A day later he returned to the Keys and stayed with us for a week—one of the neatest times of my life. Even Abbey got jazzed. Every night we’d stay up late, listening to his Caribbean adventures. In the daytime we went snorkeling or crabbing or wakeboarding behind the skiff. One afternoon we took a metal detector to the sandbar where all the drunk tourists from Miami hang out, and we found thirteen dollars in change, four rings, two bracelets, a brand-new Swiss army knife, and somebody’s gold molar.
Suddenly, over breakfast one morning, Grandpa Bobby announced he was leaving.
“Where?” I asked.
Dad answered for him. “Back to South America.”
Grandpa Bobby nodded. “You’re not gonna come huntin’ for me, are you, Paine? I want a promise.”
“You’ve got it,” my father said, not happily.
Grandpa Bobby hitched a silvery eyebrow at my mother. “Donna, I’m countin’ on you to keep this hotheaded husband of yours from runnin’ off the rails.”
Mom told Grandpa Bobby not to worry. “We’ll miss you, Pop,” she said.
“But why are you leaving?” Abbey blurted. “Why won’t you stay here with us?”
“It’s tempting, tiger, it truly is,” my grandfather said, “but don’t forget, the U.S. government thinks I’m dead. When the time’s right, I’ll be proud to march into the American embassy and stamp my fingerprint on a piece of paper and clear up all the confusion. But for now it’s useful that certain folks don’t know I’m alive. I’ve got some important business to clear up, before I can come home for good.”
My sister bolted from the table, but she didn’t get far. Grandpa Bobby snagged her as she dashed by and pulled her into his arms. He used his faded bandanna to dry her cheeks.
“What if something bad happens?” Abbey cried. “I don’t want you to die for real.”
“But I can’t live for real until I finish this thing,” he said. “Please try to understand.”
He fished something out of his pocket. “These are for you, Abbey. It’s only fair, since your brother got the queen’s coin.”
Abbey’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Whoa,” she said under her breath.
We all leaned in for a close look at the two green earrings. The stones were small but the color was brilliant, like reef water.
“Emeralds,” Grandpa Bobby said.
Mom was dazzled, too. “I won’t ask where you got them,” she said.
“Oh, probably another ‘poker game,’” Dad remarked.
“Don’t worry, I earned ’em fair and square,” said Grandpa Bobby. “I’ve been carrying ’em around for years, hopin’ to meet just the right girl. Now I have.”
He dropped the emerald studs into Abbey’s palm and said, “Those little greenies are worth more than diamonds.”
“They’re worth even more than that,” said Abbey, “to me.”
I’d never seen my sister so excited. After Mom helped her put on the earrings, she ran to check herself out in the hall mirror.
Grandpa Bobby said, “Abbey, you’re as lovely as your grandmother was. I only wish you could’ve known her.” He looked at my father. “And, son, I wish …”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Slowly he got up and went out the back door. Through the window we could see him sag against the trunk of our big mahogany tree. He was rubbing his eyes.
“Do you still remember her?” I asked my father.
“Like it was yesterday, Noah.”
Then he went outside and put an arm around the old pirate’s shoulders.
Sometimes my parents make me slightly crazed, but the thought of losing either one of them is so unreal that I can’t imagine it. I can’t even try to imagine it.
All these years, I never considered the possibility that my father—my well-meaning but occasionally whacked-out father—might be walking around with a broken heart, carrying a pain too awful to talk about.
I mean, his mom died when he was a kid. Died.
How could anyone be the same afterward? How could there not be a huge sad hole in your life?
And how could it not get worse when somebody calls up to say that your father’s gone, too? The father you idolized—dead and buried in some faraway jungle.
So maybe Dad filled up all that emptiness another way. Whenever he saw something bad or wrong, he’d do just about anything to make it right, no matter how reckless or foolish. It’s possible he couldn’t help himself.
I think Mom understood. I think that’s why she’s been so patient through the rough times.
And maybe Dad will be better, now that he knows Grandpa Bobby is really alive. It’s something to hope for anyway.
On the afternoon before he left, my grandfather knocked on my bedroom door and said he wanted to go fishing. We grabbed a couple of spinning rods and headed off to Thunder Beach.
The water was crystal clear, and we waded up to our knees. Scads of minnows flashed like chrome spangles in the shallows, and right away we spooked a snaggle-toothed barracuda that had been hanging motionless near a coral head.
Grandpa Bobby started casting a small yellow bucktail, hopping it through the grassy patches where the snappers hang out.
“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 Grandpa Bobby.
He nudged the fish back into the water. It kicked its tail and tore off.
“Must be some kind of mystic Underwood karma,” he said. “This looks like the very same spot where I caught that nice mutton with your daddy, gotta be twenty-five, thirty years ago.”
“How big was yours again?” I knew it was either fourteen or fifteen pounds, depending on who was telling the story. I was curious to hear which version Grandpa Bobby was in the mood for.
He said, “Your daddy recalls it as fourteen on the button, and his memory’s likely better than mine.”
“Still a beast.”
“Yeah, but you got your whole life to catch one bigger. You’ll do it, too, there’s no doubt in my mind.”
“Because of the karma?”
“Somethin’ like that,” he said. “You done fishin’?”
“I think so.”
“Me too.”
We put down our rods and sat on the sand. With the change of tide a breeze had kicked up, blowing in from the direction of the lighthouse. We could see two tankers and a cruise ship, all northbound in the Gulf Stream.
Another loggerhead turtle surfaced in the chop off the beach. It was twice as big and crusty as the one I’d seen with Abbey and Shelly. This time, though, I didn’t need to jump in and scare it away.
Today the water looked perfect, the way it was a million years ago, before people started using the ocean as a latrine. Today it was awesomely pure and bright, and totally safe for an old loggerhead to browse the grassy flats. Chow down. Chill out. Take a snooze.
“Don’t be surprised,” Grandpa Bobby said, “if one sunny day you’re swimmin’ here at the beach—or maybe just takin’ a stroll with some girl—when a certain magnificent forty-six-footer comes haulin’ ass over that pearly blue horizon, yours truly up in the tuna tower.”
The thing was, I could picture the moment perfectly in my mind. All I had to do was close my eyes, and there was Robert Lee Underwood streaking across the waves in the Amanda Rose.
“Now, Noah, I’m not tellin’ you to sit around and wait for me. That would be downright pathetic.” He laughed and chucked my arm. “All I’m sayin’ is, don’t be surprised when the day comes.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Not even a little bit.”
TWENTY
The summer ended quietly, and that was fine with me. Rado came back from Colorado with an infected cactus needle in his chin, and Thom came back from North Carolina with spider bites in both armpits. I didn’t have any gross wounds to show off, but I had the story of Operation Royal Flush to tell, which made both my friends wish they’d been here to help.
A few days after school started, a check for a thousand dollars arrived in the mail at our house. The check was made out to my father, who thought it was a mistake. It wasn’t.
The Florida Keys are a national marine sanctuary, which means that the islands are supposedly protected by special laws against pollution, poaching, and other man-made damage. The sanctuary program offers cash rewards to anybody who calls in tips about serious environmental crimes.
Dad’s reward was one thousand dollars.
“But I wasn’t the one who phoned in about the gambling boat,” he told a man at the sanctuary office.
“Then it was somebody using your name and phone number,” the man said. “If I were you, Mr. Underwood, I’d keep the money and forget about it.”
I purposely hadn’t told my father that it was me who called the Coast Guard on Dusty Muleman the morning after we’d flushed the dye. If Dad had known, he would have insisted that me and Abbey keep the reward.
We figured he could use the money to cover some of the damage caused to the casino boat when he sunk it. Dad still had to repay Dusty, even though Dusty had been busted.
So I felt pretty good seeing that check on the kitchen counter. It was a thousand bucks that didn’t have to come out of my father’s pocket.
Before long my sister and I were so caught up with school that neither of us thought much about the Coral Queen, or about what might happen to Dusty Muleman. We just assumed that the government would put him out of business—after all, he’d been caught cold, dumping hundreds of gallons of poop into protected state waters. It was one of the worst cases ever documented in Monroe County, according to the Island Examiner.
Meanwhile, something good was in the works. A bunch of the other fishing guides had written to the Coast Guard, saying Dad ought to be given one more chance with his captain’s license. And to almost everyone’s surprise, the Coast Guard agreed—but only if Dad finished his anger-control therapy and got a letter saying he was all better.
It was sweet news for our family. Although my father was making good money at Tropical Rescue, his patience for numskull behavior was running out. Almost every night he’d tell us a new horror story about some macho moron driving a go-fast boat aground and gouging a hundred-yard scar across the turtle grass.
I had a feeling it was only a matter of time before Dad towed one of those knuckleheads somewhere other than back to the dock; somewhere far away, where it would be a long, hot, miserable wait until anybody found them.
So we were really amped to know that Dad would soon be back in his skiff, guiding for bonefish and tarpon and snook. Almost overnight he seemed happy again, nearly as happy as when Grandpa Bobby had been here. Mom promised to take everybody out for stone crabs to celebrate when the big day arrived.
But less than a month before the Coast Guard was due to return Dad’s license, more trouble kicked up. I came home from school and found a large splintered hole in the center of our front door. There was another hole in the kitchen door, and still another in the door of the hallway bathroom.
It was impossible not to notice that each of the holes was about the same size as my father’s fist.
Mom looked frazzled when she came down the hall.
“What happened?” I asked.
She shook her head somberly. “Your dad got some bad news.”
My knees started to buckle—I was afraid something terrible had happened to Grandpa Bobby.
“It’s about Dusty Muleman,” my mother said. “His lawyers worked out some sweetheart deal with the government. He’s reopenin
g the Coral Queen tonight, throwing a big party for the whole town….”
I should’ve been ticked off, too, but at that moment I was more worried about Dad.
“Mom, tell me he didn’t use his bare hands on the doors.”
“Oh yes, indeed.”
Just thinking about it was painful. I said, “Who’s teaching those anger-control classes—Mike Tyson?”
“It’s certainly a setback,” my mother said unhappily. “They’ve been counseling your dad to get rid of negative energy the moment it enters his head. Somehow I don’t think this is what they had in mind.”
“How bad is it?”
Mom motioned toward their bedroom. “He’s resting quietly now,” she said. “Why don’t you go have a talk with him? I’ve got to pick up your sister from her piano lesson.”
Dad was lying down, watching cheesy old music videos on VH1. Each of his hands was covered by a plaster cast, and each cast was as large as a honeydew melon.
He looked up with an embarrassed smile. “Could be worse,” he said.
“That’s true. At least you’re not in jail this time,” I said.
“And it was only doors that got smashed. Those I can fix myself.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to stare. I still couldn’t believe what he’d done to himself. “You really feel like you’re improving?” I asked.
My father nodded confidently. “I think the counseling has helped, Noah, I honestly do.”
Like I said, sometimes he’s on his own weird little planet.
A video came on with a chubby guy dressed up like a woman, lipstick and all. Dad hoisted one of his casts and dropped it on the remote control. The TV screen went blank.
“Be glad you weren’t around in the ’80s,” he said. “The worst music and the worst hair in the history of the human race—that’s no lie.”
“Mom’s pretty upset,” I told him.
“I’ve been a disappointment to her. I realize that.” Dad pulled himself upright and gazed out the window and didn’t say anything for a while.
“She’ll be all right,” I said, to break the silence.