“Dad, how are we going to pay him when …”
“When we’re flat broke? Excellent question,” my father said. “See if Lice will take my bonefish skiff. It’s worth ten or twelve grand at least.”
Secretly I’d been hoping that one day Dad would give me that boat. It was an original Hell’s Bay with a sixty-horse Merc, a really sweet ride. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, my father would take me and Abbey out fishing. Even if the snappers weren’t biting, we’d stay until sunset, hoping to see the green flash on the horizon. The flash was kind of a legend in the Keys—some people believed in it and some didn’t. Dad claimed that he’d actually witnessed it once, on a cruise to Fort Jefferson. For our fishing expeditions either Abbey or I always brought a camera, just in case. We had a stack of pretty sunset pictures, but no green flash.
“You sure you want to give away the skiff?” I asked.
“What the heck, it’s the best we can do,” Dad said.
“I guess so.” I tried not to sound too bummed.
“Hey, did you meet the famous Shelly?”
“Yeah. She’s kind of scary,” I said. “Lice said he stole her from Dusty—what did he mean exactly?”
I figured it was one of those I’ll-explain-it-when-you’re-older questions that my dad would brush off, but he didn’t.
“Shelly was Dusty’s second or third wife, after Jasper Jr.’s mother,” he said. Then he paused. “Actually, maybe they were only engaged to be married. Anyway, one day she got fed up with Dusty and moved in with Lice.”
I wondered how miserable life with the Mulemans must have been to make Lice Peeking look like a prize.
“Dad, when’re you coming home?” I asked.
“After the trial,” he replied.
The plan was to use his big day in court to expose Dusty Muleman’s illegal polluting.
“But Mom says you can bail out and come home and still have your trial later,” I said.
“No, I need to stay here and show I’m totally committed to the cause. You know how many jails around this world are full of people who spoke up for what they believed in and lost their freedom? Lost everything they had? Look at Nelson Mandela,” my father said. “He spent twenty-seven years in a South African prison. Twenty-seven years, Noah! A couple of weeks won’t hurt me.”
“But Mom misses you,” I said.
That seemed to catch him off guard and take the steam out of his big speech. Dad looked away.
“It’s a sacrifice, I know,” he said. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”
I didn’t say anything about Mom and the plaid suitcase because she’d put it away. That morning I’d peeked in their bedroom closet—her clothes were still hanging there. So were Dad’s.
When I stood up to leave, my father perked up slightly. He said, “Oh, I almost forgot. A reporter from the Island Examiner might drop by the house. It’s all right for you to speak with him.”
“About what?” I asked.
“My situation.”
“Oh. Sure, Dad.”
His “situation”? I thought. Sometimes it’s like my father lives on his own weird little planet.
In July the days get long and stream together. I try not to look at the calendar because I don’t want to think about time passing. August comes way too soon, and that’s when school starts in Florida.
Summer mornings are mostly sunny and still, though by midafternoon huge boiling thunderheads start to build over the Everglades, and the weather can get interesting in a hurry. I’ve always liked watching the sky drop down like a foamy purple curtain when a summer storm rumbles across Florida Bay. If you’re on the ocean side of the islands, it can sneak up on you from behind, which happens a lot to tourists.
That’s where we were going, to Thunder Beach, when a squall rolled through after lunch. Thom, Rado, and I hunkered in the mangroves and held our skateboards over our heads, to keep the raindrops out of our eyes. It took like half an hour for the leading edge of the storm to pass. Then the wind dropped out, and the only sound was a soft sleepy drizzle.
We crawled from the tree line and brushed the leaves off our arms. Not surprisingly, the lightning had spooked everyone away from the park except us.
Before heading to the water, we scanned the shoreline for pollution warnings. Whenever the biologists from the health department find too much bacteria, they post DANGER! signs up and down Thunder Beach—no swimming, no fishing, no anything. Only a certified moron would dive in when the beach was posted.
I was glad to see that the water was okay, especially when a big loggerhead turtle bobbed up to the surface. The three of us stayed real quiet because we thought the turtle might be coming ashore to lay her eggs, although usually they waited until dark. Loggerheads have lousy eyesight, so we were pretty sure she didn’t notice us sitting there, but she didn’t swim any closer.
We wouldn’t have bothered her if she’d decided to crawl up and dig a nest. Most of the Keys are made of hard coral rock, and there aren’t many soft beaches like you find up the coast at Pompano or Vero. The momma turtles down here don’t have lots of options, so we leave them alone. It’s the law, too.
After the loggerhead swam off, we jumped in and goofed around until Thom cut his ankle on a broken beer bottle that was buried in the sand. Rado and I helped him hop back to shore, where we tied his Dolphins jersey around his foot to keep the cut from getting dirty. Rado took him home while I skated alone down the old road, back toward Lice Peeking’s place.
Nobody answered the door, and I was already down the steps when Shelly appeared from behind the trailer and nearly scared the you-know-what out of me. She was barefoot and carried a long rusty shovel.
“What’d you want now?” she asked. She wore cutoff jeans and a sleeveless top that showed off her barbed-wire tattoo.
“I need to talk to Mr. Peeking again,” I said.
“Well, he’s not available at the moment.”
“That’s okay. I’ll come back another time.”
Shelly noticed me staring at the shovel. She laughed and said, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t Lice I was puttin’ in a hole. It was last night’s dinner.”
I nodded as if that was the most normal thing in the world, burying food in your backyard.
“Lobster shells,” she explained. “I don’t want ’em stinking up the garbage, ’cause they’re out of season. Next thing you know, some nosy neighbor calls the grouper troopers and then, Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
Some of the locals in the Keys poach a lobster here and there in the off months. Not even my dad gets upset about that.
“Whatcha wanna talk to Lice for?” Shelly asked.
“Just some business between him and my father,” I said.
She was so much taller than me, I had to tilt my head back just to see her expression. She was smiling when she said, “Important business, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come on inside and have somethin’ to drink.”
“No thanks. I’m soaking wet.”
“So’s Lice,” Shelly grunted, “but from the inside out.”
She jerked open the screen door and I followed her into the trailer. Lice Peeking was stretched facedown on the blue shag carpet, and he wasn’t moving. I didn’t see any blood, which was a relief, but I couldn’t hear him breathing.
Shelly said, “Oh, don’t worry. He’s not dead.” She gave a sharp kick to his ribs and he started to snore.
“See?” she said. “Tell me your name again.”
“Noah Underwood.”
“You’re Paine’s oldest?”
“That’s right,” I said.
Shelly tossed me a Coke from the refrigerator and said, “Your daddy’s a curious specimen.” Somehow it sounded like a compliment.
I guzzled the soda in about thirty seconds while I edged toward the door. The perfume that Shelly had on was making me dizzy. It smelled like a bag of tangerines.
She sat down on a cane stool and motioned m
e to do the same, but I stayed on my feet. I wasn’t sure what would happen if Lice Peeking woke up, and I wanted to be ready to run.
Shelly said, “I’ve known Paine since back when he and Dusty used to fish charters out of Ted’s. He was always a gentleman—your daddy, I mean, not Dusty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How come you’re actin’ so skittery, Noah?”
I couldn’t come out and tell her that she was the reason, that everything about her—from her face to her feet—was at least twice as big as my mother’s.
So I said, “I’m going to be late for violin practice.”
Which was incredibly lame, because we don’t even own a violin. Abbey takes piano lessons on a portable electric keyboard that my father bought from a consignment shop in Key Largo.
“Now, Noah,” Shelly said, “that’s not the truth, is it?”
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t grow up to be one of those men who lie for the sport of it,” she said, “and most men do. That’s a fact.”
As Shelly spoke, she was staring down at Lice Peeking, and not in an admiring way. “That’s why the world is so messed up, Noah. That’s why history books are full of so much heartache and tragedy. Politicians, dictators, kings, phony-baloney preachers—most of ’em are men, and most of ’em lie like rugs,” she said. “Don’t you dare grow up to be like that.”
At first I thought she was making fun of me, but then I realized she was serious.
“Your daddy doesn’t drink, does he?” she said. “That’s truly amazing.”
It was sort of unusual, for the Keys. People who didn’t know my father automatically assumed he had to be drunk to do some of the things he did, but he wasn’t. He never touched a drop of alcohol, even on New Year’s. It wasn’t a religious thing; he just didn’t care for the taste.
“Why can’t I find a guy like that?” Shelly said in a small voice.
I couldn’t help but notice that she was using Lice Peeking’s head as a footrest. It didn’t seem to bother him, though. He kept snoring away.
“You go to the public school?” she said. “Then you must know Jasper Jr.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Is that boy still nasty as a pygmy rattler?”
“Nastier,” I answered honestly.
Shelly shook her head. “He’s been that way since he was about three foot high. Honestly? I don’t see a bright future there.”
Her mentioning Jasper Jr. reminded me of what my dad said about Shelly and Dusty Muleman, about how she’d gotten so fed up with him that she’d moved out. I decided to find out if she still felt that way.
“Didn’t you used to work on the Coral Queen?” I asked.
“For almost three years,” said Shelly.
“Was it a fun job?”
She rolled her eyes. “Tending bar? Oh yeah, it was a barrel of laughs. Very glamorous, too. Come on now, what’re you drivin’ at?”
“Nothing. I swear.”
“There you go again, Noah.”
Shelly was sharp when it came to sniffing out fibs, so I just came out and asked her: “Did you ever hear about anything crooked going on with that boat?”
“Crooked how?” she asked.
“Like dumping sewer water into the basin.”
She laughed in a way that sounded hard and bitter. “Sweetie,” she said, “the only sewage I ever saw was the human kind. That’s what you call the ‘downside’ of my job.”
“Oh.”
“This has somethin’ to do with your old man, doesn’t it? About him sinkin’ Dusty’s boat?”
“Maybe.” It sounded silly as soon as I said it. “Maybe” almost always means “yes.”
“Okay, let’s hear the whole story.” Shelly cocked her head and cupped one of her ears, which had, like, five silver rings in it. “Come on, Noah,” she said, “I’m listening.”
There was no way I wasn’t going to cave in and blab everything. She was a pro at shaking the truth out of guys who were a lot bigger and tougher than I was.
But then Lice Peeking came to the rescue. He stopped snoring, flopped over on his back, and opened one bleary red eye.
Shelly thumped him with both heels and said, “Get up, you sorry sack of beans, before I park that slimy aquarium on your head.” I didn’t wait around to see if she was serious.
FOUR
The next morning the lawyer stopped by our house. Mr. Shine looked about a thousand years old, but Mom said he knew his way around the courthouse. She had hired him twice before to get my father out of trouble.
Mr. Shine put his briefcase on the kitchen table and sat down. He looked mopey and gray, and his eyelids drooped. Abbey said he reminded her of Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.
My mother made a pot of coffee and began dropping hints that Abbey and I should leave them alone. Abbey grabbed a bagel out of the toaster and ran off to play on the computer. I got my spinning rod from the garage and biked up to the drawbridge at Snake Creek.
The police won’t let you fish from the top of the bridge because of the traffic, but you can go down underneath and cast from the sandbags, in the shade. Sometimes homeless people sleep under the bridges, but they usually don’t bother anybody. The last time I’d been to Snake Creek, some woman in an army jacket had made a campsite high on the bank, under the concrete braces. She’d even started a small fire, burning the wood slats from a broken stone-crab trap. I gave her a nice mangrove snapper that I caught, and she had it cleaned and cooking over the flames in five minutes flat. She said it was the best meal she’d eaten in a year. The next day Abbey and I went back with some homemade bread and a pound of fresh Gulf shrimp, but the lady was gone. I never even got her name.
On the day Mom was meeting with Mr. Shine, nobody was under the bridge when I got there. The tide was running in from the ocean, and schools of finger mullet were holding in the still water behind the pilings. Every so often they’d start jumping, trying to escape some bigger fish that was prowling for lunch. I started casting a white bucktail and in no time jumped a baby tarpon that wasn’t even ten pounds. Then I hooked something heavy, probably a snook, that ran out a hundred feet and broke the line.
As I was tying on another jig, I heard an outboard engine—it was a johnboat, maybe twelve feet long, motoring along Snake Creek. Two people were in the boat, and as it drew closer I recognized them as Jasper Jr. and an older kid named Bull.
They spotted me right away. I probably should have taken off, but I was really enjoying myself, fishing under that bridge. So I set down my spinning rod and watched Jasper Jr. nose the johnboat into the shallows.
Bull was in the bow. He climbed out first and looped a rope around one of the pilings. He’s a hefty guy, but that’s not how he got his nickname—people call him Bull because you can’t believe a word he says. For instance, he told everyone at school he was dropping out to play double-A ball for the Baltimore Orioles. This is at age sixteen, right? We all knew that Bull couldn’t catch a pop fly if it landed in his lap, so we weren’t exactly surprised to see him bagging groceries that spring at the Winn-Dixie.
After Bull tied off the johnboat, he called up to me: “Hey, buttface, better run for your life. Jasper’s got a speargun!”
“Yeah, right,” I said.
When Jasper Jr. hopped out of the boat, I saw that he didn’t have a speargun or any other weapon. Even so, running away would have been an excellent idea. I just didn’t feel like it.
Jasper Jr. walked up and asked, “What’re you lookin’ at?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I said with a straight face.
“I told you I was gonna find you, didn’t I?”
I knew that Jasper Jr. wasn’t looking for me at Snake Creek—he and Bull were heading out to poach lobsters or pull some other mischief.
But I played along. “Well, you found me. Now what?”
That’s when he socked me in the right eye. It hurt, too. Jasper Jr. seemed surprised that I didn’t fall down.
So was Bull. He said, “You got a hard head, for a buttface.”
The way my cheekbone was throbbing, I figured that Jasper Jr.’s knuckles weren’t feeling so good, either. He was trying to act like a tough guy, but I noticed that his eyes were watering from the pain. I probably could have knocked him flat, but I didn’t.
My father’s a large man, very strong, but he says fighting is for people who can’t win with their brains. He also says there are times when you’ve got no choice but to defend yourself from common morons. If Jasper Jr. had taken another swing at me, I definitely would have punched him back. Then Bull would have beaten me to a pulp and the whole thing would have been over.
But Jasper Jr. didn’t hit me again. Instead he spit in my face, which was worse in a way.
He forced a laugh and called me a couple of dirty names and headed back toward the johnboat. He was shaking the hand that he’d hit me with, as if there were a crab or a mousetrap attached to it. Bull was following behind, cackling like a hyena. They got into the boat, and Jasper Jr. jerk-started the outboard while Bull shoved off from the bow.
I pulled up the front of my shirt and wiped the spit off my face. Then I grabbed my fishing rod and took aim.
The bucktail jig I happened to be using weighed one-quarter of an ounce, which doesn’t sound like much until it thumps you between the shoulder blades, which is where I thumped Jasper Jr. It was an awesome cast, I’ve got to admit. The hook on the jig snagged firmly in the mesh of Jasper Jr.’s ratty old basketball jersey, and he let out a howl. I gave a stiff yank and he howled again.
In a panic he twisted the throttle and the johnboat picked up speed, but that didn’t help—Jasper Jr. was stuck on the end of my line like a moray eel. He hollered for Bull to cut him loose, which was all right with me. I’d made my point.
Bull found a knife and clambered to the back end of the boat, which turned out to be a humongous mistake. With so much weight in the stern—Bull, Jasper Jr., plus the engine—the bow tilted upward and the johnboat began taking on water.
No sooner had Bull reached behind Jasper Jr. to cut the fishing line than the motor gurgled to a dead stop. The blue-green water of Snake Creek was pouring in over the transom, but nobody in the johnboat moved. Jasper Jr. was yelling at Bull and Bull was yelling back, and they just kept getting wetter and wetter. By now the motor was completely submerged and the bow was pointed nearly straight up in the air, which meant that the boat was about to capsize.