crazy thought? Lovers started to think alike, didn't they? It was subtle, but two lovers always started sane and always split a little crazy. Sara wasn't crazy, though. She was dead.
Over the next week, Satchel scoured his thought patterns for irregularities. Sometimes he believed that he heard Sara humming to herself in the kitchen when he was upstairs in their bedroom, but he never believed this so strongly that he went downstairs to check. But it was still there in his mind. He could perfectly reconstruct the sound of her high-toned humming, so that it was as if she really was just down the stairs. The sound of her humming would just creep up on him at odd times, and suddenly his mind would be filled with it. If it started to seem any realer he would be just like the virgin Donna.
All Satchel wanted was one last throw in the sack really, one last tra-la-la. His libido had faded, but it was still there, hibernating but hungry. He felt it when he ran around the nearby high school track in the morning, when his blood pumped and sweat dripped from his earlobes. He still had it in him. For better or worse.
Before he found out one way or another about Donna's virginity, Satchel had a heart attack. He ran his usual Thursday route, four miles around Long Lake, at five-thirty in the morning and, as he ran the last mile up Mississippi Street, he found he couldn't catch his breath. He sucked in air like a guppy and looked around for someone who could help him. The citrus sun was just starting to show. He stood under a streetlight which immediately turned off. He flagged down a woman driving a red Ford Explorer, who drove him to the hospital.
The doctor at the hospital -- not his friend, Dr. Royer, but a younger doctor -- told him he would need surgery. He was in good health, but, the fact of the matter was, he was also seventy-six years old. His good physical condition was what would allow them to perform the surgery in the first place, the doctor told him. If he wasn't in such terrific shape, they wouldn't even attempt the surgery. And he would need the surgery to go on living for much longer.
Satchel's daughter, Julie, came to visit him every day. The rest of the family, her husband, Mark, Satchel Jr. and his wife, Trista, came when they could
Julie's eyes were puffy and red. She cried a little when she thought he was asleep.
"Damn, Jules," he said. "I'm going to be fine. I feel fine."
"I know, dad," she said. "I just keep thinking about mom."
And that was the way it was. They did not have a breakthrough or trade confessions. They did not talk about funeral arrangements or wills. Julie was superstitious about such talk. Satchel wished, at times, that she wasn't around so much to pester him.
Around noon the first day he was in the hospital, Donna appeared at his door with a colorful bouquet of mixed flowers. He had called her and left a message on her machine.
"I hope you're not allergic to any of these," she said.
He introduced her to Julie, who talked pleasantries with Donna for a short time and then excused herself to the hospital cafeteria, just as Satchel had hoped she would.
"How are you?" he said. His voice was gravelly and weak. He smiled at Donna's green eyes.
"I should be asking you that," she said. "I'm worried about you."
"I'll be fine," he said.
"Maybe so, but you're not going to live forever. You know that don't you?"
Satchel now saw the Bible in her hand. He did not believe in deathbed confessions or last minute conversions. He had lived a good life, and he had told his children he did not want any unctuous priests near his bed when that time came. He thought it was wrong, or at least unfair, to preach God to the sick, not only because the sick could not gird up their loins and run away, but because the sick were closer to God, whether God's wrath or God's mercy, they were threatened by death, and they would never tell what they really believed, because it was impossible to really talk to someone who had time left on this earth when you had so little left yourself.
"I'm sorry for bringing this with me, but I feel compelled to share some things with you, because I love you, Satchel."
She opened her Bible and asked him to read a passage, pointing to it with her arthritic finger, the knuckle of that finger brushing the smooth onion skin page.
"Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved," he read.
"All that means is if you want to be saved for all eternity, all you have to do is call upon the name of Jesus and he'll save you. Please, Satchel. Won't you please say the name of Jesus? Just say it. Jesus. Jesus."
Out of the corner of his eye Satchel studied the outline of her bra underneath the form-fitting cotton dress she wore.
"Jesus," he said.
"Now say, Jesus save me!"
"Jesus save me," he said.
"Now you can know you're going to heaven," she said. She put her arms around his neck. "I'm so happy you'll be there."
He wasn't sure that he would be. He didn't feel like he would be, but he didn't feel like he would be in hell either.
Before Donna left she handed him a book, a biography of Billy Sunday, a baseball star turned preacher.
"I hope you read that. It's really a good book."
"I usually just read fiction," he said.
"Really?"
"I like legal thrillers. That's about all I read."
"That's too bad," she said. "I never read fiction. I want to read about real things that happened to real people. Biographies and history books. Why would I want to read about someone who's not real?"
"Just for fun," he said. "To pass the time."
"I believe life's too important to just while away reading about things that aren't real."
"I have something for you too," he said. He handed her a letter that he had written the night before. "Read it when you get home."
"Thank you," she said.
She kissed him on the cheek, her slightly palpitating lips missing his own by less than an inch. Satchel was comforted by the grand curve of her buttocks struggling beneath her dress as she left the room.
Satchel had been too weak to write much when he composed the letter, but he wrote that he would protect Donna from the men who shocked her and that he believed her. He didn't really, but he wanted to say nice things to her because he liked her, and telling her that he believed her seemed about the nicest thing he could say. He liked the way that a letter felt like speaking, and how he had felt that he was telling Donna everything in the letter as it came out of his pen, though, even now, as he lay in the flat white hospital bed, the letter might still be sealed in Donna's leather purse.
He wondered if he had written something which might be construed as offensive in the letter because Donna did not visit him the next day, or the next. He remembered the line, "I'll sure thank God when the surgery is over and I can hold you against my healing chest," and wondered if this line had been too forward.
Donna visited him again the day before the surgery. He was desperate to see her by then. She came on Sunday while Julie was visiting.
"I tried to come twice before this, but both times I drove here someone followed me, so I had to turn around and go home."
"So how's Byerly's?" Satchel asked before Donna had finished talking.
"You're being followed?" Julie asked.
"Almost everywhere I go," Donna said. "It's terrible."
Julie looked at Donna, her eyes swelling with incredulity, but did not say anything because Satchel was staring her down from his bed. When he lowered his eyebrows, Julie cleared her throat loudly.
"Are you nervous about your surgery?" Donna asked.
"I figure these doctors know what they're doing," Satchel said. He reached out and touched her shoulder with his fingertips. She patted this hand.
"I've been praying for you," she said.
"Thank you," he said. "That means a hell of lot to me, Donna."
The three of them talked for a half hour about benign topics -- the Twins' horrible new manager, the cost of health care, then the weather, dog breeds, dogs versus cats. Satchel wanted her to mention the letter, just acknowledge it, but knew she would not with Julie in the room. Knowing this endeared her to him. As unhinged as she might be, she had a strong feminine sense of propriety. Aging allowed a person to scoff at many rules and norms, but the secret etiquette between men and a women was always there.
Donna yelped.
"I just got shocked," she said. "They shocked me." She held up her gnarled hand.
She excused herself, hugged Satchel lightly, and left.
Julie looked at Satchel, but he did not speak.
"Donna should not be driving herself around," she said. "She can't even tell what's real."
"Well I'd drive her, but I've got other plans," Satchel said.
"Dad, you shouldn't get involved with a crazy woman at your age. It's unhealthy. What would mom say?"
"I stayed married to your mother for forty years, Julie. She wasn't the damn perfect picture of mental health, you know."
"Dad, I'm serious. It's very unhealthy. Please promise me you'll break it off with this woman. Satch and I don't mind if you get remarried, but it should be to someone at least as lucid as you, Dad."
Satchel closed his eyes and rested his head against the pillow.
"Dad?"
"Maybe it was unhealthy for me to sleep with your mother after she forgot who I was, Julia. Maybe that was wrong of me. I didn't feel bad about it, but maybe it was wrong. Julie, listen to me. I'm not dead yet. I'm still here. I'm still alive. What do you want me to do?"
"Dad, would you want me dating someone like that at my age? Someone who thinks that people are following her around shocking her?"
"I never told you how to live your life."
After Julie left, Satchel tried to do some exercises in his bed. Inactivity had crawled between his sheets and had smitten his legs. He could feel its scaly skin rubbing against his own. Soon it would try to sit on his chest and suffocate him. He had to get out of this hospital bed as soon as possible.
He flexed and unflexed his quadriceps twelve times. He felt tired and stopped. He flexed his arms and thought they already looked smaller and flabbier. He had to start exercising again as soon as possible after the surgery or inactivity would catch up to him and drag him back into this hospital bed again.
He paged through another book that Donna had left with him, Foxes Book of Martyrs, Anglican propaganda from the days of Cromwell that the fundamentalists had claimed as a sort of minor scripture. He opened the book up and saw an inscription on the title page. In between the title and the author he read a single sentence. "Always remember Jesus loves you, Satchel, and I do too."
The minute he woke up from surgery, he would jump out of bed and run five miles. He would run to the grocery store and eat some raw green leafy vegetables to jumpstart his immune system. Then he would run to Donna's carrying a preacher on his back. They would marry on her front step, and then he would fuck her in her own bed and let her talk his ear off about Jesus afterward.
When the blackness of anaesthesia began to lift, no one was in the room. Satchel's limbs were paralysed with chemical sleep. His chest felt heavy and full. Only his eyes and face felt halfway normal.
He saw a dark shape appear in the doorway. His pupils slowly tipped into the corners of his sockets so he could see better.
The shape took the form of a man in a navy pinstripe suit. The man set a black briefcase down on a chair near the foot of the bed, opened it, and reached inside. He did not acknowledge Satchel. Satchel tried to say something, but only a gurgle came out of his mouth. He was afraid. Satchel's view of the briefcase was blocked by his own feet. He couldn't see what the man was doing. He started a prayer in his head. Please help me, he thought. He did not think, Help me, Jesus. or, Help me, Mary. or even, Help me, Sara. The prayer that cluttered his head and rattled around again and again like the twitching leg of some animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, was, Help me, Donna. He prayed it over and over again. His synapses fired this electric mantra in a never ending cycle.
HelpmeDonnahelpmeDonnahelpmeDonnahelpme!
The man withdrew an empty syringe from the briefcase. Satchel watched him step to the side of the bed and with one motion poke the syringe into his chest and pull the plunger slowly back. The syringe still appeared clear, but the man had to use all his strength to pull the plunger back. When the syringe was full, the man squirted the contents into a small glass vial and capped it. He put the vial into his briefcase and the syringe in the biohazard box on the far wall, clicked his briefcase shut and left.
By the end of June the summer sun had heated the loamy earth, which was still healing from the harsh winter they had had and Satchel believed that it would be impossible to hold his male impulses in check the next time he saw Donna. He felt a need to be outside doing yard work, though he was still recovering from his surgery.
The neighbor kid agreed to clean out Satchel's gutters for him. The kid was now nineteen or twenty, and he would do anything for money. Satchel supervised the boy cleaning out the gutters to make sure that he was doing it right. It really was an easy job. The kid just had to dig out the composting leaves and other muck with a special tin tool that Satchel had constructed to fit the exact width of his gutters, and then put this black mess into a transparent ice cream pail. The kid wore his headphones while he worked, and Satchel had to bellow like a bear to get his attention when he saw the kid had missed a spot. Satchel could not recall a time when he hadn't seen the kid without his headphones on.
When the kid had finished and held a folded twenty dollar bill in his dirty hand, he said to Satchel, "I think I saw you at Springbrook a while ago. Was that you hiding in the woods?"
Satchel thought through all the ways he could go about this conversation, searching for the least awkward. He could exercise his prerogative as a retired man to ignore anything a younger person said to him. He could try to talk man to man, try to draw attention to his relationship with Donna and away from what the kid had seen in the woods. He could lie.
"It might have been."
"You were hiding in a pine tree with that woman who comes over to your house sometimes."
"I remember now. That's Donna. She's easily frightened."
This was the truth, she was easily frightened, but Satchel could not help feeling he was betraying Donna by saying this to the neighbor kid whom he hardly knew.
"Is she your girlfriend? She's pretty cute for an older lady."
"Yes she is."
"Was she afraid of me?"
"She thinks that there are men who have a device that can send an electric shock through the air into her hands and feet."
"Really?" the kid asked.
"It's what she thinks."
"So your girlfriend's crazy?"
"No, she's not."
"There are plenty of older single women who aren't crazy, Mr. Thompson. I could hook you up with my aunt if you want."
"When you ran by us the other day, you gave Donna quite a spook. She thought you were one of the men who shock her. She thought your headphones were a shocking machine."
"She thought that I was shocking her with my headphones?"
"She and I are growing quite close, and she'll be spending a lot of time over here. I don't want her to be afraid of you, since I know you're a nice kid. So could you come over here some time when you see that she's over here? Just come across the street and introduce yourself, so she can see that you're not the kind of kid who would shock an old woman."
"How much do I get?" the kid asked.
"You want money?"
"For coming across the street and being polite to your girlfriend? It's a service."
"I'm not going to pay you. It's just a neighbourly thing to do. You help out your neighbors when you can. Didn't you learn that in school, kid?"
"Right," the kid said.
Satchel could tell the kid was unconvinced, so he pulled out his wallet.
"No," the kid said. "I don't want your money. I was just kidding. I'll just come over some time when I see you guys out in the yard."
The kid walked back across the street and went into the house through the dark maw of the garage.
Satchel still hadn't seen the inside of Donna's apartment. Every time he dropped her off at her place she gave excuses for why he couldn't come in. If it was after seven at night, she would say she was tired and she had to go to sleep. If it was before seven, she said she had to do her daily devotions or prepare her lunch for work the following day. When he came to pick her up, she came out of her apartment and locked the door behind her before he got a chance to really look inside. A few times he saw inside through the open door. There was a mirror framed with oak on the wall, and under this a small table with a few porcelain knickknacks on it, a dog and what looked like a fly fisherman. He thought about these things a lot, the end table and the knickknacks. He tried to figure out what they meant, tried to extrapolate from this glimpse inside, what her entire apartment must be like, a little tawdry maybe, a little cluttered, perhaps. For the amount of time that they had now spent together, not being let into her apartment was beyond silly, beyond stupid, it was embarrassing, and he didn't tell anyone that he hadn't seen inside the apartment yet.
After taking Donna out to a real Thai restaurant, where he proposed to her and discovered that he liked Thai food better than Chinese, Satchel drove Donna to her apartment building. He parked his car in the spot next to her compact Toyota, got out, and locked his car door before Donna had a chance to say good night to him and give him an excuse for why he couldn't come up to her apartment. They did not talk as they walked the stairs up to her apartment.
"Well good night," Donna said when they were at her door.
"Why good night?" he asked. "Can't I come in?"
"No," she said. "It wouldn't be appropriate, I don't believe."
"What are you hiding in there?" he teased.
"Nothing at all. It's just that we're not married yet and I don't think it would be appropriate for me, a woman, to invite you, a man, into my apartment with no one else present."
"But you come over to my place all the time and we're alone."
"That's different."
Satchel was growing angry trying to reason with her.
"How is that different?"
"I have to go to bed." She unlocked the door.
He squeezed her upper arm hard enough to feel the bone. She writhed and he let her go.
"You listen to me, Donna," he said. "We're going to be married now. You can't play around forever. You're not a little girl."
"You can wait a month," she said and snuck inside her apartment. The door shut and the lock clicked. She spoke to him through the door. "I'll pray that Jesus gives you patience."
He felt guilty about squeezing Donna's arm, so he drove around. He was sure he had left a bruise and he wondered if the engagement would be off now. He didn't want to go home, because he thought he might find a message on his machine. He drove up Central Avenue until it turned into Highway 65. He went all the way up to where there were new housing developments and past that, to where there was only farmland. He couldn't understand why she couldn't just give him what she wanted. Why marriage even mattered to her at their age.
Two days later they were walking through the mall. Satchel was building himself up again, avoiding inactivity, which was death. Donna liked walking through the mall because there was so much to look at.
Satchel had apologized for squeezing Donna's arm. "Do you still want to marry me?" he asked her. "Squeezing my arm isn't going to affect my decision one way or another about marrying you," she said. "Marriage is a bigger deal than that. I prayed about whether I should marry you or not and I believe it's what God wants me to do."
When he was walking next to her, Satchel was most aware that Donna had made her peace with God and he hadn't. He couldn't just put his faith in the name of Jesus. It seemed too mindless, too simple. And though he was most aware of his fear of death around Donna, he was also happiest when he was with her. He had asked her during their dinner at one of the mall restaurants, if she was afraid to die. She admitted that yes, sometimes she was, because it would be a new experience for her, but she also added that she had peace about dying, and that she believed it was possible to be afraid and still have peace about something. All the same, hearing Donna admit that she was afraid to die made him feel very close to her. He wanted her to feel close to him too. This was what he was thinking as they walked together through the mall.
As they passed a bookstore. Donna winced in pain and rubbed the back of her fingers.
"I just got shocked," she said. "I think it was the guy on the bench."
"The one with the red hair?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure." Donna stopped in front of the young man in a polo shirt who was tapping on his electronic datebook with a plastic pen. "Stop shocking me."
"Pardon?" the young man asked, looking up. His eyes looked glazed over, still focused on the screen.
"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. Just stop."
"I don't know what you're talking about," the young man said.
Satchel saw the edges of his mouth curl upwards, and that's when he stepped on the young man's foot. The young man was fat and flabby and Satchel knew that he could hold his own with him, despite being fifty years older. A few shoppers stopped where they stood, holding their waxed paper bags. The cashier at the bookstore looked out of the store.
"You need to stop shocking my fiancée," Satchel said. "She doesn't know how you do it, but she's sick of it. You're hurting her."
The slight smirk vanished from the young man's face.
"Listen, I'm sorry, but I really don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't play dumb. If you insist on playing dumb, then we'll take this outside."
"No, that's fine."
"Then apologize."
"I'm sorry."
"To her, not me. Say you're sorry for shocking her."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry for shocking you," the young man said.
"That's better," Satchel said.
He and Donna continued walking.
A minute later the fat mall security guard caught up to them and told Satchel he had to leave.
"Why?"
"Because we've gotten reports that you're antagonizing mall patrons."
"That man was malicious," Satchel said. "He was hurting my fiancée."
"We're finished here anyway," Donna said. She took Satchel's arm and led them away from the guard, toward the exit. Satchel liked the feel of her hand on his bicep.
Satchel invited his grown children over for dinner to make the announcement. He was very nervous about them. He thought that it would be best to make the announcement without Donna around, but this seemed uncouth. If he was going to spend the rest of his life with this woman she should be with him, by his side, when he told his children. He knew that there would be some hard feelings, especially with Julie.
Donna came over early and helped him prepare the meal. He made chicken and bowtie noodles, an easy dish that he loved to eat but did not make very often, because he rarely had enough people to help him eat it.
"Pass me that garlic," Satchel said.
As Donna handed it to him he studied the ring on her bamboo-like finger. It fit the thin part of her finger loosely but she could only barely get it around the two arthritic knuckles. He wondered if his children would notice it before he made the announcement. The ring wasn't fancy, but he would stop sending money to Meghan for a while to pay for it. He would also start cleaning his house too, next week, he decided, because he needed to start saving for their Taiwanese honeymoon.
The whole family arrived at once. They had carpooled, because they all lived in the wealthier southern suburbs, his daughter in Chanhassen and his son in Edina. Meghan was home from school for the weekend, so she had come along too. His son's wife, Trista, had an unbreakable engagement and was unable to make it, Satch Jr. told him right away.
They were late, and he led them to the dining room, which had not been used since Sara's passing. He brought the food out in bowls and set it on the table.
"Donna would like to say grace before we eat," Satchel said. "Donna, go ahead."
"Dear Jesus," Donna started.
Donna was the only one of them who had bowed her head completely, and Satchel and his granddaughter looked at one another while she prayed, each imagining a different unspoken conversation that they were having. Satchel could see the hunger pangs on his granddaughter's pale face. He looked away, and then began to study the dangling crystals in the chandelier over the table. A layer of white dust coated the sharply smooth surface of each jewel. He would never have time to clean the chandelier. Life was too short. He had never liked the damn thing anyway. Sara had made him bid on it at an estate sale.
"Thank you for being a good and generous God," Donna continued. "And thank you for providing me with such a wonderful fiancé and this new family. Please bless this food that You have provided. In your dearest name, Amen."
"So I guess the cat's out of the bag," Satchel said. "I'm very happy to announce." He looked at Donna. "I'm happy to tell you all, my family, that Donna and I are going to get married."
A funerary silence descended. Meghan looked at her parents imploring them to say something.
"I'm sorry I told," Donna said. "Sometimes when I'm praying I forget who else is in the room."
"That's okay," said Satchel.
"That's cool that you guys are getting married," Meghan said. "Congratulations."
"That's wonderful," Satchel Jr. said.
Julie was silent and Mark followed her lead.
"I'm so lucky to have this man and all of you," Donna said. "It took me long enough to find him, but now I have. He's really a wonderful man, your father. This week when we were at Northtown --"
"We were just walking," Satchel said. "I'm trying to build my body up again." He tried to catch Donna's eye but she was sitting right next to him and she was beaming out at everyone else.
"While we were in Northtown Mall, I got shocked by a man and Satchel stood up to that man and told him to stop shocking me. No one's ever done that for me before. Then the security guard came and told us we had to leave."
"Grandpa, what's she talking about?" Meghan asked.
"They shock me right on the knuckles where my arthritis hurts the worst," Donna said.
"There are men with briefcases who follow Donna around sometimes and shock her. We're not exactly sure why they do it, but we're looking into it."
"Your grandpa's just kidding, Meghan," Julie said.
"No, Julie, I'm not."
The rest of dinner was filled up with questions about the small ceremony they were planning -- Meghan said she would help with decorations -- and Thailand.
"You've never been out of the country before, have you, dad?" Satch Jr. asked.
"Not unless you count Texas," he said.
When they had had dessert out on the deck and mosquitoes were starting to come out, his daughter said she wanted to talk to him alone before they left. They went into his bedroom.
"Is it true what Donna said about you getting thrown out of Northtown?"
"This damn businessman on a bench wouldn't apologize for shocking Donna, so I had to threaten him."
"But he couldn't have been shocking her dad because that's all in her mind," Julie said.
"He could have just played along. The guy was very confrontational and, in the end, yes, we did get kicked out of the mall."
"Why are you doing this dad?"
"Doing what?"
"Marrying a crazy woman? It cheapens what you and mom had. You've had a good life, you know? Have a little dignity."
"You mean die with dignity, right, Jules?"
"Dad."
"I am not trying to replace your mom."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"There's no way I can make you understand, Jules. I love Donna. She's not perfect and that's part of why I love her. She's a woman. She's as much a woman as your mom. Not any more or less."
"Well, Dad, I'm not sure if we're going to be able to come to this wedding. It's such short notice, and next month we're pretty busy."
"I won't hold it against you if you don't come," he said.
He and Donna walked with his family out to Satch Jr.'s SUV. The sun had set, but the sky was still faintly blue.
"Mr. Thompson!"
The neighbor kid called across the street. He stepped out of the garage and walked down the driveway. He had his CD player in one hand with a black cord that led up to his face and, in the other hand, a giant remote control, obviously too old to still function. He pointed the remote control across the street and started pressing buttons.
"I'm going to shock your girlfriend to death!" The kid laughed and started walking across the street.
"You bastard kid!" Satchel yelled. He ran across the residential street without looking for traffic. The neighbor kid ran into the garage and into the house. Satchel stopped at the top of the driveway. The kid's compact disc player was there on the driveway. He had dropped it. Satchel picked it up.
He heard Julie yell something from across the street but threw the player down anyway. It shattered into dozens of jagged plastic pieces as it hit the asphalt. Donna was the only one smiling as he walked back to his own property.
Satchel and Donna were married in a small ceremony attended by his grown children and some of their coworkers from the grocery store. Their honeymoon in Thailand was beautiful. The sex was great. And though, during their first week of marriage, Donna told Satchel that she wasn't a virgin, she said she had gone without sex for as many years as she had known Jesus, and to Satchel this was almost as exciting. As soon as they returned they started saving for the next trip.
When Donna moved in, Satchel loaded one of his shotguns and leaned it against the wall of the bedroom as a precaution against anyone trying to enter the house. Donna never once told him that a loaded gun was more dangerous than any perceived threat or that the police would protect them. When she fell asleep at night, she liked knowing that there was a loaded gun nearby.
Satchel's name started to appear regularly in the police blotter of the local paper for the minor fisticuffs and name-calling that he engaged in whenever Donna pointed out one of the men who had shocked her. The next summer he broke his arm, but when his children asked, he refused to say how. Julie and Satch Jr. swore to each other that next time they would have him and his new wife committed, but every time they said again, "next time," because deep down they really didn't think that there was anything wrong with him. And though each time he removed fresh stitches, Dr. Royer warned Satchel that his body was more susceptible to infection at his age, and that each new cut and bruise essentially represented days off of his lifespan, Satchel continued to pick fights with businessmen whenever he and Donna went out.
©2005 by Shane Alan Noecker
