12th Stanza: Jake and Callahan
One
Don Callahan had had many dreams of returning to America. Usually they began with him waking up under a high, fair desert sky full of the puffy clouds baseball players call "angels" or in his own rectory bed in the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine. No matter which locale it happened to be, he'd be nearly overwhelmed with relief, his first instinct for prayer. Oh, thank God. Thank God it was only a dream and finally I am awake.
He was awake now, no question of that.
He turned a complete circle in the air and saw Jake do exactly the same in front of him. He lost one of his sandals. He could hear Oy yapping and Eddie roaring in protest. He could hear taxi horns, that sublime New York street music, and something else, as well: a preacher. Really cruising along, by the sound of him. Third gear, at least. Maybe overdrive.
One of Callahan's ankles clipped the side of the Unfound Door as he went through and there was a burst of terrific pain from that spot. Then the ankle (and the area around it) went numb. There was a speedy riffle of todash chimes, like a thirty-three-and-a-third record played at forty-five rpm. A buffet of conflicting air currents hit him, and suddenly he was smelling gasoline and exhaust instead of the Doorway Cave's dank air. First street music; now street perfume.
For a moment there weretwo preachers. Henchick behind, roaring"Behold, the door opens!" and another one ahead, bellowing"Say GAWD, brotha, that's right, say GAWD on Second Avenue!"
More twins,Callahan thought - there was time for that - and then the door behind him blammed shut and the only God-shouter was the one on Second Avenue. Callahan also had time to thinkWelcome home, you sonofabitch, welcome back to America, and then he landed.
Two
It was quite an all-out crash, but he came down hard on his hands and knees. His jeans protected the latter parts to some degree (although they tore), but the sidewalk scraped what felt like an acre of skin from his palms. He heard the rose, singing powerfully and undisturbed.
Callahan rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sky, snarling with pain, holding his bleeding, buzzing hands in front of his face. A drop of blood from the left one splashed onto his cheek like a tear.
"Where the fuck didyou come from, my friend?" asked an astounded black man in gray fatigues. He seemed to have been the only one to mark Don Callahan's dramatic re-entry into America. He was staring down at the man on the sidewalk with wide eyes.
"Oz," Callahan said, and sat up.
His hands stung fiercely and now his ankle was back, complaining in loudyowp-yowp-yowp bursts of pain that were in perfect synch with his elevated heartbeat. "Go on, fella. Get out of here. I'm okay, so twenty-three skidoo. "
"Whatever you say, bro. Later. "
The man in the gray fatigues - a janitor just off-shift was Callahan's guess - started walking. He favored Callahan with one final glance - still amazed but already beginning to doubt what he'd seen - and then skirted the little crowd listening to the street preacher. A moment later he was gone.
Callahan got to his feet and stood on one of the steps leading up to Hammarskj?ld Plaza, looking for Jake. He didn't see him. He looked the other way, for the Unfound Door, but that was gone, too.
"Now listen, my friends! Listen, I say God, I say God'slove,I say gimme hallelujah!"
"Hallelujah," said a member of the street preacher's crowd, not really sounding all that into it.
"I say amen, thank you, brotha! Now listen because this is America's time of TESTING and America is FAILING her TEST! This country needs a BOMB, not a new-kew-lar one but a GAWD-BOMB, can you say hallelujah?"
"Jake!" Callahan shouted. "Jake, where are you? Jake!"
"Oy!"That was Jake, his voice raised in a scream. "Oy, LOOK OUT!"
There was a yapping, excited bark Callahan would have recognized anywhere. Then the scream of locked tires.
The blare of a horn.
And the thud.
Three
Callahan forgot about his bashed ankle and sizzling palms. He ran around the preacher's little crowd (it had turned as one to the street and the preacher had quit his rant in mid-flow) and saw Jake standing in Second Avenue, in front of a Yellow Cab that had slewed to a crooked stop no more than an inch from his legs. Blue smoke was still drifting up from its rear tires. The driver's face was a pallid, craning O of shock. Oy was crouched between Jake's feet. To Callahan the bumbler looked freaked out but otherwise all right.
The thud came again and yet again. It was Jake, bringing his balled-up fist down on the hood of the taxi. "Asshole!" Jake yelled at the pallid O on the other side of the windshield. Thud! "Why don't you - " Thud! " - watch where - " THUD! " - the fuck you're GOING!" THUD-THUD!
"You give it to im, Cholly!" yelled someone from across the street, where perhaps three dozen people had stopped to watch the fun.
The taxi's door opened. The long tall helicopter who stepped out was wearing what Callahan thought was called a dashiki over jeans and huge mutant sneakers with boomerangs on the sides. There was a fez on his head, which probably accounted somewhat for the impression of extreme height, but not entirely. Callahan guessed the guy was at least six and a half feet tall, fiercely bearded, and scowling at Jake. Callahan started toward this developing scene with a sinking heart, barely aware that one of his feet was bare, slapping the pavement with every other step. The street preacher was also moving toward the developing confrontation. Behind the taxi stopped in the intersection, another driver, interested in nothing but his own scheduled evening plans, laid on his horn with both hands - WHEEEOOOONNNNNNK!!! - and leaned out his window, hollering "Move it, Abdul, you're blockin the box!"
Jake paid no attention. He was in a total fury. This time he brought both fists down on the hood of the taxi, like Ratso Rizzo inMidnight Cowboy - THUD! "You almost ran my friend down, you asshole, did you even LOOK - " THUD! " - where you were GOING?"
Before Jake could bring his fists down on the hood of the taxi again - which he obviously meant to do until he was satisfied - the driver grabbed his right wrist. "Stop doing that, you little punk!" he cried in an outraged and strangely high voice. "I am telling you - "
Jake stepped back, breaking free of the tall taxi driver's grip. Then, in a liquid motion too quick for Callahan to follow, the kid yanked the Ruger from the docker's clutch under his arm and pointed it at the driver's nose.
"Tell mewhat? " Jake raged at him. "Tell mewhat? That you were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend? That you don't want to die here in the street with a hole in your head? Tell meWHAT? "
A woman on the far side of Second Avenue either saw the gun or caught a whiff of Jake's homicidal fury. She screamed and started hurrying away. Several more followed her example. Others gathered at the curb, smelling blood. Incredibly, one of them - a young man wearing his hat turned around backward - shouted: "Go on, kid! Ventilate that camel-jockey!"
The driver backed up two steps, his eyes widening. He held up his hands to his shoulders. "Do not shoot me, boy! Please!"
"Then say you're sorry!" Jake raved. "If you want to live, you cry my pardon! And his! Andhis! " Jake's skin was dead pale except for tiny red spots of color high up on his cheekbones. His eyes were huge and wet. What Don Callahan saw most clearly and liked least was the way the barrel of the Ruger was trembling. "Say you're sorry for the way you were driving, you careless motherfucker! Do it now!Do it now! "
Oy whined uneasily and said, "Ake!"
Jake looked down at him. When he did, the taxi driver lunged for the gun. Callahan hit him with a fairly respectable right cross and the driver sprawled against the front of his car, his fez tumbling from his head. The driver behind him had clear lanes on either side and could have swung around but continued to lay on his horn instead, yelling"Move it buddy, move it!" Some of the spectators on the far side of Second were actually applauding like spectators at a Madison Square Garden fight, and Callahan thought:Why, this place is a madhouse. Did I
know that before and forget, or is it something I just learned?
The street preacher, a man with a beard and long white hair that descended to his shoulders, was now standing beside Jake, and when Jake started to raise the Ruger again, the preacher laid a gentle, unhurried hand on the boy's wrist.
"Holster it, boy," he said. "Stick it away, praise Jesus. "
Jake looked at him and saw what Susannah had seen not long before: a man who looked eerily like Henchick of the Manni. Jake put the gun back into the docker's clutch, then bent and picked up Oy. The bumbler whined, stretched his face toward Jake's on his long neck, and began to lick the boy's cheek.
Callahan, meanwhile, had taken the driver's arm and was leading him back toward his hack. He fished in his pocket and palmed a ten-dollar bill which was about half the money they'd managed to put together for this little safari.
"All over," he said to the driver, speaking in what he hoped was a soothing voice. "No harm, no foul, you go your way, he goes his - " And then, past the hackie, yelling at the relentless horn-honker: "Horn works, you nimrod, so why not give it a rest and try your lights?"
"That little bastard was pointing the gun at me," said the taxi driver. He felt on his head for his fez and didn't find it.
"It's only a model," Callahan said soothingly. "The kind of thing you build from a kit, doesn't even fire pellets. I assure y - "