Call Down Thunder (30 page)

He let her talk, and it eased him to hear how happy she sounded, all that bad time washed back out into the ocean; that’s how it seemed. She told him about Ciele and Ciele’s baby,
told him how they had walked all the way from Rinconda and that the first person they had seen when they had come to San Jerro was LoJo carrying the furled sail from the skiff up the street to the
little place Two-Boat had given him to stay at the back of the village. They were there together. Safe.

He asked her if she had said anything about Pelo. The phone went silent. ‘Mi? You there? Something happen?’

‘No.’

‘Will you tell her?’

‘No.’

He stared at the edge of the table he was sitting at and traced his finger in a cross someone had carved into the wood.

‘You seen it, Reve; you do whatever tellin you need. But you come and see me, Reve. Tha’s what you got to do.’

The day after he had spoken with Mi he went to see Theon, borrowed money for the bus fare, washed and scrubbed himself clean under the standpipe, ignoring the girls joking at
him while he washed, and then walked up to the highway, sat down on the edge of the road and waited for a bus to take him north.

The same coast, the same ocean, the same sandy land, and yet San Jerro seemed to breathe a different air to Rinconda. The place rippled with colour and made him think of the church window he had
seen up in the city. There wasn’t just one track but streets threading this way and that and paved almost all the way down to the bay, where a few skiffs rode at anchor. He wondered which was
his, or whether LoJo was out fishing with the rest of the fleet. He could see sails dotting the horizon.

The village was busy: there were the sounds of building and even traffic; twice he had to step out of the way as trucks came rolling down from the highway. There were even stalls selling fruit
and vegetables, and clothes, pots and tools brought in from the city, he supposed. Such a short way, and yet it was so different to Rinconda, and he wondered why Rinconda couldn’t be like
this. Maybe this was something he could do. Why not? Take away the bad things.

He wanted to find Mi. He wanted to see her and tell her what he was going to do now. He wanted to see her in her house and meet Two-Boat’s mother and make sure that she knew what to do if
Mi got one of her fits. But he knew if he did that he would lose his courage and not go see Ciele at all. So he asked where he would find the woman who had come from Rinconda, and he was shown to a
little white house, on the edge of the village and back from the sea. He knocked on the door and stood back.

She opened the door, and when she saw who it was she smiled and made as if to embrace him, but he took a step back. ‘What is it? You lookin like a ghost.’

‘I got something to say,’ he said.

Her smile faded. He didn’t know how to put it other than how it had happened, so he told it to her plain and her face seemed to shrink in on itself.

When he was done she said, ‘I am sorry,’ which is what he had meant to say, and she shut the door on him. He stood for a moment, thinking she might open it again, but she
didn’t and so he walked away.

He walked fast. He didn’t want to see Mi any more, or LoJo, or even his dog. He didn’t want them to see him, someone who had just come into their village to dump a whole sack of
pain, because that’s all he’d done.

He made his way back up to the highway and waited four hours through the heat of the day to catch the bus going south. When he got back to the Rinconda he cut straight down to the shore and
walked, and collected plastic bottles and didn’t go back up into Pelo’s old place until it was dark, and even then he didn’t go inside, just looked in at the door and saw Tomas
was sleeping and then stayed out on the porch and fell asleep out there.

The next day Tomas asked him how it had gone, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He just said, ‘I told her. Tha’s all.’ Then he made himself busy and went off as soon
as he could, down to the pier, did some work for one of the older fishermen, mending nets. When that was done he walked up to Mi’s old place and sat down under the accacia tree, trying to
make up his mind what he was going to do with his life, because that bright thought that maybe in time he could change things, make the whole village a better place, seemed too far away.

Then three things happened. Two of them on that day, the third a while later.

The first thing happened while he was sitting there, staring at Mi’s burned old car, trying to be practical, trying to think what to do. He heard a shout and a dog barking and there, right
below him, running in towards the shore, was his skiff with the small figure of LoJo in the stern and Sultan up in the bow, paws up on the gunwale, barking at a gull.

He stood up, hardly believing it was possible.

Sultan ran straight up the beach and hurled himself into Reve’s arms, almost knocking him on to his back and then sniffing his eyebrows and licking him. When Reve pushed him back, LoJo was
standing there.

‘He pinin all the time,’ said LoJo, ‘an’ I reckon he so smart he even know what we sayin half the time. Heard mother say you call bring that news, and start up
howlin’ so bad I didn’ have no choice but bring him right on back to you ’fore the neighbours up and drown him!’

Reve fussed the dog a little and settled him down. Then, after a moment, he said, ‘You blame me for your father?’

LoJo shook his head. ‘No.’ His face was sad but set firm. ‘No. We don’ know why he was in that place, why he didn’ call us or anythin, but he did a right thing
helpin’ you and Mi. Like a hero, hey?’

‘Old style,’ said Reve. ‘Only way.’

‘Tomas and him. They both the same.’

‘Maybe.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, Tomas too.’

Second, Ciele and the baby arrived in the evening, walking down the track to her old house while the two boys were out on the porch and Tomas was upright in his bed, rolling a
cigarette. He didn’t smoke them any more, just rolled them up. ‘Keep my hands busy,’ he said. She moved right back into her house and took over the care of Tomas, which rankled
Maria Scatta a little but there wasn’t any negotiating; and everyone in the village knew that Tomas had taken the fall so Ciele and the baby could be safe. She never said anything to Reve
when she moved back in, just set her baby down and wrapped her arms round Reve, held him tight and then let him go, saying: ‘This your place now.’

A whole year went by before the third thing happen. Mi was happy and settled in her mind. Two-Boat was steady and kind and Reve knew him well now, knew he was right for his sister. Everyone had
known that this wedding was coming, rolling in like good weather from the south. Mi came up in a truck to collect them all, and although she was excited there was no spin or dip in her, she seemed
more steady than he could remember. They talked a little before all the celebrating began, down on the beach at San Jerro, with the waves curling in on the sand and behind them the band beginning
to play.

‘It was some miracle,’ said Reve, ‘Two-Boat coming. Making Señor Moro give you up, like that.’

‘Makin him huff an’ puff a little, eh.’ She hitched her brown knees up under the bright blue skirt Two-Boat’s mother had made for her.

‘He did that, and the devil’s old car getting stuck in the sand! How ’bout that!’ She laughed.

‘How’d it happen, Mi? Was that you callin down a storm, wishin so bad for Two-Boat that he hear you in his mind and come for you? That what happen? Because that the most magic thing,
you ever done.’

She tipped her head to one side. ‘That wasn’ magic. I used a cellphone. The boy on the bus, you recall? You were sleepin and so I sat up next to him and I call Enrico, because he
gave me the number and I got that number in my head all the time we were in the city. He said to call him any time I want him, so I call him. Told you we goin get trouble when we hit the village,
know the devil goin come lookin. Just a cellphone, Reve. Borrowed it from that boy.’ She giggled and then fell silent. ‘I think my magic all done now,’ she said after they’d
sat there for a few moments listening to the waves keep easy time with the music of the band.

‘You got magic all the time, Mi,’ he said. ‘You goin keep holdin your meetings?’

She shrugged and hummed a snatch of the song the band was playing. Hummed it like she’d got the tune in her head. He’d never heard her do that before.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘If it’s what people want.’

‘When you ever do what people want? You the most walk-alone person I ever known.’

She didn’t answer that, just smiled a little. ‘You cross with me, Reve? You still chewed up ’bout somethin?’

‘No. I’m a’right.’

‘What you goin do, Reve? You goin find some girl and go marryin?’

He smiled and put his arm round her. ‘You just got marryin on your mind.’ But he did try to tell her what he wanted. How he wanted to put a change on Rinconda, make it something
better. Maybe one day he could take on all the fishing boats Calde had owned, make a business like Two-Boat, maybe make a partnership with Two-Boat. Then there would be work in the village and not
so many boys like Ramon would go drifting up to the city and get lost; and families like Ciele’s, instead of getting broken up, could keeping on living together . . .

‘You could do that,’ she said, ‘so long as you don’t go living under somebody’s hut with your dog; you out in the air now, Reve, you an’ me both.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You think Uncle Theon goin help me?’

‘You worry ’bout him?’

‘Some. He always tellin me sometimes you got to do business, even if that man is someone like Moro, and I never doin that.’

She looked at him, head tilted on one side, but said nothing.

‘But you know, I don’ figure him, cos you know he the one who bring the coastguard in. He got no love for Calde or Moro, and he done what he could for Tomas and
Ciele—’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but this is it, Reve; you the one goin show him the way. Tha’s your business now.’

He nodded slowly. ‘A’right.’ He took a deep breath of the salt air and stretched his shoulders. ‘I can try.’

A voice called for Mi to come up from the shore. Two-Boat’s mother, it sounded like, and there was clapping and singing and a drummer driving up the music, and there was firelight and
candles and the air was soft and warm on their faces. ‘You goin to come dancing, Reve?’ she said.

‘I wish Tomas was here,’ he said.

‘He is,’ she said. ‘I got Two-Boat go back and fetch him and Arella.’

‘You did that!’

‘Yes, I did that,’ she said. ‘So you goin to dance at my weddin, or you goin to shuffle like some old fishing man?’

‘I can dance,’ said Reve. ‘That’s not such a hard thing, so long as no one goes laughin at me.’

They walked up the beach together and he felt a lightness in himself that he hadn’t ever felt before.

Also by Daniel Finn

First published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com/childrenshome

ISBN 978-0-230-76596-2 EPUB

Copyright © Daniel Finn 2012

‘Shade’ copyright © Patrick Daly 2011

The right of Daniel Finn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com/childrenshome
to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features,
author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.