‘It is hereditary, nothing to do with passions sad or otherwise.’
‘Like monarchy?’
Mackie did not answer.
Cuff would not relent. ‘I reckon melancholy plays a part.’
‘Well then, perhaps I am doomed.’
‘Perhaps you am, ’less you cheer up. Remember that old Chinese proverb.’
‘Alright, tell me the proverb!’
‘You cannot stop the birds of sadness from passing overhead, but you can sure as hell stop them nesting in your hair.’
‘That’s very helpful, thank you, Thaddeus.’
‘We have to go back, we cannot go on.’
‘You mean I cannot go on.’
‘That is exactly what I mean; listen to yourself, you sound like a Persian hookah.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘No you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t take the time to sit quietly and contemplate the world if your life depended upon it, which it well might! That’s why I recommend a pipe to any man I deem worthy of my counsel.’
‘Why?’
‘For to sit in quiet contemplation of all things. A pipe helps.’
‘Whether quiet contemplation or sheer indolence, who would know.’
‘Who cares what anybody knows or thinks they know.’
‘I care.’
Cuff shook his head and chuckled. ‘Alister, you’re ill and you have to rest, that’s it.’
‘It will pass.’
‘Only a fool would go deeper into this gorge in your condition, knee deep in the flowage, them glands o’ yours puffed up to buggery. I’m hoping you’re not a fool.’
‘We all know about hope,’ said Mackie.
‘What is it this time?’
‘It’s grief ’s music.’
‘That’s the melancholy talking.’
Mackie stared at his companion. ‘You never miss a chance.’
‘We’ve missed ours. We have to go back,’ said Cuff.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘We’ll go when we can; when you can and not before. Could be days, settle in.’
Mackie took a deep breath. He felt himself convulse, his lungs erupting, but he managed to hold it down, lips pressed tight. He ran his tongue over the ulcers on his gums. He gathered his blanket tight about him and closed his eyes, slept, and the sounds of Cuff moving about were like faint echoes from afar and the sounds of the rain and the river the same.
42
The thunder of the floodwaters in the gorge had settled to a hum somewhere deep in their skulls. When they woke the rain had stopped but the river was angrier than ever. The old dog staggered to the shelter’s edge and stood beside Pinney. A faint grey mist carried to them on a swirl of updraught from the rock and wreckage on the turn. The mist enveloped the shelter like a shroud.
The old dog was shivering. Pinney bent down and worked his cold fingers into the creature’s fur. Then he gave him a whack on the flank and took hold of his collar and gave the old dog a shake, rattled him, ready for the day.
He looked about and saw the pup and he beckoned the pup come. The pup ambled over and stood there, sniffing at the wound in Pinney’s thigh.
Sparrow took a drink from the costrel, the leakage running down the long, thin scab on his forearm. His eyes locked on the game hunter. ‘I won’t give him up,’ he said. ‘Not for trade, not for nothin’.’
Pinney stood the dog up straight, hind legs aligned, a finger under the animal’s chin, like he was some kind of gentleman breeder. ‘I might have to fashion you an offer,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Sparrow. He called the pup and the pup ambled across the shelter and rested his snout in the crook of Sparrow’s arm.
The game hunter led them up the face of the escarpment, to a vast upland of pitted rock and heath dissected by thickly forested ravines and gullies, forming no pattern, cutting in all directions, chaotic work.
Sparrow studied the vastness. He wondered how a man would ever find his way if he didn’t stick to the Branch or otherwise to some known track. ‘Where are we goin’?’ he said.
‘We’re goin’ over the top, ’less you can part the flood like some damn Moses,’ said Pinney.
They trekked all day through the prickly heath, stopping to drink from small pools in the rock and resting whenever the old dog fell too far behind. They hardly spoke a word.
Late in the afternoon they took in the view from a fiercely weathered peak. Far to the north they saw sandstone cliffs that ran west to a point where the country was lost in a haze.
‘That’s the upper Branch,’ said Pinney.
‘How far?’ said Sparrow.
‘Too far for now.’
They followed him through dense heath that stood shoulder high, along a well-worn track that led down from a headwall into a sheltered gully, tall bloodwoods and scribbly gums and here and there the extravagant lily the savages called gymee, with leaves like the blade of a broadsword and a spear-like stem way taller than a man. A swarm of ghost moths swept over them, downy soft wings, like kapok in a whirlwind.
Further down, Pinney pulled up sharp and signed for quiet. They watched a black snake move slowly through scree and leafrot, half hidden. It slithered into a hollow log and was almost gone when Pinney grabbed its tail and dragged it out and stepped on its swollen neck.
He took his axe and severed the snake’s head with one blow, held up the remains, four or five foot of snake, red-bellied, still twitching. He dropped the meat and picked up the head and squeezed a frog from the severed neck. ‘Silly ol’ frog,’ he said.
‘Should o’ held his breath,’ said Sparrow.
Pinney chuckled. ‘Give up too quick.’
They found a cave nearby and took to it and Pinney told them to set a fire for the meat.
He gutted the snake and chopped it into chunks. The grey shades of the coming night flooded the gully and the cave like a soaking dye.
The old dog did not eat but otherwise all present feasted on the cooked meat, the plenteous chunks, the pup gulping down the tail.
Pinney took up the old dog’s portion and tried to handfeed him but to no avail. ‘He’s off his food,’ said Sparrow.
‘First time for everything,’ said Pinney.
When they’d finished they watched the fire burn to nothing much, the flames but a flicker in the coals. The cooked meat had blocked out all the creature sounds, locked them in a world oblivious, but now the sounds came back to them, carried to them over the dull whomp of the floodwaters below.
Pinney spread the tear in his britches and pressed at the swelling around the wound. He was grimacing like someone was poking him with a sharp stick, hissing through clenched teeth. He glanced at Bea. ‘You’ll pay for this, times over.’
‘You got the poison,’ said Sparrow.
‘I know what I got,’ said Pinney.
Sparrow saw a tiny white grub at work on the gash, busy in the seepage.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘That’s what’ll eat you if I cut your throat, that’n whatever else.’
Sparrow wished he was anywhere but where he was. Cuff’s words rang in his ears again: Don’t burn your bridges if you cannot part the waters, he’d said, and Sparrow knew Cuff was right.
He thought again of the bull shark and the boy Jug, the bloody torso bobbing in the river, the skull thudding on the blackbutt planking as Peachey hauled the remains onto the gunnel. He recalled the boy roped to the slab of stone and tipped into the depths of the river. In his mind’s eye he saw the whole horrid thing slipping into the deep, settling on the bottom, a knot of eels tearing at the meat, savaging the boy’s face.
He thought of the doctor, who would probably never know what happened to his son. The doctor was a good man, a decent magistrate, un-bought, no one’s instrument. The doctor did not deserve the unforgiving misery of never knowing.
Sparrow wished he could banish such thoughts. He feared he might be tormented, all his life, by that one terrible event
on the river. Such torment – a man could lose his mind. He was most anxious for some diversion. ‘What’s it like, on the other side?’ he said.
‘You’ll see, soon enough,’ said Pinney.
‘Tell me now.’
‘You want the other side in a hurry, I’ll point you the way. The girl stays with me, the pup too,’ said Pinney. He was grinning a grin that might be described as a sly grin or perhaps a very cruel grin, Sparrow could not be sure for he was not endowed with the faculty to read faces with any precision.
He did not want to reveal the panic in his heart at that moment, nor the fear he felt, curling around his vitals. He thought best to continue the conversation as if untroubled by Pinney’s taunts. ‘I doubt I’d find the way,’ he said.
‘Get a picture of a compass, pin it on your hat, you’ll be fine,’ said Pinney.
Sparrow could see the pleasure the game hunter was taking, making a fool of him in front of the girl, and he did not fail to notice that Pinney had once again made a proprietorial reference to the pup. He worried, now, that everything Pinney had said, everything, could be untrue. ‘Is there a village, on the other side?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jephthah Big, Tinkerton Hides, Jack Chitty, they there?’
‘I don’t know about Jephthah, but Tinkerton’s there and Jack Chitty too.’
‘What about Tom Snape?’
‘What is this, the fuckin’ inquisition?’ Pinney pressed his fingers into the hinge at the back of his jaw and he worked his jaw open and shut. ‘Swear I been hit with a block o’ wood,’ he said.
In the morning the old dog did not stir, laid out. Pinney woke and sat there, close to the dog. He rested a hand upon the animal’s frame and felt the sag of cold and lifeless skin between the ribs. He sat there for a long time, looking down upon his dead companion, his sole companion for as long as he’d been coming and going in the wilderness, shepherding the bolters to another world.
Bea and Sparrow and the pup watched on. Pinney looked at them like they’d done the deed, like they’d murdered the old dog in his sleep. He stood over them, staring at Bea, scratching at his package.
He grabbed Sparrow by the collar and pulled him to his feet. ‘Go forage,’ he said, ‘and don’t come back less you got somethin’ to eat.’ He handed the small axe to Sparrow and waved him away.
Sparrow beckoned the pup and he was surprised that Pinney made no objection as they left the shelter together, taking to the lower part of the gully.
‘Get on your knees,’ said Pinney.
Bea did not move.
The game hunter rested the blade of his knife on her cheek. ‘I’ll give you a smile all the way to your ears, girl, if you don’t kneel and get about.’
Bea knelt and Pinney holstered the knife and motioned her to turn about. He knelt behind her and pushed her forward onto her hands. He threw up her skirt and growled like a dog as he pulled her onto his shaft and thumped at her with a frantic rhythm, so loud, so rapt, he neither heard nor sensed the presence of Sparrow at his rear.
Sparrow was all atremble. But his mind was clear.
He raised the axe, two-handed, and thumped the blade into Pinney’s skull so hard he rent the skull in two, a declivity so deep that Pinney’s eye sockets parted ways and he crumpled and rolled and lay in a stupor, the sockets angled away, the visage like some kind of strange fish, the eyes blinking.
Sparrow threw down the axe. He went numb. His legs failed him. He dropped to his knees, his eyes locked on Pinney and the blood that now soaked into the grit like some kind of painted halo.
Bea threw down her skirt and turned about. She fell sideways onto the sand. She could but gape at Sparrow’s handiwork. For a time there was no movement in that cave save for Pinney’s arms and fingers twitching and the young dog licking first at the blood and then busily pushing his nose into the cleft skull, licking at the game hunter’s brains.
‘Come away,’ said Sparrow, but the pup paid no heed.
Sounds were coming back to them – the whomp of the floodwaters, the wind, an agitated quoll, the liquid banter of currawongs.
Sparrow stared at Pinney’s cock, limp now, beside his buttons. He muttered something that was indecipherable to Bea, something about a compass. On hands and knees she pulled herself close to Pinney’s face. She took the hunting knife from his holster. She put the blade in his mouth and cut him from the corner of his mouth to the bone beneath his ear.
She dropped the knife. She wiped her bloody hand in the grit and rubbed her hands together until the grit was off. She remembered the wish dream, the dream where Joe had rescued her. She bent low to Pinney’s ear, the eyes still blinking. ‘You will rot with that stupid smile on your face,’ she said.
‘Pup, come away,’ said Sparrow. He was trying to think what they might do next but his mind was a muddle, entirely deprived of direction by the awful scene and the horrible doings that had caused it. He thought he might faint. He thought he might be in a bad dream. Then he saw Bea straighten, he saw her thrust her hand into a pocket as she fell backwards, her body arched, convulsing, her eyes like marble.
She’d reached out to Sparrow as her body went taut as a fiddle string and she was all aquiver, trembling and jerking, her knuckles ivory white, a leather wad in her hand. Sparrow wrenched the wad from her fingers and tried to force it between her teeth but he could not loose her jaw. He took hold of her, held her tight and the tears loosed from his eyes. And all the while the pup, untroubled, was feeding on the blood and brains of Griffin Pinney.
43
When it was over the girl was limp as a rag and her skin was slick with sweat, arcs of dull pain twisting in her flesh. Sparrow dragged her a little way towards the mouth of the cave, away from the horrible mess, her heels furrowing the grit. He laid her beneath a blanket and there she slept, fitfully, for much of the morning.
He sat close to her, close enough to hear her fitful breath and to watch her bosom rise and fall in what appeared to be a troubled sleep. He noticed a trickle of blood on her chin. He studied the old wound in her lip, the scab undisturbed. The leather wad he returned to her pocket and there he found a piece of bone from the leg of a dog, knuckle at one end, sharply splintered at the other, like the point of a needle. A weapon perhaps, something to pierce a jugular. He left her to sleep.
He stood over the carcass of Griffin Pinney, recalling with some wonderment his resolve in the moment when he drove the blade of the axe into Pinney’s skull. He’d done it without forethought, without hesitation, without fear. He wondered how he’d done that, for now he felt fear. Now they were alone in the fastness, alone but together, he and Bea and the pup.
Late in the morning she woke and asked for water and there was hardly a drop in the costrel. He went for water and came back and she sat up and drank her fill. Then she lay down again, not a word, and she rested, in and out of sleep. She woke yet again and lay there, silent. Several times Sparrow caught her looking at him. On one occasion she looked away, studied the prone form of Griffin Pinney. ‘We are, perhaps, a formidable pair,’ she said.
Sparrow didn’t know if that was mockery or truly meant. ‘We are, yes,’ he said, more in hope than conviction. He promised her he would get some food. He went down the gully looking for things edible, axe in hand. It was hard going, the slope severe, the ground sodden and sticky, boulders dressed in staghorns and mantled in lichens; spider webs like gossamer wheels, shuddering in the breeze.
He found native currants and he ate some and put the rest in his pocket. He searched the ground for the edible tubers but he found none and nor could he find bush honey, nor the snotty-drops he seemed, now, to crave, nor the sweet-tasting grubs that Pinney had found with ease, chopping into rotten wood.
Not wanting to be long away, he settled for the meagre ration and hurried back to the cave. On his way he spied a little crop of mushrooms, the ones Pinney called milk caps, their caps a milky orange colour. He ate one and pocketed the rest and hurried up the gully.
Bea was sitting up, her back to the wall of the cave, the blanket around her shoulders.
He filled her palm with the currants and the two mushrooms and he fanned the fire and half-filled the quart pot with water and got it cooking for a mug of tea, and when it cooled a little, the tea, they drank it down.
Bea put her head between her knees and vomited the currants and the one mushroom she’d managed to get down. She sipped at the tea and drank the acid taste away. Then she got to her feet, steady enough.
She rummaged in the game hunter’s pockets and commandeered the pot of balm he’d taken from Freddie, and Sparrow took the powder horn and the bandolier and they took the axe and the knife and the musket too, Thyne Kunkle’s musket.
They went up the gully to the heathland above the cave. They walked west for about an hour and then took rest, sat themselves down on the lip of a basalt outcrop fringed with tea-tree and spider flower. They searched the scene to the north and the north-west, the upland dissected by the maze of ridgelines and valleys to the far horizon.
Sparrow wondered how they might ever find their way should they press on. The country so abrupt and warped and altogether infinite, the patterning so random, a man might succumb to a most morose and hopeless bewilderment – like Shug. He tried to sight the valley of the upper Branch but he could see nothing but the hazy blue-green sameness of the forests and the endless confusion of sandstone rimrock. He was awfully glad to be with Bea and the long-legged pup, but he worried about pressing on and he worried, too, about not pressing on.
The foremost ridge was lightly wooded with strange trees, the skewbald limbs bent low, tortured and twisted by the onslaught of the elements year-round.
‘What if the savages come?’ he said.
‘We give them what they want.’ The ache in her was an ache all through, an ache for which she had no word.
‘They can have an axe,’ he said. ‘But I keep the pup.’
‘They’ll take what they want, brigands mostly do.’
‘I never thought a brigand might be a savage.’
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 25
