Trash (17 page)

‘It’s getting dark,’ said Gardo. ‘Can you see pink in the dark?’

Raphael led the way, strong again, and ready.

Raphael now.

It was getting busier and busier because the evening is the busiest part of the day. There were barbecues starting up now, and people selling snacks. We were amongst wealthy people in very fancy clothes, and we felt even greyer and dirtier, but there was nothing for it, and still nobody was worrying about us – no one seemed to see us, like
we
were the ghosts.

After twenty minutes we got to the top of the slope.

I saw so many angels, and the light was way too bad to see a pink one, and I was ready to curse the guard who
wasted our time – but then Gardo saw one made of marble, on a grave the size of a truck. In the candles it was pink as a salmon, and it was staring back over the city, arms up like it had just scored one hell of a goal. A great big family were sitting all around it, playing cards, and there were brandy bottles everywhere, and more people arriving, hugging each other.

We left them to it, and went in and out of the neighbouring graves, wondering what B24/8 might mean, and looking for the name ‘Angelico’, and finding nothing.

Soon it was completely dark, and we couldn’t read the names any more. So we went back to the pink angel, and climbed up on a wall nearby, and wondered what to do.

And that is when we saw
the brightest light
.

Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):

We’d been looking in the wrong place, and the fool of a guard who took our money must have thought we knew the cemetery and didn’t bother to explain, or was just too lazy. The cemetery, you see, is divided by a wall – and that was the wall we were sitting on. The wall divides the rich quarter, where the dead get buried in earth, from the poor quarter, where the dead get stacked up in boxes.

We’d wasted the day walking among the rich when we should have been on the other side of the wall. The brightest light was the poor part of the cemetery, where thousands of candles were coming together as everyone streamed in after work. It was bright as day, bright as a furnace, and the candles were moving in great rivers as people made their way to their loved ones. It was like a
little town down there, with narrow streets through all the tombs.

B24/8 would be the number of one of the concrete boxes.

Raphael: I remember Gardo looking at me and smiling, and then Rat gave me a hug because we’d cracked it again. We jumped down and came to a little broken doorway that let you into the other side. Right away, we saw a sign in the candlelight, high up on one of the grave-stacks. It said
G9
, so we moved past it, trying to work out the system.

It really was like a town: people lived in this part of the cemetery – they had houses there. There were little shanties built round the back of the grave-boxes. There were shacks up on top too – little huts and bits of plastic, and to get to them you climbed ladders. We could see kids running on the tops with a kite, getting it up into the typhoon breeze. So many people always, and it struck me again what my auntie used to say: there is nowhere people will not live.

We passed so many graves.

Saddest were the open ones – the ones that were broken open – and everyone knows that story, and I found myself looking away. Each little concrete hole costs the family two thousand-five for five years. You cannot buy a box, you see – you can only rent one. After five years you pay again, or the box is taken back. And people move away,
or people spend the money, and sometimes the payment just doesn’t get made – so what happens? The sledgehammer is what happens. They break open the seal, and out comes the body. There’s a part of the cemetery where old bones are thrown and left to rot amongst the trash. Somebody’s child, or somebody’s grandma – out on the rubbish like a dog. The empty holes scared me, because nothing is more sad than that, and I didn’t want to look. They leave the bodies in there for a few weeks sometimes, hoping they’ll be claimed, because I guess nobody likes throwing people away like that.

Gardo.

I was working it out, though.

I led them round the back, and talked to some kids perched up on the grave-stacks. They pointed, and we found the track that was D, then C, then B, so then we came along, counting – fifteen, twenty and twenty-two. Four graves up, and there she was, we found her:
Maria Angelico, wife of José Angelico
, picked out on a little stone plaque. Raphael and me climbed up and leaned in to read, because the words under the name were small.
The brightest light
, they said, and I went cold, because those words were the ones we’d been following, and what we’d seen, and it was all coming together – we were close to the end. Around the words were scorch marks, from the candles that had been lit. Raphael read the words out to Rat, calling out loud because there were people everywhere and a
lot of drinking going on and a lot of laughter. I looked at the box underneath, and I called that out too:

‘
Eladio “Joe” Angelico
,’ I said. ‘
My good, good son
.’

Raphael grabbed me and said, ‘We’re where we’re supposed to be! This is his boy.’

I said, ‘I know that.’ That was clear. But I was also thinking … 
What’s there to find? We’ve found the poor man’s family grave – is that really such a big deal now? This sad man, whose face we first saw when we found a wallet on the dumpsite … he loses his wife and his boy and we’re poking around, hunting his money? He couldn’t have hidden it here
.

‘We’re where we should be,’ I said. ‘But he can’t have put it in a grave.’

‘I agree, ’ said Rat. ‘How would he do it?’

‘What’s that one there?’ said Raphael, looking up. ‘Is that his as well?’

He was looking at the stone above the man’s wife, and I had to climb higher up to see that one. It was clean and new, and the words were harder to read because the light was bad, so Rat handed me up a candle, and I figured them out slowly, Raphael helping.

‘
Seeds
,’ I said. ‘Something about those seeds again … Then it says:
To har … vest. My. Child. It. Is
 … Something long, I can’t see.’

‘Accomplished,’ we said, together.

‘
It is accomplished
,’ I said. ‘
It is accomplished. Love and … hope
. And there’s a name – just a little name,’ and I traced it with my finger.

*   *   *

Raphael.

The name on the stone was
Pia
. Then,
Dante
.
Pia Dante
. I looked down at Rat. ‘Oh my,’ I said, and I felt so sad. ‘That’s the little girl.’

I thought of the photo, of the little schoolgirl with her wondering eyes, and felt so bad. We’d all thought she was alive, or hoped she was.

Rat said, ‘He lost everything, man …’

‘He was sending her to school,’ I said. ‘That’s what the paper said.’

‘It was in the letter too,’ said Gardo. ‘The letter to Mr Olondriz.
If it comes to your hand, then you know I am taken. Ask after my daughter, please – use any influence you have, for I am afraid for Pia Dante now
.’

We were quiet a moment, and then I jumped down.

‘What now?’ I said. ‘What are we expecting to find here? What do we do?’

Gardo said, ‘I don’t know.’

I said, ‘A message, maybe? Look for another message …’

‘Where?’ said Rat. ‘Where’s he going to put it?’

We all looked around wildly, maybe thinking there’d be a letter, or some other clue – but it seemed pretty hopeless – it all seemed like a dead end.

‘We’ve got this far,’ said Gardo, getting angry like he does. ‘There must be something!’

‘Nothing,’ said Rat. ‘Where’s there to look, and what are
we looking for? I think he was taken and killed before he could do anything.’

‘Maybe the police have been and got it?’ I said. ‘They tracked it other ways, maybe.’

Gardo sat down again. ‘Why is this so crazy?’ he said.

I sat next to him, and we thought and thought, but there was nothing to think. Then, right by us, a big family arrived, pressing into the graves with a load of candles and a cooking stove, so we moved off across the path and found a quieter place, higher up.

‘Look,’ I said. I couldn’t let it go. ‘If he had all that money … If he got away with it – if he really had a fridge full of money … Are we thinking he buried it here, with his wife and kids? Why would he do that?’

‘To come back later and get it,’ said Rat. ‘No one’s going to break open a paid-for grave, are they?’

‘The police would,’ said Gardo. ‘If they had even one slight suspicion. That’s why the code. If the police had got the letter we got – if they did what we did – went to the prison and saw Mr Gabriel … he would not have let on about the Bible and the book-code. So they would never have got this far.’ He smiled, and said what we all knew: ‘The man was smart.’

‘OK,’ said Rat. ‘So José Angelico knew he could trust Gabriel Olondriz. Gabriel was like the … guardian of it. Without him it’s never found. If it’s in there, even.’

‘You think it’s in there?’ I said.

‘It’s in one of them,’ said Gardo. ‘Maybe.’

‘You want to break open three graves?’ I said. I couldn’t believe I was even thinking about it. I knew I couldn’t do it.

Gardo stood up then. He walked up and down, and I could see him thinking so hard his eyes were bulging, getting madder and madder. ‘It can’t be!’ he said. ‘You don’t do that, do you? You don’t bust open your family grave! What about an empty one? Maybe there’s a broken one nearby …’

We looked around, and there were several. You could see what looked like trash, or maybe bones. Who wanted to sort through that? One thing for sure was they weren’t places you’d leave anything valuable. Gardo was beginning to really lose his cool, and I could see why – we’d come all this way, and had the police all over us – he’d been almost taken, fought his way out … and all for nothing? He looked at me and said, ‘What do we do, Raphael?’ and I didn’t know. I just looked at him, and Rat was looking from him to me then back again.

It was just at that moment, as we were gazing around, that we heard a voice.

It was a small voice, and it was calling down to us, and was almost blown away by the wind. But we just caught the sound, and looked up to see a tiny little girl.

‘What are you looking for?’ she said.

Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):

She was sitting up on the graves, higher than us, so she was looking down. She was hard to see, because like I said she was so small, and there weren’t so many candles there. She had long black hair, and was sitting patiently, her hands in her lap. She was wearing school dress.

Rat said, ‘What did you say?’

The little girl said, ‘Who are you looking for?’

Raphael said: ‘José Angelico.’

‘I don’t think he’s coming,’ said the child.

We didn’t know what to say for a moment, and then Gardo said: ‘Did he say he would? When?’

We were all staring up at her and she was just staring down, so still. The breeze blew her hair, but she was like a little statue.

‘About a week ago,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

Gardo said, ‘I don’t think he’s coming either – why don’t you come down here?’

‘What’s your name?’ said Rat softly. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’m not looking for anything,’ she said. ‘I just came here to wait for him.’

‘But where do you live?’

‘Here. I don’t know now.’

‘By yourself? What’s your name,
chele
?’

‘Pia Dante,’ she said. ‘My name is Pia Dante Angelico and I’m waiting for my father, José Angelico.’

Now, I (Raphael) speak only for myself and not for the other boys, but I went stone-cold all over and I nearly fell down. I heard Rat breathe in sharply too and take a pace back. Her hair was still blowing and she looked solid enough, and her voice was a child’s voice … but my first thought was that we must be talking to a ghost, because we’d seen her grave with our own eyes.

The child was looking across at it – B25/8 – the grave with her own name on, in brand-new stone. And she was waiting for her dead father on the Day of the Dead. What kind of miracle was that?

Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):

She was no ghost, of course, and when we got ourselves together, we helped her climb down. Rat went up and helped her, because she was small – and we decided to take her out of there fast. Things were getting so strange, and we were all having the same idea straight away, but we needed to get clear for a while. Little Pia was so weak she could hardly stand up, and we all realized none of us had eaten properly, and we thought,
We’ve come this far – the police aren’t going to trace us here – can we just get a moment to think?

Gardo counted out the money, and we were low – our stash was down to a few hundred only, but we all needed food – little Pia most of all. I tell you, she was skin and bone to touch, and dirty all over – she smelled bad. We went right out of the cemetery and found a shack and ate
chicken and rice, thinking we might as well eat good – we so needed it. We were at the end of the trail, we had to be, and even at that point – before we talked – we knew what was happening, and we were getting excited, frightened, jittery. Cold and sweating – like a fever.

Rat and Pia were just about the same size, and he could see she was in a bad way more than me and Gardo. He’s been starved like that and scared out of his wits, so he knew what to do. He made her eat really slow, mixing gravy into the rice and feeding her. He got her water and made her drink it, and then he found her some banana, which he chopped up small like she was a baby. In a way she
was
a baby. She was scared, but she was so weak she didn’t know what to do, and we still think Rat saved her life.

She told us she’d been in Naravo for a week, to meet her father. It was a place they often went together, because her little brother and her mother were there.

Some children had found her and taken her to one of the shanties – she’d been fed a bit and asked questions. She kept going back to her mother’s grave and waiting, and of course she wasn’t tall enough to read her own name on the grave above – or if she did, it didn’t mean anything to her – she never said anything about it. Her father had sent her a message to meet him, and whoever looked after her had taken her there and left her. They must have read about his death, and knew they were well rid of her, what with no more rent coming in.