Flush

  Bull was the first to jump, with Jasper Jr. right behind him. They started swimming like maniacs toward the bumpers of the bridge, cursing the whole way. They were making such an awful racket that the mullet scattered out of the eddies, and I knew that the fishing was pretty much shot for the afternoon.

  So I reeled in my line and made my way up the slope, toward the highway.

  “You did what?” Abbey said when I told her what happened. “Geez, you’re as whacked as Dad.”

  “I didn’t sink their stupid boat. They sunk it themselves.”

  Abbey muttered in exasperation, “If this keeps up, we’re gonna get run out of town. Mom’ll have to put the house up for sale.”

  “Jasper Jr. spit on me,” I said.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  “He did that, too.”

  After examining my bruise, Abbey seemed more sympathetic. “From now on, don’t go anywhere without Thom or Rado,” she advised.

  It would have been a sensible plan, except that Thom’s family was heading to North Carolina for the rest of the summer, and Rado was going camping in Colorado with his mother and stepdad. Thom and Rado were my best friends, and without them I was basically on my own.

  Mom came into the bedroom, and the first thing she noticed, naturally, was my black eye. I told her the whole story—Abbey hung around to make sure. My mother was real angry, but I begged her not to call Dusty Muleman and tell him what Jasper Jr. had done.

  “It’ll just make things worse,” I said.

  “What could be worse than getting punched and spit at?” she asked.

  “Lots of things. Trust me, Mom.”

  “Noah’s right,” Abbey said.

  “We’ll discuss this later.” My mother’s mouth wasn’t moving much when she talked, which meant she was still mad. “Noah, please go wash up. There’s a gentleman waiting in the living room to speak with you.”

  “Who is it?” I asked. “Is he from the police?”

  “No, from the newspaper,” Mom said, making that sound even worse. “Apparently your father thought it would be a brilliant idea to have an article written about himself. He sent the reporter here to ‘interview’ you.”

  Abbey rolled her eyes. “You’ve gotta be joking.”

  “I wish I were,” said my mother. “Hurry up, Noah, and put on a clean shirt, please. I don’t want you looking like some sort of juvenile delinquent.”

  “Then you ought to put some makeup on his shiner,” Abbey suggested.

  “No way!” I said.

  But it was too late.

  The reporter’s name was Miles Umlatt. He was thin and blotchy, and his nose was scuffed up like an old shoe.

  Mom had stationed him on the sofa so he could set up his tape recorder on the coffee table. On his lap he held a lined yellow pad that was covered with scribbles.

  I sat down in the tall armchair where my father usually sits. Mom had dabbed some flesh-colored powder around my black eye, and she must have done a good job because Miles Umlatt didn’t seem to notice. He asked what grade I was in, what sort of hobbies I enjoyed, did I own a dog or a cat—the usual stuff. He was pretending to be nice, but I could tell it was a real chore. He was dying to get to the juicy parts.

  “I understand you’ve been to visit your father,” he said finally. “That must’ve been tough.”

  “Not really.” I was trying to sound kind of cool and bored.

  “Yes, well, this isn’t the first time your dad’s had a scrape with the law, is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What do you remember about the other times?” he asked.

  I just shrugged. It was amazing that Mom had left me alone in the room with this guy. I knew she was hovering somewhere nearby, but at least for now I was free to say what I wanted.

  “I found an old clipping about the Carmichael family,” Miles Umlatt said. He held up the photocopy to show me.

  “That was a long time ago,” I said.

  “Only three years.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, although three years sounded about right.

  Here’s what had happened, the way my father told it: The Carmichaels drove their forty-foot, gas-hogging motor home all the way to the Keys from someplace up in Michigan. They were too cheap to rent space at an RV park, so they parked along Highway One near the Indian Key Bridge and camped there for three nights.

  Which would have been no big deal, except for the way they treated their dogs—they had two chocolate Labrador retrievers that rode along with them in the motor home. One morning my dad was heading out on a tarpon-fishing charter when he spotted Mr. Carmichael whipping the dogs with a bungee cord. I guess the dogs had had an accident inside the Winnebago or something. Anyhow, they were crying and yipping and trying to get away, but Mrs. Carmichael (who was the size of a whale) was standing on their leashes so that Mr. Carmichael could beat them.

  When Dad saw that, he sort of freaked. He beached the skiff, took out his tarpon gaff, and flattened every single tire—I think there were, like, eight of them—on the Carmichaels’ RV. Then he put the two Labradors in his boat and went fishing.

  The sheriff’s deputies were waiting on the dock at the end of the day. My father confessed right away, as he always does, but he wouldn’t apologize. He also wouldn’t say what he’d done with the dogs because he knew they’d be safer away from the Carmichaels.

  That time, Dad spent only two nights in jail before he let my mom bail him out. Eventually he pleaded guilty to vandalism and, I guess, dognapping, although he agreed to pay for the Labradors and a new set of Winnebago tires. Later we found out that Dad probably would’ve beaten the charges because the Carmichaels had refused to come back to the Keys for a trial. They wrote a letter to the judge saying that my father was a raving lunatic and they were scared to be in the same county with him, which was ridiculous.

  Anyway, my dad said that running “those puppy-whipping lowlifes” out of the islands was worth the legal hassle. A public service, is what he called it. The two chocolate Labs ended up with some friends of ours, nice people who run an Italian restaurant down in Marathon.

  I listened while Miles Umlatt went through the whole story again.

  “Dad just lost his temper,” I said when he was done. “But those people were wrong. It’s against the law to treat animals like that.”

  Miles Umlatt wrote that down on his pad, which made me a little nervous. So did the tiny green light blinking on his tape recorder.

  “Dad’s just got to work on his self-control,” I added.

  “Are you ever afraid of him?”

  I burst out laughing, it was such a lame question.

  “Afraid of my dad? You serious?”

  “Well, Noah, you’ve got to admit,” Miles Umlatt said, “his behavior has been erratic. Unpredictable, I mean.”

  I knew perfectly well what “erratic” meant.

  “Dad wouldn’t hurt a flea,” I said firmly.

  “But would he hurt a human who would hurt a flea?”

  That’s when Mom breezed in to refill Miles Umlatt’s coffee cup, or at least that was her excuse.

  “How’s it going, fellas?” she asked.

  “Just fine, Mrs. Underwood,” said Miles Umlatt. “Noah’s a bright young man.”

  I felt like sticking my finger down my throat. Mom flashed her fake-polite smile and said, “Yes, we’re very proud of him.”

  She hung around for a while, making small talk, until the phone rang in the kitchen. As soon as we were alone again, Miles Umlatt leaned forward and said, “Noah, what can you tell me about the incident with Derek Mays?”

  “Not much.” I was sure he already knew the whole story. Everybody in the Upper Keys did. And what he didn’t know he could have found out from the Coast Guard files.

  “Derek says he was afraid for his life,” Miles Umlatt said.

  “Maybe he was just afraid of getting busted.”

  Here’s what my dad said had happened: He was out bonef
ishing with two doctors from New Jersey when he spotted Derek Mays stringing a gill net near Little Rabbit Key. Gill nets were outlawed years ago in Florida because they kill everything that gets tangled, not just the baitfish but sharks, reds, snook, tarpon, turtles—you name it, it dies. To make things worse, the island where Derek Mays was poaching was deep in Everglades National Park, which is totally protected. Or supposed to be.

  When he spotted my father, Derek hauled in the gill net and made a run for it. Dad’s skiff is super quick, and it didn’t take long for him to catch up. Derek refused to stop, so my father leaped right into his boat. Then it turned into a wrestling match and things got ugly. By the time the park rangers arrived, Dad had wrapped up Derek in his own net, like a big dumb mullet.

  But here’s the part that really got to me: Not a darn thing happened to Derek because none of the rangers actually witnessed what he was doing at Little Rabbit. Meanwhile, Dad gets accused of, like, assault, and then the government takes away his captain’s license because (they said) he “endangered” the lives of his customers by chasing after Derek at high speed. Of course, the two doctors on Dad’s boat said they’d never had so much fun, but that didn’t count for squat with the Coast Guard.

  Which is why my father had to start driving a cab.

  Miles Umlatt said, “There seems to be a pattern to these episodes, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s not like it happens every day,” I said.

  The guy was definitely getting on my nerves. I was sort of annoyed at my father for choosing me to be the one for the interview. The only reason, I knew, was that Mom had refused to do it.

  “Let’s talk about what happened to the Coral Queen,” said Miles Umlatt, and he droned through that whole story. He told me that Dusty Muleman denied flushing polluted water from his gambling boat, which was no big surprise. Why would he ever admit to the crime?

  “He threatened to sue your father for slander,” Miles Umlatt said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Saying something bad about a person that isn’t true.”

  “Dad doesn’t lie,” I said. “He might do some crazy stuff, but he always tells the truth.”

  “Are you proud of him, Noah?”

  That was a tricky one. I wasn’t proud that my dad was sitting in jail, but I knew he was a good person. Even when he flies off the handle, at least he’s fighting for something close to his heart. Too many people these days, they just turn their backs or close their eyes, pretending everything is wonderful in the world. Well, it’s not.

  “I am proud of my father,” I said to Miles Umlatt, “for standing up for what he believes. But, like I said, once in a while he goes too far.”

  Miles Umlatt jotted down every word. “Your dad said he considers himself a political prisoner. Would you agree with that?”

  Political prisoner? I thought. Give me a break. I knew Mom wasn’t eavesdropping, because she would have blown a fuse.

  “I don’t know much about politics,” I said carefully, “but he’s definitely a prisoner.”

  Miles Umlatt seemed to think that was very funny. He wrote it down, closed his notebook, and switched off his tape recorder.

  “Thank you, Noah. That was perfect,” he said. Then he shook my hand and skittered out the front door.

  My mother was still on the phone in the kitchen. She gave me a thumbs-up signal when I came in to grab some cookies. On the way to my room I stopped outside Abbey’s doorway and listened. She was crying, which got me worried because my sister hardly ever cries.

  I opened the door to check on her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with a box of Kleenex on her lap and a pile of pink crumpled-up tissues on the floor. I could tell she was really upset because she didn’t holler at me for barging in without knocking.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s Mom,” she sniffled.

  “But I just saw her. She seemed okay.”

  Abbey shook her head. “That lawyer. Sh-Sh-Shine.” She was trying to catch her breath between sobs.

  “What about him? He won’t take Dad’s case?”

  “W-w-worse,” Abbey stammered. “I heard Mom ask him …”

  Here she paused to snatch another tissue and dab at her eyes.

  “Ask him what?” I said impatiently.

  “She d-d-didn’t know I was standing by the d-d-door.”

  “Abbey, it’s all right. Calm down, okay?”

  “Okay.” She straightened up and swallowed hard, and for a moment she looked like her old brave self.

  “Now tell me,” I said, “what was Mom asking Mr. Shine about?”

  “The d-word,” my sister whispered.

  “Divorce?”

  Abbey nodded. Her lower lip began to tremble, and her shoulders went kind of slack, so I sat on the bed and put one arm around her and tried to act stronger than I felt.

  FIVE

  Everybody was quiet at breakfast the next morning. Mom said she was taking Abbey shopping. I told her I was going fishing again, which was a possibility.

  First, though, I had to have another talk with my father. I wanted him to know that Mom had mentioned the d-word—surely that would shake him up enough to come home.

  As soon as Mom and Abbey left, I got on my bike and headed up the highway toward the jail. I wasn’t sure they’d let me in without Mom calling to arrange it, so I brought along a letter that had arrived for my father at the house. It was from the U.S. State Department, and the seal on the envelope made it look very important.

  I already knew what the letter said because my mother had opened it. The government was telling us (for about the fifteenth time) that the body of Robert Lee Underwood, my Grandpa Bobby, was still down in Colombia. They couldn’t bring him home because there was a problem with the paperwork, and the police in the village “were not responding to inquiries from the United States Embassy.” The news wasn’t going to cheer up Dad, but at least it gave me an excuse to see him again.

  When I showed the envelope to the deputy at the desk, he didn’t seem very impressed. He peeked inside to make sure that it was only a letter, and he said he’d give it to my father later.

  “Can’t I give it to him myself?” I asked.

  “No, he’s busy this morning,” the deputy said.

  Busy? I thought. Doing what—pretending to play chess?

  “Is he all right?” I said.

  The deputy chuckled. “Yeah, he’s fine. There’s a TV crew that drove down from Miami to see him.”

  “TV?”

  “Yeah, Channel 10. They said they’ll need at least an hour.”

  “Then I’ll come back later,” I said.

  The deputy shook his head. “Sorry, sport. Inmates are allowed only one short visit per day, and we’re already bending the rules for this TV thing. Maybe tomorrow you can see your old man. But call first, okay?”

  Sure enough, there was a shiny new van from Channel 10 parked outside the sheriff’s station. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before. I rode away wondering how to tell my mother that Dad was now doing television interviews from jail. She’d find out sooner or later, when it was on the news, because all the Miami TV stations broadcast to the Keys.

  So I’d have to tell her, even though she wouldn’t be happy about it. Maybe Dad thought of himself as a political prisoner, but Mom thought he was being a selfish jerk.

  * * *

  Lice Peeking was actually awake and semi-alert when I stopped at the trailer. Shelly wasn’t there, which was sort of a relief and a disappointment at the same time. She made me real nervous—but she also kept Lice Peeking from acting up.

  “Well, lookie who’s here,” he said with a wormy smile.

  He was lounging on the front stoop, sucking on a cigarette. His hair was wet and tangly, and his shirt was damp. I couldn’t tell whether he’d taken a shower or sprayed himself down with a garden hose.

  “So, how’s the jailbird?” he asked.

  “Oh, that’s real funny
.” I didn’t appreciate him talking that way about Dad. It was different when Abbey did it because she was family. Lice Peeking was just a lazy lump who didn’t know anything about my father.

  “Well, what’d he say?” Lice Peeking asked. “Can he come up with some money or not?”

  I said, “We don’t have any money, but he’ll give you his flats skiff. It’s worth twelve thousand dollars.”

  Lice Peeking squinted one bloodshot eye. “Says who?”

  “Come see for yourself. It’s on a trailer behind our house.” I told him what kind of boat it was, and that the engine had fewer than a hundred hours on it.

  “Seriously?” he said.

  “My father doesn’t lie.”

  “And it’s free and clear, this boat? The bank don’t own a piece?”

  “Dad paid off the loan last year,” I said.

  Lice Peeking scratched his chin, which was raw and peeling. “Where’s your house at?” he asked.

  I gave him directions. It nearly broke my heart to think of a loser like that taking our skiff and selling it for cash. But what else could we do?

  Lice Peeking flicked his cigarette butt under the trailer and pulled himself upright. “Let’s go have a look,” he said, which caught me by surprise.

  “It’s a long way to walk,” I said.

  “Who’s walkin’, boy?” He laughed and pointed at my bicycle. “Hop up on the handlebars.”

  And that’s what I did.

  It had been a while since Lice Peeking had pedaled a bike, and he was wheezing by the time we got to the house. He seemed shocked that there was no beer in the refrigerator, but he settled for a Diet Coke. We went out back to see Dad’s skiff, and Lice Peeking made up his mind right away. It was a cool-looking boat.

  “We definitely got us a deal,” he said. “I’ll be back with Shelly and the Jeep to pick it up—say tomorrow ‘round noon?”

  “Hold on,” I said. “It’s not free.”