Towing Jehovah by James Morrow

dodging any Nazi subs, but at least he had a job.
    "Jesus hasn't let me down yet," the Evangelical went on.
    A job—and yet . . .
    "Christ never lets anybody down."
    A ship like the Valparaíso should not be resurrected, Neil believed, and if she were resurrected, a smart AB would look elsewhere for work.
    "You know, mates, this seems kinda creepy to me," said a buxom Puerto Rican woman in a tight Menudo T-shirt. "Why're we shippin' out with a priest?"
    "Yeah, and why on the fucking Titanic?" asked a leathery old sailor with I LOVE BRENDA tattooed on the back of his hand.
    "I'll tell you something else," said the blobby man. "I been to Svalbard on a bulk carrier once, and I can say for an absolute fact you won't find one solitary drop of crude up there. What're we takin' on, walrus piss?"
    "Well, it's great to have a ship," said willowy An-mei Jong with forced enthusiasm.
    "Oh, for sure," said Brenda's lover with artificial cheer.
    Reaching into his right pants pocket, Neil squeezed his grandfather's Ben-Gurion medal. "Let's go sign up," he said, when in fact his impulse was to bolt from the room, find some unemployed sailor roaming the Eleventh Avenue docks, and give the poor bastard his berth.
    STORM
    FOR THE AVERAGE sea captain, handing one's ship over to a harbor pilot was a wrenching experience, an ordeal of displacement not unlike that endured by a husband finding an alien brand of condom in his wife's purse. But Anthony Van Horne was not the average sea captain. Harbor pilots didn't make the rules, he reasoned; the National Transportation Safety Board did. And so when a battered New York Port Authority launch tied up alongside the Carpco Valparaíso at 1735 hours on the evening of her scheduled departure, Anthony was quite prepared to be civil. Then he recognized the pilot.
    Frank Kolby. Unctuous old Frank Kolby, the idiot who'd laughed so uproariously on seeing Anthony's father reenact the wreck of the Val in a gravy boat.
    "Hello, Frank."
    "Hiya, Anthony." The pilot stepped into the wheelhouse and pulled off his black waterproof leggings. "I heard it was you on the bridge." He wore a blue three-piece suit, well tailored and neatly pressed, as if trying to pass himself off as other than what he was, a glorified parking-lot attendant. "They spliced the Val together real good, didn't they?"
    "I expect she'll last another voyage," said Anthony, slipping on his mirrorshades. The tugboats tooted their readiness. Kolby dropped his leggings next to the compass binnacle, then reached toward the control console and snatched up the walkie-talkie. "Raise anchors!" Groaning, gushing steam, the fo'c'sle windlasses rotated, slowly drawing two algae-coated chains from the river. On the forward TV monitor Anthony watched globs of dark silt slide from the starboard anchor like Jell-O from a fork and plop into the Hudson. For an instant he imagined he saw Raphael Azarias's corpse wrapped around the flukes, but then he realized it was only an angel-shaped hunk of mud.
    "Cast off!"
    Snugging his John Deere visor cap down to his eyebrows, Anthony opened the starboard door and strode across the bridge wing. All along Pier 88, stevedores in torn plimsolls and ratty T-shirts scurried about, untying Dacron lines from bollards, setting the tanker free. Sea gulls wheeled across the setting sun, squawking their endless disapproval of the world. A half-dozen tugs converged from all directions, whistles shrieking madly as their crews tossed thick, shaggy ropes to the ABs stationed on the Val's weather deck.
    Anthony inhaled a generous helping of harbor air—his last chance, before shoving off, to savor this unique mix of bunker oil, bilge water, raw sewage, dead fish, and gull guano—and stepped back inside.
    "Slow ahead," said Kolby. "Twenty rpm's."
    "Slow ahead." Chief Mate Marbles Rafferty—a mournful black sailor in his early forties, lean and tightly wound, a kind of human sheepshank—eased the dual joysticks forward.