The Callahan Touch

by Spider Robinson

  “—a New Zealander man with a permanent tan, that’s a Maori—”

  Well, at least he’d dropped the Chico Marx accent…

  Jordin and Mary Kay Kare, who between them write really good parody songs, bellowed in protest and tried to bulldog the cluricaune together. Good thing they’re married; they ended up on the floor in the missionary position. (Have you ever wondered, as I have, how those missionaries communicated the idea to the Indians? How did they come to have the vocabulary? It had to be show and tell, right? “Now, never do this…or this…and especially not this…”)

  “—when two patterns combine, in a way serpentine, that’s a moiré—”

  Doc Webster was aghast. He was being outpunned, in his own lair, by a drunken fairy.

  Pausing only to kiss his wife (good man in a crunch), Jordin sprang to his feet and located my fire extinguisher. Mary Kay instantly leapt for cover, followed closely by several others. I opened my mouth in alarm—

  “—He tells jokes, he’s a ham; his last name’s Amsterdam—dat’s-a Morey!”

  —and closed it again. Jordin’s a physicist, who was just about to move to the coast to work at what he calls “Larry’s Rad Lab”—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His specialty is laser-guided propulsion systems, for spacecraft (the idea is, leave the engine at home, where it’s convenient to work on), and he knows more than most people about tracking moving objects. So I let him have his shot.

  And he let the cluricaune have his shot, and it was good shooting indeed. He kept the stream from the fire extinguisher trained on the capering cluricaune for a good eight seconds, never losing him for more than an instant.

  “—if yer vitamins be mostly C, D and E…take some more A—”

  He switched the thing off when it became clear that the cluricaune’s voluminous beard, twirling around him as he spun, could absorb as much as Jordin could deliver, without even losing its snowy white color. The little man seemed to enjoy it.

  Jordin’s magnificent shooting was not completely without effect, however. It reminded the cluricaune of something. He lurched to a weaving halt near the door, turned his back to us, fumbled briefly, and began urinating into the umbrella stand. Through his beard.

  “—Oh, you play ‘What I Say’ very gay—won’t you play that some more, Ray?—”

  A roar of general outrage was building to a crescendo. Our usual reaction to puns of this order was to hold our collective nose and flee screaming into the night. Setting them to Italian music made it worse. It was even harder to take without a drink for insulation. Sooner or later my patrons would remember that outside was the only place they were liable to get a drink tonight, and once that happened an exodus would begin. Those too cautious to risk slipping out past a drunkenly urinating cluricaune (say that three times fast) would simply use the windows—or claw their way through the boarded-up hole in the ceiling if they had to.

  I was not going to let my bar be emptied on its second night by a dipsomaniac dwarf, with Mike Callahan looking on.

  I reached under the bar, took out my Ted Williams classic, and brought it down on the bar so hard the sound was like a rifle shot. Even the cluricaune was startled. He spun around…

  People scattered out of his way.

  I thundered at him. “You swore you’d obey me, you mannerless clown—Now put that away and shut up and sit down!”

  To my surprise, it worked. Maybe the fact that it happened to come out as a rhymed couplet helped. Or maybe a cluricaune’s word is as good as his bond. In any case, he ceased micturating, adjusted things behind that beard, and sat down on air with folded arms without uttering another sound. He looked mildly disgusted.

  The silence was deafening.

  “Nicely done, Jake,” Callahan said.

  I warmed. “Thanks, Mike. You said he was careful about words.”

  “Boy, he’s sure been dipped in the Shannon, hasn’t he?”

  There’s a legend that those dipped in that river are perfectly and forever cured of bashfulness. “Up to his hair,” I agreed. “Uh…maybe you can guess the nature of our immediate problem?”

  He nodded. “It’s coming to me. He gave you three wishes, didn’t he? And I’m one of ’em.”

  I winced. But of course it was not the noun “wish” that was dangerous, only the verb. “You got it. You’re the first. We started in thinking about what to pick…and about the time we started to bite ourselves in the small of the back, I decided to ask your advice. I felt like I was…I still feel like I’m juggling old nitroglycerine.”

  “You are,” he agreed. “Got a plan?”

  “Well, actually—”

  “Excuse me, Jake,” Isham said, brushing sawdust off himself and approaching the bar. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I want you to take this for that table I just totaled.” He tried to put money on the bar.

  I pushed it back at him. “Forget it, man. It looks from here like I can fix it.”

  He shook his head and pushed the money toward me. “It’s cracked down the middle.”

  I pushed his money away again. “Yeah, but I still think I—”

  He shook his head more vigorously. “No way do I want to be remembered like Big Beef McCaffrey.” Big Beef once put a crack down the middle of the front door of Callahan’s Place, with his head, on the way out—and for the next thirty-nine years, the story was still being told to newcomers. “I’m buying you a new table,” he said, pushing the money toward me a third time.

  “Isham,” Tom Hauptman said, “at this point, there’s no telling if we’re still going to be open tomorrow night—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tanya said. “Take the cash, Jake. I’ll drag him here tomorrow night one way or another, and you can give him back the money when I show Ish that table repaired. I know you’re a pretty good carpen—”

  “AAAAARGH!”

  △ △ △

  Well, actually, five or six voices all shouted different things at once, but the net effect was sort of an “AAAAARGH!” I know that when I saw what had caused it, “AAAAARGH!” is what I said, and Tanya said the same thing a moment later, giving it a few extra A’s so that it was more of an “AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH,” on a rising and falling note.

  The table was repaired. Without a crack.

  “Aw shit, Jake, I’m sorry,” Tanya said. “It just slipped out.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said to the cluricaune, “what are you trying to pull?” But I knew.

  And he knew I knew. We all knew. “Plain as the nose on your face—and that’s plain as can be—did I hear the young lady a moment ago,” he cackled gleefully. “Shall we hear it again?” He put a finger up his nose, like the guy in the Monty Python sketch about the man with a tape recorder up his nose, and we all heard, with perfect fidelity and brilliant clarity, Tanya’s voice say for a second time, “…I sho’ wish that table repaired.”

  “Glad I could be of some service,” the cluricaune said, and burst into gales of laughter, rocking back and forth in his tailor’s seat. “Aye, t’is pity she don’t keep her brains in her dumplin’ shop—oh, I could have me a smack at your muns, ye enormous mavourneen! Two o’ yer wishes is gone up in smoke—” He puffed furiously on his pipe, and a gout of smoke arose that would have given one of Callahan’s old cigars some competition on the stinkmeter. “But one of ’em left—t’is a wonderful joke!”

  There was a general roar of outrage at this sophistry—but we had all known he took things literal-mindedly, had cautioned ourselves to be careful a dozen times: he had us dead to rights.

  Suddenly, through the rooba-ing, came the startling sound of Noah Gonzalez laughing along with the cluricaune. Some of us glared at him.

  “Sorry, gang,” Noah said, trying to stop laughing and failing. “Just reminded me of one of my oldest nightmares…I’m working on a voice-activated bomb…and this cub reporter sneaks past all the uniforms…and fires a flashbulb over my shoulder and says…‘That’ll make a nice blow-up for page one!’—” He
lost it and folded over in his chair, hooting.

  One by one, we all broke up.

  Well, it was either that, or fall on the cluricaune with our hands and teeth, I guess. Maybe another barful of people would have chosen the latter. Some guys step on a rake in the dark, and get mad and go punch somebody. Others step on a rake in the dark, and fall down laughing at themselves. I know which kind of guy I’d rather be. So do my friends. Over the years, together, we had come to learn that if you get a chance to turn anger into laughter, that will be a good thing to do. I know I was glad the laughter gave me an excuse to put that silly baseball bat back underneath the bar again. I’d felt like a Firbolg with it in my hand.

  And it was funny, if you thought about it. We’d been handed one of mankind’s age-old dreams…and here we were, stumbling around like a bunch of Keystone Cops, chasing our miracle like Chaplin chasing his hat…and furthermore, being beaten, in our own house, at our own game: merriment.

  For there was no denying that the cluricaune was having a better time in our bar than we were. We were accustomed to think of ourselves as a jolly crew—and he made us look like Baptists. He had outsung, outdanced, outpunned, outdrunk, outraged and outfoxed the lot of us, from the moment we’d clapped him in irons and put him in our thrall—and we had reacted pretty much like a convention of narcotics officers confronted by Hunter Thompson.

  By God, when was the last time I had been having such a good time, I’d urinated into the umbrella stand? Was I getting old, for Chrissakes? So the little guy had an unpleasant voice. Didn’t that describe Long-Drink after the eighth drink? Or for that matter, Eddie in the best of times? What did I care about the damned umbrella stand? For that matter, what the hell did I even have one for? Not one of us owned an umbrella: thanks to Mickey Finn, it was no longer possible for any of Callahan’s regulars to get rained on…

  So he’d offered me three wishes. This was something to hate him for? Just because I was too dumb to meet their challenge?

  “Lots of people,” I heard Doc Webster gasp between guffaws, “go to a bar and stand around all night, waiting for something to happen…” The general laughter gained strength, and after a while it was like that Spike Jones record where the tuba player gets out about a bar and a half of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” and then he and the entire orchestra go into helpless hysterics for three minutes straight. Someone quoted it, now, with a fart noise in B♭, and enough of us knew it to kind of kick the laughter into a lower and more durable gear; we howled until the tears came, and beyond. I hadn’t laughed that hard since…

  …since I’d been in Callahan’s Place.

  The cluricaune whooped along with us. And not at us. The difference was clear.

  “Oh Lord,” I said when I could form words, “it’s almost worth losing my whole stock, to have had a laugh like that. No, it is worth it. Ah Naggeneen, you slippery bugger, I’d have pissed meself if you hadn’t siphoned me kidneys. You’ll go up a ladder to bed, one day.”

  He wiped his own streaming eyes. “Faith, I do like a lad who can laugh at himself. Yer a right jolly dog, Mr. Publican, damned it you ain’t, and I take off me cap to ye!” He did so, with a grand tipsy flourish. “And the same for yer company—champion laughers I call ye, the lot of yez. I haven’t had me a giggle like that since the reign o’ Queen Dick!”

  “The what?” Fast Eddie asked sotto voce.

  “It’s Irish for ‘never,’ Eddie,” the Duck explained. I was startled. There was no sneer in his voice, no rude parody of patience. He just answered Eddie’s question.

  Doc Webster was the first to achieve full sobriety. “Well, Jacob,” he said, “it seems to me our problem has sort of solved itself, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I hate to break up this happy gathering; that belly laugh was worth a lot, and I’m grateful for it…but unless we want this to be the proverbial Last Laugh, there’s only one possible choice for Number Three. Right?”

  People were too tired from laughing to rooba rooba, but it was clear that the Doc had set a lot of brains to buzzing.

  “What’s the hurry?” Shorty Steinitz muttered.

  “I think we just proved kind of conclusively that the longer we put it off, the more trouble we’re likely to get in,” the Doc said. “Like Jake said before, like Noah said, think of a ticking bomb. Suppose Tanya had said…no, Jesus, I’m doing it again. Fun is fun, but it’s time to bottle it up and go.”

  I turned to Callahan. “What about you, Mike?”

  “What about me?”

  “Don’t you…uh…need a ride home?”

  That got a feeble rooba. Probably most people had the same quick flash I did: lose the cluricaune, and then keep Mike Callahan here with us forever—

  —a prisoner of fairy magic. Right!

  But Mike was shaking his head. “I told you once, Jake: I don’t use a time machine to get around. I don’t need any special equipment to get back home.”

  “How can that be, Mike?” Mary Kay Kare was moved to ask. “When I ask Jordin, he gets grouchy for days afterwards.” Her husband opened his mouth to deny the charge, and opted to stand mute instead.

  “James Taylor knows,” Callahan said.

  “James Taylor?” Mary Kay said. “The genius James Taylor?”

  “It’s in his song, ‘The Secret O’ Life,’ Mary Kay,” Callahan said.

  The Duck snorted. “How could any song live up to a title like that?”

  “Listen to the song, Ernie,” Callahan advised him. “Jake, the ball’s in your court. The Doc is right: whatever you’re fixing to do, t’were best done pronto. Looked at a certain way, people are essentially wish-generators, with no off-switch, and they’re dangerous when armed. We can’t help brimming with wishes, and most of them would kill us or worse if they ever came true. Sooner or later, somebody here’s going to start subvocalizing what they’re thinking…”

  Decision time!

  Damn, this running a bar was turning out to be tougher than I’d ever imagined…

  Somehow in the midst of everything I became aware of the fact that the Duck was staring at me with great intensity. Even more than everyone else present, he hung on my next words for some reason. I took a deep breath—

  “Hold it!” Doc Webster commanded.

  “What is it, Doc?” I said, a little annoyed.

  “Before you take any irrevocable steps, there’s something I’ve got to do,” he said.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Swing,” I said.

  He waddled over to where the cluricaune sat cross-legged on nothing. The wizened little fairy looked him square in the eye, regarding him without fear but with respectful attention.

  The Doc planted his feet, threw his arms wide, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and opened his mouth. When he sang the first word, “When—,” dragging it out theatrically like a ham baritone, eyes began to widen; by the time he descended a step for “—a—,” people were beginning to smile in sudden understanding, and the cluricaune’s eyes were sparkling merrily.

  “—Canadian shows you his mother, he goes:

  “Dat’s my mawr, eh?”

  The cluricaune broke into laughter and applause. “A new one, bedad, and I thought I knew all of ’em—good on ye, mister!” Those of us who had gotten enough strength back laughed with him, and clapped our hands, and banged our empty steins on the bar and tables. Doc Webster had upheld the honor of the house.

  The Doc inclined his head with massive dignity, and stepped back.

  Tanya stepped forward. She cleared her throat. The cluricaune widened his eyes slightly. And Tanya sang:

  “With the high price of feed, it’s for farmers in need

  “That some mow hay…”

  More laughter and applause, this time with an element of groan in it, true, but still a good hand, from human and cluricaune alike. Tanya too stepped back with proud satisfaction.

  I threw caution to the winds and came around my bar. The cluricaune, convulsed with laughter, whooped louder when he saw me
coming. “Yet another?” he cried. “Ah, ye’re thunderin’ geniuses!” Thinking rapidly, I squared off before him. Off to my right, Eddie gave me an E7+ intro chord on his piano—A is my key, what an accompanist!—and I sang:

  “My new ray-gun here tries to put out both your eyes:

  “It’s a Moe-Ray…”

  I wasn’t sure he’d get the reference—but apparently his knowledge of American cinema ranged all the way from Kane down to the Three Stooges: he laughed so hard he lost his pipe, and slapped his thigh so hard he put himself into a spin, his long snow-white beard chasing him in a slow circle. The applause I got from the gang sounded, to my totally unbiased professional ear, almost equal to what the Doc had drawn, but not so much more than Tanya’s that I had to feel embarrassed. I stepped back, bowed slightly to all, and went back around the bar to pronounce sentence.

  And as I got there, the Duck—of all people—left his chair for the first time that night, and walked up to the cluricaune.

  “Faith, there can’t be another,” the little old man gasped, and flailed his hands until he was stabilized at local vertical again.

  Trying as hard as possible to appear bored and detached about the whole thing, the Duck sang—in an unexpectedly magnificent, operatic tenor:

  “If King Kong has gone flat, rent the flick Vampire Bat:

  “That’s some more Wray…”

  In the explosion of mirth that ensued, the cluricaune’s teeth left his head and began caroming around the room like a runaway hedge-clipper, still laughing. His boots left his feet, his cap left his head, and as we all roared together, their respective vectors brought them together by chance at one end of the room, where they assembled themselves into a sketch of a man dancing a reel and laughing his heart out. “Ceol na naingeal,” the cluricaune crooned as he laughed.

  A long, breathless time later, he drew himself unsteadily to his bare feet and held out his hands. His boots and cap and teeth and pipe returned to him, and docked without assistance. He spun in mid-air to face me, and bowed so grandly he lost the cap again, and caught it as it went by his feet.