Flush - Carl Hiaasen [18]
We hit the dock running and never looked back. The bald guy was swearing so loudly that it carried clear across the water into the mangroves. We grabbed our bikes from the woods, and I never pedaled so fast in my life. Abbey was close behind, spitting and spluttering to get the stranger’s germs out of her mouth.
When we got to our street, we had another scare. There was a light on in the house.
“Mom’s bedroom,” my sister said with a groan. “We’re toast.”
“Maybe not. Maybe she’s just reading a book.”
“Yeah, right,” Abbey said. “So what’s our story going to be?”
I knew we couldn’t come up with a clever excuse for slipping out so late—nothing that would fool my mother, that was for sure.
“No story,” I decided. “We’ll tell her the truth.”
“Great plan, Noah. Except, how about you tell her? I’ll be hiding in the closet, in case she goes ballistic.”
We walked our bikes to the house and propped them against the trunk of a gumbo-limbo. The back door was still unlocked, the way we’d left it, which was a good sign.
Abbey went inside first and I followed, half expecting to be ambushed. My father says Mom has eyes like a hawk and ears like a panther. The odds of sneaking by her twice in one night without getting nabbed were slim.
Yet there wasn’t a peep as we tiptoed past Mom and Dad’s room. I went straight to bed, while Abbey spent like ten minutes gargling and brushing her teeth. I couldn’t believe the racket she was making—she sounded like a duck swallowing a harmonica. Mom would’ve had to be in a coma not to hear it.
Still, her door never opened.
LOCAL CABBIE DEFENDS SINKING OF CASINO BOAT
That was the headline the next morning in the Island Examiner. The paper lay open on the breakfast table, and it was clear from my mother’s expression that she’d already read the story.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Well, you came off like a sensible young man,” she replied. “Your father, however, is now comparing himself to Nelson Mandela.”
“Uh-oh.”
“He’s even talking about a hunger strike.”
“No way.”
“Here. See for yourself.” Mom slid the newspaper across the table.
I forced myself to read the article from beginning to end. Miles Umlatt obviously thought my father was quite a character. He’d let Dad go on and on about greedy polluters, and he’d put in the stuff about what happened with Derek Mays and the Carmichaels. Miles Umlatt described my father as “passionate about the environment” but also “volatile and impulsive.” That part was pretty accurate, I had to admit.
The story included a couple of quotes from me—one was about Dad needing to work on his self-control, and the other was about how he wouldn’t hurt a flea. It was weird seeing my own words in print. They didn’t look the same in the newspaper as they’d sounded when I’d said them out loud into Miles Umlatt’s tape recorder.
Mom noticed I wasn’t overjoyed with how the article had turned out. “It’s all right, Noah,” she said. “You told the truth—your dad’s a peaceful, well-meaning guy who occasionally loses a wing nut. Anybody who reads that story can see how much you care.”
“It’s not just what I said, Mom. It’s all the other junk in there, too.” Above the article was my father’s mug shot from the day he was arrested, and also a picture of the Coral Queen after she had sunk.
“Half the article is Dusty Muleman saying Dad’s a liar and a crackpot,” I said.
“Dusty plays golf every Sunday with the newspaper’s publisher,” my mother said. “Besides, the man’s got a right to defend himself. Your father’s made some serious accusations.”
Accusations that might even be false, I thought, remembering what we’d seen at the dock the night before.
Mom poured me a bowl of cereal and a tall glass of milk, but I wasn’t very hungry. Abbey stumbled into the