James Morrow - Towing Jehovah

“Aye,” said Rafferty.

Bliss clutched her crystal pendant and sneered.

“I assume you realize that, as of this moment, you’re all in a lot of trouble with the Vatican,” said Di Luca. “Rome receives regular dispatches from me. When I fail to report, they’ll send another Gulf tanker after you. They’ll send two — three — a whole armada.”

“Never a dull moment,” said Van Horne.

“You’re making a tragic mistake, Captain. Worse than Matagorda Bay.”

“I survived that. I’ll survive this too.” Van Horne aimed the feather directly at Dr. Carminati. “How soon before you lift the survivors out of here?”

“We expect the choppers in about twenty minutes. Give us an hour after that. I hope you realize I’m not about to join this outrageous mutiny of yours.”

“Mutiny’s the word,” said Di Luca.

Van Horne shifted the feather from the physician to the cardinal. “If I’m in rebellion against the Vatican, Eminence, then the Vatican’s in rebellion against heaven.” The captain closed his eyes. “I shall leave it for you to decide which is the more serious sin.”

The half-dozen vending machines in the Maracaibo’s snack bar dispensed a wide variety of grotesqueries: Hostess Twinkies, Li’l Debbie Snack Cakes, Ring Dings — each item underscoring Oliver’s creeping conviction that, with or without a Corpus Dei, Western civilization stood on the brink of collapse. Cassie occupied a contoured plastic chair adjacent to a small Formica table, nursing a Mountain Dew beneath the Lucite glow of the COLD DRINKS machine, an image that for Oliver recalled Degas’s masterful Glass of Absinthe. To her right, PASTRY ’N SNACKS. To her left, CANDY ’N SWEETS. He approached HOT DRINKS, secured black coffee in a paper cup unaccountably decorated with playing cards, and joined her.

“I believe the Reenactment Society is going out of business,” he said. “Midway finished it off.”

“The past dies hard.”

“I guess. Sure. You’ve always been a deeper thinker than me.”

“It kicks and screams, but eventually it dies.” Oliver jammed his thumb into the scalding coffee, savoring the penitential pain. “Hey, Cassandra, we’ve had some terrific times together, haven’t we? Remember Denver?” In some ways that particular Enlightenment League escapade — a colorful protest against the gigantic plywood Ten Commandments that the Fraternal Order of Eagles had erected on the capitol lawn — had been the high point of their relationship. In the park across the street he and Cassie had raised an equally formidable sign labeled WHAT GOD REALLY SAID and featuring a nouvelle decalogue they’d coauthored two days earlier between episodes of rapturous sex (they were field-testing the Shostak Supreme) in her apartment. “I’ll bet if we work at it, we can remember them all. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, except for Roman Catholics if they don’t get tacky about it’.”

“I don’t want to talk about Denver,” said Cassie.

“ ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s manservant, nor his maidservant, nor question why thy neighbor has servants in the first place’.”

“Oliver, I’m in love with Anthony Van Horne.”

And suddenly his hypothermia was back, stealing through his body organ by organ, turning them into frozen cuts of meat.

“Shit.” Charlotte Corday after all, stabbing him, murdering him.

“Van Horne? Van Horne’s the enemy, for Christ’s sake.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Have you… slept with him?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“What brand of condom?”

“Any answer to that question would be the wrong one.”

Oliver licked his smarting thumb. “Has he asked you to marry him?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I’m planning to ask him,” she said.

“What do you see in a man like that? He’s no rationalist, he’s not one of us!”

In a move Oliver found at once intensely pleasurable and cruelly patronizing, Cassie stroked his forearm. “I’m sorry. I’m truly, truly sorry…”

“Know what I think? I think you’ve been seduced by the mystique of the sea. Hey, look, if this is the life you crave, fine, I’ll buy you a boat. You want a sloop, Cassandra? A cabin cruiser? We’ll sail to Tahiti, lie on the beach, paint pictures of the natives, the whole Gauguin bit.”

“Oliver, it’s over.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is.”

For the next minute neither of them spoke, their silence broken only by an occasional mechanical grunt from a vending machine. Oliver fixed on PERSONAL CARE, desirous of its wares, the Tylenol to assuage his headache, the Alka-Seltzer to settle his stomach, the Wilcox nail file to slit his wrists, the Shostak Supersensitives to facilitate his raging wish to have sex with Cassie one last time.

“ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” he said. “Remember what we did with ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

No.

“Me neither.”

“Oliver…”

“My mind’s a blank.” A dull, metallic thumping filled the air. The Iceland choppers, Oliver realized, landing on the Maracaibo’s helipads. “Are you certain you can’t remember?”

“I guess I’ve — I’ve… I’m not exactly sure what I mean. Blasphemy doesn’t move me the way it used to.”

“Come with me to Reykjavik, okay? You can catch a plane to Halifax tonight, a connecting flight to New York in the morning. With luck you’ll be back teaching by Wednesday.”

“Oliver, you’re grasping at straws.”

“Come with me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No.”

Oliver snapped his fingers. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” he said, fighting tears, “ ‘except for communists, whom thou shalt kill with impunity’.”

September 16.

I assume you’re grateful I rescued you, Popeye. Truth to tell, I’m glad to be here too. A lot of captains have gone down with their ships over the years, and I don’t envy a single one of them.

Rafferty’s worried that the target on the twelve-mile scope might be just another iceberg, but I’d know those holy contours anywhere. Assuming the chains are still in place, the best procedure will probably be to sling the ends around the Maracaibo’s deck island and wire the lead links together. If the load’s too much, of course, it’ll tear the island loose and pull it overboard, dumping us all into the sea.

To earn a living, some men merely have to haul oil.

At 2015 the last of the Reykjavik choppers took off, bearing away Pembroke, Flume, and Oliver Shostak, along with those two fake ensigns who piloted the PBY. I had a notion to seek old Oliver out before he left, identify myself, and introduce his front teeth to the pit of his stomach, but then I decided stealing his girlfriend is revenge enough. Still, I’ll never fully understand what he and Cassie have against our cargo. It seems to me a person ought to be thankful to his Creator. For now, though, none of my personal philosophical opinions matter. I’ve come to bury God, not to praise Him.

I’ll give the Val till dawn. If she’s not gone by then, I’ll fire off an Aspide and put her out of her misery. After that I’ll be sorely tempted to hunt down Spruance’s carrier and send her to the bottom as well. But I’ll resist, Popeye. Such vindictiveness would be wrong. “Once enthralled by the Idea of the Corpse,” Ockham tells me, “a person must remain eternally vigilant, forever seeking the moral law within.”

Under the midnight sun, despair acquires the intensity of sex, insomnia the vehemence of art. To the sailor who finds himself sleepless in the Arctic, wind has never felt sharper, salt air more pungent, a gannet’s cry more piercing. As Anthony Van Horne wandered the central catwalk of the Carpco Maracaibo — icicles dangling everywhere, icebergs growling on all sides — he felt as if he’d become the hero of some vivid Scandinavian myth. He half expected to see the Midgard serpent cruising through the pink sea, swimming in circles around the dying Valparaíso, teeth flashing, eyes aflame, waiting for Ragnarok.