Call Down Thunder (3 page)

‘Go on then,’ said Mi.

‘What?’

‘Ask that question you got.’

‘How you know I got question?’

She moved a stick, laid another on top of it to make a cross. ‘Cos you carry one big askin face, tha’s why.’

So he told her as accurately as he could what it was that he had seen: a young woman, with floating red hair, down near the ocean floor, maybe six or seven metres down. The water had been clear
and clean, like the glass in a rich man’s car, and it had been like that, like looking through a window, except she’d been way below him, the light shining on her, her hair red, like
the red you get when a fire is dying low.

‘She look a bit like you,’ he said simply when he had finished telling her everything, how he had dived down and there’d been nothing there. ‘And she look living not
drowned. She look pretty. And she look sad. Made me hurry back and find you.’

Mi pulled a face when he said that, but she didn’t look at him, kept shifting things one way or another, concentrating on her little garden.

‘Six, seven metre down and she don’t look drowned? You goin tell me she swim up and start talkin to you? What you playin at, Reve?’

‘Just tellin you what I seen. You think it got meaning? Like things you see sometime. Things you say you hear. You think it like that?’

She turned and looked sharply at him when he said this. ‘You not the same as me, Reve. You don’t got thing happening inside you all the time.’

‘I know,’ he said, trying to calm her. ‘I know all this you’re sayin but I just had to tell you what I seen. Tha’s all, Mi.’

‘Maybe you tellin’ me stories, Reve. Maybe you think you got dreamin power, Reve. Maybe you come in my business—’

‘Mi, you just buzzin!’ He laughed but uncertainly, worried that her mind was racing away with itself and she would get wound up and start juddering.

She sat back and hugged her knees. She looked miserable. She often looked distracted, or wild, or cross but not this, not like someone was grinding his heel down on her spirit. ‘I believe
you dream this woman,’ she said.

‘I don’ know. Maybe.’

‘Maybe you dream it for me,’ she said slowly.

He didn’t follow that so he said nothing, sat watching her move her little bits of plastic and stone about.

‘Who you think look like me?’ she asked after a moment.

‘No one. No one in this place.’

‘Think.’

He shook his head. ‘You different from most everybody I ever seen.’

‘Except the woman who birthed me.’ She straightened up and looked at him.

‘She dead.’

‘You said she didn’t look dead.’

‘I said the woman I seen didn’t look drowned. Not the same thing, Mi.’

She gripped his wrist. ‘You the one came to tell me these things,’ she said. ‘Now, I’m tellin you, Reve, I see the meanin. Tha’s what I do. An’ I see this.
She alive and she callin me . . .’ Her mood had completely changed. There was something almost desperate in her expression and in her voice too. Sunlight and storm, she could slip from one to
the other in a heartbeart.

‘She? Alive? Our mother? No, Mi, listen. You the one dreamin now.’ He stroked her forearm. She was still gripping his wrist tightly. ‘She gone a long time, Mi. Eight years. The
police took her away. We know this. She get swallow up in the Castle. Uncle Theon told us all this. Told us no one come out of that prison once they go in. She’s dead to us. Hey, if some
miracle happen an’ she’s living free, why she don’ come knocking on our door before this time? I don’t even know how she look any more, Mi. You didn’t see what I seen;
you don’t know how she look.’

‘You tol’ me. It’s her! Who else? She somewhere and I got to go find her.’ She shook his wrist. ‘This is what it all mean.’

He’d never had the same dreams about their mother that Mi had; she talked about her sometimes, tried to make Reve remember her, but she was never more than hazy when he tried calling her
up: a smile, a smoky laughing voice, but what he remembered most was her absence. When they buried their father she wasn’t there. She was a gone-away mother, that’s all she was; and now
to leave Tomas, leave his fishing, his uncle Theon, leave LoJo, leave Sultan? Leave his whole life behind him and just up and go? The thought startled him.

‘Maybe she goin to come find us,’ he said. ‘If she need us, she know where we are.’

‘No!’ She let go of his wrist. ‘You don’ understand.’ She snatched up a Coke bottle half filled with sand and started poking little stones into it. Sultan lifted
his head and growled.

‘Maybe I don’t, Mi.’ He paused, waiting for an explanation. But she stayed silent, lips pursed, busy with her stones and the bottle. ‘So, how ’bout you tellin me
all these thing you so sure of,’ he said at length. ‘Sometimes talkin to you like teasin a crab from its shell.’

It was as if she didn’t hear him. ‘There’s storm comin here. I feel it. Too much comin in aroun’ me. Too much. I feel it comin.’

Reve glanced up at the sky over the ocean: blue and clear not a whisper of cloud; and the sea was calm, nudging gently against the beach. The fishing fleet were on their way back. All was as it
should be, but not for Mi. ‘You tired bein on your own, Mi? You got more trouble from Hevez than I seen today? Somethin happenin you not told me about?’

He reached out to take her arm but just as he did so, she started to tremble, gently at first and then more violently, shaking jerkily, her eyes rolled so far back all you could see was the
yellowy whites. She gasped. ‘They comin! They comin like a storm. Bringin money and sickness.’ She gasped again, gulping air into her lungs. ‘I hearin thunder . . .’ Her
voice was horrible, old and raspy, like an old woman’s all of a sudden. She’d done something like this at a meeting once. It had scared him then; scared him now. He didn’t know if
it was her sickness or some spirit tearing to get out of her.

Sultan lifted his head and howled once and then edged close to Reve. Reve touched his nose and the dog quietened. Reve put his arm tightly round Mi’s shoulder and gradually the trembling
died away. Her head tilted over, rested on his shoulder. ‘You all right now,’ he said softly. ‘It’s gone now.’

After a second she looked up at him, no expression on her face. Her forehead gleamed with sweat. ‘Got to leave,’ she said. ‘Got to leave this place here.’

He stepped over to the back of the VW and took out the water bottle she kept there and handed it to her. She drank greedily and spat the last mouthful on to the sand.

‘You never talk ’bout leavin Rinconda before, Mi. You sure ’bout leavin? We got a life here. Maybe Tomas, the Boxer or Uncle Theon stop Hevez bothering, or maybe you talk to
Ciele.’ LoJo’s mother always had time for Mi.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t like Tomas come near me,’ she said.

Tomas and Mi, the two most important people in his life, and there was never an easy word between them.

Then she puffed out her cheeks and exhaled slowly. ‘Don’t think I want anyone near me, Reve. Too much people askin and wantin me to tell them what goin happen in their lives, when
they goin catch fish, pay their bills, have their babies and I don’ know what to tell them, ’cept sometimes a shouting voice come burnin up inside me, and it make me sick.’

‘Like now?’

She nodded. ‘But when I find her, Reve, everythin be different then.’ She bowed her head. ‘I got thing I got to know, and only she can tell me. I’m grown, Reve. I got
woman-time comin on me. Maybe different for you. Tomas tell you all you need.’ She looked at him. ‘I swear that woman you dream mean only one thing. It mean she ready for me to come
looking for her; and this the right time cos I got to leave this place.’

‘All right.’ He stood up. ‘But don’ you go leaving me. Hey. We talk ’bout this. You don’ know where she is, or if she’s living.’

‘She is.’

‘OK. OK. But you got any idea where you start lookin? Even if she livin, she could be anywhere.’ She frowned and he let that thought sink in. He knew what it was with her, she
thought she could just get up and go and that would be the end of it. Tomas always said wishing never made a thing happen.

‘You lookin to stop me goin?’

‘No, Mi. That’s not it . . . but I don’t want you goin off some place an’ you get lost, an’ I don’t know where you gone. Let me do some thinkin, Mi. Let me
figure out a plan. I can do that.’ He hesitated and then made up his mind. ‘An’ if you go anywhere, you let me come with you.’

‘All right.’ She wiped her wrist across her forehead and rolled her head round, easing tension from her neck, then looked at her hands, stretching her fingers out. ‘Look how
they tremblin, Reve. Always a sign when they go tremblin.’

‘You think we got a storm comin? You think maybe I gotta haul the skiff up high?’

‘I say that?’ She looked at her trembling fingers again, her expression puzzled. ‘I feel something like storm in my bones.’ Then she clenched her hands into tight fists.
‘What else did I say?’

‘“They comin,” you said. You said you could hear thunder.’ He gave a smile. ‘It don’t sound too good.’

‘How long since the Night Men come in the village?’

He pulled a face. ‘Maybe six months.’

‘You stay quiet these nights, Reve. Tuck you head down.’ She turned back to her garden and started moving the different pieces around again.

‘See you tomorrow.’ She didn’t answer. This was just the way she was: half tell you something, leave you wondering. She could drive you crazy, drive him crazy anyhow.

He whistled up Sultan and headed off down the beach. He hoped his jackfish hadn’t spoilt. Tomas hated it when a fisherman wasted his catch. That would be storm enough to deal with.

Reve walked quickly to the skiff, but before lifting out the red fish box he stood for a moment looking out to sea.

‘What you thinkin ’bout this, Sultan?’

Sultan had busily trotted round to the stern, but at the sound of Reve’s voice he stopped and looked back up at him. He was a smart dog, smarter than the skinny mutts that nosed the back
of the shacks, but not smart enough to answer any of the questions Reve had buzzing in his mind. Sultan cocked his head, waiting, but when Reve didn’t say anything else he put his paws up on
the stern, sniffed the air and barked. He could smell the fish Reve had bundled under the stern thwart, and he knew they had to be taken up to the cold store.

Reve wasn’t thinking about the fish. It was Mi; she was harder to read than the sea. That’s what he was thinking. The breeze was just strong enough to put a light ruffle on the sea
and keep the heavy air moving. It would die away and then it would be a still night. Nothing heavy, no yellow in the sky: a perfect time for the Night Man to make a run across the border. If they
came, it would be a good chance to earn a dollar; there was no way he was going to tuck his head down if there was money to be made.

Then he grimaced. But if there was a spit chance of a storm blowing up out of nowhere, he couldn’t risk losing the skiff. Lose the skiff and that would be the end of everything. Maybe he
would get LoJo to help him bring it high up above the tideline, just in case.

He lifted out the catch and checked it. The fish smelt all right though the skin had started to dry up a little bit, but everyone said that if you catch and ice a fish on the same day it’s
going to last fine till market. So that’s what he would do; take them straight to the fish store, ice five and keep two for the stove.

He cut up to the right behind the first line of shacks and yards, avoiding the start of the main track which would have taken him by Tomas the Boxer, who would be sitting or lying outside his
shack, just staring at the ocean. That was the most thing he did now that Reve was skilled enough to take the skiff out on his own. His shack was at the end of the track, the nearest to the harbour
wall and the furthest from the highway. Anyone leaving Rinconda took that road; it was the road he and Mi would have to take if they went off looking like Mi wanted.

After fifty metres he left the path that led behind the village, crossed a wire and skirted a mess of rubbish where pigs were rooting. Then he slipped through a narrow gap between two wooden
buildings and came out right by LoJo’s place, and on to the main track again.

LoJo’s mother, Ciele, was sitting up on the porch of her home, her baby girl on her knee. He stopped and asked her to tell LoJo he wanted help with the skiff.

‘When you goin get some muscle in your arm, Reve?’ She was easy and liked to tease the boys. Reve always felt this was a different family because of her, different to most families
in Rinconda. ‘When you goin to get like Tomas the Boxer? He could carry that boat up from the shore on his own back. That’s what my Pelo say.’

Mostly people grew old quickly in Rinconda, but Reve thought Ciele looked young, pretty too. Pelo was a lucky man to catch her, Tomas said. Like most people in Rinconda though, they struggled to
get by; the shack was storm-battered, the porch warped and in need of replacing. Pelo wasn’t the luckiest fisherman, and word was that he struggled to pay his debts to Calde.

‘I can lift most anything,’ said Reve, ‘but I savin my strength for hauling fish.’

She laughed. ‘That right? How many you got today?’

‘Seven.’

‘Seven’s good. ’

‘You tell Lo my message.’

‘I’ll tell him.’ He was just about to move on when she said, ‘I saw Hevez pass. He been giving your sister trouble?’

Reve nodded. ‘Some.’

‘He looked hurt.’ Reve didn’t answer. The baby girl, Mayash, wriggled out of her arms and Ciele let her down on to the ground. The baby straight away crawled along to the end
of the porch where Reve was standing.‘You watch yourself, Reve,’ said Ciele, ‘and you get Mi move in from that place she got out there; she’s not safe.’

‘Have you tried telling my sister what to do?’ He touched Mayash’s nose.

Ciele smiled. ‘I got trouble minding my own family without minding yours, Reve. You tell her. She hears more than she pretends to hear, if you know what I’m saying.’

He saw Ramon and Sali hanging around outside his uncle Theon’s cantina when he went to drop the fish off at the cold store. Sali slapped his arm like a tough guy, made a
fist at Reve then spat. He wouldn’t have dared do that if he’d been on his own. Ramon just looked at him, said nothing.