Towing Jehovah by James Morrow Read Free Book Online Page A

unless he was as broke as Neil. A crew of methane-breathing Neptunians might land in Journal Square, their helmsman dead from an oxygen overdose, and sign him up on the spot.
    "Ever had any close calls?" A tense voice, slightly laryngitic. Neil turned. Outside the window, a sailor lounged on the fire escape—a muscular, freckled, auburn-haired young man in a red polo shirt and tattered black beret, his seabag serving as a pillow. "I mean, really close ?"
    "Not me, no. Once, in Philly, I saw an AB come in with this card three hundred and sixty-four days old."
    "Sweating?"
    "Like a stoker. When the sheet went up, the guy actually pissed his pants."
    "He get a berth?"
    Neil nodded. "Twelve and a half minutes before his card would've rolled over."
    "The Lord was lookin' out for him." The freckled sailor slipped a tiny gold chain from beneath his polo shirt, glancing at the attached cross like the White Rabbit consulting his pocket watch. Neil winced. This wasn't the first time he'd encountered a Jesus aficionado. As a rule, he didn't mind them. Once at sea, they were usually diligent as hell, cleaning toilets and chipping rust without a whimper, but their agenda made him nervous. Often as not, the conversation got around to the precarious position of Neil's immortal soul. On the Stella, for example, a Seventh Day Adventist had somberly advised Neil that he could spare himself "the trouble of Armageddon" by accepting Jesus then and there.
    "What're you doin' on the fire escape?"
    "It's cooler out here," said the freckled sailor, unwrapping a package of Bazooka bubblegum. He scanned the comic strip and chortled, then popped the pink lozenge into his mouth. "I'm Neil Weisinger."
    "Leo Zook."
    Drawing his plastic Bugs Bunny lunch box from his seabag, Neil climbed through the window. He'd always been a great admirer of Bugs. The rabbit was a loner, and liked it. No friends. No family. Smart, resourceful, rejected by the outside world. There was something rather Jewish about Bugs Bunny.
    "Hey, Leo, I saw three killer cards in the box, and none of 'em belongs to you." The fire escape seemed no cooler than the hall, but the view was spectacular, a clear vista stretching all the way from midtown to the Statue of Liberty. "Why don't you leave?"
    "The Lord told me I'd be getting a ship today." From the zippered compartment of his seabag, Zook retrieved a tattered booklet titled Close Encounters with Jesus Christ, the author being one Hyman Levkowitz. "You might find this interesting," he said, pressing the tract into Neil's palm. "It's by a cantor who found salvation."
    Neil opened his lunch box, removed a green apple, and began to munch. He beat back a sneer. God was a perfectly fine idea. Indeed, before realizing he belonged on ships, Neil had spent two years across the river at Yeshiva University, studying Jewish history and toying with the idea of becoming a rabbi. But Neil's God was not the patient, accessible, direct-dial deity on whom Leo Zook evidently predicated his life. Neil's was the God he'd found by going to sea, the radiant En Sof who lay somewhere below the deepest mid-Atlantic trench and beyond the highest navigational star, the God of the four A.M. watch.
    "Do yourself a favor—read it through," said Zook. "I can't recommend eternal life highly enough." At that moment, Neil would have preferred almost anyone else's company. An encyclopedia salesman's. An Arab's. Whatever their other foibles, his Arab mates never tried to convert him. Usually they just ignored him, though sometimes they actually became his friends—particularly when, during prayers, he helped them stay pointed toward Mecca while the ship made a turn. Neil always brought a magnetically-corrected compass to sea for expressly this purpose.
    A pear-shaped woman with the demeanor of a fishwife waddled out of the office and headed for the board.
    "Soup's on!" the dispatcher cried as Neil and Zook scrambled back into the hall. She jerked two