Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (4 page)

Then he raised his glass and waited, and we all drank with him. Before the last glass was empty his head hit the table like an anvil, and we had to pick him up and carry him to the back room where Callahan keeps a cot, and you know, he was heavy.

And he snored in three stages.

The Time-Traveler

Of course we should have been expecting it. I guess the people at Callahan’s read newspapers just like other folks, and there’d been a discotheque over on Jericho Turnpike hit three days earlier. But somehow none of us was prepared for it when it came.

Well, how were we to know? It’s not that Callahan’s Place is so isolated from the world that you never expect it to be affected by the same things. God knows that most of the troubles of the world, old and new, come through the door of Callahan’s sooner or later-but they usually have a dollar bill in their fist, not a .45 automatic. Besides, he was such a shrimpy little guy.

And on top of everything, it was Punday night.

Punday Night is a weekly attraction at Callahan’s-if that’s the word. Folks who come into the place for the first time on a Tuesday evening have been known to flee screaming into the night, leaving full pitchers of beer behind in their haste to be elsewhere. There’s Sunday, see, and then there’s Monday, and then there’s Punday. And on that day, the boys begin assembling around seven-thirty, and after a time people stop piddling around with drafts and start lining up pitchers, and Fast Eddie gets up from his beat-up upright piano and starts pulling tables together. Everyone begins ever-so-casually jockeying for position, so important on Punday night. Here and there the newer men can be heard warming up with one another, and the first groans are heard.

“Say, Fogerty. I hear tell Stacy Keach was engaged to the same girl three times. Every time the Big Day come due, she decided she couldn’t stand him.”

“Do tell.”

“Yup. Then the late Harry Truman hisself advised her, said, `gal, if you can’t stand the Keach, get out of the hitchin.’ “

And another three or four glasses hit the fireplace.

Of course the real regulars, the old-timers, simply sit and drink their beer and conserve their wit. They add little to the shattered welter of glass that grows in the foreplace-though the toasts, when they make them, can get pretty flashy.

Along about eleven Doc Webster comes waddling in from his rounds and the place hushes up. The Doc suffers his topcoat and bag to be taken from him, collects a beermug full of Peter Dawson’s from Callahan, and takes his place at the head of the assembled tables like a liner coming into port. Then, folding his fingers over his great belly, he addresses the group.

“What is the topic?”

At this point the fate of the evening hangs in the balance. Maybe you’ll get a good topic, maybe you won’t -and the only way to explain what I mean is by example:

“Fast Eddie,” says Callahan, “how ‘bout a little inspirational music?”

“That would bring the problem into scale,” says Doc Webster, and the battle is joined.

“I had already noted that,” comes the hasty riposte from Shorty Steinitz, and over on his right LongDrink McGonnigle snorts.

“You’ve cleffed me in twain,” he accuses, and Tommy Janssen advises him to take a rest, and by the time that Callahan can point out that “This ain’t a music-hall, it’s a bar,” they’re off and running. Once a topic is established, it goes in rotation clockwise from Doc Webster, and if you can’t supply a stinker when your turn comes up, you’re out. By one o’clock in the morning, it’s usually a tight contest between the real pros, all of them acutely aware that anyone still in the lists by closing gets his night’s tab erased. It has become a point of honor to drink a good deal on Punday night to show how confident you are. When I first noticed this and asked Callahan whose idea Punday had been in the first place he told me he couldn’t remember. One smart fella, that Callahan.

This one night in particular had used up an awful lot of alcohol, and one hell of a lot of spiritual fortitude. The topic was one of those naturals that can be milked for hours: “electricity.” It was about one-fifteen that the trouble started.

By this point in a harrowing evening, the competition was down to the Doc, Noah Gonzalez and me. I was feeling decidedly pun-chy.

“I have a feeling this is going to be a good round Fermi,” the Doc mused, and sent a few ounces of Scotch past an angelic smile.

“You’ve galvanized us all once again, Doc,” said Noah immediately.

“Socket to me,” I agreed enthusiastically.

The Doc made a face, no great feat considering what he had to work with, and glared at me. “Wire you debasing this contest with slang?” he intoned.

“Oh, I don’t know,” interceded Noah. “It seems like an acceptable current usage to me.”

“You see, Doc?” I said desperately, beginning to feel the strain now, “Noah and I seem tube be in agreement.”

But Doc Webster wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t even looking in my, direction. He was staring fixedly over Noah’s right shoulder. “I regret to inform you all,” he said with the utmost calm, “that the gent at the bar is not packing a lightning rod.”

About thirty heads spun around at once, and sure enough, there was a guy in front of the bar with a .45 automatic in his hand, and Callahan was staring equably into the medicine end. He was holding out a salt-shaker in his huge horny fist.

“What’s that for?” the gunman demanded.

“Might as well salt that thing, son. You’re about to eat it.

Now your run-of-the-mill stickup artist would react to a line like that by waving the rod around a little, maybe even picking off the odd bottle behind the bar. This fellow just looked more depressed.

He didn’t look like a stickup artist if it came to that; I’d have taken him for an insurance salesman down on his luck. He was short, slight and balding, and his goldrimmed glasses pinched cruelly at his nose. His features were utterly nondescript, a Walter Mitty caricature of despair, and I couldn’t help remembering that some of our more notable assassins have been Walter Mitty types.

Then I saw Fast Eddie over at the piano slide his hand down to his boot for the little blackjack he carries for emergencies, and began trying to remember if my insurance was paid up. The scrawny gunman locked eyes with Callahan, holding the cannon steady as a rock, and Callahan smiled.

“Want a drink to wash it down with?” he asked.

The guy with the gun ran out of determination all at once and lowered the piece, looking around him vaguely. Callahan pointed to the fireplace, and the guy nodded thanks. The gun described a lazy arc and landed in the pile of glass with a sound like change rattling in a pocket.

You might almost have thought the gun had shattered a window that kept out a storm, but the whooshing sound that followed was really only the noise of a couple dozen guys all exhaling at the same time. Fast Eddie’s hand slid back up his leg, and Callahan said softly, “You forgot the toast, friend.”

I expected that to confuse the guy, but it seemed he knew something about Callahan’s Place after all, because he just nodded and made his toast.

“To progress.”

I could see people all up and down the bar firing up their guessers, but nobody opened his trap. We waited to see if the guy felt like telling us what his beef with progress was, and when you understand that you will have gone a long way toward understanding what Callahan’s Place is all about. I’m sure anywhere else folks’d figure that a man who’d just waved a gun around owed ‘em an explanation, if not a few teeth. We just sat there looking noncommittal and hoping he’d let it out.

He did.

“I mean, progress is something with no pity and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew and spits out things you can’t understand and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money. What the hell is the sense of progress anyway?”

“Keeps the dust off ya,” said Slippery Joe Maser seriously. Now Joe, as you know, has two wives, and there sure as hell ain’t no dust on him.

“I suppose you’re right,” said the clerical-looking burglar, “but I’d surely appreciate a little dust just at the moment. I was hip-deep in it for years, and I didn’t know how well off I was.”

“Well, take this to cut it with,” said Callahan, and held out a gin-and-gin. As he handed it over, his other hand came up from behind the bar with a sawed-off shotgun in it. “I’ll be damned,” said Callahan, noticing it for the first time, “Forgot I had that in my hand.” He put it back under the bar, and the balding bandit swallowed.

“Now then, brother, pull up a chair and tell us your name, and if you’ve got troubles I never heard before I’ll give you the case of your choice.”

“Make it I. W. Harper.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harp-oooooooch!” said Doc Webster, the last rising syllable occasioned by Long-drink McGonnigle’s size nines having come down hard on the Doc’s instep. Pretty quick on the uptake, that LongDrink.

“My name is Hauptman,” the fellow said, picking up the drink. “Thomas Hauptman. I’m a …” He took a long pull. “That is, I used to be a minister.”

“And then God went and died and now what the hell do you do, is that it?” asked LongDrink with genuine sympathy.

“Something like that,” Hauptman agreed. “He died of malaria in a stinking little cell in a stinking little town in a stinking little banana republic called Pasala, and his name was Mary.” Ice cubes clicked against his teeth.

“Your wife?” asked Callahan after a while.

“Yes. My wife. No one dies of malaria any more, do you know that? I mean, they licked that one years ago.”

“How’d it happen?” Doc asked gently, and as Callahan refilled glasses all around, the Time-Traveler told us history.

Mary and I (he said) had a special game we played between ourselves. Oh, all couples play the same game, I suppose, but we knew we were doing it, and we never cheated.

You see, as many of you are no doubt aware, it is often difficult for a man and a woman to agree (sustained audience demonstration, signifying hearty agreement) … even a minister and his wife. Almost any given course of action will have two sides: she wants to spend Sunday driving in the country, and he wants to spend it watching the football people sell razor blades.

How is the dilemma resolved? Often by histrionics, at ten paces. She will emote feverishly on the joys of a country drive, entering rapture as she portrays the heartstopping beauty to be found along Route 25A at this time of year. He, in turn, will roll his eyes and saw his hands as he attempts to convey through the wholly inadequate vocabulary of word and gesture how crucial this particular game is to both the History of Football and the Scheme of Things.

The winner gets, in lieu of an Oscar, his or her own way.

It’s a fairly reasonable system, based on the theory that the pitch of your performance is a function of how important the goal is to you. If you recognize that you’re being out-acted, you realize how important this one is to your spouse, and you acquiesce.

The not-cheating comes right there-in not hamming it up just to be the winner (unless, rarely, that’s the real issue), and in admitting you’ve been topped.

That’s why when Mary brought God into the argument—a highly unfair, last-ditch gambit for a minister’s wife—I gave in and agreed that we would spend my vacation visiting her sister Corinne.

I had given up a congregation over in Sayville, not very far from here. Frankly Mary and I had had all the Long Island we could take. We hadn’t even any plans: weintended to take a month’s vacation, our first in several years, and then decide where to settle next. I wanted to spend the month with friends in Boulder, Colorado, and Mary wanted to visit her sister in a little fly-speck banana republic called Pasala. Corinne was a nurse with the Peace Corps, and they hadn’t seen each other for seven or eight years.

As I said, when a minister’s wife begins to tell him about missionary zeal, it is time to capitulate. We said good-bye to my successor, Reverend Davis, promised to send a forwarding address as soon as we had one, and pushed off in the winter of 1963.

We divided the voyage between discussing the growing unpleasantness in a place called Viet Nam, and arguing over whether to ultimately settle on the West or East Coast. We both gave uncertain, shaky performances, and the issue was tabled.

Meeting Corinne for the first time I was terribly struck by a dissimilarity of the sisters. Where Mary’s hair was a rich, almost chocolate brown, Corinne’s was. a decidedly vivid red. Where Mary’s features were round, Corinne’s were square, with pronounced cheekbones. Where Mary was small and soft, Corinne was long and lithe. They were both very, very beautiful, but the only characteristic they shared was a profundity of faith that had nothing to do with heredity, and which went quite as well with Corinne’s fiery sense of purpose as with Mary’s quiet certainty.

Pasala turned out to be a perfect comic-opera Central American country, presided over by a smalltime tyrant named De Villega. The hospital where Corinne worked was located directly across the Plaza de Palacio from the palace which gave the square its name. De Villega had built himself an immense mausoleum of an imitation castle from which to rule, at about the same time that the hospital was built, with much the same sources of funding. Pasala, you see, exports maize, sugar cane, a good deal of mahogany … and oil.

As Corinne led us past the palace from the harbor, I commented on the number of heavily-armed guardias, in groups of five each of which had its own comisario, who stood at every point of entry to the huge stone structure with their rifles at the ready. Corinne told us that revolution was brewing in the hills to the north, under the leadership of a man named Miranda, who with absurd inevitability had styled himself El Supremo. Mary and I roared with laughter at this final cliché, and demanded to be shown someone taking a siesta.

Without cracking a smile, Corinne led us around behind the hospital, where four mule-drawn carts were filled with khaki figures taking the siesta that never ends. “You cannot deal with the problems of Pasala by changing the channel, Tom,” she said soberly, and my horror was replaced by both a wave of guilt and a wistful, palpebral vision of Boulder in the spring-which of course only made me feel more guilty.