The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  The sloop coursed around a thickly forested promontory where, at their peak, the floodwaters had hurtled a miscellany of chattels and trappings into the trees, the strangest things now lodged in the canopy – a butter barrel, a window panel, a Dutch clock, a fishnet and shreds of rigging, and a big teakettle cradled in a clutch of driftwood like a nesting heron.

  On a small beachhead they saw a gig on its side with a wheel dislodged, the shaft snapped and shreds of harness in the underbrush, the horse gone forever.

  ‘That gig’s beggin’ for salvage,’ said Dan Sprodd. He took off his hat, scratched at his scalp, pulled at wisps of thin grey hair.

  ‘You could set up a regular thieves’ market right there,’ said Cuff.

  Sprodd took on a hurt look. ‘No theft in salvage,’ he said.

  ‘It’s theft if you don’t declare it,’ said Mackie.

  ‘I would declare it, I’d put a note in the Gazette, but I’d want a salvage fee.’

  Cuff was contemplating the devastation they’d seen thus far. ‘This river’s an avenue for a carnival of ghouls.’

  ‘No time for a carnival just now,’ said Sprodd.

  Cuff worked his earlobe between thumb and forefinger and cast a glance upward as if searching for assistance from the Lord above. It was his view that a prolonged exchange with Dan Sprodd could make a man jump off a cliff. He reckoned it was about eight years since he first met Sprodd. All that time he’d found the man moderately exasperating, Sprodd’s top paddock being not much turned and sparsely seeded. He was the only man Cuff had ever known to miss the point every time. But that was not the half of Sprodd. The man hardly said a bad word about anyone, ever. He was unfailingly generous in spirit and deed and steady too, dependably steady. And he could fish like no other man. If Sprodd put in a line, you could wager a good feed was on the way, you could bet your fob watch on that.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that harness neither, that’ll scrub up,’ he said.

  ‘Well Dan, I’m sure it’ll be there when next you happen this way, the traffic being somewhat reticent at the present time, so don’t agitate your kidneys.’

  Cuff took another mouthful from the demijohn, wiped his chin and licked his fingers and turned his attention to the chief constable. ‘I’m happy to put aside the clout, but if anyone needs a shot of vigour it’s you. You’re so tired you look like a weathered corpse. Look at me, twice your age, a regular imbiber and nothin’ but vigour and beauty to show for it.’

  ‘Vigour for talk and rut and not much else,’ said Mackie.

  He had the palest of pale green eyes, one of which bore a black spot, a flaw upon the iris. Cuff had often wondered about that black spot. It seemed to draw his own eye whenever he was caught in the grip of Mackie’s scrutinising gaze.

  Once past Cattai Creek they stopped regularly so Mackie might better survey the damage and make his appraisal of the plight of the small farms – the losses of grain on the stem and grain in store, livestock losses, the standing maize that might be salvaged, the surviving wheat seed and other seed, and the acreage committed to planting in April, weather permitting.

  Mackie was in no mood for blather but the settlers, some of them at least, were charged with the wild energy of miraculous survival and they were full of blather. They were like pots on the boil, spilling over with talk of the calamity, the strangest of tales – of hours spent clinging to rooftops, of wheat stacks and barley mows carried off, stock and forest creatures helpless on the torrent, pigs and dogs and prodigious quantities of poultry clinging to driftwood, the bottoms gone, swamped, the country transformed, a vast archipelago, naught but a scattering of runty atolls and the air thick and damp and the sky so black and the lightning, oh the lightning, the bolts and the javelins and the harpoons of blue fire, darts like serpents’ tongues and forks like banshee talons, their work rending the earth with the smell of sulphur and fissured saplings, young and pale and tinged with green, like prawn flesh rotting. Of all this and more they were compelled to speak and the grain assessor was compelled to listen until they settled, and made some bush tea, and set themselves upon logs or refuse of some description and readied to answer his questions as to their losses of wheat, maize and barley, seed in hand and prospects for planting.

  The breeze was light. On the fading tide the sloop moved slowly, in company with the flood-wrack on the flow. They tacked again, this time across the oxbow on Sickle Reach, and they came in sight of Martin Sparrow cross-legged on the furthest edge of a small beach on the west bank, his obedient shadow squat upon the sandy slope. They saw him get to his feet and jump about like he was bitten. They saw him wave and shout, lest they sail on by, deaf and blind to his predicament.

  Cuff was first to step ashore. ‘You’re on the wrong side of the river Mr Sparrow,’ he said.

  ‘I near got drowned,’ said Sparrow, watching Mackie step from the boat.

  ‘But you didn’t, and now you’re saved,’ said Cuff.

  Sparrow shuddered. ‘I got carried off, me and the hens, and the hens are dead, drowned, that’s all I know.’

  Cuff studied the coop and then the coffin. ‘I trust you didn’t wash down in that,’ he said.

  ‘That was here when I woke up.’

  Mackie went straight to the coffin, followed by Sprodd. He lifted the drape, studied the carnage beneath. ‘Is this your work?’ he said to Sparrow.

  ‘I had to stop them crows.’

  ‘You get your corn in?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Your corn is in the mud then?’

  ‘You know that.’

  ‘I do, I saw your patch, the crop flattened, the grain rotting in muck. I saw your neighbours busy at work, but I did not see you.’

  ‘That river was a chute.’

  ‘You had ample warning, ample time to get your crop in.’

  ‘I did yes, I see that now.’

  ‘And why are you not rescuing what corn you can. Why are you thus?’

  ‘I am on the wrong side of the river, I cannot get back.’ Sparrow’s voice had lifted an octave or two, edging to shrill.

  ‘You might have walked south, got yourself to Monty Bushell’s patch.’

  ‘I can hardly lift my legs.’

  ‘When is that not the case, save your regular pilgrimage to Bet Pepper’s establishment?’

  Sparrow chuckled. ‘I don’t exactly worship there.’

  ‘I think you do, I think that’s half your trouble, duchessed by flounce and rouge,’ said Mackie.

  Sparrow was flummoxed. Biddie Happ was not one for flounce nor rouge, but that was hardly the point. Here he was, marooned, considerably wasted, a victim of nature’s wrath, the devil conducting the elements, and Alister Mackie was warning him off whores. ‘You take me across I’ll wing my way back I swear. I’ll salvage what I can.’

  ‘Do you have any intention of planting wheat for the store, as required by our arrangement?’

  ‘Weather permitting, I’ll get a crop in within the month but, um . . . I got no seed.’

  ‘Yet again cap in hand, to me.’

  ‘Yes sir, seed wheat for two acres, one for me, one to cover a parcel o’ debt, that’s all I need . . . and maize enough to see me through to the harvest, just for bread. Only bread.’

  Mackie crossed the sand and stepped up the bank, the better to survey the lowlands and the mountains beyond. Herons scuttled off and wildfowl burst into the air, the downdraught stirring the surface on freshly formed ponds, a silvery light on the ripples. He turned to Sparrow. ‘Have you seen your friend the bolter, Mort Craggs?’

  Sparrow was shocked to think Mackie might consider him in any way a party to Mort’s escape.

  ‘I have not seen him and he is not my friend,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘And you know nothing of the plot?’ said Mackie.

  ‘No,’ he said, intent upon a still tongue.

  Cuff patted Sparrow on the shoulder. ‘Let’s just get him across, Alister, and he can hurry on home.’

  ‘I’ll s
alvage what I can, I promise.’

  ‘There!’ said Cuff.

  ‘You see me when we get back,’ said Mackie.

  ‘I will, yes, thank you sir.’

  They made ready to depart but Sparrow detained them. He retrieved a hen from the coop, the hen he called Geraldine, his favourite. He cradled the bird in his arms. ‘I want to bury them,’ he said.

  Mackie turned away. Cuff made every effort not to laugh and he succeeded in this endeavour for he was no mocker, not of lesser mortals, the likes of Sparrow. He got the sand shovel from the sloop and handed it to Sparrow and Sparrow looked about, unsure what to do with Geraldine.

  ‘Give me the bird,’ said Cuff, and he gathered Geraldine from the crook of Sparrow’s arm and Sparrow went up the bank and set to digging a little grave. Sprodd brought the other hens and dropped them close by.

  ‘They never failed me,’ said Sparrow. He was on his knees, digging.

  Cuff thought the former felon a most pathetic sight. He went down on his haunches so he could talk to Sparrow quietly, eye to eye. ‘A wise man does not burn his bridges till he knows he can part the waters,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Martin, Mr Mackie is a hard man, but he’s a friend to any man sober who would persevere. You must endeavour to persevere, y’understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Make a show, Marty, look to your grain, that’s all he wants, grain’s all that matters in this little world of ours. Grain is money, it’s credit at the store, grain is your ticket to a little comfort in this world, to your . . . renewal.’

  Sparrow knew Cuff was right. Grain, wheat, that was money – tradeable at the commissariat store for foodstuffs, hardware, timber, clothing, candied ginger, whatever came off the transports in the way of government provisions.

  Cuff spoke softly into Sparrow’s ear. ‘You meet your obligations Marty or he’ll foreclose on you. Believe me, Alister will have your patch.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sparrow. He patted down the dirt with the head of the shovel.

  Mackie had lost all patience. ‘Enough, time to go, now!’

  ‘Why?’ said Cuff.

  ‘You kill time you injure eternity, that’s why.’

  ‘You could learn something from eternity, Alister. It’s just there, unhurried, an example to us all.’

  ‘It’s notice to get moving is what it is.’

  ‘If it weren’t forever it wouldn’t trouble me at all,’ said Sprodd.

  They loaded into the sloop and crossed the broad turn in the river, running with the wind, the westerly full in the sail.

  Sparrow stepped into the shallows. He thanked them and hurried off, south, wondering how he might ford the bloated fresh water creeks and his own creek, the Cattai, and how he might begin to reclaim his patch. How he might set about his renewal. The very thought put lead in his legs.

  3

  The boatmen took to the deep once again, the tide briefly in abeyance, the westerly obliging for the run to the Branch, raptors wheeling in the sky, the river yet a carpet of driftwood and leaves.

  Mackie was not inclined to stop at the game hunter’s camp at Pig Creek for there was no life there, just a dead ox and otherwise nothing, no sign of Griffin Pinney’s hut, nor his old tent, nothing to suggest a campsite until Sprodd said ‘Oh Lord’ and pointed to the limp, blue, lacerated body of a woman wedged in the fork of an old grey gum, the rooting half out of the ground.

  They beached the boat near the Pig Creek outflow.

  The tree was bent so low they could almost reach up and touch her.

  They stood there, trying to make sense of the fatal predicament above them.

  ‘Poor soul,’ said Cuff. He looked away, studied the scene upriver.

  ‘That’s Griffin Pinney’s concubine up there,’ said Sprodd.

  ‘I know who she is and it’s a damn shame.’ Her face was mostly obscured by her long hair, but they all knew it was Thelma Rowntree, formerly one of Betty Pepper’s girls. ‘She was better off servicin’ the corps than take up with Griffin Pinney, I know that much,’ said Cuff.

  ‘Where’s he got to?’ said Sprodd.

  ‘Who the hell would know, that villain.’

  ‘He might be drowned dead too.’

  ‘You don’t need to say dead when you say drowned, Dan, drowned means dead.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Sprodd.

  Cuff was pondering this most unlikely coupling, the fearsome game hunter and the nice-looking strumpet. ‘Pinney’s a wily customer,’ he said. ‘Filled her head with that nonsense about the far side of the wilderness, place of milk and honey.’

  ‘You don’t know it’s nonsense.’

  ‘You been there?’

  ‘No, but you ain’t neither.’

  ‘Dan, there’s nowhere like that. Look at the Frogs, liberty liberty liberty, and what have they got?’

  ‘Napoleon Bonaparte?’

  ‘The scourge of the con-ti-nent, I rest my case.’

  ‘But this ain’t France.’ Sprodd looked about, certain he was right.

  ‘No, it ain’t France. It’s the river where we got nature bless’d and fecund, dirt so rich you can sing up a crop with a song if you want to . . . I call that Arcadia.’

  ‘What’s Arcadia?’

  Mackie stepped away, unbuttoned, took a piss on the sand. He stared into the timber further up the creek, listening to the chatter as Cuff talked on.

  ‘Dan, that nonsense about a settlement on the other side of the mountains, that comes out of Peachey’s Tap. Feckless felons and Irishmen pickled in bang-head. Seamus Peachey and friends don’t know paradise when they’re livin’ in it.’

  ‘Where’d they get the idea then?’

  ‘Some mischievous Frenchman I’d reckon. You put a Frenchy in with Irish you get a compound of wild dreams and silliness with a strong tendency to bloody outcomes.’

  ‘But Peachey’s from Birmingham.’

  ‘He’s half full of Irish blood and he’s Irish in his head. He is not a trustworthy entity, that is my point.’

  Sprodd was in agreement with Cuff as regards Peachey’s blood, but he could not dismiss the idea that white men might be living a life entirely free of bondage on the far side of the mountains. ‘I heard there’s a village on the other side, and a big river.’

  ‘We ought get poor Thelma out of that tree,’ said Cuff.

  They took her down and laid her on the sand and drew back the mouse-coloured hair from her face. Mercifully, her eyes were closed, but they were closed so tight her entire face was contorted, once bonny, now wrinkled up like old rind. They all agreed no one could have foretold the full extent of the rise in the river. ‘The foreseeable, that’s what never happens,’ said Cuff.

  Mackie came and stood over the woman. ‘A busy quim no more,’ he said, without sadness or pity.

  Cuff followed Mackie in some things, notably the enforcement of select law and a seasoned distrust of the military, but on the subject of women he was set at sharp variance. He looked at Thelma, bruised and cut, spotted with silt and sediment and smeared in grey muck; looked upon her once lovely face, where hard living had carved grooves way too soon. He knew Mackie to be a man who stood off from women, as if they were diseased or foul-breathed or some lesser species from the animal world, or perhaps merely a peril to the vigour of his enterprise. ‘Only the wretched have no compassion,’ he said.

  Mackie stared. ‘I state a fact.’

  ‘Fact or no fact, now is not the time to sit in judgement.’

  ‘She had airs, told me she was a hostess,’ said Sprodd.

  ‘That ain’t a crime, we all got airs. The crime is to pretend we don’t.’

  ‘You been with her?’

  ‘Ev’body’s been with her, except a certain chief constable I happen to know.’ Cuff wanted Mackie to hear that. He looked at the poor young woman’s fingers, the knuckles chafed and torn. Now, it seemed, his time with Thelma was time well spent. They had always been happy in the course of their l
eisurely communion. Thelma said she liked to be with him, said she felt safe with him, said she liked to hear him talk, said most of the traffic was not interested in talk. That was no surprise to Cuff for he knew he was a good talker. He also knew most of the traffic was the soldiers and most of the soldiers were poor talkers. The memory of Thelma made Cuff a little bit angry, made him want to chastise Mackie before the present company. ‘Alister, if you got no charity in your heart, you got nothin’.’

  But Mackie was not about to be admonished. ‘We may all lift ourselves up and others with us, but charity is for the deserving.’

  Cuff threw his hands in the air. ‘I rest my case.’

  4

  It was late in the afternoon when Sparrow got home, wet and tired. His corn crop lay flattened in the mud, the wildfowl feeding at their leisure. His hut was ripe with the smell of rot and mould and the dirt floor turned to mush when he walked upon it. Some of the roof shingles were gone too, the dismal interior patterned in square-cut shafts of blue-grey light.

  He went outside and slumped onto a stump stool on his porch. Where to begin? The question overwhelmed him. He studied the cut on his forearm, felt himself sinking into a slough of despond. He could hear the wildfowl at work, that soft cooing sound they make when they’re happy. He wished he had a pistol to blast them with a fan of slugs and make of them a stew. What with the crows in the coffin, and his hens, now buried, he concluded he was having an unusually bird-filled day.

  His thoughts turned to Biddie Happ. Biddie never failed to excite the most tender and amorous sensations in his breast, and the most vigorous throbbing in his pizzle. All he wanted was a word, a sign, any sign she favoured him, that would be enough – a mere scrap of hope – enough to fortify his agricultural resolve and spark him into the work of restoration, an almighty fit of renewal. But until that time, until she gave him a sign, he could hardly lift a finger such was his sorrow. He therefore resolved that the best way to get started on his patch was to go see Biddie and hope for a pleasant interlude.