Towing Jehovah by James Morrow Page B

be a week before you lose your master's license all over again."
    "Put your complaint in Portuguese," said the captain. The Statue of Liberty glided past, tirelessly lifting her lamp. "My license comes from Brazil."
    "Brazil?"
    "It's in South America, Frank," said Anthony, hustling the pilot out of the wheelhouse. "You'll never get there."
    By 1835 Kolby was in the harbor launch, speeding back toward Pier 88.
    At 1845 the Valparaíso began drinking Upper New York Bay, sucking its tides into her ballast tanks. At 1910 Anthony's radio officer came onto the bridge: Lianne Bliss—"Sparks," as per hallowed maritime tradition—the bony little hippie vegetarian Ockham had dug up on Wednesday at the International Organization of Masters, Mates, and Pilots. "Jay Island's on the phone." For someone so petite, Sparks had an astonishingly resonant voice, as if she were speaking from the bottom of an empty cargo bay. "They wanna know what we're up to."
    Anthony ducked into the radio shack, thumbing the transceiver mike to ON. "Calling Jay Island Coast Guard Station . . ."
    "Go ahead. Over."
    "Carpco Valparaíso here, bound in ballast for Lagos, Nigeria, to take on two hundred thousand barrels of crude oil. Over."
    "Roger, Valparaíso. Be advised of Tropical Depression Number Six—Hurricane Beatrice—currently blowing west from Cape Verde."
    "Gotcha, Jay Island. Out."
    At 1934 the Valparaíso slid across the ethereal line separating Lower New York Bay from the North Atlantic Ocean. Twenty minutes later, Second Mate Spicer—Big Joe Spicer, the only sailor on board who seemed scaled to the tanker herself—entered the wheelhouse to relieve Rafferty.
    "Lay me a course for Saã Tomé," Anthony ordered Spicer. Grabbing the Exxon coffee Thermos and his ceramic Carpco mug, the captain poured himself the first of what he expected would be about five hundred cups of thick black jamoke. "I want us there in two weeks."
    "I overheard the Coast Guard mention a hurricane," said Rafferty.
    "Forget the damn hurricane. This is the Carpco Valparaíso, not some proctologist's sailboat. If it starts to rain, we'll turn on the windshield wipers."
    "Can O'Connor give us a steady eighteen knots?" asked Spicer.
    "I expect so."
    "Then we'll be in the Gulf of Guinea by the tenth." The second mate advanced the joysticks, notch by notch. "All ahead full?"
    The captain looked south, scanning the ranks of gray, glassy swells, the eternally shifting terrain of the sea. And so it begins, he thought, the great race, Anthony Van Horne versus brain death, decay, and the Devil's own sharks.
    "All ahead full!"
    July 2.
    Latitude: 37°7'N. Longitude: 58°10'W. Course: 094. Speed: 18 knots. Distance made good since New York: 810 nautical miles. A gentle breeze, no. 3 on the Beaufort scale, wafts across our weather deck.
    I wanted a real diary, but there wasn't time to visit a stationery store, so instead I ran down to Thrift Drug and got you. According to your cover, you're an "Official Popeye the Sailor Spiral-Bound Notebook, copyright © 1959 King Features Syndicate." When I look into your wizened face, Popeye, I know you're a man I can trust.
    On this day in 1816, the French frigate Medusa went aground off the west coast of Africa—so says my Manner's Pocket Companion. "Of the 147 who escaped on a raft, most were murdered by their mates and either thrown overboard or eaten. Only 15 survived." I think we can do better than that. For a company cobbled together at the last minute, they seem like a pretty smart bunch. Big Joe Spicer brought his own sextant aboard, always a good sign in a navigator. Dolores Haycox, the zaftig third mate, passed the surprise quiz I gave her without a hiccup. (I had her calculate her distance from a hypothetical bold shore based on the interval between a ship's foghorn blast and the echo.) Marbles Rafferty, the gloomy first officer, is a particularly poetic choice for this mission—his great-grandfather