Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (7 page)

Because we just sat there, and stared at him, and felt helpless, and the silence became a tangible thing that throbbed in your temples and made your eyes sting.

And then Callahan cleared his throat.

“To be or not to be,” he declaimed in a voice like a foghorn. “Is that the question?”

Like I said, we’re a bright bunch, but it took us a second. By the time I got it, Callahan had already lumbered out from behind the bar, swept a pitcher and three glasses to the floor, and wrapped the tablecloth around him like a toga. Doc Webster was grinning openly.

“Listen, ya goddam fathead,” Callahan declaimed in the hokey, stentorian tones of a Shakespearean ham, ” ‘tis damn well nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, than to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, let ‘em lick ya. Nay, fuck that …“His eyes rolled, his huge hands sawed the air as he postured and orated.

Hauptman stared blankly, his mouth open.

Doc Webster heaved himself up onto a chair, harummphed noisily and struck a pose.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,” he began passionately.

Suddenly Callahan’s Place became a madhouse, something like a theater might be if actors “tuned-up” as cacaphonously as do orchestras. Everyone suddenly became the Ghost of Barrymore, or thought he had, and the air filled with praises of life and courage delivered in the most impassioned histrionic manner. I unpacked my old guitar and joined Fast Eddie in a rousing chorus of “Pack Up Your Sorrows,” and I guess among us all we made a hell of a racket.

“All right, all right,” Callahan bellowed after a few minutes of pandemonium. “I reckon that ought to do, gents. I think we took the Oscar.”

He turned to Hauptman, and tossed the tablecloth on the floor.

“Well, Reverend,” he growled. “Can you top that performance?”

The little minister looked at him for a long spell, and then he began to laugh and laugh. It was a different kind of laugh than we’d heard from him before: it had no ragged, edges and no despair in it. It was a full, deep belly-laugh, and instead of grating on our nerves like a knife on piano wire it made us feel warm and proud and relieved. Kind of a tribute to our act.

“Gentlemen,” he said finally, clapping his hands feebly, still chuckling, “I concede. I’ve been out-acted fair and square; I wouldn’t try to compete with a performance like that.”

Then all at once he sobered, and looked at all of us. “I … I didn’t know people like you existed in this world. I … I think that I can make it now. I’ll find some kind of work. It’s just that … well … if somebody else knows how tough it is, then it’s all right.” The corners of his mouth, lifting in a happy smile, met a flood of tears on their way down. “Thank you, my friends. Thank you.”

“Any time,” said Callahan, and meant it.

And the door banged inevitably open, and we spun around to see a young black kid, chest heaving, framed in the doorway with a .38 Police Positive in his hand.

“Now everybody be quiet, an’ nobody gonna get hurt,” he said shrilly, and stepped inside.

Callahan seemed to swell around the shoulders, but he didn’t move. Everybody was frozen, thinking for the second time that night that we should have been expecting it, and of all of us only Hauptman refused to be numbed by shock any more, only Hauptman kept his head, and only Hauptman remembered.

It all happened very quickly then, as it had to happen. Callahan’s shotgun was behind the bar, out of reach, and Fast Eddie had been caught with both hands in sight. The minister caught Doc Webster’s eye, and they exchanged a meaningful glance across the room that I didn’t understand.

And then the Doc cleared his throat. “Excuse me, young man,” he began, and the black kid turned to tell him to shut up, and behind him Hauptman sprang from his chair headlong across the room and headfirst toward the fireplace.

He landed on his stomach, and his hands plowed straight into the welter of broken glass. As he wrenched over on his back, his right hand came around with that big .45 in it, and the kid was still turning to see what that noise behind him was.

They froze that way for a long moment, Hauptman sprawled in the fireplace, the kid by the bar, and two gun-muzzles stared unblinking across the room at each other. Then Callahan spoke.

“You’ll hurt him with a .38 son, but he’ll kill you with a .45.”

The kid froze, his eyes darting around the room, then flung his gun from him and bolted for the door with a noise like a cross between a sneeze and a sob. Nobody got in his way. ‘

And then Callahan spoke up again. “You see, Tom,” he said conversationally, “moral issues never change. Only social ones.”

One thing I’ll say for the boys at Callahan’s: they can keep a straight face. Nobody cracked a smile as Callahan fed the cops a perfectly hilarious yarn about how the minister had disarmed a thief with a revolver he had only that afternoon taken from a troubled young parishioner. Some of us had even argued against involving the police at all, on general principles-I was one of them-but Callahan insisted that he didn’t want any guns in his joint, and nobody else really wanted them either.

But when I was proudest of the boys was when the police asked for a description of the thief. None of us had given any thought to that, but Doc Webster was right in there, his dragon-in-the-shower voice drowning out all others.

“Description?” he boomed. “Hell, nobody was ever easier to describe. The guy was six-four with a hook-nose, blonde hair, blue eyes, a scar from his right ear to his chin and he had one leg.”

And not one of us so much as blinked as the cop dutifully wrote that down.

Perhaps that kid would have another chance.

Tom Hauptman, however, didn’t come off so well in the aplomb department. As one of the cops was phoning in, LongDrink called out, “Hey-Tom. One thing I don’t understand. That cannon you had was in the fireplace for a good hour or so, and that hearth is plenty warm even when the fire’s been out a while. How the hell come none of the cartridges went off?”

The minister looked puzzled. “Why, I have no idea. Do you suppose that …?”

But the second cop was making strangling sounds and waving the .45. At last he found his voice. “You mean you didn’t know?”

We looked at him.

He tossed the gun-to Callahan, who one-handed it easily, then suddenly looked startled. He hefted the gun, and his jaw dropped.

“There’s no clip in this gun,” he said faintly. “The damned thing’s unloaded.”

And Tom Hauptman fainted dead away.

By the time we recovered from that one, Callahan had decided that Doc and Noah and I were Punday Night Champions, and we were helping ourselves to just one more free drink with Tom Hauptman when Doc came up with an idea.

“Say, Mike,” he called out. “Don’t you think a bunch of savvy galoots like us could find Tom here some kind of job?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Doc,” said Callahan, scratching his neck, “I’ve been givin’ that some thought.” He lit a cigar and regarded the minister with a professional eye. “Tom, do you know anything about tending bar?”

“Huh? Why, yes I do. I tended bar for a couple of summers before I entered the ministry.”

“Well,” Callahan drawled, “I ain’t getting any younger. This all day and all night stuff is okay for someone your age, but I’m pushing fifty. Why I hit a man last week, and he got up on me. I’ve been meaning to get myself a little part-time help, sorta distribute the load a little. And I’d be right honored to have a man of God serve my booze.”

A murmur of shock ran through the bar, and expression of awe at the honor being accorded to Tom Hauptman. He looked around, having the sense to see that it was up to us as much as it was to Callahan.

“Why the hell not?” roared LongDrink and the Doc together, and the minister began to cry.

“Mr. Callahan,” he said, “I’d be proud to help you run this bar.”

About that point a rousing cheer went up, and about two dozen glasses met above the newly-relit blaze in the fireplace. Toasts got proposed all at once, and a firecracker went off somewhere in the back of the room. The minister was lifted up onto a couple or three shoulders, and the most godawful alleycat off-key chorus you ever heard assured him that he was indeed a Jolly Good Fellow.

“This calls for another drink,” Callahan decreed. “What’ll it be, Tom?”

“Well,” the minister said diffidently, “I’ve had an awful lot of gin, and I really haven’t gotten back into training yet. I think I’d better just have a Horse’s Ass.”

“Reverend,” said Callahan, vastly chagrined, “whatever it is, you’re gonna get it on the house. ‘Cause I never heard of it.”

All around the room conversations chopped off in midsentence as the news was assimilated. The last time in my memory when Callahan got taken for a drink was in 1968, when some joker in a pork-pie hat asked for a Mother Superior. Turned out to be a martini with a prune in it, and Callahan by God went out and bought a prune.

Hauptman blinked at the commotion he was causing, and finally managed, “Well, it, uh, won’t set you back very much. It’s just a ginger ale with a cherry in it.” He paused, apparently embarrassed, and continued just a shade too diffidently, “You see, they call it that be-“

“-CAUSE ANYONE WHO’D ORDER ONE IS A HORSE’S ASS!” chorused a dozen voices with him, and a shower of peanuts hit him from all over the room. Tommy Janssen heaved a half-full pitcher at the fireplace, and Fast Eddie snatched it out of the air with his right hand as his left picked up “You Said It, Not Me” in F sharp.

Hauptman accepted his drink from Callahan, and he had it to his lips before he noticed the remarkably authentic-looking plastic fly which Callahan had thoughtfully added to the prescription. The explosion was impressive, and I swear ginger ale came out his ears.

“Seemed like a likely place to find a fly,” said Callahan loudly, and somehow Fast Eddie managed to heave the pitcher at him without interrupting the song. Callahan fielded it deftly and took a long drink.

“That’s what I like to see,” he boomed, replacing his cigar in his teeth. “A place that’s merry.”

The Centipede’s Dilemma

What happened to Fogerty was a classic example of the centipede’s dilemma. Served him right, of course, and I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. But things could have gone much worse with him if he hadn’t been wearing that silly hat.

It was this way:

Fogerty came shuffling in to Callahan’s Place for the first time on the night of the Third Annual Darts Championship,of the Universe, an event by which we place much store at Callahan’s, and I noticed him the moment he walked in. No great feat; he was a sight to see. He looked like a barrel with legs, and I mean a big barrel. On its side. On top of this abundance sat a head like a hastily peeled potato, and on top of the head sat—or rather sprawled—the most ridiculous hat I’d ever seen. It could have passed for a dead zeppelin, floppy and disheveled, a villainous yellow in color. From the moment I saw it I expected it of slide down his face like a disreputable avalanche, but some mysterious force held it at eyebrow level. I couldn’t estimate his age.

Callahan served him without blinking an eye—I some times suspect that if a pink gorilla walked into Callahan’s, on fire, and ordered a shot, Callahan would ask if it wanted a chaser. The guy inhalted three fingers of gin in as many seconds, had Callahan build him another, and strolled on over to the crowd by the dart board, where LongDrink McGonnigle and Doc Webster were locked in mortal combat. I followed along, sensing something zany in the wind.

Some of us at Callahan’s are pretty good with a dart, and consequently the throwing distance is thirty feet, a span which favors brute strength but requires accuracy along with it. The board is a three foot circle with a head-shot of a certain politician (supply your own) on its face, concentric circles of fifty, fourty, twenty, ten and one point each superimposed over his notorious features. When I got to where I could see the board Doc Webster had just planted a dandy high on the right cheek for fourty, and LongDrink was straining to look unconcerned.

“What’s the stakes?” the guy with the hat asked me. His voice sounded like a ‘54 Chevy with bad valves.

“Quarts of Scotch,” I told him. “The challenger stakes a bottle against the previous winner’s total. Last year the Doc there went home with six cases of Peter Dawson’s.” He grunted, watched the Doc notch an ex-presidential ear (you supplied the same politician, didn’t you?), then asked how he could sign up. I directed him to Fast Eddie, who was taking a night off from the piano to referee, and kept half an eye on him while I watched the match. He took no part in the conversational hilarity around him, but watched the combat with a vacuous stare, rather like a man about to fall asleep before the T. V . It was reasonably apparent that wit was not his long suit. Doc Webster won the match handily, and the stein that LongDrink disconsolately pegged into the big fireplace joined a mound of broken glass that was mute testimony to the Doc’s prowess. One of my glasses was in that pile.

About a pound of glass later, Fast Eddie called out, “Dink Fogerty,” and the guy with the hat stood up. The Doc beamed at him like a bear being sociable to a hive, and offered him the darts.

They made a quite a pair. If Fogerty was a barrel, the Doc is what they shipped the barrel in, and it probably rattled a lot. Fogerty took the darts, rammed them together point-first into a nearby table-top, and stood back smiling. The Doc blinked, then smiled back and toed the mark. Plucking a dart from the table-top with an effort, he grinned over his shoulder at Fogerty and let fly.

The dart missed the board entirely.

A gasp went up from the crowd, and the Doc frowned. Fogerty’s expression was unreadable. The champ plucked another dart, wound up and threw again.

The dart landed in the fireplace’ fifteen feet to the left with a noise like change rattling in a pocket.

“It curved,” the Doc yelped, and some of the crowd guffawed. But from where I stood I could see that there were four men between Doc Webster and the fireplace, and I could also see the beginnings of an unpleasant smile on Fogerty’s thick features.