by Daniel Finn
‘Mi!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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 wi
th 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 . . .’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘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.
Then, as he watched her, she slipped back into the crowd, leaving the first child slinging all his patter at him. ‘Where you from, country? You got some place you gotta go? You lookin lost as city chicken. You lost, country? I show you. I know the way round every place. You ask anyone. I know most thing ’bout any place.’
Reve tried to keep looking for Mi, but the boy was distracting him. ‘I don’t need nothing,’ he said, trying to push him to one side.
‘Don’t push, country. Don’t push me, ’less you want to fight,’ and he even put up his little fists bunching them up near his face. ‘I could be a fighter. I could be Cashew Clay. You hear of him, country?’ and he darted in with one little fly punch. Even though Reve was worried about Mi, he couldn’t help smiling, but as he made to step round this half-size street champion something collided into his back and threw him off step. At the same moment his mocking assailant skipped to one side and snatched his bundle from where it was slung over his back, then slipped like a rat between a mountain of grain sacks and carts stacked up with onions and bright yellow peppers.
‘Hey!’
Reve dived after him but lost his footing and fell flat on his face. No one paid any notice, just kept stepping by and around him. He scrambled back to his feet and caught a glimpse of the little girl-boy looking solemneyed at him, before disappearing again but in the opposite direction to the way the boy had taken. How could he be so stupid, and so clumsy?
And all their money! Everything gone and he hadn’t got down from the cab five minutes. How would they get to Moro or survive long enough to track their mother down? Mi was going to rage at him . . .
He scrubbed his head, frantic; should he follow the boy, or go in the direction the girl went?
He started after the girl and then pulled himself up. It was a trick. She had reappeared so that he would do just that, follow her and then, no doubt, he would end up miles from the market and completely lost. They wouldn’t want him chasing after them here, because this was their patch. This is where the fast-talking boy would be, already tucked in somewhere, checking what Reve had wrapped in the bundle. Stick around long enough and he would see them both again, he was sure of it. Meanwhile he needed to find Mi.
Reve squeezed past the cart and the grain and, knowing there was no point in running, he walked as swiftly as he was able down an alley of stalls, sidestepping vendors, drunks and lounging young men in jazzy shirts with hair oiled and spiky. He looked left and right, keeping his eyes skinned.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a brown ankle and a scuffed trainer sliding in under a stall, and quick as lightning, as if he were snatching a slippery jackfish out of the net, Reve grabbed and pulled out a child who immediately yelled and cursed him so violently and loudly that the stallholders came to the child’s rescue and Reve had to back rapidly away.
The market was so big. It seemed to stretch on forever, and nothing was in straight lines. He tried to remember particular stalls, but they were all food or grain or coffee and there seemed to be a million faces, dark and sweating, wide-eyed and dark-haired, shouting and jostling and he couldn’t even remember where Theon had pulled up the truck, and he couldn’t see the wall with the picture of that beautiful woman on it.
Where was Mi?
He was feeling dizzy and it was so hot the air was thick in his lungs. There had to be a tap or fountain maybe or ice . . . He found a fish stall, and when the vendor was busy he scooped out a palmful of ice and ran round a corner and then wiped it across his face and dabbed his neck, and slipped a smooth icy pebble into his mouth, closed his eyes and let it melt down his throat.
He took a deep breath and tried to think straight. You don’t just sit on a boat and expect something to happen; you look for the place where the fish run; you watch the sky and the way the wind moves across the water; anythi
ng else is blind sailing, and a blind sailor only ends up one way: drowned. He looked around him. The only way to see anything in this place was to get up on something and look down.
He found a flatbed truck whose driver was unloading sacks. He offered to help and the man, already drenched in sweat, let Reve climb up beside him. He worked there for twenty minutes, scanning each quarter of where they were every time he straightened his back. The last sack was bundled down, and the man said, ‘You don’t work like a city boy that for sure. Here –’ he pushed a dollar into his hand – ‘Ask for Cedo any Friday and I’ll give you work. Wha’s your name?’
‘Reve . . .’
At that moment, he heard shouting, a high-pitched whistle, and then, about a hundred metres down to his right, he could see a surge of people and red, he was sure of it, a fuzz of red hair. He leaped down and ran, ducking and weaving, until he got to where the commotion was. He burrowed through a wedge of backs and shoulders and there was Mi, head back, hair sticking right out like she had an electric storm ripping up from her skull. Her eyes were rolled in that way that scared Reve because it meant she was having one bad juddering fit, and sure enough she was, trembling and her arms stretched in front of her and all her fingers out tight.
The man in uniform, the one who had been blowing the whistle, was trying to take her arm and lead her out of the market, but she was rooted. He would have to carry her if he wanted to move her any place.
‘Excuse me,’ Reve called. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He remembered Tomas saying anyone in a uniform, no matter how low down he was, liked to be called sir, and it didn’t cost you anything to say the word. ‘She my sister. This happen to her times. I’ll take her, sir.’
The uniform looked down at him. ‘You prove it? You got papers?’
Papers? He didn’t have thing other than the dollar bill he’d just earned, and he wasn’t giving that away.
Someone in the crowd came to his rescue. ‘Wake up officer, can’t you see this boy just in from the country? What paper he goin to be carryin?’ The speaker was a large woman and her large arms were folded imposingly across her large bosom.