Trash - Andy Mulligan [34]
‘How do you live down here?’ I said. It was the most disgusting place on the whole dumpsite.
He just laughed. ‘It’s the best house I ever had,’ he said. ‘You don’t like it because you’re lucky. You always had a house.’
‘I don’t know how you stand it, boy.’
‘They don’t bother me, I’m telling you. You get some that are friendly.’
‘And what about at night?’ I said. ‘They never take a bite out of you?’
Rat laughed at me. ‘They have a sniff, OK – maybe, when I’m sleeping. But what they gonna bite? There’s no meat on me.’
He lit a couple of candles. I could hear scufflings in the wall, and mewling yelps.
‘There’s a nest somewhere,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t sleep down here if you paid me.’
‘There’s always nests everywhere. That’s a big one, though, OK? They kept me awake last night – must be hundreds of them. Oh, and by the way – that bag …’
‘What about it?’
Just the thought of the bag and I froze up.
‘You can tell the police to come down here and look, because that bag’s gone, Raphael. Two nights, and they’d eaten it. The wallet too: chewed up and disappeared.’
He was rocking a brick backwards and forwards gently. Then he turned and looked at me, suddenly serious.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I better trust you. I just better trust you, and you better be good to trust. I know you’re going to tell Gardo, but you tell nobody else!’
‘Tell what?’ I said. I had no idea what he was saying.
‘I’m just thinking, here you are – here’s me, showing you all my secrets. You could rob me blind now, you and Gardo – what would I do then?’
He was fierce, but all I could do was laugh at him. Not to be mean – but the idea of robbing Rat was crazy.
‘What is there to rob?’ I said. ‘A little pair of shorts, and you’re wearing them.’
Rat started to laugh right back at me. It was a high-pitched squeak of a laugh. The brick was on the floor now, and he was reaching into the space behind. Carefully, with his thin fingers – with the rats going crazy all around us – he removed a small metal box, not much bigger than a cigarette carton, and closed up tight. He set it between his feet and opened it.
He grinned up at me. ‘Not much to rob, huh? You want to see what I’ve got? I’ve got more than you think.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘Buried treasure, boy. Two thousand, three hundred and twenty-six pesos. My going-away fund.’
Sure enough, he showed it to me, counting it out. I think the amazement must have shown in my face, because he started laughing again, and rocking on his heels. ‘I got one more box for just day-to-day stuff,’ he said. ‘One more tin box, that is, so the rats don’t eat it. Two hundred and sixty in that one. I figure, today we’re on a kind of holiday – so I’m gonna borrow out of this one, the travelling box.’
‘But how do you get so much?’ I said. I was totally amazed. Two thousand was a fortune for boys like us.
‘I get it slow, and I keep it. Everyone gives me a little. The little piles up, and I don’t eat much, or I get given food. Sister Olivia, for instance – she gave me fifty just yesterday, and then I went back for a sandwich.’
‘And what are you saving for?’
Rat put his head down and seemed to be thinking hard. Then he crept to the steps and took a long look up them, like he really thought there might be someone listening. He came back and squatted – put a banknote in his pocket and closed the lid of the box. Then he put his hands up on my shoulders and looked right in my eyes.
‘You and me are friends now,’ he said, ‘right?’
I nodded.
‘Real friends?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘OK, I’m going to tell you something I never told any other boy. I told Olivia, made her promise to tell no one, just because I was so tired of never telling.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. A rat ran over his foot in the darkness, right between us; I had to force myself to keep still. ‘I’m not from round here,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you? Like, most of you are Behala boys, but I come from the south. I was at Central Station for nearly a year, and I heard about the Mission School,