Flush - Carl Hiaasen [9]
“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 me 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