The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  ‘I can read you some more Bunyan,’ she said after a while.

  ‘Not just now. Might remind me there’s a way to hell even from the gates of heaven,’ he said. He closed his eyes and seemed to doze off.

  There was a chisel and a whetstone on the lid of a toolbox by the cabin door and Bea looked about to see what she might sharpen. She took a boning knife from the rear wall, set it on the table and retrieved the whetstone and spat upon it and began to work the long thin blade on the stone with some proficiency. The boning knife brought back memories of butchered lambs on the hook and massacres on the sealeries.

  She was a world away when Griffin Pinney stepped into the cabin, musket in hand. He looked about. He saw Joe Franks throw his legs over the edge of the bed and try to rise and Pinney stepped up to Franks and slammed the butt of the musket into the old soldier’s forehead.

  The girl rose up. She hurled the knife and the blade struck low and deep in the meat of Pinney’s thigh.

  Pinney hardly moved save to turn his head and lock his eyes upon her. He made no sound. He spat a big brown wad of something onto the floor. His old dog ambled forward somewhat rheumatically and gobbled it up.

  Pinney looked down at the handle of the boning knife and saw the blood soaking into the cloth of his trousers. He made no attempt to remove the blade. He moved to the table and sat. ‘You sit back down girl,’ he said. He tore the gash in his trousers wide open.

  The girl did not move. Pinney spoke softly. ‘If you do not sit down I’ll kill that old man this instant.’ He closed his fist on the bone handle. ‘I’ll cut his throat from ear to ear an’ I’ll take his tongue off the bone and feed it, root and branch, to my old dog.’

  Bea sat.

  Pinney’s old dog came to him and licked at the wound all about the blade. ‘Mind now.’ The game hunter pushed the dog away and set his jaw and sucked in his breath as he drew the blade from his flesh and banged the point into the table and the blade quivered along its stem and a fine spray of blood dappled the rough-cut surface, the colour leaching away as the blood soaked into the wood.

  Pinney scratched at the back of the dog’s ear and with that the old dog resumed licking at the wound.

  ‘He wants the blood,’ said Bea.

  ‘This dog is devoted, like no damn woman,’ said Pinney.

  The girl made no reply but studied the old dog as it dutifully licked at the torn cloth about the game hunter’s wound.

  ‘Why’d he pay for you?’ said Pinney.

  She did not understand the question.

  ‘He bought a share in you, Mackie.’

  ‘He helped Joe, that’s all.’

  ‘Against me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He bought a piece o’ you, that’s what he did.’ Pinney smiled and nodded at her as if to say I know the secret here.

  The girl said nothing.

  ‘You’re his bit o’ trim downriver, ever so discreet. They say the man has an ethic, well, there’s no ethic I know ain’t got shit on the underside.’

  ‘He wants no share in me.’

  ‘I despise such falseness in a man.’

  ‘I am Joe’s.’

  ‘Mackie ain’t gunna have any, and that old ruin won’t have you neither,’ said Pinney, gesturing a thumb in Joe’s direction.

  ‘I will not go with you,’ said the girl.

  ‘You will, or I’ll cut his throat here and now.’ Pinney wrapped his fist around the bone handle of the knife and let the blade bend to and fro, the sway like a lone reed in the wind.

  Joe was on his feet, a run of blood on his forehead. He shuffled forward, shaky on his legs. Pinney pulled the knife from the table and stood and whirled about and slammed the butt end of the handle into the wound on Joe’s forehead, and Joe went down like a stone.

  The game hunter stood astride Joe, his own blood drying on the blade. The girl lunged at him and Pinney turned and took her by the throat, one hand, crushing her windpipe, and backed her up against the table. He dropped the knife. She went up on her toes in search of breath. He seemed to lift her without effort onto the table’s edge and he stepped between her legs and unbuttoned his flap and pushed her down and threw back her skirt and took hold of her nest. ‘Well well well, a man trap in the bush,’ he said, and he chuckled as he fumbled about and got underway.

  Bea Faa clutched at the edge of the table. She sucked for air. As Griffin Pinney entered her she went rigid, her back arching, her eyes rolling in her head and then, first, a tremor, then another, then she convulsed, time and again and Pinney was leering. ‘You’re doin’ me a treat,’ he said, and he pushed a fist onto her pubic bone and pinned her to the table and he went at her with that awful rhythm, and he saw the whites of her eyes and he felt her rigid, like a plank, and he did not care. He went at her until he was done.

  She heard words, words beyond grasp, a jumble, and she saw needles of light come at her and her skin crawled with something, sweat, fear, and her ears hummed a low whining sound within, like steam through a cracked lid, and she could taste blood. She had folded her lower lip into her bite and bit down, bit through her lip. Blood was running on her cheek and her chin as she opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She could not sit up.

  She heard the scuffing of boots and she rolled her head to one side and looked to the doorway. She saw the hazed outline of Freddie there, as if through clearing fog.

  Freddie was leaning into the cabin, staring agape, his hands on the door frame like he was ready to push off and run for his life. He saw Griffin Pinney wipe his member on the girl’s skirt. He saw the blood-soaked gash in Pinney’s trousers as the game hunter buttoned up his flap. He saw the girl, dishevelled, breathless, bloodied at the mouth, her eyelids flicking like the wings of a stuck moth.

  ‘Nooooo,’ he said.

  Pinney was tucking in his shirt tails. ‘What a fine fit you aaaare mistress Faaaa,’ he said.

  The goat buffeted its way onto the doorstep, pushing vigorously at Freddie’s knee. It looked upon the scene in the cabin and bleated softly.

  ‘You still got that stupid goat I see,’ said Pinney.

  Freddie stared at the goat.

  Pinney seated himself and he spread the tear in his trousers and poked at the wound in this thigh.

  ‘How’d you do that?’ said Freddie, peering close.

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘I got a swathe.’

  ‘A swathe o’ what?’

  Freddie took a small jar off a shelf and handed it to Pinney. Only then did he see Joe bloodied on the floor. He went to him, swiftly.

  ‘Folk goin’ down like flies.’ Pinney took the top off the jar and sniffed at the gummy solution.

  Freddie helped Joe onto the bed and Joe laid back, blank-eyed, his forehead coloured with bruising and streaked with blood.

  Bea felt a rude churn in her guts. She rolled over to vomit but somehow she held it down, all but the taste of it. She struggled to sit up, shifting her legs, turned side on, steadied herself on the table’s edge.

  Pinney took hold of the green glass demijohn. He uncorked it and drank down the cyder, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He returned his attentions to the balm. ‘What is this?’ he said.

  ‘It’s honey and sugar, dries up the blood and drowns the rot in the goodness, would our world laboured on such a principle . . . my mother used to say that,’ said Freddie.

  Pinney glared at him. ‘You some kind o’ imbecile?’

  ‘Noooo, it’s true, good for leeches too, helps with the itch.’

  The game hunter dipped a finger into the jar and sniffed at it and pasted the balm onto the wound. He upended the demijohn and drank some more. ‘What’s he done here, mix piss and toffee?’

  ‘That’s peach cyder.’

  ‘It’s kitten piss.’

  ‘We got no kittens.’

  ‘What else he give you, Mackie?’

  ‘He give us seed wheat, for two acres I think, and some cocoa.’

  ‘Cocoa?’
r />   ‘Quite lovely of an evening.’

  ‘What else?’

  Freddie stared at the chimney. ‘Pork belly.’

  ‘We’ll take that.’

  ‘It’s gone, the savages gobbled it.’

  The old dog had dropped down on the hearthstone and the goat came sniffing. The dog snarled and growled and the goat backed away. Pinney turned to the girl. ‘You run I’ll set that old dog on you . . . you want the particulars?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I truss you up, I cut a hole in your gut and he’ll tear out your innards. That’s the wolf in him.’

  38

  Mackie and Cuff left the village, first light, sailing into a fading flood tide, effectively slack water, tacking interminably from one reach to the next and one hour to the next, intent upon the entirely perishable convenience of a south-westerly breeze and the ebb tide in full flow.

  It was midafternoon when the boat skimmed onto the sand south of Pig Creek. They reckoned they might miss Pinney if they went straight to Joe’s. A better chance to intercept him at Harp’s. Mackie slid onto the hull and leant against the back board, his eyes closed. Already the air held the cool fresh smell of evening with more than a hint of rain.

  They followed the line of the creek into the back country with as much haste as the chief constable could muster.

  Cuff found a modest shelter, a shallow cave, among dappled grey gums and grass trees like squat sentinels hatted for extravagant show. They sat, listening to the creature sounds and the patter of the light rain.

  ‘Frogs,’ said Cuff.

  ‘That sound, like a ratchet?’ asked Mackie.

  ‘Well it ain’t a ratchet.’

  ‘You know your frogs.’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘I suppose that hoot is a frog?’

  ‘That’s a owl.’

  ‘I was hoping you might credit me with knowing the call of an owl.’

  ‘Hope is physician to misery.’

  ‘As ever, we come to a proverb . . . from frogs to proverbs.’

  ‘Never let it be said I’m a miser with my wisdom.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’

  ‘I was imbibing gainful proverbs when you was still suckin’ on the tit in Yetholm, and they done me no harm.’

  ‘Gainful?’

  ‘Yes, gainful. You ought thank me.’

  ‘I thought it was just minstrels and songsters craved applause.’

  They sat quietly for a time, but Cuff was not finished. He wanted to make a point. ‘Nature’s a gift, Alister, and you ought soak it up, broaden your mind, not least since it’s free. The simple things, a seashell, a wildflower, a feather on the sand, the sounds wondrous, the frogs. You cannot reduce such things to a squiggle in that double-entry book o’ yours, things of immeasurable mystery, and wonder.’

  ‘I have no interest in a mystery.’

  ‘That’s my point. You’re too busy plotting your ambition like some crazed navigator. People like you are forever getting ready for the future, I don’t know why. The future ain’t gettin’ ready for you, it don’t even know you’re comin’. That’s a hard fact in case you need one.’

  ‘That fact, so called, I don’t need.’

  ‘The point is, there’s joy to be had in things other than the practise of virtue. You think work is a remedy against sin, I think it’s a rude interruption.’

  ‘Are you ever likely to stop?’

  ‘I don’t know why I start . . . waste the riches of my ruminations on you.’

  They heard the guttural bawl of a cullawine. ‘There’s no wonderment in that, like a pig in a bad dream,’ said Mackie.

  ‘They’re poor meat too,’ said Cuff.

  The rain was faltering. Their recess was dry. They untied their bundles and rolled out their blankets and wrapped them round. They pressed themselves against the stone and set about trying to get some sleep.

  In the morning Mackie woke coughing, his lungs heavy with muck. He got up and spread his legs and bent low and coughed up what he could, some of it into his hand for closer inspection. Trying to settle his chest to some sort of equilibrium, he breathed slow and deep. Then he swallowed hard, wincing as he did so. He longed for a draught of claret.

  ‘You alright?’ said Cuff.

  ‘I’m alright.’

  They made a small fire and ate some hard biscuit, washed down with a mug of tea, packed their bundles and resumed their westerly course on the sodden gravels of Pig Creek.

  They stopped briefly at Harp’s hut and then pressed on, upstream, until the wreckage of the still was in view. They saw the pot and the cap had been rescued from the creek and the pot now lay on its side near the stone furnace. They saw Harp rooting around in a haversack and Peachey prone on the ground.

  The pony stirred.

  Mackie stepped up the bank and crossed to the firestones in the centre of the camp.

  ‘Not again!’ said Harp.

  ‘Where is Griffin Pinney?’

  Harp paused. Cuff intervened: ‘Don’t think, Harp, just tell us the damn truth.’

  ‘He’s gone, you’re too late.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘He come with his dog, and that girl, and he took Sparrow and the pup and they’ve gone and you won’t catch them.’

  ‘What pup?’ said Cuff.

  ‘You don’t know about the pup?’ Harp was chuckling. ‘They got Henry Kettle’s brindle pup.’

  ‘What of the girl?’ said Mackie.

  Harp angled the carriage of his head severely upwards. He seemed to be looking into the canopy beyond the chief constable. ‘You here for the girl?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I hear you and Joe bought her for a wife. That’s against the law, ain’t it?’

  ‘Joe bought her for a wife and that is law according to custom.’

  ‘Well, you missed her, they’ve been and gone.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Mr Peachey here?’ said Cuff.

  ‘Got kicked in the guts and he’s come down with the bloody drizzles and the rest is history,’ said Harp.

  ‘Well, history and the drizzles is close cousins,’ said Cuff. ‘There’s a great deal of fluid prejudice in the both of them.’

  Peachey raised himself onto one elbow. ‘I’ll tell you the history, Harp’s up and poisoned me, that’s the history.’

  Harp waggled his forefinger in the air the better to stress his emphatic denial. ‘I did my best, medicinally speaking.’

  ‘And my guts in violent spasm, cramped to buggery. I been to the underworld and back, you cannot imagine the night I’ve had, the torments.’

  ‘You give him the wrong medicine!’ said Cuff.

  ‘I did no such a thing.’

  ‘And here I am, my ribs broke, my bowels in startling eruption.’

  ‘Build the fire, we’ll wash him out with buckets of tea,’ said Mackie.

  Harp got busy at the fire. Cuff squatted down beside Peachey. ‘Seamus, we know you took the boy’s boat. Now, where is that boy?’

  ‘We took his boat, that’s all. We took it and went.’

  ‘He gave you the boat, knowin’ you couldn’t bring it back?’

  ‘We told him we was ramblin’. That boy had every expectation we’d come back with his boat. I swear we left him hale and hearty on the Cattai.’

  ‘You know he’s missing.’

  ‘I don’t know nothin’.’

  ‘And his daddy, the good doctor, he is in purgatory, and the missus too.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’

  Cuff searched the crags and recesses of Peachey’s countenance. He looked him in the eye but Peachey looked away. ‘Did you pay him for his trouble?’

  ‘Yes. I believe Sparrow paid him some coin.’

  ‘How much coin?’

  ‘I don’t know but I know he gave him some coin.’

  ‘But you weren’t comin’ back, and you were stealing his boat. That’s a capital crime in this neighbourhood, we hang you for th
at.’

  ‘We gave him money for rent,’ said Peachey. He was most grateful Cuff had reminded him of Sparrow’s coin.

  ‘You took it, you used it and you scuttled it,’ said Mackie.

  ‘We never did.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘We moored that boat on the river, for all the comers and goers to see. There to be found forthwith, Guthrie on the scow or someone.’

  ‘There’s no trace of it,’ said Mackie.

  ‘That is a mystery to be sure,’ said Peachey.

  ‘Seamus, the boy is gone, lost. And you and Sparrow took his boat from him and you lied to him,’ said Cuff.

  ‘That’s all we did I swear.’ He lay back and wrapped his arms tight around his ribs and rocked to one side and then the other, his face contorted with what appeared to be real pain.

  Harp had made the tea. Mackie passed a steaming half-pint mug to Peachey and Peachey pulled his sleeve over his fingers and took the mug.

  Cuff turned to Harp. ‘What they do with that boat? What they do with the boy for that matter?’

  ‘I don’t know nothin’ about the boy,’ said Harp.

  ‘You help them scuttle that boat?’

  ‘Lord no, sink a boat’s worse’n ravishing your own mother.’

  ‘What of Mr Pinney and his little company? They on the Branch now?’

  ‘They are now, yes, and well along.’

  ‘Bound for the other side?’

  ‘Griffin follows that river every time, all the way to the headwaters, that’s all I know.’

  That night Seamus Peachey felt, yet again, a stabbing pain in his guts and the now familiar stirring in his bowels. Harp woke, watched him go, bent over and clutching at his middle. The constables did not appear to stir.

  Peachey followed the creek downstream with some difficulty, dragging his feet through a tangle of ferns and pushing through thickets of slender saplings. Dim grey slivers of light from the night sky.

  There was hardly any wind at all, just the faintest north-easterly that stirred the canopy and eddied around his extremities as he shuffled on.

  He found a snug nook and brushed off an old log and fumbled at the big buttons on his flap, stepping from one foot to another, his buttocks clenched, his guts in loathsome revolt. He sat himself over the log and let go and a flood of thin bloody stools poured from his arse; he put his face in his hands and gave out a deep sigh and as he did so the log gave way, its fibrous rigour long gone.