Call Down Thunder (11 page)

Reve sprinted down the side of the cantina. Theon had hit him so hard his teeth buzzed and his eyes were all watered up. He should have kept his mouth shut. He shouldn’t
have spoken.

He turned right, threading his way fast through the tight cluster of shacks and sheds that sprawled back from the main track. The cracks and slips between the huts were tight and dark, like a
slice of night had got tangled up there; the wider spaces were splashed with white sunlight. It was hot already.

Theon’s was only three hundred metres from Pelo’s place, but it was hard not to get caught in wire or trip on rubbish. But he moved fast all the same, twisting this way and that,
ignoring dogs and pigs, pushing himself, fretting that he would be too late, that the lieutenant had already called his men up from the pier. Frightened that Calde himself would come down looking
for him, wanting to cut out his tongue. Why had he shouted at Calde? He never shouted, not ever – not at Tomas, not at Hevez, not in all his life.

He was a fool. He tried not to be, but he was.

Pelo’s hut was much the same as Tomas’s. A little bigger maybe, raised up from the sandy ground and patched together with planks of salty wood, scraps of tin and
black plastic. Pelo had made a little porch at the front, facing the track, and also one at the back. That’s where Ciele was sitting, her baby on her lap. And Tomas was standing beside her,
head bent talking. He looked serious. There was no sign of LoJo. He’d be down at the skiff most likely.

‘Hey!’ Reve called. ‘Ciele, you got to come out o’ here.’ She looked up, surprised, startled by his voice coming out of the darkness. ‘Get what thing you can.
Tomas we got hardly no time. This place not safe . . .’

‘Reve,’ she said, ‘what you doin?’ She looked like some queen to Reve, like Mi tried to look sometimes. Just sitting there, holding her baby. But Reve could hear the
strain in her voice. ‘This my place. Nothin stirring me.’

Tomas put his hand on her shoulder. Tomas didn’t hardly talk to anyone other than Arella, and here he was like Ciele was almost family to him. Ciele didn’t seem to be minding.

‘What you know, Reve?’ Tomas said. ‘Thought you gone fishing when I rose up. LoJo gone looking for you. We got police stampin down on the wall, herding people up.’

‘I been at Theon’s.’ Hurriedly Reve told them what Calde had said; how he’d sold out Pelo. ‘You got to leave,’ he said to Ciele. ‘Theon said to tell
you. Calde given up Pelo’s name. They comin to wreck this place. Hurt you too, Ciele, if they find you here.’

‘Cos I turned him down flat, called him a pig,’ she said bitterly. ‘Told him find some other woman.’ She stood up. ‘I don’t got any place to go,
Tomas.’

She held the baby tight to her breast.

They heard the roar of a Jeep’s engine gunning down the track; the screech of brakes, the shouted command and then a gun butt hammering on the door.

‘Ciele! Move quick. Give the baby to Reve and get down there with him. Reve take them out to your sister. You’ll be out of the way there,’ Tomas said to her. ‘I’ll
save what I can.’

Reve held out his hands. Ciele hesitated and then passed over the baby, little Mayash. She mewled once and then settled against Reve’s shoulder. She felt so tiny. Like a bird.

Tomas hustled Ciele down from the porch and then stepped back into the shack as the front door crashed open. ‘Hey,’ Reve heard him saying. ‘This the home of Pelo the fisherman.
You got business here I can help you with?’ He sounded calm and steady, as though having police beating on your door was no thing to get strange about. He was just doing what any fisherman
does, finding his way through the storm.

‘I got to see what’s happenin!’ said Ciele.

From inside they could hear raised voices and the smash of things being broken.

Ciele made to go back up into the shack, but Reve tugged at her arm with his free hand. ‘Come. Come with me.’ He stepped back into the shadow and pulled her after him. ‘They
got nothin on him.’ He tucked the baby close to him, sniffing her forehead as he threaded his way through the dark maze of this back end of the village, wrapping his arms round her little
body, trying to protect her as he pushed his way through bits of wire and fencing. At the edge of the field he stopped. ‘We cut across here. You want to take Mayash now? You OK, running with
her? I’ll carry her if you like.’

Ciele held out her arms.

They ran through dry maize, heading at an angle away from the village and down to the shore.

They found Mi standing up on the roof of her Beetle, staring towards the village. ‘Ciele!’ she said, swivelling round when she heard them coming in from the field
behind. ‘Ciele, you got Mayash. Reve! What happen there? I see fire an’ smoke in the village . . .’

Trickly black smoke, plastic and wood. Somebody’s place turning to ash.

‘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.

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, saying 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.