The Dead & The Drowning

by Cameron Bell

  I could always take a drubbing and my head clears quickly. I rally my legs and prepare for an onslaught, blood the taste of iron in my mouth; and with a face a map of turmoil Marcus tears into me. From a southpaw stance I am caught on the cheek with a left reverse punch and it smarts instead of shakes. With a cross guard in place I continue to weave side to side but don't duck for danger of a knee. I have two weapons - well sometimes three when I elect to use my head. He has eight; but I have to take solace that my two are better than any of his two – I just had to connect cleanly and land one bomb before being hammered with another kick.

  He doesn't come back in but follows the momentum of the punch to perform a roundhouse kick with the left foot. It is rising when I spring forward and thrust a ramrod left jab into the underside of his jaw. The impact cleans his clock and dumps him on his back. I am on him with an uppercut as he hastens up to his feet, the hurried blow cuffing his left ear.

  Wild faced he grabs my shoulders and brings a knee into my stomach which I tense and take, though there is always a cost to be paid later in a long fight. He shoots another and I block it with a tucked elbow. Then with an open hand I twist and shove his left hand off my shoulder cocking the right hand for a hard, sapping hook to the ribs. I pull the fist in and angling my body drive it up through the middle as an uppercut. It makes solid contact with his chin, a fraction of a second before I feel I've walked into a post. In a moment the ringing subsides, the vision clears, and I see a nodding Marcus try to straighten up like a sozzled sailor before a gangplank. Blood flows immediately from my forehead in separate little streams dripping into, over and around my left eye. And I deduce that I've been sliced open by an elbow strike. I wipe away the blood, but it makes no difference, and it pours into my eye from its many tributaries.

  Marcus breathing heavily puts hands on thighs and tries by head shaking to fix the focus of his eyes. Separated by seven yards I stare into his relatively unmarked face and grin, a big bloody, disfigured grin. He reciprocates and his teeth too are coated with blood.

  Many a man had hate exorcised from him in the ring, and in its place a hard-earned respect grown in sweat, blood and grit. In another time or place, when the dust had settled I might have shaken his hand and bought him a drink.

  I spit out a globule of blood, wipe my brow and get going. Marcus circles away, feinting attacks and creating angles, while I work my way in cutting off an imaginary ring, boxing him into nowhere. We are husks of what we were, damaged inside and out by now and before.

  He smoothly changes to side on southpaw and with brutal skill and speed delivers a side stomp kick to my traumatized shin. The pain is excruciating, and I pull the leg away as though it had been put to a flame. This time he doesn't rush in, he circles and lets me hobble and bleed. It would seem the new tactic is to snipe with kicks at range, to pick at me like a matador would a bull; and damn if his fucking leg isn't hurt as bad I had thought. Not believing I could take another splintering stomp I leave my damaged leg behind and turn southy myself.

  “You should see yourself bud, you're a fucking mess, you look like roadkill,” he says with a red toothed smirk.

  I am tired of listening to his bile, I had hoped that he'd shut up and now he's running off his mouth trash talking again. He's an on top shit talker so he must fancy the tide is turning in his favour. I have nothing smart to say or would I want to either. At this stage for me there is breath, blood and pain held together with a violent intent - there is no space for words.

  I advance watching the hips anticipating the kick to come. He switches over to orthodox sidling and suggesting an attack. I make up my mind not to wait and dive at him, unleashing with the dominant hand a crushing right jab with all my weight behind it. I angle off the centre line and get it outside his lead hand. It flies over the left shoulder, and the punch crashes into the side of his jaw, rapidly forcing the chin to the other shoulder. Marcus goes to sit like he's had a long day and is falling into his favourite chair. His head drops, he sinks back and a follow up shovel hook with the left hand smashes into the front of his face. Concussed and battered he collapses into a loose seat. I step back in love with my sore fists and count.

  “One … two … three.”

  Marcus looks up, his top lip split, eyes in separate orbits.

  “Four … five,” I count.

  He pushes up to his knees as though he has suddenly aged forty years and gets in a position to stand.

  “Six … seven … eight.”

  If he's not taking advantage of the count.

  “Nine.”

  Marcus rises and I give him credit for being tough. It fitted with a preferred narrative that he'd be a cream puff bully that could dish it out and not take it, but this is not how it is.

  “Beat your count,” he says defiantly wearing a stupefied look.

  He is unsteady and dazed though likely still dangerous as wounded animals are. His hands hover loutishly out in front and the stance is now squared and irregular. A kick from him would now put him over and a short salvo from me should put him away.

  Marcus grins, shrugging off the hurt, boldly waving me in like it is all part of the plan. I line up the left hook and prepare to pull the trigger, when from behind the edge of a spade strikes down at his right shoulder. It hits the bony point with an unpleasant crack and the force drops Marcus to his knees. His face is frozen in surprise and he seems not to know where to look for an answer. Marcus's sick, shocked eyes ask me, then move to his hanging shoulder for an explanation, and finally understanding they look behind to accuse Toni.

  ◆◆◆

  Toni has both hands on the handle one on top of the other, and she leans on the spade as if she is taking a break from digging her allotment.

  “That should to do it … dislocated shoulder I reckon … or maybe a fractured collarbone.”

  “Arrrgh you bitch! … I fucking knew it … aaaah,” gasps Marcus.

  Nursing his limp arm, he stands with a stagger, turning his back on me to face Toni.

  “I had him, you spoiled it … it was hard ... hard and fair and you ... you screwed it up! ... and took it away from me!”

  Indignation had blown a fuse in my brain and I could hardly get the words out.

  “It was too close Will, you were getting hurt ... and what was that shit with the count … he wouldn't do that, he'd have shattered your face with the heel of his boot.”

  And she looks at me like I'm an oddity in a jar.

  “We're not fucking playing here.”

  “But … I had him,” I repeat weakly realizing that I am right and wrong at the same time.

  “I couldn't take the chance. There is more at stake here than your stupid, selfish pride. And besides he's hurt me more than anyone … I deserved a piece, so quit the bitching.”

  I couldn't argue, I was seeking an ideal that had no place on this mountain, that had no currency with these people. I valued it, I knew it meant something, but is it putting value on fool's gold.

  “Huh, I'm going to leave you two to it. Toni, I'm through, I'm done you've seen to that, I'm no threat now. I need to go to a hospital … have it all.”

  Stooping and hugging his arm it takes effort for Marcus to speak as though he's pushing the words from his deathbed.

  “That's very kind of you Marcus. You're no threat now it is true, but what about later back home, what then?”

  “I'll leave you alone,” he answers his lips hardly moving, his tone and mood muted and subdued.

  “Nah, I don't see you or your sicko cousin doing that. After all you sent him down the basement to kill me.”

  Toni leans off the spade and readies its blade over her shoulder.

  “He … he wasn't going to kill you … just scare you into keeping your mouth shut.”

  A mixture of pain and worry occupies Marcus's face and I realize that he is more scared of her than me.

  “Right now, I could do it. I could swing this at your head and see what harm it did, and then do more
of the same until all that remains is mush around a stump,” Toni threatens manically, her lip curling mean at the end; yet I can see that it is fear that is at work behind the scenes.

  “Okay Toni I didn't sign up for murder,” I say trying to placate her.

  “Think about it Toni, if you kill me, you've got to kill Martha and Adam too because they know I'm here … think now!” Let me walk away and go dig up whatever is there.”

  “Don't … wait!” shouts a female voice.

  I turn and see Marta to my right with her hands raised in surrender walking down the mountain. As she gets nearer I see that she has the brooch in the palm of her right hand. I also notice that her jacket has a band of red tinged lining exposed along the left bicep.

  “Let him go and I'll give you the brooch.”

  “Throw it over then,” I say.

  “Don't come too close Marta,” warns Marcus.

  Marta pitches the brooch at the optimum angle, and it travels a good distance, landing half a dozen yards in front of me.

  “Go!” I tell Marcus.

  Warily, keeping an eye on Toni, Marcus walks wearily towards Marta like a wounded soldier returning from the front line. Toni swears, harpoons the earth and kicks a tuft of grass. She places both hands on her hips and inhales and exhales vigorously enough that her nostrils flare.

  “Come on let's get on it while I still got blood to bleed,” I sullenly joke.

  She strides over in a huff, holds my chin and says disapprovingly,

  “You'll live but you look more like a bulldog now. What was all that about?”

  “Something I don't think you'd understand,” I reply with a shrug of the shoulders and an overtone of regret – sympathy it seemed is frozen in the pipe.

  “No, I don't, not any more I stopped doing stupid.”

  I'd been given both barrels, point blank range into the chest. I had no comebacks, nothing tart or pithy to say – I was stupid, am.

  I pick up the brooch and know exhaustion is coming. An avalanche of it rumbling behind that will bury me sooner if I stop but will bury me all the same no matter what. I watch them climb up the peak, her stringy arm around his waist, helping him like a crutch. She had come back for him and that counted for a lot; it probably counted for more than anything else.

  ◆◆◆

  The cause of all this strife is a shiny silver circle the size of a coffee coaster with a rune engraved rim a quarter of an inch thick. Across the circumference from eight o'clock to three o'clock a silver thread the thickness of a match is shaped to form the curled peaks. Off the rim between four and five o'clock is a silver cord of exact thickness and about a half and inch long, culminating in a small amber cross. The brooch's rim is bevelled and has a simple hook type fastener at the back that would present the brooch to those who looked upon it as a picture. I sniff it and it smells of the crypt. I run my blood-stained fingers over its features and wonder if a little over a thousand years ago, a Viking called Gorm Longbeard had stood where I am now holding this brooch with blood on his hands too. Now people were willing to kill each other for the wish of gold that another had killed people for eras ago. And allow enough time to elapse, though perhaps not much time at all, and others succumbing to that base desire would set their hearts to do the same.

  I drag myself over for the other spade, however Jon beats me to it and says in an avuncular sounding voice that would suit narration of a children's book,

  “I got this young man, you guide us in.”

  Toni and Jon traipse up the slope to where Marcus left the detector. I hold the brooch up and manoeuvre to fit it to the mountain. I hang the picture on the twin peaks and the cross sits on the pair as they refine the spot with the detector. I shout up the slope,

  “You're on it.”

  Conflict had held the cold at bay, but in its aftermath a frigid coastal wind devours me - my wet clothing a chilling second skin. In these conditions you are a missed step from grief and two from the grave. I head up the hill seeing Toni and Jon working in tandem shovelling earth; Toni oblivious to the cold digging with blind fervour. I cross over the ridge and retrieve our coats and gloves and catch sight of Marcus and Marta shambling back to a crippled car and a wall of despair – and know that when it rains it pours.

  Chapter 20

  By the time I return they are a couple of feet deep into the hillside. Toni has built a sweat and Jon has shorn his coat. Absent the baggy duffel Jon is a trim figure and with the vigour he attacks the earth seems unafflicted by the common, limiting ills of a man his age. He has a fleshy triangular nose between sunken, rheumy eyes and a weather-beaten complexion hedged by a full white beard, mottled in parts with grey; and although craning forward in a stoop stands taller than me by a good inch. With all that had gone on he hadn't said much. Those thin lips had parted with few words since I'd met him and it could be he isn't the talking type, or given the ensuing ugliness had nothing worth saying.

  I make the mistake of stilly watching the cold brown dirt pile and the avalanche hits, engulfing me in exhaustion, calling me to the ground, pulling me into the dark reaches of surrender. Then the ding I hear revives my eyes.

  “We've hit something!” exclaims Toni.

  “Careful now,” contrasts Jon his words unhurried and even.

  They dig around widening the hole, cautiously excavating the clay like earth away from the sides of the tarnished object. I discern a circular lid and bowed sides.

  “Different kind of Workout of The Day,” says Toni grunting and working like a Navvy.

  They beaver away, shovelling and scraping off the thick earth until the object is revealed to be a metal pot the size of a beer keg.

  “Has one of you a phone with you?” asks Jon.

  “They took mine,” answers Toni.

  “I have one,” I reply.

  “I need to take photos; can I use it?”

  “Shouldn't you save the charge Will to navigate us back?” comments Toni attempting I sense to influence my answer.

  “It's okay I know the way back,” Jon assures.

  I take out my phone and it has twenty-seven percent charge. I enter the swipe code, get the camera up and I hand it to him. Jon photographs the situation and then kneeling over gets a close-up shot of the pot. Jon then stands and beckons us to the hole.

  “Stand in both of you. You are now famous treasure hunters and will be celebrated.”

  “No, no Jon the limelight is yours,” replies Toni dismissing the idea.

  “I don't understand … er limelight.”

  “It means you can take the credit, I know how much it means to you; but first there needs to be something worth shouting about.”

  Jon holds the phone out with his left hand and with the right offers me a handshake.

  “We haven't been properly introduced I'm Jon Einarsson and I am a friend of Toni's father Jim.”

  We shake hands, his grip is firm and warm from the digging.

  “I'm William Cutter from South Wales and I've just got sucked into this,” I say with a bewildered and busted smile on my chops.

  “Well I'm glad you did William, I'm glad you did because it was looking bad for both of us. There is going to be a reward, and you'll get your share.”

  I turn and Toni is back working the spade.

  Chapter 21

  The pot is damn heavy in the tight hole and Jon suggests that we dig a trench to get at it. I have another idea and bending over the pot clean away the muck from the lid. I twist and pull, and it comes off easier than I imagine it would. Toni and Jon crowd around and we all see our fortunes change. Packed to the brim are gold coins, immaculate, glittering sovereignty of a bygone king. Hands collide and jam at the neck to grasp what is a dizzying and warping amount of gold.

  “We've hit the fucking mother lode.” exuberates Toni shaking me, glee blazing from her eyes.

  “I knew it, I knew it … they, the experts all laughed at me, ridiculed me for chasing a phantom … now they will eat their words and gi
ve me my respect. Who will be the expert now, the giant … hah?”

  Bitterly euphoric and vengeful Jon had uncorked himself and what gushed out wasn't pretty. I understood where he was coming from; if I had walked in his shoes I'd want to rub their noses in it too - we all bore wounds from the slights and snubs of those whom we sought approval, and injustices from those we did and didn't. Before leaving I had been marinating in resentment and stockpiling grievances for a battle I couldn't yet fight; I had only hurt myself and I could now see myself in Jon.

  Toni and I take turns scooping handfuls of gold coins out of the pot and onto the grass. Jon plucks just one and taking out a pair of spectacles from a breast pocket scrutinizes it.

  “My, my … is it?”

  I stop to observe and see a man winning the lottery and incredulously staring at the ticket expecting the numbers to change. His thin lips tremble and he mouths incomplete words. He licks thin, cracked lips and utters,

  “Ó Guð!”

  Jon flaps, his synapses over stimulated with what is before him and what lay ahead. He checks the coin once more, then managing to harness the frenetic energy coursing through his body bustles over to the pile of coins. On his knees, he picks and examines, picks and examines, his face riffling with emotion.

  “Ó Guð!”

  “What is it Jon?” asks Toni.

  “Will give me the phone,” he says fidgeting like he's mainlined speed.

  I open up my phone and hand it to him. I put my specs on and watch. Jon gets onto Google and enters Syracuse Solidus in the search bar. The first result is Solidus of Irene, Syracuse – Historical Coin Market and below are images similar to the coins I'd dug my fingers into. Gold pancaked into an imperfect circle with some a little ragged at the edges. They had been struck with a female monarch resplendent with robes, crown and cross topped sceptre. Jon brings the ancient and new together and it is though he can't trust his eyes as he compares. Jon scrolls down and clicks the link to the historical coin market, and I read the page with him.