Call Down Thunder (8 page)

Two men had LoJo’s father, Pelo, one by each arm, and they were dragging him along, ignoring Ciele, who was following on their heels, slapping at them and yelling to let her husband go,
and LoJo was there too, beside her, trying to restrain her. In the other group there was Hevez and two of Calde’s men: Cesar and Escal, brothers, and another two behind them. And they had
Tomas the Boxer. As Reve watched he saw Tomas straighten himself like a giant and swing Cesar one way and Escal the other, but he couldn’t shake them free and the man behind him suddenly
cracked something down on Tomas’s head so that he slumped to his knees. Then the men dragged him, his legs splayed out behind him, up to the truck where Calde and the señor were
waiting.

For the second time that day, maybe the second time in his life, Reve acted without thinking. The money still tight in his fist, he ran back across the pier, shoved past Hevez,
till he was beside Tomas. ‘What you do to him?’ he shouted to Cesar and his stupid brother. ‘Hey? What he done to you?’

Reve looked around at all the faces, and his anger turned cold in his stomach. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, realizing he was just a boy standing in the middle of these men,
getting in the way of their business. He took a breath and readied himself, his legs a little apart. He saw Pelo looking at him, Ciele and LoJo too. Ciele’s lips were moving but he
didn’t know if she was trying to tell him something. He saw the sneer on Hevez’s face

The man behind Tomas tapped his stumpy club into the palm of his left hand, and Cesar, still gripping Tomas with his left hand, let his right hand snake to the knife on his hip, but his eyes
were on Calde. He wouldn’t do anything unless he was told. And Escal was expressionless, waiting for his brother’s lead, his hands tight round Tomas’s arm.

Reve turned to face Señor Moro; he was the man in charge. It was his word they were waiting for. He didn’t like to leave his back to anyone, especially not Cesar, but he was in the
circle now so he might as well dance. That’s what Arella said every time she stood up after a bellyful of rum to walk back to her hut: ‘If you step in the circle, Reve, you got to know
the steps of the dance. So you watch me now.’

He lifted his chin and, realizing he still had this man’s money in his hand, he shoved it into his pocket. ‘Why you got Tomas here? If you got something you want him to do, I can do
it instead.’ He glanced at Calde. It wasn’t the señor who had asked for this; it was Calde. Maybe Tomas had tough-talked him that morning, got under his skin, and this was
payback.

‘So,’ said Señor Moro, as if he hadn’t heard Reve’s offer, ‘we got the little big man again.’ He dipped his head towards Calde and murmured something
Reve couldn’t hear. He feared it wouldn’t be good, but Calde just nodded at the brothers and they let Tomas go. Tomas stumbled, almost fell and then regained his footing and shook
himself. ‘What is this man to you?’ Señor Moro said to Reve.

‘I sail his boat. He . . .’ he hesitated. ‘He look out for me . . .’

Calde said, ‘His mother the one run with off with the policeman.’ He turned his face and spat.

There was a stir from the circle of onlookers. They hadn’t known this. Señor Moro, though, grunted as if he had heard the story before.

Reve felt his throat tighten up so bad it was hard to speak. ‘Who tell you that!’ he managed. ‘That never happen!’ Reve looked at Tomas, but the big man just stared
straight ahead as if he hadn’t heard. ‘She get arrested.’ Reve felt his face flush and burn. People get arrested. No shame in that because it happens; the law is there to stop you
getting ahead. That’s what Theon said to him one time. Helping the Night Man load his trucks – that would get anyone hard time if the policeman came down. But to run off with a
policeman, no one would ever do that . . . and not, their mother – run out on them as if they were nothing. There was so much shame in that it could fill the ocean. ‘He just make up
that dirt talk!’ Reve said, but his words had no bite.

Señor Moro grunted again and then with a sudden edge, he said, ‘All right, I got no time for this.’ He made a slight gesture with his left hand and Reve was pulled to one
side, hardly aware of the firm hand clamped on the back of his neck.

‘You,’ Señor Moro was saying to Tomas. ‘You, Tomas the Boxer – you don’t look in so good shape to me.’

Tomas gingerly touched the back of his grizzled head and grimaced.

‘You do this kind of work one time, Tomas the Boxer?’

‘One time. I work for no one now.’

‘You can drive a boat?’

‘If you want someone drive a boat, you don’t hit him on the head first, hey.’ He rolled his shoulders, easing the hurt, and then grunted again. ‘But it don’t make a
difference. I done all the business I ever gonna do, and you got no call on me.’

‘One last job. Give you drinking money, Tomas. That’s what I hear you do now: kissing the bottle. A boxer and a kissing man, that’s how I hear it.’

‘Hear it any way you like. I don’t need one thing from you, or you,’ said Tomas, turning and challenging Calde. ‘That time’s all gone for me, you understand? You
find some other man for your business.’

‘Well –’ Señor Moro nodded at the man holding Reve, and Reve found himself pushed forward into the circle again – ‘how about this boy? He make offer take
your place. He good enough to run a boat to Paraloca without getting stung by the patrol?’

Tomas looked at Reve but said nothing.

‘If he lose my boat,’ continued Señor Moro, ‘I come looking for you, Tomas, and I take what little you got.’

‘This boy’s too young to do your business,’ said Tomas.

His shoulders were straight and his eyes unblinking. No sign of the rum shakes. He looked strong. Then he looked at Calde: thick shoulder, pig-eyed. The señor’s dog in Rinconda. Had
Tomas and Theon been like that when they ran Rinconda? Reve wondered. Is that what Mi had seen in them both. No, Calde was the one with the devil in his belly. He was the enemy.

‘I understand,’ said Señor Moro. He flicked the tip of his cigar. ‘But I got business that need doing. Maybe this man can help me out.’ He nodded towards
LoJo’s father, Pelo. ‘Calde, can this man help me out?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We don’t have so much time.’ He sounded as if he had all the time in the
world.

Calde nodded and Pelo was jostled forward. He was a small man with a narrow face and a sharp chin and he wore a moustache that drooped round the edge of his mouth and made him look sad. He
wasn’t sad though; he worked hard, but he liked to joke too, called Reve ‘Captain Clean-up’ because of the way Reve gathered bottles from the seashore. Tomas liked him. Liked his
wife too. Reve looked over at Ciele. She was gripping LoJo’s shoulders, holding him tight. She caught Reve’s eye and Reve looked away; she could lose her man.

‘I’ll go,’ said Pelo, his voice even. ‘How much you payin? Paraloca take me a week maybe. I got fishing to do.’

‘In one of my fishing boats?’ said Calde.

Pelo shrugged. ‘I pay you all the time.’

‘Maybe this help you pay off the debt, eh.’

‘Sure.’ Pelo looked at Señor Moro.

‘OK,’ said Señor Moro, ‘let’s see.’ But as he was pulling out a roll of dollars from his pocket – more money than Reve could imagine having –
Reve saw the way Calde looked at Ciele and he could tell that Calde was happy for Pelo to be away for a week.

‘Here.’ Señor Moro held out a couple of bills.

Pelo hesitated, looked at Tomas, then put out his hand and without looking at how much the señor was giving him, he passed it to Ciele.

‘Don’ worry, Pelo,’ said Calde, all smooth as if he’d dipped his voice in pig fat. ‘I’ll see Ciele’s all right. She need anything, she just ask me. No
problem.’

Pelo ignored Calde’s offer and turned to Tomas. ‘Tomas, you mind Ciele, the boy can fish with Reve.’

Tomas nodded. ‘I’ll see this pig don’t come near her . . .’

Escal, Cesar’s heavy-jawed and simple-minded brother, lunged at Tomas, fists bunched, but Tomas stepped to one side, neat as a dancer. You wouldn’t think someone so big and carrying
so many years could move as easy as that. ‘You want trouble off me, Calde, you know where you find me.’

Señor Moro laughed. ‘Do your business another time, Calde. Come.’

He beckoned to Pelo and they went together over to the pier’s edge, the other men and then Ciele and LoJo following. LoJo was saying something quietly to his mother, reassuring her
maybe.

Reve was left alone with Tomas. ‘What Calde say, is that true? My mother cheat and run off, didn’t care nothin ’bout us?’

‘Not now.’

‘When you goin tell me? You and Theon, how much you keep from us? Everyone else know but we two? You tellin me that?

‘No.’

‘Everyone think that ’bout her now. Think we got a mother who run with a policeman. Everyone goin say we got that streak. Things bad enough for Mi. What you think this kind of talk
goin do now? Hey. What you think, Tomas. People still goin believe in what she say? People goin give me respect—’

‘Tha’s enough! We don’ talk here. You come back out of here.’ He didn’t wait for Reve to answer but turned and headed back towards the village. Reve watched him go.
He wasn’t a dog to trot after him, get a tidbit of knowing when it suited Tomas to throw it his way. He joined Ciele and LoJo.

Down below them, the skippers were back in their boats, though Pelo’s craft seemed way lower in the water than the others. The sunken powerboat had been dragged up on to the sand and three
men were manhandling the huge outboard engine on to a handcart.

Pelo called out, ‘What you sellin me, Calde? This boat half full of water.’

A flashlight played along the boat’s hull and then on to Pelo again; his face looked bloodless and grey in the harsh beam.

‘Bail her out.’ A tin sailed down into the boat. ‘She’ll ride high on the way back if you give her speed.’

‘I got a choice?’

The man Moro called Secondo laughed. ‘Everybody got a choice till they stop breathing. You want to stop breathing?’

Pelo muttered something and then busied himself scooping water from the bilge. He pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips, and used the strips to plug holes in the hull.

Secondo called out, ‘Time to go.’

Pelo started the engine; it gave a throaty roar and he raised his hand. One by one the others started up, lines were thrown back on board and the black-hulled boats swung away from the pier in a
wide, creaming curve and headed out to sea, the engines peaking to a howl as the throttles were pushed full down. One boat lagged a little behind the others. Pelo taking it easy, Reve reckoned, but
even his craft quickly disappeared into the dark, leaving phosphorescent lines scratched on the black surface of the sea for a few seconds.

Señor Moro and his men were already heading for their cars. The rest of the crowd followed. All but Pelo’s wife, and LoJo, who stood by her side.

Ciele looked like a widow standing on the wall with her son, everyone else gone from her.

It is a too easy thing, Reve thought, for a family to be pulled apart.

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.

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.