Island of Thieves by Josh Lacey Page B

sank behind the mountains. Darkness flooded the sky. Our headlights illuminated a little slice of road ahead of us and nothing more. One false move and our wheel would slip over the precipice, taking the rest of the car with it. Uncle Harvey could only drive about five miles an hour. I was tempted to get out and walk. I probably would have gotten there quicker. And I wouldn’t die if the car went over the edge of the cliff.
    â€œWe’re lost,” I said.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous,” said Uncle Harvey. “I know exactly where we are.”
    â€œWhere are we?”
    He didn’t answer that.
    â€œWhat if we run out of gas?” I said.
    â€œWe won’t.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œSure as eggs is eggs,” said Uncle Harvey.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œIt means we’re going to be fine and you should stop worrying so much.”
    â€œBut I
am
worried,” I said. “We can’t drive all night. Where are we going to stop? Are we going to sleep out here? In the car?”
    â€œOh, calm down,” said Uncle Harvey. “We’ll find somewhere.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œBecause we will. Trust me, Tom. I’ve been in situations like this enough times before. Something always turns up.”
    I didn’t believe him—I thought we would have to spend the whole night sleeping in the car—but not long afterward, the road curved and our headlights gleamed over a small building. A shepherd’s shack, perhaps, or an old abandoned barn. It looked uninhabited; there weren’t any lights in the windows. But it had four walls and a roof, and that was enough for us.
    â€œWe’ll sleep there,” said Uncle Harvey. “We can carry on at dawn. I don’t like driving on this road in the dark.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    A bumpy path led through the fields to the shack. As we shuddered and juddered up to the front door, an old couple appeared in the doorway. They must have heard our engine and seen our headlights. The building wasn’t a barn. Or abandoned. Someone lived there.
    We got out and talked to them.
    That morning, I’d found a useful phrase in the back of the guidebook:
Teine un cuarto?
Do you have a room? I repeated it several times. The old man nodded and grinned, his teeth gleaming in the candlelight.
    Uncle Harvey pulled a few bills from his wallet and offered them to the old man, who handed them to his wife. She flicked through them, counting them quickly, then pushed open the door and welcomed us inside.
    The farm had no electricity, so there was no phone, no TV, no lights, and no heating. That night was cold. There was no moon. A few candles and a flickering fire provided the only light and heat in the house. The old folks had eaten already, but they gave us some leftover boiled potatoes mixed with chopped raw onions. That doesn’t sound very appetizing, I know, but it was surprisingly tasty. We couldn’t speak a word of one another’s languages, but we managed to communicate with a few signs and gestures, explaining we were
“Americano”
and asking if they had sold a necklace to Rodolfo. They shrugged their shoulders, not understanding what we were trying to say, and gestured for us to finish our potatoes.
    I was sharing a room with Uncle Harvey. We went to bed in darkness, lighting our way with a little stub of a candle, so we couldn’t see much more than the outline of the two beds that the old woman had prepared for us. Actually, they weren’t really beds at all. They were just thick woolen blankets spread out on the ground, plus a couple of cushions each. I thought I’d never be able to sleep.
    A voice came out of the gloom. “Night, Tom.”
    â€œGood night, Uncle Harvey.”
    â€œDon’t call me that.”
    â€œSorry. Good night, Harvey.”
    â€œGood night.”

10
    There were no curtains over the window, and no