Towing Jehovah by James Morrow Read Free Book Online Page B

thumbtacks from her mouth as if they were loose teeth and pinned a job sheet to the cork.
    •OFFSHORE SHIPPING JOBS
    COMPANY: Lykes Brothers
    SHIP: SS Argo Lykes
    LOCATED: Pier 86
    SAILS: 1500 Friday
    RUN: West Coast South America
    JOBS: Able Seaman: 2
    TIME: 120-day rotary
    RELIEVING: J . Pierce, F. Pellegrino
    REASON: Time up
    "All right," said the dispatcher, "who's got 'em?"
    "Nobody here be beatin' ten month plus fifteen day, eh?" said the Rastafarian.
    "The other one's mine," said Daniel Rosenberg.
    The dispatcher checked her watch. "Assuming no killer card shows up in the next six seconds"—she winked at the winners—"they're all yours. Step into the office, fellas." Gradually the mob dispersed, forty disappointed men and women ambling morosely back to their seats. Eight sailors collected their cards and, conceding defeat, left. The dreamers and the desperate sat down to wait.
    "The Lord will come through," said Zook.
    Neil slumped onto the nearest folding chair. Why didn't he just admit it—he had no career, he was a failure. Somehow his grandfather had wrought an honorable and glamorous life from the sea. But that era was gone. The system was dying. Advising a young man to join the United States Merchant Marine was like advising him to go into vaudeville.
    As a boy, Neil had never tired of hearing Grandfather Moshe recount his maritime adventures, wondrous tales of battling pirates on Ecuadorian rivers, transporting hippopotami to French zoos, playing cat-and-mouse with Nazi submarines in the North Atlantic, and, most impressive of all, helping to smuggle fifteen hundred displaced Jews past the British blockade and into Palestine on the Hatifyah, one of the dozen rogue freighters secretly leased by the Aliyah Bet. Four decades later, Chief Mate Moshe Weisinger had opened his mail to find a token of appreciation from the Israeli government: a bronze medal bearing the face of David Ben-Gurion in bas-relief. When Grandfather Moshe died, Neil inherited the medal. He always kept it in his right pants pocket, something to clutch in moments of stress. The door to the hall swung open, and a wrinkled, lanky man wearing a black shirt and Roman collar entered, slapping a job sheet into the dispatcher's palm.
    "Call this right away."
    The dispatcher tacked up the priest's sheet directly over the Argo Lyfes notice. "Okay, you packet rats," she said, turning to the hopeful sailors, "we've got this tramp tanker over at Pier Eighty-eight, and it looks like they're startin' from scratch."
    •OFFSHORE SHIPPING JOBS•
    COMPANY: Carpco Shipping
    SHIP: SS Carpco Valparaíso
    LOCATED: Pier 88
    SAILS: 1700 Thursday
    RUN: Svalbard, Arctic Ocean
    JOBS: Able Seaman: 18
    Ordinary Seaman: 12
    Food Handler: 2
    TIME: 90-day rotary
    RELIEVING: Not applicable
    REASON: Not applicable
    Grunts of dismay resounded through the union hall. Rumors swarmed like sea gulls feasting on a landfill. The Valparaíso, the infamous Valparaíso, the tainted, broken, bedeviled Valparaíso. Hadn't she been sold to the Japanese and converted into a toxic-waste carrier? Sunk in a Tomahawk missile test?
    "Does this mean we're all hired?" asked a blobby man with bad teeth and five o'clock shadow.
    "Every one of you," said the priest. "Not only that but you can figure on more overtime than you've ever pulled down in your lives. My name is Thomas Ockham, Society of Jesus, and we'll be spending the next three months together."
    And then, as if he thought the U.S. Merchant Marine were a branch of the military, the priest saluted, made an abrupt about-face, and marched out of the room.
    "I told you the Lord would come through," said Zook, licking a mustache of perspiration from his upper lip.
    An eerie silence descended, settling into the dust, clinging to the cigarette smoke. The Lord had come through, mused Neil. Either the Lord or Caribbean Petroleum. Neil wouldn't be ferrying any Jews to Haifa or hippos to Le Havre this trip, he wouldn't be