by Carl Hiaasen
“You all right, Noah?”
I lifted my eyes in bewilderment. The voice belonged to a lanky, long-armed man with woolly, silvery hair. A gleaming gold coin hung from a tarnished chain around his neck. His craggy face looked like a mahogany stump, and on one tanned cheek was a scar in the shape of an M.
Anybody could see that the guy was old—and tough. Shirtless and barefoot, he leaned casually against the trunk of a tall pine. His weather-beaten cutoffs had been bleached gray by the sun, and a dirty red bandanna was knotted around his right wrist. The curly hair on his bare chest was as shiny as the hair on his head.
Jasper Jr. wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he knew that the stranger meant business.
“We was only jokin’ around,” he said timidly.
“That right?” The old pirate smiled in a way that caused Jasper Jr. to go pale. Bull whimpered like a puppy but said nothing.
The stranger turned to my sister. “Now it’s your turn, Abbey. How ’bout you let loose of that boy?”
My sister’s eyes got wide at the sound of her name. She released her grip on Bull’s ear, stepped back, and began spitting vigorously into the bushes. Bull straightened up and pressed a fist to his throbbing ear, trying to stanch the invisible bleeding.
“Who are you?” I asked the old man. “How’d you know our names?”
He brushed past me and went up to Jasper Jr., who looked like he desperately needed a bathroom.
“You ever bother these two kids again,” the old man warned him, “and you’ll dearly regret it. Comprende?”
Jasper Jr. nodded shakily.
Bull was actually an inch or so taller than the pirate, but it didn’t help him. The guy walked over and got square in his face. “Pretty summer day, you can’t think of anything better to do than hassle some helpless little girl? That’s flat-out pathetic, son.”
“Helpless? She nearly took my ear!”
“I’d say you got off lucky,” the stranger said with a smile.
He winked at Abbey and me, and jerked a thumb over one shoulder. “Y’all run on home. Hurry up, now.”
“Who are you?” my sister asked.
“Nobody. And that’s the truth.”
He wasn’t kidding around.
“Now get goin’, both of you,” he said. “Me and the boys are gonna finish our chat.”
Abbey and I quickly retrieved our bicycles and took off. As soon as we were out of the trees, we started pedaling for home as fast as we could.
“You ever seen that guy before?” Abbey asked breathlessly.
“I don’t think so.”
“Then how’d he know who we were? Has he been spying on us or something? He looked kind of dangerous, Noah, you think he’s dangerous?”
“Abbey, I honestly don’t know.”
Maybe I should have been creeped out by the strange old pirate, but I wasn’t. For some reason I believed everything he’d said in the woods.
Except the part about him being nobody.
It was an hour before dark when we got out to the islands called the Cowpens. They got the name because Indians supposedly kept sea cows penned up there a long time ago.
Dad tossed the anchor into a deep hole about two hundred yards from the main channel. The Tropical Rescue towboat was much bigger than Dad’s bonefish skiff, so there was plenty of room for Mom to ride along. She’d said yes, too, which was a nice surprise. She sat on the bow with her back to the sun and snapped pictures of us fishing.
Right away I got a couple of decent mangrove snappers, and Dad caught a fat keeper grouper. My sister reeled in a puffer fish that blew itself up into a spiny balloon—she said it looked just like her fourth-grade teacher.
Of course, Abbey and I didn’t mention what had happened that afternoon on the way home from Shelly’s trailer. Dad would have taken off after Jasper Jr., and Mom would have gone to the police to tell them about the strange old man.
Besides, my father liked things quiet and peaceful when he was out on the water. He didn’t go for too much talking. He said it was disrespectful to nature.
After a while we put away our fishing rods and sat down to wait for the sunset. The sky to the west was mostly clear, except for a few wispy clouds and the long foamy contrail from a big military jet. Dad took a seat up front next to Mom, who handed the camera to Abbey. I dangled my legs off the starboard gunwale, where RESCUE was painted in bright orange lettering.
A flock of pelicans floated over us in the shape of a V and kept on flying, straight toward the great Gulf of Mexico. A light breeze was blowing from the southeast, rocking the boat just enough to make us a little drowsy. Abbey nudged me and cut her eyes toward our parents, who were actually holding hands.
Everything felt so good and so right, I had this feeling that we’d finally get to see the green flash. The evening was perfect for it.
Gradually the sun changed from gold to blazing pink and seemed to turn liquid as it dimpled the horizon. None of us said a word because we didn’t want the moment to end.
People who’ve never seen a sunset at sea would be blown away. Time seems to slow down until finally that huge blazing ball looks like it’s just hanging there, balanced on the far edge of the earth. In reality, though, it’s dropping fast.
As the last rosy crescent melted into the Gulf, I felt myself leaning forward, squinting hopefully at the skyline.
Then the sun was gone, leaving a pale lemon emptiness. I glanced over at Abbey, who was putting the camera away. She smiled and shrugged.
“Wow, that was gorgeous,” my mother whispered.
“Yeah,” said Abbey, “but no green flash.”
“Maybe next time,” my father said, as he always did.
I turned my gaze back to the horizon and held it there, even as the rim of pink faded to darkness. I heard Dad hauling in the anchor and Mom zipping her windbreaker and Abbey asking if she could steer back to the dock, but still I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky.
FOURTEEN
Fifty-seven dollars and sixteen cents.
That’s all Abbey and I could scrounge up—and fifty-one bucks of it was hers. I would’ve had more if I hadn’t bought new skateboard trucks the first week of vacation.
“You think it’s gonna buy enough?” Abbey asked on the way to the store.
“It’ll have to,” I said.
I didn’t know the exact size of the Coral Queen’s holding tank, but I guessed it carried a couple hundred gallons of waste. I also didn’t know how much dye we could get for fifty-seven dollars and sixteen cents.
Abbey led me to the aisle where the food coloring was displayed.
“Blue won’t work, right?”
“No, that wouldn’t show up,” I agreed, scanning the shelves. “What do they use this stuff for anyway?”
“Frosting. Desserts. All kinds of goodies.”
“Do they make an orange?”
“No, but here’s fuchsia,” Abbey said.
“What?”
“That’s how it’s pronounced, Noah. Few-sha.”
I had no idea what fuchsia was, but it sounded like something you wouldn’t want to step in.
“It’s a hot reddish purple,” Abbey explained. “Perfect for Operation Royal Flush.”
That was the code name for our secret mission to nail Dusty Muleman. We’d decided to use food-coloring gel instead of laundry dye because the gel wasn’t made with chemicals that would harm the sea life. Even better, it was highly concentrated, which meant that a small amount would dye a lot of poopy water.
The plastic bottles were little, though, holding only an ounce. There was only one container of fuchsia on the shelf, so we asked a stock boy to go find more.
“How many you want?” he asked.
“Bring us all you’ve got,” I said.
When we got to the cash register, the checkout lady gave us the skunk eye as she tallied up the total.
“What in the world,” she said, arching an eyebrow, “would you kids be doing
with thirty-four bottles of food coloring?”
Abbey smiled sweetly. “We’re baking a birthday cake,” she said.
“Oh, is that right?”
“A very big birthday cake,” my sister added.
“And a very purple one, I see,” the checkout lady said, handing us the bag of bottles.
On the way home I kept looking behind us to see if we were being followed by the old pirate geezer. I couldn’t stop wondering who he was, and how he knew us.
Abbey said he was probably a gnarly old mate from one of the sportfishing boats, or maybe a bridge person who’d seen us around the island and overheard us calling each other by name.
Whoever he was, I kept my eyes peeled.
As we turned the corner of our street, someone called out to us. It was Bull, of all people, standing in front of the house. He waved as we rode up, though Abbey and I were too suspicious to wave back.
I hopped off my bike and asked, “What’s up?”
Bull seemed edgy and uncomfortable. I could see Abbey’s teeth marks on his left ear, which was still puffy and crinkled. He cleared his throat about five times before he finally spoke.
“Uh, I just came over to say I was sorry,” he said. “Real sorry.”
I set the grocery bag full of dye bottles on the sidewalk. My sister stood behind me and said, “Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“No way.” Bull shook his head forcefully. “I’m righteously sorry—for everything, dude.”
He was looking straight at me. “All the times me and Jasper hassled you, it was wrong, okay? Bogus and wrong.”
“What’s going on, Bull?”
“Nothin’! Why you ask me that?”
“Because all of a sudden you’re Mister Huggy Bear. It’s very weird.”
“Come on, Underwood, can’t a dude say he’s sorry and be real? What’s the problem?”
Bull was getting frustrated, and I didn’t want to push him too far. “Okay, we’re cool,” I said. “You say you’re sorry, I believe you.”
“Excellent.”
“Well, Idon’t believe you,” Abbey cut in. “Either you’re faking it, or you’ve had a total personality transplant.”
Bull’s long, dull face pinched in confusion. “Whaddya mean by that? What kind a ‘transplant’ you say?”
“Never mind,” I said. “What about Jasper Jr.?”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot. He’s sorry, too.”
“Really? Then where is he?”
Bull hitched his shoulders. Dark half-moons of sweat had appeared in the armpits of his faded Harley-Davidson T-shirt.
“He couldn’t come, but he wanted me to tell you it won’t never happen again,” Bull said. “We won’t beat on you no more.”
“That’s nice. Next you’ll be sending me flowers.” Naturally, Bull didn’t catch on that I was being sarcastic.
“I’d really like to hear Jasper Jr.’s apology in person,” I said.
“Fat chance,” mumbled my sister. She picked up the grocery bag and lugged it inside the house.
Bull just stood there, sweating through his shirt and staring down at his enormous bare feet. It sounds strange, but I felt sort of sorry for the guy. He’d quit school and left the Keys to be a big baseball star, but here he was back on the rock, bagging groceries and hanging out with losers like Jasper Jr.
“Come on, man. Tell the truth,” I said, though it wasn’t in Bull’s nature.
He looked up slowly. “Underwood, who’s the freaky old man? The guy in the woods?”
“Just a friend,” I said, thinking: a friend and total stranger.
“Where’d he get that wicked-bad scar on his face?”
“He doesn’t talk about it,” I said, hoping that Bull would think I was tight with the pirate guy.
“Thing is,” Bull said, “he told me and Jasper to … well—”
“What?”
“He told us to tell you we was sorry for what we done to you and your little sister. He was real clear on that,” Bull said. “But when it come time, Jasper just flat wouldn’t do it. He said he didn’t care what some crazy old bush rat told him.”
“What else did the old man in the woods say?” I asked.
Bull turned and checked over his shoulder, his eyes moving up and down the street. “He said not to screw up again. He said he’ll be hangin’ close, and don’t never forget it.”
Bull’s visit finally made sense. He’d come to apologize because he was terrified not to.
“You’ll tell him, won’t you, Underwood? Tell him I stopped over and said I was sorry. When you see him again, I mean.”
“Sure, Bull. When I see him again.”
Though I wondered if I ever would.
After lunch my sister and I headed for Shelly’s place to deliver the food dye and review our plan. Even though she came to the door wearing the nappy pink robe and carrying a plastic razor, we could tell that she was in better shape than the day before.
She waved us inside and cheerfully resumed shaving her legs at the kitchen sink, a procedure I’d never witnessed so up close and personal. The way Shelly did it wasn’t quite as glamorous as in the TV commercials. Whenever she nicked herself, she’d cuss like a biker and wipe away the blood with her pinkie. Abbey watched in fascination but I felt kind of weird, so I turned away and pretended to be enchanted by the scummy aquarium. I could hear the razor blade scraping across Shelly’s skin as she said, “So—we’re good to go?”
“What about Billy Babcock?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, I got that all figured out.”
But I was worried.
If Billy was at the Coast Guard station when the sewage spill was reported, he’d tip off Dusty Muleman right away. It wouldn’t take long for Dusty’s crew to unhitch the Coral Queen and take her offshore, where they could flush the holding tank until there was no trace of our dye—and no way to connect Dusty to the crime.
“Ever since he heard Lice was gone, Billy’s been spendin’ lots of time at my bar,” Shelly said, “leaving ten-dollar tips on ten-dollar tabs.”
“Did he ask you out?” Abbey said.
“Only about two or three times a night.” Shelly tossed the plastic razor into a trash basket, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the dinette.
“I’ll handle Billy Babcock,” she said with a confident smile. “Now lemme see what you got.”
Abbey gave her the grocery bag containing the bottles of coloring gel. Shelly peeked inside and said, “Those are puny little suckers. Sure that’ll do the job?”
“Well, it’s concentrated—” I started to explain.
“I know it’s concentrated, Noah. I’ve baked a few treats in my time.”
Abbey told her that we’d bought out the store. “Thirty-four bottles. Is that okay?”
“No problem,” Shelly said. “I’ve got a purse big enough to carry a Honda Civic.” She held up one of the bottles. “Ever use this stuff before?”
Abbey and I shook our heads.
“Well, it doesn’t pour out like water. It’s more gooey, like sunblock, so you’ve really gotta squeeze,” Shelly said, demonstrating on a capped container. “Thirty-four bottles, that’s gonna take some time.”
I hadn’t thought about that when we’d picked out the gel. Neither had Abbey.
“See, it’s just me working solo behind the bar,” said Shelly, “and Dusty doesn’t like his customers to go thirsty. I only get two fifteen-minute potty breaks every night, which ain’t nearly enough time to flush all this stuff.”
“Does that mean you can’t help us?” I asked.
“Now don’t get your shorts in a knot,” she said. “I’ll tell Dusty I got sick off the shrimp salad—what’s he gonna do, make me go in a bucket?”
“Isn’t there a head near the bar?” I asked.
Abbey poked me. “A what?”
“A toilet,” I explained. “On ships they’re called heads.”
Shelly told us that the Coral Queen had three sets.
“One fore, one aft, and one up in the wheelhouse, which is out of the question. It’s only for the casino manager and the crew.”
“But aren’t you part of the crew?” Abbey said.
“No, sweetie, I’m a bartender. They make me tinkle with the civilians.”
The more I heard, the more worried I got. The longer that Shelly was away from the bar, the greater the risk that Dusty or one of his goons would go searching for her. Other things could go wrong, too. What if the toilet she was using malfunctioned, or got clogged?
I decided on a slight change of plan.
“You’ll need some backup on board,” I said. “I’ll take half the dye and flush it from a different head.”
Shelly tossed her head. “Oh no you don’t, James Bond Jr. It’s too hairy.”
“Just find me a place to hide. There’s got to be somewhere safe.”
“Hello? What about me?” Abbey interjected.
Together Shelly and I turned and said: “No way!”
“You don’t bring me along, I’ll rat you out to Dad and Mom,” my sister declared. “I swear to God, Noah.”
She wasn’t joking, either. The veins in her scrawny neck were popping out, she was so ticked off.
“You couldn’t do this without me,” she said. “If it wasn’t for my fifty-one bucks, you wouldn’t have enough dye to color a birdbath!”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“This is gettin’ way too complicated,” Shelly said, slurping at her coffee.
“Look, we’re only going to get one chance at Dusty,” I said, “so we’d better do it right.”
Shelly shot me a doubtful look. “If you two brats get caught—”
“We won’t,” Abbey cut in.
“But if you do—”
“We’ll never mention your name,” I said. “That’s a promise.”
“Double promise,” said Abbey.
Shelly sighed. “I must be outta my mind.”
* * *
It was almost five-thirty when Mr. Shine dropped off my parents at the house.
They’d spent the afternoon at the courthouse, working out the final settlement of the Coral Queen case. Dusty Muleman had agreed not to prosecute my father for scuttling the casino boat, and in exchange Dad had promised to pay back Dusty’s insurance company for the cost of refloating the thing, cleaning it up, and fixing the diesels. The bill must have been super expensive because the judge gave my father five whole years to pay it off. He also made Dad swear not to say anything bad about Dusty on TV, in the newspapers, or anywhere in public.
