Towing Jehovah

by James Morrow

  Midnight now. A choppy beam sea. Ursa Minor high above. Before us lie the Faeroes, 80 miles distant as the petrel flies, and then it’s open water all the way to Svalbard. Rafferty was just on the intercom, telling me the forward searchlight has picked out “an iceberg shaped like the Paramount Pictures logo.”

  We’re steaming for the frigid Norwegian Sea, trimmed with blood, all ahead full, and I’m feeling like a master again.

  Beer mug in hand, Myron Kovitsky shuffled up to the piano stool, sat down, and, pressing his Jimmy Durante nose in place, began pounding the keys. He scratched his schnozzola and raised his gravel voice, singing to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”

  We was fly in’ in our bombers at one hundred fuckin’ feet,

  Da weather fuckin’ awful, fuckin’ rain and fuckn’ sleet;

  Da compass it was swinging fuckin’ south and fuckin’ north,

  But we made a fuckin’ landing in da Firth of fuckin’ Forth.

  Durante stopped playing and showed the crowd a big loopy grin. The men of the Enterprise shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. No one applauded. Oliver cringed. Undaunted, Durante took a slug of Frydenlund and launched into the chorus.

  Ain’t da Navy fuckin’ awful?

  Ain’t da Navy fuckin’ awful?

  Ain’t da Navy fuckin’ awful?

  We made a fuckin’ landing in da Firth of fuckin’ Forth.

  Rising from the stool, Durante said, “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!”

  Hard times had befallen the Midnight Sun Canteen. Bored to death and sick of the cold, the Great American Nostalgia Machine had started adulterating its repertoire with off-color songs that, despite their historical authenticity, were clearly nothing Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, or the Andrews Sisters would have ever performed in public. The hostesses were tired of pretending to have crushes on the pilots and sailors, and the pilots and sailors were tired of the hostesses being tired of them. As for Sonny Orbach and His Harmonicoots, they had quit the scene entirely, off reincarnating Glenn Miller’s band at a bar mitzvah in Connecticut, a long-standing commitment they’d insisted on honoring despite Oliver’s offer to double their wages. Those servicemen who still felt the urge to dance were forced to settle for either Myron Kovitsky’s feeble piano-playing skills or Sidney Pembroke’s Victrola rasping out Albert Flume’s original 78-rpm records of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and the real Glenn Miller.

  Oliver had to admit it: his grand crusade was on the verge of collapse. By sitting around doing nothing for three weeks, Pembroke and Flume had amassed enough in retainer fees to stage a first-rate D-Day, and while the notion of sinking a Jap golem still appealed to them, they were far more anxious to get home and locate a reasonable facsimile of Normandy. And even if Oliver could somehow convince everybody to stay at Point Luck until a PBY recon flight spotted the Val, it was quite possible that, because of the dreadful Arctic weather, Admiral Spruance would refuse to give the go-ahead. Flaps and landing gear were sticking during the milk runs. Gas lines were clogging. The flight deck was freezing faster than Captain Murray’s men could clear it: an unbroken sheet of ice as vast as the mirror of the Hubble telescope.

  Oliver spent these gloomy days at the bar, doodling randomly in his sketch pad as he tried to come up with reasons it was okay for them not to obliterate the Corpus Dei after all.

  “Fellas, I got a question for you,” he said, putting the final touches on a caricature of Myron Kovitsky. “This campaign of ours—is it truly justified?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Barclay, deftly shuffling a pack of playing cards.

  “Maybe the body should be left alone,” said Oliver. “Maybe it should even be brought to light, like Sylvia Endicott insisted the night she quit.” Rotating on his bar stool, he placed himself face to face with Winston. “A disclosure might even spark your True Revolution, right? Once everybody knows He’s cashed it in, they’ll leave their churches and start building the workers’ paradise.”

  “You don’t know very much about Marxism, do you?” Winston arranged two dozen stray Frydenlund bottle caps into a hammer and sickle. “Until they’re given something better to replace it with, the masses will never abandon religion, corpse or no corpse. Once social justice triumphs, of course, the God myth will vanish”—he snapped his fingers—“like that.”

  “Oh, come off it.” Barclay made the queen of spades vault magically from the pack. “Religion will always exist, Winston.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Al Jolson wandered drunkenly onstage.

  “One word,” said Barclay. “Death. Religion solves it, social justice doesn’t.” Turning toward Oliver, he caused the jack of hearts to leap into his friend’s lap. “But what does it matter, eh? I hate to be blunt, Oliver, but I think it’s pretty damn likely Cassie’s ship has been lost at sea.”

  As Oliver winced, Jolson began singing a cappella:

  Oh, I love to see Shirley make water,

  She can pee such a beautiful stream.

  She can pee for a mile and a quarter,

  And you can’t see her ass for the steam.

  At which instant Ray Spruance’s portrayer’s static-laden voice exploded from the loudspeakers. “Attention, everyone! This is the admiral! Good news, boys! Initial dispatches from the Coral Sea indicate that Task Force Seventeen has badly damaged the Japanese carriers Shohu and Shokaku, thereby preventing the enemy from occupying Port Moresby!”

  A solitary sailor clapped. A lone flier said, “That’s nice.”

  “He’s leaving out a few details,” said Wade McClusky’s portrayer, joining the three atheists at the bar. “He’s afraid to mention we lost Lexington in that particular battle.”

  “Truth: the first casualty of war,” said Winston.

  “Attention!” continued Spruance. “Attention! All men attached to Task Force Sixteen will report to the ship immediately! This is not a drill! All men from Scout Bombing Six, Torpedo Six, and Enterprise will report immediately!” Spruance suddenly shifted to a jovial, folksy tone. “Strawberry Ten’s just spotted the enemy, boys! That Jap golem’s in Arctic waters, and now we’re gonna bushwhack the sucker!”

  “Hey, comrades—you hear that?” squealed Winston.

  “We’ve done it, guys!” shouted Barclay. “We’ve got irrationality by the balls!”

  Oliver hugged his sketch pad, kissing his caricature of Myron Kovitsky. The Valparaíso was afloat! Cassandra was alive! He pictured her standing on one of the tanker’s bridge wings, scanning the sky for the promised squadrons. I’m on my way, darling, he thought. Here comes Oliver to save your Weltanschauung.

  McClusky strode to Pembroke’s Victrola and, detaching the huge conical speaker, held it to his mouth like a megaphone. “Well, boys, you heard the admiral! Let’s get off our duffs and show them Nips they got no right to mess with the natural economic order of things!”

  So now it was here, that bittersweet juncture each man had awaited with supreme patience, the moment when he must seek out his favorite hostess and bid her au revoir. Choking back tears half-crocodile and half-genuine, the sailor nearest Oliver clasped the hand of his best girl—a chubby woman with pigtails and dimples—and solemnly vowed to write her every day. The hostess, in turn, gave the sailor Oliver’s money’s worth, assuring him she would carry their brief encounter in her heart forever. Throughout the Midnight Sun Canteen, phone numbers were exchanged, along with fleeting kisses and sentimental tokens (brooches and locks of hair from the women, tie clips and aviation badges from the men). Even Arnold Kovitsky got into the mood, striding up to the mike and transforming himself into Marlene Dietrich singing “Lili Marlene.”

  The servicemen trembled and wept, stunned by the sheer hypnotic beauty of it all: the song, the farewells, the call to arms.

  A blond, apple-cheeked flier whose name badge read BEESON turned to McClusky and raised his hand.

  “Yes, Lieutenant Beeson?”

  “Commander McClusky, sir, is there time fo
r one last foxtrot?”

  “Sorry, sailor, Uncle Sam needs us right now. Battle stations, men!”

  September 14.

  Latitude: 66°50'N. Longitude: 2°45'W. Course: 044. Speed: 7 knots. Sea temperature: 23° Fahrenheit. Air temperature: 12° and falling.

  At 0745 two momentous events occurred. The Valparaíso crossed the Arctic Circle, and I shaved off my beard. A major operation. I had to borrow a pair of butcher’s shears from Follingsbee, and after that I went through a half dozen of Ockham’s disposable razors.

  Ice enshrouds our cargo, a smooth crust running head to toe like the casing on a sausage. By the time we reach Kvitoya, His meat will be solid as marble.

  “See, the putrefaction’s stopped, just like our angels predicted,” I said, striding up to Ockham. “We don’t need the Vatican’s damn formaldehyde.”

  The padre was standing on the afterdeck, watching the pump-room gang glide around on His sternum. Ice-skating has become the crew’s principal recreation of late, eclipsing both stud poker and Ping-Pong. Their gear is jerry-built—cutlery affixed to hiking boots—but it works fine. For extra protection against the cold, they coat their hands, feet, and faces with glory grease.

  Ockham looked me in the eye and smiled, obviously relieved that I’d just placed us back on speaking terms. “Someone should contact Rome and tell them He’s finally stable,” he said as Bud Ramsey fell squarely on his ass. “Surely you’d prefer not to have Di Luca out chasing us in the Maracaibo.”

  I couldn’t argue with the man’s logic, and I even allowed him to compose the message. (He did this in his cabin. They’ll be selling earmuffs in hell before I let Ockham on the bridge again.) At 1530 Sparks faxed the good news to Rome, and at 1538 a second communiqué went out, this one to sunny Spain. It was only a dozen words long. “Expect me in Valladolid next month whether you want me or not,” I told my father.

  We’re getting very near the end, Popeye.

  After tonight’s dinner, Follingsbee’s best batch of stroganoff yet, the steward said he wanted me to see the results of a “scientific experiment” he’d been working on ever since our stop in Ireland. He led me outside—what a wonderland our weather deck has become, ice hanging from the catwalks in great crystalline webs, frost shimmering on the pipes and valves—and into the depths of number 4 ballast tank, chattering all the way about the joys of home agronomy. We hadn’t gone 20 feet before my nostrils were quivering with pleasure. Lord, such a marvelous scent: utter ripeness, Popeye, sheer fecundity. I switched on my flashlight.

  At the bottom of the tank lay a brightly colored garden, its vegetables grown bulbous beyond the wildest fantasies of Hieronymus Bosch, its fruits so fat they practically screamed aloud to be plucked. Gnarled trees lurched out of the darkness, their branches bent by apples the size of volleyballs. Asparagus spears reared up from the floor like some bizarre species of cactus. Broccoli flourished beside the keelson, each stalk as tall and thick as a mimosa tree. Vines drooped from the ladders, their dark purple grapes clustered together like Godzilla’s lymph nodes.

  “Sam, you’re a genius.”

  The steward doffed his cream-puff hat and took a modest bow. “Seeds all came from them groceries we bought in Galway. Soil’s a mixture of skin and plasma. What gets me is how fast everything grew, in subfreezing temperatures yet, and without a single ray of sunshine. You sow an orange pip, and ten hours later—bingo!”

  “So half the credit belongs to…”

  “More than half. He makes great compost, sir.”

  When this voyage is finally over, Popeye, there’s only one thing I’m going to miss, and that’s the food.

  Cassie’s parka, borrowed from Bud Ramsey, was stuffed with grade-A goose down; her socks, from Juanita Torres, were 100 percent virgin wool; her gloves, from Sister Miriam, contained pure rabbit fur. But the cold still penetrated, eating through each protective layer like some voracious Arctic moth. The thermometer on the starboard wing stood at negative eight degrees, and that didn’t include the windchill factor.

  Lifting her field glasses, she focused on the glistery, snowcapped nose. Far beyond, a steady stream of charged solar particles spilled forth, countless electrons and neutrons entering the earth’s magnetic field and colliding with rarefied atmospheric gases. The resulting aurora filled the entire northern sky: a luminous blue-and-green banner flapping in eerie silence above the rolling waves and the wandering pack ice.

  What she most admired about Anthony Van Horne, the fact that made him always there these days, always flitting about in her brain, was his obsessiveness. At last she’d met someone as stubborn as she. Snapshots from a sea odyssey: Anthony killing a tiger shark with a bazooka, quelling a mutiny with fast food, persuading his sailors to move a mountain. Just as Cassie would stop at nothing to destroy God, so the captain would stop at nothing to protect Him. It was truly intense, erotic almost, this strange, unspoken bond between them.

  The question, of course, was whether Oliver’s admirable project still existed. Pure logic said the slender threads binding the interests of the Central Park West Enlightenment League to those of the World War Two Reenactment Society had been completely severed during the Valparaíso’s long imprisonment on Van Horne Island. Yet Cassie knew Oliver. She understood his utter, passionate, tedious devotion to her. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that he’d found some way to keep the alliance alive. Any day now, any hour now, the Age of Reason would be visited upon the Corpus Dei.

  The Valparaíso’s chart room, surprisingly, was no warmer than her bridge wings. As Cassie stepped inside, her vaporous breath drifted across the Formica table and hovered above a map of Sardinia, creating a massive cloud formation over Cagliari. Luckily, someone had undertaken to compensate for the defective heating ducts by bringing in a Coleman stove. She fired it up and got busy, scanning the wide, shallow drawers until she noticed one labeled ARCTIC OCEAN. She opened it. The drawer contained over a hundred bodies of ice-choked water—Greenland’s Scoresby Sound, Norway’s Vestfjord, Svalbard’s Hinlopenstreten, Russia’s East Siberian Sea—and only after thumbing halfway through the pile did she come upon a chart depicting both the Arctic Circle and Jan Mayen Island.

  Expect airstrike at 68°11'N, 2°35'W, Oliver’s fax had said, 150 miles east of launch point…

  Pivoting toward the Formica table, she unfurled the map. It was dense with data: soundings, anchorages, wrecks, submerged rocks—the geographic equivalent of an anatomy text, she decided, earth’s most intimate particulars laid bare. She picked up a ballpoint pen and did the math on a stray scrap of Carpco stationery. Wary of the icebergs, Anthony had recently cut their speed from nine knots to seven. Seven times twenty-four: they were covering 168 nautical miles a day. Calibrating the dividers against the bar scale, ten miles tip to tip, she walked them from the Val’s position—67 north, 4 west—to the spot specified by Oliver. Result: a mere 280 miles. If her optimism was not misplaced, the attack lay fewer than forty-eight hours in the future.

  “Searching for the Northwest Passage?”

  She hadn’t heard him come in, but there he was, dressed in a green turtleneck sweater and frayed orange watch cap. He was clean-shaven, shockingly so. In the bright neon glow his chin lay wholly revealed, its dimple winking at her.

  “Homesick,” she replied, pitching the dividers into the Norwegian Sea. “I figure we’re a good four days from Kvitoya.” She rubbed each arm with the opposite hand. “Wish that damn stove worked better.”

  Anthony slipped off his cap. “There are remedies.”

  “For homesickness?”

  “For cold.”

  His arms swung apart like the doors to some particularly cozy and genial tavern, and with a nervous laugh she embraced him, pressing against his woolly chest. He massaged her back, his palm carving deep, slow spirals in the space between her shoulder blades.

  “You shaved.”

  “Uh-huh. Feeling warmer?”

  “Hmmm…”

 
; “Can you keep a secret?”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “The Vatican’s ordered us to turn around and head south.”

  “South?” Panic shot through Cassie. She tightened her grip.

  “We’re supposed to rendezvous with the SS Carpco Maracaibo back in the Gibraltar Sea. She’s got formaldehyde in her cargo bays.”

  “Those angels ordered Him frozen, not embalmed,” she protested.

  “That’s why we’re holding steady.”

  “Ahh…” Cassie relaxed, laughing to herself, cavorting internally. Holding steady—wonderful, perfect, straight into the clutches of the Enlightenment.

  He kissed her cheek, softly, tenderly: a brotherly kiss, non-carnal. Then her brow, her eyes. Jaw, ear, cheek again. Their lips met. She pulled away.

  “This isn’t a good idea.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed.

  And suddenly they were connecting again, hugging fiercely, meshing. They kissed voraciously, mouths wide open, as if to swallow one another. Cassie shut her eyes, reveling in the liquidity of Anthony’s tongue: a life-form unto itself, member of some astoundingly sensual species of eel.

  Disengaging, the captain said, “The stove gets hotter, you know…”

  “Hotter,” she echoed, catching her breath.

  He crouched over the Coleman and adjusted the fuel control, turning the flame into a roiling red mass, a kind of indoor aurora borealis. Opening the INDIAN OCEAN drawer, he whipped out a large, laminated map and spread it on the floor like a picnic blanket. “Madagascar’s the best place for this sort of thing,” he explained, winking at her. Slowly, lasciviously, the chart room heated up.

  “You’re wrong,” said Cassie playfully, shedding her parka. She rifled the SULU SEA drawer and grabbed a portrait of the Philippines. “Palawan’s much more erotic.” She released the map, and it glided to the floor like a magic carpet landing in thirteenth-century Baghdad.