The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  ‘A pact?’

  ‘A pact to hold close, to honour, never to share beyond ourselves, a true mark of character and friendship.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  ‘And stick a needle in my eye.’

  ‘Alright.’

  So, Sparrow told them. Everything. How he and Peachey had gulled the Woody boy they called Jug; how the bull shark had savaged the boy, killed him; and how they tied his remains to a slab of sandstone and sent it to the bottom of the Hawkesbury River. How they chopped a big hole in the bottom of the little boat and sunk it; how Pinney came through Harp’s camp with Bea Faa and the old dog. Stood over poor Seamus, ridiculed him, called him weak as rank piss, and how they left poor Seamus behind. And further, how they went up the Branch till the rains came and the gorge flooded and then how they went over the top all the way to the cave where Pinney’s old dog died, and Bea on her knees, put upon, and so forth.

  Sparrow told all, almost. He took the narrative all the way through to the killing of Griffin Pinney with the short-handled axe and there he left off. He said nothing about Bea Faa going to work on Pinney with the hunting knife though the cut and the outcome were still vividly pictorial in his mind. ‘I find it hard to believe I did what I did, but I did; I did it,’ he said. It seemed like a story about someone else. It seemed most un-Marty to Marty.

  ‘You surprised yourself,’ said Catley.

  ‘I did that. I recall, I shook like a leaf.’

  ‘The greater the fear the greater the triumph.’ He was pointing straight at Sparrow.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Daniel loaded up the fire. The yams were ready. They each took one, skewered on a burnt twig, and they ate the vegetable as it cooled.

  Catley fed the young dog a lump of gristle from the edge of the fire. ‘Does he have a name?’ he said.

  ‘I call him pup,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘He’s grown beyond that. Would he like a Latin name, I wonder.’

  ‘Latin?’

  ‘Yes, you could call him, let’s see . . . you could call him amicus amico, Amicus for short.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘It means a friend to a friend,’ said Catley.

  Sparrow liked the meaning. ‘Amicus, Amicus Amico . . . yes.’ He liked the sound as much as the meaning. He called the dog and the dog rose and hurried to him, the tip of his tail working the ground like a broom.

  Sparrow had noticed he felt better after his confession and, since he had confessed to the axe murder of the game hunter and the loss of the boy, he could think of no reason why he should not confess to finding a lost pup and keeping him, albeit he knew whose pup it was. He could see no reason, sitting here among confidants, why he should not tell the truth and he almost did, but he could not quite bring himself to confess all.

  Catley was still contemplating the terrible truth about the boy Jug. ‘If you go to the good magistrate and tell him as much of the truth as you can, at least his torment will be over; he will know the boy is lost, gone. He will not be forever looking and wondering, and he will be able to sleep at night and his good wife too; and he will know you were not to blame. I picture the scene. You may well shed a tear together. He may even thank you, the relief being such as to overwhelm his heart. He is a good, kind man and if there is an eye of pity at the Hawkesbury River establishment it’s his eye. Speaking of which, he might have some advice for you.’

  ‘Advice?’ Sparrow was stroking Amicus Amico, thinking how much he liked the name.

  ‘Why yes, that yellowy complexion, something wrong there,’ said Catley.

  ‘It’s jaundice,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘Let’s hope the mountain air’s a tonic.’

  Sparrow did not put much hope in the mountain air but he knew Mr Catley was trying to lift his spirits in that regard. Then it struck him that his ailment these past days was in fact less troublesome than it had been for some years. Perhaps Mr Catley was right, perhaps the wilderness was a tonic?

  Catley’s thoughts turned once again to the charms of Bea Faa. He wished he could rut her himself. His mind held the moment in all its fleshy detail. Why was he smoothing the path for Sparrow? He did not want them to depart for the river and if they did depart he hoped they might come back. Upon this reckoning, he formulated the following commentary and delivered it without review: ‘As to the headwaters, I should say this – any one of them might mark the way to another Eden. The magnitude and the magnificence of the land to the west can hardly be imagined. If you do find yourself compelled to seek it out you might base yourself here and venture forth, to and fro as weather and wellness permits.’

  Catley said this while poking a stick at the onions in the fringing coals, hardly daring to glance at Bea Faa lest he betray his deepest yearning. He was intent upon being the good fellow he knew himself to be.

  ‘Have you seen it, the other side?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘I cannot be sure,’ said Catley, ‘for the mountains go on and on.’

  Sparrow was tempted to mention the whales but he thought best not to digress at this moment. ‘I wonder could we build a cave house, somewhere?’

  ‘Beyond a doubt, most assuredly,’ said Catley. He was smiling at Bea. ‘This country is a garden of stone; any number of capacious hollows might be fashioned and walled as you see here. Water and game, and soil so rich you can sing a bean up a trellis; a man could want for no more. All that is here for a verifiable certainty but beyond here one can only surmise as to unseen complications, the want of society for one thing.’

  Sparrow had no want for society. His only want was Bea Faa and Amicus Amico. He swivelled about and scrutinised the cave house in the firelight, the stone frontage, the door, the window frame, the teapot.

  Catley was anxious to make make the best of the moment, to impress Bea with his knowledge of the far beyond. ‘The country to the west is very hard and very strange.’ He paused, searching for the words. ‘It is a land of thickly wooded valleys and brutally weathered stone, of precipitous ravines and fractured cliff lines sheer to the sky and towers of sedimentary rock and ironstone, like chimneys or ceremonial pagodas from some ancient world, amphitheatres for a confederacy of giants, the sculpted work of a vanished people, the work weathered beyond all recognition, weathered into serried ledges and caves and crags, exquisitely beautiful from a vantage, deadly cruel if you’re lost in there. I tell you both this: the wilderness to the west begs a certain reverence and demands a certain humility.’

  Bea had hardly noticed Daniel slip away, into the dark, like a shadow into shadow fold. Now he was back with a half-rotten piece of damp wood. He sat by the fire cross-legged with the wood in his lap. With a sharp stick he picked grubs from the hollow in the wood and gobbled them down with relish.

  ‘What is that?’ she said.

  ‘They are cah-bro, which Daniel cherishes as a delicacy but for mine they are loathsome,’ said Catley. He put a quart pot on the fire. ‘Let’s have some Hai Seng tea.’

  ‘Shall I get the teapot?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘Whyever not.’

  Moowut’tin took another stick, thin as a feather shaft, and he skewered a pair of cah-bro and handed them to Bea. He chuckled as he did so, said something in his native tongue.

  Bea took the offering and looked to Catley.

  ‘He says they’re husband and wife.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those two grubs on the stick, the very picture of marriage.’

  Bea examined the wriggling grubs on the skewer. She had the flavoursome taste of the cooked meat in her mouth and she was inclined to dwell on that. But now Daniel was watching her, as was Catley, and Sparrow too, teapot in hand. She had no intention of appearing faint of heart. She took the grubs in her mouth and chewed and searched for the taste and she found them to be not unpleasant. She nodded, and Daniel smiled. ‘Nice!’ he said.

  ‘They are sweet.’

  ‘They’re ravenously fond of these things, his peop
le,’ said Catley.

  ‘Who are his people?’

  ‘Why, Nabbinum’s mob, the mountain blacks.’

  ‘Is he truly seven foot tall?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘No.’

  Sparrow tried to remember if Griffin Pinney had ever specified who it was who collected the toll, the Branch mob or the mountain blacks, but he could not remember. He was, however, certain that Pinney had not mentioned the name Nabbinum. From that he deduced it had to be the Branch mob, old Wolgan and company, who traded select goods for safe passage, and it followed that there was, most likely, no such understanding with Nabbinum. Any progression further west was therefore fraught with a new and distressing complication.

  The girl was scratching at the leech scabs on her legs.

  ‘You need some trousers,’ said Catley.

  ‘I have none,’ she said.

  ‘I have trousers, for Daniel, but he won’t wear them; they’re long in the leg, they’ll fit.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Catley fed the young dog another small bone. ‘I must say, your Amicus Amico does bear a startling resemblance to Henry Kettle’s brindle pup.’

  ‘I found him, that’s all I know.’

  ‘The dog’s good fortune.’

  ‘I won’t give him up, not to Henry Kettle, not to anybody.’

  ‘Are you aware Mr Mackie is on the Branch?’ said Catley, quite out of the blue.

  The information startled Bea and Sparrow both.

  ‘No,’ said Bea.

  ‘He’s stalled by the rains but he’s coming, or was, he and Mr Thaddeus Cuff, the latter a true gentleman by nature if not by birth.’

  ‘How do you know they’re coming?’

  ‘Daniel.’

  Sparrow had a very big urge to be done with all the worry. ‘I might just surrender,’ he said.

  ‘Will you take us to him?’ said Bea.

  ‘I’m told you have a history, you and he,’ said Catley.

  ‘My mother knew him, briefly, long ago. Before I was born.’

  Bea did not want to discuss her mother or the strange unfolding of her life, the twists and turns that took her from the travellers’ camp on the outskirts of Yetholm to the butcher’s snare and thence across the world to the Southern Ocean sealeries and on to New South Wales and thence to Joe’s patch and from there to Catley and the cave house. And Mr Catley was gentleman enough to know this was no time to probe further, though he was quite curious to know more. ‘Mackie is straight, straight as a mason’s rule. Though others might choose the word unbending. He’ll look to your interests with some zeal, most particularly if his own interests are concerned.’

  ‘Will you take us to him?’

  ‘When the river’s safe, dropping sufficient to permit my search for the duckbill, then I’ll take you.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Not long, the sandbars will be tricky but Daniel knows the woodland tracks above the flood line. If you know the tracks you know the history – not long ago this wilderness was busy as London.’

  ‘That busy?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘A slight exaggeration, Mr Sparrow, busy nonetheless.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Bea and Sparrow slept in the cave house and woke in the still dark to the clatter and the alien jabber of Catley and Daniel outside, and the sounds of the pup cavorting about the mongrel dog.

  They spent the day much at their leisure, save for Moowut’tin. He departed early, in the company of the mongrel dog, and did not return until midafternoon. Catley was most attentive to Bea Faa and Sparrow could do nothing about that so he did not try. He went off with Amicus Amico and they followed the cliff line west for several miles, way past the slot gully, pausing now and then to sit and survey the valley and the river and the sandstone ridges beyond, and Sparrow took the opportunity to ponder the mystery of the other side and to meditate on his many troubles.

  With the dog at his heel, he hastened back to Catley’s camp in the early afternoon and Moowut’tin returned a little later, dragging a big dead lizard by the tail. ‘Big cook up,’ he said. He set him close to the fire pit, the tail thudding in the dust.

  They feasted that night and they slept, all of them, a deep sleep.

  47

  Next morning, they departed the valley as they had come, climbing to the upland through the slot gully and from there they retraced their steps, much the same course as before.

  Daniel led the way. Catley brought the mule, loaded with the mattock and miscellaneous stores plus the tin vasculum with the woven cotton shoulder straps in which, he said, he would cosset any duckbill eggs he might extract from womb or lair, hoping, in the event, to hatch one.

  ‘I thought we was goin’ to follow the river,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘Patience Mr Sparrow, soon enough we meet the settling Branch,’ said Catley.

  An hour later, the track veered south-east and further along it shifted course yet again for now they were following the southward line of the gorge. Catley reefed the mule’s lead rope and stopped the hybrid just short of a sandstone ledge. Moowut’tin stepped around the creature totems etched in the stone and stood on the brink. Sparrow and Bea followed in his steps. A faint morning sun was playing on the honeycombed cliffs beyond the Branch when they heard a musket shot, a single shot, downriver.

  Moowut’tin led off and they followed him, through dense scrub for something like an hour until he drew to a sudden halt, sniffing woodsmoke in the air. ‘Cookfire,’ he said. And he led them down a gully into the hooded coolness of rainforest, onto a cutback that angled to a rock shelter, where Cuff was cooking a fat goanna, hoping that Mackie might take some meat for his breakfast.

  Cuff had heard them coming and Catley spied the shelter as the deputy stepped into view. He called to Cuff to put him at ease: ‘Hey ho, Mr Cuff,’ he shouted.

  Mackie was getting to his feet with some difficulty. ‘It’s alright, it’s Catley,’ said Cuff. ‘Hey ho to you sir,’ he shouted back.

  Cuff watched them come, single file. ‘It’s Catley and his eagle man and Sparrow and the girl, if they had a horse it would have to be Christmas. I don’t see the boy.’

  ‘We have a horse of sorts,’ said Catley. ‘He’s tethered back there.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Cuff, ‘because we have a man here much in need of a horse of sorts.’

  ‘What’s on the spit?’

  ‘You grown particular with the years?’

  ‘Not about meat.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Catley, I do not need your mule,’ said Mackie.

  The mongrel dog and Amicus Amico were at the fire, drawn to the butchered meat on the flame. Cuff shooed them away.

  Mackie chose to ignore the girl and watched Sparrow as he set Kunkle’s musket against the wall. ‘Where is Dr Woody’s boy?’ he said.

  Sparrow hesitated, thinking on what he might say and what he might not say and trying at the same time to remember exactly what he had confessed to Mr Catley. He squatted by the musket, stared at the ground, Amicus licking at his hand.

  ‘Mr Sparrow, you really must,’ said Catley.

  ‘We didn’t hurt the boy, we never ever hurt him, I swear.’

  The chief constable moved close, that foul breath. He smacked the dog away, spoke softly. ‘I will visit torments on your flesh if needs be. As for the doctor, he will deliver you up to the military.’

  The rectal pear came to Sparrow’s mind, the worse for never having seen it. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘They’ll sling you on that hook, Marty. You seen the hook?’ said Cuff.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Where is Dr Woody’s boy?’ said Mackie.

  The question chilled Sparrow to the bone as he recalled how they tipped the remains roped to the stone into the depths of the Hawkesbury River. The truth was the most awful thing but it was the truth, a truth for which neither he nor Peachey could be blamed, not entirely. ‘The pup went overboard and the boy tipped in, and a bull shark took him and that’
s the truth. Bit him near in half and it’s a torment forever that memory and I’m sorry beyond all measure I truly am Mr Mackie.’

  ‘A shark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A shark took the boy and not the dog, that’s a queer thing.’

  ‘This one didn’t take the dog he just didn’t. He took the boy.’

  ‘Perhaps this one never yet tasted dog?’ said Catley.

  ‘You’ve nothing to prove the truth of this,’ said Mackie.

  ‘I would not conjur this in my worst dream.’

  Beyond the shelter the sun had disappeared and the day coloured to grey, light rain falling, beads curling around the slick black brow of the overhang, poised there, like a string of pearl drops.

  They sat for a time, in silence, picking at the oily meat and drinking their tea.

  ‘With God as your witness you will look the doctor in the eye and tell him what happened,’ said Mackie.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘If it is a lie you carry it to judgement and the terrors beyond.’

  ‘It’s not a lie.’

  ‘On that you will be tested.’

  ‘Don’t sling me on the hook, please.’

  ‘That is for Dr Woody to weigh in the balance.’

  ‘Where’s Griffin Pinney?’ said Cuff.

  ‘He went off, never came back,’ said Sparrow.

  The dogs were still prowling about the fire, drawn by the sizzle and the smell of meat on the flame, Cuff backhanding them away.

  Bea wanted to help Sparrow. She trusted to Mr Catley’s vow of silence. ‘He went off to forage and he never did come back,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe the savages got him,’ said Sparrow. He cast an uncomfortable glance at Daniel who had called the big dog and sat with him, at one remove.

  ‘Have you seen Joe?’ said Bea.

  ‘No,’ said Mackie.

  ‘Was he not there, on his patch?’

  ‘We came by way of Pig Creek, joined the Branch upstream,’ said Cuff.

  ‘Joe is sick and hurt,’ said Bea.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Griffin Pinney hurt him.’

  ‘Did he hurt him bad?’