by Cynan Jones
There was a scrape of stones beyond his sight and he looked up to the cliffs and saw nothing, simply the impassivity responding. Again the sound came and the loose shale flashed in his headlight and he looked up the scree to see a rabbit bump away to some safer bank. Then he saw it, as he turned his head back out to sea. Something on the water. He ripped off the headlamp and hid its light against him and crouched and had no idea why this was his reaction. He turned the light off, holding the net as if it was some safe thing.
As his eyes altered to the dark, the small landscape grew back round him, coming in patches as his eyes focused. The humps of wrack. The pools. The grated sand. Dawn had brought a preminiscent light to the horizon which hid the scallop lights and which somehow made the sea look darker. There was light from the moon, some thin aureole, misting into the shifted clouds. He heard the rubber hit the rock, the strange, stretching sound like a creaking floor and he felt himself fizz with electricity. It could be someone come to poach the nets. He thought often about things coming to that, about that challenge coming like a violent dog. Don’t back down. And he turned on the light and stood up.
His face was set. He was ready to respond, or to call out, and he put all the look he could into his shoulders and his arms, and the pump of the breaker came loudly and he set his feet and then the sound again came, an unmistakable impact, over the rising beat of his heart. He thought of the gun back on the stones above the pools.
The inflatable was spinning slowly by the rocks. The army gray of it full and neutral at the edge of the lamp beam. It looked unmanned, but it was in the end of the beam, as if it consumed the light. Like something circling the edge of a clearing. He saw a flash of engine, some red perhaps as the boat swung. And then a heap. A dark mass in the belly of the boat and he knew immediately it was a man.
He could feel the adrenaline surge through him and his mind turned to one repeated curse word but there was something in that very clear. He put on the headlamp and went out, footing over the rocks to the easier sand and then he went into the sea, stumbling under the power of the breakers for safe space for his feet. There was real strength in the water and the waves were high and big and it took a few seconds for the cold water to get through his clothes and the extreme cold was like a shock that his adrenaline fought.
He waded at the boat through the tunnel of light he made, having to fight the push and draw of the water, the cold sting and salt reaching his thighs as he went out. He hardly had any thought, it was just an automatic thing to do.
The boat was a few meters away and moving out and he was slow, putting his feet down blindly through the dragging water, and the swell was much bigger by the rocks. The water smashed him, one big wave that nearly took him over, and he found a handhold half submerged against the rock and held on and then he went out with the draw of the tide half floating at the boat which was very close now. It came at him with a thump and hit him hard and he held to it with the wind hit half out of him and went backwards with it, his legs sucked underneath its hull. Then the sea sighed again as if setting itself and he scrambled for a footing and dug his fingers into the cord around the gunwale and tried to go with the boat in the new onrush of water. He reached the rock and clung hard against the dragging ebb and the boat stayed with him this time. He was up to his stomach in water on some unseen risen stone or slope of grit and it was like the boat would come no further with the draw of that outward tide too strong a force of gravity for him to beat.
His breath came spitting through his teeth and his eyes stung and it was all he could do to hold the boat there with the cold starting to wear through the thin, fleeting first retch of adrenaline. He tried to swallow in strength from the air and the lamp beam moved as his head did, up into the air for breath in a disorienting way. “I have to still,” he thought. “Still. Just still a minute.” He held the boat going up and lowering on the swell with all his muscles stubborn and hoping that he could get more from himself. He held it for a while until he could get some clarity, as if the energy would go out of the boat like holding down a brawling man. He tried to keep his head steady.
Behind him the waves were busting on the reef of sand and tearing out past him and driving shards of gravel into him. Salt stung in a graze he hadn’t noticed. And then the boat seemed to make its own decision and wrenched round and lodged itself on a point of rock, and it too seemed to still, as if it needed breath.
The body was by his face now. “Christ,” Hold was thinking. “I guess here it is.” He could see the man heaped in the boat. The man wore all black, or so it looked in that light, with a big puffer jacket that gave him a comfortable, sleeping look. He shook him. He thought again about the rifle on the shore. He leaned as far as he could and punched the leg. Hold grabbed the collar and pulled the man and sat him up and the head came up and sat itself up as if against a pillow and it was like the broken neck of a bird. He had the high cheekbones and wide face of a Slav.
The boat seemed to be suspended in that patch of water, and the two men were going up and down with the swell. Hold called at the man and then pulled his ear and just stood there holding the boat knowing the man was dead. He just tried to hold on, with the stinging water hitting him, and it was like his ability to make a decision was in the same suspended place as the boat.
What the hell had happened here? A scalloper? He knew that there were crew from all over, perhaps going between ships for something. The boat was bare and without markings. Had he run out of fuel? Hold stretched to the motor pump and squeezed the bulb and felt some resistance that meant there was a little fuel at least, and then saw the can and tried to reach it with an outstretched finger. It was full.
In the light from the headlamp the face looked very white and flat. “I have to get him ashore,” thought Hold. “I have to find something more from myself and get him ashore.”
He felt this sudden massive emptying tiredness as if this one thing was finally too much. Then it rang. He saw the glow first, a white shade. He half leapt at the man to reach him, draw him closer, and went for the pocket and the phone fell into the boat, flashing soundlessly, then there were three pitching beeps and the battery went. “Shit,” said Hold, out loud. And then it all came to him, in the first relief of this first utterance and he swore and swore out loud and hit the side of the boat in his futility.
In his anger, the boat was starting to go out again and he couldn’t hold it, but the anger itself came into him like this extra fuel. I have to think quickly now. Think. Come on. It’s happened now, you’re in it. Do something, even if you can’t hold the boat.
He braced himself against the rock and held the cord and unzipped the man’s jacket and felt inside for wallet or card, the water starting to beat him again, for some sign of his name. And then he felt the water get a purchase and pull him off the rock and in his new found anger he got a strength in him and felt all the sick, balling fear in him alight and he yanked the boat and went into the water holding it, and up to his chest he spat his defiance at the sea as it came in through his gritted teeth and finding the ground under his feet he dragged the boat like some furious and stubborn horse and went toward the dark beach with everything he had, cursing and screaming.
When he got the boat nearly to the reef of sand it came finally with him in an angry run, knocking him to the stones as it beached itself. It had taken on water. On the beach the cold hit Hold. He tried to get his head round that and just held it like some solid fact to deal with later. “You have to get up,” he said. “Don’t get cold. You have to get up.”
He shut the man’s eyes and picked up the phone and tried to switch it on but it just flashed briefly, bleeped, and went out. Then he collapsed on the reef of sand.
The headlamp was dimming and going out. He switched it off for a while and just sat there looking at the shape of the boat and the dead man in the moonlight.
He got up and tried to walk a little of the stiff coldness out and went back to the boat. The grit and broken shells and sa
nd that had been washed into his shoes grazed him, but it was pointless to try and do anything about that now. He knew he was hurt. It’s amazing what you can’t feel in the sea. The lume of the dawn was building and the bay was filled with this strange ancient light and he could hear turning in the energy of the tide.
He checked the man over again, went through the pockets, and lifted him to see if there were any other parts to his fairy tale in the boat, and then he took another look at the Slavic face. The wind was starting to lick up with the tide change and he bit with cold and was suddenly very hungry. He thought for a moment about taking the man’s jacket that was drier than his. Somehow in his coldness and hunger was a sense of his own reality. He clung on to that.
Gulls were coming off the cliffs and circling and began to call and other birds were beckoning in the new light. He was shaking his hands to get them warm. “What if someone was here to meet him,” Hold thought. Suddenly it was to him as if the light was some enemy, some thing that would see him. He thought back to the stones falling on the cliff earlier. “I cannot have been seen,” he said. “There was no one.” Then he saw the packages.
There were three of them, carefully wrapped, bound up in parcel tape, all about the size of a fist. He picked them up. Something inside him knew already they were packages of some dangerous, exploiting thing, which he felt a sick fear of in his gut. It was like they could speak.
He dragged the boat a little farther onto the reef and went back to the game bag and took out the knife. Then he cut a thin split in one of the parcels with the knowledge of what was in them already in him. A small, sticky spill of white powder sat up out of the split. It smelt strange on the knife. He had no idea what it was. But he knew it was drugs, and it looked raw and unprocessed and he wouldn’t be able to tell you what part of his knowledge told him this.
He looked at the parcel in his hand and thought of the worth of it and of the house and of Danny and the dead Slav and of a risk that would surely only have been taken for great wealth.
“Now what?” he said. And then he sat on the rock with the parcels in his hand, the light coming.
He’d had this image of Cara with her neck in a net, tiring herself to a beaten point of exhaustion. Of his mother. Take it, he had thought. Take this now, and try to change things, or you will have to stand by and watch it all again.
“I couldn’t have been seen,” he thought. “No one could have seen this.”
PART TWO
He could not take everything. He had not intended to bring the net in and had no bag for it. There were the big fish and the rabbits. The rifle had to come. He was like a point of concentration now, with the mechanism from childhood fully kicked in.
As soon as he saw them, he knew he would take the packages. He had thought briefly about taking the boat, of checking the engine for serial numbers, of weighting the man and throwing him in the water and had known this was madness. He knew he must have no connection with the packages, and he must disappear off the beach.
He went back to the net and started to take the other fish out with his numb hands, trying to slow himself in this process, and the light was growing bit by bit, even giving some luminosity to the strands of nylon as if it was becoming animate. He got the knife and cut out the fish and dumped it on the rocks and cut out the other fish and there was something almost religious about cutting the net, like he had broken some sanctity and that he had cut much more than the net in doing this thing. He went to the tangled crab and cut it free and cut and pulled away the threads amongst it and put it down on the rock so as not to hurt even this thing he had no like of. And he moved efficiently in this place of decision he had built for himself and pulled up the anchoring rope of the net from the bowl of rocks he had it in, ignoring the criminality of having cut the net.
He threw the fish down the beach and got the large plastic sack he carried for them and arm over arm piled the yards of net into it, tearing automatically at the large straps of seaweed that were amongst it. He thought about putting the net in the boat and of keeping the fish but he knew that should not be done; and he thought too about taking the fish and leaving the net lifted, and of bringing round the fishing boat and sculling out to collect it so much was his reluctance to leave the fish and to kill for no purpose. At least the gulls will have them, he thought. The bay was filling with light now and it was the point of most coldness.
He worked his hands trying to warm them and sucked at his fingers to bring the blood back to them and tasted the fish and salt water on them and the iodine tang of the weed. He put on the headlamp and took the rabbits from the bag and the nylon line and blunt needle for stitching the net and he cut out the liver and kidneys and hearts he had left in the rabbits and threw them too on the beach and washed his hands in a pool and watched the dark strings of blood come off him. As cold as he was, the water felt warm on his hands.
He took the packages one by one and set them inside the rabbits and one by one stitched up the cavities, forcing the needle though the taut hide with a pebble and the rabbits grew in weight and seemed to reconstitute their missing shape like they underwent some backwards act of resurrection.
He had sat wondering what to do and everything had happened unconsciously, as if the decisions were being made at some distance from him, and he had none of the usual discussion in his mind about what choices to make. It was as if he already knew. He had sat and stared at the boat and at the heap of man and down at his fish and had taken out the fish scales and weighed the packages one by one, hanging them by their loops of tape. And he knew that for a man to take a boat, to take this weight of things somewhere, there had to be much value in those things and he had sat for a while with his head in his hands.
He looked once more at his scattered bounty of fish and took his knife and went to the boat and took the spare fuel and refilled the tank and pumped the fuel through to the motor. Then he dragged the man into the back of the boat. He took the bow of the boat by the cord and heaved it round until it met the water and walked in with it, feeling the cold water come into him again and the man bounce in the bed of the boat and he let it ride over the waves and went with it into the deeper water.
He dropped the motor and pulled out the weed that had dragged in the propeller and took the gunwale cord and cut it with the knife, going backwards with the boat each time a wave came to it. Then he wrapped the cord over and over round the prop shaft and fed an end of it through the rings as if it might have snapped and gone itself around the engine. And as strongly as he could in the water he stayed the motor so it could not turn and pushed the boat back out into the deeper water.
He checked the prime on the motor once more and moved the choke and pressed the automatic starter and swore silently at the motor when it did not start. And then he cut off the toggle and took out the drawstring from the man’s hood and unscrewed the cap of the flywheel as the boat kept going back at the beach and he kept walking it forward. He had cut his hand somehow and it was bleeding heavily onto the wheel and he wrapped the drawstring round the wheel and tugged and sent it round and the engine spat and fired and he leveled the choke and felt the blood go down his hand. And then he dropped a gear and coughed at the spume of fuel that caught him and he let the boat go.
It cut out through the water over the waves like some thing released and he watched it until it was way out in its straight line. Then he got out of the water, took his things, and watched until he couldn’t see the boat any more. Then he walked laden off the beach.
He dropped the net by the van.
He was shaking with exhaustion and cold and nervous and he could hardly move. His arms were numb with the effort of carrying the wet net.
He got the net in the back of the van and took out an old sack and spread it automatically on the driver’s seat. The places his body hurt were becoming known to him one by one as the anesthetic effects of the adrenaline and the shock settled into a low, sick-tasting weight in his stomach.
“Don’t do
this,” he thought. “Take it to the police and turn it all in now.”
It was light now, and the blackbirds and thrushes were vibrant with sound. He sat there for a while. He thought of Danny and his belief in the outside chance.
“No,” he thought. “It’s fallen to you. You kind of asked for something like this. You have to take it on now.”
He drove back to the trailer and took the rabbits in and put them on the unit in the bag. He took out the phone from the pocket in the bag and dried it and put it from some inexplicable paranoia inside the grill section of the cooker. Then he took out the rabbits from the bag and looked at them and then he took them out and hung them in the van back thinking that would be natural, and that the van was most difficult to get into. “I cannot be too careful now,” he thought. “There is no part of me that can miss something.”
He was sure he was not seen but he understood what he had done and what he had started and how he had come into something very dangerous. He looked around the trailer. He locked the door and then he took the ball of string he’d hung the rabbits up with and he ran a line from the handle of the door to the open bathroom door and pushed the bathroom door back until the line was tight and then he wedged the bathroom door. He took the rifle from the case and checked it and laid it down on the unit by the bathroom door with its chamber open and he left the silencer off. I cannot at any point let myself think that I am being too paranoid. The extra sound of the unsilenced gun might give me split seconds if it happened. He looked around again and checked the line to see that it was tight enough to pull the bathroom door if the front door opened. He put a handful of cartridges on the shelf by the bathroom door, took the rifle, and went into the shower.
