Flush (novel)
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Flush is a young adult novel by Carl Hiaasen first published in 2005, and set in Hiaasen's native Florida.
[edit] Explanation of the novel's title
The environmental crime which concerns the heroes is the illegal dumping of sewage into the ocean. Also, the hero’s plan to stop it involves a toilet. With a little help from some friends the kids are able to catch them in the act, once and for all
[edit] Plot summary
The story is told from the perspective of Noah Underwood, a boy in his early teens, born and raised in florida.
On Father’s Day, Noah visits his father in the county jail. Paine Underwood, a passionate environmentalist, has been arrested for sinking the Coral Queen, a casino boat operated by “Dusty” Muleman. Paine is openly proud of what he’s done, and seems unworried by the legal consequences. His wife Donna, however, is furious. Paine, who has an aggravating tendency to act first and think later, has been arrested twice before and she’s getting fed up with it. Paine used to be a fishing guide, but lost his license after his second arrest and had to take a job as a cab driver.
Paine believes Dusty Muleman has been dumping sewage from the boat’s holding tank into the ocean at night, which is both disgusting and illegal.
Noah and his younger sister, Abbey (named for Edward Abbey) visit the marina, and see that the Coral Queen will be re-floated and back in action by the end of the week. Paine’s act of protest has come to nothing.
Paine’s backup plan is to get a witness statement from “Lice” Peeking, a former mate on the Coral Queen. Noah has doubts about the plan, since Lice is an unwashed, chain-smoking, hard-drinking slob – not a very credible witness. Noah also meets Lice’s estranged girlfriend, Shelly, Dusty's ex-fiancee, who used to be a bartender on the Coral Queen.
Noah is repeatedly stalked and sometimes beat up by Dusty’s son, Jasper Muleman, Jr., and his buddy, nicknamed Bull “because you can’t believe a word he says.”
At Paine’s invitation, a newspaper reporter comes to the house to interview Noah. He tells Noah that Paine has been comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, and considers himself a political prisoner. Both he and Abbey are worried by how lightly Paine seems to be taking Donna’s increasing anger. Abbey breaks down and cries when she overhears their mother use “the d-word” (divorce) to the family lawyer.
That night, Noah and Abbey sneak to the marina, and are surprised and disappointed to see the Coral Queen’s crew connect a hose to a sewer tank on the dock, as is the normal, law-abiding practice. They wonder if their father has sunk the wrong man’s boat. Then a burly bald man grabs Abbey by the neck. Abbey, who has had a nasty biting habit since she was a baby, chomps the stranger’s arm, and the two of them escape.
Lice wants money in exchange for his statement, and Paine tells Noah to trade in his fishing skiff. Lice agrees, but doesn't show up at the appointed time. Noah goes to look for him, and Shelly tells him Lice has skipped town. Then she surprises him by offering to help nail Dusty Muleman.
Paine gives an interview for the television news. After Donna sees it, Noah overhears her use "the d-word" again, on the phone with her mother. Noah sneaks down to the marina again, on his own this time. Hiding near the sewer tank, he finds that it is not only empty, but rusted full of holes and useless – a fake.
The next day, Shelly picks up Noah in front of the house and tells him the day before Lice disappeared, the bald guy came to visit him. They also found Shelly's car abandoned on the highway, with bloodstains inside. Now she thinks Dusty had Lice killed, and tells Noah she's taken back her old job bartending on the Coral Queen.
In the middle of the night, Noah wakes up to find his father in his room. At breakfast the next day, Paine explains that Dusty applied to the judge for a gag order, preventing Paine from saying anything bad about Dusty in public, so Paine decided to escape jail. Donna informs him that Dusty has offered to drop the charges against him, if he pays Dusty back and consents to the gag order; Paine is outraged, and wants to go back to jail, and have his chance to expose Dusty in court. Paine still doesn’t seem to understand how mad his wife is, until Noah tells him about “the d-word.”
Paine is released from jail, but placed under house arrest for a week, forced to wear an electronic tracking device. Shelly comes by one afternoon and tells Paine, Noah, and Abbey that she has seen the boat’s crew dumping again, on Dusty’s orders.
That night, Donna goes to tuck Abbey in, and finds her room empty. Realizing where she must have gone, Paine tears off the tracking device and sets out to the marina with Donna and Noah. There they meet Dusty and the bald guy, Luno, where Donna asks if Abbey is there. Dusty says no, but lets them look around, with Luno following. Abbey is nowhere to be found on the marina, but appears on the roadside as they are driving home.
The next morning, she proudly explains that she borrowed the video camera and hid onboard another boat to film the crew dumping. The video, however, is too unclear to be useful. Then sheriff’s deputies appear and arrest Paine again for tampering with the tracking device. Donna calls the cab company and finds that Paine has been fired.
Noah visits his father again, who is only being held for two days. Paine admits defeat, wanting nothing more to do with the Coral Queen; Abbey risked her safety just to prove him right. Paine promises to forget about Dusty Muleman and get their lives back to normal.
The next day, Noah and Abbey go to the beach, and see Shelly sunbathing. When a man in a speedboat makes a lewd advance, she beans him with a beer can. Since his father has taught him to always pick up litter, Noah wades out to get the can, and is disgusted to find the Coral Queen’s sewage floating around his legs.
Shelly confides that a man named Billy Babcock, who works at the Coast Guard station, has a major gambling addiction and owes Dusty so much money that he holds off the debt by tipping Dusty off about surprise Coast Guard inspections.
After seeing the pollution for themselves, Noah and Abbey are both too mad to give up on nailing Dusty. Realizing the problem is that no one has ever been able to trace the sewage spills directly to the Coral Queen, Noah comes up with a plan, and they both agree to keep their parents out of it.
Paine is released from jail, and takes a job with Tropical Rescue, an aquatic towing service that rescues tourist speedboats that have run out of gas or run aground in the shoals (of which there are no shortage in the Florida Keys). Although Paine normally can’t stand dumb, macho tourists, he is much happier driving a boat than a taxi.
On their way home from a meeting with Shelly at her trailer, Noah and Abbey are ambushed again by Jasper Jr. and Bull. Abbey forces a stalemate by biting down hard on Bull’s ear. Jasper Jr. is about to choke Noah dead, when a strange, tough old man with the look of a pirate appears and orders the bullies to let them go.
Noah’s plan, christened “Operation Royal Flush,” is to have Shelly flush food coloring down the Coral Queen’s toilets, dyeing the sewage and marking a trail in the water when it gets dumped. At the grocery store, they decide on the color fuchsia (a “hot reddish purple”).
They deliver the dye to Shelly, but she points out a snag: food coloring gel takes a while to squeeze out of the bottle, and she only gets two short bathroom breaks. Noah decides to take half the dye, stow away on the boat and flush the dye from a different toilet. Abbey insists on coming along.
Dusty drops the charges against Paine. Donna informs Noah and Abbey that she and Paine are going out that night to celebrate, so they need to stay home.
As soon as they are gone, Noah and Abbey borrow a small motor skiff from Noah’s friend, and head for the marina. Hiding the skiff, Noah sneaks aboard and Shelly guides him to an unused ladies restroom. Slowly, gradually, Noah squeezes out the food dye and flushes it down the toilet. Just as he is opening the door, a nasty old lady with a bursting bladder sees him, and calls security. Two guards chase Noah to the bow, where he jumps over the side, yelling for Abbey.
Noah swims clear of the boat, crashing along the way into a sleeping manatee, with Luno chasing him along the dock. Abbey picks him up in the boat, but the engine stalls just as Luno finds them. Noah desperately tries to re-start the engine, but surrenders when Luno aims a gun at them. Then the old pirate appears and takes away the gun, beating Luno to a pulp. The engine starts, and the kids escape.
Noah and Abbey’s elation fades when the engine breaks down completely, and the current carries them away from shore. They are forced to spend the night at sea, getting more scared as time passes. In the morning, they are still stuck in the middle of the ocean without food, water, or shade. Abbey also realizes that their plan has fizzled, since they can’t call the Coast Guard about the pollution stain.
"This really bites."
"Yeah, it does. I’m sorry, Abbey."
"What for? We tried to stop something bad, and it didn’t work. Doesn’t mean we were wrong to try."
It was amazing how calm and good-natured she was, considering the trouble we were in. Lots of people I knew, grown-ups included, would have freaked out.
They are both ecstatic when Paine’s Tropical Rescue boat appears, but stunned to see him accompanied not by Donna, but by the old pirate. Paine introduces him as their long-lost Grandpa Bobby.
Back at the house, Noah calls the Coast Guard, and then the newspaper. Grandpa Bobby tells his story: some people offered him a job smuggling emeralds from South America, but later double-crossed him, tried to kill him, and stole his beloved fishing boat. Ever since then, he’s been trying to track them down and get back his boat. It hurt to think that everyone thought he was dead, but it was necessary. First, he didn’t want the guys he was looking for to know he was still alive; second, he also knew that if his son found out, he would, true to form, drop everything and rush down to South America without another thought. (He confides to Noah and Abbey that, as a kid, their father’s impulsiveness earned him the nickname “Paine-in-the-Butt” at school.) Grandpa Bobby was in a bar in a small fishing village in Colombia when he saw Paine’s interview on the satellite TV. Hitching his way back to Florida, he tailed Noah and Abbey, suspecting what they were up to.
Noah then tells the story of Operation Royal Flush, though Grandpa Bobby adds that Luno’s pistol was just a flare gun. Then he takes an antique Spanish doubloon hanging from a chain around his neck and gives it to Noah.
The family drives to the beach, to view the fuchsia stain in the water. Donna, seeing proof for the first time of what Dusty has been doing, is outraged. Then a Coast Guard helicopter appears, tracking the stain back to the Coral Queen.
Noah and Abbey go to thank Shelly. They find her trailer almost totally trashed, with Shelly out front and two unconscious men on the floor. The first man is Billy Babcock, whom Shelly brought home to make sure he didn’t tip off Dusty the next morning. (Nothing else happened, because Billy passed out on the couch.) The second man, to Noah and Abbey’s surprise, is Lice Peeking. It turns out he wasn’t killed or kidnapped, just scared by Luno’s visit into stealing Shelly’s Jeep and running away (the bloodstains in the car were ketchup). He came back, says Shelly, because he missed her. The kids are equally surprised to hear her say she’s taking him back.
On their way back, they run into Jasper Jr., who starts threatening Noah. Noah shows him the doubloon, and Jasper Jr. cowers, offering a sullen apology.
The Coral Queen is shut down, and Noah and Abbey lay low for the next couple of weeks, spending their days and nights with Grandpa Bobby. When he announces he is going back to South America, Abbey cries. He asks her to understand, he can’t be satisfied until he’s gotten his boat back - he built it himself, and named it after his late wife. As a goodbye present, he gives Abbey a pair of stunning emerald earrings.
Since Dusty has been busted and Paine has been proved right, a group of other fishing guides appeal to the Coast Guard to give Paine back his captain’s license. The Coast Guard agrees.
About a month later, Noah and Abbey are back in school. Noah comes home and finds his father has broken his hands, punching holes in the doors of the house. Paine, with both of his hands in casts, tells Noah the bad news: Dusty settled his pollution case for a measly fine, and is re-opening the Coral Queen that night with a big party. Shelly told Paine that Dusty had incriminating photos of some lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s office who had attended a bachelor party on the Coral Queen.
That night, the Coral Queen is burned down, and sheriff’s deputies come to the Underwoods’ house to arrest Paine for arson. Noah and Abbey wonder if their father lost his cool again, but Paine swears that he had nothing to do with it. Donna calmly shows the detectives the bill from the hospital, proving that Paine’s hands were broken in the daytime before the night of the fire. Meaning he couldn’t have done it, “unless you’d care to demonstrate how a person with all ten fingers sealed in hard plaster would go about striking a match.” The sheriff’s men depart in a sulk, and the family cheers.
Later, the arson investigation reveals what really happened: Jasper Jr. and Bull hid in a storage hold on the Coral Queen, deciding to try smoking some of Dusty’s real Cuban cigars, but idiotically chose a storage hold filled with fireworks left over from the party. Jasper Jr. ignited a box by accident, and Bull saved his life by carrying him out and jumping overboard. Rather than being grateful, Jasper tried to put the blame on Bull, who decided to tell the fire department exactly what happened.
But what truly sinks Dusty’s casino business is the discovery in the boat’s wreckage of a fireproof lockbox filled with cash, showing that Dusty has been skimming from the gambling boat’s profits. Furious, Dusty’s partners sue him for embezzlement while he is also audited by the IRS.
Paine gets back his captain’s license, and the whole family goes out for a celebratory fishing cruise. While watching the sunset from the water, they are amazed to see the legendary green flash, which Noah and Abbey have heard about all their lives, but never seen.
