Call Down Thunder (19 page)

He couldn’t believe what she was telling him. In all this place! Two little street children who happened to live with their mother . . . ‘Mi, you sure ’bout this? That girl
could be telling thing that you want to hear. You know, tha’ happen when you come to the city. You got to be careful cos people tell you thing—’

‘She tell the truth, that little girl. I know she tell the truth. I can tell.’

‘Hope you’re right, Mi.’

‘I’m right! I’m right! I’m always right, Reve.’ She laughed excitedly. ‘We almost there, almost home, hey. What you think our mother goin say when she see us,
when we come walkin in through her door? I think she goin want us more than anythin, hey. I think she goin tell us all ’bout everything. You think she’ll cry? People cry when they happy
sometime. I seen that. I don’ cry. You don’ cry. Don’ recall you ever cryin, Reve; even when you nothin but small, you got a serious face, most serious face in Rinconda . .
.’

She was so happy, but all he could do was shake his head. He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. This was not home, and it was certainly not a place to get lost in. He wondered how long
the children would be before they came back to them.

He opened his eyes, about to ask Mi whether she really trusted these two children when he realized that straight opposite him a sallow face with oil-black hair and a droopy moustache was staring
out at him. The man smiled and his teeth were long and yellow.

Two doors further along, a young man stepped into the alley, tight black jeans and pointy white shoes. He flexed his fingers and then buttoned up his shirt. From somewhere behind this man Reve
could hear the sound of a woman crying.

The man opposite with his wolf-like smile was still looking at him through his glassless window, and nodding his head. Come on in, he seemed to be suggesting. Come on, country boy, bring your
sister with you . . .

Reve pushed himself away from the wall and stood by Mi. A moment later Baz reappeared with his bag in her hand. Behind her was Demi. He grinned and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Thought you
goin be quicker on yo’ feet, country.’

Baz handed him the bag and Mi jumped to her feet. Reve checked the contents and slipped the money into his back pocket. ‘A’right. Thank you, but you . . .’ he said to Demi,
‘you don’ touch my things again. You hear me?’

Baz looked at him with her solemn eyes and Reve felt as if he had done something wrong.

Demi laughed. Nothing seemed to bother him.‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Everyone follow me. I take you see Fay.’

The two children led them further into the Barrio.

On a boat you got the coast, or you got the sun. You have something to tell you where you are, but here in this place, where every alley runs around on itself and is tangled up worse than an old
net, you have nothing.

They reached a dead-end courtyard with a grey wall on one side, mounded up with rubbish and bones and something wrapped up in a stinking old carpet piled on the top of it. Opposite was the back
of a building with a domed roof, bleached white by sun and neglect. Stone steps led up the side of this wall. ‘This a good place if you get lost,’ said Baz. ‘Hey, Demi?’

Demi shrugged like he didn’t care what she showed them.

‘Me an’ Demi come here. That wall’s a bad place, but up on the roof is good. No one ever go there.’

They followed her back out of the courtyard and on. East, Reve reckoned, though he wasn’t sure. Baz and Demi walked quickly, turning left, ducking right, never hesitating until they
suddenly burst into a little group of young men squatted round in a circle, playing dice for dollars.

One of the men looked up. ‘Hey, Demi, what’s this?’

He eyed Mi. The others stood up.

‘You bringin in country guests, Demi? You know you always got to pay, if you bringin in guests.’ The young man was a good bit taller than Reve, but skinny.

‘These two friendly with Señor Moro,’ said Demi importantly. ‘You got any business, you talk to him.’ He sauntered on and the others followed him. Reve tensed and
put himself between Mi and the men, expecting the rest of the little crowd to move on him right away. But they didn’t; they shrugged, backed off. One of them said mockingly, ‘So you got
the señor’s favour, Demi. You goin be king of the Barrio?’

‘Tha’s me,’ said Demi.

Demi led them on through the maze, ducking through a gap in a wall, up a ladder and across flat crumbling rooftops, down again, and then over a series of dry ditches.
‘Your sister goin to do real good in the city. Fay say pretty girl’s like gold mine, almost much a gold mine as me. I can conjure thing out o’ thin air like a magic man.’
Then he blew on his fingertips like they were so hot they had caught fire.

Baz snorted. ‘Only thing you conjure is fat-nothin air comin out your mouth.’

Mi seemed nervous but excited too. She didn’t seem to mind the way they were getting deeper and deeper into the maze, but she kept a tight grip on Reve’s wrist. ‘You ever think
of getting married, Reve?’ she asked him.

‘Where that come from, Mi? What you thinkin? No, I never think ’bout marryin.’

They were close to the river now and the land was all bristly, stump grass and baked mud that hummed with flies; it smelt bad too, like something had died and been left to rot in the sun. The
river itself was nothing but a thin slide of water over mud.

‘That’s our place, up at the top.’ Baz pointed to a derelict warehouse two storeys tall, perched out over the river.’ She’d stopped beside a wide ditch, rank with
greasy sludge. A couple of railway sleepers served as a bridge.

Demi ran ahead across the bridge, skipped up some steps that were down at the end of the building and disappeared through a battered galvanized door into the warehouse.

‘You think we got problem if we go in this place?’ Reve said to Baz.

She looked at him and bit her lip. Her eyes were round and dark; he found it hard to match her quiet gaze, and she was only half his age. ‘What problem?’

‘Come on, Reve! What you sayin?’ Mi flapped her hand, as if he was just another pestering fly. ‘We’re here! Baz, can we go see her?’

Baz ran across the old rail sleepers, Mi followed, hands out on either side to balance and Reve came behind. Baz pushed open the door. ‘Our place is on the top,’ she said again.

A makeshift ladder led up to the next level, a wide dirty space, concrete dust, rag and plastic littering the floor. It smelt sharp and sour. The air was heavy with it. Reve
thought that the smell could just be lifting off the river. The place needed a storm, waves coming in off the ocean, give it a chance to wash clean. Why didn’t anyone clean here, pick up the
rubbish? There was money in plastic, or Theon wouldn’t pay him.

There was another ladder and another floor and then a darker space with no windows, and a door that the little girl knocked on. Three sharp raps and then she pushed it open and went in.

Mi looked at Reve and then she took his hand and they went in, stopping just inside the door. The air was fuggy, and though there were windows, they were so smeared and grubby that the sunlight
had trouble cutting through the glass and throwing a dirty square of light into the centre of the room.

‘This them, eh?’ The voice was husky, like it had been dipped in smoke and rum, or like maybe it had come out of the back of a dream.

Mi squeezed Reve’s hand. The woman was sitting at one end of a table on the far side of the room. Her hair was a stormy tangle, and yes, it burned a little like Mi’s. Reve stared at
her and wondered if this could possibly be their mother. She wasn’t so old, wasn’t young either. Her face was pale, not like anyone from the village; she wasn’t dressed like a
village woman either. She had a white shirt, man’s shirt, and creamy stained jacket, the sleeves rolled up just to her elbows, and she was wearing trousers. There was a bottle in front of
her, and a saucer, black with butt ends. She was smoking a thin black cigar.

She was like a faded-out memory of the woman he’d seen down in the ocean. That was it. Nothing more than that. Reve felt a moment of disappointment, but more for Mi than for himself. He
had never had Mi’s conviction that somehow they would find their mother and then everything would be all right. This woman didn’t look like she could be anybody’s mother.

There were a couple of children over by the window and a little boy, as young as Demi and Baz, sitting down on a mat, watching a streaky black-and-white TV. A girl, about the same age as Mi was
tending a pot bubbling over a stove. She didn’t look at them. Whatever she was cooking was more important than a couple of stray blowins.

‘Well, step in. No one goin bite you here. Let me see what my clever children brought, brought in for Fay to take a look at, just like I ask.’

Demi was grinning. He looked so happy, Reve reckoned, that if he’d been a dog he’d have been wagging his tail so hard it would have spun him right round; Baz didn’t show
anything though. She had slipped over to a corner, as if she wanted to disappear.

Mi tossed back her head and stuck out her chin, like the way she did when she was ready to face a storm or cut words with someone maybe ready to give her trouble. She gave his hand a little tug
but Reve held her back. He felt safer by the door, in the shadow. She was trembling, not so you’d notice, but he could feel the tremor in her fingers.

‘Why you change your name?’ asked Mi.

The woman didn’t answer, but her hand paused for a fraction as she was lifting her cigar up to her mouth. She sucked in smoke and then puffed it out sideways, half closing her eyes as she
regarded them. ‘How long you been in the city?’ she said. ‘Look like no time to me; you got country writ all over you.’

Demi nodded his head vigorously. ‘S’what I said, Fay.’

She ignored him. ‘And you got the señor expectin you – tha’s what he tell me,’ she said. ‘Called me up all in a worry you get lost in the Barrio. He
didn’ want that. Didn’t want that at all. Told me to find you an’ bring you in.’ She exhaled lazily. ‘What you say to that man? You got something special,
child?’ Her attention was all on Mi. ‘You got somethin that man want? Maybe you different from the ones he usually got business for.’

What did she mean by that? What business? It was him the señor had wanted to offer a job to, not Mi. Sweat dripped down his neck but he felt suddenly cold. Why was this woman leaning
forward and peering at Mi as if she were something that maybe could be bought or sold?

‘Come a little closer,’ said Fay. ‘Step in the light.’

Neither of them moved.

Why had Señor Moro called this woman? Reve remembered the way Moro had looked down from the top of his building out over on the Barrio and now he imagined him throwing out strands of web
like a spider, winding a strand round them and dragging them back. Theon had warned them. He had said that if Moro offered anything, he would want something in return. Was it really Mi he had plans
for?

Why hadn’t Baz or Demi said anything about his call?

Reve felt as if he and Mi had stepped blindly into a trap. He glanced at Mi, but she didn’t have eyes for him, just for the woman.

‘Why you change your name?’ Mi said again. ‘Why you don’ tell me that?’

Fay tilted her head to one side, like Mi did sometimes, and took another pull on her thin cigar.

‘You sayin you don’t know who we are? Or why we come lookin?’

The woman gave a short laugh. ‘My name Fay, all the time. You can call me that if you got business with me. And you here cos my Demi bring you in,’ she said, patting Demi’s
arm.

Mi tightened her grip on Reve’s hand.

‘He lead you by the nose,’ continued Fay, ‘tha’s why you here. The señor got his intentions for you. I don’t need to know nothin more ’n that.’
She sucked on her cigar. ‘Why do we do things, Demi?’

‘Business, Fay,’ piped Demi.

‘Business,’ she agreed.

Reve noticed Baz looking at him and Mi, and then at Fay, watching them all, her eyes round and dark and her face still and serious. Those children had brought them here because they had been
told to, not for any other reason. Señor Moro told this woman, Fay, and she told her runarounds. That was it.

‘You got no memory then?’ said Mi stubbornly. ‘One time you carry a different name and before you go running up to the city . . . You got no recall of that?’

‘Different name? Everyone carry different names in this place.’ Fay flipped out a cellphone and checked a message. The phone’s light made her face sharp and hungry-looking.
‘You boyfriend and girlfriend? Bit young, the boy, eh? I can find you better boyfriend if you want, someone with a little spending money . . .’

Reve couldn’t take his eyes from her. Didn’t like the way she smoked and looked at them as if they were some funny thing the tide had washed up. He didn’t like it that she and
Señor Moro seemed tied hook and line. ‘Mi,’ he said softly, giving her hand a tug, ‘she not the one we lookin for, Mi. This not the place. We back up a little, eh?’
It wasn’t safe.

‘No.’

‘What you sayin to me?’ said Fay, her voice still husky but with the warmth stripped out of it. ‘People been tellin you things?’ She ground her cigar into the overflowing
saucer. That somehow was like a signal because the two children, Baz and Demi, slipped behind Fay; one on the left, one the right. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ she said. ‘You got nothin
more to say? Course you got thing to say. So come on, come a little closer now. You half in shadow; come up here to me. Step in the light like I tol’ you.’

Mi let go of Reve’s hand, smoothed her skirt and took two paces forward into the dirty square of light. ‘We come looking for you,’ she said; her hand go up to her hair, pushing
a strand away from her eye.

Reluctantly Reve moved up to be beside her and for the first time he felt Fay’s eyes on him, eyes that widened momentarily as her gazed flickered between him and Mi, and when she spoke
there was a sudden note of uncertainty, a slight tremor, like the first ripple of wind on a still sea. ‘That right?’ Fay said. ‘Someone tell you ’bout me?’

Reve saw that little Baz sensed the change too. She looked up at Fay and touched her arm.