James Morrow - Towing Jehovah

“Van Horne must’ve been trimmin’ her with blood,” said Reid over the intercom. “Good way to lighten his load — right, Mr. Flume?”

Flume made no reply. His partner remained equally silent. As the Maracaibo took on the remnants of Air Group Six, the war reenactors sat rigidly in their machine-gun blisters and listened to the transceiver broadcasts, a radio horror show to put their beloved Inner Sanctum to shame.

“Missile at six o’clock!”

“Mayday! Mayday!”

“Bail out, everybody!”

“Help me!”

“Jump!”

“Shit!”

“Mommy! Mommy!”

“This isn’t in my contract!”

Oliver felt like praying, but it was impossible to gather the requisite energy when the decayed, frozen, violated remains of the God he didn’t believe in stretched so starkly before his eyes.

“Alby?”

“Yeah, Sid?”

“Alby, I’m not having any fun.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Alby, I want to go home.”

“Ensign Reid,” said Flume into his intercom mike, “kindly climb to nine thousand feet and set off for Point Luck.”

“You mean — withdraw?”

“Withdraw.”

“Ever walk out on one of your own shows before?” asked Reid.

“Just leave, Jack.”

“Roger,” said the pilot, pulling back on the control yoke.

“Alby?”

“Yeah, Sid?”

“Two of our actors are dead.”

“Most of ’em bailed out.”

“Two are dead.”

“I know.”

“Waldron’s dead,” said Pembroke. “His gunner too, Ensign Collins.”

“Carny Otis, right?” said Flume. “I saw him at the Helen Hayes once. Iago.”

“Alby, I think we done bad.”

“Attention, Torpedo Six!” came Ray Spruance’s portrayer’s voice from the transceiver. “Attention, Scout Bombing Six! Listen, men, no matter how you slice it, we aren’t being paid to mess with a Gulf tanker! Break off the attack and return to Enterprise! Repeat: break off attack and return! We weigh anchor at 1530 hours!”

From out of nowhere a crippled dive bomber arrived, sheets of flame flowing from her wings. The plane zoomed so close that Oliver could see the pilot’s face — or, rather, he would have seen the pilot’s face had it not been burned clear to the bone.

“It’s Ensign Gay!” cried Pembroke. “They got Ensign Gay!”

“Please, God, no!” shouted Flume.

The runaway Dauntless headed straight for the flying boat’s tail, shedding sparks and firebrands. Pembroke shrieked madly, moving his hands back and forth as if pantomiming a frenetic game of cat’s cradle. Then, as Strawberry Eleven reached nine thousand feet, the bomber collided with her, snapping off the PBY’s rudder, severing her starboard stabilizer, puncturing her fuselage, and pouring burning gasoline into the tunnel gunner’s compartment, each individual disaster unfolding so rapidly that Oliver’s single scream sufficed to cover them all. A mass of flames swept along the aft flooring and into the portside blister. Searing heat filled the cabin. Within seconds, Albert Flume’s cotton trousers, aviator’s scarf, and flak jacket were ablaze.

“Aaaiiii!”

“Alby!”

“Put me out!”

“Put him out!”

“God, put me out!”

“Here!” Charles Eaton’s portrayer shoved a glossy red cylinder into Oliver’s lap.

“What’s this?” Oliver couldn’t tell whether the tears flooding his eyes sprang from terror, pity, or the black smoke wafting through the mechanic’s station. “What? What?”

“Read the directions!”

“Oh, Jesus!” screamed Flume. “Oh, sweet Jesus!”

“I think we lost our tail!” cried Reid over the intercom.

Oliver wiped his eyes. HOLD UPRIGHT. He did. PULL PIN. Pin? What pin? He made a series of desperate grabs — please, God, please, the pin — and suddenly he was indeed gripping something that looked like a pin.

“Put me out!”

“Put him out! Oh, Alby, buddy!”

STAND BACK 10 FEET AND AIM AT BASE OF FIRE. Oliver Seized the discharge hose and pointed it toward Flume. “We lost our tail!” “Put me out!” SQUEEZE LEVER AND SWEEP SIDE TO SIDE. A thick gray mist gushed from the horn, coating the war reenactor in foul-smelling chemicals and instantly smothering the flames.

“It’s gonna hurt!” groaned Flume as the PBY careened crazily, dropping toward the ocean. “It’s really gonna hurt!”

“No tail!”

“Give me pants that entrance! It’s starting to hurt!”

Tearing off his headset, Oliver crawled past Flume’s smoking, writhing form, lurched into the tunnel gunner’s compartment, and began attacking the flames.

“Why does God permit this?” asked Pembroke of no one in particular.

“Shoulders Gibraltar, shiny as a halter!” screamed Flume, writhing in agony. “Oh, Jesus, it hurts! It hurts so much!”

Everyone tried to be polite.

Everyone struggled to avoid the subject.

But in the end Albert Flume’s situation could not be denied, and right before Strawberry Eleven belly flopped into the Norwegian Sea, splitting into a dozen pieces, Pembroke turned to his best friend and said, in a soft, sad voice, “Alby, buddy, you don’t have any arms.”

BY A MIRACLE OF the sort that in an earlier age Jehovah Himself might have wrought, the Valparaíso stayed afloat that afternoon, allowing the officers, crew, and rescued war reenactors to abandon her in an orderly fashion. There was even time to salvage certain crucial items: footlockers, musical instruments, fillets of Corpus Dei, a few jars of glory grease, some supervegetables from Follingsbee’s garden, the Ten Commandments print. The Valparaíso was terminal, of course. Anthony knew it. A captain could always tell. No ingenious patching job or heroic pumping effort could save her. But what a fighter, he thought, what a tough old lady, ceding fewer than ten feet per hour to the bloodstained Norwegian Sea. By noon her weather deck lay completely buried, but her superstructure was still visible, rising out of the waves like a hotel perched on pylons.

At 1420, Anthony began ferrying the final group over the red ocean to the Carpco Maracaibo — a grim little party consisting of Cassie, Rafferty, O’Connor, Father Ockham, and Sister Miriam, each evacuee clutching a seabag. No one said a word. Cassie refused to look him in the eye. She had much to brood about, he knew, several reasons to be sad: the failure of her plot, the crash landing of her boyfriend’s plane, the deaths of John Waldron and two other mercenaries. Were Anthony not himself benumbed and despondent, he might have actually felt sorry for her.

He parked the Juan Fernandez beside a vulcanized rubber dock tied to the Maracaibo’ s hull, waited until everyone had disembarked, then cast off.

“Where’re you going?” Rafferty called after him.

“I forgot my sextant.”

“Christ, Anthony — I’ll buy you a sextant in New York!”

“My sister gave it to me!” he shouted toward the fading figures on the dock.

By 1445 Anthony was back at the wreck site, maneuvering the Juan Fernandez alongside a first-floor window. He smashed the glass with the launch’s stockless anchor and climbed over the sill. The elevator had shorted out, so he used the companionways instead. Reaching level seven, he entered the chart room, locked the door, and waited.

Brain lost.

Body lost.

Val lost.

There was no choice, really. He’d blown the mission. His second chance was gone.

He stared at the Formica table. The jumbled maps tormented him. Sulawesi, redolent of Cassie’s midriff. Pago Pago, so evocative of her breasts. He lifted his gaze. Forward wall, the Mediterranean; aft wall, the Indian Ocean; port wall, the South Pacific; starboard wall, the North Atlantic. He was giving up so much, all these glorious tracts of sea and patches of shore, most of them despoiled and ravaged by the reigning species, yet all still painfully beautiful at the core. Let no man say Anthony Van Horne did not know what he was losing.