Call Down Thunder by Daniel Finn

bottles he had trailed over his shoulder and walked on. Mi’s storm was over, but there would be more. The police would
come tomorrow, maybe even tonight; there would be a hunt to find out who had told the coastguards. The truth, he now realized, was that nothing was ever finished. It was like the beach, it
stretched on forever. No end to the rubbish beading the sand either. Plastic. Always plastic. Sacks of it. Bottles mainly, but Reve never knew what else he’d find. He picked up a small
plastic lion one time. Didn’t know it was a lion till he showed it to Uncle Theon and Theon told him how lions marked their territory by roaring loud as thunder. King of all the animals. Reve
had put the plastic lion on a post to the side of their shack, but it didn’t look so fierce and he and LoJo used it as a target to throw stones at and then it went.
    He’d gather another string of plastic bottles before going back again. Theon gave him a cent for every ten he brought to him. Tomas said no one ever got money for nothing, but to
Reve’s way of thinking an empty bottle was next to nothing so he was doing all right. He liked walking the beach in the night-time, picking up the plastic, making something better, getting
something done.
    He made up his mind. If Tomas confirmed Calde’s story was true, then he and Mi would go to the city and find her. This policeman would have a name. And there’d be a trail they could
follow. It was what Mi wanted. It would get her away from Hevez, maybe give her time to think about this Two-Boat. Maybe their mother would think different, seeing them now. Maybe they would be
able to think differently about her running off with a policeman – gone whoring, people would say now, dirttalk. They would have to live with that, and if they did, maybe they could be a
family.
    Because even if Tomas said Calde was lying, the talk would still be the same. A girl whose mother had gone whoring, living on her own, no one was goin to care about her any more, no one was
going to listen to her talk, and Hevez or some other man would come one night . . .
    This was it. They were either going for the city or he would take the skiff and Mi and sail down the coast, find a place in San Jerro, maybe work for Two-Boat. They were leaving.
    He walked back to the shack but stopped at the gate a moment, standing in the darkness looking across at Tomas, who was sitting inside, the oil lamp on, the Bible on his lap, a
quart of rum by his hand. Sometimes, Reve realized, you live close to someone for a long time and you only see part of what they are.
    When their father’s body had been found in the middle of the village, right outside Uncle Theon’s cantina, no one would touch it, but Tomas walked right up to where it lay in the
middle of the track, and with all the villagers watching but saying nothing, he had cut away the net and then wrapped up the body in a piece of sailcloth. He had hoisted it on to a barrow and
wheeled it up the sandy track to the graveyard on the hill. When Reve had looked back over his shoulder he had seen that all those people who had been silently watching had just turned away as if
nothing had happened. The people of Rinconda were like that; kept things tight. Someone with a loose mouth got it sewn up quick enough, like a tear in a sail.
    Reve pushed the gate and Tomas looked up. ‘That you, Reve?’
    ‘It’s me.’
    He threw the strings of plastic bottles into the shed. Then he squared his shoulders and stepped up on to the porch. This was it. No hiding and twisting things away – Tomas would have to tell everything.
    ‘Is it true?’ he asked. ‘The thing Calde tell that señor, and everyone listenin.’
    Tomas closed the Bible.
    Tomas told him only three people had known what Felice, Reve’s mother, had gone and done: Uncle Theon, because he was the one who ran the village back then, Tomas, his strong arm, and
Calde, their runaround. The policeman was young; he’d come into