Call Down Thunder

by Daniel Finn

  They rounded a bend in the track and there was the cantina. The crowd he’d seen from the roadside had moved off, though he could hear someone shouting further down towards the shore. They slipped in through the door and Reve called out, ‘Hey! Theon! We come back!’

  Silence.

  The tables were cleared, chairs tucked in and out of the way. The floor was swept but there was a pot of water boiling on the hob. Reve took a cloth and lifted it off. ‘Making himself coffee. Must have just stepped out.’

  ‘Thought you said Tomas was here. Where is he?’ Mi asked.

  ‘Unless he learn to fly, he’s up on the roof. Come and see him.’

  ‘There’s no one here, Reve. Can’t you feel it? They all gone.’

  ‘No!’ They had to be there. He took the stairs two at a time and Mi followed behind. She was right: there was no one there. No Tomas, no Theon, no Ciele and no baby. Just like below, it looked as though they had just stepped away this minute. Tomas’s sheet was scrumpled up at the foot of his pallet, a jug of water beside the bed, half full and tepid from standing out in the sun; and his Bible was lying open. ‘Maybe he’s all right,’ he said, even though nothing looked right. ‘You know Tomas is strong. Maybe the cut he got wasn’t so bad. What you think? Maybe Theon took him and Ciele. Down the coast . . .’ His voice trailed into silence.

  ‘Maybe.’ Mi didn’t sound convinced. She was over by the corner of the roof, looking back the way they had come, up to the highway.

  ‘You see anything there?’

  She shook her head and then bent down and rummaged in a deep basket over in the corner where she was standing and started pulling out long torn strips of cotton. ‘This look fresh.’ She held up a cloth that must have been used as a bandage; the dark stain was blood. A gull floated above them, looking down, and then tilted its wings and drifted off to the coast. ‘You think Tomas strong enough to walk out of here, and him bleeding still?’

  Reve stood staring at the pallet as if it could tell him what had happened, but all he could think about was how Tomas had lain there, his face grey, his voice a hoarse whisper and Ciele’s white bandage tight round his middle, and the dark stain of his blood seeping through. Three days to recover? No. No hope of that at all. There was only one thing that could have happened.

  This was why no one they had passed had spoken to them. The villagers knew and they wanted no part of it. He should have seen it straight away.

  ‘Calde got him,’ he said abruptly. ‘Calde got him right now! Come on!’ He turned and ran down the stairs. He’d been dreaming to think for one moment that Calde would let it all blow over. Calde would have kept looking and sniffing and rooting, and someone would have heard or seen something up on the cantina roof. Maybe the baby had cried . . . and then Calde’s men would have hauled Tomas down, and Theon and Ciele, dragged them out so that everyone could see what he was doin to his one-time partner. Calde would want the whole village to know that if you stood against him something bad would happen. The crowd he’d seen from the road – had that been them bundling Tomas and the others down towards the harbour?

  ‘Wait!’ said Mi, pulling at his arm. ‘You don’t know what’s happening, Reve! You don’t know what they doing down there.’

  He stopped and turned round. Fear made him angry. ‘What you think, Mi? You think we do nothing? You think we jus’ keep out the way, keep our eyes squeeze tight so we don’ see what happen? Tha’ what you want?’

  She frowned, then glanced back up at the highway, the same as she had done up on the roof.

  ‘What is it? You see something?’

  ‘No.’

  So he ran; she followed, and people stared at them from their shacks as they went by. They passed the cold store and then Ciele’s place and then they were almost down at the end of the track: the remains of Tomas’s hut on the right; Arella’s hut on the left. Arella was standing on her porch, her blank eyes staring straight ahead at the gathering right there in the middle of the track, her face worn down with grief.

  There were at least ten men, all Calde’s people, and Calde was in the middle. Reve didn’t see Tomas or Ciele or Theon, but he wasn’t going to stand there looking. He yanked Mi off the track and they made their way through the backyards of the last few shacks, stopping when they got to Arella’s. Cautiously Reve peered from the corner. No one had spotted them. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the salty planking.

  He needed to think, to be clever, clever as Theon. But how do you suddenly get to be clever? What would Theon do in their place? Make a call, that’s what you do. But who? Who do you call? The police? The police would just bring the Captain and kiss Calde on the cheek, and let him kick Tomas to death. Then he would snatch Mi and take her back in the trunk of his car, lock her in his house some place. He felt like banging his head against the shack’s back wall. Clever? When had he ever been clever? They had run from one nightmare, and he had led them smack into another.

  ‘Wha’s happening?’ whispered Mi. ‘What they doing?’

  He puffed out his cheeks and peered round the edge of the shack again. He saw the brothers Cesar and Escal standing over a body they had down on the ground. Escal had a rolled-up fishing net on his shoulders, and Reve saw Cesar say something to him. Escal swung the bundle down and the two of them strung it out between them and then there was grunting and a muffled cry as whoever was down on the ground was trussed in the net.

  Reve watched in horror. It was Tomas. Was this how it had been with their father, snagged up in a net and then what? Thrown off the harbour wall to drown?

  He scanned the crowd.

  He saw fishermen who owed Calde favour one way or another, or who reckoned it was safer being on the inside of the ring. He knew them all. And Hevez and his pals, Sali and Ramon. No one who might help. There was no sign of Ciele . . .

  He spotted Theon though.

  He was right beside Calde, and Calde had his hairy hand on Theon’s shoulder, gripping it tight, like they were pals, like they were partners! And Theon was pulling off his glasses and rubbing them on the edge of his shirt and looking round the crowd, not looking at Tomas but back round at the village, and then he was looking their way. He blinked. A moment of recognition.

  Instantly Reve pulled himself back out of sight. He looked at Mi. Her face was tight and her eyes screwed up. Her hands were trembling.

  ‘Do something, Mi! Do some of your magic thing. Do your voice! Call down a storm like you done before.’

  Her lips were moving and her eyelids flickering. Maybe she was trying. She was starting to tremble. But he couldn’t help her. He realized with a feeling of despair that he couldn’t help anyone. ‘Oh please, Mi, do something . . .’

  Calde raised his voice. He was speaking so loud all the people cowering in their shacks and hiding their heads away would hear him. ‘You all about to see what happen when someone do a bad thing in my village.’ He sounded hard. ‘This man here is the squeal-pig. A’right? You all heard that. You know what it mean: he brought the police burning down homes in this place.’ The men around him were silent, waiting for Calde to finish. ‘And,’ added Calde, ‘he’s a runaround after another man’s wife. This is not a man we want in Rinconda . . .’ He paused. ‘If no one goin to speak for him, I take it you all are easy about the punishment I’m goin to put on this man.’

  ‘Take his head off,’ shouted Escal, his voice ugly. ‘Take it off with your cutting blade, Calde. Take his head off and put it on a pole, like in the old times.’

  There was laughter and a couple of the men jeered.

  Reve pulled his head back. He didn’t want to see any more. ‘They’ve roll him up in a net, Mi.’ He took a shaky breath and pressed his head against the shack wall. ‘I think they goin drown him . . .’ He closed his eyes tight and through clenched teeth said, ‘Mi? Can’t you call down something . . . some of your magic . . . now, please.’

  He turned his head and looked at her. Mi was trembling very badly, her eyes staring
, not rolled-up white but staring hard straight ahead, not at Reve but at some point he couldn’t see.

  She grunted, trying to make a word. Her hand was a claw on his arm. ‘Ohgh!’ she grunted. Or maybe it was ‘Ohd!’ Nothing that made sense.

  ‘Make him ready,’ called Calde.

  This was it.

  Reve prised Mi’s fingers from his arm. Better to do something, even if it is the wrong thing. When you step in the dance you got to know the steps. But there were no steps to this dance. ‘Stay here, Mi. Keep still, OK? Stay quiet. Don’ let anyone see you.’ She was rigid, lost in some dark place again. He touched her cheek. ‘Whatever happen, a’right?’

  He ran round the corner and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Stop! You got no right, Calde! I witness what you doin! You murdering Tomas! An’ he done nothin ’cept stand against you! Tha’s all he done!’ He took a ragged breath.

  He saw Ramon looking at him, not sneering in his usual way but puzzled, an eyebrow raised and looking behind Reve as if expecting to see someone else. And Hevez, his face glazed and stupid-looking – he’d been stoking up his courage with beer.

  The small crowd parted a little and Reve could see a shapeless snagged-up bundle with Tomas’s face visible through the netting, and the white of his vest that looked drenched in sweat and a darker stain over the wound. He wasn’t moving. He couldn’t move. Was he still breathing? Reve couldn’t see.

  ‘Tomas never call anyone,’ he shouted again. ‘He got no cellphone. He got no interest in what you doin. Calde tellin a lie!’

  Arella, up on her porch, suddenly called out, ‘Reve! What they doin? What they doing to Tomas?’

  He wanted to reassure her. Poor old Arella, with nothing in her life but a bit of company with Tomas, standing up on her porch, her head tilted up as if she could somehow see with her head that way.

  ‘What they doin?’ Her voice quavered.

  Calde swung round and lifted his panga blade, pointing the tip at Reve’s throat. ‘You come back, eh! Well, you next if you step in my way. Be careful, runaround, or you find you lose a leg or an arm.’

  Theon cut in. His voice was icy. ‘You don’t know what you’re sayin, Reve. Go back out of this. You can’t do anything here. Not now.’ The sinking sun caught his glasses and the flash blanked out his eyes, made him look inhuman.

  Reve felt as if he was trembling almost as bad as Mi. He forced himself to walk forward, past the two brothers, up to Tomas. He wished he had a knife to cut the net biting into Tomas. He wished he had a knife in his hand, give him courage, give a chance to put up some fight before they finish him.

  He turned and faced them again, planted his legs apart, as if he were keeping steady on his skiff and, ignoring all the faces of the men staring at him, looked straight at Calde and said, ‘You got no right! You got no right steppin on anyone, Calde!’ His voice shook a little but they all heard him, every one of them.

  Calde grunted with surprise. ‘You got some nerve, boy. Maybe you got some of Tomas’s rum runnin in your belly.’ A few of the men smiled. Then Calde’s tone hardened. ‘Move out the way. This not the first time a squeal-pig gets done in this place. Tomas know what comin to him. Your father was—’

  ‘Murdered,’ said Reve. ‘You going to do the same?’ He caught Theon’s eye. ‘What happen, Theon? How you let this happen?’

  Theon shook his head. ‘Some things you can’t fix.’ He had promised them it would all be safe when they got back.

  There was a heartbeat when no one moved and everything was so sharp. Every sound, every breath was distinct: the crunch of a sandalled foot shifting on the track, the sea flopping up on to the sand, a gull crying, the cicadas buzzing, an engine changing gear.

  Calde pulled a face. ‘What is this? None of this talk interest me. Someone get him out the way.’

  Reve clenched his fist. One hit. At least let me land one hit on this ugly man. One hit for what he done to us all.

  There was the sharp squeal of tyres on a hot road. A few heads turned and Reve saw a black car pulling down from the highway, bumping fast along the track and into the village.

  Suddenly Reve realized what Mi had been trying to say: ‘The road!’ She’d somehow known someone would be coming.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ‘You got more witness now,’ Reve said. ‘Look who coming for you.’

  A stay of execution.

  That’s what it felt like, though when Reve saw the squat figure of Moro and two of his suited men getting out of the car, his throat tightened. Instinctively he stooped down, trying to get Calde and his men to block him from Moro. If Moro saw him or Mi, they were dead. He wouldn’t care one way or the other about Tomas.

  Why in the name of heaven and hell had he insisted Mi come back to the village with him? To be family? Dead family.

  Calde’s men moved towards the señor. Maybe if Mi kept really still he could swear to Moro that she wasn’t with him. Maybe Moro hadn’t come for them at all. Maybe he had come for the informer, trace him down with that number that Theon had insisted Reve pass on. Reve edged back towards Tomas. ‘Tomas,’ he hissed. ‘Tomas?’

  He thought there was a faint movement, a finger hooked through the mesh. Tomas was alive!

  Moro put up his hand. ‘Not so close,’ he said to Calde’s men.

  ‘This is it,’ said Moro, ‘a village gathering. I like this. Everything in the open. Calde, I see you got business. Tell me what’s happening, eh. And Theon . . .’ he said, spotting him. ‘You here too. That’s good. Now, why you got that man like that. Someone been fishing?’ No one laughed at his grim joke.

  Calde started to tell him about Tomas – that he was the one who had informed on the smugglers and that he and his men were about to punish him, when suddenly there was an excited yell.

  ‘I got the witch girl!’ It was Hevez, his voice crowing with delight. He and Sali emerged from behind Arella’s, dragging Mi kicking and struggling between them.

  Reve didn’t even think. He abandoned Tomas, sprinted straight at Hevez and threw a punch that landed hard, smack in the middle of his face, right on the button of his nose. Hevez’s head snapped back and he fell, landing with a thud on the track, his nose bloody. In the same instant Mi wrenched her arm away and swung her free left hand round in a claw-hammer blow that caught Sali a ringing smack on his ear that made him grunt with surprise and pain. He clutched the side of his head, and she broke away from him and stepped in beside Reve as Hevez struggled back to his feet. For a moment it looked as if the two boys were going to make another move, but she just raised her arm and pointed at them, and that stopped them in their tracks.

  Reve was so astonished that it took him a moment to register that no one else, none of Calde’s men, had done anything to help the boys. He took Mi’s arm and edged her back towards Tomas, everyone watching them, and glancing at Moro as if expecting him to give an order.

  He felt oddly calm. At least the three of them were together, like they had been all that time ago when Tomas had peeled away the net from their drowned father.

  He felt for Mi’s hand and gripped it.

  ‘Ah,’ said Moro, and gave three claps. ‘I hoped for this. Very good. The little bull and his sister. That moves me, it does, but . . . you,’ he said to Reve, ‘should have been smarter. Found yourself another town, stayed free. But here, this place, this is mine now, eh. And you got serious problem.’ He smiled, but his small eyes were cold and angry.

  Reve kept his head up, but he felt lost. This was it. This is what it must feel like to be scooped up in the net. All three of them in the one catch. Jackfish. No running away.

  ‘Now,’ said Moro, ‘my business.’ He pulled out his cellphone. ‘I got a number here,’ he said. ‘This the number of someone who think calling the helicopter coastguard a smart idea.’ A few of Calde’s men moved away from Tomas. Moro’s suited men, Reve realized, had guns, heavy snub-barrelled weapons, pointing casually at the crowd. ‘And whoever got a phone that ring when I call thi
s number, that man got a problem.

  Calde was impassive. He glanced at Theon. Theon shrugged and wiped his glasses again, but a moment later Reve noticed that he stepped sideways, leaving space between himself and Calde.

  Moro tapped the numbers into his cellphone, making a performance of it, slowly, mouthing each number to himself.

  Silence.

  A phone started to ring. Everyone shuffled nervously and looked this way and that. Calde grunted and patted his pocket, then took out a phone, which chirped at him till he pressed a button with his thumb. He frowned. ‘This is not my phone . . .’ he began to say.

  Moro nodded at his men.

  Calde didn’t even have time to look up before the first bullet took him in the chest and the second in his throat, flinging him back on to the sandy path, about a metre away from Tomas’s feet.

  Everyone else froze.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The silence was sudden and heavy. Even the cicadas seemed to pause their endless scraping and sawing. Maybe they were holding their breath too.

  Reve studied Uncle Theon’s face for a clue, but it was impassive. He’d figured this, hadn’t he? Done something clever. Clever Theon. Switched Calde’s phone maybe. If anyone else thought the same, they weren’t saying.

  ‘All right,’ said Moro, looking up from his phone. ‘I come along to do this. So now we all know: you play a game, you got to be sure the rules work for you; but you play a game with me, the rules always work for me. That fat man nothing when he lived, and he nothing now. Anyone goin step in his place?’

  Reve saw Hevez keeping his head down, his hand cupping his bloody nose. He tried not to look at the body lying on the ground like a beached whale, the shirt ridden up a little, showing some belly.

  Theon glanced down at Calde, then stooped, picked the phone out of his hand, clicked it off and slipped it into his pocket. Reve kept his face still and his mouth shut. Theon had figured out the whole play.

  ‘Well,’ Moro faced Theon, ‘you got any business with this man? You got problem you going to give me for this?’