Call Down Thunder
Page 24
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
Two Good Thieves
First published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books
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Copyright © Daniel Finn 2012
‘Shade’ copyright © Patrick Daly 2011
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