A Commodore of Errors

by John Jacobson

  I look forward to your return. God Speed.

  Yours,

  Commodore Robert Dickey

  Mrs. Tannenbaume placed the letter back on the side table. She was about to open the other letter when she felt the ship roll—Swifty, changing course for another ship. Well that simply would not do. Anything other than a straight course line would slow down the ship’s progress, and they did not have a moment to spare if they were to get back in time for the unveiling. She, too, wanted her sonny boy to make a big splash. When Mrs. Tannenbaume got to the bridge, she saw that, sure enough, Swifty was in the middle of changing course.

  Mrs. Tannenbaume did not chastise Swifty for his decision—she knew that making Swifty a take-charge ship’s officer was a lost cause. She simply ordered Ski to turn the ship back onto its course and then she blew five short blasts on the whistle at the ship bearing down on them from their starboard side.

  PHILADELPHIA LAWYER

  Captain Tannenbaume had not made morning chow in over a week. He had been so consumed reading (and rereading) Mogie’s telexes that he had fallen out of sync with the normal rhythms of the ship. He had been eating breakfast mid-morning, skipping lunch altogether, and coming in at the very end of the evening meal hour. But today he arrived in the officers’ mess on time for breakfast—and found himself all alone. He sat by himself and stared out the lone porthole, his plate of eggs untouched. Since he had not been on the bridge in so long, he had no way of knowing that the morning was Mitzi’s peak time and that the crew had taken to bringing their breakast to the bridge while they waited in line for their back rub or pedicure or scalp massage.

  The steward came in. “Everything okay, Captain?”

  “Eggs are as tight as ever, Stew, thanks. I’m just not hungry, I guess.”

  He was waiting on Sparks so that they could have a chat about the new GPS Sparks had picked up in Suez. Since he was not allowed to step foot in the radio shack, he was forced to wait while Sparks took his sweet time getting down to the officers’ mess that morning. Oh, he could go into any space on the ship he damn well pleased, but truth be told, he didn’t want to get Sparks any more riled up than he already was. The fact was he needed Sparks’s help to get his ship back across the pond. Captain Tannenbaume knew from what little interaction he had with his mates—chance meetings in the passageways mostly—that Swifty and the others were having a devil of a time getting the GPS initialized. Sparks could initialize it in his sleep, but he told Captain Tannenbaume that he was too busy, that he had already told Swifty how to initialize the GPS, and that if Swifty couldn’t get the thing initialized in a few days, then maybe he’d have time to help then. But Captain Tannenbaume knew they didn’t have a few days to wait. The ship was going to be in the Atlantic Ocean in less than twenty-four hours, and seeing as they couldn’t simply hug the coast across the Atlantic, the mates needed that GPS. Of course, Captain Tannenbaume could do the navigating himself now that he had his sextant back. Or he could use the crossing as an opportunity to finally teach his mates celestial. But the thought of it made his stomach turn. A, he wanted to spend as little time on that bridge as possible, and B, he figured it was better to start from scratch and teach celestial to a fresh batch of plebes when he became head honcho at the academy. Swifty was already a lost cause.

  Captain Tannenbaume heard someone coming from the passageway and he began to unconsciously push plates and cups and saucers around the table in anticipation of his confrontation with Sparks. The rearranging of the tableware came to an abrupt end when the chief walked into the mess.

  “The mates get that GPS initialized yet?”

  God Almighty, how did stuff get around on this ship so fast? He ignored the chief ‘s question and did not say good morning when the chief joined him at the table. The messman came in and placed a glass of prune juice in front of the chief and told him his breakfast would be out in a minute.

  “You waiting on Sparks this morning?” the chief said.

  Captain Tannenbaume thought about ignoring him, but he did not wish to be openly hostile. Instead, he waited a good minute before replying, “Yes, as a matter of fact I am.”

  “He’s been coming to breakfast a bit late, lately. He likes to get his cuticles pushed back—you know that half-moon thing?—before the morning rush up at Mitzi’s.”

  Just then Sparks walked into the mess. He sat alone at a four-top across the room from where the chief and Captain Tannenbaume were sitting. The sound of the ship’s clock ringing two bells came in loud and clear in the quiet mess room.

  The chief broke the awkward silence. “Care to join us over here, Sparks?”

  Sparks shook his head.

  “You get that GPS initialized yet, Sparks?” Captain Tannenbaume didn’t like the way his words came out. He was going for light and breezy but it came out sounding confrontational. He always marveled at how the chief could argue with a smile on his face.

  “No,” Sparks said.

  Captain Tannenbaume did not want to say, in front of the chief, how much his officers needed the GPS to cross the Atlantic.

  “The mates don’t need it, Sparks, but it sure would come in handy.” Captain Tannenbaume smiled when he said it. “As a backup, is all.”

  “It’s not my job to initialize the GPS.”

  “It is too your job!” Captain Tannenbaume shouted so violently he scared the messman, who spilled Sparks’s glass of orange juice.

  “No it’s not.”

  “You’re being insubordinate!”

  “No he’s not.” The chief was smiling, of course, when he said it.

  “Stay the hell out of this, Maggie.”

  “Union rules say the radio officer only has to make his best effort at ‘repairing’ the electronics. Nowhere in the contract does it say he has to”—air quotes—“’initialize’ the electronics.”

  To Captain Tannenbaume, it felt like the chief was scratching his fingers on a chalkboard when he made his goddamn air quotes. He pushed his plate of cold eggs across the table. A glass fell off the edge and broke on the deck.

  “Don’t play Philadelphia lawyer with me, Maggie. The man is insubordinate.”

  “Not according to the contract.”

  “I don’t give a damn what the contract says. We need that GPS working!”

  This time the chief smiled before he spoke. “I thought we didn’t”—air quotes—“’need’ it. I thought—”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think, Maggie. Look, Sparks . . . ” Captain Tannenbaume got up from the table wagging his finger and crossed the room to where Sparks was sitting. Just then he heard the faint sound of the ship’s whistle.

  “Is that our whistle?”

  The chief looked at Captain Tannenbaume in amazement. “You can hear the whistle? You haven’t heard the whistle in over a week. Now all the way aft in the officers’ mess, you can hear the whistle?” The chief shook his head. “I don’t understand that at all.”

  Captain Tannenbaume suddenly realized he needed to get to the bridge immediately.

  “Look, Sparks, I don’t have time for this now. I want that GPS initialized pronto. If you don’t get the thing initialized today, you’re fired.”

  “You can’t fire him for that. It’s not in the contract.”

  Captain Tannenbaume could care less about the contract. He wanted to know why the hell Swifty was blowing the danger signal. He walked out of the mess, and as he made his way down the passageway toward the bridge, he heard the chief shouting something about waiting until he took his nooner. It felt funny to be walking toward the bridge at a swift clip and made him aware that it had been a while since he had last been up there. He felt a little self-conscious about that and wondered just what he’d find.

  He heard the sound of the whistle again and it made him pick up his pace, and when he got to the stairwell, he took the stairs two at a time.

  MITZI’S

  Due to the sound of the blaring whistle, no one on the bridge heard the door squeak op
en, and so the crew was unaware that Captain Tannenbaume, after over a week’s absence, had finally returned to the bridge of the God is Able. Not that he stepped very far onto the bridge—he stopped just inside the doorway, unable to move a muscle, so profound was his shock. Mitzi’s makeover of the bridge was now complete. The chart table, directly in front of him, which should have had a large-scale chart spread out on it with a proper fix laid down and a DR track plotted, was festooned with massage oils and candles and fluffy pillows. Long sheets of cheesecloth, used by the boatswain to wipe down wood when prepping for varnish, had been sewn together to replace the heavy canvas blackout curtains that surround every chart table. The cheesecloth billowed in the air, blown by the air-conditioning unit from the back of the bridge. Captain Tannenbaume’s captain’s chair, which he could just make out through the cheesecloth, was all but unrecognizable under the jury-rigged heat guns and paint trays, not to mention the person lying in the chair with a hot towel wrapped around his face and a blanket draped over his body. He thought he recognized Swifty’s hush puppies poking out from under the blanket.

  Captain Tannenbaume had never before seen so many people on his bridge. He recognized cooks and bedroom stewards and engineers and deck hands. They milled about, drinking coffee, reading magazines, waiting their turn for Mitzi’s services and talking about what kind of work they wanted to have done that day. The engineers, who cared so much about their hands, were busy inspecting the different bottles of nail polish—bottles and bottles of nail polish. The ship’s agent had misread the requisition that Mitzi made out and dropped off not a box of nail polish, but a pallet full. The bottles of nail polish lined the bookshelves that formerly housed the Rules of the Road and Bowditch and the Sight Reduction tables.

  Captain Tannenbaume was having trouble accepting that this was the bridge of a ship he was standing on—his bridge. The electrician—the electrician, of all people—was getting a shoulder massage from Mitzi. The second engineer was at the coffee station lazily removing steaming hot towels from the coffeepots with a pair of channel locks. The second engineer, who should have been down in the engine room getting his hands dirty, was instead on the bridge playing barbershop. Even Sylvia was part of the act. Sylvia got the ship’s carpenter to turn the slop chest on the bridge into a shampoo station. At the moment, she was giving Ski a scalp massage.

  So with Swifty asleep in the captain’s chair, and Ski getting a scalp massage, who the hell was steering and keeping a lookout?

  It was this thought that finally jarred him awake, and it was only then that he became aware of the sound of the whistle again. He walked around the chart table.

  His mother had her hand on the whistle. She was blowing the unorthodox signal at a tanker—a tanker—hard on their starboard bow.

  Captain Tannenbaume slapped his mother’s hand off the whistle.

  Mrs. Tannenbaume shouted, “Sonny boy!” and Ski, from the slop chest, shouted, “Attention on deck!” From under the hot towel came, “Oh, shit.”

  Oh, shit, indeed.

  Captain Tannenbaume was vaguely aware of frantic shuffling behind him as he spun the wheel hard to starboard to go under the tanker’s stern. When he turned around, he found that the cooks and stewards had left the bridge without a fight. Only the engineers stayed behind. Apparently, they had come to get their nails done and they were not leaving until they did.

  Captain Tannenbaume was about to tell the engineers that they should feel free to join the cooks and stewards, but he stopped himself. He had to get his navigation bridge squared away first. He ordered Ski to the wheel.

  “Sonny—”

  “Please, Mother,” he said. “Don’t say a word.”

  “But we have a schedule to keep. Changing course slows us down.”

  “I suggest you read the Rules of the Road, Mother.”

  “I read them. And I don’t agree with them. Why should we always have to be the one to change course?”

  “I suggest you read my standing orders then, Mother.”

  “I read your standing orders, too. And I have to say, sonny, I wasn’t impressed.”

  Captain Tannenbaume watched the tanker cross slowly in front of them.

  “So I changed them.”

  “You did what!”

  Captain Tannenbaume caught himself. He could not very well get upset with his mother. He knew he had only himself to blame. He knew he had to take responsibility for what had happened on his bridge—he had to take it on the chin, and then he had to move on.

  With his ship no longer in extremis, Captain Tannenbaume turned his attention to his next most urgent problem. The GPS. He called Swifty over and, without saying a word about the manner in which the man was conducting his watch, gave him back the conn. Then he called Mitzi over. He took her by the arm and walked her out on the wing.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Captain Tannenbaume said when they were alone. “I think you can help.”

  “Shoot,” Mitzi said.

  “We need that GPS programmed.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “I’m getting nowhere with Sparks. Do you think you can convince him to do it?”

  Mitzi thought about it for a moment. “He’s a strange bird, that Sparks. I don’t relate to him.”

  “You don’t have to relate to him. He only has to relate to you. See what I’m driving at?”

  “Oh, no.” Mitzi put up her hands to stop the conversation. “I’ve had enough trouble getting the chief to relate to me. You merchant marines are all talk and no action. I don’t know if I’m up for being alone in a room with another merchant marine who is scared to death of a woman.”

  “I think Sparks is different. I’ve never heard him talk about women. He could be the silent type.”

  Mitzi looked over Captain Tannenbaume’s shoulder into the bridge. “What about my salon? The engineers get awfully cranky when they don’t get their nails done as soon as they come off watch.”

  “What about Sylvia? Can she keep an eye on things while you’re away?”

  “Yeah. I suppose so. I’ve been training her. She’s got a good work ethic.”

  “Good,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “That settles it. Go to work on Sparks. We need that GPS.”

  Mitzi shook her head. “You’re gonna owe me one for this.”

  But Captain Tannenbaume did not hear what Mitzi said. The tanker was now passing down the side of the God is Able at a range of no more than a quarter mile. The captain of the tanker was out on the wing, waving at the ship that had just nearly cut him in half. It surprised Captain Tannenbaume that the other captain was waving his hand, but after taking a closer look, he saw that he was not using all of his fingers.

  IT’S CALLED LEVERAGE

  Mitzi was back on the bridge before noon. She handed the GPS to Captain Tannenbaume. “Go ahead. Fire it up.”

  Captain Tannenbaume took the GPS from Mitzi. “You’re kidding,” he said as he took a step back and looked at Mitzi, appraising her. Then they both started laughing.

  “You were right about Sparks being the silent type.”

  “But I never thought—”

  Captain Tannenbaume stopped mid-sentence. Ski was waving his arm and nodding toward the door. They all turned when they heard the door open, and sure enough, there was Sparks. Captain Tannenbaume watched Sparks as he walked over to the coffee station. There was something different about the way he was walking. What was it? He nodded toward Sparks. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  Captain Tannenbaume did not need an answer from Mitzi. The answer was all over her face. She was looking at Sparks the way a teacher looks at a student who gets it for the first time.

  Sparks poured his coffee and walked to the windowsill at the front of the bridge. That was it. A purposeful stride had replaced his usual stoop-shouldered shuffle. He put his coffee cup down on the sill, pulled his shoulders back, took a battered pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and lit one. When he blew the smoke out of his mouth, he narro
wed his eyes and looked off into the middle distance. To Captain Tannenbaume it looked as if he was thinking about something, and not only that, it looked as if he was sure, absolutely certain, of what he was thinking about.

  “There’s nothing like a good smoke with a cup of coffee,” Sparks said without turning around.

  “I didn’t know you smoked, Sparks,” Ski said.

  Sparks held his middle-distance stare. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Ski.” Then he turned, slowly, and looked directly at Mitzi. “There’s more to this radio officer than most people know.”

  Captain Tannenbaume realized that Sparks had just made it through the three sentences without missing a beat. He—miraculously—had lost his stutter. Sparks was a new man.

  What kind of woman was this Mitzi? What powers did she possess? Captain Tannenbaume knew from the telexes the effect she had on her boyfriend Mogie. And now . . . the woman had cured Stuttering Sparks.

  “Mitzi,” he said, reaching out to her, as if to take her in his arms.

  Mitzi waved him off. “Oh, go on.”

  Captain Tannenbaume caught himself. He noticed that Mitzi was blushing. He hoped he hadn’t been too obvious. He saw her glance over at Sparks, and he spun around in time to catch Sparks grinning at her. Shit, he was too obvious. What was his problem? What was it about Mitzi that made him act so damn obvious?

  “Swifty!”

  Swifty came running over.

  “Here’s your goddamn GPS.” Captain Tannenbaume shoved it into his chest. “Fire it up and put a proper fix on that chart.”

  Swifty took the GPS from Captain Tannenbaume and handed it to Ski, so that Ski could plug it in for him.

  “It’ll be the first goddamn fix anybody’s put down since the Indian Ocean,” Captain Tannenbaume muttered, before shouting over his shoulder, “and I want that chart table cleaned up!”

  Captain Tannenbaume walked over to the bookshelf and stood before it, glowering at it. The bottles of nail polish on his old bookshelf were too numerous to count. It was a goddamn sacrilege to remove Bowditch’s Epitome of Navigation from its rightful place to make room for nail polish. How in the hell did he let it all come to this?