Call Down Thunder
Authors: Daniel Finn
For Patrick, a poet in the sun
The grace and shadow of a single tree in bloom settled in me like gentleness
From ‘Shade’ by P. Daly
CONTENTS
It was like this.
Reve’s skiff, a small open-decked fishing boat, was in close to a ragged cliff that butted like a boxer’s nose out into the sea. In hard weather this was a bad bit of coastline.
There were rocks and shallows and eddies that would pull and twist a small boat about and smash it up against that cliff when a sea was running. It happened. But today the sea was glass, and anyway
Reve reckoned it was worth the risk coming in this close; you could net good jackfish here, if you were patient.
The sea barely moved, just a faint sigh as it breathed against the cliff, and Reve was patient.
He could see every twist of weed and strip of white sand tucked up between the rocky gulleys; he could see sunlight flashing as shoals of sprat twisted in and out of shadow. Six metres down
right here, but everything looked so close he could almost reach out and touch it.
The sun scored down the back of his neck; he wiped the sweat from his eyes, squinted against the glare. Concentrate.
The rest of the fishing boats were far out, nailed to the horizon. It was usually the way, him fishing on his own like this. It was Tomas’s boat, and not every fisherman was Tomas’s
friend. Reve didn’t mind one way or the other. In fact he liked to fish alone.
There!
Maybe five metres away, on the ocean side of the skiff.
And again.
The sea boiled as a big fish turned rapidly, just beneath the surface. Reve shifted his grip on the coil of net. One end was fixed to the stern, the other he gripped in his left hand, the belly
of the net he held in his right, ready to throw.
Up in the bows, tucked into the shade under the folded sail, a scruff mat of a dog opened one eye and murmured a growl. Best fishing dog in the village – only fishing dog in the village
– lazy as hell, but he loved it up there in the bow, keeping an eye on Reve. Like he was the boss.
There it was again, a little closer. A twist and slash on the surface. Big! Feeding on sprat, must be. He hoped it was a jackfish, something bigger than Tomas had ever caught, a giant fish, deep
and strong, a fish to put dollar in their pockets.
Come on, a little closer. A little closer.
Tiny white fish shrapnelled out of the water, instantly followed by a wide splash of silver. He flung out the net. Perfect. It uncoiled in the air and then sank fast. He counted: one and two.
And then his hands blurred they were hauling so fast, sweeping in the net. Any second he would feel it, that weight, and then the bang and tug of the tangled fish.
But there was no weight, nothing. The net slithered in around his feet and Sultan didn’t even bother to raise his head, just yawned and pushed his nose down into his paws.
Reve grimaced. He had been so sure.
He splashed seawater over his face and head, then shook the wet from him just like Sultan did when he came out of the sea and up on to the beach. Then he leaned out over the side, willing that
jackfish to swim right up to him. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘I know you there, you fat old fish. Come on an’ I snatch you up in my hand.’ He leaned over further, pushing
his face down into the cool surface, squeezing his eyes tight and then opening them slowly . . .
Hair like flame burning around her face, lips a little apart, like she was about to say something. A smile that had no happiness in it and a hand held up to beckon . . . or maybe to wave
goodbye.
So close he could almost touch her, except he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. It wasn’t possible. It was his sister, it was Mi. And it wasn’t
her at all. Long dark strands of weed reached up and stroked across her face, criss-crossed, as if tightening like a net . . . He stared so hard his eyes felt as if they were about to tear out of
their sockets and every tendon on his neck was bunched up tight. His heart was hammering in his chest. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing and yet there she was.
He jerked back, spluttering.
Sultan, suddenly alert, was up, paws on the side, barking and barking. Reve didn’t even hear his dog. He took a big breath and dived overboard and swam fast, straight down, eyes wide,
staring this way and that.
He reached the bed, lungs bursting, grabbed a fistful of thick weed and twisted round on himself, half expecting her face to be right there, her cold hand reaching for him. A black crab the size
of a human skull waved his claws at him and then backed down into a crevice.
Where was she?
Like the cursed fish. Nothing.
His head pounded, a mallet banging his chest. He let go and kicked hard, bursting through the surface with such force that his head, shoulders and chest came right up out of the water. He gasped
for breath and clutched at the side of the boat, barely aware of Sultan whining and scratching and licking at his hand.
He let go and dived again, steadier this time, looking this way and that. Maybe a freak current had pulled the body down into a rock gulley, maybe . . . He surfaced again. The tide was slack.
There was no current.
He dived again and again and then, exhausted, hauled himself back on board and slumped down in the stern.
He must have imagined her.
Mi never went in the sea. Never. Never stepped in a boat. No one get drowned if they don’t go in the water, she used to say.
So it couldn’t have been her. Maybe someone else who looked like her? No. No one look like Mi. No one got that red hair. No one got her looks.
The sun could make you see things . . . give you waking dreams. He knew that all right, but it’d never happened to him. He didn’t even dream in the night-time. Never had. Mi was the
dreamer – half lived in a different world from the rest of them. But not Reve. He worked. He fished. He cooked. He minded Tomas. He minded Arella. He minded Mi. What time did he have for
dreaming?
Sultan sniffed his hand and then put a paw on Reve’s leg.
‘I’m all right,’ he said, more to himself than to the dog.
Sultan tilted his head, as if he understood perfectly well what the boy’s words meant, and then retreated to his shelter in the bows.
Reve didn’t move. Maybe this was one of those things that had meaning, like with Mi and the way she could tell when a storm was coming; the way her spirit voices told her things, like when
she stopped in front of old Baufice and told him he needed to take two nets because he was going to catch more fish than one net could swallow. And that’s what happened. No one else caught a
thing that time, not even Tomas.
Or the time she stopped in front of Elena’s and told her she was going to birth two babies and that her sow would birth piglets on that same day. She hadn’t been joking. Mi
didn’t joke. It happened like she said.
Maybe he had caught this from her somehow, the seeing of something that carried meaning. Maybe Mi was in trouble again. Maybe worse this time.
The village, Rinconda, was more than five miles up the coast, and a long hard row, but maybe he could pick up a scrap of breeze away from the shelter of the shore. Quickly he poured seawater
into the battered plastic box where he had the jackfish he had caught earlier, covered them up again, pulled out the oars, set them into the pins, then sat on the centre thwart and rowed. He dug
the blades in and pulled, heaving the skiff out from the cliff. He dug, and pulled and feathered the blade and tried not to imagine the trouble she was in. He rowed steady but hard, putting his
back into it, trying to keep the worry down in its hole, but every time he pulled on the oars that face floated into his mind.
The sweat poured down his back and his hands burned against the wood but he pulled hard and ignored the pain. He had seen a drowned body one time, all snagged up in a net. He’d got that
memory sharp and clear. He saw it all again right now as he rowed: the skin gone grey and puffy, the eyes dead like the eyes of a shark-fish, the fingers poking through the net, and when the body
was laid out they’d all seen the little hole in his chest, all puckered up like a belly button. The whole village had seen that, been made to see it.
He had been five and Mi had been eight years old the day their father was dragged up out of the water and on to the harbour wall; the day their mother had stepped out of their lives; the day
Tomas the Boxer took them into his home.
He rowed hard but steady, and as soon as he felt the touch of wind on his cheek he shipped the oars and scrabbled up the sail and sat back in the stern, his eyes fixed on the hazy blur that was
Rinconda, willing the skiff to cut through the water and bring him home quick.
LoJo was on the beach when Reve sailed the skiff in. There was a little harbour at the foot of the village that they all called ‘the wall’ because that’s
about all it was: a wide stone wall that hooked out into the sea and gave some shelter in the stormy season. The real reason it was there was because it was for unloading the fast boats when they
slipped in at night, and it was all sweat and fear and hurry in case the coastguard or police came poking their nose. Most fishermen, like Reve, kept their skiffs up on the sand and used the
harbour wall for mending nets, passing time. The village itself stretched back from the harbour almost as far as the north–south coast highway. It was not much more than a straggle of shacks,
mostly clad in black plastic, with patchwork roofs, rickety porches and sandy yards pegged out with driftwood and wire fences. A few men with money had more substantial places: Theon, Reve’s
uncle, had the cantina and Calde had a block-stone house, workshops and a builders’ yard and a factory where some of the Rinconda women were lucky enough to work.
As soon as LoJo spotted Reve he ran down the beach and waded in. ‘Seen you comin in,’ he called, grabbing hold of the bow. ‘You ahead of everyone, Reve. Done any
good?’
‘Some,’ said Reve, letting the sail go and jumping over the side. ‘You seen Mi?’ He was anxious to hear she was all right; the whole strange business of the young woman
in the water nagged at him worse than a salt sore. But then the truth was he worried about Mi all the time anyhow.
‘That’s what I come tell you,’ said LoJo, taking the other side of the skiff and helping Reve to drag it inshore. ‘I seen her coming back from Theon’s, walking
fast, like she get bee-stung.’
Sultan had his front paws up on the bow and was barking, as he always did, wanting the boys to hurry and pull the skiff on to the sand, so he could jump down without getting wet.
‘Go on!’ said Reve impatiently. ‘You nothin but noise. Get down!’
Sultan barked again and jumped, skipped ahead of a little wave and then, without a backwards glance, trotted off along the beach, away from the harbour and the village, heading for Mi’s
place.
‘What happen with Mi?’ asked Reve. ‘She start shakin, falling down . . . ? Someone throw bad talk at her?’