Trash by Andy Mulligan

Author:Andy Mulligan
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Street Children, Developing Countries, Social Science, Political Corruption, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction, Environment, Poverty, Refuse and Refuse Disposal, Boys & Men, Nature & the Natural World, Mystery and Detective Stories
ISBN: 9780385752145
Publisher: David Fickling Books
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

8

This is me, Raphael.

Sister Olivia was a good friend to us that day, and – for reasons that will be clear soon enough – we did not see her again to say thank-you. Writing this is a way to say thank-you, and one day maybe we will meet again and say it the way we need to say it.

I am so sorry for deceiving you, Sister.

I must talk about what we did while Gardo was in the jail – which was important. Then I will hand over to Rat, and write for him. You see, he and I decided to do something too, because it was hard sitting waiting and waiting all day, and I have not felt right since the police station – I cannot stay still, and everyone is looking at me always. We took the letter again, and stole off by the canal to a place nobody goes – a place I felt safe in, where you could see people coming. We squatted down and went over the newspaper cuttings again, me reading them out, all the way through. I read the letter too, which was coming apart in my hands by now. We both knew it almost by heart, since we’d been helping Gardo remember it – even the jumble of numbers stuck on at the end. Those names again, coming at us: José Angelico, the man killed in a police station. He felt like a brother to me now and I was dreaming about him. Gabriel Olondriz, his friend in Colva Prison. And now the fat senator, Zapanta … When I read the line about Senator Zapanta, Rat stopped me and made me re-read it: ‘If only you could go to Zapanta’s house now: it would make your soul sing.’

‘What’s that mean?’ said Rat.

I didn’t know. We’d all been saying that every time we read it: I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.

‘Where’s his house, though? Maybe we should visit.’

‘Green Hills,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that. Same place as José Angelico.’

The senator was a famous man, and everyone knew he had a place out there, just beyond the city, big as a town. Everyone knew he was rich and old, and I’d seen his fat face in the papers I hooked up, oh, so often – papers that more often than not wrapped up the stupp. Everyone knew he owned big pieces of the city – there are only five or six families who do out here, and his name was on streets, on a shopping mall in the fancy part of town, and in rising skyscrapers … He was a big man in every way. Vice-president for two years and his smiling face everywhere.

It was Rat’s idea to pay him a visit, and I liked the idea, if only to get me out of Behala.

‘Why would seeing the place make your soul sing?’ said Rat. We wondered and wondered, and agreed that taking a trip might tell us.

It seemed to me the problem would be the usual one.

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