Everything I Found on the Beach by Cynan Jones Page B

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, thenthere 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 sand 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 ifsomeone 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