Call Down Thunder Page 7

  He thought of Mi down on the beach. She’d be curled up in the car, head covered, not wanting to hear all that thunder, not wanting to see the flames; and Tomas would be up in the shack, a tin cup of rum in his hand; and then somewhere in the city this shadow person, his mother, living with her policeman who she’d run away with. The taste in his mouth was sour, but when he tried to spit there was nothing there, just the taste. Shame. That was still there, but his anger had gone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The night was still and the sea hardly moving, as if it was exhausted by all that had happened. The moon was a thin crescent, but the stars were bright and the damp sand stretched ahead of Reve like a ghostly road into the distance. Sultan trotted along beside him.

  When he had walked back along the wall after everyone else and jumped down on to the beach Sultan had come running from the shack and greeted him like he hadn’t seen him for a week. Reve knew he would have been hiding all the time there was yelling and noise, and guns going off. He was too smart to be brave – that’s what he told LoJo when he asked how come Sultan never got in fights like all the other dogs in the village. Reve knew that he too had to be smart, not just run smack into things. He needed to think.

  He stooped and picked up a plastic bottle, added it to the string of bottles he had trailed over his shoulder and walked on. Mi’s storm was over, but there would be more. The police would come tomorrow, maybe even tonight; there would be a hunt to find out who had told the coastguards. The truth, he now realized, was that nothing was ever finished. It was like the beach, it stretched on forever. No end to the rubbish beading the sand either. Plastic. Always plastic. Sacks of it. Bottles mainly, but Reve never knew what else he’d find. He picked up a small plastic lion one time. Didn’t know it was a lion till he showed it to Uncle Theon and Theon told him how lions marked their territory by roaring loud as thunder. King of all the animals. Reve had put the plastic lion on a post to the side of their shack, but it didn’t look so fierce and he and LoJo used it as a target to throw stones at and then it went.

  He’d gather another string of plastic bottles before going back again. Theon gave him a cent for every ten he brought to him. Tomas said no one ever got money for nothing, but to Reve’s way of thinking an empty bottle was next to nothing so he was doing all right. He liked walking the beach in the night-time, picking up the plastic, making something better, getting something done.

  He made up his mind. If Tomas confirmed Calde’s story was true, then he and Mi would go to the city and find her. This policeman would have a name. And there’d be a trail they could follow. It was what Mi wanted. It would get her away from Hevez, maybe give her time to think about this Two-Boat. Maybe their mother would think different, seeing them now. Maybe they would be able to think differently about her running off with a policeman – gone whoring, people would say now, dirttalk. They would have to live with that, and if they did, maybe they could be a family.

  Because even if Tomas said Calde was lying, the talk would still be the same. A girl whose mother had gone whoring, living on her own, no one was goin to care about her any more, no one was going to listen to her talk, and Hevez or some other man would come one night . . .

  This was it. They were either going for the city or he would take the skiff and Mi and sail down the coast, find a place in San Jerro, maybe work for Two-Boat. They were leaving.

  He walked back to the shack but stopped at the gate a moment, standing in the darkness looking across at Tomas, who was sitting inside, the oil lamp on, the Bible on his lap, a quart of rum by his hand. Sometimes, Reve realized, you live close to someone for a long time and you only see part of what they are.

  When their father’s body had been found in the middle of the village, right outside Uncle Theon’s cantina, no one would touch it, but Tomas walked right up to where it lay in the middle of the track, and with all the villagers watching but saying nothing, he had cut away the net and then wrapped up the body in a piece of sailcloth. He had hoisted it on to a barrow and wheeled it up the sandy track to the graveyard on the hill. When Reve had looked back over his shoulder he had seen that all those people who had been silently watching had just turned away as if nothing had happened. The people of Rinconda were like that; kept things tight. Someone with a loose mouth got it sewn up quick enough, like a tear in a sail.

  Reve pushed the gate and Tomas looked up. ‘That you, Reve?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  He threw the strings of plastic bottles into the shed. Then he squared his shoulders and stepped up on to the porch. This was it. No hiding and twisting things away – Tomas would have to tell everything.

  ‘Is it true?’ he asked. ‘The thing Calde tell that señor, and everyone listenin.’

  Tomas closed the Bible.

  Tomas told him only three people had known what Felice, Reve’s mother, had gone and done: Uncle Theon, because he was the one who ran the village back then, Tomas, his strong arm, and Calde, their runaround. The policeman was young; he’d come into Rinconda to sniff around their business and then had fallen for Felice. He wasn’t the first and neither Tomas nor Theon thought she had any feeling for him. Theon thought this was an opportunity: the policeman was going to be putty; they could use him. Good to have a policeman on your side when you are running boats up from the border, doing business with a señor, the old señor, not this young one who Calde worked with now.

  But it turned out that the policeman and Felice wanted to do more than cheat on her husband; they had plans to make a lot of money. She had always wanted money. Arella had been right; they did call her Santa Fe, after the gold-rush town up in the rich north. The plan was simple. Reve’s father skippered one of Theon’s smuggling boats. She persuaded him to bring the boat up the coast; she would arrange a truck, she said; they would steal the contraband and start a new life somewhere else. Reve’s father was good with a boat, but he was not a smart man and Theon used him only out of kindness; Felice was always at him to give Reve’s father work.

  Felice, though, was very smart; that shipment had been worth a lot of dollars. It would set them up for life. It would have done the same for Theon and Tomas. They could have been rich men living in some ranchera up the coast.

  When the boat didn’t come in on time, Theon and Tomas had become suspicious and Tomas had set off to search. When he eventually found it, in a cove a little way up the coast, all the cargo had gone; he also found Reve’s father, with a bullet in him. The policeman had shot him like a dog. That’s how it was.

  Theon raged. They looked like fools, he said, country dummies. Men from the city would walk all over them. So they decided to cover up the story, have it that Felice had been taken for questioning and that the dead body of Reve’s father left in the village was a warning that nobody could steal from their business. Theon had dumped the body there.

  But the truth was their business was finished. Losing that shipment ruined them. Calde went behind their backs and made a deal with the old señor, and that was it. He took over.

  When Tomas was finished, Reve had only two questions. ‘What name that policeman carry?’

  ‘Dolucca.’

  ‘OK,’ said Reve, and then asked his second question: ‘Why you keep all this tuck away from us? Maybe Mi would’ve turn out different if she’d know’d what happen; wouldn’ always’ve gone wanderin, boilin herself up . . .’

  ‘No,’ Tomas said. ‘You don’t remember, but your sister always gone her own way, act strange. She put worry on Felice.’ He nodded, remembering. ‘Felice didn’t know how to put a rein on her any more than me, eh. Your sister was always goin to be the way she is. And at that time I thought it better you didn’ know your mother was runnin free.’ He looked up at Reve, who was standing by the doorway. ‘I didn’t want you and her growin up and goin off to the city to go lookin for her. But tha’s where you headin now, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know, I hoped she would come back, find that I’d taken you both in. Ac
ted right for her.’

  ‘That’s why you gave us a home?’

  Tomas didn’t answer.

  ‘That Bible you got – that the only thing make you different from Calde or the Night Man?’

  Tomas shook his head. ‘It’s what you do make you different.’ He sounded weary.

  Reve closed the door on him. They had the name. He would go see LoJo, ask him if he could borrow his twenty, tell Mi what he’d found out and then in the morning he would see Theon; Theon would give them a ride up to the city in his truck, or get them on the fish truck; he could do that.

  He found LoJo still up. He was outside his place, sitting on the step of their shack. When Reve asked if he could borrow LoJo’s twenty LoJo shrugged. They had enough with what Moro had paid to keep going till his father got back, he said. In fact he didn’t seem to care about the money at all, and when Reve told him the reason he just said, ‘So you goin off to the city, yeah?’

  ‘You look after the skiff while I’m gone?’ LoJo nodded. ‘My dog too?’

  ‘That dog make up his own mind. If he stop with me, I’ll feed him.’

  ‘What happen you?’ Reve asked. ‘You got some trouble? Pelo make that trip easy.’

  LoJo shrugged again. ‘Calde,’ he said bitterly. ‘He come to our place. He sayin thing to my mother. Offer her work in his place, promising good money. Tell her that Pelo could make good money too after helping out the señor. But only if Calde put in a word for him. Asked my mother if she’d like that, him putting in a word.’

  ‘That man more slippy than a ball of grease,’ said Reve. ‘He just a piece of pig-eyed hog fat, and he stink like a dog; stink worse than my dog.’

  That raised half a smile and LoJo bent down and touched Sultan on the nose. ‘You don’ mind someone hear you call him that? This place got ears all a time.’

  All the shacks around them were dark; only Theon’s had lights burning.

  Reve dropped his voice a little. ‘Tomas made promise to your father, Lo.’

  ‘Sure, Reve. I just wish my daddy hadn’t gone on that boat.’

  ‘Looked like he didn’t have so much choice.’

  ‘My mother say a body always got choice . . . Calde say somethin else to my mother when he come by; it made my mother so angry the baby started cryin. Calde walk away then.’

  ‘On his fat legs.’

  ‘Fat cos he eat up half the village.’

  ‘Look like Ciele don’t need Tomas’s help.’

  ‘Everybody need help sometime.’

  He’d left LoJo then and walked quickly out to see if Mi was at the car and awake.

  When he got there, she was sitting cross-legged up on the bonnet of the Beetle. She had her bundle packed up and ready.

  He slumped down by the front wheel and stuck his legs out into her sand garden, and Sultan coiled himself down beside him. He told her they were going. He told her Tomas’s story.

  The edge of the ocean gleamed white where it broke on the sand.

  ‘Knew she was livin,’ she said. ‘Right ’bout that. Right ’bout most things, Reve.’

  ‘Oh yeah? And if I’d stayed all tucked away when the Night Man come into the village, like you tol’ me to do, we wouldn’ know a thing.’

  She didn’t respond to that. Just said: ‘It all goin to fall out easy, Reve. You dream her and that mean you find her. That the way these things happen.’

  On the way back along the shore he stopped to look at the beached powerboat. It was long and thin, built for speed, and tipped on its back it looked like a skinny whale. He wondered if his father had skippered a boat like this. Jagged holes ran along the length of its hull, silvery against the black. He tapped it. Metal, not wood. A boat like that would cost more than Reve would ever earn in a lifetime fishing, and yet there it was, another piece of rubbish on the beach. Maybe money wasn’t the only thing. Sultan sniffed it, growled and backed away. Then he trotted up to the prow, lifted his leg and without waiting for Reve crossed the sand to the shack.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was pitch black and so quiet he could hear an animal rooting over on the far side of the track, pig most likely; most people, apart from Uncle Theon, let their pigs root any place. Reve lay there for a moment, eyes wide but seeing nothing, just thinking about what he had to do, the practical things.

  He put out his hand and touched Sultan. The dog sighed but didn’t move. LoJo would mind Sultan; Tomas would forget to feed him; Tomas would most likely forget to feed himself. He stopped himself thinking about that and carefully swept his hand round to the right, found the jar with the candle, struck a light, then pulled on his jeans and rolled off the pallet.

  If Theon didn’t know how to track this Dolucca policeman, he would know how to find Señor Moro. A man like that would know where to find a policeman who got a story in his life that could be used against him. The señor would help them, Reve thought. He’d said to come see him. They would. It would be the smart thing to do. Señor Moro was the key.

  Reve tried to imagine what this Dolucca looked like, but all he could picture was something like a giant pucker fish, all needle teeth and the rest of his body wrapped in uniform. He stuck his head under the standpipe and let the water wash away his stupid thinking. That was the way Mi would picture things in her stories about people she didn’t like, their bellies stuffed with devils. This man was maybe caring for their mother; they would have to be polite. What would Mi do? He hoped she wouldn’t start juddering and hearing voices. The policeman might want to lock her up. And what would this woman, their mother, want? If she saw Mi acting strange, would she turn away from them again? She hadn’t liked that in Mi when Mi was just a little girl, and now Mi was almost grown maybe their mother wouldn’t like having her near, or him too, a fishing boy out of the village she’d run from . . .

  He took a deep breath of ocean air. They would find out. That was all there was to it.

  He crawled back under the hut and put the coins and the two twenty-dollar notes into his one spare T-shirt, tied it up so that none of the money would fall out, snuffed the candle and then, grabbing the T-shirt he intended to wear, crawled out from under the hut, Sultan following him.

  There was just the beginning of grey out over the ocean; sun-up wasn’t so far off. He then put the shirt, money, a bit of bread and a twist of bean paste into a canvas bag, slung it over his bare shoulder, gathered up the strings of empty plastic bottles and headed up the track, letting the air dry him before putting on his T-shirt.

  The village shacks he passed seemed like a straggle of giant black-backed crabs, the plastic sheets on the roofs pulsing slightly in the faint breeze. Nothing else was stirring.

  By the time he was up at Uncle Theon’s it was fully light. It always seemed to him that it was like the sun just took a breath out of that last bit of darkness and then threw itself up into the sky; that’s how quickly dawn broke.

  Reve dropped the bottles into the bin at the back of the cantina and then went into the kitchen, waiting for Theon to wake up. He unwrapped the T-shirt and counted the money, again, putting it in neat piles. He wanted Theon to change it all for small notes.

  After that he did what he always did; he began to clean the place. He gathered up bottles and glasses, swept the floor, wiped the tables and had even started washing up when Theon came down the stone stairs that led up to the roof. He always slept up there, said the sea air kept him cool and he could catch any thief trying to steal his beer.

  Theon, barefooted and half dressed, was on his cellphone as he came down the stairs. The second time in two days. Of course he did business on his phone, but not this early, not usually.

  When Theon saw Reve he frowned and turned away. He sounded impatient with whoever he was talking to. ‘Yes, of course I know that. You think I was born yesterday . . . Yes.’ He snapped the phone shut and scratched his cheek, thinking. When Reve started to talk to him he held up his hand. ‘Not now!’ After a moment he walked over to the front of the building and looked u
p towards the highway, then came back past Reve into the kitchen and made himself a coffee, which he sipped slowly. All the time Reve just stood and waited. Eventually Theon seemed to make up his mind and turned back to face Reve. He studied him for a moment. Then, noticing the piles of coins, he swept them into his hand, and without Reve even asking he poured the lot into his cash drawer and pulled out twelve dollars, which he handed to Reve.

  ‘Goin some place, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Goin to the city. With Mi.’

  ‘People skin you in the city.’ Theon sounded still irritable. ‘Easy like they skin a dog.’

  This wasn’t going the way Reve wanted. Theon was OK. Didn’t talk all the time, would listen, talk sense. But this morning he seemed like he had a wire fence tangled up round him. ‘Theon,’ said Reve, ‘can you give us a ride in your truck?’

  Theon barely let him finish his question. ‘What you been doin? You been catchin some of them asking-fish, cos all they do is leave a body hungry. What happen to Tomas, if you go?’

  Reve didn’t bother to answer that. Tomas wasn’t sick; he could get out of his hammock and feed himself, that’s what could happen. Instead he spoke to his uncle in a way that he never had before. ‘Time you listen to me, Uncle Theon. You and Tomas wrap up what happen when our mother ran off with the policeman, wrap it up so tight you reckon no one ever know you get cheated, and me and my sister just stay not knowin for all time. We got a right to find her if we can. We not stayin in this place – not safe for Mi, and I’m done sweepin floors and bein a runaround . . .’

  Theon looked at him, clearly surprised, then splashed more coffee into his cup and sat down. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘What did you hear, Reve?’

  Reve described what happened down on the harbour wall. What Calde had said, what Tomas had then told him. Theon listened and nodded, but he also pressed Reve to tell him everything about the action: the unloading, the helicopter coming, boats getting hit . . . all that. He was particularly interested when Reve repeated what Señor Moro had said when he was phoning. ‘First his lawyer and then a captain . . . I wonder which captain he has in his pocket . . .’ He let Reve finish, and at the end, he said, ‘Tomas told you just how it was. I don’t know any more. My sister, your mother, she may be living with her policeman. I don’t know. She dead to me. If you find her, you can tell her that yourself.’ He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘I hope your sister treat you better than Felice treated me.’