James Morrow - Towing Jehovah

“Your prognosis is excellent,” said Dr. Carminati, crouching beside Oliver. “But stay put, okay? If you move too much, the blood will flow to your extremities, cool off, and lower your temperature, and that could trigger lethal cardiac arrhythmia.”

“Lethal cardiac arrhythmia,” Oliver echoed dully, his teeth chattering like castanets. A most appealing idea.

“Your kilocalorie deficit is probably near a thousand right now, but I predict we’ll normalize your core temperature in under an hour. After that, an Iceland Air-Sea Rescue helicopter will take you to Reykjavik General for observation.”

“Was that really God’s body the Valparaíso was towing?”

“I believe it was.”

“God’s?”

“Yes.”

“It’s hard to accept.”

“Three months ago, the angel Gabriel died in my arms,” said the young physician, starting away. “Since that moment, I’ve been open to all sorts of possibilities.”

Steam rose on every side of the tub, obscuring the hypothermia victims lined up to Oliver’s left and right. So efficient was healthcare delivery aboard the Maracaibo that, once borne to the sick bay, they’d all been treated without delay: shoulders relocated, ribs taped, bones set, burns greased, gashes disinfected, lungs filled with warm, moist air from a heated Dragen tank. No amount of efficiency, however, could revive the faceless body that had passed through on a gurney shortly after their arrival. Oliver knew that he and the dead man had spoken several times in the Midnight Sun Canteen, but he could recall nothing specific from any of their exchanges. To Oliver he was merely another overpaid and anonymous war reenactor, currently engaged in his final performance, playing the corpse of Ensign George Gay.

Within twenty minutes, he felt warmer, but his mood remained bleak as ever. A woman’s form appeared, swathed in steam. Charlotte Corday, he mused, come to stab Marat — he’d always adored Jacques-Louis David’s painting — but instead of a dagger she wielded only a digital thermometer.

“Hello, Oliver. Good to see you.”

“Cassandra?”

“They want me to take your temperature,” she said, piercing the veil of mist.

“Listen, honey, I tried my darnedest. I really, really tried.”

Bending beside the tub, she placed a quick, noncommittal kiss on his cheek. “I know you did,” she said in a gratuitously condescending tone. Her face was gaunt, her demeanor cowed and diffident, and no doubt he appeared equally defeated to her. And yet, as she stood over him, pressing the tiny green button on the thermometer, he thought she’d never looked more beautiful.

“I tried my darnedest,” he said again. “You gotta understand — I had no idea Spruance was planning to torpedo your tanker.”

“I’ll be blunt,” said Cassie, easing the device between his lips. “I never really believed you’d hired the right people.” The remark wounded Oliver — so severely that he almost bit off the thermometer bulb. (Jesus Christ, what did she expect on such short notice, the U.S. Seventh Fleet?) A faint ringing reached his ears, like the sound of a mouse’s alarm clock. Cassie removed the thermometer and squinted at the little numerals. “Ninety-eight point two. Close enough. We’ll let you walk around now.”

“I tried my darnedest. Really.”

“You don’t need to keep saying that.”

“Where’s God?”

“Adrift,” she replied, handing Oliver a white terry-cloth bathrobe and a beach towel imprinted with the Carpco stegosaurus. “He went east, I think. Quite possibly He’s unsinkable. Oliver, we have to talk. Meet me in the snack bar.”

“I love you, Cassandra.”

“I know,” she said evenly — ominously — and, whirling around, vanished into the mist.

As Oliver climbed out of the rewarming tub, a dizzying depression overcame him. He felt landlocked, marooned in the Age of Reason, and, meanwhile, way out to sea, nudging the horizon, there was his Cassandra, sailing into the post-Enlightenment, post-Christian, post-theistic future, moving farther and farther from him with each passing minute.

He dried off and, throwing on the bathrobe, limped through the ranks of dazed war reenactors, half of them sitting in re-warming tubs, the rest lying in bed. A ragged row of stitches ran down McClusky’s left cheek. A turban of bandages sat atop Lieutenant Beeson’s head. Burns dotted Lance Sharp’s chest like abstract-expressionist tattoos. He pitied these eighteen men their snapped bones, their torn flesh, but he also felt betrayed by them. They should have made much bigger holes in God. They simply should have.

When Oliver first encountered the sorry spectacle of Albert Flume, he understood as never before what it meant for a man to lose his arms. Leg loss was a different matter. Leg loss was Captain Ahab, Long John Silver — a whole gallery of romantic heroes. But a man without arms simply looked like a mistake.

Pembroke stood by the bed, his forehead a mass of bruises, a gauze patch over his right eye. “This is all your fault,” he told Oliver, gesturing toward his mutilated partner.

The impresario’s arrogance stunned Oliver. “My fault?”

Flume stared at the ceiling and winced. Spirals of linen covered his stumps, giving the starkly truncated limbs the appearance of baseball bats whose handgrips had been wrapped in adhesive tape.

“You said there wouldn’t be any screening vessels,” whined Pembroke.

“You want a villain, Sidney?” asked Oliver, beating back his impulse to scream. “Try your buddy Spruance. Spruance and his Op Plan 29-67. Try that fool McClusky over there — he should’ve blown retreat the instant the Maracaibo showed up. Try yourself.”

“Maracaibo, not ‘the’ Maracaibo.”

“People around here are mumbling about lawsuits, extradition, manslaughter indictments,” said Oliver. “I think we’re in a lot of trouble, all of us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. There weren’t any lawsuits after Midway.” Drawing a plastic comb from his bathrobe, Pembroke tidied up his friend’s thick blond hair. “Jeez, I wish I could help you, Alby. I wish I could make Frances Langford appear right now and cheer you up.”

“What’ll happen to me?” moaned Flume.

“Nothing but the best therapy for you, buddy. You’ll get wonderful mechanical arms — you know, like Harold Russell had.”

“Harold Russell?” said Oliver.

“That double amputee who went into the movies,” said Pembroke. “Ever see The Best Years of Our Lives?”

“No.”

“Swell picture. Russell got an Oscar.”

“I’ll pay the bills,” said Oliver, lightly brushing Flume’s left stump. “No matter what those wonderful mechanical arms cost, I’ll pay.”

“I don’t want wonderful mechanical arms,” mumbled Flume. “Russell had to sell his Oscar.”

“True,” sighed Pembroke.

“Real arms.”

“Hey, buddy, we’re gonna stage one hell of a Guadalcanal, aren’t we?”

“I don’t want a Guadalcanal.”

“No?” said Pembroke.

“I don’t want a Guadalcanal, or an Ardennes, or a D-Day even.”

“I understand.”

“Arms.”

Sure.

“I keep trying to move my hands.”

“Naturally.”

“I can’t move ’em.”

“I know, Alby.”

“I wanna play the piano.”

“Right.”

“Pitch pennies.”

“Or course.”

Time to leave, the Enlightenment League’s president thought as Albert Flume voiced his wish to snap his fingers and twiddle his thumbs. Time to find Cassandra, Oliver decided as the armless impresario articulated his desire to wear a wristwatch, knit samplers, play with a yo-yo, raise the flag for Hudson High, and masturbate. Time to get on with the rest of what Oliver suspected was going to be a crushingly dull and utterly meaningless life.