Towing Jehovah

by James Morrow

  The fog hissed as it hit the little fire. Miriam seized Follingsbee’s eighteen-inch iron skillet and set it atop the burner.

  “Meum corpus enim est hoc,” muttered Thomas, cutting and slashing as he desacralized the tissues, “omnes hoc ex manducate et accipite.” As heavy magenta blood came bubbling to the surface, Miriam took the chalice, knelt down, and scooped up several pints. “Omnes eo ex bibite et accipite,” said the priest, filtering the holiness from the blood. He kept working the saw, at last freeing up a three-pound swatch of flesh.

  It had to be this way. No other choice existed. If he didn’t do it, Van Horne would.

  Shutting off the vibrating blade, he carried the fillet to the altar and dropped it into the skillet. The meat sizzled, pink juices rushing from its depths. A wondrous scent arose, the sweet aroma of seared divinity, making Thomas’s mouth water.

  “It’s done,” seethed Cassie Fowler. “It’s fucking done.”

  “Patience,” snarled Miriam.

  “Christ on a raft…”

  Sixty seconds passed. Thomas grabbed the spatula and flipped the fillet. A matter of balances: he must heat the thing long enough to kill the pathogens, but not so long as to destroy the precious proteins for which their bodies screamed.

  “What’s next?” snorted Van Horne.

  “The Fraction of the Host,” said Miriam.

  “Screw it,” he said.

  “Screw you,” she said.

  Sliding the spatula under the meat, Thomas transferred it to the silver salver. He took a breath and, switching on the carving knife, divided the great steak into nine equal portions, each the size of a brownie. “Haec commixtio,” he said, slicing a tiny bit off his own share, “corporis et sanguinis Dei”—with the particle he made the Sign of the Cross over the chalice and dropped it in—“fiat accipientibus nobis.” May this mingling of the body and blood of God be effectual to us who receive it. “Amen.”

  “Stop stretching it out,” gasped Fowler.

  “This is sadistic,” whined Van Horne.

  “If you don’t like it,” said Miriam, “find another church.”

  Squeezing his portion between thumb and forefinger, feeling the sticky warmth roll across his palm, Thomas raised it to his lips. He opened his mouth. “Perceptio corporis Tui, Domine, quod ego indignus sumere praesumo, non mihi proveniat in condemnationem.” Let not the partaking of Thy body, O Lord, which I, though unworthy, presume to receive, turn to my condemnation. He sank his teeth into the meat. He chewed slowly and gulped. The flavor astonished him. He’d been expecting something manifestly classy and valuable—London broil, perhaps, or milk-fed veal—but instead it evoked Follingsbee’s version of a Big Mac.

  And the priest thought: of course. God had been for everyone, hadn’t He? He’d belonged to the fast-food multitudes, to all those overweight mothers Thomas was forever seeing in the Bronxdale Avenue McDonald’s, ordering Happy Meals for their chubby broods.

  “Corpus Tuum, Domine, quod sumpsit, adhaereat visceribus meis,” he said. May Thy body, O Lord, which I have received, cleave to my inmost parts. He felt a sudden, electric surge, though whether this traced to the meat itself or to the Idea of the Meat he couldn’t say. “Amen.”

  Myriad sensations gamboled among Thomas’s taste buds as, silver salver in hand, he approached Follingsbee. Beyond the burgerness lay something not unlike Kentucky Fried Chicken, and beyond that lay intimations of a Wendy’s Triple.

  “Father, I feel real bad about this,” said the plump chef.

  “I’m sure you could’ve cooked it better. Don’t tell the stewards’ union.”

  Follingsbee winced. “I used to be an altar boy, remember?”

  “It’s perfectly okay, Sam.”

  “You promise? It seems sinful.”

  “I promise.”

  “It’s okay? You sure?”

  “Open your mouth.”

  The chef’s lips parted.

  “Corpus Dei custodial corpus tuum,” said Thomas, inserting Follingsbee’s portion. May God’s body preserve thy own. “Eat slowly,” he admonished, “or you’ll get sick.”

  As Follingsbee chewed, Thomas moved down the line—Rafferty, O’Connor, Chickering, Bliss, Fowler, Van Horne, Sister Miriam—laying a share on each extended tongue. “Corpus Dei custodial corpus tuum,” he told them. “Not too fast,” he warned.

  The communicants worked their jaws and swallowed.

  “Domine, non sum dignus,” said Miriam, licking her lips. Lord, I am not worthy.

  “Domine, non sum dignus,” said Follingsbee, eyes closed, savoring his salvation.

  “Domine…non…sum…dignus,” groaned the radio officer, shuddering with self-disgust. For a committed vegetarian like Lianne Bliss, this was obviously a terrible ordeal.

  “Domine, non sum dignus,” said Rafferty, O’Connor, and Chickering in unison. Only Van Horne and Fowler remained silent.

  “Dominus vobiscum,” Thomas told the congregation, stepping onto the areola.

  Under the captain’s direction the loyalists drew out their machetes, stilettos, and Swiss Army knives and set to work, systematically enlarging the original indentation as they carved out additional fillets for their mates back in the shantytown, and within an hour they had flensed the corpse sufficiently to fill every pot and pan.

  “He smells ripe,” said Van Horne, pinching his nostrils as he joined Thomas on the areola.

  “If not rotten,” said the priest, watching Miriam cram a bloody fillet into the ciborium.

  “You know, I probably believe in Him more strongly right now than I ever did when He was alive.” The captain dropped his hand, letting his nostrils spring open. “It’s an absolute miracle, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what it is.” Fanning himself with his Panama hat, Thomas turned toward the communicants.

  “Either that, or His body got caught on the crest of the Canary Current, entered the North Atlantic Drift…”

  “Ite,” Thomas announced in a strong, clear voice.

  “…and then came ’round full circle.”

  “Missa est.”

  “So what do you think, Father? A miracle, or the North Atlantic Drift?”

  “I think it’s all the same thing,” said the dazed, exhausted, satiated priest.

  Feast

  WILD APPLAUSE AND delirious cheers greeted Bob Hope as, dressed in baggy green combat fatigues and a white golfing cap, he stepped onto the stage of the Midnight Sun Canteen. The spotlight caught his famous and complex nose, limning its beloved contours.

  “I’m sure havin’ a swell time here on Jan Mayen Island,” the comedian began, waving to his audience: a hundred and thirty-two Navy pilots and gunners—most of them wearing chocolate brown bomber jackets with black fur collars—plus two hundred and ten sailors in white bucket hats and blue neckerchiefs. “You all know what Jan Mayen is.” He tapped the floor mike, producing an amplified thock. “Shangri-La with icicles!”

  Appreciative howls. Delighted guffaws.

  Oliver, sitting alone, did not laugh. He polished off his second Frydenlund beer of the evening, burped, and slumped down farther in his chair. Some terrible tragedy, he was sure, had overtaken Cassandra and the Valparaíso. Typhoon, maelstrom, tsunami—or maybe the force was human, for surely there were institutions other than the Central Park West Enlightenment League that wished to get God’s carcass out of the way, institutions that wouldn’t hesitate to sink a supertanker or two in the process.

  Albert Flume and his partner ambled up to Oliver’s table. “May we join you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Another beer?” asked Sidney Pembroke, pointing to the pair of empty bottles.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “Last night I slept in the barracks along with the boys,” said Bob Hope. Hands in pockets, he hunched toward the mike. “You know what barracks are. That’s two thousand cots separated by individual crap games.”

  A Hope classic. The pilots, gunners, and sailors nearly fel
l out of their chairs.

  “Alby, we done good,” said Pembroke.

  “Definitely one of our better productions,” said Flume. “Hey, girl-o’-my-dreams!” he called toward a pretty, honey-blonde hostess as, hips swaying, she carried a plate of ham sandwiches across the room. “Bring our friend Oliver here a Frydenlund!”

  The impresarios’ pride was in fact justified. In a mere three days they’d managed to turn the Sundog Saloon into a forties USO club. Except for the availability of beer, the Midnight Sun Canteen was entirely authentic, right down to the fluted public-address speakers on the girders, the SERVICEMEN ONLY sign above the front door, and the LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS and NIMITZ HAS NO LIMITS posters on the walls. At first Vladimir Panshin had resisted the transformation, figuring his usual clientele would be irate, but then he realized that for every Ibsen City scientist who stayed away at least two Reenactment Society members would take his place.

  The refurbishing had cost Oliver nearly eighty-five thousand dollars, most of it going to the carpenters and electricians they’d ferried over from Trondheim, but that sum was nothing compared to the sizable percentage of his bank account Pembroke and Flume had consumed in procuring the talent. The New York office of Actors Equity had sent two dozen ingenues and chorus girls, all of them more than willing to put on cocktail aprons and flirt with a bunch of middle-aged schizophrenics who thought they were fighting World War Two. From the William Morris Agency had come Sonny Orbach and His Harmonicoots, sixteen septuagenarian musicians who, when sufficiently plastered on Frydenlund, became a veritable reincarnation of Glenn Miller’s band. But the impresarios’ real coup was tracking down the amazingly gifted and chronically obscure Kovitsky Brothers: Myron, Arnold, and Jake, aka the Great American Nostalgia Machine—borscht-circuit mimics whose repertoire extended beyond such obvious choices as Bob Hope and Al Jolson into the rarefied world of female impersonation. Myron did a first-rate Kate Smith, Arnold a credible Marlene Dietrich, Jake a passable Ethel Merman and a positively uncanny Frances Langford. Fusing their falsettos in tight, three-part harmony, the Kovitsky Brothers could make you swear you were hearing the Andrews Sisters singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me).”

  Oliver looked at his watch. Five P.M. Damn. Commander Wade McClusky’s portrayer should have reported in well over an hour ago.

  “You know, I recently figured out that all General Tojo wants is peace,” said Hope. “A piece of China, a piece of Australia, a piece of the Philippines…”

  By his own account, Wade McClusky was a crackerjack target spotter. While still an ensign, he’d become known as the man who could pick out a camouflaged aircraft factory from three miles up, though Oliver was unclear on whether it was the real McClusky, the real McClusky’s portrayer, or the real McClusky’s portrayer’s fictionalized version of the real McClusky who boasted this talent. In any event, ten hours earlier the stalwart leader of Air Group Six had taken personal charge of the reconnaissance operation, assuming command of the PBY flying boat code-named “Strawberry Eight.” An auspicious development, Oliver felt. So why wasn’t McClusky back yet? Was the Valparaíso armed with Bofors guns after all? Had Van Horne shot Strawberry Eight out of the sky?

  Hope motioned for the gorgeous and curvaceous Dorothy Lamour—Myron Kovitsky in wig, makeup, evening gown, and latex breasts—to join him on stage. Smiling, blowing kisses, Lamour slithered across the canteen, accompanied by choruses of wolf whistles.

  “Just wanted you boys to see what you’re fighting for.” Another Hope classic. “Yesterday, Crosby and I were—”

  “Attention, everyone! Attention!” A breathless voice broke from the loudspeakers, popping and fizzing like a draught of Moxie encountering an ice cube. “This is Admiral Spruance on Enterprise! Great news, men! Barely four hours ago, sixteen army B-25s took off from the carrier Hornet under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle and dropped over fifty demolition bombs on the industrial heart of Tokyo!”

  Whoops and applause resounded through the Midnight Sun Canteen.

  “The extent of the damage is not known,” Spruance’s portrayer continued, “but President Roosevelt is calling the Doolittle raid ‘a major blow to enemy morale’!”

  The war reenactors stomped their feet. Bewildered but eager to please, the hostesses set down their sandwich trays and cheered.

  “That is all, men!”

  When the tumult died away, the spotlight pivoted toward the northeast corner, just as Sonny Orbach and His Harmonicoots, in full evening attire, launched into a spirited imitation of Glenn Miller’s “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” Leaping up, the Midnight Sun Canteen’s patrons began jitterbugging—with each other, with their hostesses, and, in the case of one fantastically lucky tail gunner, with Dorothy Lamour herself.

  At the next table over, a perky redheaded hostess was busy earning her salary, sharing a Coca-Cola with a chunky sailor in his early forties.

  “…not supposed to ask where you’re going,” the hostess was saying as Oliver tuned in their conversation.

  “That’s right,” the sailor replied. “The Japs have spies everywhere.”

  “But I can ask where you’re from.”

  “Georgia, ma’am. Little town called Peach Landing.”

  “Really?”

  “Newark, actually.”

  “Golly, I never met anyone from Georgia.” The hostess batted her eyes. “Got a girl, sailor?”

  “Sure do, ma’am.”

  “Carry her picture with you, by any chance?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” With a sheepish grin the sailor pulled his wallet from his bell-bottoms and, slipping out a small photograph, handed it to the hostess. “Her name’s Mindy Sue.”

  “She looks real sweet, sailor. Does she blow you?”

  “What?”

  At 1815 hours, the unmistakable roar of a PBY flying boat’s Pratt and Whitney engines passed over the Midnight Sun Canteen, rattling the Frydenlund bottles. A delicious anticipation flooded through Oliver. Surely this was Wade McClusky, heading for the nearest fjord in Strawberry Eight. Surely the Valparaíso had been spotted.

  Glenn Miller followed “Pistol Packin’ Mama” with “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” then the spotlight swung back to the stage for the Andrews Sisters singing “The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.” (At some point Myron had sneaked off and changed costumes.) Next came Bing Crosby crooning “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” after which Hope sauntered over to his buddy. Swaying back and forth, the two of them offered their famous rendition of “Mairzy Doats.”

  “Speaking of mares,” said Flume as Hope and Crosby welcomed Frances Langford on stage, “did you know our subs used to carry buckets of horse guts along on their missions?”

  Oliver wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Buckets of…?”

  “Horse guts. Sometimes sheep guts. That way, whenever the Nazis dropped their depth charges, the sub commander could send the stuff to the surface, and the enemy would think he’d scored a hit!”

  “What an amazing war,” said Pembroke, sighing with admiration.

  “I’m in the mood for love,” sang Frances Langford.

  “Baby, you came to the right place!” a randy sailor shouted.

  “Simply because you’re near me…”

  The front door flew open, and a small gale swept through the Midnight Sun Canteen. Blue with cold, Wade McClusky’s craggy portrayer strode inside and marched over to Oliver’s table. Ice crystals glittered on his flight jacket. Snow sat on his shoulders like a prodigious case of dandruff.

  “Jeez, am I glad to see you!” shouted Oliver, slapping the group leader on the back. “Any luck?”

  Smiling, blowing kisses, Frances Langford launched into her signature tune, “Embraceable You.”

  “Gimme a lousy minute.” McClusky pulled a pack of Wrigley’s spearmint from his flight jacket, then slid a stick into his mouth like a doctor inserting a tongue depressor. “Hey, cutie!” he called to the redheaded host
ess, who was still drinking Coke with the chunky sailor. “We’ll take a Frydenlund over here!”

  “Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you,” sang Frances Langford. “Embrace me, my irreplaceable you…”

  “You know, there’s a wonderful story connected with that number,” said Pembroke. “Miss Langford was visiting a field hospital in the African desert. There’d been a big tank battle earlier that week, and some of the boys were shot up pretty bad.”

  “Hope suggested she give ’em a song,” said Flume, “so naturally Frances trotted out ‘Embraceable You.’ And when she looked toward the nearest bed—well, you’ll never guess what she saw.”

  “Did you find the Valparaíso?” Oliver demanded. “Did you find the golem?”

  “I didn’t find a goddamn thing,” said McClusky, accepting his beer from the hostess.

  “She saw a soldier without any arms,” said Pembroke. “Both of ’em had been burned off. Isn’t that a wonderful story?”

  The late-afternoon breeze lifted nuggets of rust from the dunes, hurling them over the starboard bulwark and scattering them across the weather deck like buckshot. Anthony donned his mirrorshades and, peering through the sandstorm, studied the approaching procession. His stomach, filled, purred contentedly. Like pallbearers transporting a small but emotionally burdensome coffin—the coffin of a pet, a child, a beloved dwarf—Ockham and Sister Miriam carried an aluminum footlocker down the catwalk. Descending to the deck, they set the box at Anthony’s feet. They opened it.

  Packaged in wax paper, sixty sandwiches lay in neat ranks, files, and layers. Closing his eyes, Anthony inhaled the robust fragrance. Follingsbee’s great breakthrough had occurred less than an hour after the inverse Eucharist, when he’d discovered that their cargo’s epidermis could be mashed into a paste possessing all the best qualities of bread dough. While Rafferty and Chickering had fried the patties, Follingsbee had baked the buns. In Anthony’s view, the fact that he’d be giving his crew not just meat but a facsimile of their favorite cuisine all but guaranteed the mutiny’s end.