A man with a child's embrace of the questions
By Stephen King
The Boston Globe, Wednesday, May 30, 2002
I can't remember for sure why he showed up in our lives
for the first time, because in those days I was drunk
and blown out on dope a lot of the time - not into
noticing, if you know what I mean. I think what
happened is that my wife went to a lecture he gave at
the University of Maine, then dragged him home to fix
him up with transportation when she discovered his
flight back to Boston had been cancelled. It's the sort
of thing she would have done.
What I do remember is a smallish man with an aw-shucks,
Will Rogers chuckle, a bit of a belly under a
nondescript plaid Kmart sport shirt (slightly faded
from repeated washing), and a forelock of graying hair
that kept spilling into his eyes. It gave him a boyish
look. Each time it fell, he'd push it absently back
with a cupped hand. There was something boyish about
the gaze that shot out from under the hair as well; it
was brilliant and full of unapologetic curiosity. About
everything.
He shot out his hand and said: "Hi, I'm Steve Gould.
And you're Steve King."
We got talking, mostly about baseball. I liked him. I
don't take to people in a hurry, as a rule, but I took
to him. When he told me he was a Yankees fan, I asked
him if he also rooted for big insurance companies. His
eyes widened at that, and he laughed. Later, almost
against his will, he became a Red Sox fan for awhile.
Partly because he was teaching in Boston but mostly
because he loved Fenway Park. "No room," he said
once, shaking his head. "It should be ugly but it's
not. It's lovely."
He was not superstitious but believed the Red Sox were
a cursed team because the statistics - which he could
produce - proved it. At home he kept a single sheet of
yellow legal paper upon which his father had scored Don
Larsen's perfect game in perfect straight lines,
against the rule of the paper.
He kept it in his study desk, upon which sat an ugly
old manual typewriter that he cosseted like a child who
is sickly but much loved. So far as I know, everything
he wrote came out of his head via that typewriter.
He liked my books, he said, because they were
"perfectly logical extrapolations of pleasantly
illogical premises." And then, laughing, brushing the
boyish graying forelock off his brow: "Because they're
fun."
Once I wrote a vernacular version of the Book of
Genesis ("The Street Kid's Genesis," I called it) and
sent it to him. He wrote back about it at length,
calling it a fascinating study of nomenclature. His
enthusiasm, like his tumbling forelock, was a part of
him. He added, almost in passing, that he did not
believe in God. I told him that was fine, God believed
in him, and he laughed his cheery laugh. "I'm flattered
to be part of the Eternal's belief system," he said.
I sent him my books. He sent me offprints of the pieces
he published in Natural History and those he sometimes
wrote about the Red Sox, the Yankees, and the
statistical underpinnings of baseball (the best of
these was about the splendid improbability of Ted
Williams's .406 batting average in 1941, and the
likelihood - slim, in Steve's view - that anyone would
hit .400 again). We had baseball in common and one day
wound up together on a panel - along with David
Halberstam and who knows how many other notables -
discussing the subject in Washington, D.C.
Steve and I flew back to Boston afterward on a little
Lear 35 - a soup can with wings. The night was cold and
perfectly clear. As we banked over the city, heading
for the place over Boston Harbor where we would begin
our final descent, Steve pointed out the lights below -
all those straight lines, all those graceful arcs. It
was his habit to pick up old conversations - years old,
sometimes - as if they had never really stopped. In his
fabulously unique mind, I am sure they never really
had.
"If there was a God," he said, "he'd be in that
pattern. Think of all the intersecting lives it
represents!"
"And parallel ones, too," I replied.
He considered it, then laughed and pushed the forelock
off his brow. "Yes," he said, "All those that never
touch at any point, Those, too."
It wasn't the last time I saw him, but it's probably
the one I remember best: discussing the lighted
fingerprint of God at 10,000 feet over Boston. He was a
man with a child's embrace of the questions. I'm glad
that my life touched his life and am sorry that his
light has gone out.
--
I have become both the real and the dream. I now
see many worlds surrounding me: the past, present,
and future; the conscious and unconscious; the
tangible and the imagined. I try to convince
myself that it is only the present that is
hellish.
"Steven Callahan"
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