Call Down Thunder (20 page)

‘We told that Señor Moro we lookin for someone,’ said Mi, ‘and he said you might be that person.’

‘Did he?’ She was staring at Mi and her thin, pale face looked touched with red. ‘Why’d he do that?’

Mi was staring right back at her. ‘Don’t you know who we are?’

‘Where you say you come from?’

‘Come from a village on the coast,’ said Mi, ‘and we lookin for a mother we had, a mother who run off on us, years back. Mean somethin to you now?’

Fay sat very still for a long moment. Then she pulled a face and shrugged. ‘That place got a name?’ she said coldly.

Mi’s trembling was clearly visible now. ‘Called,’ she said. ‘A place called . . .’

‘Rinconda,’ said Reve for her, putting his arm round Mi and holding her tight. She told him one time that when her trembling was this bad it was like a weight, a stone slab pressing
down on her, bringing dark into her head and then the voices would start up. ‘We didn’ mean any harm comin here. Yeah. We make a mistake comin here. Mi, come on.’

With an effort she pushed him away. ‘No!’

The woman sat back in her chair. ‘What you want with this mother you lookin for? No one come lookin for someone ’less they want something. What you want?’

‘You don’t know!’

‘I got children looking all the time for this person or that. Children no one want. You nothing special here. What you expect? You expect a little free this, eh? A little free that? Where
do money grow, Demi?’

‘It don’t grow on a tree, Fay.’

‘It don’t. So what you expecting, girl, you and this boy here? And mind you don’t go makin thing up. I don’t have time for lying children! Tell you that for nothing.
Demi, ain’t that the truth?’

‘Truth, Fay,’ said the little thief.

‘Truth,’ she echoed.

Reve took half a step back. He saw that Baz was still watching him; she didn’t miss anything. He wished Mi would give up.

‘We not the ones tellin lies here,’ said Mi.

‘Mi,’ said Reve, trying to get her attention. ‘Come on now.’ He pulled gently at her arm.

But Mi didn’t come on. She started to judder. Her fingers were stretched out tight and a moaning sound was coming out of her mouth.

‘Stop that!’ snapped Fay. She looked at Reve, as if he was responsible. ‘She crazy, that girl? She sick? What you do bringing a sick one here, Demi!’ She stood, pushing
her chair so savagely it spun back, clattering to the floor. Both Baz and Demi flinched away from her, as if expecting her to lash out.

‘I just done what you asked, Fay,’ said Demi. ‘S’all I done. You said bring them in. You said the señor was lookin for them and we’d make money, Fay . .
.’ The words tumbled out of him. Baz remained silent, looking at him.

Mi’s moaning was like the sound a person makes when they have all the air sucked out of them after a belly punch.

‘She’s not sick,’ said Reve. ‘She just get this way when—’

‘I know how she gets!’ shouted Fay.

How did she know?

‘I know what you both are; and I don’t care. You hear me? This is my place! You don’t belong here!’ Her words rasped like nails across the thick air, and her eyes were
wet stone, cold, hard and blind. Like she saw them but not them, not him and Mi but some other children that she didn’t want, didn’t want at all. ‘I am not the person you looking
for. She long gone. She don’t exist any more. You understand? She walked out of your life and you better off without her!’

Her face was a tight white mask; she looked like some bad-dream woman; nothing, nothing like the woman in the ocean. He wanted to move, but he couldn’t. Mi was trembling worse, her legs
locked straight, her head tight as a snap-line quivering in a gale. ‘I’m giving you one chance, you hear me? You leave this place; you go. You find your way out of here. Go on back to
your village. Go!’

‘Fay!’ said Demi. ‘You can’t let them go! The man said he wanted them here. He said—’

The back of Fay’s hand caught Demi with a hard smack that sent him staggering back, one hand clutching the side of his face, the other out to stop himself falling. Baz’s eyes widened
but she never said a word. ‘Out!’ Fay said again, glaring at Mi, as if Mi was the horror. ‘I got no place for you here! You hear me?’

Reve could see a vein on her neck thick as a worm. He pulled Mi, pulled her back through the door. ‘Come on, Mi, down the stairs. Please. Come on! We got trouble here.’ He begged and
urged and guided her down the ladder, half expecting this Fay to burst out of the door and come raging after them, or call up people even worse than her, people like he had seen staring at them in
the Barrio, young men who would tear into them like dogs.

But there was nobody waiting for them outside and no sound of her gang scrambling down after them.

Reve took a deep breath of Barrio air – anything was better than that sour den. He felt shamed and his eyes were hot. But they were out now and away from this woman, this one-time mother.
This runaway mother. This woman bitter as smoke, who’d shouted them away like they were stray dogs. They were wrong to have gone looking for her. He took another breath.

‘Are you a’right, Mi?’

She didn’t respond so he put his arm round her. He could feel her still trembling badly so, gently, he guided her to the sleepers where they could cross the ditch. The sooner they could
put distance between them and this place the better they would both feel. But when he tried to lead her over the little makeshift bridge, she twisted out of his grip and stood facing the old
blistered warehouse, her arms tight at her sides, as if to clamp herself together.

‘You got nothing!’ she screamed up at the building, at the woman she had thought would embrace them, her voice all ripped and raw. ‘You got nothing!’ Then she began
sobbing and her eyes were squeezed shut, but in between the sobs she still shouted: ‘I see you! I see you! I see what you are! You devil woman! You tangle up with so much bad thing . . . You
got a devil eatin you. An’ you try burnin us out of your heart, but all you got now is nothin, nothin . . .’ The stream of words became choked by her miserable sobbing, and then she
retched into the ditch, gasping and coughing up spit and tears.

Reve put his arms round her again and held her tight until the weeping died away and her eyes were no longer rolled up white and frightening, and the trembling had eased. He held her like that
even though he still half expected Fay or her gang to come skidding and sliding down that ladder from her lair. ‘You a’right?’ he said gently. ‘Can you move? We got to go,
a’right?’

She was breathing hard, gulping in the sticky air.

‘Mi, you a’right now?’

She nodded and he felt a wave of relief. His deepest fear was that one time she’d have such a storm inside her it would take her right away and he would never get her back.

‘We goin now,’ he said.

‘A’right.’

He led her back over the makeshift bridge, trying to remember the way they had come, hoping to find somewhere they could hole up and hide before someone come looking for them. He imagined Fay,
calling the señor on her cellphone, shouting at him, shouting at the children in her den.

How had it happened like this? One thing after another: the woman in the sea and then nothing but one storm rolling into another, the one Mi had seen coming.

They ran.

Had he been able to see back in the den, he would have been surprised. The woman, Fay, wasn’t shouting and raving; she wasn’t on her cellphone. She was sitting
right back where she had been when they had gone in, her face pale and drawn, and though her eyes were dry, they were stretched and full of hurt. Baz was beside her, touching her arm. ‘You
got one of your bad spiky feelings, Fay?’ she was saying. ‘That what you got?’

Demi was over by the window, sitting up on a ledge, hugging his knees, not looking at anything, just hugging his knees tight.

They ran.

For more than ten minutes they ran, cutting across the ditches, the patches of scrub, before threading back into the twisted and steaming alleyways of the Barrio. Then when Reve sensed Mi
couldn’t run any further they took a break, leaning up against a wall.

Where would they go? Reve wondered.

There were people all round them now, eyeing them and passing them by. But Reve reckoned it better to ask no one, not in this place. He tugged Mi’s hand and they moved on, turning left,
turning right, winding their way back into the heart of the maze.

‘You got any feeling which way?’ he said to Mi.

She shook her head and looked down at her feet. A moment later she said, ‘You the one, Reve, out in the sea. No road signs there an’ you manage.’

‘An’ you the one who pull sign out of the air, tell people what goin happen. You pick the way, Mi.’

He was trying to tease her a little, but she looked utterly beaten. He’d not seen her like this ever before. ‘I got nothin right,’ she said. ‘Didn’t know she goin
blind us away, pretend not to see who we are. Didn’ know that goin happen. I read your dream woman wrong, Reve. That bit you say about her waving her hand? She just waving us away, even
though she know who we are.’ Her voice was flat.

‘A’right,’ he said. ‘We go this way.’

They came to a corner kitchen with a large fat woman standing in the doorway, her arms folded. They had passed through this place before, he was sure of it. The smell of frying clawed up his
belly, telling him he hadn’t eaten all day. He stopped and Mi stopped beside him. The woman looked down at them. ‘This a payin place,’ she said.

Reve rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a few coins. Fifty . . . sixty cents. He didn’t want to spend more. He didn’t know how long they would have to survive on what little
money he had. The woman looked dismissively at what he was offering.

‘Where you from? You want a charity kitchen,’ said the woman, ‘you go find a church.’

‘Where that?’

She looked at him as if he was some poor dog with only three legs. Then abruptly she turned and went back into her tiny place; it looked so small as if she would hardly fit inside, she was so
big herself.

He turned away, giving Mi a tug, but they had only taken a couple of steps when the woman called them. ‘Here.’ She held out a corner of bread and piece of cold sausage.

‘Thank you,’ said Reve.

The woman shook her head. ‘Don’t come back this way, and you take that girl of yours out of here.’

‘Which way we go?’

The woman looked at him with incredulity. ‘You want me act like some tour guide! What you think this place is?’ She waved her hand, ‘You go on out of here. Give my kitchen bad
name having beggar children crawling on my step.’

Reve ducked his head. ‘A’right,’ he said turning away. ‘We’re goin.’

They set off again. It was a narrow alley, a slip of dark with wire overhead, and it seemed like he had been down it before. They pressed on and then came to the courtyard with the outside
stairway, the place that Demi had said was safe. Reve led Mi up to the domed roof with its little flat edge, like the turned-up rim of a priest’s hat. From the top they could see lanes and
alleys twisting around away from where they were like dark veins running through the body of the Barrio. To the east were the backs of the tall buildings that lined the square where he and Mi had
spent the previous night. There was no traffic in the Barrio, and though he could hear people, voices, sometimes shouting, sometimes at their work, it seemed strangely quiet after the constant blur
of traffic out on the streets.

They would be safe enough there, could rest a little and eat the bread. He pulled Mi down and then leaned against the dome and he broke the bread in half and gave her her portion. It was dry but
not too bad and the sausage was good. He gnawed at it and then realized she wasn’t touching hers.

‘Come on. You got to eat.’

She turned her head and spat – blood.

‘You bite the inside of your mouth again?’

She shrugged. ‘We ever goin get out of this place?’

This place.

‘It make you want the ocean, Mi. Make you think Rinconda something better ’n this,’ he said.

When she didn’t answer he turned and saw tears running down her face, streaking through the grime; he didn’t know what to say.

‘Hey, we make a mistake, got taken in by a couple of slither-back thieves, and that woman nothin to us, Mi. Nothing. I tell you, she not even a dirt shadow of the woman I seen.’

He didn’t know what else to say. They were alone in the city. Theon wasn’t due back for another six days, and the only place they knew was the Slow Bar. And they had to keep well
away from there; away from Moro with his smile and his hand on Reve’s shoulder while all the time what he wanted was Mi. Reve was sure of that now. Maybe he wanted to give her to that strip
of grease from the bar, the one he called Zavvy.

‘We’ll find some place safe. Don’t you think about her,’ he said. ‘She never anything to us—’

‘No. You wrong, Reve. She the one. That woman birth me, birth you too, and I don’ know why but she don’t want none of us.’

The way Mi remembered their mother all those times she talked about her, she was like light shining in through a door, a voice laughing and singing. She wasn’t that any more; she was hard,
cold and dark. That’s what Reve felt.

Mi pulled a face. ‘Something make her ugly inside.’ She sniffed and wiped her forearm across her face. ‘Hope it don’t happen to us.’ Then she looked around.
‘I see nothin, now. Nothin. Got no feeling about which way to go . . . no feeling what to do ’bout anything.’ She sounded exhausted.

He felt like he had a rope knot tied up in his belly.

‘An’ the people in the village, comin out more an’ more, askin question ’bout this, ’bout that, like I got the answer to everything. I’m runnin dry, Reve.
Sometime words come in my head, sometimes the well dry as bone. Tha’s what it feel like. An’ I got more comin at me . . . the boys in the village. All the time . . .’

She was so slight, skin, bone and air, like a bird, shadow bird. ‘Hevez.’

‘Him,’ she agreed. ‘He’s a whole streak of nothin. Dog in the dirt.’ She frowned at the food Reve had put on her lap and absently started to eat it. Tearing at the
sausage, little bits and then hungrily, till it was all gone. ‘A girl should have a mother tell her about what comin round the corner; tha’s what a mother does.’