A Commodore of Errors Read online




  Characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The sole exception is the character of Edwin J. O’Hara. O’Hara was a cadet at the Academy who went down with his ship in 1942. He was nineteen years old at the time of his death. These are true facts. All other references in the novel to his person, character, and actions are the sole creation of the author’s imagination.

  Copyright © 2011 by John Jacobsen

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jacobsen, John G.

  A commodore of errors: a novel / John Jacobsen.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-61145-338-6 (hardcover: alk. paper)

  1. United States Merchant Marine Academy--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3610.A35665C66 2011

  813’.6--dc22

  2011020627

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  BOOK I:

  The United States Merchant Marine Academy,

  Kings Point, New York

  Chapter 1 Second in Command

  Chapter 2 Johnson’s Johnson

  Chapter 3 It’s All About the Tempo

  Chapter 4 S & M

  Chapter 5 Plebe Knowledge

  Chapter 6 Bigger Fish to Fry

  Chapter 7 The Little Guy Is Bigger

  Chapter 8 Experience at Sea

  Chapter 9 Sticks, Steppers, and Stools

  Chapter 10 Short and Inadequate

  Chapter 11 Fetishisms

  Chapter 12 The Goyim Were Right?

  Chapter 13 A Standing Ovation

  Chapter 14 Woman on Top

  Chapter 15 Wolf Tickets

  Chapter 16 Phone Sex

  Chapter 17 Sex Ed

  Chapter 18 Flouncy

  Chapter 19 Raise Your Right Hand

  Chapter 20 Captain Tannenbaume to the Rescue

  Chapter 21 Midnight Musk

  Chapter 22 Suspectfully Remitted

  Chapter 23 Sylvia’s My Name

  Chapter 24 A Handshake Deal

  Chapter 25 A Supernumerary and a Cadet

  Chapter 26 Bona Fide Board Members

  BOOK II:

  The MV God is Able, at Sea

  Chapter 27 Coffeepots and Paperweights

  Chapter 28 Indian Ocean Fog

  Chapter 29 Safety First

  Chapter 30 Breakfast in Bed

  Chapter 31 A Three-step Plan

  Chapter 32 Send It Back

  Chapter 33 Right-of-way

  Chapter 34 Doing for Others

  Chapter 35 Godspeed

  Chapter 36 Shalom!

  Chapter 37 Night Orders

  Chapter 38 Philadelphia Lawyer

  Chapter 39 Mitzi’s

  Chapter 40 It’s Called Leverage

  Chapter 41 Handsome Smooth

  Chapter 42 Kick It Up a Notch

  Chapter 43 Talking Business

  Chapter 44 Homecoming

  BOOK III:

  The United States Merchant Marine Academy

  Chapter 45 Like a Moth to a Flame

  Chapter 46 A Captain and His Comely Cadet

  Chapter 47 You Don’t Know Gunnisch

  Chapter 48 A True Unveiling

  Chapter 49 The Butler’s Bow

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Silvana, who actually believed me when I told her I was going to write a novel.

  PROLOGUE

  Midshipman Jones stood on the uneven porch of Mrs. Tannenbaume’s house and stared at the wooden cross that leaned against the porch rail. The cross was enormous. It was bigger than he—a rough-hewed Midwest farm boy—and made of rough wood beams pegged together with wood dowels. A life-size papier-mâché replica of a bloody Jesus lay on the burnt grass next to the porch.

  He’d been wondering what his work order meant as soon as he picked it out of the job box at the MOD’s office. He’d also been wondering whether Mrs. Tannenbaume was crazy. Now he knew.

  Midshipman Jones rang the ship’s bell that served as Mrs. Tannenbaume’s doorbell. When Mrs. Tannenbaume arrived at the door in her housedress—she was old, which he sort of expected, based on the rundown condition of the house’s exterior—Midshipman Jones waived the piece of scrap paper he held in his hand.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Tannenbaume,” he said. “I’m here for the job you called in.”

  “Oh, yes, come in, love.”

  Wow. What a raspy voice. She must have been a smoker when she was young. Or a drinker. Probably both.

  He opened the screen door—half-painted and peeling—and stepped into the small entrance off the porch. Stacks of yellowed newspapers filled the vestibule. He sidestepped his way through them and entered Mrs. Tannenbaume’s living room.

  The room was a shrine to the Holy Roman Catholic Church—or at least that’s how it appeared. Little replicas of the Stations of the Cross were placed in every corner. A leather-bound Holy Bible took up most of the coffee table. Rosary beads were strewn about on the card table in the corner, crammed between the cushions on the sofa and love seats, and hanging off the shade of the floor lamp in the other corner of the peculiar room. Over the fireplace hung a crucifix, also wrapped in rosary beads. The only nonreligious decorations in the room were three framed photographs on the fireplace mantle. Midshipman Jones stared at the photos. They were dark and grainy and appeared to portray three young men. He wondered why these terrible photos were so prominent in the old lady’s home.

  Mrs. Tannenbaume looked up expectantly at him. “I forget why I wanted you here, love.”

  Midshipman Jones did not know what to make of this old lady. Her wrinkled skin—God, she must have been a real sun worshipper when she was young—made her look pretty old but then she seemed so spry, almost youthful, nothing like his grandmother back in Ohio, who was probably the same age.

  He looked at the slip of paper in his hand, then back to Mrs. Tannenbaume. “Let me read it to you, Mrs. Tannenbaume. I want to make sure I get it right.” He paused. “It says here, ‘Need one midshipman to nail Jesus to the cross.’”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume slapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh yes, my papier-mâché Jesus. I got him at the annual yard sale at the St. Aloysius, my church in Great Neck. He was a leftover from a play put on by the kids. Nobody else wanted him. I got him for five bucks, can you believe it? The nuns wanted to know what I planned to do with my Jesus. I told them I was going to find a big cross and nail him to it. When I went to pick him up—one of your classmates helped me, he owns a pickup truck—Sister Mahoney tried to keep me from taking him. I told her, ‘No way, Sister, a deal is a deal, I have the receipt to prove it.’ She’s some kind of meshuggener, that Sister Mahoney.”

  “Meshuggener?”

  “She’s crazy.”

  A couple of years of dealing with superio
r officers had taught Midshipman Jones how to bite back a smart remark. He called upon his training at that moment.

  Mrs. Tannenbaume led Midshipman Jones back out to the dilapidated front porch and pointed at the cross. “I got this from my tenant upstairs, Mr. Schwartz. We used to go together, you know. When he found out I was Catholic, he broke the whole thing off. He said he could not believe Sylvia Tannenbaume was a Catholic, as if he didn’t already know. I said to him, ‘Schwartzie, how many times did I tell you? It’s Tannenbaume with an E. I’m not Jewish.’ But he don’t listen, that Schwartzie. He said to me, ‘I’m sorry, Sylvia, but if my mother knew, she’d disown me.’ So I said to him, ‘We’re both seventy-six years old, love. Does it really matter?’” Mrs. Tannenbaume paused for a moment to admire her wooden cross. “But I think he musta felt bad about breaking up with me because he made me this cross to hang my Jesus on.”

  To Midshipman Jones, this old lady was a hoot. He really didn’t know what to make of her. He wanted to be sure to mind his manners so he just nodded his head while he brushed his hand on the rough wood of the cross and searched for an appropriate remark. “It must be hard for a widow to find a good man,” he blurted out.

  Mrs. Tannenbaume jerked her head toward him. “What makes you think I’m a widow?”

  Midshipman Jones averted Mrs. Tannenbaume’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Tannenbaume. I don’t know, really, I guess I just figured . . . ”

  “Come here, young man.” Mrs. Tannenbaume grabbed him by the elbow. “I want to show you something.”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume dragged him inside the house once again and stopped in front of the fireplace. She pointed to the nicely framed photographs. “Eddie, Teddy, and Freddie.”

  Midshipman Jones stepped closer and peered at the photos. Yes, they were photographs of three young men about his age. Mrs. Tannenbaume was lost in her thoughts, so he just looked at the photos and didn’t say a word.

  “Eddie, Teddy, and Freddie.” Mrs. Tannenbaume turned to face him, her hands still clutched to her heart. “One of these boys is my son’s father.”

  Once again, Midshipman Jones had the opportuntity to practice biting back a remark.

  “Oh, I was a wild one when I was young,” Mrs. Tannenbaume confessed, pointing at the picture on the left. “That’s Eddie. He was a sailor. His ship pulled into port during the war. My father was a tailor and he made uniforms for the merchant marine. Ships from all over the world would stop in Durban—that’s where we lived, Durban, in South Africa—to pick up uniforms made by my father. I brought a bunch of uniforms down to the ships one afternoon. Eddie was the youngest sailor on the ship, and oh, I tell you, that Eddie was something to look at.”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume’s gaze remained fixed on the photographs on the mantle. She pointed at the middle one. “And that’s Teddy. He was a tailor. An apprentice tailor, really. My father agreed to teach him the trade as a favor to Teddy’s father. He wasn’t very good, though, poor Teddy. All his uniforms had too many buttonholes. To tell you the truth,” Mrs. Tannenbaume whispered to Midshipman Jones, “I think I distracted the poor fella whenever I was in the shop. Not for nothing, but I was something to look at, too, when I was seventeen.” Mrs. Tannenbaume turned back to the photographs with a wistful look in her eyes.

  Midshipman Jones pointed to the last photograph. “And him?”

  “Freddie was a jailor,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said. “He worked in the Durban jail as a guard. I guess these days he’d be called a prison guard, but in those days he was just a jailor. Freddie was a nice guy. Dumb as a bag of hammers, though. My father made the uniforms for the jailors is how I met him.”

  “So. Eddie, Teddy, and Freddie. A sailor, a tailor, and a jailor. Wow.”

  “What’s the far-off look for?”

  “Oh nothing, I guess,” Midshipman Jones said. “It’s just that there’s something vaguely familiar about this story. Probably just déjà vu.”

  “It’s no story.” Mrs. Tannenbaume smoothed her hands on her housedress. “One of those boys is my son’s father. Since I’m not exactly sure which one it is, I kind of think of them all as his father.”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume turned and walked out onto the porch. Midshipman Jones followed along. This assignment was turning out to be a lot more interesting than he’d thought it would be. He pointed at the ship’s bell serving as Mrs. Tannenbaume’s doorbell. “Where’d you get the ship’s bell, Mrs. Tannenbaume?”

  “That’s from my son’s ship, the God is Able. My sonny boy is the captain.” Midshipman Jones bent over for a closer look at the ship’s bell. The God is Able? Where had he—

  And then it hit him.

  “That’s it! I knew I had heard the story before. Captain Tannenbaume is your son? He’s, like, a legend. The stories about the God is Able are the best! I can’t wait to tell the guys.”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume beamed. “You just made my day, young man.” Then together Mrs. Tannenbaume and Midshipman Jones turned and faced the wooden cross and the papier-mâché Jesus.

  “So what do you think?” Mrs. Tannenbaume asked. “Should we put up the cross first and then nail the Jesus to it, or would it be easier to nail the Jesus to the cross while it’s lying on the ground?”

  SECOND IN COMMAND

  Commodore Robert S. Dickey marched across Barney Square in full view of the cregiment of midshipmen. The midshipmen had just finished mustering for Morning Colors and were standing at attention in formation. The Commodore felt them follow his every step with their eyes and basked in their adoration.

  Dressed in his summer whites, he knew that he was the very essence of “the officer and the gentleman.” The crease in his pant leg was a knife’s edge. His shined brass belt buckle glinted off the morning sun. The Filipino Martinizer at the Great Neck Martinizing Dry Cleaners knew that the Commodore liked his shirts pressed crisp, and this morning his shirt was so crisp it audibly crackled as he walked. And even though his hair was mostly covered by his gold-braided white hat, it, too, was perfect. The Commodore took great pride in his hair. His hair was patrician white and possessed a natural luster that needed no mousse, gel, oil, or spray. He looked forward to his semi-weekly visits to the academy barbershop. He liked the compliments he received as he sat, erect and smiling, in the barber’s chair. His hair was gorgeous, the barber would say, gorgeous, and so thick and white. When the barber finished trimming his hair this morning, the Commodore asked if he needed any mousse or gel. He knew what the barber would say, but he liked to hear him say it anyway.

  “Mousse? In your hair?” The barber placed his hand to his mouth in mock horror. “Commodore, please, your hair is so thick, so gorgeous. A good barber would never soil your hair with such junk.”

  As the Commodore strode across Barney Square—taking care to avoid the bigger cracks in the black asphalt—three regimental drummers began beating bass drums with mallets that looked like long sticks with marshmallows stuck on the end. Boom! Boom! Ba boom, boom, boom! Boom! Boom! Ba boom, boom, boom! The Commodore timed his walk across Barney Square to coincide with the beating of the drums. The sound of the big bass drums stirred his heart with pride. How he loved the United States Merchant Marine Academy!

  Boom! Boom! Ba boom, boom, boom!

  The Commodore pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks. The effect on the midshipmen, he surmised, must be overwhelming. As he made his way toward Wiley Hall, the academy’s main administrative building (and former summer home to a wealthy automobile magnate), he smiled up at Admiral Johnson, who stood at attention on Wiley Hall’s balcony. The balcony overlooked Powell Oval and the flagpole, which stood at the epicenter of the academy’s grounds.

  Admiral John J. Johnson, the academy’s superintendent, did not return the smile.

  The Commodore entered the cool marble foyer of Wiley Hall, doffed his cap with a flick of his wrist, and tucked it beneath his left arm. He greeted the secretaries gathered inside the foyer—it was the only place in Wiley Hall, built before the advent of air-conditioning, th
at provided a natural respite from the oppressive heat—by pulling up with a click of his heels and then bowing like a butler. The secretaries responded as they usually did, by covering their mouths to muffle their giggles and comments, presumably about his beautiful white hair.

  “Good morning, ladies,” the Commodore said.

  “Good morning, Commodore,” the women sang in unison.

  The Commodore walked toward the staircase to the left of the foyer. “And what kind of day is it today?”

  “It’s another day to excel, sir,” the women said together, before collapsing again into giggles.

  “That’s right, ladies. Today is just another day in which to excel.”

  The Commodore took the stairs two at a time. He did this out of habit, not because he was in a hurry. Indeed, he intended to join Admiral Johnson on the balcony at the precise moment the regimental band struck its first note of the “Star-Spangled Banner” and not a moment sooner. So the Commodore waited in the alcove until he heard the regimental band strike a few extraneous notes preparatory to playing the song. Then he stepped onto the balcony, whipped his hand to the brim of his cap, and saluted the flag.

  Johnson stiffened. “Late again, I see.” Even though they were alone on the balcony, Johnson spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Is the humidity messing up your hair this morning, Bobby?”

  The Commodore angled his head toward Johnson and spoke above the din of the band.

  “No, sir. The hair’s just fine, thank you. I’m just not a morning person, as you know.”

  The regimental band fumbled through the National Anthem the best they could. Staying up half the night drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while hitting the books was poor preparation for blowing on a trumpet first thing in the morning. More often than not, Morning Colors featured what sounded like the Star-Mangled Banner.

  The Commodore winced. “Isn’t there something we can do about the band, sir? They are hopeless.”

  Johnson looked straight ahead at the American flag lying limp against the flagpole in the still air. “The band is fine. At least they show up on time.”