Callahan's Secret Read Online Free PDF

talk.”
    “Let’s talk later: you know we will. Right now I want to go where there are lights on.”
    “Yes, but-“
    “I want to check the staircase over one more time, too.”
    “-it’s perfectly-“
    “All right, I want to hear people admiring it.”
    “-you -don’t-“
    “I want a drink.”
    “-I bow to superior intelligence.”
     
    Warm light and happy noise and the smell of good suds came flooding out the opened door; as we descended the stairs the sour, oddly pleasant aroma of Callahan’s everpresent El Ropo cigars joined the mix.- Under the laughter and talk, Fast Eddie Costigan was playing Mac Rebennac stuff, and occasionally one patron or another would scat along with him. Noah Gonzalez was working on a gag he’d picked up from Al Phee, juggling full shot glasses, and by God he finally had it down cold. A small cheering section had gathered; while they clapped, Noah started sipping from the shots as they passed his face. (Noah works for the Suffolk County Bomb Squad, is why one leg is artificial, and a merrier man you’ll never meet.) Mary and I joined the onlookers; true artistry is rare. Noah drained two tumblers, spilling no more than a teaspoon or so on himself, then swallowed, wiped his mouth without losing rhythm, and hollered out, “Open wide, Drink!”
    Long-Drink McGonnigle never blows a cue. “Hit me,” he cried, and opened his mouth wide.
    This is what I think I saw: the shot glass still containing whiskey went up one last time, tilting this time in stately slow motion so that the contents almost spilled; then it came down, and Noah caught it,-stopped it cold with three fingers, the contents departed on a high trajectory, Noah flung it back into the stream of traffic so that it made up the lost time, we held our collective breath-and the Drink whipped his head two inches to the left and the flying booze impacted squarely against the back of his throat. A roar went up, and Noah laughed so hard he lost all three glasses, and-perhaps most magnificent of all-Long-Drink did not lose so much as a drop of the load.
    So rarely in life are we privileged to be present at such a moment. When I was ten, my family spent a summer vacation puptenting around New Hampshire, and inevitably we took the cog railway up Mount Washington, a journey itself worth remembering, but what I will never forget as long as I live is standing at the bookoff railing with the family, admiring the view while trying to keep from being blown over the edge by the fierce mountaintop wind, and the truly beautiful thing that happened then. Dad’s hat blew off, before he could even try to save it, and sailed out over an indescribable gulf, bound for the state of Maine with every chance of making it. He’d been a little grumpy earlier that day, and had regained his good spirits by force of will only a short time earlier, the rest of us made small cries of dismay as we watched his hat recede. So did several bystanders. But Dad was heroically determined to keep his good mood: he forced a smile, and even essayed a joke. “Don’t worry,” he called above the wind, “there’ll be another one along in a minute.” He put up his hand as if to pluck a hat from the sky. And a hat flew into his hand.
    This, you may say, and I will agree, is a wonderful thing, a marvelous thing. But the beautifuI thing, the thing that came back to me again and again during my stormy adolescent battles with Dad and kept me from ever really hating him, is what he did then. He caught the hat, smoothly, and without the slightest hesitation placed it on his head, pokerfaced. Even -the fact that it was a perfect fit did not faze him. “You see?” he said, and held a deadpan all the way through the ensuing ovation. I’ve always loved and admired my dad, but in that two or three seconds he became immortal.
    Some moments are golden, is what I’m saying, and what Noah had just pulled off was.one of those, somebody playing above himself. It made me feel awed