Flush

The day after the sinking, crews are working to raise the Coral Queen. At the dock, Noah is confronted by Dusty’s son, Jasper. Noah says of him, “He was a well-known jerk, which I partly blamed on the fact that his parents had named him Jasper. That would be enough to make anybody mean and mad at the world” (12). Jasper threatens to get even with Noah someday for interfering in Dusty’s business.

After his altercation with Jasper, Noah goes to visit Lice Peeking, who used to be a mate on the Coral Queen until Dusty fired him. Paine says that Lice knows about the sewage dumping, and Noah is supposed to get him to testify. Lice lives in a rundown trailer park with Dusty’s former fiancée, Shelly. He’s hungover when he meets Noah but says he will cooperate if Paine pays him.

When Noah gets back home, he finds his mother crying. She’s upset that his father thinks more about taking a political stand than about providing for his family. Donna thinks that Paine’s eccentric behavior may be inherited. His father, known to the kids as Grandpa Bobby, was a charter boat captain who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in South America a decade earlier and is presumed dead.

Apparently, Donna is ready to turn her back on the men of the Underwood family for good this time. Upstairs, Abbey shows Noah a suitcase, implying that their mother might be ready to leave Paine. Abbey tells Noah, “She’s serious this time, Noah. We’ve got to do something” (23).

The next day, Noah goes back to visit Paine in jail and says that Lice wants to be paid. Paine instructs Noah to offer Lice his bone-fish skiff, which is worth ten-thousand dollars. Noah urges his father to accept bail, but Paine insists on remaining in jail to call attention to the dumping issue. He also says a reporter from the Island Examiner will come to the house to get an interview from the family.

Later that afternoon, Noah calls on Lice again, but the man is dead drunk. Instead, Shelly begins to interrogate Noah about what he wants with Lice. Noah tries to lie, but Shelly says, “That’s why the world is so messed up, Noah. […] Politicians, dictators, kings, phony-baloney preachers—most of ’em are men, and most of ’em lie like rugs […] Don’t you dare grow up to be like that” (31-32). Noah relents and tells Shelly about the sewage issue on the Coral Queen. Even though Shelly tended bar on the boat, she says she never saw any evidence of waste being dumped into the bay.

The following morning, an attorney named Mr. Shine comes to speak to Donna about her husband’s case, and Noah goes fishing by the drawbridge at Snake Creek. While there, he sees Jasper and his hulking friend Bull approaching him in a johnboat. When the bullies reach the shore, Jasper punches Noah in the eye and then spits at him before climbing back into his boat and taking off. Noah says, “My father’s a large man, very strong, but he says fighting is for people who can’t win with their brains. He also says there are times when you’ve got no choice but to defend yourself from common morons” (38). Noah uses his fly rod to hook the back of Jasper’s shirt. As Bull struggles to cut Jasper loose, he capsizes their boat.

Noah leaves the scene and returns home, only to find a reporter named Miles Umlatt waiting to interview him. The reporter dredges up previous incidents when Paine championed various causes and got into trouble with the law. On one occasion, he confiscated two Labrador retrievers who were being beaten by their owners. In another instance, Paine chased a poacher using an illegal gill net in protected waters and tied him up in his own net, which resulted in the loss of Paine’s captain’s license and a charge of assault. Noah defends his father to the reporter by saying that Paine stands up for his beliefs, even if he does go too far. After the interview ends, Abbey confides to Noah that their mother has been talking to Mr. Shine about a divorce.

When Noah goes to visit his father in jail the following morning, he learns that Paine is in the middle of an interview with a Miami TV station. Noah thinks, “Maybe Dad thought of himself as a political prisoner, but Mom thought he was being a selfish jerk” (50).

Noah leaves and goes to see Lice again, offering the bone-fish skiff as compensation for a written statement of Dusty’s illegal activities. Lice rides with Noah on his bike to view the skiff and immediately agrees to the deal. Noah cautions, “My dad wants you to sign a statement telling what you saw when you worked on the Coral Queen. You know, about Mr. Muleman making them empty the dirty holding tank into the water” (52-53). Lice agrees to provide a signed, witnessed, notarized statement before taking possession of the boat.

On their way back to the trailer park, Lice and Noah come across Jasper and Bull, pushing a wheelbarrow containing the salvaged motor from their capsized johnboat. When Jasper calls out an insult to Noah, Lice gets off the bicycle and forces him to apologize. Then he kicks the motor off the wheelbarrow and cautions the bullies not to call people names.

Late that night, Noah and Abbey sneak out of the house to surveil The Coral Queen. They hope to catch Dusty in the act of dumping sewage but see it being pumped into a holding tank instead. Noah wonders if perhaps Dusty isn’t guilty after all when someone suddenly comes up behind them and grabs Abbey by the neck.