The Callahan Touch

by Spider Robinson

  Oh there is a guy with funny eyes, his name is Michael Finn

  He carries quite an arsenal tucked underneath his skin

  His masters had him programmed once, to do the whole earth in

  And the only thing that stopped him was a glass of homemade gin

  Joy or sorrow: it’s better if you share

  So I’ll take me down to Callahan’s, and do my drinking there

  The chorus was greeted with enthusiastic applause. Mary Kay, a short gorgeous blonde dressed in purple, took the second verse:

  A time traveler comes in each week and buys a coupla beers

  He drinks ’em down, then taps his belt, and promptly disappears

  Next week, same time, he’s back again, still potted to the ears

  He’s been on one long bender for some twenty thousand years

  Joy or sorrow: it’s better if you share

  So I’ll take me down to Callahan’s, and do my drinking there

  They traded verses for a while, most of which I’ll omit since each grossly libeled one of my regular patrons. Then husband and wife traded lines on the last verse:

  Doc Webster, feeling gene-ial, once told us of the day

  He mixed chromosomes from vegetables with canine DNA

  He crossed Lassie with a canteloupe. Says Mike, “So what’d you get?”

  “Why, a melon/collie baby…and one helluva startled vet!”

  Everyone sang along joyously on the final chorus. Then Jordin reprised it—but at half speed, in minor rather than major, and with new words:

  Michael’s tavern…is gone, beyond repair…

  —and just for a moment, sorrow stabbed every heart—

  —and then Jordin and Mary Kay came in together, at the original speed and voice, singing:

  So it’s time to race to Mary’s Place, and do our drinking there!

  The house came down.

  △ △ △

  Somewhere along about Thursday—or possibly it was Friday—I ran out of excuses, evasions and stalls. Callahan suckered me out from behind the stick to look at a poker hand he was holding, Tom Hauptman locked the little swinging door from the inside to keep me out, and Fast Eddie must have snuck into my living quarters in the back, because the next thing I knew he had my beat-up old Country Gentleman plugged into an amp and was strapping it around my neck. I gave up and stepped up to one of the mikes, blushing at the size of the ovation that ensued. I never blush when strangers applaud me, but somehow it’s different with your friends. I barely remembered to take my apron off.

  I played old favorites for a while. Loudon Wainwright III’s “The Drinking Song,” Jon Hendricks’ “Shiny Stockings,” my own “The Drunkard’s Song,” “I’d Love You If You Didn’t Have Those Tits,” “Shitheaded Driver Blues”—all the songs I’d always played for them in the old days, at Callahan’s Place. Fast Eddie knew ’em all, of course. The Lucky Duck and Margie Shorter had been looking deep into each other’s eyes for a whole day now; in the middle of “Shiny Stockings,” they slipped out the door so unobtrusively at least three people missed it. Ah, young love! I’d have told them they were welcome to use the back room, but they were gone while I was in the midst of a verse. I felt a faint twinge of envy for Ernie. I’d had a half an eye on Margie myself. The hairy little pooka had good taste. Ah, well…

  Nate came in with some rhythm guitar support on “Drunkard”; Donn put some delicious fills into “…Those Tits,” and he and Nate had worked out the harmonies on the chorus by the second verse; and Peter and every other musician in the house took three choruses of solos apiece on the twelve-bar blues. Those present who did not laugh, wept; many did both.

  After the final verse of “Shitheaded Driver,” I remembered something, and called out, “Here’s a new blues you’ll appreciate, Mike!” Callahan smiled and nodded, and I sang:

  You’ve heard of every kind of blues there is, I hear you say

  Well, I’m leavin’ here tomorrow…and I just got back today

  I got the time travel blues, look at the mess I’m in

  I’m sad for what the past will be…and what the future hasn’t been

  I longed to know the future, like the Oracle of Delphi

  And then this cat knocked on my door: Goddam, it was myself! I

  got the time travel blues, since I met myself comin’ in;

  I’d tell you all about it…but where the hell do I begin?

  The other musicians all caught my signal, and went stop-time when I did:

  He said that I was going to invent a time machine—

  That is to say, I told me, if you follow what I mean.

  I said, “I’m no inventor, man: I’ll never ever get it.”

  But he said “Copy this one, and we both can share the credit!”

  I cranked it up, it blew right up, and then and there I died.

  I wonder who that joker was, and why the bastard lied…

  Whooping, all the players jumped back aboard with me again for the chorus:

  Got the time travel blues: one of my life’s most awful shocks

  Now I could use a doctor: in fact, I need a paradox

  If I am dead, my murderer can’t logically exist

  But here I am in pieces, and I’m really gettin’ pissed

  I got the time travel blues—it’s only natural, bein’ dead

  To want to think that time is really only in your head

  I ended it with a classic barroom walkout. The applause and laughter were gratifying, and Mike brought me over a cold Rickard’s Red. I’d wondered, writing that song, if I would ever in my life have a chance to sing it for him. His grin was something to see.

  When I finished gulping ale, Fast Eddie yelled, “Got anything else new, Jake?” And I did happen to have a goofy new one with easily-grokked, C&W chords. So I gave them “Please, Dr. Frankenstein—”:

  I’ve walked a thousand miles in an effort to retain ya

  And I didn’t come for charity: I fully plan on payin ya

  But I’ve been so depressive, guess I’m ready for some mania

  That’s why I’ve traveled all this way to gloomy Transylvania,

  singin

  Please Dr. Frankenstein, won’t you try and bring me back to life?

  Cause I truly have been grievin since I got “Goodbye, I’m leavin” from my wife

  I’m slowly goin nuts because the memory of her cuts me like a knife

  Please Dr. Frankenstein, won’t you try and bring me back to life?

  I cannot seem to find my pulse; my temperature is down

  And I can tell I smell like hell, the way that people frown

  I feel like rigor mortis, all I do is lay around

  You gotta help me Frankenstein, I’m halfway in the ground

  (I’m beggin)

  Please Dr. Frankenstein, I am up for any kind of change

  Spent evenings in this coffin just a little bit too often, and it’s strange

  Please don’t consider me more than some flesh for you and Igor to arrange

  Please Dr. Frankenstein, I am up for any kind of change

  I’ll stagger like the victim of a wreck

  I’ll wear those funny bolt-things in my neck

  I’d love to be in stitches—what the heck

  Do you need cash, or will you take a check?

  I’m not afraid of what you’ll do—I’m immunized to pain

  Cause everything I ever had has bubbled down the drain

  Make me the Pride of Frankenstein and I will not complain

  Just strap me down and let me have a transplant of the brain: I need it

  Please Dr. Frankenstein, won’t you try and raise me from the dead?

  My heart is barely beatin since I caught the woman cheatin in our bed

  My entire world’s a coffin and it doesn’t get me off an’ like I said

  Please Dr. Frankenstein, won’t you try and raise me from the dead?

  Which went over pretty good; I thought old Pyotr was going
to laugh himself to death. Once again, every musician who tried to join in with a lick or a harmony got it right, and nobody clammed the ending, a thing so rare it made me shiver with glee as the applause drowned that final chord. I looked around and met a lot of smiling eyes, and knew I’d made a bunch of new friends…and that I was just a little bit closer to telepathy than I’d been on Friday.

  It was a job finding some of those eyes. The players were scattered all around the room, some with long cords and some with those newfangled cordless radio-boxes, rather than all bunched up in one spot with their elbows in each other’s eye the way it’s usually done. Also, Fast Eddie had rigged a spot on me, so folks could watch my hands good, and it made me squint some. I’d heard a bass join in in the middle of the last verse, off to my right somewhere, but I couldn’t seem to see the guy in the crowd.

  A strange impulse came over me. I was feeling too good to examine it: I went with it. “Lemme have a solo, folks,” I said to the rest of the players, “and then we’ll all do another blues together to finish up, in A this time, okay?” Nobody objected. “Maybe just the bass, on this, if you think you can follow it. I wrote this to my wife over twenty years ago, and I’ve never played it for anybody but her…but I just feel in the mood to, now, for some reason. It’s called ‘Spice’.”

  And I sang:

  And when I’ve just assuaged your lust

  By flicker-light of telly

  I love to lie between your thighs

  My cheek upon your belly

  To smell you and to feel you

  And to hear your small intestine

  And know that this is perfect bliss

  Just as it was predestined

  In the hour that my death draws near

  And I wonder what my life was for

  It’ll be the afterglows

  With your fragrance in my nose

  I’ll remember and relive once more

  By the third line of the chorus the bassman had doped out where I was going and come in quietly underneath. By the time I started the second verse he was already reminding me pleasantly of Lee Sklar, who did such wonderful work with James Taylor.

  And now I rest, caress your breast

  And sail in satiation

  On the oceanic motion

  Of your rhythmic respiration

  And now my lips and fingertips

  Are flavored sweet and sour

  For I have stripped and fully sipped

  My favorite furry flower

  In the hour that my death draws near

  And I wonder what my life was for

  It’ll be the afterglows

  With your fragrance in my nose

  I’ll remember and relive once more

  A vivid sense memory of Barbara—the very one that had caused me to write this song to her, only weeks before she was killed—rose up and struck me from ambush like a hammer to the heart; I would have stumbled if that strong bass hadn’t rushed to support me. The guy improvised a four-bar vamp that sounded as if we’d rehearsed it, and nudged me gently but firmly into the last verse:

  I know in time I’ll have to climb

  Up next to you for sleep

  With no regret, but not just yet

  This moment let me keep

  And suddenly it comes to me

  —how glorious and dumb!—

  I had so much fun making love

  I plain forgot to come…

  My voice broke on the last word, I couldn’t make the final chorus, and the bassman knew that at once and did it for me as a bass solo, once again so smoothly and naturally that it simply seemed the correct way to end that song; somehow I managed to put the last few chords on it to tack it shut with him.

  The applause was loud and long. I stared down at my feet, too moved, and too startled at how moved I was, to meet anybody’s eyes. Especially that bass player’s eyes, wherever they were. Whoever he was, he now knew me better than I generally like people to know me before I’ve laid eyes on them or heard their name. When the applause began to wane, I kept looking down and started the blues in A, concentrating on my fingers. “Four choruses apiece, this time,” I called.

  By the second bar, every musician in the room was cooking with me. I didn’t bother with lyrics; I could think of none I wanted to sing after that last song; I just played the blues.

  △ △ △

  And so did everybody else—but no two of us played the same kind of blues. I started us out in a kind of country blues, but after I’d done four choruses and nodded to Nate, he hopped into a Lightning Hopkins, East Texas bag; Nate handed off to Peter, who took us east to New Orleans for some of the dirty Delta blues; Peter passed the stick to Donn, who blew a Chicago-style blues somewhere between Buddy Guy and Mike Bloomfield; that set Fast Eddie up to do a Ray Charles thing; which cued me for some Charles Brown “cool” blues, which reminded Nate of…well, you get the idea. The amazing thing was that, whatever groove was put down, Fast Eddie and that bassman were both able to pick it up, every time—sometimes turning on a dime. Each soloist won spontaneous shouts of joy as they played, and applause when their turn was done.

  About the eighty-’leventh chorus, I ran out of ideas I knew how to play, and started to scat some vocals. Just noodling around, letting it come out without planning it, improvising nonsense-syllable riffs like some aphasic Jon Hendricks, humming the lines I’d have played if my hands were good enough. Doing what the blues is for. Pouring out my heart—

  —a warm pure contralto came out of nowhere, somewhere off to my left, unamplified but strong, and started harmonizing with me—

  —kept on doing it, magnificently, following me as flawlessly and effortlessly as if we’d both been reading the same sheet music—

  —more: doing it—unmistakably—with feeling, as well as skill—

  I’d have been shocked if I’d had the time; but I was too busy. Musicians wait a lifetime for an opportunity like that. I glanced wildly around, failed to spot her in the crowd—if it was a her; that voice had enough bottom on it to make me uncertain—and then I forgot where s/he was and who s/he was and what s/he looked like and just sang, backing off from my mike so our levels would balance.

  Fast Eddie, aware that something extraordinary was going on, dropped out; one after another the other musicians faded too; only that telepathic bass player stayed in, somewhere over on the other side of me, giving the two of us a stable platform to dance on. Somebody, Tommy Janssen I think, located a free mike and disappeared into the throng with it; shortly her voice was amplified too, and I closed back in on my own mike.

  She (it was a woman, all right: no mistake now) knew when I wanted to switch from harmony to crosstalk, dropped out and let me take the first phrase, then answered in a way that drove me higher for my next phrase—and kept that up. When I yelled, “Gimme one,” she let me have a chorus all to myself, so I could make a complicated statement using the syllable “No” over and over again, putting my whole raggedy-ass white boy’s soul into it (here, I thought, listen to my blues!); when it was her turn she nodded with her voice, (Yeah, them is blues, all right) and cut me clean…using the syllable “Yeah.” People shouted with glee, and began to clap time…

  Oh, Jesus, it was glorious and it was scary and it was exalting and it was…I don’t know the words. It was emptying, does that mean anything to you? And filling at the same time. I hadn’t had sex as good as that since Barbara died. I lived with a lady once for three years without coming to know her as well as I now knew this woman I had not yet even met. I kept thinking of a line from an old song of mine: “Bring me your nakedness/ help me in mine…”

  I knew, for instance, that she was—like me—a badly fractured and carefully rebuilt person. Stronger than ever now, like healed bone, but with a heightened understanding of fragility. And that unlike me, she had done her healing on her own, with little or no help. I knew about her pride, and her humor, and her courage, and her frustration, and her simple stubbornness, and her untapped and
unplumbed capacity for kindness. For all I know, I knew more about her than she knew.

  And I’m sure she knew more about me than I did, because she assured me later that she knew I was in love with her by the third chorus…and I didn’t realize it until she cut me with her “Yeah” solo, several minutes later.

  We both knew when we were done, and both said our first intelligible words—“Come on!”—together like an echo to the rest of the players, and they climbed on running, like hobos boarding a moving train. I played the best last-chorus of my life, throwing in a Johnny Winter quote from “Third Degree” that I’ve never been able to play correctly before or since, and when I got to the end of it—

  Once I phonied up some press credentials so I could meet the Crew of Apollo 16. They had come to Grumman Aviation to personally shake every single hand that had had anything whatsoever to do with building their LEM. It had worked, you see. As the event was breaking up, Grumman seized the moment. They were plagued with cost overruns on the F-111 at the time, and badly needed a PR break. So as we all filed out toward the parking lot, they brought an F-111 in at about two hundred feet, at stalling speed. As we craned our necks and gaped, it pointed its nose up at the stars, changed its wingshape, and suddenly BANG, it was gone—just a dwindling dot straight overhead with a hole in the sky to show where it had been. Everybody but the Apollo crew and the Grumman flacks jumped a foot. All three astronauts smiled wistfully (even the science guy), and watched that dot disappear with their fists on their hips, practically salivating.

  Anyway, that’s all I could think of when that blues ended, and her voice took off for the stars like an F-111 on afterburners. I think she reached brennschluss about six inches to the right of a standard piano keyboard, and coasted for another octave or two more before she reached apogee and began reentry. Up until that final gliss, my intentions toward her were strictly and enthusiastically dishonorable. But as she began tying off the cord, I grasped two things with utter certainty: that I needed to marry her, and that I was going to have to stalk her with the cunning and guile of a panther.

  By the time we all beat that last chord to death with a stick together, I had even figured out that she was the bass player.