“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.
The captain leaned over the rail. Today’s emissary from the shantytown was an elderly, cod-faced man, stripped to the waist and wearing black bicycle pants. He sat motionless amid the thick mist and swirling rust, arms outstretched in a gesture of entreaty, ribs bulging from his shriveled torso like bars on a marimba.
“What’s your name?” Anthony called to the starving man.
“Mungo, sir.” The sailor rose and stumbled backward, slumping against the tanker’s thrown propeller like a leprechaun crucified on a gigantic shamrock. “Able Seaman Ralph Mungo.”
“Find your shipmates, Mungo. Tell ’em to report here at once.
“Aye-aye.”
“Give ’em a message.”
“What message?”
“ ‘Van Horne is the bread of life.’ Got that?”
“Aye.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” said Ockham, cupping his palm around Anthony’s shoulder.
“Repeat it,” Anthony ordered the sailor.
“Van Horne is the bread of life.” Mungo pushed off from the orphan screw. Gasping for breath, he staggered away. “Van Horne is the bread…”
Twenty minutes later the mutineers appeared, flopping and crawling across the foggy dunes, and soon the lot of them sat clustered around the propeller. The allegory pleased Anthony. Above: he, Captain Van Horne, master of the Valparaíso, splendid in his dress blues and braided cap. Below: they, abject mortals, groveling in the muck. He wasn’t out to torment them. He had no wish to steal their wills or claim their souls. But now was the time to bring these traitors to heel once and for all, now was the time to bury the Idea of the Corpse in the deepest, darkest hole this side of the Mariana Trench.
Anthony drew a package from the footlocker. “This soup kitchen’s like any other, sailors. First the sermon, then the sandwich.” He cleared his throat. “ ‘When evening came, the disciples went to Him and said, “Send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food.’ ” He’d spent the noon-to-four watch paging through Ockham’s Jerusalem Bible, studying the great precedents: the manna from heaven, the water from the rock, the feeding of the five thousand. “ ‘Jesus replied, “Give them something to eat yourselves.” But they answered, “All we have is five loaves and two fish.” ’ ”
Tearing off his Panama hat, Ockham squeezed Anthony’s wrist. “Cut the crap, okay?”
So far Follingsbee had wrung four distinct variations. The steward’s own favorite was the basic hamburger, while Rafferty found the Filet-o-Fish unbeatable (seafood flavor derived from areola tissue) and Chickering preferred the Quarter Pounder with Cheese (curds cultivated from divine lymph). Nobody much liked the McNuggets.
“ ‘Breaking the loaves, He handed them to His disciples,’ ” Anthony persisted, “ ‘who gave them to the crowds.’ ” He hurled the sandwich over the side. “ ‘They all ate as much as they wanted…’ ”
The Filet-o-Fish arced toward the mutineers. Reaching up, Able Seaman Weisinger made the catch. Incredulous, he unwrapped the wax paper and stared at the gift. He rubbed the bun. He sniffed the meat. Tears of gratitude ran down his face in parallel tracks. Crumpling the paper into a ball, he tossed it aside, raised the sandwich to his mouth, and swept his lips along the breaded, juicy fibers.
“Eat,” Anthony commanded.
Placing one index finger under his nose, Weisinger hooked the other over his lower teeth and pried his jaw open. He inserted the Filet-o-Fish, bit off a large piece. He swallowed. Gulped. Shuddered. A retching noise issued from his throat, like a ship scraping bottom. Seconds later he vomited up the offering, marring his lap with a sticky mixture of amber fat and sea green bile.
“Chew it!” called Anthony. “You aren’t scarfing down peanuts in a fucking waterfront dive! Chew it!”
Weisinger broke off a modest morsel and tried again. His jaw moved slowly, deliberately. “It’s good!” rasped the AB. “It’s so good!”
“Of course it’s good!” shouted Anthony.
“Where’d you get it?” asked Ralph Mungo.
“All good things come from God!” cried Sister Miriam.
Anthony drew a Quarter Pounder with Cheese from the locker. “Who is your captain?” he screamed into the wind.
“You are!” cried Dolores Haycox.
“You are!” insisted Charlie Horrocks.
“You are!” chimed in Ralph Mungo, Bud Ramsey, James Echohawk, Stubby Barnes, Juanita Torres, Isabel Bostwick, An-mei Jong, and a dozen more.
Quarter Pounder in hand, Anthony thrust his arm over the rail. “Who is the bread of life?”
“You are!” cried a chorus of mutineers.
He waved the sandwich around. “Who can forgive your sins against this ship?”
“You can!”
Springing sideways, Sister Miriam grabbed the Quarter Pounder from Anthony and tossed it into the air. Like a tight end catching a forward pass, Haycox snagged the package, instantly ripping away the wax paper.
“You had no right to do that,” Anthony informed the nun. “You’re just a passenger, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m just a passenger,” she agreed. “For Christ’s sake,” she repeated, curling her lower lip.
Ockham rummaged around in the locker, drawing out four hamburgers and four boxes of McNuggets. “You each get two!” he shouted, chucking the packages over the rail. “Eat slowly!”
“Very slowly,” said Miriam, throwing down six Filets-o-Fish.
The sky rained godsend. Half the packages were caught in midair, half hit the sands. Anthony was impressed not only by the orderliness with which the mutineers retrieved the fallen meat but by the fact that no sailor took more than his or her share.
“They fear me,” he observed.
“You proud of that?” asked Ockham.
“Yes. No. I want my ship back, Thomas.”
“How does it feel, being feared? Heady stuff?”