The Callahan Touch

by Spider Robinson

  “It’s now,” Eddie croaked. He looked appealingly at Long-Drink and gave a little shake of his head. “Right now. I mean, now just started…now.”

  Rooba rooba rooba.

  We all understood Eddie perfectly. The program scrawl typically lists ninety minutes’ worth of programming on forty-some channels, in half-hour increments—and an Iron Law of the Universe states that if you access the program scrawl one thousand times at random, eight hundred and seventy-one times it will have just finished the present half-hour period, forcing you to wait the maximum possible amount of time for the information you seek. An additional hundred and twenty-seven times, you’ll be trying to find out what’s going to start in the next half-hour slot, so that block will have just finished. And twice, the computer program that generates the scrawl will have hung, so that there’s no information and you can’t even guess how long you’ll have to wait. Everybody knows this, and for some reason nobody ever talks about it. (Sometimes I think of it as the Single Overlooked Blunder in an otherwise convincing scam universe. You know that Heinlein story, “They,” where the guy’s world seems perfectly ordinary and plausible…until one rainy day there’s a screwup in the Continuity Department, and one of his windows displays sunshine? You don’t want to tug too hard at an anomaly like that: your universe could unravel like a cheap sock.) You can set your watch by it; you can watch your set by it; it never fails—unless you’re attempting to demonstrate the phenomenon to an unbeliever.

  Until now. Either Eddie was lying, or the Duck had—right before our very eyes—accessed the program scrawl just as it began to display the current listings. The most consistent example of Finagle’s Law in the universe lay in ruins. It was almost enough to make me wonder what was on TV now.

  “Jesus Christ and His Tympani Five,” the Drink exclaimed.

  And then things got weirder, real fast.

  △ △ △

  First, fire—

  Wanting to dramatically express his extreme astonishment, Long-Drink attempted a histrionic gesture he’d seen but never tried before: he clapped his hands to his bosom, one across the other, like a silent-movie heroine, while rolling his eyes at the sky. (Being Irish, he already rolled his r’s.) His right palm chanced to reach his chest first. There it encountered a lump in his shirt pocket: the little plastic film-can of strike-anywhere matches he likes to light on his thumbnail, and all too often on his fly. The container happened to be full to capacity with matches. A split-second after his right palm struck it, his left palm slapped against the back of his right hand. Perhaps some unlikely harmonic resonance occurred. The entire canister-full of matches went up, with more than enough force to blow off the lid and send a fiery column of vigorously flaring wooden matchsticks high into the air, like Munchkin fireworks. Well it was for the Drink that he had tilted his head back as part of the gesture—the entire rising barrage missed his chin and sailed high in the air, spreading like a fountain of flame. If he’d been looking down, he’d have lost his left eye. As it was, only one of the forty-odd burning matches fell back onto his head and set his hair on fire.

  Which made it unanimous. There were forty-odd people in the room, kind of clustered near the bar, and not one of us had our hair set on fire by any more—or any less—than a single match. It looked for a second as if two matches were going to land on Tommy Janssen, but he made a wild attempt to bat them away from him and managed to knock one of them high over the TV set so that Fast Eddie wouldn’t be left out. The room began to fill with the dreadful smell of burning hair. And the sound of forty-odd reluctant Apostles, beginning to speak in tongues…

  Then, water—

  Well, beer. Luckily we are all experienced drunks: those who held stronger beverages had presence of mind enough not to use them, or someone might have been badly burned. But the alcohol content of beer is low enough to permit its use as an emergency fire extinguisher. Lucky us!—there was precisely enough beer on the loose in the room to saturate every single head. Tom Hauptman and I got each other. Since Fast Eddie had a straight Bushmill’s in his hand, three or four helpful souls sent their dregs his way; all four missed and soaked the TV, which sparked and died, adding its portion to the smoke rising for the rafters. Eddie, meanwhile, solved his own problem: it was not his hair but his favorite cabby’s cap that was burning; he tore it off and trampled it in the sawdust.

  Then, ice—

  —as we all turned as one to glare at the Duck.

  He pooched out his lower lip with his tongue, and nodded twice. “Hell,” he said contentedly, “you probably think that was weird.”

  Those holding drinks stronger than beer now reached a consensus that their time, too, had come; the Duck’s range and bearing were taken; arms cocked—

  Suddenly the Duck was on his feet, eyes flashing. “Would you guys like to see something—” He paused, tossed his aviator’s scarf back over his shoulder, thrust out his beard, and grinned broadly. “—really weird?”

  Consensus changed; there were much more practical things to do with hard liquor. “Don’t see why.” “Not me.” “No, thanks Duckster, maybe later, eh?” “What’re you drinking, Duck?” “Man quacks me up.” “Why do they call him the Lucky Duck, anyway?”

  And folks sort of went back about their business. One of the gods, passing unnoticed among us, had suddenly taken on his Aspect and raised up his Attribute—on a throat-clearing level—and it was time to make the place seem agreeable and let him enjoy his beer.

  △ △ △

  The Duck turned to me, indicated his empty glass and held up one finger. I drew him another Rickard’s, and waved my hand over it. He nodded thanks, once. “To competition,” he said softly, and tossed the empty glass negligently over his shoulder. We both ignored it. “Maybe I can’t outpun the big sawbones over there,” he said, nodding toward Doc Webster, “but I can outweird all of you rummies put together, any day.”

  There was a distant “Ouch!” and then a small musical crash as the empty glass finally arrived, by circuitous means no doubt, in the fireplace.

  “Mind if I ask a snoopy question or two?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Ask. If you stumble into any sensitive areas, I’ll rip your eyelids off to clue you.”

  “You been this way from in front?”

  His answer told me that he had caught the obscure Lord Buckley reference. “Why—you gonna straighten my bent frame?”

  I shook my head. “Wouldn’t know how. I just figured that if it came on any time after you were born, where and when would be a clue.”

  “Astute. Naturally, such a thing would never have occurred to me. But as it happens, I have been the Lucky Duck ever since my last stroke of unmitigated rotten luck: being born. Mom always said my father was the same way.”

  “You never knew your Dad?”

  “I tried hard, but his steadfast absence defeated me. That and Mom’s reticence. About all I know about him is that he had red hair, his first name was Eric, and he must have been a tough guy—she never called him anything but Feared Eric, or ‘that big red son of a fairy,’ and she doesn’t like to talk about him.” He belched spectacularly. “I’m just guessing the red hair because she’s Irish—for all I know he was an Apache. Or a Martian.”

  I made a long arm and punched myself up a Blessing, Black Bush in Celebes Kalossi. It gave me time to think. Difficult to try and help such a thorny little guy. Did he even want any help?

  “Gotta be a strain on a guy,” I said tentatively.

  He shrugged.

  “Suppose I could straighten that metaphorical bent frame,” I said. “Hypothetically…would you want me to?”

  “Make me a normal human being? Would you want to be one?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Doubtless many would agree with you,” he said acidly, and then relented. “Oh, all right. I admit it’s a good question. But how would I know? I have nothing to compare my life to.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, sometimes I think life would be a lot
simpler if odds didn’t get even odder around me. The only thing I can say for it—and against it—is that the luck is never totally good or totally bad. Just weird. Sometimes I think I’ve got a guardian idiot.”

  I cracked up. “You too? I’ve had that feeling all my life. I never heard anybody else call it that. A guardian idiot: a little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me…only he’s an imbecile.” I laughed so hard I nearly spilled whiskey. Doc Webster noticed that, and stared; when I didn’t invite him in on the joke with my eyes he turned away and went back to swapping puns with Willard.

  The Duck nodded. “But a lucky imbecile. Somehow the net effect is usually that things more or less cancel out. Like, if you’re sitting next to me and you win a million bucks in the lottery, don’t worry about it: something will happen and you’ll be right back where you started before you know it. Except for any wear and tear it might put on your nerves to win a million dollars and lose it in the same day.”

  It must have been hard for him to keep a friend. No wonder he was so sour.

  “No,” the hairy little man said, “taking it all in all, I don’t think I’d want to lose my…whatever it is I’ve got. I mean, obviously my life is perfect: it produced me. But like I said last night, if I ever meet that Mike Callahan of yours, I’d sure like to ask him whether or not there’s some way to put an off-switch on the bastard. Or even just a rheostat. As I age, I weary of being fantastic. Just about the only thing I’ve never tried is boredom. People seem to work so hard to get it, I figure it must be worth trying.”

  “I enjoy having you in my place, Ernie,” I said, thankful that I remembered at least half of the birth-name he’d given us last night. “I got a feeling you belong here. But in all honesty I have to tell you, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Mike to show up.”

  He grimaced. “Christ, that’s a break. I was bracing myself to do mouth-to-mouth on you if you tried it. Look, you just opened this joint. I’ll give it a week or two; maybe this Callahan will show up. If not—” He shrugged. “There are worse places to have a beer.” He finished his glass, and tossed it negligently over his shoulder. I started to say something, and broke off as he locked eyes with me. We kept looking at each other, while behind him musical pandemonium broke out, thuds and crashes and tinkles and shouts and splashes and cries of dismay and people lurching back and forth. I don’t think I could tell you any more about it if I’d seen it happen. All I know is, as the commotion was ending, the Duck stuck out both his hands, and his empty glass—two-thirds full now—dropped into them from above like a mortar round. He caught it well: some beer escaped, but he caught half as it fell again, and the rest impacted squarely on the bar-rag that lay curled up before me.

  He took a sip. “Half Dos Equis and half Cooper’s,” he announced.

  Behind him there was brief silence…and then sustained applause. “Damndest thing I ever—” “—see the way that—” “—and I tried to—just as you—” “—have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my—” “—and then it just—” “—goddam work of art!”

  The Duck turned around and acknowledged their applause with an inclination of the head.

  “Mister,” Long-Drink McGonnigle said, “if you can teach me that trick…”

  The Duck smiled and turned back to me.

  “See what I mean?” he said. “Some places that’ll get you assaulted. These guys appreciate beauty. A round for the house, barkeep.”

  The applause redoubled.

  I helped Tom Hauptman pass out fresh drinks until he had it under control, then went back to the Duck again.

  “Anything in particular seem to trigger it?” I asked him. “Or does it just happen all the time at random?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes when I’m nervous. Out of sorts, like.”

  “Threatened? A defense mechanism?”

  He glared at me as though I’d just said something truly stupid, but what he said was, “Maybe.” He didn’t seem crazy about the implication. The true macho man doesn’t need defense mechanisms.

  No wonder he’d concentrated so hard on developing his offense mechanisms…

  I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere here. He’d been thinking about this a lot longer than I had. I decided the thing to do with the Lucky Duck was to simply accept him as he was and not worry about it. That was what Mike Callahan would have done. “Well, look on the bright side: if it is a defense mechanism, you won’t need it here. This is the only bunch of rummies I know that never has a fistfight.”

  “You mean, ‘hardly ever’.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Never.”

  He shook his own head. “No shit. You people were weird before I even got here.”

  “You got that right. Hanging out together got us blown up by an atom bomb, once, and we’re still doing it.” That reminded me of something, all of a sudden. “Will you excuse me for a minute, Duck? I just reminded myself of something I meant to ask the gang last night, and forgot. It’s kind of important.”

  “What, end this riveting discussion? I’ll have to kill myself.”

  “Thanks.”

  △ △ △

  Fast Eddie was just hemstitching the final chorus of “In the Evenin’ When the Sun Goes Down,” with his left hand as Mulgrew Miller and his right as Ray Charles, to enthusiastic applause. When he took a break to shake the snake, I came around the bar and went to the chalk line. I took my coffee mug with me, and whistled for general attention.

  “There’s something we’ve got to get straight, folks,” I said.

  “Why not leave it bent?” Long-Drink asked reasonably.

  I had a question for that particular subset of humanity, one that could not be asked with strangers present. So I had to bring it up now. Sooner or later, strangers would start walking in the door and it would be too late.

  “Because it’s too important, Drink,” I told him. “It’s the root.”

  “I think he’s talking about his dick,” Margie Shorter said in a stage whisper, and several people giggled.

  “I’ll discuss straightening that with you later if you like, Marge,” I said, and several of the gigglers told an imaginary horse to whoa. “Right now,” I went on doggedly, “I’m talking about my mandate, not my manhood.”

  “Mandate?” the Drink said. “What’s mandatory around here, except having fun and makin’ toasts?”

  “Precisely my question,” I said.

  That finished quelling the gigglers. “How do you mean that, Jake?” Doc Webster asked. “You feel a need to make some new rules?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I just want a clear statement of what it is we’re all here for.”

  The McGonnigle looked at me as if I’d gone mad. “Drinking,” he said, as one explaining the obvious to a child.

  Fast Eddie had returned from his errand. “Being merry,” he said in the same manner as Long-Drink.

  “Sharing,” Maureen said.

  “Those are good things to do,” I agreed, “and if that’s what we all say we’re here for…well, we could do a lot worse. But everyone in this room—except you, Duck—was standing within earshot the night I first proposed opening this joint and agreed to run it. Anybody here remember why? Anybody recall what we said it was gonna be for, that night?”

  Light was dawning all around.

  “We were one that night. I know a lot of time has passed since—I don’t know about you, but I remember it real good. We were one, in telepathic communion…and not for the first time, either. So when it was over we hurt. That’s why everybody hurts—because they’re not telepathic. And it’s a lot worse when you know what you’re missing. So we all decided that if we could do it twice with the help of Mike Callahan and the McDonald brothers, maybe in twenty years or so of trying we could learn to do it for ourselves. We knew the potential was there. And we agreed it was worth trying. This place was intended from the very beginning as a workshop, a school in getting telepathic.”

  Thoughtful sile
nce.

  “We’ve all kind of drifted apart some in the last year or two,” I said. “Nobody’s fault; none of us had a home big enough to hold all of us, that’s all. Now we do. Have we drifted so far away from that night in the woods that we no longer want to try and get telepathic again? Or not? Are we content at this point to simply drink and be merry and share? That’s all I want to know, and I want to be clear on it. Me, I’ll go either way; whatever we decide. Take your time.”

  Long thoughtful silence.

  “Do you have any specific ideas on how to go about getting telepathic, Jake?” Tom Hauptman asked, handing me a mug of Blessing.

  “Same plan I suggested that night,” I said. “Love each other as hard as we can, and see what happens. And in the meantime, drink and be merry and share, to pass the time. Stick with what’s worked for us in the past, in other words. I haven’t got any Six-Step Program; I don’t want to turn the place into a séance or an encounter session. I just want to know if it’s all going somewhere…or if it’s all right here.”

  I sipped Irish coffee and waited.

  The Duck was so interested he forgot to look bored. He signaled Tom Hauptman for a new drink.

  “I remember that night,” Long-Drink McGonnigle said softly.

  “I’ve never forgotten that night,” Isham Latimer murmured, and hugged his wife Tanya to his side.

  “I’ll remember zat night in my grafe,” Ralph von Wau Wau said.

  “Like you said that night, Jake,” Noah said, “Maybe it’ll take us twenty years to figure out how to do that again…but I got twenty years I’m not using.” A couple of people nodded.

  “Being all together like that,” Doc Webster rumbled, “being whole for once…” He shook his big head. “Let me put it this way: I found a nuclear explosion at arm’s length to be a less interesting experience. No: I found surviving a nuclear explosion at arm’s length less interesting. I don’t know about the rest of you monkeys, but…no, that’s the point: I do know about the rest of you monkeys. That’s what we’re all here for, all right.”

  And he spun on his heel, as gracefully as someone who weighed less than four hundred pounds, bellowed, “To us!” and fired the first shot of what became a thundering cannonade of glasses and coffee mugs into the fireplace. The cheer was as loud as the explosion, in a different octave but in the same key.