“Hey, Jake,” Jim Omar called from the other direction, “I can fix this.”
He referred to the gate. He was holding it up against its ruined hinges experimentally, the way a girl holds a dress up in front of herself to judge how it will look if she puts it on. He was using a thumb and two fingers to do so. Omar looks like a normal, if large-size, person, but I’ve seen him lift up the front of a school bus and set it down on his jack. The gate itself was badly cracked, but Omar was right; it was repairable. Seeing it made me think of a man decades dead, with the unlikely name of Big Beef McCaffrey. “Okay,” I called back to him. “But do a mediocre job, will you?”
He pantomimed puzzlement.
“Tradition,” I told him.
He continued to look uncomprehending for a moment—and then he smiled. “Big Beef.”
I nodded.
There were smiles all around. Nearly everyone either remembered Big Beef McCaffrey or had heard the story. Our original home, Callahan’s Place, had featured a big poorly repaired crack right down the center of its front door, too. It had been put there in the late 1940s by the head of the McCaffrey, the night he tried to stiff Mike with a bogus ten-spot. Now I had a crack to match it in my own tavern door. For some reason I found that absurdly pleasing, and a quick glance around told me I wasn’t the only one.
“You got it,” Omar called. He inspected the door again. “Still rather use my own tools, though. I’ll have it back tomorrow.” He left with it, carrying it in one hand as if it were an empty pizza box.
I put my elbows on the bar, my face in my hands, closed my eyes, and briefly left the world. (That’s the kind of clientele I got: I can do that when I need to, and my bar will still be intact when I get back.)
Okay, Jake: let’s compact our feces, here. The hammer of doom hangs over you, the forces of darkness are mad enough to shit thumbtacks, and it’s time to establish priorities. You won’t be able to get hold of Zoey for hours yet. It’s too late to phone your lawyer, or anyone in the government who could offer info or advice. So your optimum move right now is…what, again?
Well, I have a default answer for that question.
I turned to The Machine and found that Long-Drink McGonnigle was way ahead of me. While I had been staring into space, he had come around behind the bar and taken over for me. A whipped-cream-capped mug was already emerging from the right side of The Machine, the air above it shimmering slightly; he picked it up and handed it to me. The first sip told me that he’d gotten my prescription right: Tanzanian Peaberry coffee, the Black Bush, two sugars and 18 percent cream. “Thank you, Drink.”
“My pleasure,” he said, dialing a different prescription. His own empty mug was just disappearing into the left side of The Machine. The barely audible sound of the conveyor belt stopped and was replaced by the gurgle-bubble sound of magic taking place inside. When it emerged, I knew, it would contain New Guinea Peaberry, Tullamore Dew, three sugars and whipped Jersey cream. “As your physician, I prescribe intoxication,” he told me. “Why don’t you let me take the stick awhile, so you can focus?”
“I’m Jake’s physician,” Doc Webster said from his seat behind us.
“As your attorney,” Long-Drink told him, “I advise you not to contradict me. Do you dispute my diagnosis?”
“No, no,” the Doc said. “You’re quite right: she heeds to get nitfaced.”
Long-Drink and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Spoonerisms—in a company that included Walter and Bradley. The Doc was slipping.
Nonetheless he constituted a qualified second opinion, so I allowed Long-Drink to take over as bartender, found an empty chaise longue near the pool, and consented to the course of treatment he had prescribed. It was delicious.
An hour or so later, Erin came back outside, again walking rather than teleporting since there was no need for haste. I was sitting beside Fast Eddie’s piano, holding my guitar on my lap, helping Willard and Maureen Hooker put the finishing touches on their fond desecration of Johnny Burke’s lyrics and Jimmy Van Heusen’s tune:
A duck is animal that flies around town
Try him if you’re looking to get down
Named after champagne in a paper cup
When he flies upside down, he sure quacks up
And if you don’t mind how badly things will suck
You might grow up to be a duck
Our listeners liked that one. Three puns in one verse made it their kind of lyric. When the applause had faded, Erin put a hand on my arm to get my attention. “I think I’ve found the problem, Pop,” she said.
“I’m not sure you should call him that,” Willard said. “While I’ve never been sure what to call the kind of music your father plays, it’s definitely not Pop.”
She gave him deadpan. So did his wife, Maureen, whose distaste for puns rivals Erin’s. No accounting for distaste.
Willard grinned at both of them. “Folkaoke, maybe?”
I was suddenly too agitated for repartee. “You’ve found the problem,” I prompted Erin.
She nodded and offered me some printout. I glanced at it, but one glance was enough. “This is in Bullshit.”
“You can say that again,” she said, “bearing in mind that if you actually do, I’ll bite you. And don’t call me Shirley. I’ll translate the important bits into Human for you.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “Hey, Drink—hit me again, harder.” Behind the bar, Long-Drink waved acknowledgment and turned to The Machine. If I had to be exposed to Gummint Regulations, I wanted fortification. “Okay, honey, go ahead,” I said bravely.
“The Home Education Program comes under Florida Statute 232.0201. It says that parents who choose to teach and direct the education of their own children at home must notify their district school superintendent, and, quote, ‘meet the other requirements of this law.’ It says ‘Parents bear the teaching responsibility in this option…’—news flash—‘…and the child must show educational progress each year.’” She did not glance down at the papers she held, but her voice told me she was quoting.
Long-Drink arrived with my Irish coffee, and I took a big gulp, waving thanks to him with the mug. “What are these requirements we’re supposed to meet?” I asked Erin.
“The law requires an annual educational evaluation, which the parent or guardian must file with his district school superintendent’s office.”
“When?”
“The state doesn’t say, exactly.”
“What does it say?”
Again she became Quote-Robot: “‘Some superintendents have established deadlines for receiving the evaluation in order to help them with their bookkeeping. While nothing in the law requires families to comply with a particular date, most families do comply unless circumstances make it impossible to do so.’” She went on in her normal voice, “Especially since the superintendent in his or her sole discretion determines whether the evaluation is satisfactory or not.”
Already I was beginning to get a headache. This definitely sounded like state law, all right. “I don’t think you’re doing enough translating, honey: it still sounds like Bullshit. We do have to comply, but we don’t, unless we don’t want to get screwed in which case we do. What exactly is this furshlugginer evaluation supposed to consist of?”
She shrugged. “It can be any one of five things. One, individual assessment by a Florida-certified teacher. There are some who do that full-time, like circuit judges.”
I pictured the kind of teacher who could be permanently spared from actual teaching duties to do that gig. Like being surgeon general, or vice president: a distinction that disgraces you. “Pass.”
“Agreed. Two, a nationally normed student achievement test, administered by a certified teacher. Three, a state student assessment test. Four, a psych evaluation. Or five, ‘any other method that is mutually agreed upon by the parent(s) and the superintendent.’”
The first four all sounded horrid; the last didn’t sound like anything at all. “S
o, which method have we been using, so far?”
She kept her features smooth. “None.”
“No!” I couldn’t believe I had blown off paperwork this crucial. After losing my first bar for that very mistake, had I really made it again, badly enough to risk costing me the custody and company of my only child? “Oh, fuck me—”
“Best offer I’ve had in half an hour,” Harry brayed.
Erin put a hand on my shoulder. “Relax, Daddy—we didn’t need to do any of those things. We had a waiver. An unofficial one, a special understanding with the district superintendent. Until recently.”
“We did? Really? How did I pull that off?”
“Remember that time we all went on that vacation cruise with Uncle Trav for a whole week?”
I smiled just thinking of it. “I’ll remember that trip a month after they cremate me.”
“Remember the lady Uncle Bbiillll brought with him?”
Nobody but Erin can pronounce Double Bill’s name that way. I’ve heard several try. “Yes, I do. Remarkable woman. Morgan Something.”
“Morgan Sorensen. That was her.”
“That was who?”
“She was the district superintendent of schools. The operative word being was.”
I nodded. “I can see how that would be. She was at least an order of magnitude too smart to have that job, and almost certainly too good a teacher to waste on it. What I don’t understand is how she ever acquired the post in the first place.”
“Inheritance. Her brother died in office, and she agreed to fill out his term. What with one thing and another—Peter Principle, I suspect—she was still there eleven years later. Six months ago, she retired and moved away.”
I finished my Irish coffee. “It’s not just an expression. I can actually feel my eyeballs glazing over.”
“Her successor is a professional chairwarmer named Dhozi Pilok.”
“If this conversation goes on much longer, they’re going to be big glass marbles—”
“You lost your marbles a long time ago!” Harry the Parrot crowed. (Um.)
“He’s got you there, Jake,” Alf said.
Erin raised her volume just enough to regain control of the discussion. “Nearly done now. Superintendent Pilok’s mistress is Field Inspector Ludnyola Czrjghnczl—ah, multiculturalism!—which basically means she has a mandate to do any goddam thing she feels like doing within the world of Florida education. And as I suspected, Ludnyola turns out to be the third cousin twice removed of Smithtown Town Inspector Jorjhk Grtozkzhnyi. With Ukrainians, that makes them as close as, say, an Italian brother and sister.”
“Terrific.” I sighed. “Well, at least now I understand why th—what’s wrong, honey?”
To my consternation Erin suddenly burst into tears. “Oh, Pop—it’s all my fault.”
Automatically I got up and put my arms around her. “What the hell are you talking about? The only thing in the round world that’s all your fault is that damn tattoo.”
In the midst of crying she couldn’t help smiling at that line, which of course was why I’d said it. But the smile lasted for less than a second. “Remember the day we left Long Island?”
“Vividly,” I assured her.
“What’s the very last thing I did?”
I thought about it. “Uh…”
“Just as we were pulling away.”
Suddenly I remembered. “Oh, hell yeah—that was beautiful! Old Nyjmnckra Grtozkzhnyi came waddling out to the roadside to see us all leave, to gloat over having driven us out of the state, and as I drove past her, you—”
“I gave her the finger.”
I laughed out loud remembering it. So did Ralph, who’d been there on our bus at the time. Erin had still been in diapers, back then: Nyjmnckra’s expression had been something to see.
“And she fainted dead away, fell over on her back, and made an angel in the snow,” Erin said, and I laughed even harder.
And then stopped. I began to see what she meant. “And you think her nephew Jorjhk has been hunting us ever since, planning his revenge.”
She nodded against my shoulder. “Oh Papa, I knew even then. Less than two years old, and I already knew it was a mistake to do that.” Her arms tightened around me. “I was just so mad at Ms. Grtozkzhnyi.”
“Hell, so was I, honey. That silly woman ruined everything we had. And all I ever did to her was answer the door. Spilling that beaker of piss on her was totally accidental—”
“Sure. But don’t you remember what Lady Sally said about vengeance?”
I shook my head.
“She said, ‘Vengeance is counterproductive, always. Not to mention the fact it gets your soul all sticky.’ I should have remembered. But I was too angry at Nyjmnckra, for hurting you and Mom.”
I hugged her even harder. “Hard to think straight when you’re mad.”
“Honest to God, Pop,” she said, “sometimes I really wonder about evolution. The whole fight-or-flight business…I just don’t understand it. I can’t remember one time when adrenaline ever helped me in a crisis. Usually it spoils my judgment, makes my knees tremble and my hands shake, makes my voice sound quavery and unthreatening, and screws up my reflexes. Wouldn’t you think anger would make you smarter? Calmer? Instead it’s a cliché that if you can get your opponent angry, you have the fight half won. The natural, hardwired human response to sudden crisis is to drop IQ points. How did we ever last this long?”
Fast Eddie spoke up. “Da madder ya get, da less effective ya get. I got no problem wit dat. Maybe dat’s ezzackly how we lasted dis long.”
Eddie doesn’t say much, but when he does, the result is often a short thoughtful silence on the part of those within earshot.
“All right, enough of this,” I said finally. “Flipping old Nyjmnckra the Pierre Trudeau Salute may indeed have pissed her off. But she was plenty pissed off at us to begin with. There’s no reason to believe the very last thing we did to annoy her had any sort of threshold effect. In any case, the question is irrelevant. The point is, what are we going to do about this?”
“Get me evaluated, somehow,” Erin said.
Alf spoke up. “Evaluated in some way that suits…Look, let’s all just start calling her Ludnyola, okay? My throat hurts when I try and say her name.” Agreement was nodded or grunted generally. “In some way that suits Ludnyola.”
“She was suited when she got here,” Doc Webster said. People blinked at him. “Alf said we had to suit her,” he explained. “Well, she was suited to start with. That silly ‘power suit.’” He snorted. “Like all other kinds of suits were hand-cranked.”
I was starting to wonder about the Doc. Over the years I’d heard him make some very lame puns, sometimes so abstruse it was days before I realized they’d been puns. But I had never heard him explain one before.
Willard Hooker cut to the chase. “Well, we can’t figure out what sort of evaluation we need to fake until we consult some experts tomorrow during business hours. I say the only sensible thing to do now is make supper and then get drunk.”
This suggestion met with general approval. I realized I was starving, myself. “Who’s cooking tonight?” I asked.
It happens that among the staff and regular clientele of The Place we have, these days, seven people generally deemed competent to cook for the group, each with his or her own unique culinary style. There’s no system to the rotation or anything; dinner just tends to get made by whoever consensus agrees should do so that night. Anybody who eats some tosses some cash into the cigar box at the end of the bar before they leave, in whatever amount they deem appropriate. Maybe it wouldn’t work with another group. Okay, probably.
Zoey says we’re the first commune in history that don’t live together. Not the only one, mind you: there are several of them on the Internet right now, and at least one of them has a membership numbered in the high six figures. But our group first achieved telepathic communion back in the 1970s—well before ARPANET evolved into even Usenet, much le
ss the World Wide Web—so I’m pretty sure we hold the record.
“Well,” Marty Pignatelli spoke up, “I was planning to make an Italian rabbit stew for everybody, but you managed to find a way to screw that up, Jake.”
“Oh, Fifty-Fifty,” I said, shaking my head theatrically. We had all started calling Marty Pignatelli Fifty-Fifty that year to break his chops, the logic being that he was a retired policeman—Five-Oh in street parlance—and had just turned fifty. I smelled a pun coming, now, chiefly because Marty was not one of the seven competent cooks, and I decided to help him out by supplying the shortest distance between two puns: a straight line. “What could I possibly have done to spoil your cooking plans?”
He didn’t let me down. “Not buy the hare of my guinea din-din.”
It was decided, by instant consensus, that Marty really ought to be chatting with Lex rather than with us, and he was delivered there airmail by an ad hoc committee. He made an impressive splash, exciting general merriment.
Most important to me, my daughter’s dark mood of self-recrimination vanished in a silver cascade of giggles.
That sort of set the tone. The crisis was over now, the emergency past for the moment, problems remained to be solved, but for the moment there was no pressing reason for us to stay sober. First Willard and Maureen and Eddie and I finished our parodic desecration of “Swingin’ on a Star” together—
Or would you like to swing with your wife?
Eat your beans and peas with a knife?
Callahan's Con Page 4
