An Old Man Story
by Dan Sullivan
Joe Bartholomew hobbled into the Kenney Retirement Home lounge as quickly as he could. Wheezing and clutching his cane, the 79-year old managed to grasp his way to an old, beat-up recliner, where he carefully lowered himself to the seat.
“You won’t believe what just happened to me,” he announced to the lounge occupants. No one responded. In fact, no one even turned toward him. Of the seven elders there, most concentrated on the large window overlooking the rear yard of the complex.
“I must have been gone for days! Hasn’t anyone noticed?”
“Quiet! Bewitched!” someone yelled. It was 72-year old Ruth Lukenson who was staring at a television mounted on the wall. Everything she said was at a really loud volume, so in her mind, she wasn’t yelling.
“You’re yelling again, Ruth,” responded Joe. “Never mind Bewitched, you’ve seen that episode six million times. Never mind that nonsense, listen to this instead.”
“Listen to you?” asked 80-year old Alice Atkins. She sat in the chair next to Joe and was about to take a nap when Joe entered. “You have about a hundred different stories a day, Joe. We’re tired of listening.”
“But this one’s different!” Joe exclaimed. “I was just out with my nephew.”
“Which one?” asked Alice.
“I don’t know which one; I’ve got about a thousand nephews. He took me to that mall across town. You know, the one that’s about fifty stories high with … I’d guess around … nine thousand stores?”
“Deed ya git t’all of ‘em stores?” It was Jeremiah Strug, a 69-year old retired farmer whose accent could not be placed by anyone. “’Cause eef ya deed,” he continued,
“you’d a spint ‘bout a hundred thousand dollars. My cousin, he spint that much once een one a ‘em malls somewhere.”
“A hundred thousand isn’t even a lot of money,” replied Joe. “My nephew and I spent about seven hundred thousand dollars today.”
“Then where are the things you bought?” asked Alice.
“Well that’s what I’ve got to tell you. But first I’ve got to tell you about the mall. My nephew took me there in his new car. A great car; it has around three thousand horsepower or something.”
“I heard a dat car, they’s nice,” said Jeremiah.
“’Course they’re nice,” said Joe, “and the lot at the mall, was filled with millions of cars. The parking lot must have stretched for miles and miles. They had trains that could sit a thousand people and take you from your car to the mall entrance.”
“Trains in parking lot?” asked Peter Diefendorf, one of the window gazers. He was a 70-year old immigrant from Germany. “Never heard such a thing. Belong on track.”
“I saw them, Pete, with my own eyes,” replied Joe.
“You mean eye?” Peter inquired. Joe had lost one of his eyes to cancer about nine years ago.
“Yes, yes, eye. With my own eye! Now, we entered the mall through these fifty-foot tall doors made out of stained-glass. Beautiful, I tell you, beautiful. And the lobby was huge, shops immediately to our left and right, and down the center was…a pool! A giant pool with a fountain shooting water up about a thousand feet. And all these kids were going down a water slide. My nephew said the slide started at the top floor, twenty-eight stories up, and spiraled all the way down.”
“I can’t hear Bewitched!” screamed Ruth.
“Ruth: lower tones please,” said Peter. “Now Joseph, I thought you said mall was fifty stories high, not twenty-eight.”
“Well,” said Joe, thinking, “that’s because the other floors are underground. So that means … twenty-three stories were below us when we walked in.”
“Twenty-two,” chimed Stanley Benson, who stood by the window. Stanley was a 77-year old former accountant. “And I’ve heard of these underground malls. They actually have whole cities underground now. I saw it on the news.”
“I seen dat too,” agreed Jeremiah.
“They do not, that’s outrageous,” replied Joe, waving a hand in disgust. “If that were the case, this whole city we’re in now would be underground. They’ve only got malls underground.”
“Ya know, he mighta be right,” said Jeremiah, rubbing his bristly chin.
“’Course I’m right. Now, my nephew needed to buy a pair of running shoes. So we looked on this directory right by the entrance as to where to go. These directories list off a million things about the mall that you’d want to know, and show you where to find anything.”
Alice squinted in thought. “What if you wanted to find a phone number?”
“You could find a phone book store. They had about forty of them. We needed shoes, though, and it turns out there was a whole floor of shoe stores. It was seventeen stories up, so we took one of the elevators that go about seven hundred miles per hour to where you want to go. They could even go sideways to get to certain places if needed.”
“My daughter’s second cousin, he helped invent those sideways elevators,” said Stanley. “Smart man.”
“Really?” asked Joe. “I think they’ve made about a hundred trillion dollars at this point, too.”
“Two hundred,” Peter said.
“Right, two hundred. But never mind that. I’ve got to tell you about the shoe store.”
At this point, Joe had captured everyone’s attention, except Ruth who was still drawn to the Bewitched episode. There were two other old-timers in the lounge as well, sitting comfortably by the window. They were Helen Coughlin and Wendell McAndrews, both 84-years old. Unfortunately each had gone mute about five years ago. However, they listened intently to Joe’s story and everyone else’s comments, with wide eyes and white knuckles. Joe continued on.
“The shoe store we finally decided on had about fifty thousand brands and one hundred foot walls holding everything. You needed this crane that was in there to get the shoes at the top of the wall. So my nephew ended up trying on about forty pairs of shoes, but couldn’t decide what he wanted. So he just bought all forty pairs.”
“Dat was smert,” said Jeremiah. Stanley and Peter nodded their approval as well.
“Will he wear all of those?” asked Alice.
“Oh yes,” Stanley said before Joe could even respond. “Runners need tons of different shoes to try out and experiment with, not to mention they run about a thousand races a month usually.”
“’Course they do,” agreed Joe, “which is why we then needed to find a water bottle for while he’s running. We went up to the top floor, the water bottle floor, and they had all sorts of bottles. The best ones were the ones that chill the water while it’s in the bottle. It’s all state-of-the-art equipment.”
“I’m trying to watch Bewitched!” screeched Ruth.
“Ruth, keep your voice down please,” said Stanley.
“Even I seen show five hundred times when I not even live in this country,” complained Peter.
“My grandson has about seventy of those new water bottles, Joe,” continued Stanley. “He says they’re great. They can be run over by thirty buses in a row and they still won’t break either.” Helen and Wendell both looked at each other in surprise. Alice frowned.
“When would thirty buses ever run over anything?” asked Alice.
“That’s a standard water bottle test,” answered Joe. “So we got a bunch of those, about nine hundred, and since we were at the top, we decided to take the water slide down. I’m telling you all, we were probably going about two hundred miles per hour down the thing, it was incredible.”
“Ohhhh boy, dat musta been a helluva sweet ride geettin’ down,” Jeremiah exclaimed.
“How’d you go down a water slide if you can’t even walk without a cane?” asked Alice.
“I was just laying there,” retorted Joe, “and you don’t walk down a slide, you … slide. Besides, they held my cane for me. Anyways, we needed to find one more thing: shorts for running. Clothing was all underground, so we took these new escalator contraptions that whisk you down three floors every second.”
“I think it’s six floors every second,” Stanley quickly interjected.
“That’s impossible!” replied Joe. “Six floors? No way, Stanley.”
“I think Joe right about three floors,” said Peter, in his cadenced English.
“’Course I’m right. Now the shorts we ended up buying are made out of this new material that’s half cotton, half nylon, half elastic, and half micro-spandex. They cost around twenty thousand dollars each, so my nephew only got twenty pairs of them. You don’t need that many shorts.”
“Everyone be quiet!” demanded Ruth, at the top of her lungs. “Bewitched!”
“Can we unplug that TV she’s watching?” asked Alice.
“Theen she’ll yill fer days,” answered Jeremiah.
“So my nephew, being the good nephew that he is, said he’d buy me a gift for accompanying him. I told him a watch would be superb, so we took the elevator back up to the fourth floor where there must have been about three hundred watch shops and sellers. I enjoy a nice pocket watch, so he bought me one worth about sixty thousand dollars. It had a crystal casing and a gold face. Beautiful.”
“Where is it?” asked Alice.
“I’m getting to that. So after we got the watch we went up a few more floors to the food court, where they had every restaurant imaginable. We ate like kings. I think I had about sixty rolls from this one establishment. This is where we ran into trouble.”
“Trouble?” asked Peter. “What sort of trouble?”
“Well some kids started harassing us, stepping in our way as we left the food court. They wanted our purchases, our bags. One pushed my nephew to the ground.”
Joe’s audience gasped at the mention of physical abuse. Ruth smiled at the small window of silence that took place. Joe let the silence hang a bit, cleared his throat, and continued.
“So there seemed like a hundred of these kids, all circling around us. They started grabbing our bags and taking what they could get their hands on. I was forced to fight back with my cane. I believe I whacked fifty of them off the head before they sprinted away with our goods.”
“You hit children over head?” cried Peter.
“Ya deed tha right thang there, Joe,” Jeremiah confirmed.
“I’ve held your cane. It’s heavy,” Stanley added. Even Alice seemed impressed.
“My nephew managed to subdue a few more, but it was too late. And when mall security came by, they were no help. We must have told them our story four thousand times before they finally understood just what had happened. At this point, my nephew figured, the kids must have left the mall. So we were out of luck.” Joe leaned back in the recliner, signaling that his story was through. The listeners all stared at the floor, amazed at what had happened to their colleague. Ruth shouted mention of how good the Bewitched episode was. Helen and Wendell each threw loafers at her. Finally Alice spoke up.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were going to the mall?”
Before Joe could say anything, Stanley spoke up. “Obviously he planned on buying us a bunch of things and wanted it to be a surprise. That right, Joe?”
“’Course it’s right, I had left that out so you all didn’t feel bad. But I had gotten a bunch of different things: books, movies, a crochet set and … a decks of cards, board games, a new TV for Ruth and ... vitamins, slippers, new cushions for the sofa, a seat, a phone, newspapers … and … a million other things!”
Everyone except Alice issued Joe thanks and reflected on how great a friend he was. Alice just closed her eyes, hoping to catch the nap she had pushed off. Soon the rest of them all nodded off, each thinking how he or she could sleep for days, but also wondering what they would purchase at such a great mall.
In the viewing station sat Nurse Craft and the new nursing assistant, Nurse Hebert. They had listened to Joe’s story and the reaction it received. Nurse Hebert looked at Nurse Craft.
“I didn’t even know Mr. Bartholomew had been granted a leave pass,” she said, confused. Nurse Craft looked over at Nurse Hebert and smiled.
“I didn’t even know Mr. Bartholomew had been granted a leave pass,” she said, confused. Nurse Craft looked over at Nurse Hebert and smiled.
“Funny how they all exaggerate, huh? Mr. Bartholomew hasn’t been outside this building in a long time. He refuses to go out, even refusing the short walks we take all the patients on.” She paused and chuckled. “He hasn’t been outside in like a hundred years.” She sighed and stretched. “Alright, c’mon. We’ve got about a million medications to administer. Let’s get going.”
© Copyright, Dan Sullivan
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