A Commodore of Errors (40 page)

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

D
ue to the sound of the blaring whistle, no one on the bridge heard the door squeak open, 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

M
itzi 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?”