“How long you want to wait here?” she asked anxiously. “Mom's gonna freak if she wakes up and we're gone.”
I checked my watch: ten minutes after one. “We'll give it to one-thirty,” I said, “then we'll go home.”
The way Dad had explained it, big boats like the Coral Queen are supposed to pump their toilet waste from onboard holding tanks into a sealed vat onshore. Later a sewage truck collects the stuff and hauls it to a treatment plant.
Dad believed that Dusty Muleman's boat was flushing hundreds of gallons of poop directly into the basin, which is not only gross (as Abbey would say) but also a big-time crime. All we had to do was catch him in the act and call the Coast Guard to come arrest him.
Then everybody in town would know that my father wasn't some kind of loony troublemaker, that he was just a guy who cared about the kids and the beaches and the things that lived in the sea. And when the truth about Dusty came out and everyone saw that Dad was right, Mom would feel better about staying married to him.
Maybe we were kidding ourselves, but that's how Abbey and I had it figured.
So we both got excited when we noticed the workers dragging a long thick hose toward the stern of the Coral Queen. We were sure-I mean, one thousand percent certain-that they'd open the valve and drop the end of that hose into the water.
But they didn't. They snaked it over to the dock and connected it to something that resembled a giant rust-freckled egg.
“Hey,” whispered Abbey, “that looks like a sewer tank.”
“Yeah, it does.” There was a knot in my stomach. I couldn't believe what we were seeing.
“What if Dad made a mistake?” she asked gloomily. “What if Dusty's totally legal? What if the pollution is coming from somewhere else?”
I had no answer. It had never occurred to me that my father might have blamed the wrong person.
“What do we do now?” Abbey said.
“I really don't know.”
“Noah?”
“Abbey, I said I don't know.”
“Noah!”
From the hitch in her voice, I sensed something was wrong. I turned and saw, in the pale glow of the marina lights, a thick greasy arm around my little sister's neck.
SIX
When Abbey was a baby, she had a nasty habit that nearly drove us nuts. Even in the hottest part of summer we'd have to put on long clothes to protect our arms and legs-and forget about having company over. It was too dangerous.
My sister was a biter.
Not that she was a mean little kid; she just liked to chew. My dad called her a pit bull in diapers. In those days she'd gnaw on just about anything, and I don't mean “nibble.” When Abbey chomped, she chomped hard. One time she crunched on a marble like it was a gumball.
So I had a hunch what was about to happen on the deep-sea boat when the bald crooked-nosed guy grabbed my sister around her neck. I could see her eyeing the meaty part of his forearm, and I thought: Whoever this goon is, some major pain is headed his way.
The instant Abbey clamped down, the stranger howled and let loose of her neck. Abbey herself didn't let go so quickly. The stranger screamed and thrashed and flapped his arm until finally he shook free. He was rearing back to smack her when I socked him, a kidney shot to the lower back, and he dropped to one knee. I snatched my sister by the sleeve and together we jumped from the deck.
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 kitchen looking as if she'd gotten maybe two hours of sleep. She was rubbing her eyes with one hand and trying to get a snarl out of her hair with the other. Mom and I knew better than to start a conversation-even at her best, my sister wasn't a bundle of cheer in the mornings.
She snatched up the Island Examiner and sped through Miles Umlatt's article, grumbling the whole time.
“Hunger strike!” she huffed when she was done, slapping the newspaper on the table. “What's wrong with him? Is he dense or what?”