The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  Peachey lit a lamp. ‘I can spare you a tot of the skull-cracker,’ he said, ‘but no guarantees on the morning comin’ round.’

  ‘That will do me lovely,’ said Sparrow.

  Peachey reached into some nook beneath the counter and he came up with a bottle of something dark. ‘There’s not a lot I can say for this brew, except, if you die, we can embalm you with it, keep you nice for a thousand years.’

  ‘Put y’on the shelf over there,’ said Alfie.

  Sparrow was not laughing. He drank down the skull-cracker and felt it burn all the way.

  ‘You want another?’

  Sparrow nodded and Peachey poured the tot.

  The game hunter stepped so close to Sparrow he could feel the man’s meaty breath upon his cheeks. ‘You’re a brave man, Marty, you’re drinkin’ coffin varnish.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  ‘You ready to bolt then?’

  ‘Sure as eggs are little chickens.’

  Pinney stayed close. ‘That’s the thing . . . eggs ain’t always chickens.’

  ‘Could be a duck,’ said Alfie.

  ‘You reckon you got the mettle?’

  ‘I reckon I do.’

  Sparrow lifted the top plate from the stack on the counter and much to his pleasure he found a pair of crusts in the plate beneath and these he put to work, mopping up the leftover juices and sucking on the brittle bones, taking care to set Griffin Pinney’s nose bone to one side, and then he licked the next plate clean and pretty soon he felt better for he knew it was not a good idea to drink skull-cracker on an empty stomach.

  There was someone rattling around in the skilling at the rear and that someone was Winifred Peachey, who now made her entrance as she always did, bustling onto the stage of tavern life with considerable purpose. The dogs upped and moved away.

  In one hand Mrs Peachey held a key thick as a finger and with the other she pushed her husband out of the way. She lifted a wooden box from beneath the counter and unlocked the lock and retrieved a bunch of promissory notes and sorted through them until she found what she wanted.

  She handed the note to Seamus. ‘He’s in hock to more than Mackie and don’t you forget it. We are not a poorhouse for your abettors in the art of lolling about and doing so much less than nothing that nothing’d be something if ever you did it and you knew what it looked like.’ She turned and snatched the plate from Sparrow’s hand.

  ‘Did what?’ said Shivers in a whisper.

  ‘I don’t forget,’ said Peachey. ‘The poor man’s hardly drinking the saleable stock.’

  ‘See it stays that way.’ She poked a finger into Sparrow’s chest and nearly knocked him over. ‘Saleable is the word. You owe this establishment a half bushel of saleable grain, rust free, grub free and no damp nor mould neither and what’s more you give it up before you go favourin’ the commissariat store or the traders or anyone else, Mackie or whoever, I don’t care, you understand me?’

  ‘I’ll pay you when I can,’ said Sparrow, his voice a whine that seemed to trickle out of his mouth like a pitiful line of dribble.

  ‘You better pay something or I’ll crack your damn skull myself.’

  ‘Winnie, don’t be like that,’ said Peachey.

  ‘Like what, like something other’n a damn loafer?’ She poked a finger in Alfie’s direction. ‘Why’s he not otherwise occupied? Why do we need him, why do we feed him if he’s useless? Why why why do I have to nag all the time and don’t call me Winnie!’

  Shivers scuttled out. ‘I’ll weed them turnips,’ he said, Winifred shouting after him. ‘You see you do, and chain up them dogs for the night and feed them pigs before they starve to death and be quick about it or I’ll send you back to the government and you’ll be on the damn shovel where you belong.’

  She sucked for air and smacked a hand onto her chest and pressed hard as she succumbed to a terrible coughing fit that seemed like it would never end, but when it did she turned to Sparrow and stared at him. She just stared and there seemed no end to that either. ‘I ain’t dead and the gripe won’t kill me, so you can stop wishin’,’ she said, eventually.

  Sparrow felt like a thief caught in the act. He stepped away from the bottle of skull-cracker. At such times his mind broke its mooring. He felt it happening now. He remembered the first time Biddie Happ checked his pizzle for sores. She’d called him a ridgeling, made him blush. ‘I am not,’ he had said.

  ‘Yes you are,’ she’d said.

  ‘One nut’s smaller’n the other, that’s all.’

  ‘So small I cannot see it nor feel it, not in your throat is it?’ And that was that for he was lost for words, like now, with Mrs Peachey staring at him.

  He felt himself a little giddy. He thought he best go, walk it off. ‘I best go,’ he said. And he did.

  13

  Mackie was not asleep. He stirred when Cuff took the pony to the creek. He watched as the pony hurried to the water and stepped down and reefed its head free and drank deep. Cuff dropped the lead rope and put his arm over the withers and leant on the pony the way a drunkard might lean on a friend, or a porch post. Mackie reckoned that was typical, for Cuff was naturally given to trusting pretty much anyone or anything, unless it growled or bit or smelt bad.

  Cuff secured the pony and went back to the fire. Mackie lay quietly, listening to the conversation, much of which was unnecessary and trivial. Cuff was well schooled, yet he seemed happiest when he was talking rubbish to silly old dupes like Harp, indulging the man’s flair for distilling bang-head, praising his product and drinking it too, until the conversation sunk to pitiable and pointless reminiscing about women, the two of them blind to the snare in every pleasure.

  Mackie was hoping Cuff might steer the old man into a confession or a slip that implicated Griffin Pinney in the operation of the still. But Cuff, as ever, was talking for enjoyment. There was no purpose in his talk save for the purpose of more talk, a shallow conviviality. His deputy was turning up the best of opportunities, what with Harp half asleep and half pickled and garrulous into the bargain.

  Mackie lay there, his eyes now closed. He knew that Cuff meant well, but Harp would be a lot better off were he persuaded to name Pinney the principal in the matter of the bush distillery and stick fast to that. Instead the two men scraped out the possum slurry in the iron pot, slaked down the brew, sang its praises and talked, unhushed, about a certain chief constable, without the slightest concession to his presence. He’s no one’s dog, too canny. Cuff at least had the good grace to concede that elemental truth but, then, he might have known Mackie was listening.

  When the two men finally stopped drinking and talking and Harp began to snore, Mackie lay there for a time looking up at the stars. He was sleepy, his mind wandering off track to the subject of irresistible beauty, his own view sharply at variance given the pernicious character of such allurements – the jarring memories a buttress to the constancy of his resolve. He recalled how, before the Kirk, he begged to be forgiven and how, before the court, he begged for nothing. For at the age of seventeen his flesh had turned to stone. And he recalled, too, the ever so odd sense of freedom he felt upon his sentence coming down, for never again would he succumb to the liquid fear and shame he suffered in the presence of the Kirk. He recalled the shocking desire to be away, to cross an ocean, to be on that transport, bound for New South Wales. To be dead, or gone.

  14

  Sparrow felt a headache coming. He put it down to the skull-cracker but then he thought better, guessing Winifred Peachey was to blame, that menace of a woman, that shrew, that scold, that fishwife, that hag, that that, that termagant.

  He crossed the twisted toll bridge, Mackie’s bridge, and he followed the line of the creek eastwards, heading for the confluence with the river, gawping at the great wads of flood-wrack in the clefts of trees and searching the banks of the creek for anything to salvage. He found a Magellan jacket in shreds; he found a family Bible all tattered and swollen; he found a dead and bloated pig an
d a boy’s straw hat and he also found a water bottle, a leather costrel, an old thing, battered but quite possibly useful – for a bolter.

  Further up he found the high-water mark where the flattened, ghostly grey underbrush gave way to sprightly grasses thriving on the damp, the heat and the natural drainage. The ground was quite spongy but firm enough underfoot, so he kept to the high side of the flood line and walked on, watching the pull of the tide.

  The pain in his right side was sharper now, so much so that he had to sit down, but when he sat down he couldn’t stay still. He lay back on the grass and clutched at himself and bunched up, wrapping his arms around his knees and rocking to and fro.

  Next thing he heard footsteps, that sucking sound, and when he opened his eyes he found he was looking up at the unmistakable mass of Griffin Pinney who stood over him, framed by the night sky.

  Pinney’s dog arrived and the old thing sniffed at Sparrow with his wet whiskers and licked at his neck and Sparrow let him do it.

  ‘So now you know about the other side,’ said Pinney.

  ‘I don’t know nothin’ about the other side.’

  ‘You know it’s there, that’s enough.’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘Enough to get your throat cut and your tongue sliced off the bone.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Cause you might tell.’

  ‘I would never.’

  ‘Are you straight on this?’

  ‘Sraight as a rush.’

  ‘Swear, positively.’

  ‘I swear!’

  ‘You understand we don’t want improper persons to be knowin’ about the other side.’

  ‘I’m proper, I want to go.’

  ‘What about that girl got you moochin’ about?’

  Pinney stepped away, scratching at his package, and Sparrow sat up and dropped his head and stared at the grass between his legs and flicked at it, back and forth. ‘Biddie Happ,’ he said.

  ‘Is that her name?’

  ‘I’m finished there.’

  ‘My Thelma’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Sparrow was shocked.

  ‘That’s what I said. Dead, drowned dead.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  Pinney sucked up some phlegm and turned his head and spat a long loop of a gob onto the muddy bank below. ‘River rat down there, goo on his head. “Where’d that come from?” he says.’

  That seemed to take the fix out of the atmosphere. Pinney sat down beside Sparrow and Sparrow smelled the paste the savages wore to keep off the mosquitoes and the cold.

  ‘Autumn,’ said Pinney. ‘How they have the goddamn hide to call this autumn I do not know. I miss the colours, that’s what I miss, the burning flame of autumn.’

  ‘I miss them too.’ Sparrow was thinking not about autumn, or colours, but about the gob of spit.

  ‘What was all that groanin’ I heard when I come along?’ said Pinney.

  ‘Just a bit of colic.’

  ‘Warm ale and a dash of laudanum.’

  ‘Warm ale and a dash of laudanum?’

  ‘Don’t repeat what I say.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Yet again he’d said sorry. He half expected Griffin Pinney to whack him, but he didn’t. He continued to be helpful in the medicinal way.

  ‘If that don’t work, try three teaspoons of oil of turpentine and ground ginger.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sparrow was so pleased that Griffin Pinney was being nice to him he forgot the problem wasn’t colic.

  ‘If we was in the bush I’d find you somethin’ better but this ain’t the bush, not anymore.’

  Sparrow scanned the flats beyond the creek, everywhere the ponding, tree stumps like some sort of eruption on the sodden earth.

  Pinney was staring at Sparrow. ‘You got eyes like a owl, you know that?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘And I hear you got but one ball, that true?’

  ‘Where’d you hear that?’ asked Sparrow, but he already knew. Biddie must have told Thelma. Or she might have told Pinney herself. ‘One’s bigger than the other, that’s all.’

  ‘Irregularity can be a mark of distinction, like that Happ girl’s birthmark. I quite like that, don’t you?’ Pinney waggled his tongue for Sparrow’s benefit and Sparrow was sickened. To think Biddie would suffer to be covered by such a man as this; to think she would tattle to such a man about another man’s imperfections.

  They sat there for a while, in silence, their world hooded by a darkness speckled with stars all the way to the impenetrably solid form of the mountains far off, black as pitch.

  ‘You understand a secret like this makes for a bond that is tight and a spirit of union that must not be broke?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You will swear on thunder and lightning.’

  ‘I do, I swear.’

  ‘You understand prudence will facilitate its own agency and at the same time confound our enemies by means of their ignorance of our design and direction . . . them who would undo us.’

  Sparrow had an idea he understood what Griffin Pinney had just said. ‘Just tell me what I gotta do.’

  ‘Get a dog, a hunting dog, that’s the toll you gotta pay, that is the sine qua non.’ Sparrow waited, hoping Pinney might translate, but he just talked on. ‘You understand there can be no middle state – it’s the misery of this mercantile tyranny or by God it’s the other side, the sovereignty o’ the commonweal, free of the brutish parties that govern us here.’

  ‘I will have it, I’ll have that weal, if I can,’ said Sparrow.

  There was one question that he dearly wanted to ask but he was unsure when best to do so, for the information he wanted was a sensitive matter.

  Pinney seemed to know that Sparrow had a question. ‘You want to arks me somethin’ you can,’ he said.

  ‘Is it true there’s a river, on the other side?’

  ‘Of course there’s a river, has to be, country this size don’t make sense without a river over there.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘It is a river of the first magnitude, as predicted by no less an authority than Mr Flinders in the Gazette.’

  ‘I heard about that, what he said.’

  ‘Well there you are . . . even our overlords know it’s true which is why they forever deny it.’

  The birds roosting in the trees high on the ridge had all gone silent but now the cicadas filled the void, supported by the bustle of the ebb tide, their song grating on Sparrow’s ear. ‘What about a axe, instead of a dog?’ he said.

  ‘Old Wolgan wants a game dog, game dog’s gold; we know it, they know it. Get him a game dog he’ll lay palms under your feet all the way to the other side.’

  ‘But they already got dogs, the savages.’

  ‘They have and they’re fuckin’ useless. Thing is, our dogs have bequeathed something of a leisurely turn to the savages’ abject plight, see. You want across you pay the toll, same as anywhere.’

  ‘A toll?’

  ‘Yes, a toll, a ticket, a tithe, something to trade, Marty, are you with me here? You got that you travel in perfect security, why, you pay the toll you could walk a lady through that country . . . long as she had a umbrella.’

  Sparrow was somewhat reassured by the reference to a lady, and an umbrella. A hunting dog surrendered to old Wolgan was like a pass, a ticket of leave to go and work somewhere else, but with no ties. Bondage in all its manifest and wicked formulations left behind. This was a lovely notion and it warmed Sparrow to think on it but he worried it might be too good to be true.

  ‘I heard it said there’s a good fifty bolters out there in the fastness, stripped of all but their moulderin’ shoes and some of them butchered something awful, their pizzles gone and their livers cut out.’ He thought it best to say nothing of tongues.

  ‘That’s true, and you need to know it,’ said Pinney. ‘See, they was lone bolters, or pairs with no compact with the savages. I got a compact with old Wo
lgan and he is an honourable man, like his grandson young Caleb, a formidable interlocutor, so you trade fair, them savages are true to their word. In short they’d fuck their own mothers for a game dog.’

  ‘Wonder what Mort took, for a toll. Mort and Shug.’

  ‘Nothin’, clearly they got no compact.’

  ‘Shug’s in the gaol.’

  ‘Shug could’ve come with me, paid the toll he’d be there now, free as a bird.’

  Sparrow looked up to the ridge where lights flickered, a dim glow in sundry windows, but the wattle and daub hovels where the felons slept cheek to jowl were black dark.

  ‘How big is it, the river?’

  ‘It is a river the majesty of which there is nothing to compare.’

  ‘Lord!’ said Sparrow.

  The cicadas now were very loud and Sparrow’s mind turned to one of the big puzzles in his life, which was how come cicadas are ever so loud all about but you never get to see a one? He had not expected Griffin Pinney to offer up any more intelligence on the other side, so he had let his mind wander into the field of natural history and was much surprised when Pinney continued.

  ‘Marty, against the better judgement of my weary bones, and my kidneys, I will extend to you the courtesy of the most complete picture I can paint.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘Think of it, you reach the final summit, having traversed and prevailed over a most forbidding wilderness and having paid your toll to old Wolgan and partook his hospitality one last time. And there it is: the most beautiful grassy woodlands you are ever going to see, and way below, a small village, embosomed in a grove of tall trees by a most majestic river, flowing west, west as far as you can see, and small boats gliding the channels between little islands, and women, knee deep in the shallows, casting their nets.’