Call Down Thunder Page 9

  ‘Police,’ he said keeping his voice calm, telling her to come down, prompting her to give water to Ciele and the baby, to get them something to sit on, and as she did those things he told her all he had heard at Theon’s. ‘All right,’ he said to Ciele, ‘I’m goin back find Tomas and I got to find LoJo. Mi, tomorrow – we’re leaving tomorrow, you remember. OK? OK? Up by the drain. Our meeting place.’

  They were both looking at him.

  ‘I got to find Lo, I got to see Tomas. I think maybe . . . I don’t know.’ Tomas could be hurt, could be dead . . .

  Ciele was holding the baby tight to her chest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you find them, Reve.’

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ said Mi. ‘Not OK. What you thinking, Reve? You stay here. You can’t go back into that place; it’s burnin . . .’

  Reve shook his head, backed away. ‘One big storm, eh, Mi. All comin like you say.’

  And then before she could say anything he was running through soft sand towards the shore. ‘Don’t forget, we take the truck in the morning,’ he called back. ‘Early time. Before sun-up. You got to be there up by the road.’

  ‘What you telling me?’ she shouted. ‘Who you reckon you are, Reve? You can’t stop all thing happenin. When you goin to know that? Come back.’

  He didn’t know what he could stop. Nothing maybe. When the storm comes, you reef the sail and ride the waves as best you can.

  LoJo wasn’t down on the beach or up on the wall. Reve stood for a moment catching his breath and rubbing the sweat off his face, his back to an oily-calm sea. If the police hadn’t snatched LoJo, he’d have gone back to check on his mother and the baby, and run smack into the uniforms busting up his place.

  He started to run as fast as he could back up through the village. A thin scatter of ash drifted in the air and he could smell and taste burned wood and plastic. He passed people hurrying to the shore with tubs and buckets. It did look like a storm had torn through: doors kicked in, shutters swinging off their hinges, a dead dog crumpled at the corner of one shack – not Sultan. He called for him as he ran but there was no answering bark.

  He saw Arella gripping the edge of her door frame, staring with her filmy grey eyes, seeing nothing. ‘It’s Reve,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back, Rella. Go inside.’ He couldn’t stop.

  ‘You find Tomas,’ she called. ‘See he’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, Rella.’

  He saw two shacks burned down to the sand, people dousing the remains. He could hear the hiss as water hit the hot wood and he saw the family picking through the bits that had been salvaged before the fire took hold.

  He saw where a Jeep had driven through a fence, pulled it right down, hit the shack too and smacked away the little porch. If you got a uniform, you can do what damage you like.

  A fisherman from the back of the village, a man called Tarak, came hurrying towards him, heading for the wall, his eye swollen up.

  Reve stopped him. ‘Police gone?’ he asked.

  ‘They gone.’ Tarak said and spat on to the side of the track.

  Reve let out his breath. ‘They threw some muscle at you.’

  ‘They can throw what they like, so long as they don’t touch my boat.’

  ‘Pelo’s place?’

  ‘Still standin.’

  Tarak walked on and Reve broke into a run again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Reve found LoJo tending Tomas. The big man was sitting on a fish crate by the busted front door, and LoJo was cleaning a cut on his brow. Tomas was bruised up, his vest torn, but he was all right. He took the wet rag from LoJo and gave his face a brisk rub, then stood up. ‘Bring Ciele home,’ he said, ‘I’ll go check Rella and then come back here.’

  As soon as Tomas was gone, the two boys set off back to Mi’s car and LoJo told his story, bouncing up and down on his toes, shining up the details, his hands flying this way and that as he described how he had come running back almost at exactly the time Reve had been leading Ciele and the baby away from all the trouble. Tomas was down, he said, looked like a dead man all stretched out on the track, face up. One of the uniform grabbed a can of kerosene from the Jeep, and sloshed some down on Tomas. They’d been set to burn him, burn him and the house too.

  At this point LoJo stopped dead in his tracks and grabbed Reve’s arm to tell him exactly what Tomas had done next. He’d just been pretending, didn’t even move a stitch when the man poured petrol on him, and then more sudden than a twitch-back snake he snapped right up and kicked the can out of the policeman’s hands. Sent it flying. LoJo spun his hands round and made a whistling sound as he acted out the whole scene of the flying petrol can and how it come slap down into the Jeep, and those two police standing there like they didn’t know which way to turn, because they didn’t expect anyone in this place to do anything except kiss dirt for them. But Tomas moved so fast they could hardly see him, like a blur, like Tom and Jerry, like nothing Reve could ever imagine. And Tomas catched up one of the uniform and swung him up high, right over his head, and he looked all set to throw that police way into the ocean.

  Reve smiled; LoJo loved to tell a story. In a week’s time Tomas would have grown to the size of a mountain. ‘All right,’ he said, putting his hand on LoJo’s mouth. ‘All right, but just tell me how come he done all this miracle thing and he just sitting here when I come back? Those uniform got guns and they been burnin up shacks—’

  ‘Just what I’m tryin to tell you, Reve! You don’t give a body time to say half of anythin . . . The officer step up, while Tomas got that uniform high up in the air, and the uniform threatening him with his gun, going to put a bullet right in the big man. BAM. ’Cept he didn’ because the officer stop him. He say, “You, the one they call Tomas the Boxer” and Tomas say, still with that police up in the air, “I’m Tomas.” And the officer say, “You can put my man down and you can go back in this place.”And Tomas say, “Tha’s all right by me,” and he put down the uniform. And the uniform got to be carried and put in the Jeep and the officer say? “You got a good friend in that Theon,” and then they gone, leavin nothing but dirt and hurt.’

  ‘Theon guess Tomas get in trouble or he come down and see what happenin.’

  ‘Theon just clever, I guess,’ said LoJo. ‘Must have knowed.’

  When they got to Mi’s, the first thing Ciele asked was whether Tomas was all right and LoJo told his story all over again. Ciele was so happy she said she would cook for them all. A feast. She laughed and kissed Mayash and Mi smiled too, but even though Ciele pressed her Mi wouldn’t come with them; she would stay, she had things to get ready. Reve knew there was no point in trying to persuade her and he reckoned now, with the police gone, there wouldn’t be any more trouble that night. Everyone would be trying to pull things back together, just grateful that the police hadn’t hauled them off to the Castle. Even Hevez would keep his head down, and then tomorrow he and Mi would be gone. He reminded her once again of their meeting place and then followed Ciele and LoJo, who had already set off back to the village.

  They ate well that night. Ciele killed a chicken and Reve fetched Arella and they sat round the front of the shack and LoJo told the story at least one more time about how Tomas beat the police and how they wouldn’t dare strut down Rinconda unless they brought an army with them, because now they had fear in them for what a Rinconda man might do. Tomas smiled, and that was a first for Reve, the big man never smiled, and he said that LoJo had so much talk in him he could puff up a meatball and make it sound like a feast.

  It was as if the storm had blown right through and they were all all right. Now, sitting around together, Reve thought they could almost be family. Except Pelo was gone, and Mi hadn’t come back with them. Probably as well, Reve thought; she and Tomas would have made the air scratchy and sour. He wondered if there would ever be a time when they could be easy with each other. The trouble was that even when he had told her the story of their mother and this man Dolucca, Mi had just dismissed it, s
aying that’s just Tomas’s word.

  The occasional person had drifted past, mostly heading up to Theon’s for a drink. LoJo nudged Reve as Hevez, Ramon and Sali sloped down the track to the sea, Hevez holding the neck of a bottle loosely in his hand. The boys glanced their way, and to Reve’s surprise Ramon gave him a nod of recognition as they passed by.

  Reve stood up and followed them down to the bend in the track, just to check where they were going. When he saw them settling down he came back to the fire. He would check Mi later, see if she was all right.

  A moment later he thought he saw Calde a couple of shacks up the way standing by another family’s cooking fire. It was his shape; he looked like a squat ball of grease in the firelight and was maybe looking their way, but Reve couldn’t see properly. A moment later the figure was gone. A couple of fishermen who were friendly with Pelo came up to see if Ciele had heard anything from her husband. They had a little more information about what else had happened during the police raid, who’d got hit, who’d had their shack turned over, pulled apart, who had been dragged off. At the end of it all there had been two men from up the village hauled into one of the Jeeps, cuffed and driven away.

  Reve didn’t know the men who’d been taken, but he couldn’t help wondering if it could turn out to be a good thing. ‘What you think, Tomas? That lieutenant just say he got to have a head on a plate bring his captain, and he got two now, so maybe nothing happen ’bout Pelo.’

  Ciele shrugged and cradled her baby. ‘We still got Calde in this place.’

  And then almost as if by using his name she had conjured him out of the darkness, there was Calde, smelling of sweet oil, all dressed up in white cotton, his long blade hanging by his side. Sultan lifted his head and growled.

  ‘This a nice picture,’ he said.

  ‘No one invite you to this place, Calde,’ Tomas said.

  Calde ignored him. ‘You a pretty lucky woman, Ciele, but I think you should take advice, these shacks here burn down real easy; all this ash and cinder floating, come down in the night, burn your place.’ He looked concerned. ‘Your baby get choke up easy on the smoke.’

  Tomas stood up. ‘You got fat grease in your ear, Calde? You don’t hear what I’m sayin?’

  ‘No one need to listen to you, Tomas. You’re as good as finish in this place and you just ’bout the only person who don’t know it.’ He smiled. ‘Enjoy your meal,’ he said to Ciele and Arella. ‘I’ll come back and talk to you again when this old man stop bothering you, Ciele. I don’ think your Pelo meant for him to be moving in on you like this. Maybe I should get him word.’ He turned and headed up the main track, walking deliberately slowly, it looked to Reve, with just that bit of swagger so that blade swung out and back enough to make a body notice it, until the dark swallowed him up.

  It put a stop on their evening. Tomas fell silent, eventually pushing upright. ‘I need to have a word with Theon,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you go drinkin in there, Tomas,’ said Arella. ‘And don’t go pushin that man . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I should be doin, Arella. Tha’s not your place.’ That was the first time Reve had ever heard him speak to his old friend like that. It upset Arella, that was clear; she looked down and her mouth worked like she was wanting to say something but no words were coming out.

  Tomas thanked Ciele for her meal and said she could call on him anytime she had worry. He nodded at Reve, and then as he passsed by Arella, he touched her shoulder, said her name: ‘Arella.’ It wasn’t a question, just her name, and then he walked up the dark track to Theon’s.

  It was Ciele who broke the silence: ‘That man done me big favour, Reve,’ she said. ‘And you did too. You and Tomas welcome to eat here so long as we got food to share.’

  They tidied up then and Ciele put the baby into her cot and took her inside. Reve, unconsciously just like Tomas had, touched Arella’s shoulder. ‘Arella,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  ‘That’d be kind,’ Arella said and levered herself upright. Reve let her take his arm. Sultan got up and stretched, but Reve told him to stay. ‘He’s a good watchdog; bark like crazy if anyone come by your place in the night.’ Then he wished he’d kept his mouth shut; there was only one man set to bother Ciele’s household and he wouldn’t be put off by an old dog whose only tactic had ever been to bark and run.

  LoJo scratched the dog’s head. ‘Sure, he can stay. You coming by again?’

  ‘Later.’

  Arella didn’t say anything to him on that short walk back to her place, but as he was handing her up the step to her door she gripped his arm. ‘Never hear Tomas talk like he done tonight.’ Nor had Reve. ‘I think he got something he plan on doin.’

  ‘Up at Theon’s?’

  ‘Yes. He goin to try teach Calde a lesson.’

  ‘Calde got too many men! He can’t go fighting in there,’ Reve exclaimed, pulling away from her. ‘They’ll kill him.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When LoJo saw Reve come back and running hard, he fell in beside him. ‘What happen?’

  Reve told him.

  ‘But what can you do?’

  The lights were burning in Theon’s and music was jiggering out of his old monkey jukebox. They paused at the side door, one on each side, leaning with their backs to the wall.

  ‘Don’ know. Go in. Tell Theon.’ Reve took a breath. ‘He’ll think of something. Not gonna do nothing.’ He eased the door open and checked out the inside.

  The place was busy, men lining the bar, drinking beer from bottles, talking quietly; standing head and shoulders taller than them all was Tomas, his vest was torn and the cut on his forehead looked raw, but he was a match for any man in there. He looked steady, even dignified, not hurrying his drink. Reve relaxed a little.

  Tomas was down at the end and Theon was across the bar from him, leaning forward, telling him something.

  The tables at the far side were filled with old men clacking dominoes and, through the open door at the bar’s entrance, Reve could see another group at the table out on the porch, where the lieutenant had sat just that morning. Reve could see the backs of heads, and a stone jug being passed back and forth. He recognized Cesar, because he glanced back over his shoulder into the bar, and if he was there then Escal would be too, and if they were there, chances are the man paying for that jug of beer was Calde himself. Perhaps that was what Theon was saying to Tomas.

  One of the old domino players called across to Tomas to join them, but there was an edge to the invitation that Reve didn’t quite understand, something veiled. Tomas ignored him, and the old men laughed, cawing like scraggy birds. One or two of the men at the bar turned and smiled. Somebody mentioned Pelo and someone else mentioned his wife. LoJo muttered a curse, but it was bar talk, no harm in it.

  Tomas stood there, leaning with his back to the bar, not drinking. He didn’t smile; he just looked easy, the talk swilling around him like water around the pier. Then he said something to Theon. Theon shrugged and moved away and Tomas half turned and smacked his hand down on the counter so hard it sounded like a pistol shot. Everyone fell silent. ‘Calde!’ Tomas said loudly across that silence. ‘I got business with you in here.’

  If Calde was outside he didn’t come running, that was for sure.

  One of the old-timers leaned back on his stool.‘Hey, Tomas! Calde don’t wear a skirt. What business you got with him?’

  His friends laughed and another one chimed in: ‘You gone call on Pelo wife yet?’

  ‘She like the way you threw the uniform in the air? Pretty strong for an old man.’

  And there was more laughter. But appreciative this time. Tomas shook his head slightly, but he wasn’t distracted by the banter; his eyes remained fixed on the doorway out to the porch.

  Reve made up his mind. This was the time to go in, persuade him out of there. He took a step towards the side entrance but LoJo held him back. ‘What’s he doing here?’ he hissed.

  ‘Who?’

&nb
sp; ‘Hevez.’

  He was there at the main door. His slick hair a little mussed like he had been in a scuffle, or taken a fall. There was no sign of the other two, just Hevez on his own with Cesar a little behind him, looking into the bar, his eyes narrow, focusing on one man. Hevez turned round as if receiving an instruction from someone, Calde most likely. When he swaggered up to the bar, a couple of men moved aside. He called for a rum and held up a dollar bill. Theon shrugged and served him.

  At that moment Escal slipped into the bar. Then Calde’s driver, a small man with a thick moustache and a blue tattoo etched all the way up his right arm, came in behind them. Three. All looking at Tomas, and Tomas not moving but watching them as they moved over to the bar together, a little way along from Hevez.

  It was like the moves in a dance, Reve thought, or when the fishing boats worked together, rounding up tuna, taking their station, waiting their time, getting ready to throw the nets.

  Reve could see it was too late for him to go in now. It would make Tomas look soft and that wouldn’t be good, not in front of these men.

  Hevez picked up his glass and moved along till he was right beside Tomas. ‘I seen you with Pelo’s wife, eating her stew. Pelo know you moving in with his wife?’ His voice was thin but loud and aggressive. The room fell quiet once more. Tomas glanced at the boy in front of him but didn’t reply, his eyes lifted to the doorway, now filled by the bulky figure of Calde. The old men clacking their dominoes stopped their play. ‘She give you anything more than her stew?’

  Calde’s men laughed, as did one or two more drinkers at the counter. The atmosphere felt suddenly sour and heavy with bad feeling.

  ‘What’s the matter? You need a drink of rum before you tell people what they come to hear?’

  Tomas frowned as if only now hearing Hevez speak. ‘What they come to hear, boy?’

  It was Calde who answered this. ‘Why the policeman didn’t arrest you for what you done? You got some special arrangement?’

  There was the beginning of angry muttering at this. Reve heard the words ‘informer’ and ‘squeal-pig’. It was all make-believe, Reve knew that. He looked towards Theon, expecting him to say something. The only ones with a special arrangement with the police were Calde and Theon; Tomas didn’t have anything to do with anyone. Theon stayed quiet, like Reve, watching.