I’m comfortable in my bed, surrounded by my friends. It’s nice and warm and we have a good time, but eventually even Kevin will decide it’s time to go home. Every time he’ll get up, notice he’s too drunk to walk, and start fumbling with the phone.
“Relax, I already called the cab.”
“Johnny, you’re a fucking genius.”
“That’s why you’re parking cars for a living and I’m on Welfare.”
By eleven o’clock Marlos has left and I’m set up for the night with the thousands of papers I have to rewrite or edit or redraw. I’m working on three projects at once.
I may have been dragging a little. I may have been tired and depressed all day. But at night it’s my time. I come alive. I roll my bed up, and I work with the TV on. I’ve got a remote to change the channels, and the light switches work by handclaps. There’s a microwave at my elbow for hot drinks. My cat is curled up on the bed, and the streetlights throw quivering shadows across my drawn curtains.
I feel stimulated, magical. At night I seem to think more clearly. I work hard, but it doesn’t feel like work to me. The intellectual clutter of the daytime hours dissolves from my mind, which moves almost in an instinctual, animal way. I’m happy. I don’t care that the job—and the Welfare office—are giving me gray hairs or that I’m not rolling in dough, because ideas and images are flowing through me and out onto the paper.
Before the inspiration of this night fades into fatigue, I want to draw one more cartoon, one that started forming in my mind earlier today as I sat with Celeste at the river’s edge. It’s a variation of the old schoolbook cliché of the evolution of man.
The drawing shows a cutaway view of the sea meeting the land. In the sea you can see the primordial starfish; higher above, just climbing out of the water onto the beach is a lizardlike creature, half fish, half whatever. Higher still on the beach, completely out of the water you see a lemur; above him on the beach is a chimpanzee. He is followed by Neanderthal man and finally, at the highest point on the beach, before a podium, stands a twentieth-century Homo sapiens, dressed in a tuxedo and clutching a trophy. He’s saying, “I’d like to thank all those who made it possible for me to be here tonight.”
And then, I’m going to go to sleep.
Acknowledgments
My first and greatest thanks to Liza Dawson and Stacy Schiff of William Morrow and Company, Inc. In addition to being the most sensitive and intelligent of editors, I truly appreciate their not calling me a sexist pig and pushing me down the stairs.
Deborah Levin, my representative, dear friend, and surrogate mom, conceived this project and humiliated me until I got it done. Richard Pine, our agent, believed in it from the first and convinced everyone else, even me. David Milholland, himself a fine editor, read all the drafts, good and bad, made crucial suggestions, and was available for agonizing twenty-four hours a day. Thanks also to Gene and Norma, Jerry Fine, Larry Wobbrock, and my friends at Applause.
Finally, David Kelly, working from hundreds of hours of my tapes, drafted each chapter and then rewrote it again and again and again and again until no trace of his own voice remained. “We’re not going to have one of those goddamn ‘as-told-to’ books,” he would snarl. And we don’t.
About the Author
JOHN CALLAHAN (1951–2010) was a nationally syndicated cartoonist known for his frank portrayals of challenging subjects, in particular disability. Callahan, who became a quadriplegic following a car accident at age twenty-one, drew cartoons that touched upon addiction, ableism, and the absurd. He was the creator of the Nickelodeon cartoon Pelswick.
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Copyright
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following:
“The Hanging Man,” by Sylvia Plath. From Ariel, copyright © 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row.
The following cartoons are printed courtesy of the publisher: “It hurts when I go like this” (here), copyright © 1988 by Variations magazine.
“First chance I’ve had to sit down all day” (here), copyright © 1988 by Forum magazine.
“Don’t be a fool, Billy” (here), copyright © 1986 by Penthouse magazine.
“Efficiency expert” (here), copyright © 1987 by Penthouse magazine.
DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT. Copyright © 1989 by John Callahan and David Kelly. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1989 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST EDITION
* * *
The Library of Congress has catalogued a previous edition as follows:
Callahan, John.
Don’t worry, he won’t get far on foot / John Callahan.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-679-72824-4
1. Callahan, John. 2. Quadriplegics—United States—Biography. 3. Cartoonists—United States—Biography. 4. Alcoholics—United States—Biography. I. Title.
[RC406.Q33C35 1990]
362.4'3'092—dc20
89-40488
[B] CIP
* * *
Digital Edition JUNE 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-289346-8
Version 06052018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-283696-0 (pbk.)
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