A Commodore of Errors (39 page)

As it turned out, the cigarettes were the least of her worries. Not only did Swifty turn over the cigarettes to the pilot, but to Mrs. Tannenbaume's utter amazement, he also turned over the ship to him. “Okay, Mr. Pilot,” Swifty said the morning the pilot came aboard and the flap over the cigarettes had ended. “She's all yours.”

“What?” Mrs. Tannenbaume pulled Swifty aside. “What the hell is going on here? Who is this guy we just gave the ship to?”

“He's the pilot,” Swifty said. “He's in charge of navigation now. We can just sit back and enjoy the view.”

Mrs. Tannenbaume looked out at the scrub desert on either side of the Suez Canal. “You call this a view?”

“Look,” Swifty said, “I have an appointment to get my face wrapped. You do what you want. Just . . . the pilot has the conn now, all right?”

Mrs. Tannenbaume would have none of it. She walked over and stood beside the pilot, a smallish man in rumpled linen pants and shirt, with dark sweaty hair that he wore matted down over his head. When he didn't acknowledge her, Mrs. Tannenbaume nudged the pilot's forearm.

“Give it back,” she said.

The pilot looked past Mrs. Tannenbaume to Swifty, but Swifty was already in the chair with a hot cloth on his face.

“Give me back the ship,” Mrs. Tannenbaume repeated.

“Who are you?”

“The supernumerary, that's who.”

“Well I'm the pilot. I answer to no one, not even the captain.” The pilot lit up a Marlboro and blew smoke rings. “I certainly do not answer to any supernumerary.”

“Well I'm not just any supernumerary. I'm the captain's mother and I'm making the decisions up here, not you. And the first decision I'm making is no smoking on the bridge.”

Mrs. Tannenbaume yanked the dangling cigarette from the pilot's mouth and handed it to Ski at the wheel. Ski, who was smoking himself, extinguished the pilot's cigarette in the remains of his coffee.

In a voice far stronger than anyone imagined the little man might possess, the pilot thundered, “I want to see the captain on the bridge right now!”

No one else on the bridge wanted to see the captain right then, judging by the way they all sprung into action to isolate the pilot from Mrs. Tannenbaume. Swifty threw off his hot towel and escorted Mrs. Tannenbaume to the wing while the second engineer showed the pilot to the captain's chair. Mitzi had the pilot's shoes off before he knew what was happening and she went to work on his feet like nobody's business. Ski, meanwhile, got another hot towel out of the spare Pyrex coffeepot and placed it over the pilot's face. Ski told the pilot that he had been driving ships through the canal for twenty years and that all that he, the pilot, had to do was relax in the chair while they took care of things. Ski knew that pilots, as a rule, enjoy a little pampering, and this pilot was no different. After a minute with the soothing hot towel on his face, the pilot was sleeping peacefully. Mrs. Tannenbaume was not altogether pleased with having to navigate from the wing, but Swifty convinced her that if she wanted to keep Captain Tannenbaume off the bridge doing who knew what, then she'd have to make the adjustment this one time.

The trip through the canal went smoothly after that, with Ski doing most of the driving. Mrs. Tannenbaume took an occasional turn at the wheel, almost nodding off from time to time from the sheer boredom of steering a dead straight course through the dead straight ditch. She tried to get the pilot's goat by asking him to tell her, again, why they even needed a pilot in the Suez Canal, but Swifty
and Ski were there to hurry her off to the wing. With the last of the dreary ditch behind them, the
God is Able
dropped off the pilot just outside the entrance. The pilot, it turns out, was sad to go, seeing as he looked and felt a whole lot better than when he first came aboard. Mitzi had primped-up his matted-down hair, trimmed the profusion of bristling hairs sprouting from his nose and ears, and had given him a gleaming manicure. He had never had a better transit, he told Swifty, as he admired the fresh gloss on his fingernails. Swifty made sure to repay the compliment with a couple more cartons of Marlboro Reds.

Mrs. Tannenbaume noticed the additional cartons of Marlboros in the pilot's arms as they bid each other farewell but she had bigger fish to fry. She had never seen so many ships in all her life. She felt like she was coming out of an overcrowded elevator and that there was an even bigger crowd waiting to get in as soon as the doors opened. Mrs. Tannenbaume took it personally. Couldn't they at least let her get out first? She steered the ship until it pointed at the center of the mass of ships hovering outside the canal, told Ski to steady her up there, ordered the engines ahead full, told the lookout on the bow he might as well knock off, then held her thumb down on the whistle and blasted right through the ships until the
God is Able
was in the clear. Once they got past the ships in the immediate vicinity of the canal, they came upon another set of ships, and then another. Mrs. Tannenbaume discovered she needed to blow the danger signal more than ever in the crowded shipping lanes of the Med.

It wasn't until the ship had passed Tunisia that the traffic abated. Mrs. Tannenbaume scanned the horizon with a pair of binoculars and did not detect a single ship. She handed the binoculars to Swifty, slumped into the chair, and asked Mitzi for a back rub.

“I need a day off,” she told Mitzi.

“Somehow, I don't think the crew will mind,” Mitzi said.

Mrs. Tannenbaume was too tired to argue. She got up from the chair after Mitzi finished her back rub and said she was going down below to her cabin for the rest of the day and that if they had any questions about traffic they were to blow the danger signal before interrupting her.

Shortly after Mrs. Tannenbaume left, the chief called the bridge to ask why everything was so quiet. He was in the middle of his nooner, lying in his bunk, staring at the overhead, waiting for the whistle to go off. Swifty told him that Mrs. Tannenbaume had left the bridge and that, hopefully, the whistle would not be going off anytime soon. That was not the answer the chief wanted to hear. The chief had gotten used to the sound of the whistle—it had become white noise for him—and he told Swifty to go ahead and blow the damn whistle so that he could get some sleep.

Mrs. Tannenbaume was already stretched out in the easy chair in her cabin with her shoes kicked off when she heard the whistle. It made her feel like things were going smoothly on the bridge and she began to relax. She thought she might take a nap—she certainly could use the rest—but she also needed to catch up on her mail. The agent in Suez had dropped off the ship's mail and Mrs. Tannenbaume had two letters to open, one with the return address of the
Great Neck Martinizing Dry Cleaners
and the other the
United States Merchant Marine Academy
. Mrs. Tannenbaume picked up the letters from the side table next to the easy chair, opened the one from the academy, and saw that it was from the Commodore:

Dear Mrs. Tannenbaume,
       It pains me to inform you that as of this instant the regiment of midshipmen is in a state of upheaval. My boys have been unruly and I know that they are merely acting up out of boredom. Ennui prevails for no reason other than a lack of leadership, of course. The board accepted Admiral Johnson's resignation, as you know, but they have steadfastly refused to appoint an interim superintendent. I have proffered my services more than once and have even suggested that I would be amenable to retaining my present rank and pay, but still the board has refused my entreaties. They can be a stubborn lot, that cabal of widows.
       Now that Johnson is gone, his cronies have gone missing in action—it should come as no surprise. The commandant does not even bother to keep up the pretense of performing his job. He takes Mondays and Fridays off, and the remainder of the workweek he spends in
the gymnasium. His trapezoids are bulging while the regiment's spirit atrophies. For my part, I am doing all that I have always done—comporting myself in such a manner as to inspire others. My carriage is erect as I walk the campus even as my own spirit sags. It pains me to see my boys suffer even one more day.
       To wit, my dear, I entreat that you make great haste in bringing Captain Tannenbaume to the academy. The dedication of the Mariners Monument is fast approaching and I want your son to be present and to make a respectable impression on Mayor Mogelefsky and the board. The bronze likeness of Edwin J. O'Hara is now complete. The sculptor captured perfectly the imperious gaze, the Roman nose, and the square chin of our young hero. I was overcome with emotion when I faced Edwin for the first time. I looked into his intelligent eyes and felt him staring back at me. I dare say I felt naked in the presence of such greatness. The workers have affixed the statue to the pedestal and the monument is now in place on the lawn facing the Sound. They tried to place a protective plastic wrap around Edwin to keep him out of the elements until his unveiling on dedication day, but, fortunately for Edwin, I intervened. The thought of wrapping dear Edwin in
plastic
was anathema to me, and I prevailed upon the workers to cover him in a cotton sheet (300 thread count) followed by a canvas tarp. So Edwin is comfortably under wraps until his big day. All that is needed is for the MV
God is Able
to deliver Captain Tannenbaume on time for the unveiling.
       And so, Mrs. Tannenbaume, I implore you to do everything in your power to see that the ship makes its best speed for New York. I reiterate my desire for your son to make the biggest impression possible in front of the most people as possible.
       I look forward to your return. God Speed.

Yours,
Commodore Robert Dickey

Mrs. Tannenbaume placed the letter back on the side table. She was about to open the other letter when she felt the ship roll—Swifty, changing course for another ship. Well that simply would not do. Anything other than a straight course line would slow down the ship's progress, and they did not have a moment to spare if they were to get back in time for the unveiling. She, too, wanted her sonny boy to make a big splash. When Mrs. Tannenbaume got to the bridge, she saw that, sure enough, Swifty was in the middle of changing course.

Mrs. Tannenbaume did not chastise Swifty for his decision—she knew that making Swifty a take-charge ship's officer was a lost cause. She simply ordered Ski to turn the ship back onto its course and then she blew five short blasts on the whistle at the ship bearing down on them from their starboard side.

PHILADELPHIA LAWYER

C
aptain Tannenbaume had not made morning chow in over a week. He had been so consumed reading (and rereading) Mogie's telexes that he had fallen out of sync with the normal rhythms of the ship. He had been eating breakfast mid-morning, skipping lunch altogether, and coming in at the very end of the evening meal hour. But today he arrived in the officers' mess on time for breakfast—and found himself all alone. He sat by himself and stared out the lone porthole, his plate of eggs untouched. Since he had not been on the bridge in so long, he had no way of knowing that the morning was Mitzi's peak time and that the crew had taken to bringing their breakast to the bridge while they waited in line for their back rub or pedicure or scalp massage.

The steward came in. “Everything okay, Captain?”

“Eggs are as tight as ever, Stew, thanks. I'm just not hungry, I guess.”

He was waiting on Sparks so that they could have a chat about the new GPS Sparks had picked up in Suez. Since he was not allowed to step foot in the radio
shack, he was forced to wait while Sparks took his sweet time getting down to the officers' mess that morning. Oh, he could go into any space on the ship he damn well pleased, but truth be told, he didn't want to get Sparks any more riled up than he already was. The fact was he needed Sparks's help to get his ship back across the pond. Captain Tannenbaume knew from what little interaction he had with his mates—chance meetings in the passageways mostly—that Swifty and the others were having a devil of a time getting the GPS initialized. Sparks could initialize it in his sleep, but he told Captain Tannenbaume that he was too busy, that he had already told Swifty how to initialize the GPS, and that if Swifty couldn't get the thing initialized in a few days, then maybe he'd have time to help then. But Captain Tannenbaume knew they didn't have a few days to wait. The ship was going to be in the Atlantic Ocean in less than twenty-four hours, and seeing as they couldn't simply hug the coast across the Atlantic, the mates needed that GPS. Of course, Captain Tannenbaume could do the navigating himself now that he had his sextant back. Or he could use the crossing as an opportunity to finally teach his mates celestial. But the thought of it made his stomach turn. A, he wanted to spend as little time on that bridge as possible, and B, he figured it was better to start from scratch and teach celestial to a fresh batch of plebes when he became head honcho at the academy. Swifty was already a lost cause.