Flush - Carl Hiaasen [72]
“How are you going back?” I asked.
“Same way I got here. There’s a freighter leaving Key West for Aruba tomorrow,” he said. “From there I’ll hitch a ride on a banana boat.”
“You sure about this?”
Grandpa Bobby said, “Oh, I’ll be fine. Your mom even packed me a suitcase.”
“Not the plaid one?” I asked.
“Yeah. What’s so funny?”
“That’s the one she takes out whenever she’s thinking about dumping Dad.”
“Well, I guess that’s not in the game plan anymore.” My grandfather tucked the butt of the fishing rod under one arm and took out another old photograph to show me.
“There she is,” he said proudly.
It was a picture of the Amanda Rose. She was a classic, too.
“That was taken in Cat Cay,” he said. “Summer before you were born.”
“Wow.”
“She’s forty-six feet. Twin diesels, eight hundred horses.”
The gleaming sportfisherman was tied stern-first to a wooden dock, where a monster blue marlin hung glassy-eyed from a tall pole. In the picture Grandpa Bobby’s curly hair was so long, it looked like a blond Afro. He was poised on the teakwood transom, raising a beer in a toast to the great fish.
“The dirtbags who hijacked my Amanda Rose, they’ve repainted the hull and changed her name. But that won’t fly,” he said confidently, “because I’ll recognize her, no matter what.”
“But what if you can’t find her?” I asked.
“Oh, I most definitely will, Noah. You can bet the damn ranch on that.” He didn’t take his eyes off the photograph. “I built her myself. Started shortly after your grandmother passed on. It was this boat that carried me through those terrible times. That, and raising your daddy and his brother and sister.”
He folded up the snapshot and went back to fishing.
“All this might be tough for you to understand,” he said quietly.
“Not at all.”
“Ten years is ridiculous, Noah. Ten years without so much as a postcard. I’m lucky your father forgave me.”
“I wish I could’ve seen his face the night you showed up,” I said.
Grandpa Bobby laughed. “Know what he did? He jumped from the truck and snatched me up and swung me ‘round in circles like a doll—same as I did to him when he was a little shrimp! He’s got some serious muscle on his bones, your old man does. Hey, what’s this? Finally somebody got hungry.”
He jerked up on the rod and reeled in a small blue runner, which he tossed back. He caught another one on the very next cast.
“Hey, aren’t you gonna fish?” he asked me.
“Sure.” I threw my bucktail into the deeper water and started bouncing it along the bottom.
“How come you’re so quiet?” he said.
The truth was, I felt as bummed out as Abbey—I didn’t want Grandpa Bobby to go away again. At the same time I didn’t want to make him feel guilty by saying so.
He said, “You don’t believe I’ll ever be back, do you?”
“I’m worried, that’s all.” It was impossible not to worry. The knife scar on his cheek was a pretty strong clue that the men my grandfather was chasing were not model citizens.
“Whatever else they say about me, champ, I do keep my promises.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Hey, are you snagged on a rock?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
It was a fish. As soon as I set the hook, it smoked thirty yards of line off the spool. Grandpa Bobby whistled.
“Probably just a big jack,” I said.
“Wanna bet?”
The fish fought hard, dogging back and forth across the flats. It made several more zippy runs—one between my ankles—before I was able to steer it to the beach.
My grandfather was right. It wasn’t a jack. It was a fat pink snapper. Triumphantly he pointed at the black telltale spot on its side. “That’s a muttonfish, Noah!”
“Sweet,” I said. It was the best snapper I’d ever caught. “How big do you think it is?”
He smiled. “How big do you want it to be?”
“Just the truth,” I told him.
“The truth? Six pounds,” he said, “but that’s still one helluva catch on a bucktail jig from a shoreline.”
I held the fish still while Grandpa Bobby unhooked it. You have to be super careful because snappers can bite through a human finger, no problem.
“Noah, you hungry? I’m not.”
“Me neither.”
“Good,” said