Authors: Daniel Finn
‘My mother and Mayash goin be safe?’
Reve could hear Hevez and his gang now, somewhere up in the village, yelling the snatch of a football chant. Sultan growled and pressed himself against Reve’s legs.
‘Safer if you do this thing.’ Reve hoped he was right, but he wondered how long Theon could keep her, her baby and Tomas hidden away up on the roof of the cantina. ‘Theon
figure something.’
‘Yeah,’ said LoJo, an edge of relief in his voice, ‘Clever Theon always figurin. All right, I do it. And your dog?’
Reve looked down at Sultan and pulled a face. ‘Take him,’ he said. ‘He goin be happier on the skiff than riding the truck up to the city.’ He picked up Sultan, held him
for a moment and then placed him in the bow of the skiff.
They dragged the boat down the beach, rigged and raised the sail. Waist deep in the water, Reve held the boat steady while LoJo scrambled on board, quickly fixed the tiller. Then Reve hauled the
bow out through the low surf until the sea was up to his chest. The wind caught the sail and LoJo just had time to raise his hand before he was sliding fast away on a long reach north and up the
coast. Reve thought he saw the tip of Sultan’s nose up above the gunwale before they were swallowed by the darkness.
Wearily, Reve pushed his way back ashore. He could see a string of lights at the end of the village track and then a gush of flame where Tomas’s hut stood. The air glowed and suddenly he
could see figures running this way and that, and Arella on her porch. Sparks were spraying up into the night, and more people running, some with buckets.
It would be Mi’s car next.
He could leave it. It didn’t matter if it burned; she didn’t want to live there any more . . . but what if she went back, just wandered back, maybe she’d had a juddering attack
and her thinking was all loosened up . . .
Reve ran back, pushing himself to place one leg in front of the other, trying to ignore the aching tiredness and the sharp pain from his bruises.
Halfway along the strand he stopped to catch his breath and looked behind him. There was a trail of lights coming this way now. He didn’t have more than a three or four-minute lead.
He reached the car. He called again, and again there was no answer.
They were right behind him. He had no time to make it into the maize field.
He backed away from the car towards the acacia tree and then flattened himself on the ground just as the group came running up, torches flaring, the flames leaning backwards, like tails.
He watched them, these shadowy figures circling the car, and for two beats they just stopped, stood, maybe no one wanted to be first. The first one would be cursed; they would believe that. They
were right too; Mi had a good line in curses. She could tie up a body so bad his hair would go white and his heart shrivel up like a dried fruit. That’s what she said, and what a lot of
people believed too.
But rum has a way of washing fear down so it doesn’t mean too much. Hevez ran up to the car and banged on the bonnet with the palm of his hand. ‘You there, witch!’ he yelled.
‘You come out. You get out now!’ He ripped open the door and stuck his head inside. Then he pulled himself back and straightened up. ‘She’s not there,’ he said,
sounding embarrassed. All these men come to do terrible things, and nothing here but an old car. He kicked the door angrily.
‘Burn it anyhow!’ Escal shouted.
Hevez pulled open the door again and first one and then another man ran up and tossed their torch into it until the inside of the car smouldered and then began to glow red, all the cracks around
the door and windows lit like threads of phosphorous. It looked almost pretty for a moment until one of the men loosened his trousers and pissed against the bonnet.
The men whooped a little, but maybe having burned one shack already, burning an empty and wrecked old car wasn’t much to hang around for, especially since they didn’t have a witch to
burn. He heard Hevez trying to organize them into searching for her, but they weren’t interested.
‘You wan’ her so much, you go look for her. Maybe she in that maize field, hey.’
They drifted off back towards the village, leaving Hevez and two other boys standing back from the car, watching it pop and flame and spew up thick acrid smoke. They smoked a cigarette, sharing
it between them, and then they too turned away, but instead of walking back along the shoreline, they cut up to the tree, obviously deciding to follow the edge of the field, keeping inside the low
dunes that banked the land side of the beach.
‘You reckon someone give her warning,’ he overheard Hevez saying.
‘How? We didn’t even know we would do this until . . . until just, you know, down back there.’ That was Sali, fumbling for words. Frightened of Hevez, Reve realized.
‘Who goin warn a witch?’ said Ramon dismissively.
He was cool that one, thought Reve. He risked a lot coming to Ciele’s with his warning.
‘Yeah . . . let’s go find that old Boxer an’ his runaround. Finish it good time.’
‘A’right.’
When they had gone Reve slowly got to his feet. He wondered how many people in the village had any idea what Calde’s mob really had in mind when they had gone drinking
and whooping down on to the shore. Would they have stayed quiet knowing they wanted to burn Mi right out of the village.
The car glowed, the salt-dry tyres smoked. Mi talked about flames sometimes, about a burning place where bad spirits scream and yell. The car looked like it was goin to that place. The heat was
like a wall around the car, burning his face, making his eyes smart. Reve didn’t cry. He never did, even when he was small and Mi had gone wandering off and he was on his own.
They weren’t tears edging down his cheeks because there was no point to tears or to crying; no point in being soft. A fisherman deals with whatever the sea throws at him. A fisherman is on
his own, hours maybe days at a time, but that doesn’t bother him because all the time he knows what he has to do.
But standing there, with LoJo gone away in Reve’s skiff with Reve’s dog, and Tomas laid up on Theon’s roof, maybe dying from that stab he got in his side, and now Mi just
vanished, Reve felt about as alone as could be.
He raked his hands through his hair and forced himself to think. One thing at a time. One step at a time.
The moon hung like a claw in the black sky. Half the night had gone. It felt as if half his life had gone with it.
Reve cut back through the field, moving slow and careful, wriggling through wire, slipping like an eel between silent black shacks until he reached Theon’s. He waited for
more than five minutes, crouched down by the pig shed, looking for the glow of a cigarette, or a shadow that shifted; Calde could have men with eyes on the cantina. But nothing moved.
A few moments later he was in.
Calde and his men had nosed by, but Theon had talked them away.
Now, up there on the roof of the cantina, it was as if they were on an island, a dark ocean breathing all around them; the humps of black, the straggling reef of shacks; the
glitter of torchlight, sharks drifting here and there.
Safe – just for a little while. Then up to the road, to the meeting place. He’d have gone there straight, but there was the money to collect. And there was Tomas . . .
Tomas was flat on his back, lying on a thin cotton mattress. He was stripped to the waist. His eyes were closed. Ciele had cleaned him up again and made a new bandage for him. She was now
downstairs fixing a crib for Mayash.
‘That was smart, Reve, moving the skiff like that,’ Theon said. ‘You getting to think quick.’
He didn’t feel he was capable of thinking anything at all. His mind was a fog of tiredness.
‘That man taught you how to fight too, hey,’ continued Theon. ‘Another boxer in the village maybe.’
‘I don’t know. ’ Reve turned away, uncomfortable with the compliment. He’d stepped into that fight because he couldn’t see Tomas cornered like that, like when the
pack turns on an old dog.
‘You saved his life, Reve. And you just a boy.’
Theon had built a low cement-block wall round the rim of his roof, a little bit of shelter when a strong wind came in off the sea. He was leaning against this, twisting tobacco between his
fingers, folding it into a leaf of cigarette paper, and then, when the cigarette was rolled, he cupped his hands to shield the flame, the light glinting off his glasses as he bowed his head. He
inhaled and then let the smoke drift out of his mouth. Then he leaned over Tomas. ‘Here,’ he said. Tomas opened his mouth and Theon put the cigarette between his lips.
Tomas coughed and with a grunt lifted his arm and took out the cigarette. ‘One time you said it was rum goin kill me.’ His voice was a paper-thin whisper. It hardly had any breath in
it. He wiped his mouth and then looked with vague interest at the smear of blood left on the back of his hand. He coughed again and closed his eyes. ‘Maybe smoke do it instead.’ He
replaced the cigarette between his lips.
‘Smoke? Calde goin finish you long before this tobacco choke you up!’ Theon shook his head. ‘One time you had a brain. The boy think more than you do.’
‘One time . . .’ Without opening his eyes, Tomas said, ‘Reve, come here.’
Reve went over close to him, eased Tomas’s head up and took the cigarette from his mouth. Smoke trailed upward. Tomas coughed and put his hand on Reve’s arm. ‘You goin
then?’
Reve nodded. There was a spot of blood on the edge of Tomas’s mouth.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I wait all my life for her to come back.’ He opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and baggy, his stubble was grey and his skin had lost its sheen,
the black almost as grey as his beard. ‘I should’ve done what you’re goin do. Should’ve gone lookin for her.’
Down on the track outside the cantina, Reve could hear the sound of men passing, their voices low – the hunt all boozed up on drink had maybe faded out now. Calde would whip them up again
in the morning. Too late then; he’d see the skiff gone.
He touched Tomas’s wrist. ‘If you’d gone lookin, who’d’ve taken us in?’
Tomas shifted his head slightly so he was looking directly at Reve. ‘You goin come back, Reve? Bring your mother and your sister to this place? That’d be something, Theon. Your
sister queenin this place again . . .’ He tried to laugh but it turned into a cough. When he had caught his breath, he said: ‘But that not goin be the way, hey?’
‘No,’ said Reve. He waited a moment, then placed the roll-up back between Tomas’s dry lips. Smoke trailed up between them. ‘I don’t think that goin happen. I gotta
look out for Mi now.’
Tomas rolled his head back so he was looking straight up into the night sky. ‘Yes. You got to do that,’ he said softly, almost as if he was speaking to himself. ‘Don’t
let the city swallow her up like it done to your mother. Don’ let that happen . . .’ His eyes closed.
Theon leaned over and removed the cigarette. ‘Easy now,’ he said with a gentleness in his voice Reve hadn’t heard in him before. ‘You try sleeping, eh.’
When the village was dark, and the last flames had died away from Tomas’s shack, Reve went down the stairs from the roof and gathered up his bundle from behind the bar.
Hiding up by the road wouldn’t be comfortable, but there was a risk Calde’s men would search the truck on its way out of the village, and it was easier for him to slip away now, while
it was stone dark. He took his leave of Ciele. ‘Pelo come back to you soon,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m hopin.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘One time you the boy always running chores,’ she said. ‘Now you’re the one tryin
to keep everyone safe. Your sister lucky she got you.’
He didn’t feel lucky. He felt like they were running away because there wasn’t any choice. He felt Tomas was sick and like to die.
‘Here,’ she said, and to his surprise, she put her arms round him and held him close for a moment. Then she quickly turned away and stepped up the stairway to the roof.
Theon pulled open the door for him. ‘When you see the truck coming, Reve, you get ready; it’ll slow down but it’s not going to stop. Calde going to have eyes
on it even if he see the skiff gone. So you and your sister, if she’s there with you, just run low and the door will swing open. OK?’
‘OK.’ Reve hesitated. ‘Why you ever work with a man like Calde?’
‘People change.’
‘You mean he was all right one time?’
‘No, Calde was always more muscle than brain. But Tomas and me could put a rein on him back then.’
‘Now?’
‘Now maybe Tomas and me are different people. An’ I do business where I can.’
‘With the policeman?’
‘If I have to.’
‘An’ Calde? An’ Moro?’
‘You’re learnin, Reve.’ He nodded at Reve and gently closed the door on him.
Reve found his way up to the drain by the road, but there was no sign of Mi. He forced himself not to worry. She had got herself so well hidden, she would stay put until the
morning . . . but what would he do if she didn’t appear then? There was no going back into the village – that would be the end of them all – but how could he go on to the city on
his own, looking for his mother without Mi?
He threw a handful of dirt and stone into the drain to frighten off anything lurking, then crouched down and crawled in. He sat near the entrance, his back curved against the rough concrete, his
knees hunched up. In the city there would be more ways of losing yourself than there ever were at sea.
The night was long and hard. Things scuttled in the back of the drain. Something feathery or furry touched his hand, stones rattled down the slope and he swore he heard a
footstep and the grunt of someone pushing themself up the steep track. He kept so still, hardly letting himself breathe, even when a mosquito hummed in by his eyes and pierced the soft skin at the
top of his cheek and drank his blood.
Maybe a rooting pig, maybe a dog, or maybe one of Calde’s men with a gutting knife . . .
He didn’t sleep; his eyes never closed once, not the whole night. He watched the moon as it moved step by step down through the ocean of space, like a hook, or an anchor. He watched until
his eyes felt salty and burned out. And then he heard first one and then another cock crowing. Early birds. There was no thread of dawn out there on the horizon, but the cockerel doesn’t get
it wrong. He eased himself up and out of the drain. A moment later he saw headlights flicking on.