James Morrow: Towing Jehovah

“God did.”

“Who’s God?”

“Nobody knows.”

“When did He do it?”

“A long time ago.”

“Is He still around?”

The captain inhaled a lungful of gritty Manhattan air. “Of course He’s still around.”

“Good.”

Together they picked out their favorites: Sirius, Procyon, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Aldebaran, Orion’s belt. Stevie Van Horne was a sailor’s boy. He knew the Milky Way like the back of his hand. As the child’s eyes drooped, Anthony chanted the several names of the mariner’s best friend: “North Star, Lodestar, Polestar, Polaris,” he sang, over and over — “North Star, Lodestar, Polestar, Polaris” — and by this method brought his son to the brink of sleep.

“Happy birthday, Stevie,” Anthony told the drowsy child, carrying him down the ladder. “I love you,” he said, tucking the boy in bed.

“Daddy loves Stevie,” squawked Pirate Jenny. “Froggy loves Tiffany. Daddy loves Stevie.”

As it turned out, Tiffany hadn’t wanted the bird. She didn’t like animals, and she knew that Jenny would function less as a sweet memento of her late husband than as a remorseless reminder of his death. Anthony had spent over twenty hours teaching the macaw her new trick, but it’d been worth it. All the world’s children, he felt, should fall asleep hearing some feathered and affectionate creature — a parrot, a mynah bird, an angel — whispering in their ears.

For a time he stood looking at Stevie, just looking. The boy had his mother’s nose, his father’s chin, his paternal grandmother’s mouth. Moonlight poured into the room, bathing a plastic model of the starship Enterprise in a luminous haze. From the birdcage came the steady, clocklike tick of Pirate Jenny pecking at her mirror.

Occasionally — not this night, but occasionally — a dark mantle of pungent Texas crude would materialize on the parrot, rolling down her back and wings, flowing across the floor of the cage, and falling drip-drip-drip onto the carpet.

Whenever this happened, Anthony’s response was always the same. He would press Raphael’s feather against his chest and breathe deeply until the oil went away.

“Froggy loves Tiffany. Daddy loves Stevie.”

Anthony loves Cassie, he thought.

The captain turned off the bedroom light, pulled the blue silk canopy over Jenny’s cage, and stepped back into the dark hallway. Sea fever rose in his soul. The moon tugged at his blood. The Atlantic said, Come hither. North Star, Lodestar, Pole-star…

How long would he be able to hold out? Until Cassie got her next sabbatical? Until Stevie was tall enough to take the helm and steer? No, the voyage must come sooner than that. Anthony could see it all now. In a year or so he’d get on the phone and make the arrangements. Cargo, crew, ship: not a supertanker, something more romantic — a bulk carrier, a freighter. A month later the whole family would rise at dawn and drive to Bayonne. They’d eat a fantastic breakfast at Follingsbee’s restaurant on Canal Street. Scrambled eggs slathered with catsup, crisp strips of real bacon, wet crescents of honeydew melon, bagel halves mortared together with Philadelphia cream cheese. Bellies full, all senses at peak, Anthony and Stevie would kiss Cassie goodbye. They’d get on board. Light the boilers. Pick a port. Plot a course. And then, like those canny Dutch traders who inhabited their blood, they’d set out toward the sun, steady as she goes: the captain and his cabin boy, off with the morning tide.