The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  ‘No I did not.’

  The doctor swivelled about, glaring at Redenbach. ‘What on God’s earth is the relevance of that to me?’

  ‘Nothin’, just —’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Just, I heard he was awful big.’

  ‘Will you shut up,’ growled Woody. ‘Now, tell me about this bull shark, you saw it plain as day I’m told.’

  ‘I did sir, yes, more’s the pity, he was awful big too.’

  Woody was staring into Sparrow’s face yet again, searching for the truth or otherwise in the expiree’s countenance. Occasionally he would look to the patch of floor between his boots and sit in silence, shaking his head.

  ‘Tell me this,’ he said, finally, ‘was there not a scrap of my boy left, for to retrieve, for to bury, for to show me? No resting place, not a thread, not a button, not a shred of flesh nor bone?’

  Sparrow felt awfully cold as the full meaning of this question settled in his mind. He did not want to give up the most terrible details, the worst of them entirely beyond the bounds of merciful sensibility and thus the bounds of possible telling. He could say nothing of the boy, the torso they towed to the river bank; nothing of those vacant eyes, wide open; nothing of the terrible transgression that he permitted – the pup supping on the boy’s entrails. He could say naught but the boy was gone, entirely gone. ‘There was some . . . leavings . . . on the flow, but we did not think to collect them . . . I believe they sunk to the bottom . . . we was in the middle of that river and we was numb with the shock, believe me, please,’ he said.

  Woody looked away sharply, as if he could not bear to look at Sparrow again. ‘Leavings . . . leavings,’ was all he said.

  Sparrow could hear heavy exhalations through the doctor’s nose.

  ‘I am no wiser now than when I sat down. Leavings, like grease on a plate,’ said Woody.

  ‘Not like that, no,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘On the word of a waster and a backslider I am to be tormented for the rest of my life,’ said the doctor. He stood up and he stepped outside the cell and he beckoned Hat to follow. He spoke to Peskett. ‘Put Mr Sparrow’s narrative to the test.’

  Sparrow leapt up, he took hold of the bars. He was not at all sure about that word narrative, but he was quite sure that the doctor was departing, leaving him in the hands of the military, so he could only assume that narrative had a meaning somewhere in the vicinity of untruth. ‘It’s the truth, I swear,’ he said.

  But already Woody was shuffling away with Hat in his wake. He was almost gone from sight when he stopped and turned, waving a finger at Sparrow. ‘That good man tried to salvage you from the wreckage of your miserable life.’

  ‘Who . . . who?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘What are you, a damn owl,’ growled Woody.

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘He is not here, Mr Sparrow, because he has forsaken you. He was your port in the storm and more fool him I said at the time. I told him, I said, that man will never do honour to a generous benefactor, I told him you were nothing but an idler, a worthless recidivist. And here we are.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Sparrow. He was trying to look as sad as he could possibly look which wasn’t hard because he was, truly, very sad.

  ‘Let’s to work!’ said Nimrod Parsonage.

  Dr Woody was waggling that finger again. ‘Mr Mackie extended to you a benevolence founded upon good principles if not good sense. He invested in you and your patch a most charitable faith, a most liberal generosity, and you owed him a dutiful subordination say nothing of hard work and a modest tithe come harvest. What chance now? Your patch in ruins, weeded up, neither ploughed nor planted; your liberal patron most grossly insulted. You ought be ashamed.’

  ‘I am, I see that now, life can take such a turn, a revelation. I’m sorry beyond measure truly I am . . . don’t go.’

  Woody stared at Sparrow like he was some alien thing. ‘It’s a sad day when a man’s past is what he is,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘Sorry will not do it. This will not wash away, none of this will wash away,’ said Woody. He was colouring up, his anger stirred by more than his pain, and Sparrow did not know what to say for it was true – the doctor was condemned forever.

  And then the doctor was gone and Sparrow was there, in the cell, with Redenbach and Peskett. He felt very much alone, notwithstanding the company.

  50

  Peskett thumbed his false teeth into place, moved close. ‘See what happens when you do something bad, Marty? It’s like an echo, it carries to and fro, doin’ hurt in all directions.’

  Sparrow had never heard of an echo doing hurt to anybody but he understood the point that Reuben Peskett was making. And he knew the crusty veteran was right. They had bolted, he and Peachey, and that one act had done hurt hither and yon. Peachey was dead, the boy Jug, Jason, he was dead too, and Griffin Pinney was dead but that was a secret. Also, the chief constable’s investment in a certain expiree had turned bad and that expiree was now, according to the doctor, forsaken, and his patch was a ruin. ‘Forsaken, that’s all I need,’ he said.

  His eyes followed Redenbach who had stepped into the corridor to untie the hauling line that was hitched to a big iron ring in the stone. Redenbach glanced back at Sparrow. ‘That patch is the least o’ your worries now, you don’t tell us the truth.’ He lowered the tackle rig to hip-high and tied it off.

  There was a big hook on the movable block, and the block turned ever so slightly in the chill air. They took Sparrow from the cell and tied his hands behind him and stood him in the corridor with the block at his back. Sparrow’s heart was pounding like a big sea onto a beach.

  The Parsonage twins stood watching through the bars. ‘If I was you I’d tell ’em the truth, front to back,’ said Crispin.

  ‘Truth could be worse,’ said Nimrod.

  Sparrow wondered about the strange serendipity of having Reuben Peskett for his torturer, him with whom Biddie Happ was now, in all likelihood, concubined. He no longer cared for Biddie so why this troubled him he did not understand.

  He wished old Joe was dead. If old Joe was dead Bea might just go with him, if ever he got away, if ever he got the chance to run. If he could not stay at Joe’s and he had to run, he did not want to run alone. His mind was deeply troubled, turning about, worse than a bucket of eels.

  The cat was walking a figure eight around and between Sparrow’s legs, rubbing against him all the way. For a moment the purr was the only sound to be heard.

  Peskett shunted the cat away with his boot. He stood almost nose to nose with Sparrow as Redenbach took hold of the moveable block and fitted the hook into the rope that now bound the prisoner’s wrists tight behind him. ‘What are you goin’ to do?’ said Sparrow, but he already knew. Peskett took up the slack on the hauling line. Redenbach joined to the task, the taut rope straining, lifting Sparrow at the wrists until he was tottering in that dark, cold corridor, his toes barely touching the ground, his arms hauled up behind him, almost shoulder high, the strain on his shoulders most unkind.

  At that point Peskett called a halt and Redenbach took the hauling line and hitched it to the iron ring.

  Hat Thistlewaite came with a taper. He lit a slender candle set upon a sconce on the wall. Then he glanced at Sparrow and just as quick he looked away. He bent low and swooped up the cat, and he left. Sparrow took Hat’s sombre mien and swift departure to be a sign of the turnkey’s humanity. That or he was busy.

  ‘He’s in a great deal of discomfort, I see that now,’ said Nimrod Parsonage.

  ‘That’s nothin’ to what’s comin’,’ said Crispin.

  Peskett moved close again. ‘You’ll be feelin’ the strain on your uppers and your lowers.’

  He was so close that Sparrow felt himself doused in the man’s stinky breath. It was bad but it was nothing like as bad as Mackie’s.

  ‘Is it true what I hear about your nethers?’ said Peskett.

  Sparrow was stun
g. He knew the origins of the knowledge hidden in the question. He reckoned he might punch Biddie Happ in the ear if he ever got the chance, just as she’d punched him, only harder. Helpless as he was, strained at his extremities, he had no desire for the conversation to shift to his private parts. Every answer he could summon seemed loaded up with dangerous implications.

  ‘I hear you got but one ball. Perhaps we should have a look?’

  Sparrow did not want his britches to come down, not for any reason. ‘I don’t believe the doctor will condone this,’ he said, but straight away he knew the futility of his words for, notwithstanding the doctor’s celebrated moderation, he would surely tolerate any means towards the end of knowing what happened to his boy Jug, Jason.

  Sparrow could hear Crispin sniggering. ‘He’s quiverin’ like a hare in a trap,’ he said.

  ‘They don’t care about you anymore, they done with you,’ said Redenbach.

  ‘They?’

  ‘Why, the good doctor and Mackie both.’

  ‘What I said was true: a bull shark took the boy.’

  ‘You killed him and you buried him and you hid him away somewhere,’ said Peskett.

  He was leaning against the wall, working the end of the hauling line between his fingers, a thoughtful pose. ‘Proof of life or proof of death, one or the other, Marty. Nothing less will do.’

  ‘Everyone knows a shark will take a dog big or small any day,’ said Redenbach.

  ‘Well he didn’t,’ said Sparrow. The ball of his left foot now had a little more purchase on the floor but his shoulders were still terribly pained. He took some relief by leaning forward and dropping his chin onto his chest and shifting a little more weight onto the better situated foot. His heart pumping hard, he could feel the blood wooshing in and out of his ventricles, he could hear it. His legs were fast tiring. He feared his muscles cramping up. He dreaded the thought they might raise him higher and hang him entirely from his fettered wrists and go to work on him. In his pictorial mind he could see himself hauled high, almost head-high to the beam, his britches around his ankles, the military below. His arms might come away from his shoulders, there to dangle, his body hanging by naught but ligament and sinew, the sockets popped, the flesh stretching like a dough pour.

  He heard someone’s footsteps, one foot scuffing the ground every time. He knew that sound. It was Henry Kettle. The soldiers looked sharp.

  Kettle stopped directly behind Sparrow.

  Sparrow felt the captain’s walking stick probing the small of his back, gently pushing at him, compelling his shoe leather to drag through the grit on the floor.

  ‘What about my dog?’ said Kettle.

  ‘Sir, we will get to the dog, make no mistake,’ said Peskett.

  ‘What’s that mean, make no mistake? If anyone’s to make a mistake here sergeant – should your best endeavours fail to confirm the whereabouts of my dog . . .’

  Confirm! Sparrow could only assume the whereabouts of the dog were already known. Mackie or Cuff had likely told the captain that Amicus Amico was at Joe’s, with Bea.

  He felt such a fool.

  ‘We’ll find the dog,’ said Peskett.

  ‘Do that,’ said Kettle. He gave Sparrow one last jab with his walking stick and then he departed, dragging that lame leg.

  ‘What about this dog?’ said Peskett.

  Sparrow did not lift his head. He could not look the man in the eye. ‘I found him, a stray, that’s all. I found him half dead on South Creek.’

  ‘A stray you say?’

  ‘For to trade, yes. Thus to pass, unmolested.’

  ‘Young dog, perchance a brindle?’

  ‘A stray, that’s all, to win the good grace of the savages.’

  ‘Did you see ’em, the savages?’ said Redenbach.

  ‘Only Mr Catley’s Daniel. I never saw old Wolgan nor Caleb neither. Nor the one they call Napoleon.’

  ‘You see any of them hangin’ from a tree, suitably neutralised?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Quite a sight. You approve?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ His shoulders pained him something dreadful.

  ‘Why’d you come back?’

  Sparrow reached for the most noble explanation he could think of. ‘Bea was captive to Griffin Pinney but he went off and he never come back, and Bea said she had to go home, to look after Joe.’

  ‘There’s a lot of unlikely mystery pilin’ up here,’ said Peskett. He was undoing the knot on the iron ring.

  ‘Please no.’

  ‘Griffin ain’t a man to disappear, not with a woman in hand, not that woman.’

  ‘Well he did.’

  ‘An’ the better half o’ your nature took charge and you nobly chaperoned her all the way to Joe’s, that right?’

  ‘I went back with her, yes. Please don’t haul me up.’

  ‘I’m surprised Catley didn’t make that girl an offer, he’s a randy one, don’t the widow Wise know it,’ said Redenbach.

  ‘Where is the boy?’ Peskett beckoned the assistance of his fellow tormentor.

  ‘He’s lost to the bull shark I swear.’

  ‘Where’s the brindle dog?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call him brindle, exactly.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s with Joe.’

  They took the weight on the hauling line and began to heave. Sparrow’s arms lifted behind him to the point where they could flex no more and he felt his body weight shift entirely to his shoulder joints as his feet left the ground and he turned, slowly, the pain in his shoulders like fire. He could hear the strain on the block, the rope chafing on the sheaves. Stretched to extremity, his shoulders assaulted by his own dead weight, levered beyond the limits of God’s design, bone on bone, a sharp, cruel pain that pulsed into his brain like a needle.

  Redenbach was below him now, looking up. ‘Did he fuck her, Griffin?’

  Peskett pushed Redenbach aside. ‘Proof o’ life or proof o’ death, that’s it, then you come down. You can hang there till your arms come away for all I care.’

  ‘There’s nothin’ left, nothin’, truly.’

  Peskett reached up and took Sparrow by the throat and squeezed hard on the windpipe, his own face reddening with the effort. The sergeant squeezed harder still, then he let go. ‘I’ve just about had enough o’ you!’

  Sparrow was gasping, his body rocking, his shoulders loaded with hurt.

  Peskett walked about. He circled his captive. He came back into view with the corn sack in hand. He dropped it on the floor beneath the iron ring. Clunk.

  ‘Give him the pear like you give it to me!’ said Crispin.

  ‘If one more time you deny me the answer I want . . .’ said Peskett. ‘One more time, I will take down your britches and go to work on your arse, do you understand?’

  Sparrow could feel sweat all over, so cold on his skin. He was faint. The walls were shifting, straight things warping into twisted form. He eyed the corn sack. He stared at the pot of grease. He knew at that moment there was naught but one thing to do.

  ‘Alright,’ he said.

  The Parsonage twins clapped their hands. ‘Another narrative,’ said Crispin.

  ‘Perchance a counter narrative!’ said Nimrod.

  ‘Oh goody’, said Redenbach.

  Sparrow wanted them to let him down, but they would not let him down. Peskett moved up close once more. ‘We’ll have the truth while you’re up there.’

  ‘I can’t talk up here.’

  ‘You best find a way.’

  Sparrow was trying to think. He had hoped the real truth would suffice. Now he knew that only a false truth would do, a big lie, masquerading as the true account of the boy Jug’s demise. Proof of death in the wilderness would require a sighting, confirmation. He would have to take them there, and there in the fastness . . . in the fastness he might escape. He might even get to the other side, if he had to. ‘There is a cave in a gully off the Branch,’ he said. He was thinking of the cave where Griffin Pinney
and his old dog lay dead. ‘I believe I can find it if I try.’

  ‘The boy is there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Peskett.

  ‘He’s there, the boy is there,’ said Sparrow. His arms ached like purgatory, the weight on his shoulders heavy as a horse.

  ‘Dead?’ said Peskett.

  ‘Let me down, please.’

  ‘Who killed him?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘A spider.’

  ‘A spider?’

  ‘A mountain funnel-web.’

  ‘Psssssh,’ said Nimrod Parsonage.

  ‘Now that is a narrative!’ said Crispin.

  Redenbach growled. ‘You tuggin’ my squirrel, laddie?’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Sparrow. ‘They make their burrows in the most unlikely places where you might sit down, or fossick, and they got fangs that cut through fingernails even, and a man once bit has no recourse but to die, that’s what happens, and this one bit the boy, and he’s dead in that cave.’

  ‘A spider in a cave?’ said Peskett.

  ‘No,’ said Sparrow. More. ‘The boy picked up some wood on the way in, the spider come in with the wood and bit him on the back of the hand before he could even blink and when he threw down the wood it was too late.’

  ‘You left him for dead,’ said Redenbach.

  ‘We tended him as best we could until he left us, left this world.’

  ‘You understand the doctor will require some exacting detail,’ said Peskett.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then, you describe to me the boy’s suffering, swiftly now.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘Please let me down.’

  Peskett looked away. ‘Let him down, somewhat,’ he said to Redenbach and they lowered Sparrow until the balls of his feet touched the floor and took weight enough to moderate the agony in his shoulders.

  ‘That’s it. Talk,’ said Peskett.

  ‘It was awful.’

  ‘Doubtless.’

  ‘First thing he dropped the wood and sat and held his hand and we saw the puncture wounds and they were big and deep and red raw. Then he said he was giddy and we propped him against the cave wall and his skin was like a plucked fowl, and his brow was run with sweat. He said his mouth was tingly and his tongue too and his face began to twitch and his eyes to water. He was panting hard and the twitching spread, his entire body agitated and he vomited into his lap so we laid him down and he began to talk, confused talk, babble; and then everything seemed to slow, the twitching, the breathing, the talk . . . and then he was dead.’