Callahan's Secret Part 4

I transferred to her all my conflict; as I had on the roof, I poured my need into her.

And this time she didn't accept it. I opened my mouth to say something or other that would end our affair, and she ignored me, spoke directly and only to Finn.

"Now you're getting it," she said, smiling. "It isn't fair. Enjoying it, Mick? Have I given you enough, now? Have you got a way to store it digitally and play it back later? Can you put it on a loop and run it continuously or something?"

He blinked at her.

"You marinate in guilt soup for enough years, you suck all the juice right out of it, have to go get some new vegetables to throw into the pot, that's understandable. But eventually you'll use up this bag. What'll we do next- spread the news around, put you on the Phil Donahue Show? Sooner or later, somebody'd figure out a way to kill you, and you know it, too, you big dumb jerk. Can't you make this last you for a while?"

These were hammer blows she was landing, from a distance of about a foot and a half. I opened my mouth to say something, and suddenly she whirled around to face us. Finn's got a more efficient speaker than any human, but she certainly had an impressive bellow onto her-we jumped further than we had when he let go.

"Will you clowns stop indulging him now?"

The dust settled, Callahan picked his cigar b.u.t.t up off the floor and blew sawdust off it, and she cut back to about Force Eight and went on: "What is the matter with you morons? A mutt comes in here, a guy you claim is your friend, with a sign on his forehead says, 'm.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t', and you people get out the whips and chains, is that it? Txffu's committed the cardinal sin, eh? He doesn't love humanity: hang him. And Handsome over there, too, and half the people in this bar, probably what the h.e.l.l is so special about humanity that not loving it is a sin? Finn said his people loved sentient life: I respect that a lot more, and I'm not at all sure that humanity qualifies, on average-"

(By "Handsome," she referred to Long-Drink, whose name she didn't know, and I found time to wonder if Mary was a pervert, too, queer for scrawny men. Long-Drink is even taller and skinnier than me-put him and me and Finn side by side and we look like a pine mountainside ... ) "-How about an a.n.a.logy: will that strain your brains too much? Say you work for a South American real estate developer; he has you go out into the bush and exterminate tribes of monkeys where he wants to build new condominiums. You don't like the work, you'd rather quit and jungle up, but the boss has thoughtfully planted a b.o.o.by-trapped transceiver on you. To make matters worse, you're a diabetic, and he only gives you a limited supply of insulin for each trip.

"One day you run across a tribe of monkeys clever enough to disable the transceiver. It may even be possible to train them to manufacture insulin. Is it necessary that you love them before you can accept their aid? I could maybe, given time, learn to get attached to three or four individual monkeys, maybe as many as a dozen or so-be amused by them, grow fond of them, even respect them in certain ways. I could see being concerned if I learned that their tribe was locked into some kind of suicidal behavior pattern-really concerned, not just on my own account. But love them? Or their kind in general?

"And should I be ashamed for wanting insulin so that I can live another forty or fifty years-when the monks can only hope for ten or twenty? Oh, you jacka.s.ses, I can understand HIM being that dumb, he's smarter than any of us- but how could you morons be so stupid?"

Many feet were shuffled. She had opened up our friend's hidden wound ... and we had all picked at it. I was belatedly beginning to realize her technique. Sometimes a mocking voice whispers vile things in a man's ear, things he can't shut out because he half-believes they're true. But if you can personify that voice, and get him to fight it, to reject it.

"He comes from a race so fatheaded n.o.ble and ethical that-they couldn't bring themselves to destroy their a.s.sa.s.sins-perhaps, he says, they made the wrong choice. Naturally he'd feel guilty about exploiting us by trying to keep us alive, about his inability to love monkeys. All the years he's been on this planet, none of you noticed any pattern in the kind of professions he's followed?"

I found that I was speaking. "I figured he picked basic, earthy trades as a way of rooting himself to this planet. Our primal cultural basics: farming, fishing, watching the forest, contemplating the sea-"

"Solitary, lonely jobs, every one, the way he went about them. Hermit jobs." She turned to Finn. "You probably find most of us actually repellent, don't you, Txffu?"

His face was expressionless again. "Candidly, yes."

"Physically disgusting?"

"Well ... deformed, on the average. Your males are all so short ... and your females are all so undernourished."

Her ears grew points. "Really?"

"Yes. Among my people, you yourself would be considered-well, not emaciated, but almost unfashionably slender. As it happens I have an unconventional taste for slender women ... but most human females your size hate themselves so much it is unpleasant to be near them."

"Txffu?" she interrupted.

"Yes, Mary?"

"Will you marry me?"

I screwed my eyes so tight I saw neon paisley. Somewhere behind their lids was the switch that would turn my breathing back on, and I had to find it pretty quickly.

Finn was utterly still for five long seconds. "You are not serious."

"No, thank G.o.d, and that's going to be a break for you in the years to come-but my proposal is dead serious. What's your answer?"

"But- you-"

"Finn, you've been unable to love because you haven't loved yourself because you haven't loved us-it's time somebody got you off the loop. You ninny, of course you didn't save us out of love! You did it out of compa.s.sion. That's something that's, underrated, but I think it's just as good as love-who knows, maybe better. You can love only your equals-with your superiors or inferiors, compa.s.sion is the best you can do, and it's pretty d.a.m.ned good, at least as high up on the ethical scale. With time, it can lead to love. I speculate that-it could even be the basis of a pretty fair marriage. Do you think?"

"You saw what is in my chest-"

"Yeah, I'm fascinated. Is there an owner's manual for it?"

"You cannot be serious. You do not even know if we are s.e.xually compatible."

"The h.e.l.l I don't. I can see fingers and a tongue from here: anything else is gravy. And I've got something or other that appeals to you; I knew that back up on the roof when I met you."

That breathing switch had to be around here someplace; just a question of finding it ... - "-we are not cross-fertile-," Finn tried.

"What of it? Maybe we'll adopt. h.e.l.l, we'll adopt this whole G.o.ddam bar-they need someone to bring 'em up. Quit stalling: yes or no?"

I think maybe I'd known it all along, sensed it up there on the roof when Finn first flew out of the rainy night. I suppose there are worse ways to say goodbye ...

"Yes," Finn said finally. "Yes, Mary, I would be honored to marry you. On one condition." He turned to the rest of us. "All of you, male and female, must agree to be my Best Man."

A roomful of people looked guiltily to Mary.

She nodded serenely. "Deal."

A cheer went up that rung the rafters. I even got my lungs going in time to join it. Sure it hurt.

But it felt good, too.

Finn's face remained blank for another few seconds- and then he remembered to share his joy with us, and hung that expression on himself; I was pleased and proud that he took the trouble.

"Would you two," Callahan boomed, "do me the honor of gettin' married here in my joint? Say, over there on the staircase?"

"Where else?" Mick and Mary said together, and another cheer went up, even louder.

It came to me that I might find some use for a bucket of alcohol, so when Callahan began the bucket brigade of free drinks for the house I hogged three or four. It's amazing how fast you can throw down booze if you work at it, and so before long I found myself bellying up to the bar.

"Innkeeper," I said when he reached me, "give me drink."

He understood my situation-had probably understood from the moment. Mary popped the question. Not much gets past Mike Callahan, and nothing that pertains to the human heart. "Healthy reaction," he said, nodding judiciously. "I think you'll live, Jake."

"Have you ever hated your best friend's guts, Mike?"

"Careful, pal: don't get into the same guilt-loop Finn did. Melodrama is for T.V. Finn's not your best friend, just a garden variety pal. And if you feel like hating him for a while, go to it: it'll pa.s.s."

"You haven't said much tonight, Mike. How do you feel about all this?"

"Well, the way I look at it, I'm not so much losing a daughter as I am gaining an alien."

I stared at him, and by the time all the tumblers had finished clicking into place, he was handing me an oversized mug of Irish coffee.

"Mary is your-"

"Lady Sally and I have always been real proud of her," he said contentedly, puffing on that miserable stogie.

"Why the h.e.l.l didn't she ever come around here before?" I asked. "All these years-"

"Well, she couldn't, Jake. She lived too far away, and she used to work nights. Until Sal retired.

You burn your tongue when you drink Irish coffee too fast, so I burned my tongue. So I had another to keep my tongue numb, and then another, and I started having so much fun that the idea sort of caught on generally, and that's more or less how Mike and I and about a dozen of our friends eventually ended up naked in the rain on Callahan's roof, me for the second time that night.

Do you know, from that day to this, rain won't land on me-or any of us that were there-unless we ask it to?

CHAPTER 2 Pyotr's Story.

TWO TOTAL DRUNKS in a single week is much higher than average for anyone who goes to Callahan's Place-no pun intended.

Surely there is nothing odd about a man going to a bar in search of oblivion. Understatement of the decade. But Callahan's Place is what cured me of being a lush, and it's done the same for others. h.e.l.l, it's helped keep Tommy Janssen off of heroin for years now. I've gotten high there, and once or twice I've gotten tight, but it's been a good many years since I've been flat-out, helpless drunk-or yearned to be. A true drunk is a rare sight at Callahan's. Mike Callahan doesn't just pour his liquor, he serves it; to get p.i.s.sed in his Place you must convince him you have a need to, persuade him to take responsibility for you. Most bars, people go to in order to get blind. Mike's customers go there to see better.

But that night I had a need to completely dismantle my higher faculties, and he knew that as I crossed the threshold.

Because I was carrying in my arms the ruined body of Lady Macbeth. Her head dangled crazily, her proud neck broken clean through, and a hush fell upon Callahan's Place as the door closed behind me.

Mike recovered quickly; he always does. He nodded, a nod which meant both h.e.l.lo and something else, and glanced up and down the bar until he found an untenanted stretch. He pointed to it, I nodded back, and by the time I reached it he had the free lunch and the beer nuts moved out of the way. Not a word was said in the bar-everyone there understood my feelings as well as Callahan did. Do you begin to see how one could stop being an alcoholic there? Someone, I think it was Fast Eddie, made a subvocal sound of empathy as I laid the Lady on the bartop.

I don't know just how old she is. I could find out by writing the Gibson people and asking when serial number 427248 was sent out into the world, but somehow I don't want to. Somewhere in the twenty-to-thirty range, I'd guess, and she can't be less than fifteen, for I met her in 1966. But she was a treasure even then, and the man I bought her from cheated himself horribly. He was getting married much too quickly and needed folding money in a hurry. All I can say is, I hope he got one h.e.l.l of a wife-because I sure got one h.e.l.l of a guitar.

She's a J-45, red sunburst with a custom neck, and she clearly predates the Great Guitar Boom of the Sixties. She is hand-made, not machine-stamped, and she is some forgotten artisan's masterpiece. The very best, top-of-the-line Gibson made today could not touch her; there are very few guitars you can buy that would. She has been my other voice and the basic tool of my trade for a decade and a half. Now her neck, and my heart, were broken clean through.

Long-Drink McGonnigle was at my side, looking mournfully down past me at the pitiful thing on the bar. He touched one of the sprawled strings. It rattled. Death rattle. "Aw," he murmured.

Callahan put a triple Bushmill's in my hand, closed my fingers around it. I made it a double, and then I turned and walked to the chalk line on the floor, faced the merrily crackling fireplace from a distance of twenty feet. People waited respectfully. I drank again while I considered my toast. Then I raised my gla.s.s, and everybody followed suit.

"To the Lady," I said, and drained my gla.s.s and threw it at the back of the fireplace, and then I said, "Sorry, folks," because it's very difficult to make Mike's fireplace emit shards of gla.s.s-it's designed like a parabolic reflector with a shallow focus-but I had thrown hard enough to spatter four tables just the same. I know better than to throw that hard.

n.o.body paid the least mind; as one they chorused, "To the Lady" and drank, and when the barrage was finished, eight tables were littered with shards.

Then there was a pause, while everybody waited to see if I could talk about it yet. The certain knowledge that they were prepared to swallow their curiosity, go back to their drinking and ignore me if that were what I needed, made it possible to speak.

"I was coming offstage. The Purple Cat, over in Easthampton. Tripped over a cable in the dark. Knew I was going down, tried to get her out from under me. The stage there is waist-high, her head just cleared it and wedged in under the monitor speaker. Then my weight came down on her ... " I was sobbing. " ... and she screamed, and I... "

Long-Drink wrapped me in his great long arms and hugged tight. I buried my face in his shirt and wept. Someone else hugged us both from behind me. When I was back under control, both let go and I found a drink in my hand. I gulped it gratefully.

"I hate to ask, Jake," Callahan rumbled. "I'm afraid I already know. Is there any chance she could be fixed?"

"Tell him, Eddie." But Eddie wasn't there; his piano stool was empty. "All right, look, Mike: There are probably ten shops right here on Long Island that'd accept the commission and my money, and maybe an equal number who'd be honest enough to turn me away. There are maybe five real guitar-makers in the whole New York area, and they'd all tell me to forget it. There might be four Master-cla.s.s artisans still alive in all of North America, and their bill would run to four figures, maybe five, a.s.suming they thought they could save her at all." Noah Gonzalez had removed his hat, with a view toward pa.s.sing it; he put it back on. "Look at her. You can't get wood like that anymore. She's got a custom neck and fingerboard, skinnier'n usual, puts the strings closer together-when I play a normal guitar it's like my fingers shrunk. So a rebuilt neck would have less strength, and the fingerboard'd have to be hand-made ..."

I stopped myself. I finished my drink. "Mike, she's dead." Long-Drink burst into tears. Callahan nodded and looked sad, and pa.s.sed me another big drink. He poured one for himself, and he toasted the Lady, and when that barrage was over he set 'em up for the house.

The folks treated me right; we had a proper Irish wake for the Lady, and it got pretty drunk out. We laughed and danced and reminisced and swapped lies, created grand~ toasts; everyone did it up nice. The only thing it lacked was Eddie on the piano; he had disappeared and none knew where. But a wake for Lady Macbeth must include the voice of her long-time colleague-so Callahan surprised us all by sitting down and turning out some creditable barrelhouse. I hadn't known he could play a note, and I'd have sworn his fingers were too big to hit only one key at a time, but he did okay.

Anyhow, when the smoke cleared, Pyotr ended up driving better than half of us home, in groups of three-a task I wouldn't wish on my senator.

I guess I should explain about Pyotr ...

The thing about a joint like Callahan's Place is that it could not possibly function without the cooperation of all its patrons. It takes a lot of volunteer effort to make the Place work the way it does.

Some of this is obvious. Clearly, if a barkeep is going to allow his patrons to smash their empties in the fireplace, they must all be responsible enough to exercise prudence in this pursuit-and furthermore they must have better than average aim. But perhaps it is not obvious, and so I should mention, that there is a broom-and-scoop set on either side of the hearth, and whenever an occasional wild shard ricochets across the room, one of those broom-and-scoops just naturally finds its way into the hands of whoever happens to be nearest, without anything being said.

Similarly, if you like a parking lot in which anarchy reigns, with cars parked every which way like goats in a pen, you must all be prepared to pile outside together six or ten times a night, and back-and-fill in series until whoever is trying to leave can get his car out. This recurring scene looks rather like a grand-scale Chinese Fire Drill, or perhaps like b.u.mper Cars for Grownups; Doc Webster points out that to a Martian it would probably look like some vast robot orgy, and insists on referring to it as Auto-Eroticism.

Then there's closing ritual. Along about fifteen minutes before closing, somebody, usually Fast Eddie Costigan the piano player, comes around to all the tables with a big plastic-lined trash barrel. Each table has one of those funnel-and-tincan ashtrays; someone at each table unscrews it and dumps the b.u.t.ts into the barrel. Then Eddie inserts two corners of the plastic tablecloth into the barrel, the customer lifts the other two corners into the air, and Eddie sluices off the cloth with a seltzer bottle. Other cleanup jobs, mopping and straightening and the like, just seem to get done by somebody or other every night; all Mike Callahan ever had to do is polish the bartop, turn out the lights and go home. Consequently, although he is scrupulous about ceasing to sell booze at legal curfew, Mike is in no hurry to chase his friends out, and indeed I know of several occasions on which he kept the Place open round the clock, giving away nosepaint until the hour arrived at which it became legal to sell it again.

And finally, of course, there's old Pyotr. You see, no one tight drives home from Callahan's bar. When Mike decides that you've had enough-and they'll never make a Breathalyzer as accurate as his professional judgment- the only way in the world you will get another drink from him is to surrender your car keys and then let Pyotr, who drinks only distilled water, drive you home when you fold. The next morning you drive Pyotr back to his cottage, which is just up the street from Callahan's, and if this seems like too much trouble, you can always go drink somewhere else and see what that gets you.

For the first couple of years after Pyotr started coming around, some of us used to wonder what he got out of the arrangement. None of us ever managed to get him to accept so much as a free breakfast the morning after, and how do you buy a drink for a man who drinks distilled water? Oh, Mike gave him the water for free, but a gallon or so of water a night is pretty poor wages for all the hours of driving Pyotr put in, in the company of at least occasionally troublesome drunks, not to mention the inconvenience of spending many nights sleeping on a strange bed or couch or floor. (Some of the boys, and especially the ones who want to get pie-eyed once in a while, are married. Almost to a woman, their wives worship Pyotr; are happy to put him up now and then.) For that matter, none of us could ever figure out what old Pyotr did for a living. He never had to be anywhere at any particular time next morning, and he was never late arriving at Callahan's. If asked what he did he would say, "Oh, a little bit of everything, whenever I can get it,", and drop the subject. Yet he never seemed to be in need of money, and in all the time I knew him I never once saw him take so much as a peanut from the Free Lunch.

(In Callahan's Place there is a free lunch-supported by donations. The value of the change in the jar is almost always greater than the value of the Free Lunch next to it, but n.o.body watches to make sure it stays that way. I mind me of a bad two weeks when that Free Lunch was the only protein I had, and n.o.body so much as frowned at me.) But while he is a bit on the pale side for a man of Middle European stock, Pyotr certainly never looks undernourished, and so there was never any need for us to pry into his personal affairs. Me, I figured him for some kind of a pensioner with a streak of pure altruism, and let it go.

He certainly looks old enough to be a pensioner. Oh, he's in very good shape for his age, and not overly afflicted with wrinkles, but his complexion has that old-leather look. And when you notice his habit of speaking into his cupped hand, and hear the slight lisp in his speech, and you realize that his smiles never seem to pry his lips apart, you get the idea that he's missing some bridgework. And there's something old about his eyes ...

Anyway, Pyotr was busier than usual that night, ferrying home all the casualties of Lady Macbeth's wake. It took quite a while. He took three at a time, using the vehicle of whoever lived furthest away, and taxied back for the next load. Two out of every three drunks would have to taxi back to Callahan's the next day for their cars. I was proud of the honor being paid my dead Lady. Pyotr and Callahan decided to save me for last. Perhaps on the principle that the worst should come last-I was p.i.s.sed, and at the stage of being offensively cheerful and hearty. At last all the other wounded had been choppered out, and Pyotr tapped me on one weaving shoulder.

"So they weld-well bell, hi, Pyotr, wait a half while I finish telling Mike this story-they weld manacles on this giant alien, and they haul him into court for trial, and the first thing he does, they go to swear him in and he swallows the bailiff whole."

Mike had told me this gag, but he is a very compa.s.sionate man. He relit his cheroot and gave me the straight line, "What'd the bailiff do?'

"His job, o'course-he swore, in the witness. Haw hew!" Pyotr joined in the polite laughter and took my arm. "Time to bottle it up, Pyotr you old lovable Litvak? Time to scamper, is it? Why should you have to haul my old ashes, huh? Gimme my keys, Mike, I'm not nearly so drunk as you think-I mean, so thunk as you drink. s.h.i.t, I said it right, I must be drink. All right, just let me find my pants-"

It took both of them to get me to the car. I noticed that every time one of my feet came unstuck from the ground, it seemed to take enormous effort to force it back down again. A car seat leaped up and hit me in the a.s.s, and a door slammed. "Make sure he takes two aspirins before he pa.s.ses out for good," Callahan's voice said from a mile away.

"Right," Pyotr said from only a few blocks distant, and my old Pontiac woke up grumbling. The world lurched suddenly, and we fell off a cliff, landing a million years later in white water. I felt nausea coming on, chattered merrily to stave it off.

"Splendid business, Pyotr old sock, absolutionally magnelephant. You drive well, and this car handles well on ice, but if you keep spinning like this we're going to deed up in the itch-mean, we'll rote off the ride, right? Let's go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and try to buy a drink for every sailor on the U.S.S. Missouri-as a songwriter I'm always hoping to find the Moe juiced. Left her right there on the bartop, by all the G.o.ds! Jus' left her and-turn around, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Heft my Lady back there!"

"It is all right, Jake. Mr. Callahan will leave her locked up. We will wake her for several days, correct Irish custom, yes? Even those not present tonight should have opportunity to pay their respects."

"h.e.l.l, yeah, sure. Hey! Funeral. How? Bury or cremate?"

"Cremation would seem appropriate."

"Strings? Gearboxes? Heavy metal air pollution? Fuggolf. Bury her, dissolve in acid, heave her into the ocean off Montauk Point and let the fish lay eggs in her sounding box. Know why I called her Lady Macbeth?'