Saturday's Storyteller: "Arthur's pacemaker was powered by the treadmill on which he ran, so for thirty-six years, he never stopped."

by Belinda Roddie

"Arthur's pacemaker was powered by the treadmill on which he ran, so for thirty-six years, he never stopped."

I looked up from the crossword. "That's impossible," I announced.

"No, it's not!" shrieked my little brother Tommy, looking very, very offended. "It's totally true. My friend Jordan knew him. He said so!"

"Jordan, eh?" I repeated with a smirk. "The one who always tells stories to you and laughs whenever you believe them?"

My mother wasn't exactly thrilled by the string of nine-year-old profanity that Tommy hurled at me - and by that, I mean every bodily excrement starting with the letter p - but my father was amused. He put down his section of the paper and sipped from a bottle of beer.

"Wait, who's Arthur?" my sister Gina cut in as she walked out of the kitchen with a plate of eggs.

Tommy opened his mouth to redirect his snapping tone to Gina. Then he froze. Then he raised an index finger. Then he swallowed down saliva. Then he tried to answer.

"Uncle!" he finally blurted. "His uncle. Jordan's uncle Arthur."

"Joke's on you," Gina grinned. "I know Jordan's parents, and neither of them had siblings. They were both an only child."

"You don't know nothing!" Tommy howled as he shot up from his chair, scurried off to his bedroom, and slammed the door as hard as he could.

I focused on the answer to 37-across to keep from laughing too hard. Last time I had outright snorted at Tommy, he had threatened to shove a beanie baby up my nose, and I wasn't in the mood for him to actually test it out. My mom went back to making toast, sighing and rolling her eyes.

"Honestly," she murmured. "The whole thing was absolutely unnecessary. Doesn't anyone these days take time to think?"

"Gee, sorry, Mom," mumbled Gina. "I was only just - "

"No, not you,"  my mom interrupted. "Your little brother. He's nine years old, for Christ's sake. Isn't he old enough to realize that a grown-ass man can't just run on a treadmill forever without dying from sleep deprivation?"

Gina stopped eating her eggs over easy just to give my mom a high five. My dad and I exchanged glances, and I couldn't help sneering.

"You can explain that one, Dad," I commented. "You're the one who gave Tommy your Y chromosome."

"Only because you girls didn't want it," my dad joked right back. "Ungrateful females."

"We just like being double X and extra daring!" Gina shot her barb, and I scribbled in "noir" for 4-down with the smile still wiggling on my face.

***

Of course, that all happened before Tommy died. It wasn't a hugely traumatic death, and truth be told, it wasn't all that unexpected. They found him deep in the bowels of Central America - thick Guatemalan flora - with a gun shot in his chest. He was twenty.

He hadn't ever been the smartest kid, and his gullibility never faded away. My mom, for a while, was worried that it was a mental issue - that for some reason, one part of his brain wasn't growing right and the magical thinking that any child had stuck around. Tommy had a vivid imagination, sure, but it wasn't normal for a sixteen-year-old to come home saying that a tall tale told by a beggar on the street about Mount Diablo actually being the devil's mountain was actually true. He also believed in conspiracy theories. He believed in every single one.

The road trip out of the United States hadn't been his idea - it had been a buddy's. They had both been high school drop-outs, and after my mom's failed attempts to get Tommy counseling and other extensive help for his almost schizophrenic ranting, Tommy turned eighteen and his friend carted him away in a black BMW that would ultimately become the equivalent of a hearse. They went to Mexico, and they never came back. No phone calls. No news. Nothing. Not until the Guatemalan authorities found Tommy's body and could barely read the name on his mangled state identification card.

Gina refused to go to the funeral - Tommy's inclination to believe everything anyone told him had made things tense between them. He had actually threatened to slap her one time because he was certain that a pathetic rumor circulating her school was true. Her prom date, after trying and failing to pop her cherry, had lied that Gina was a slut and gotten it on with four other boys at the same time. Even when the other boys finally denied it and the asshole was suspended for two weeks for bullying, slander, and essentially being an ass - Tommy still believed it. He probably still thought it was a real thing up to the moment he died.

I didn't tell fairy tales to my daughter for a long time after Tommy's funeral. I didn't know if it'd be safe. But made-up stories had been a huge part of my life. My father had read The Hobbit to me dozens of times when I was young. The man who became my husband had actually been an oral storyteller, commissioned by several schools to recite folklore and perform fiction to interested students. He was now the school librarian, and his creativity never ceased. That's why he snuck fantasy books over to my daughter once she turned five without my knowing.

She confronted me on that, actually. She came right up to me one day, seven years old and pink cheeked, as I finished up cutting hot peppers to add to a bowl of chili - I was taking a day off from my computer maintenance job, and I felt like cooking instead of fixing laptops and tablets.

"Mommy," she asked, "how come you never read me Jack and the Beanstalk?"

I stopped paying attention to the can of pinto beans and stared at her. "What?"

"The story," she repeated. "It's about a boy named Jack. And a beanstalk."

"Oh." I made a mental note to speak with my husband about boundaries. "And did you like it?"

"Yep." Then my daughter made a pouty face. "But I'm sad you didn't read it to me."

"Did your father read it to you?"

"No, he just gives me the books."

I swallowed down the fireball of fear brewing in my esophagus. "And do you think any of it's real?"

"Huh?"

"Do you think - "

"Mommy," interrupted my daughter. "I'm not dumb. I know there's no such thing as giant beanstalks and geese that lay golden eggs."

"You do?"

"Yeah!" Then she grinned. "Though a goose that laid golden eggs would be pretty cool."

Suddenly, the thoughts of panic and bitterness toward her and my husband faded. I calmed myself down. I didn't think of Tommy, from his tousled hair to his wide eyes to the way his mouth drooped in one corner, all the way until he left the house with two middle fingers up in the air. I decided to try something.

"You know what else is crazy?" I exhaled.

My daughter looked up at me, wide-eyed. "What?"

"I know this guy named Arthur," I narrated, though not verbatim. "He had a pacemaker. That's something that keeps your heart beating."

"Uh-huh."

"But here's the kicker - it was plugged into a treadmill. And a treadmill is that thing you walk on, and it moves, right?"

"Yeah."

"So if he didn't run on the treadmill forever, his pacemaker wouldn't work. So he ran for thirty-six years without stopping." I had remembered the number. Again, I gulped shudders down. "Isn't that crazy?"

The expression on my daughter's face scared me at first. It seemed to darken somewhat. Suddenly, I was picturing my brother again. His shrieking. His accusatory, "You don't know nothing!" His clenching and unclenching fist. But then my daughter laughed.

"Don't be silly!" she cried out. "Pacemakers don't get plugged into treadmills!"

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.