Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

by Spider Robinson

  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, Long-Drink 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 Long-Drink 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 god-awful 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 mid-sentence 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 to 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 sometimes 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 inhaled 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 Long-Drink 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 headshot of a certain politician (supply your own) on its face, concentric circles of fifty, forty, 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 forty, and Long-Drink 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 TV. It was reasonably apparent that wit was not his long suit. Doc Webster won the match handily, and the stein that Long-Drink 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.

  None of the Doc's remaining shots came close to the target, and he left the firing line like a disconsolate blimp, shaking his head and looking at his hand. Fogerty took his place and, without removing that absurd hat, selected a dart.

  Watching his throw I thought for a second the match might turn out a draw. His wind-up was pitiful, his stance ungainly, and he held the dart too near the feathers, his other arm stiff at his side. He threw like a girl, and his follow-through was nonexistent.

  The dart landed right between the eyes with a meaty

  thunk.

  "Winner and new champeen, Dink Fogerty," Fast Eddie hollered over the roar of the crowd, and Fogerty took a long, triumphant drink from the glass he'd set down on a nearby table. Fast Eddie informed him that he'd just won thirty-five bottles of Scotch, and the new champ smiled, turned to face us.

  "Any takers?" he rasped. The '54 Chevy had gotten a valve job.

  "Sure," said Noah Gonzalez, next on the list. "Be damned if you'll take us for three dozen bottles with one throw." Fogerty nodded agreeably, retrieved his dart from the target and toed the mark again. And with the same awkward, off-balance throw as before, he proceeded to place all six darts in the fifty-circle.

  By the last one the silence in the room was complete, and Noah's strangled "I concede," was plainly audible. Fogerty just looked smug and took another big gulp of his drink, set it down on the same table.

  "Ten dollars says you can't do that again," the Doc exploded, and Fogerty smiled. Fast Eddie went to fetch him the darts, but as he reached the target...

  "Hold it!" Callahan bellowed, and the room froze. Fogerty turned slowly and stared at the big redheaded barkeep, an innocent look on his pudding face. Callahan glared at him, brows like thunderclouds.

  "Whassamatter, chief?" Fogerty asked.

  "Damned if I know," Callahan rumbled, "but I've seen you take at least a dozen long swallows from that drink you got, and it's still full."

  Every eye in the place Went to Fogerty's glass, and sure enough. Not only was it full, all the glasses near it were emptier than their owners remembered leaving them, and an angry buzzing began.

  "Wait a minute," Fogerty protested. "My hands've been in plain sight every minute—all of you saw me. You can't pin nothin' on me."

  "I guess you didn't use your hands, then," Callahan said darkly, and a great light seemed to dawn on Doc Webster's face.

  "By God," he roared, "a telekinetic! Why you low-down, no-good..."

  Fogerty made a break for the door, but Fast Eddie demonstrated the veracity of his name with a snappy flying tackle that cut Fogerty down before he covered five yards. He landed with a crash before Long-Drink McGonnigle, who promptly sat on him. "Tele-what?" inquired Long-Drink conversationally.

  "Telekinesis," the Doc explained. "Mind over matter. I knew a telekinetic in the Army who could roll sevens as long as you cared to watch. It's a rare talent, but it exists. And this bird's got it. Haven't you, Fogerty?"

  Fogerty blustered for awhile, but finally he broke down and admitted it. A lot of jaws dropped, some bouncing off the floor, and Long-Drink let the guy with the hat back up, backing away from him. The hat still clung gaudily to his skull like a homosexual barnacle.

  "You mean you directed dem darts wit' yer mind?" Fast Eddie expostulated.

  "Nah. Not ezzackly. I... I make the dart-board want darts."

  "Huh?"

  "I can't make the darts move. What I do, I project a... a state of wanting darts onto the center of the target, like some kinda magnet, an' the target attracts 'em for me. I only learned how ta do it about a year ago. The hard part is to hang on to all but one dart."

  "Thought so," growled Callahan from behind the bar. "You make your glass want gin too—don't ya?"

  Fogerty nodded. "I make a pretty good buck as a fisherman—my nets want fish."

  It seemed to me that, given his talent, Fogerty was making pretty unimaginative use of it. Imagine a cancer wanting X-rays. Then again, imagine a pocket that wants diamonds. I decided it was just as well that his ambitions were modest.

  "Wait a minute," said the Doc, puzzled. "This 'state of wanting darts' you project. What's it like?"

  And Fogerty, an unimaginative man, pondered that question for the first time in his life, and the inevitable happened.

  There's an old story about the centipede who was asked how he could coordinate so many legs at once, and, considering the mechanics of something that had always been automatic, became so confused that he never managed to walk again. In just this manner, Fogerty focused his attention on the gift that had always been second nature to him, created that zone of yearning for the first time in his head where he could observe it, and...

  The whole half-dozen darts ripped, free of the target, crossed the room like so many Sidewinder missiles, and smashed into Fogerty's forehead.

  If he hadn't been wearing that dumb hat, they might have pulped his skull. Instead they drove him backward, depositing him on his ample fundament, where he blinked up at us blinking down at him. There was a stunned silence (literally so on his part) and then a great wave of laughter that grew and swelled and rang, blowing the cobwebs from the rafters. We laughed till we cried, till our lungs, ached and our stomachs hurt, and Fogerty sat under the avalanche of mirth and turned red and finally began to giggle himself.

  And like the centipede, like the rajah whose flying carpet would only function if he did not think of the word "elephant," Fogerty from that day forth never managed to bring himself to use his bizarre talent again.

  Imagine getting a netfull of mackerel in the eye!

  Two Heads Are Better Than One

  As usual, it was a pretty merry night at Callahan's when the trouble started.

  I don't want to give the impression that every time us Callahan's regulars (Callahanians?) get to feeling good, there's drama around the corner. The reason it seems that way is probably that, barring disaster, merriment is the general rule at Callahan's Place. Most of us have little better to do than get happy in another's company, and we're not an unimaginative bunch, so we keep ourselves pretty well amused.

  Being a Wednesday, it was Tall Tales Night (as opposed to Monday, the Fireside Fill-More singalong night, or Tuesday, which we call Punday). Along about eight-thirty, when most of the boys had arrived, and the level of broken glass in the fireplace was still rather low, Callahan dried his big meaty hands on his apron and cleared his throat with a sound like a bulldozer in pain.

  "All right, gents," he boomed, and conversations were tabled for the night. "We need a subject. An
y suggestions?"

  Nobody spoke up. See, the teller of the tallest tale on a Wednesday night gets his drinking money refunded, and most folks like to lie low until they've had a chance to examine the competition and come up with a topper. Not that the first tale told never wins, but it has to be pretty memorable.

  "All right," Callahan said when no one took the lead. "People, places, or things?"

  "We did t'ings last week," Fast Eddie pointed out from his seat at the upright. True enough. I'd had everybody beat with a yarn about a beer-nut tree that used to grow in my backyard until I watered it, when Doc Webster wiped me out with the saga of a '38 Buick of his that understood spoken English, which would have been just fine except that it took on a rude highway cop one day and chased him across six lanes of traffic. Doc claimed to have buried it in his backyard after it expired from remorse.

  "Ain't nothing says we have to be consistent," Callahan replied. "We can do things again."

  "Naw," Doc Webster called out. "Let's do people."

  "All right, Doc. What kind? You sound like you got something in mind."

  "Wal..." drawled the Doc, and people checked to see that their drinks were fresh. Those who needed a refill put a dollar bill on the bar and were refueled by Callahan, who did not need to ask what they wanted.

  "...I was just thinking," the Doc continued, his own drink as magically full as always, "of my Cousin Hobart, the celebrated Man With The Foot-Long Nose." ("Oh, relatives tonight," someone muttered.) "Hobart's mother died in childbirth, naturally, and his father succumbed to acute embarrassment shortly thereafter. As a child Hobart was a born showman, keeping the orphanage in stitches with incredibly accurate woodpecker imitations, and upon attaining the age of seven he ran away, to form the nucleus of a traveling road company which played Pinocchio in every theater in the country, and some in the city too. This kept him in Kleenex until he outgrew the role, and Cyrano de Bergerac was not popular at the time, so he struck off on his own and in short order became something of an old stand-by on the vaudeville circuits, where his ability to identify the perfume of ladies in the last row and his prowess on the nose-flutes (as many as five at one time) were a never-failing draw. He might have lived on in this way for a good many years, for he was a fanatically hygienic man, and although there were dark rumors about his sex life, he was invariably discreet. The young ladies he visited were for some reason equally reticent, even with their best girl friends—let alone their husbands.