Callahan’s Secret, page 11
“God’s teeth,” I said under my breath. Then aloud: “From twenty feet across a parking lot by moonlight you can tell I’ve got something on my mind. From what? The echo of an expression I was wearing before you pulled up? You people are incorrigibly good at what you do, you know that?”
“Ouch,” Les said softly.
They had almost reached me by now, and the third thing I saw was that Les’s hardcover was a boxed videotape, and the second thing I saw was that Merry’s stereo was a VCR, and the first thing I saw was that Les and Merry were—astonishingly, most uncharacteristically—miserably depressed. Their expressions, their stride, their body language, all said that they were so far down that up was for astronomers; they had, to quote a song, of mine, the Industrial Strength Blues.
“Jesus Christ on a Moped, what’s the matter with you two?” An unpleasant thought began to form. “Oh hell, you didn’t lose one, did you?” That happened a year ago, a sleeping-pill job, and it took us all about a week to put the Cheerful Charlies back together again. It is the occupational risk, and a failure rate as low as one a year means that the Cheerfuls are supernaturally good at what they do. (They have to be; there is no malpractice insurance for their racket.)
“No,” Merry answered, “not yet anyway.”
“Well, tell me about it.”
“You tell us yours first.”
“Mine? Hey, on a scale of ten I’m a point two five and you guys are up in the eights—and I think it’s a log scale, like the Richter.”
“Come on, give. If it’s a simple one, great: we could use the confidence right now.”
I shrugged. “Okay. I was just going a few rounds with envy.”
“Of whom?” Merry asked, setting the VCR down on the Datsun I was using for a bench.
“The Doc.”
“Ah.”
“I like to make people laugh. So I troll for the best jokes I can find, make up the best ones I can devise, work on my timing, try to work the audience into it and use their feedback—and it works pretty well, most times they laugh, or groan, or whatever I was looking for. The Doc could recite his Social Security Number, deadpan, and lay ’em on the floor. Dammit, I tell better jokes than he does, I even think I tell ’em better—and he gets more laughs. With his incredibly tortuous set-ups and his corny voice and his Paleozoic punchlines, we all fall down laughing. Even me! He’s just an intrinsically funny man—and I’m just a guy who tries to be funny.”
“And the worst of it,” Les said, “is that he’s such a totally nice guy, you can’t even dislike him for it.”
“Bullseye.”
Merry grinned, a ghost of her usual grin. “This is ironic.” She and Lea shared a glance.
I shook my head ruefully. “For you guys, no doubt. So okay: in the words of Mr. Ribadhee to the Hip Ghand, ‘Straighten me, ’cause I’m ready.’”
“Jake,” Les said, “a few years ago you lent us a novel called Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny. Remember it?”
“Sure. An SF novel about a world patterned after Hindu mythology.”
“Right—and then along came Buddha to kick over the applecart. Now, remember how the people who had become ‘gods’ were each able, at will, to take on an Aspect and raise up an Attribute?”
“Yama could become Death, and drink your life with his eyes, Mara’s Aspect was Illusion, and his Attribute was to cloud your mind with a gesture. And so forth.”
“You’ve got it. Well, it’s like that with the Doc. His Aspect is Humor. In a figurative, but very real sense, Doc Webster is Humor—at least when he chooses to take on his Aspect. And his Attribute is the ability to make you piss yourself laughing. Envying him is like envying a flower because it never needs deodorant.”
“Huh,” I said. “I think I get you. It’s silly to envy the gods.”
“Especially when you are one.”
“Eh?”
“Jake,” Merry said, “when was the last time someone interrupted you while you were singing?”
“Well…” I couldn’t bring such an instance to mind. People do tend to quiet down when I take my guitar out of her case.
Les did his uncanny Martin Mull imitation. “‘Remember the Great Folk Music Scare of the Fifties?’” he quoted. “‘That shit almost caught on.’ Jake, haven’t you noticed that you’re about the only folksinger left on Long Island who can still find regular work? Don’t you know why you don’t need electronics and a thousand watts and a rhythm section to get gigs? Man, when you pick up Lady Macbeth and put her across your lap and open your mouth, you take on your Aspect—and when you wring her neck and coax sound out of her sounding-box and sing along with her, you’re raising up your Attribute. You take people out of themselves, for as long as you choose to go on singing. Doc Webster is Humor, Jake, and you are Music. Don’t you know that?”
I thought it over—and suddenly grinned. “How did you guys ever get the name Cheerful Charlies?”
“Maybe because we own the complete works of Walt Kelly,” Les hazarded. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
“Wait—what about your problem? Cheering-up ought to be like breastfeeding, you know, mutually satisfactory”
“Tit for tot?” Merry asked innocently.
Les mock-glared at her. “I think our problem should be taken inside,” he said. “We need a group head on this one.”
So we went in and took chairs at the bar.
Mike Callahan came ambling over, wiping his big hands on his apron, smiling broadly when he saw the Cheerfuls. He took out one of the non-safety stick matches he imports from Canada, struck it on his stubbly chin, and put a fresh light on one of the stunted malodorous cigars he imports from Hell. “Well, if it ain’t the Beerful Barleys! What’ll it be, folks?”
I finished the beer I had left on the counter and answered for all three of us. “Bless us father, for we have thirst.”
Callahan nodded and made up three portions of God’s Blessing. It is called Irish Coffee by the vulgar, and I’m told there are actually places where they don’t sugar the rim of the glass before making it—but we who drink at Callahan’s Place have a proper respect for the finer things in life. “Here you go, folks.” I could tell from his expression that Mike had picked up on the Cheerfuls’ state of mind, and wanted to know what they were down about. But…look, I’ve been hanging out at Callahan’s for a good many years now. But if I walked in tomorrow night with a toilet bowl tattooed on my forehead, Mike Callahan would fail to notice it unless and until I brought the matter up. Mike likes that people should open up and talk about their troubles in his bar—and so he has given standing orders to Fast Eddie the piano player that anyone caught asking snoopy questions is to be discouraged with a blackjack.
Occasionally, though, he will allow himself to lead a witness. “So how’s life been treating you?” he asked as he Blessed us.
Merry answered obliquely. “Mike, is that babble box in the back room still operational?”
The big Irishman blinked. “Well, yeah. I use it for a monitor on my microprocessor.”
Callahan’s Place has been fully wired for cable television—but the only times in my memory that the tube has ever been hooked up for viewing and switched on were coronations, assassinations, space shots, and the final episode of “M*A*S*H.” Its operation requires either the unanimous vote of all customers present, or—even more rarely—whim of Mike Callahan.
Merry lifted the VCR from her lap and set it on the bar. “Would you whip it out, Mike? We want to call a meeting.”
The red-headed barkeep was as mystified and curious as I was—I could tell—but he just nodded.
Well, of course, by the time the boob tube was hot and the VCR connected, the Cheerfuls had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. Callahan passed around fresh drinks for those who needed them, and we sat back to see what the Cheerfuls had for us.
“Folks,” Merry said, popping the tape into the deck and laying her finger on the PLAY button, “we’ve got a client we don’t know what to do with, and we’d like to ask your help.”
There was a ragged chorus of reply. “Sure,” “Of course,” “You got it,” and, from Long-Drink McGonnigle in the corner, “Whyn’t you just bring him or her around?”
Merry looked pained. “Ordinarily we would. But this case is a little unique, and we thought it might be advisable if we prepared you first. You may not be able to help us, and if you can’t it’ll hurt worse than not trying.”
“I am offended,” the Drink said, only half-kidding. “This here is Callahan’s Place. Did you need to prepare us before you brought around that guy with no jaw?”
“No,” Merry conceded, “and you were all splendid. But this is different.”
“We just have to be sure,” Les said. “This guy is right on the edge. So here’s the deal: the tape Merry is about to run lasts about two minutes. If you can all watch it all the way through in dead silence—without a single sound—we’ll bring him around tomorrow night. Deal?”
“This tape is of your client?” Callahan asked.
“That’s right.”
“Piece of cake,” Long-Drink stated. “Fire it up.”
Merry nodded, and pushed down the PLAY button—
—and we all fell down laughing.
She stopped the tape, and the laughter chopped off raggedly, leaving a stunned silence.
She reached to start it again, and we redoubled our determination not to laugh…and within five seconds the last of us had collapsed again in helpless, horrified laughter.
She stopped and started it once more, and this time I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood, and again I could not prevent myself from whooping with laughter. Nor could any of us—Callahan included.
“You see why your problem outside seemed so ironic to us, Jake,” Merry murmured, stopping the tape for the last time and popping it up out of the machine. I nodded, thunderstruck.
Did you ever find yourself in a situation where it is hideously inappropriate to laugh—and you just can’t help yourself? It is a horrid sensation, much like shifting your pants. Now I began to understand why the Cheerfuls weren’t. Imagine if Doc Webster literally couldn’t help being funny…
“What de fuck was dat?” Fast Eddie breathed.
“That,” Doc Webster said grimly, “was the worst case of Tourette’s Syndrome I ever saw in my life.”
“Doc,” Long-Drink said indignantly, “are you trying to tell me that that was some kind of disease? What kind of guy do you think God is, anyway?”
So the Doc told us all about Tourette’s Syndrome. Nobody knows what causes it. You may have seen Dick Cavett doing a public-service commercial about it, late at night when the network has run out of paying customers. I had—and recognized the symptoms almost as quickly as the Doc had—but it was hard to imagine that there could be an unhappier victim anywhere in the world than the Cheerfuls’ client; he was afflicted with an extremely exaggerated version of the syndrome.
The symptoms of Tourette’s include involuntary twitching, grunting and barking. No sufferer is happy with it—but this young fellow just happened to have a recurring twitch that looked exactly like what might be produced by the greatest comedian in the world going flat out for a laugh, and his grunts sounded precisely like a gorilla making love, and his constant barking was not only uncannily canine, but issued from a face which looked more like a cocker spaniel’s than even early-period Ringo Starr did. The overall effect was devastatingly—diabolically—hilarious; the three symptoms, funny enough separately, heterodyned together.
“His name is Billy Walker, and he’s eighteen years old,” Les said. “The disease came on at age fifteen—it usually hits the young—and the usual palliatives, Haldol and so forth, don’t help him in the slightest. Unlike most sufferers, he can’t suppress or control his symptoms, even for a short time. This tape was made by a couple of specialists from Johns Hopkins, and they had to leave the room while the camera was rolling or they would have spoiled the audio track. For the last two years Billy has lived shut up in a little cottage in Rocky Point, supported by his parents. The only friend he’s had since the onset was a blind and deaf guy he met at Hopkins. They lived together for a year. The guy died two weeks ago, and Billy saw our ad and got in touch with us.”
“And now I don’t know what we’re going to do for him,” Merry finished sadly.
“How’d he get in touch with you?” I asked.
Merry looked even sadder. “I hate to admit this. He called us three times on the phone, and each time we just assumed that it was a gag call. The third time, Les got mad and told him off—so he sent us a letter.”
“How could he hold a pen steady enough with a twitch like that?”
“He couldn’t. He typed the letter, timing the twitches.”
“Jesus.”
“As if things weren’t bad enough, of course, he happens to be extremely intelligent and sensitive, with the remnants of what was once a terrific sense of humor.”
“You’ve spent time with him?” Callahan asked.
“With great difficulty, about half an hour,” Merry said. “The longest I could go without giggling was about ten or twenty seconds, and eventually I gave up, assured him that I had something terrific up my sleeve, and got out of there. My ribs still hurt. There’s something about that bark that you just can’t get used to. Look, does anyone here have any idea what we could do for this poor son of a bitch? He’s so damned lonely that the tears pour down your face while you’re laughing, honest to God.”
There was a general rumble of sad negation. “Beats the hell out of me.” “Help the poor guy do himself in as painlessly as possible.” “Maybe it’ll go away…in time.” “Find a whole lot of blind and deaf guys…nah, that’s no good.” Les and Merry looked more and more downcast.
“I think I got it,” Callahan said, and they both looked around sharply, hope beginning to form. “Hey, Drink! Lend me your copper-topper a minute, will you?”
The McGonnigle, puzzled but willing, tossed Mike the night-watchman’s cap that he wears off-duty (because it looks so much like a policeman’s hat that he is never ever passed, cut off, or tailgated on the highway). Mike caught it, opened the cash register and took out a fistful of bills, dropped them into the hat.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed, “I’m looking for about three hundred bucks.” And he passed the hat to me.
I looked around, saw there were about fifty or sixty of us present, and tossed in a fin. Then I remembered how many of the regulars had lost jobs lately, and added another five, and passed the hat on.
When it got back to Callahan it was overflowing with cash. He totaled it up, and it came to four and a quarter. He beamed around at us all. “Thanks, folks. The cash register just closed for the night.” And he began a bucket-brigade of fresh drinks for everyone present.
“Whaddya gonna do wit de cabbage, Boss?” Fast Eddie asked.
“You’ll see tomorrow night, Eddie. Or maybe the night after, it might take a while to set up.”
“Set up what?” Les and Merry chorused.
“Meet me here tomorrow at noon and I’ll show you,” Callahan promised.
The next evening was Fireside Fill-More Night, on which Fast Eddie and I traditionally jam together. There were four people missing that I had expected to see: the Cheerfuls, Eddie and Callahan himself. Tom Hauptmann, the second-string bartender, could tell us nothing except that Mike had called him late in the day and asked him to fill in. So I did a solo, and it went well enough…but halfway through I got an idea, and invited Doc Webster up to do a bunch of comedy songs—and we brought the house down together.
I pulled in the next night at about a quarter to eight. Callahan was there in his usual place behind the bar, and Tom Hauptmann was with him. That was a little odd: Mike usually only needs help on weekends, when the crowd is thickest, and there weren’t enough customers tonight to justify two barkeeps. The TV (no, not Bill Gerrity; I mean the television) was back on the bartop, but the station it was tuned to didn’t seem to be on the air; horizontal stripes chased each other up its face. Callahan saw me come in, sized me up with a glance and had a shot of Bushmill’s and a beer ready by the time I reached him. As usual, it was just what I’d have ordered if he’d given me a chance. “Evening, Jake.”
“Hi, Mike. How’d you make out on that Billy Walker thing?”
He drew on his cheroot. “We’ll find out together at nine o’clock.”
“Okay, be mysterious.” I sipped and chased a few times, enjoying the contrast of tastes and textures. “Hey, where’s the blackboard? This is Riddle Night, isn’t it?”
On Riddle Night, one of us makes up riddles and the rest of us try and unscramble them. Each solved riddle costs the Riddlemaster/Riddlemistress a drink; each unresolved riddle is a free drink for him/her. Most often we use the classic “Invisible Idiot” or mangled-translation format. You must have heard the old dodge about the translator who rendered “out of sight, out of mind” literally as “invisible idiot.” Like that. For example, “festive, meathooks; finish second” would be correctly deciphered as “gala, hands; place” or “Callahan’s Place.” Semicolons mark the end of a word, commas separate parts of a single word. They can get quite tricky—it once took me months to translate “coffin; baby boy” as Paul Newman. Ordinarily the Riddlemaster (last week’s champ) would have had at least half a dozen riddles already chalked up on a big blackboard by the door for study—but last week’s champ was Callahan himself, and he hadn’t even trotted out the board yet. “We’ll get to them later, too,” he said, and wandered off to replenish the free lunch.
So I washed down my curiosity with the world’s oldest whiskey (they got their charter to distill in 1608) and listened to Fast Eddie stitch his way through a medley of Eubie Blake, Willie the Lion, Pinetop Smith, and Memphis Slim. Eddie had to get special hammers for his piano; the thumbtacks used to keep falling out. I was mildly sorry I’d left my guitar at home; I’d missed my weekly jam with him. The joint filled up while he played, and our spirits danced to his merry tune. When Eddie’s on a roll like that, people tend to shut up and dig it. Once a loud newcomer distracted the runty little piano man in the middle of “Tricky Fingers.” Eddie got the sap from his boot and pegged it across the room, laid the fellow out, and damned if the sap didn’t bounce back right to his hand—and not a note did he fluff during the procedure. They raise ’em tough in Red Hook.
