Callahan's Place 07 - Callahan's Legacy (v5.0) by Spider Robinson Page A

pocket.   Acayib saw it too, and turned to me.
    “If you don’t feel like talking,” I said, “just say, ‘No, but I don’t mind your asking.’   But do it fast—or Buck there will wake up in the parking lot with a headache.   We take privacy pretty seriously around here.”
    “I don’t mind your asking,” he said at once, and Fast Eddie relaxed slightly.   “Aw hell, I don’t mind talking about it.   Ask anything you want, any of you.   One more time, why not?   If anybody comes up with a question I’ve never heard before, I’ll buy Buck a drink.   Here, let me start you off: ‘Can you detect heat and cold?’   Answer: ‘Yes, but just barely—and I often have trouble telling them apart.’   That’s why I thought that the coffee Tommy poured on me was beer.   ‘What’s the worst you’ve injured yourself without noticing?’   Answer: ‘Well, I once walked a couple of miles on a broken leg.   And there’s a bullet in my right thigh, and for the life of me I couldn’t tell you how or when it happened; my doctor found it during a semiannual checkup.’   But neither injury is responsible for the way I walk: that’s the ‘vestibular impairment’ part of the syndrome.   Let me see, now.   Women often ask, ‘Did you ever cry when you were a baby?’—or sometimes, ‘Do you ever cry now?’   And the answer is, ‘Of course—you don’t have to feel pain to feel sad.’   Only I can’t even do that right: I can cry, but no tears ever come out.   That’s that ‘lacrimation deficit’ Dr. Solace mentioned.   Okay, now one of you ask me something.”
    “What’s the question you’ve been asked least ?” Margie Shorter asked.
    He blinked.   “Uh…that one.   Buck, I owe you a beer.   But aside from that one…well, two different guys have asked if I’d ever been tempted to get tattooed—since it’d be only tedious.   The answer is ‘No.’   I was always afraid if I got started, I wouldn’t stop until I looked like the Illustrated Man.”
    Tanya Latimer spoke up.   “What’s it like—living without pain?   Do you ever miss it?”
    “What’s it like, living without a penis?” he responded.
    “Huh?   Oh, I get you…how can I know, with nothing to compare it to?   Sorry—I guess it was a dumb question.   It’s just…well, black people in America have had more than our share of pain for so long, and done so many magnificent, unprecedented things with it, that I’ve sometimes wondered if we wouldn’t miss it, at least a little bit, if racism ever did magically disappear.   It isn’t just fear that keeps us from feeling totally comfortable hanging around white people; it’s also that—present company excepted—so many of them seem to us so vapid and dull and directionless.   I don’t know if I’d enjoy being like that for long.   Maybe pain has gotten good to us.   I’d be overjoyed to make the experiment, mind—but I do wonder sometimes.   Don’t you?”
    Dave Goldblum-Matthias nodded vigorously—then remembered that Tanya is blind.   “Yes, yes—it’s like I’ve been thinking for a few years now: one day, if God is good, there will exist a generation of Jews in Israel who do not have a single living ancestor who can tell them of his own experience what it is like to be landless, homeless, stateless.   Jews like ordinary humans—will this be a wholly good thing?   Will they still be proud ?   After all these weary millennia on the road, will we really be happy with roots—even in the Promised Land?”
    Acayib frowned.   “Buck,” he said, setting money on the bar, “I owe you three drinks so far.   Another beer for me too, please, Jake, while I think about them.”   I served up Mary’s Milks for him and Buck, ignoring his money.   “I think what you’re both asking me,” he said finally, “is whether I’m really so sure I’d trade places with a normal.   Well, my immediate impulse is to say yes .   Every single