Towing Jehovah (41 page)

The night the tow began, Cassie took up residence in Anthony's cabin, an environment made erotically tropical by the eighty-degree air Crock O'Connor was obligingly pumping in from the engine flat.

"I have to know something," she said, guiding Anthony's naked body onto the bunk. "If our Midway scheme had worked and God had gone under, would you have forgiven me?"

"That's not a fair question."

"True." She began arraying him in a decorator Supersensitive—the best-selling barber pole design, second in popularity only to the diamondback rattlesnake. "What's the answer?"

"I'd probably never have forgiven you," said Anthony, enjoying the way the sweat filled her cleavage like a river flowing through a gorge. "I know that's not the answer you wanted to hear, but . . ."

"But it's the one I expected," she confessed.

"Now
I
have to know something." He plugged her ear with his tongue, swizzling it around. "Suppose another opportunity came along for you to destroy my cargo. Would you take it?"

"You bet I would."

"You don't have to answer right away."

Laughing, Cassie unfurled the condom. "You're surprised?"

"Not really," he sighed. Slithering on top of her, he cupped her breasts like Jehovah molding the Andes.

"You're a woman with a mission, Doc. It's what I love about you." The next morning, while Cassie was out helping to chip ice from the central catwalk and Anthony lay in their bunk writing about the death of the
Valparaíso,
filling his Popeye journal with page after page of angry lamentation, a knock reverberated through the cabin. He rolled off the mattress, opened the door. Crock O'Connor stepped inside, accompanied by spindly little Vince Mangione, the latter gripping a brass birdcage, lifting it level with his face as if deploying a hurricane lantern against a moonless night. Inside the cage, a parrot stood on a trapeze, making quick jabs with its beak in hopes of killing the mites under its wings. The bird turned its scarlet head, fixing on Anthony. Its eyes were like tiny oiled bearings. At first he thought some sort of resurrection had occurred, for the similarity between this macaw and his boyhood pet, Rainbow, was uncanny, but on further inspection he realized the present parrot lacked Rainbow's distinguishing marks—the peculiar hourglass shape on her beak, the small jagged scar on her right talon.

"Your father bought her in Palermo, right before we shipped out," Mangione explained, setting the cage on the bunk.

"The engine flat made a fine home—all that steam," said O'Connor. "But I'm sure she'll do fine in your cabin."

"Get her out of here," said Anthony.

"What?"

"I want nothing that belonged to my father."

"You don't understand," said Mangione. "He told me it was a present."

"A present?"

Despite the Thanksgiving humiliation, the bottled
Constitution,
the malign neglect—despite everything, Anthony was touched. At last the old man was trying to make amends, restoring to his son the gift he'd taken away forty years earlier.

"We don't know if your dad named her or not," said O'Connor.

"What do
you
call her?"

"Pirate Jenny."

"Leave her here," said Anthony, returning Pirate Jenny's unblinking stare. A sudden queasiness came. He half expected the parrot to say something sardonic and wounding, like
Anthony left the bridge
or
Anthony fucked up.

As O'Connor started out of the cabin, Pirate Jenny squawked but produced no vocables. "I'm bored," said the engineer, pausing in the jamb. He faced Anthony and frowned, crinkling the steam burn on his forehead. "The boilers around here are all on computers. There's nothing for me to
do."

"The
Val
was an eyesore, hard to steer . . ."

"I know. I want her back."

"Me too, Crock. I want her back too. Thanks for the bird."

On September 21, a new variety of ice island appeared on the horizon, drifting southeast with the Greenland Current— glacier fragments so huge they made the Jan Mayen bergs seem like molehills. According to the Marisat, the
Maracaibo
was barely a day from her destination, but the prospect of journey's end brought Anthony no pleasure. Eight men had died; the
Val
was in the Mohns Trench; the divine brain was garbage; his father would never absolve him. And for all Anthony knew, a Vatican armada now lay at anchor inside the tomb, ready to pirate his cargo.

"Froggy loves Tiffany."

He was giving Cassie a backrub, pressing his palms against her beautiful flesh, vertebra after vertebra lined up like speed bumps, and for an instant he thought it was she who'd made the raspy little declaration.

"What?"

"Froggy loves Tiffany," the scarlet macaw repeated. "Froggy loves Tiffany." The universe again, playing another of its outrageous jokes. Froggy loved Tiffany. Anthony stifled a giggle. "It's all too perfect, wouldn't you say?”

"Perfect?" Cassie replied. "What?"

"Absolutely perfect. A masterpiece. The bastard's dead, and he's
still
taking back the things he gave me."

"Oh, come on—
your father's
not doing anything. Mangione didn't understand the parrot was for Tiffany, that's all. There's no malice here."

"You think so?"

"Jesus Christ."

"I must admit, I'm actually rather impressed," said Anthony, struck by his mental picture of the old man sitting hour after hour in the engine flat, drilling the half-dozen syllables into the parrot's head. "Imagine how many times he had to say it, over and over . . ."

"Maybe he hired a deckie."

"No, Dad did the work, I'm sure. He loved that woman. Over and over and over."

"Froggy loves Tiffany," said Pirate Jenny.

"Cassie loves Anthony," said Cassie Fowler.

"Anthony loves Cassie," said Anthony Van Horne.

September 22.

The autumnal equinox. On this day in 1789, my
Manner's Pocket Companion
informs me,
5
months after the mutiny on HMS
Bounty,
"Fletcher Christian and his crew sailed for the last time from Tahiti in search of a deserted island on which to settle."

Mr. Christian could've done a lot worse than where he ended up, Pitcairn's Island. He could've come here, for instance, to Kvitoya, surely the bleakest, coldest place south of Santa Claus's outhouse. At 0920 we drew within sight of the coordinates Raphael gave me in the Manhattan Cloisters—80°6'N, 34°3'E—and, indeed, there it was, the Great Tomb, a waterborne mountain measuring nearly 16 miles across at its base and towering over 28,000 feet (the approximate height of Everest, Dolores Haycox noted), pinned between the deserted island and the beginning of what the charts call "unnavigable polar ice." As we bore down on the thing, weaving among the lesser bergs at 5 knots, the entire company gathered spontaneously on the weather deck. Most of the sailors dropped to their knees. About half crossed themselves. The shadow of the tomb spread across the water like an oil slick, darkening our path. Directly above, a shimmering gold ring ran around the sun, a phenomenon that prompted Ockham to get on the PA system and explain how we were seeing "light waves bending as they pass through airborne ice crystals." The sundogs appeared next: greenish, glassy highlights on either side of the ring, where the crystals were "acting like millions of tiny mirrors." The sailors wanted no part of the padre's rationality, and I didn't either. This morning, Popeye, the sun wore a halo.

For an hour we cruised along the mountain's western face, probing, poking, seeking entrance, and at 1105 we spotted a trapezoidal portal. We came left 15 degrees, slowed to 3 knots, and crossed the threshold. Those angels knew their math, Popeye; their calculations were on the mark. Our cargo cleared the portal with a margin of perhaps 6 yards along each floating hand and not much more above the chest. The
Maracaibo
steamed forward, her searchlights panning back and forth as she spiraled toward the core. For 20 miles we followed the smooth, slick, ever-curving passageway. It was like navigating the interior of a gigantic conch. Then, at last: the central crypt, its silvery walls soaring to meet a vaulted dome whose apex lay well beyond the reach of our beams.

No armada awaited. Rome may find us yet, of course; her ships could be gathering outside even as I write these words, barricading the exit. But right now we're free to conduct our business in peace. Dead ahead, dark waves lapped against a mile-long ice shelf, its surface nearly level with our bulwarks, and the minute I saw the glistery, sculpted bollards I knew the angels had intended it as a pier. At 1450 I sent a half-dozen ordinaries over in the launch. They had no trouble grabbing the mooring lines and making them fast, but docking the
Maracaibo
was still a damned dicey operation: deceptive shadows, crazy echoes, chunks of pack ice everywhere. By 1535 the bitch was tied up, both her engines cut for the first time since she left Palermo.

I ordered an immediate burial at sea. Cassie, Ockham, and I marched down the catwalk to the fo'c'sle deck, pried up the seabag with grappling hooks, and, after scavenging an anchor from the handiest lifeboat, carried poor old Dad to the starboard bulwark.

"I'm not sure how Dutch Presbyterians go about it," said Ockham, slipping a King James Bible from his parka, "but I know they're fond of this translation."

Loosening the drawstring, I removed my father's pale, crushed corpse. He was frozen solid. "A Pop-sicle," I muttered, and Cassie shot me a glance compounded of both shock and amusement. Opening to First Corinthians, Ockham recited words I'd heard in a thousand Hollywood burial scenes.

“Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible . . .''

Cassie and I wrapped the lifeboat anchor around Dad's waist and hoisted his iron-hard body onto the rail. The anchor hung between his legs like a codpiece. We pushed. He fell, crashing into the black lake. Even with the extra weight, he stayed on the surface for over a minute, drifting slowly toward God's brow.

"Farewell, sailor," I said, thinking how good it would feel to get back inside and savor a mug of Follingsbee's jamoke.

“ 'Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory,' " Ockham intoned as Dad dropped from view, legs first, then torso, head, and hair. " 'O death, where is thy sting?' " said the priest, and I found myself wondering whether the
Maracaibo's
main pantry held any doughnuts. " 'O grave, where is thy victory?' "

And, in fact, it did.

Jelly, glazed, and sugar.

Cupping his gloves around the railing, Neil Weisinger joined the solemn little march down the gangway. Gingerly he crossed the slippery pier, one cautious step at a time. By 1715 the whole company stood on the ice, officers and crew alike, shuffling about in the harsh light, puffs of breath streaming from their mouths like dialogue balloons.

When Neil saw how the angels had prepared the crypt, a chill of recognition shot through him; he thought immediately of the Labor Day barbecue he'd attended two years earlier at the home of his neighbor, Dwight Gorka, a joyless celebration that reached its nadir when Dwight's cat, Pumpkin, was run over by a Federal Express truck. Responding instantly to his preschool daughter's grief, Dwight had nailed together a plywood coffin, dug a hole in the stiff Teaneck earth, and laid the poor cat to rest. Before her father shoveled back the dirt, little Emily packed the grave with all the things Pumpkin would need during his journey to cat heaven—his water dish (filled), a can of Friskies Fancy Feast (opened), and, most importantly, his favorite toy, a plastic bottle cap he'd spent many mindless feline hours batting around the house.

The north wall of the crypt featured six immense niches, each sheltering a product God had evidently held in high regard. The forward searchlight struck the colossal carcass of a blue whale, a form at once ponderous and sleek. The amidships beacon swept across the soaring hulk of a sequoia tree, limned the wrinkled remains of an African bull elephant, glinted off a stuffed marlin, ignited a family of embalmed grizzly bears, and, finally, came to rest on a frozen hippopotamus (quite possibly descended, Neil mused, from the hippos his grandfather had helped transport from Africa to France). Directly ahead, a cabinet constructed entirely of ice rose nearly twenty feet. He extended his sleeve, wiping frost and condensation from the transparent doors. He peered inside. Every shelf was jammed with items from the divine portfolio, bottle after bottle. Monarch butterfly . . . chunk of jade . . . divot blooming with Kentucky bluegrass . . . orchid . . . praying mantis . . . Maine lobster . . . human brain . . . king cobra . . . cricket . .

. sparrow . . . nugget of igneous rock.

Spontaneously, the Mourner's Kaddish formed on Neil's lips. "Yitgadal veyitkadash shemei raba bealma divera chireutei . . ."
Let the glory of God be extolled, let His great name be hallowed, in the world
whose creation He willed . . .

Drawing up beside Neil, Cassie Fowler jerked a thumb toward the trophy cabinet. "God's greatest hits."

"You're not very religious, are you?"

"He may have been our Creator," she said, "but He was also something of a malicious lunatic."

"He may have been something of a malicious lunatic," he said, "but He was also our Creator." The instant Neil spotted the altar—a long, low table of ice spread out beneath the blue whale—he was overwhelmed by a desire to use it. He was not alone in this wish. Somberly the officers and crew filed back up the gangway, returning twenty minutes later, tributes in hand. One by one, the deckies approached the altar, and soon it was piled high with oblations: a National steel guitar, a trainman's watch on a gold chain, a Sony Walkman, a Texas Instruments calculator, a packet of top-of-the-line condoms (the pricey Shostak Supremes), a silver whiskey flask, a five-string banjo, a shaving mug imprinted with a Currier and Ives skating scene, three bottles of Moosehead beer, a belt buckle bearing the sculpted likeness of a clipper ship.