Callahan's Key

by Spider Robinson

  I was not even faintly surprised. I had been expecting this to happen—and to happen just about now, too. As part of my research for the trip, I had dug out and reread Stephen Gaskin’s wonderful old sixties memoir, HEY BEATNIK! It’s the story of the longest-lasting hippie commune in American history (The Farm still exists today, albeit much changed)—and it begins with Stephen’s account of the giant bus caravan that brought them all, hundreds of hairy freaks, to Tennessee from California. An important point he raises is that there exists a phenomenon he calls “cop teletype”: an informal and mostly unofficial network by which state highway patrols exchange information with one another. Any kind of serious weirdness moving on the interstate highway system is just naturally going to be logged and passed along down the line—and a convoy of two dozen converted buses, containing people not one of whom is wearing a necktie or pantyhose, definitely fits the cop definition of serious weirdness. I had foreseen that we would probably show up on the radar the moment we left New York City (where nothing is considered seriously weird by the cops), and sure enough, here was our first ping. This encounter, Stephen’s memoir suggested, would be crucial. Much, if not everything, depended on it going well.

  The copmobile passed the whole convoy, came up alongside me, and matched speeds. I glanced over and down, and as I expected, the trooper in the shotgun seat gave me a hard look and the pull over sign.

  I glanced away for a quick assessment of the situation. The shoulder here was really not wide enough to accommodate a schoolbus—two dozen of them in a row plus ancillary vehicles would be a major road hazard. Traffic was moderately heavy. We were just at that moment coming up on a road sign that read “REST AREA 1 MILE AHEAD.” I could just make out the exit for it on the horizon ahead. “Get ready to stop, folks,” I said into the CB mike. I turned back to the cop, pointed to the road sign, and pantomimed that we would all pull in at the rest stop.

  Maybe he didn’t have time to see the sign before it flashed past, didn’t realize where he was on the road. Maybe he just hated mimes. Instead of nodding and telling his partner to pull in in front of me, like a reasonable person, he stuck a handgun out the window, cocked it, drew a dead bead on my face, and repeated his pull over gesture with emphasis.

  I raised my hands in surrender, nodded as pacifically as I could, said, “Heads up, people—we’re stopping now,” into the CB mike, and took my foot off the gas; the heavy-laden monster began to slow at once. I eased over onto the shoulder, and the copmobile pulled in ahead of me. Way ahead: the driver, at least, was sensible enough to realize that I could not decelerate any quicker than whichever bus behind me happened to have the worst brakes, and gave me plenty of room.

  Eventually we were all at rest. My bus was sticking out at least a foot into the road, and nobody else was any better off. The CB was full of indignant questions, complaints, and sulfurous curses. Braying car horns dopplered past. Zoey unstrapped and checked on Erin, cursing loudly herself. Ralph was in the doorwell, barking his own curses: he had slipped off his seat and slid under Zoey’s into the well. I put the mike to my mouth and brayed, “SHADDAP.”

  Silence fell, in my bus and on CB, except for the continuous dopplering sound of horns from drivers whizzing past us.

  “Is anybody hurt?” I asked. “Any injuries? Report!”

  Nothing. Zoey signed that Erin was fine. Ralph growled, but softly, came up the stairs and went back to his seat.

  “Okay. Everybody stay inside, sit tight, and stand by,” I said, and hung up the mike.

  This was not going as well as I’d hoped.

  The cop car was about fifty yards ahead. The cop with the gun got out, holstered it with a flourish, and came toward me, doing Eastwood. The driver stayed behind the wheel; I was too high up to see him, but through my open window I could faintly hear him pumping up a shotgun. His partner came around to my door—there was just room for him to stand between the bus and the ditch—and gestured. I cranked open the door.

  “A fuckin’ hippie,” he said under his breath.

  He was young, mean, and stupid. His face and body language and the meticulous perfection of his haircut and shave and uniform all loudly proclaimed the message I am a hard-on, and would be very happy to prove it. A quarter of a century of history melted away; suddenly it was the Sixties again. I was a hippie in a bus; he was a cop. Natural enemies.

  “Good afternoon, Officer,” I said politely.

  “Step out of the vehicle please, sir,” he said, doing his best to make a fighting word out of the “sir.”

  I failed to notice. “Certainly.” I unbelted, being careful how I moved my hands, and dismounted.

  It really felt like being in a time-warp. The actual cops I had known back in the Sixties, those that weren’t already retired, were probably wearing mustaches and hair as long as mine by now, and had nearly forgotten how much they used to hate longhairs. But pendulums do keep swinging, and this twenty-something throwback might have just stepped into Bryant Park, looking for fun. I could feel hairs standing up on the back of my neck. “Please take your operator’s license out of your wallet and hand it to me, sir,” he said.

  “I don’t have a wallet,” I said.

  He frowned. “You don’t have a wallet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where the hell do you keep your credit cards?”

  I sighed. “I don’t have any of those, either.”

  Now he really scowled. I had confirmed his darkest suspicions. Hell, drug dealers had credit cards. I was not a normal human being, not a card-carrying citizen, not a decent respectable member of polite society.

  Well, what could I say? He was right.

  “Do you have an operator’s license, sir?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Please hand it to me, sir.”

  I took it out of my shirt pocket and handed it over. He backed off a pace or two, keeping one hand on his gun butt—a Glock 9mm—and studied the license. “You’re Jacob Stonebender?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And this is your address?”

  I sighed again. “Not since nine o’clock this morning.”

  He looked at me. “This is not your address?”

  “Not anymore,” I repeated.

  “What is your current address, sir?”

  “I don’t have one yet. We’re moving.”

  He scowled even harder. Not only was I not a card-carrying citizen, I was homeless. An Okie. He tucked my license into his shirt pocket, touched his shoulder mike, and recited the information he had so far to his partner in the cruiser.

  I was getting more depressed by the minute. This was not going well at all. Soon, inevitably, he would want to search the bus…and then all the buses. Even if everybody else had hidden their stash as well as I had, by the time he was done making a nuisance of himself, there would, inevitably, be at least one fender bender: someone racing by would either clip one of the buses, or clip somebody to the left of him in avoiding one, or slow down to gawk and initiate a chain pileup. An inauspicious beginning for our journey. Furthermore, it was freezing out…and I was dressed for comfortable driving in an unusually well-heated bus, with no more than a sweater to keep off the chill.

  “Hey, Jake,” Ralph von Wau Wau said from above me, “Zoey vants to know if you vant your chacket.”

  The cop glanced up automatically, did a double-take, then made it a triple-take.

  “Yeah, thanks, Ralph,” I said.

  “Gluffs, too?” asked the German shepherd.

  “Sure,” I said.

  He ducked back inside for a moment, came back out with my pea coat in his teeth, and let it go with a flick of his head. I caught it and put it on. Throughout all this the cop was as motionless as if he had frozen solid, staring fixedly at Ralph.

  “Goot day, Officer,” Ralph said politely.

  The cop made no reply.

  To my left, Erin appeared in the open doorway at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t forget your hat, Daddy,” she sa
id, and tossed my watch cap to me. I caught that too and put it on.

  The cop tore his eyes away from Ralph with a visible effort, glanced at Erin…and stared at her just as hard.

  “Good afternoon, Officer,” she said. “Is this going to take long? If it will be a while, I really ought to shut the engine off and save gas. And pass the word back up the line by CB, so all the others can do the same.”

  The cop’s left eye began visibly to tic. His hand on his gun butt began to tremble slightly. Other than that, he might have been carved from stone. You know the expression, you could see the wheels turning? Well, in his eyes you could see the wheels trying to turn—and burning out their bearings instead.

  “Vould you mind iff I step out of ze vehicle too, Officer?” Ralph asked. “Ve haff sanitary facilities aboard, of course—but I haff never cared for litter boxes.”

  His voice drew the cop’s eyes back to him.

  “I assure you, I vill be discreet,” Ralph told him.

  Somewhere in the cop’s head, a relay clicked over. What to do when you’re in over your head. He put his free hand to his shoulder mike and said, “Marty, come here.”

  I was close enough to hear his partner’s instant reply, though I couldn’t tell you if it came from an external speaker or an overloud earphone. “Trouble, Joe?”

  Joe took a deep breath. “Marty,” he said, “that’s not a simple question.”

  “It isn’t?” Pause. “On my way.”

  He was as good as his word. I heard the cruiser’s door open, and a few seconds later he came into view around the fender with a shotgun at port arms, an older cop with a lot more miles on him than Joe had. Marty looked as if he might well have served through the Sixties—and had been thinking about it ever since. “What’s the situation?” he asked his partner.

  “I want to search every one of these goddam buses,” Joe said. “These mopes are wrong.”

  “We have no problem with that, Officer Joe,” Erin said. “But wouldn’t it make more sense to do it at that rest stop just ahead?”

  “Zat vouldt zertainly be more pragtical for efferyvun,” Ralph agreed, laying the accent on even thicker than usual.

  Marty looked at both of them, then at me.

  “They’re right,” I said.

  “You see what I mean?” Joe said. “It ain’t a simple question.”

  Marty nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  “Look, fellas,” I said, “I’m trying to be cooperative, but I’m getting goose bumps, and traffic’s starting to back up. Could we hurry this along? How about if you go ahead and search my bus—and then after you come up empty, you let the rest of us pull up ahead to the oh shit.”

  Joe had been drifting over toward the door; probably to do just as I was suggesting—but suddenly he stopped in his tracks. I could see his nostrils flare, hear him sniff, imagine what he smelled in my bus, and feel my heart sinking. He was exactly the sort of young policeman who would have a hypersensitive nose for pot, and genuinely believe it to be a dangerous narcotic. I should have waited until after this known-to-be-inevitable confrontation to light up…but had foolishly allowed the ugliness of the New Jersey Turnpike to overwhelm my judgment. Bad mistake.

  Sure enough, a second later he had me up against the side of the bus, a palm on my chest holding me in place, his Glock out and pointing at my face. “That’s it!” he roared. “Everybody off the fuckin’ bus, now.”

  For what happened next I accept full responsibility. I’d, been suppressing annoyance ever since he’d first pointed that thing at me back out on the highway. My job as Road Chief was to stay cool under provocation. But now my irritation blossomed into anger. Perhaps I was politically offended by his assumption that pot smokers are presumptively armed and dangerous. Perhaps I was just an insulted ape. In any case, I did something stupid.

  I reached out and poked my middle finger into the barrel of his Glock.

  It was a snug fit. He tried to pull clear, and failed. “Get that finger out of there,” he snarled, “or I’ll blow it off!”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “NO!” Marty cried.

  Joe was young, and even stupider than anger had made me. He growled and pulled the trigger. The gun burst with a loud bang, and dropped to the ground. Joe yelped and lurched away from me, holding his wrist and gaping down at his gun hand. The thumb stuck out at an unnatural angle.

  His staggering took him to the open door of my bus. Erin reached out a hand from the bottom step, caught hold of his belt, and reeled him in. Still staring stupidly at his injured hand, he let her take it and examine it. As preparation for our trip, she’d done quite a lot of reading on first aid.

  “It’s not broken,” she told him, “but it’s dislocated. This is going to hurt.”

  He blinked at her. She popped his thumb back in place, and Joe screamed. Then he looked down at the hand, and carefully worked his fingers, and looked back up at Erin. He opened his mouth, and after a few seconds managed to say, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said gravely. “You should get it looked at.”

  “Nice job, honey,” Zoey said.

  “Thanks, Mom. I just followed the book.”

  I turned to Marty. His face was blank. He still had the shotgun in his hands, but had clearly forgotten it. He was looking at what was left of Joe’s gun, on the ground. “Lemme see your finger,” he said to me, his voice hoarse.

  Well, he’d asked. In a long and interesting life, it was the first time a cop had ever asked me to give him the finger. I held it up, as politely as I could.

  Marty looked at it, and then me. For a fairly long time. Finally he said, “Where you folks from?”

  “Long Island,” I told him.

  “Where you all going?”

  “Florida,” I said.

  He lowered the shotgun. “Drive on,” he said.

  “Thank you, Officer,” Zoey said.

  I held out my hand to Joe, palm upward. He blinked at me and started to back away.

  “I need my license,” I said.

  “Oh.” He got it back out of his shirt pocket with his left hand and gave it to me. “Sorry we bothered you, Mr. Stonebender,” he said dizzily.

  “Good,” I said, stepped around him, and began to board my bus. Marty put out a hand to stop me. “You gonna file a beef?”

  I shook my head. “That was my fault. I’m glad your partner didn’t get hurt bad.”

  He bit his lip and nodded slowly. “Nice of you to look at it that way,” he said.

  I picked Erin up, carried her up the stairs with me, and put her back into her seat. “Bye, Officer Marty,” she said, waving to him.

  “So long, miss,” he said, and touched his cap. “I’ll go make a path for you folks.” He bent, scooped up the ruined Glock, and handed it to his partner. “Come on, Joe.” I could see from his eyes that Joe was thinking about going into shock.

  “Thanks,” I said, and cranked the door closed. The cops got back in their car. Officer Marty put on his light, sirens, and emergency flashers, and when he got an opening pulled out onto the highway and stopped, blocking traffic from the right-hand lane.

  I got on the CB. “Okay, folks, we’re moving out. Stay on the shoulder until you get past the Smoky.” I sat down and strapped in, revved my engine a couple of times.

  A chorus of acknowledgments came back. “What was that noise, Jake?” Long-Drink asked.

  “Nothing, Drink,” I assured him. “Just shooting the bull.” I put her in gear. “Let’s roll.”

  We had no further trouble in New Jersey. Beyond having to look at New Jersey.

  And we had no further police trouble the whole rest of the way down to Florida. Not highway cops, anyway. In state after state, they watched us roll by without putting down their donuts. The word had apparently gone out on the cop teletype: Don’t mess with them.

  Getting shot seemed a small price to pay.

  I happened to get something in my eye just as we left Jersey
and crossed into Delaware, so I missed that state almost entirely. I think we were in it for all of ten miles. That seemed adequate.

  Just before we left it and entered Maryland, I had a brief instant of panic when I started seeing signs for Newark. For a moment I had the idea I had gotten us caught in some evil Twilight Zone loop, and now we were back in North Jersey again, condemned to spend eternity on the Jersey Turnpike. (That’s the only way I can think of that would make the Jersey Pike even worse: turn it into a Möbius strip.) But it turns out Delaware has, for reasons I can’t even imagine, a Newark of its own. I couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like to be from there, and have someone ask you where you’re from. First you have to admit you’re from Newark…then you have to decide whether to humiliate yourself even further, or just let your listener assume you mean the one in New Jersey. They must have real cheap rent there.

  We stopped for the night at a little state park slash campground just over the Maryland border. It was early in the day to stop—we’d made pretty good time so far. But if we’d kept on going until the sun gave out, we’d pretty much have been forced to pass the night in Baltimore. We just weren’t in that much of a hurry.

  Also, I found myself captivated by the name of the town nearest the campground. It was called—you’ll have to trust me on this—North East. I have no idea why. You could start there and go south as long as you like without ever coming to a place called East. There is no place to the west of it called North. Maybe it’s just that everybody there wants to disassociate themselves as much as possible from sou’westers. Maybe the big town, East itself, just up and went west one day, abandoning its outlying region to fend for itself.

  Perhaps one day population growth will force incorporation of a suburb of North East, called Southwest North East. I like to think so, anyway. That’s just the way my mind works—or avoids doing so, if you prefer. I take great personal delight in inexplicable oddities, especially of nomenclature, and am always happy to add to my collection. One of my favorites, for instance, is the intersection in New York City where Waverly Place meets Waverly Place. (Honest—look it up! It’s in the Village.) And I had only with difficulty been talked out of leading us all miles out of our way into Pennsylvania, just so I could take a quick look at Intercourse, the town Ralph Ginzburg went to prison for. (Do you recall the story? Back in the Dark Ages, Mr. Ginzburg published a pornographic magazine so tastefully camouflaged that several respectable authorities were willing to testify that it was Art—but the judge jugged him anyway. With an excess of what I can only call cockiness, Mr. Ginzburg had arranged for subscription copies to be mailed out from darkest Pennsylvania, so they’d arrive postmarked “Intercourse,” and Hizzoner maintained that this demonstrated prurient intent. Anytime somebody does hard time for having a sense of humor, you better believe I’ll make careful note of it.)