Call Down Thunder (15 page)

This was it.

‘Mi?’ he called softly, just in case she was hidden somewhere close by. ‘Mi, you’re not here somewhere, are you?’

Silence.

He felt drained, tired and like he could give up, just sit back down and not do anything, but he couldn’t do that. He had no choice but to go on his own, get Señor Moro to help him,
find their mother and then somehow come back for Mi. Maybe his mother had a smart car, a good house, would know things.

He followed the lights, jinking slowly up and down and to one side and then to the other as the driver eased the truck up the broken track towards the highway. Reve hunkered
down at a point where the track curved a little to the left before it pulled up on to the road. He’d be out of sight then when he made his run.

The truck seemed to take forever but then there it was, smelling of diesel and dirt, the axles squealing as it slowly rocked up to where he was. He stood and ran lightly up towards the cab. The
door swung open, he caught the rim of the opening and pulled himself up and in.

‘Just you then, is it, Reve?’

‘Theon!’

His uncle wrenched the wheel and jolted the truck up on to the highway. ‘Who else you think I goin to trust with my truck?’

‘You let me drive it sometimes.’ Reve couldn’t help feeling some relief; at least this leg of the journey would be easier. He tried not to think about what he would do when he
arrived, being on his own, in that place, and without Mi.

‘So she didn’t make it,’ said Theon, as if reading his mind. ‘That’s too bad.’

Reve shrugged.

‘Does her own thing. Her mother was like that. Not all the conjuring spirits – that Macumba, Macumba. My sister, she only wanted gold.’ He hummed a snatch of a song to himself.
‘I kept meaning to go down when Mi was holding one of her meetings. I hear what people say – that she really got the gift. Just not steady in her ways. I’m sorry. I’ll do
what I can to find her.’

Reve nodded.

‘She was always the strange one, your sister . . .’ He broke off and stood on the brakes so hard the truck howled and screeched, juddering into the side of the tarmacked road.

Picked out in the beam of the headlights was a figure, pale in the light, skirt and top bleached to white, eyes tightened up in the glare, hair a wild halo the colour of fire.

‘Mi!’

Mi didn’t move of course, just waited for the truck to ease up to her and for Reve to push open the door.

‘I was waiting,’ she said. ‘Like you said I should, Reve. I remembered.’ She tucked herself in beside him and stared straight ahead. ‘Why aren’t we
moving?’

Theon pushed the old truck into gear. ‘Where you sprung from, Mi? Reve thinkin you walk away on him.’

‘Hiding,’ she said. ‘Seen that Ramon come runnin down the beach on his own and I know,’ she said emphatically, ‘he got a spite against me, always kickin at my
garden . . .’

‘Don’ think so, Mi,’ said Reve. ‘He came an’ gave warnin that Hevez mean to give you hurt.’ Ramon was an ally; maybe if they had been able to stay, he’d
have turned out a friend, like LoJo.

‘. . . So I come up to the road an’ start walkin, an’ then I come back, cos I remember, ’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard what he had said, or maybe simply chosen
not to hear it. She did that sometimes. ‘The night’s almost done; dark’s getting thinner.’

She was right. A few moments later Theon switched off the headlights and the highway stretched ahead, a long black line pointing north and to the city.

‘I looked for you down on the beach, Mi, but you’d already gone. It was bad last night. Tomas got burned out.’

‘I seen the fires,’ she said.

‘Your old car got burned too. Hevez come down, jus’ like Ramon say he would.’

Mi’s expression, when she spoke with Reve, was almost always neutral, like nothing touched her, not really; now her voice seemed to shrink and curl up small. ‘Why they hate me, Reve?’

Theon looked across at them, shifted gear and said, ‘You’re different, is all. An’ . . . some people got to break what they can’t have. Boys mostly.’

‘Not Reve,’ she said and then looked out of the window. They rode in silence for a while and then she said, ‘Why Ramon give warning? I thought he the one who most give
hurt.’

‘I did him favour,’ said Reve.

To their right, for the first hour of their travelling, was the sandy dry scrubland and low dune-like hills of this stretch of the coast. They passed a string of shabby
half-towns, ribboned along the highway, stalls stocked with melon and dusty fruits. There were cafes with, it seemed, never more than one or two men sitting outside, staring at them as they
trundled by. There were gas stations, each with its own graveyard of dead trucks, piles of old tyres and beaten tin roof, which, as the sun climbed higher, glinted and flared in the bright light.
Everything was makeshift, unfinished and already crumbling. This is the way things were outside Rinconda, Reve thought, hardly different at all. But he liked it that the highway trailed along
beside the ocean; it looked so fresh and so blue. ‘Hasn’t your friend Two-Boat got his place somewhere down there?’ he said to Mi, leaning across her and pointing down to a smudge
of houses, white stone, the glitter of glass.

Mi started her quiet one-note hum.

‘You don’ wan’ talk ’bout him?’ Reve said, shifting back to how he had been sitting before.

She turned her head to look out of the side window, still humming.

‘You different person when Two-Boat visit you.’ He let that sink in. Then he said. ‘You don’ do this hummin. I tell you, Mi, if you go hummin next time he see you,
he’ll be gone for dust.’

She gave a little grunt and hummed louder. Now she was just doing it to annoy him, and she was succeeding. ‘You goin stop that,’ he said. ‘You send Theon to sleep, and you
rattle up my thinking. Why you never got any tune in you humming? You just drone.’

‘Like a bee?’

‘Not as pretty as a bee.’

‘Maybe you sayin I drone like an old cow got sick and is looking for some grass. You think I sound like that?’

It was noisy in the cab, but Theon picked up on what Mi was saying and he laughed.

‘Maybe the cow’s not so old,’ said Reve.

Mi nodded. ‘No, not old.’

He could never quite tell with her joking, but she made him smile all the same; no one else talked like her. Seeing her like this, sitting up stiffly in the cab, gazing straight out at the long
road, her head tilted a little, and the light shining in through the side window so her hair flamed, the image of the drowned woman rose up in his mind. It was almost as if she were right there in
the cab. Then it was just Mi sitting beside him. He’d have to be careful with her up in the city – not to let her go wandering off.

At the next stop Theon bought them drinks and told them how to find their way to Señor Moro, pulling a slip of paper from the top pocket of his shirt. ‘This what
you look for.’ It read: ‘Slow Bar, Agua’. ‘That’s his place,’ he said. ‘And you give him something from me.’ He passed over a card with a long number
written on it.

‘What’s this?’ asked Reve.

‘Business. Always business, Reve, that’s what come first. He’ll be happy to get this, cos you goin tell him that all he got to do is come into Rinconda and ring this number,
and he’ll see the man who called that coastguard chopper down on him.’

‘All right.’ Reve took the card and the piece of paper and folded them into the back pocket of his jeans.

Theon started up the truck. ‘I tell you both something. You watch for thief in this city. Thief everywhere you walk. And something else: Moro say he goin help you, he’ll want
something back. You be careful what you promise.’

‘Not goin promise anything . . .’

Theon held up his hand to stop him. ‘I know, I’m just sayin. Thing different in the city.’ He hesitated and Mi, who had been sitting there not appearing to be interested in any
of this, suddenly broke in.

‘This man Moro another one with devil in him. I don’ think we need this man, Reve. We find our own way.’

Theon shrugged. ‘Just sayin: everyone got their own learning to do.’

Eventually the highway peeled away from the coast and the land began to look a little greener. To the west the long bank of hills sharpened, like a wall, thought Reve, like it had to keep the
ocean from rolling in and covering everything. He wondered what it would be like to live so far away from water, and so high up too – you’d spend all your time looking down.

The occasional ribbon of shops and shacks along the road started to thicken, as if the city were crowding out to meet them. Deeper and deeper around them the buildings grew. It
was like their village piled up tight against another village and another: plastic and tin and wood and wire, patched and tucked together, and faces watching, and people, so many people all in the
one place, along the roadside and running, sometimes almost under the wheels of the truck.

Reve flinched and shut his eyes and braced himself for an accident that never came. How would they ever find their way anywhere?

‘Where in all this place we goin, Theon?’ It was one thing knowing that the city would be big because people told you so, but seeing and feeling all the crush of buildings and people
everywhere you turned your head . . . There seemed hardly space to breathe.

‘Market,’ said Theon. ‘This where I come get my supply for the cantina. And that’s where you get down and make your own way. I’m back here this day week, so if you
want me, you look for me then. In the market. Sud – that’s what they call it.’

‘I like the city,’ said Mi, her eyes gleaming and her head turning all the time as if she could somehow scoop everything into her mind. ‘City got life running in it. People
like fish in the sea – you ever thought that? – ’cept fish you can see. You can’t see nothin when you’re in that boat you got. Here, here everything is all around. We
goin find her, Reve. We getting closer all the time. Closer an’ closer.’ She patted her knees and then turned and smiled at him. ‘Trust me.’

A whole city all around them! And she thought all they had to do was get down from the truck and there their mother would be. He knew it wouldn’t be like that. Whether she liked it or not,
they would have to start with Señor Moro.

The truck cut through the centre, all gleaming shops and wide roads, a miracle place with people in suits and swinging skirts, carrying bags and wearing shiny shoes, and then
they were in a dustier part of town. It still had high buildings, and shops, but not so smart. They wound this way and that until they came to the market itself: a sprawl of stalls and awnings, and
people shovelling and shouting and haggling. Theon found a place to pull up the truck. It was right beside a wall with a poster of a man with slick black hair and longing eyes staring down into the
face of the most beautiful girl Reve had ever seen.

‘Here,’ said Theon. ‘This the place – you make sure you remember it, all right?’

A grizzled man in a battered straw hat peered up at the cab. His eyes creased as he recognized Theon and he gestured for him to get down. Theon lifted his hand, signalled five minutes and the
man turned away. He looked like a farmer but where were the fields? There was no space for anything in this place, just buildings and people pushing in all around and Reve had to crane his head to
see even a slip of sky.

‘Reve not going to forget this place,’ said Mi. ‘Not with that girl on the wall. Look at him, Theon, Reve one minute in the city and he fallin in love with a dream woman!
I’m goin to have trouble pulling him away from this place. Reve,’ she said with pretend sweetness, ‘wake up now! No one look like that in real life. She a painting.’

‘No,’ said Theon, ‘some women can look like that.’

Mi turned away, not believing him.

Reve smiled. Mi hated being told she was wrong about anything. ‘Don’t worry, Mi. Only one person we go looking for. I know that.’

‘All right,’ said Theon. ‘Remember what I tell you. You keep your money safe, and when you meet the señor, you be more careful than anything. You get nothin for nothin,
in this place. He draw you in easy enough, so be watching, Reve.’

Reve nodded. He would be watching all the time.

‘And . . .’ Theon looked out of the window at the bustling market, like he was chewing over something he didn’t know how to say to them.

Mi gave him a sharp look. ‘You got something to tell about our mother,’ she said abruptly.

‘I done things in my time . . .’

Mi wasn’t looking at him; she was staring fixedly out of the cab window at the fading poster up on the building. Reve knew she was listening though.

‘Felice only ever run with the money. Remember that. She knew what she was doin when she left you.’

Reve looked at him.

Mi started her humming. Reve put his hand on hers, but she didn’t stop.

‘What you wantin to say, Theon?’

‘Don’t go expecting too much,’ said Theon.

Mi jerked her hand away from Reve, pushed open the cab door, jumped down and was gone, pushing her way through the bustling market. Reve snatched his bundle with their dollars stuffed in it and
was slithering across the seat to follow after her, when Theon caught his arm.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you be ready for what you find. And, Reve, remember, you give that number to Moro.’

‘OK. OK. Got to find her, Theon.’ He didn’t think she would run far, but how far did you need to run in this place before you got lost and something happened to you? He jumped
down from the cab and scanned the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of her wild flame hair. Nothing.

He hadn’t taken one step in the city and this was it: he’d lost her!

‘Hey. Scuse me.’ He threaded his way as quickly as he could down one of the twisting routes through the market. ‘Scuse me. Please . . .’

‘Scuse! Scuse!’ Right on his heels two half-pint street children in surprisingly clean white vests were grinning and one of them was mimicking him. ‘What you
got, country?’ said the slightly taller of the two. His teeth were white and his eyes were shining, and he was dancing up and down on his toes, bobbing like a boxer ready to duck and weave
any which way. The other child was darkerskinned, flat brown, and hair so short Reve couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy. Girl, he thought, maybe. She stood behind the boy and looked at
him out of solemn eyes.