“I knew this guy one, a demac on the Amoco Cádiz, dying of bone cancer. You know what he said? ‘When they… — James Morrow

Somehow his grandfather had wrought an honorable and glamorous life from the sea. But that era was gone. The system was dying. Advising a young man to join the United States Merchant Marine was like advising him to go into vaudeville.

“Another boyfriend?”

“A character in one of my plays. Runkleberg’s my twentieth-century Abraham. One fine morning he’s out watering his roses, and he hears God’s voice telling him to sacrifice his son.”

“Does he obey?”

“His wife intervenes.”

“How?”

“She castrates him with his hedge clippers, and he bleeds to death.”

Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God.