The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  Mort cocked his head to one side and caressed what was left of his earlobe twixt thumb and forefinger. ‘Griffin’s old dog was a ruin, that much I know. I would surmise he wanted that young dog o’ yours for himself. I’m surprised you still got him. I’m surprised you’re still in one piece. That Griffin plays a wicked game.’

  ‘There’s no village, no river of the first magnitude?’

  ‘Marty, there’s just mountains, and here we are. I have my own firm conviction based on my own considerable cogitations as to what is beyond.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Real tea?’

  ‘Bush tea.’

  ‘Oh yes, any tea.’

  ‘In that case we better go and make some tea.’

  Mort led the way through the timber to a foot track that ran almost the length of the reach before it met with a gully, deep in shade. They paused there as Mort and Caleb surveyed the river upstream, the sun long gone, the colours fading from the rim rock, the sands calving into the shallows, their form undone by the quickening flow.

  ‘That’s the storm in the west,’ said Mort.

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Let’s us hasten to that cup o’ tea.’

  They took to the gully, the savages tailing Sparrow and the dog.

  Mort seemed to know his apish waddle was under some scrutiny from behind. ‘Knees are gone, bone on bone, gait like an old dog,’ he said as he shuffled up the gully to a clearing in a copse of cabbage trees and coachwoods, a campsite cosseted and cool. Further up where the creek disappeared in thick scrub there was a cave and at the mouth of the cave a coil of rope, a grappling hook and a blanket tossed across a yielding bough.

  Caleb set the fire and Mort threw the fish onto the flames and they sat about, the four of them, peeling the cooked flesh off the bones, morsels, Amicus poised for the leavings.

  When they finished, Caleb spat out a piece of gristle, wiped his lips and addressed Sparrow directly. ‘We savages dwell here, cast out from the sight of God.’

  ‘Who says that?’ said Sparrow.

  ‘That ol’ bugger Hardwick.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s hardly right, or fair.’

  ‘He says my people are lost to the sun of God’s warmth.’

  ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘Sunk in the ways of ignorance and filth.’

  ‘Nooooo.’

  ‘Doomed to the misery of Hell, eternal fire.’

  ‘I’d say that’s not very Christian to say that.’

  ‘Do you love us, then, as Jesus says you must love us?’

  ‘I do, yes, I love you as a brother.’ That was a lie.

  ‘A brother?’

  ‘Yes, a brother.’

  ‘Your love for us is deep then, deeper than the love of women?’

  ‘I s’pose, yes.’

  Mort was chuckling, watching the exchange. ‘They don’t reckon we’re the Christians, Marty,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Course not. We’re the Romans. We march in, seize the land, crucify them, string ’em up in trees, mutilate their parts. Pickin’ the Romans ain’t difficult.’

  ‘I ain’t no Roman,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘Well, that’s good to know, ’cause if you was a Roman we’d have to get one o’ them long spears and stick it in yer gizzard,’ said Mort, still chuckling.

  ‘Who’s the Christians then?’

  Mort chuckled yet again. ‘That’s hard to know.’

  The fire was naught but wisps of smoke. Mort took a long stick and poked about in the live coals, pushing them together. He threw some dry twigs on the coals and they phoomphed into flame. He took a water bladder and topped up the quart pot for the tea and set it on the fire, cocked his head to one side. ‘Can you hear it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rain, west o’ here.’

  Sparrow listened hard, but all he could hear was the crackle of the fire. He licked his greasy fingers. His mind cast back to the poultry-bone leavings on the greasy plates at Peachey’s Tap, those final days on his patch, his miserable time at Bet Pepper’s, the toing and froing, Hat Thistlewaite’s awful smile. The rectal pear. ‘They hung Shug with the pony’s head strung on his neck,’ he said.

  Mort paused, took in the news. ‘That pony was useless. Mule’s what you need, that or an awful big goat.’

  They sat in silence until Mort felt the urge to say one more thing on the matter of Shug: ‘I hope he died brave; hope he cursed ’em all to rot in hell.’

  When the water boiled, Mort took the pot off the flame. He took hold of his haversack and set it between his feet and searched the innards and from the haversack he withdrew a teapot and he set this most unlikely amenity on the fire stones. He grinned at Sparrow. The dark was setting in as he took Peskett’s false teeth from his pocket and placed them, ceremonially, on the hot stones beside the teapot. ‘Special occasion.’

  He removed the tin lid and dropped his tea leaves into the pot, and he set a tin mug on the other side of the ox-bone teeth on the metal rim. ‘Why don’t you be mother,’ he said.

  Sparrow watched as Caleb and Napoleon departed in the direction of the river. ‘They’re going,’ he said.

  ‘Theirs is a sylvan liberty. Who am I to bid them stay?’ He stood and stretched.

  ‘Did you trade, pay a tithe?’

  Mort had to think. ‘I gave them Gordy’s girl, when I was done with her.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I suppose she’s where they put her.’ There was a small axe and a wad of sackcloth rag by the fire stones and Sparrow wrapped the sackcloth around his hand and he felt the steam on his fingers as he took the quart pot by the handle and poured the hot water into the teapot.

  He was relieved the savages were gone. He was puzzled too. Mort seemed awfully settled, here on the Branch. ‘Is there no village?’ he said.

  Mort plonked down on a length of old log by the campfire, his legs spread wide and his frame bent over like he might vomit, but he didn’t. He was thinking deeply. He was weighing the question of whether or not to extend to Marty Sparrow the benefit of his considerable cogitations on the matter of the village beyond the mountains.

  After a while he spoke. ‘I too had this unquenchable desire for deliverance in the far beyond.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘It was not my conviction that wavered, but my knees. For a time I cursed them, my knees, but then I woke to my true situation, to a life of plenty on the far flung Branch, and I was reconciled.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Oh I know alright.’

  ‘Tell me then.’

  ‘Marty, I cannot just tell you, not in a word. There’s no simple answer here, there is only a line of reasoning through which we must navigate according to reason’s compass in order to arrive at the truth, y’foller me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sparrow, for he was, indeed, ready to follow Mort’s line of reasoning as best he could, most particularly if it led to the truth.

  57

  Cuff led the way onto a stretch of sand that banked steep at the far end of the reach, where the canyon narrowed and the waters hurried down rapids feeding into the long, stirring stretch of river. He watched a wading bird stalking in the shallows. Then he saw the bodies of Peskett and Redenbach, the far-shadowing spear stuck hard in Redenbach’s frame.

  Crows took flight, fled the remains of the dead soldiers.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Sprodd.

  Bea Faa went to Redenbach. She pulled hard at the spear but it would not come free. She put her boot down hard on the dead man’s shoulder and heaved on the shaft and the spear came away, barbs and all, and she threw it aside. Cuff looked on, as did Sprodd. She rolled the corpse with deceptive ease, saw that wound, the bayonet wound, in the man’s chin.

  ‘He’s deader’n a dead dog’s bone,’ said Sprodd.

  ‘And I will see him dead, face up,’ she said.

  Cuff was standing over
Peskett. ‘I’d say Reuben never knew what hit him.’

  ‘They’re awful good at sneakin’ up on us, the very thought gives me the drizzles,’ said Sprodd. He was staring down at Peskett. ‘Them false teeth are gone,’ he said, ‘might be he swallowed ’em.’

  Cuff studied the soldiers’ wounds and he studied their boots and then he set to scrutinising the footprints of two adult savages and the smaller boot prints that he took to be Sparrow and everywhere the imprints of the young game dog’s paws.

  He could make no sense of the signs. What had happened to Sparrow was a mystery. He could imagine the savages taking the dog but he could not imagine them wanting Sparrow for company, not them not anyone.

  ‘If they wanted Sparrow dead he’d be dead, right here,’ he said. He bent low and studied the wrecked musket, and the bull ants busy on Peskett’s ruined hand.

  They moved away from the dead soldiers and kept moving, aiming for a thicket of she-oaks that fringed the rapids at the far end of the reach. They sat for a while, watched the river swell, the headwaters flushing out. ‘Lucky Redenbach was dead,’ said Cuff. ‘Someone I know might’ve finished him off.’

  ‘The faintest flicker, I would snuff it out,’ said Bea.

  ‘I believe you would.’ Cuff had no objection to the girl’s resolute intent. He admired her for the loyalty of her attachments and the strength of her conviction. He now knew enough about Bea Faa to know she’d suffered much and her one chance, much deserved, had slipped away with the death of Joe. As to the warrant, that meant she was not safe on Joe’s patch, not now, for sooner or later the word would carry upriver to the garrison at Prominence and the soldiers would come and snatch her away. The one thing that Cuff thought certain – there was no going back for Bea Faa.

  Cuff wondered if, perchance, Mr Catley might take her. Even in his addled moments back on the rock shelf it was hard not to notice Catley’s eyes feasting on the girl, but she did not reciprocate in any way. She gave no sign of an interest in the specimen collector. The only option for companionship seemed to be Marty Sparrow who, like Bea, had good reason never to go back lest they hang him for the death of Jug Woody or the scuttling of Jug’s boat, or both. Cuff was certain he now knew the true story regarding the fate of poor Jug, but a full panel of magistrates would in all likelihood find the bull shark story all too convenient, the work of a midge, a loafer and a slippery deceiver.

  Cuff no longer thought of Marty Sparrow in that way, for he had killed Griffin Pinney with an axe and he’d done this deed in defence of Bea Faa who was, by any measure, under siege at the time. He had done a noble thing, even if he’d done it when the advantage was entirely his own, that is to say, when Griffin had his britches down and his member all aquiver. For Cuff this piece of intelligence meant that Sparrow just might be the companion that Bea Faa required if she was to make for the other side. ‘What say we set after Mr Sparrow, see if we can find him?’ he said.

  ‘Martin and the dog, yes,’ she said.

  Bea was also pondering her situation. Her options were now somewhat limited. She had warmed to Martin Sparrow and to his dog long before the killing of Griffin Pinney. She reckoned Sparrow would be a loyal friend if ever they could find him. Sparrow was perhaps the only man in the world who might be her friend and not trouble her with doings she much preferred to avoid. The only man who would be loyal, like the dog, and hopefully extend to her a dispensation in the matter of her affections, and were he to be selfless and sacrificial in that way then she might consider a modest rationing in his favour, now and then.

  The westering sun had departed the gorge and the last of its colours faded from the forest and the cliff top far above, the coming night turning their minds to shelter.

  They hurried forth, scrambling over talus and driftwood on the fringe of the rapids and they followed the quickening river, taking the turn onto the next reach. Way above they could see in dark relief a ponderous forehead of stone, what appeared to be a cave.

  Cuff led the way. They scrambled up a slope, skirting the rubble, the rotting timber, angling ever upwards for the overhang that would surely give them shelter for the night.

  They were much slowed by the poor light, stepping carefully as they went higher, finally scrambling onto the lip of the cave.

  What they found was a spacious accommodation, a sandy floor, bone dry, the remnants of a cookfire, some dry wood, a gathering of shredded bark and here and there the parched white coils of animal droppings.

  Cuff set the Kunkle musket against the decorated wall and he studied the painted images: fish, wallaby, man, woman; a shark, little fish inside; stencilled hands, the outlines milky white. He dropped his haversack and worked his fingers on an aching knee. Bea Faa turned her back on the cave and stared into the depths of the gorge and her eye followed it northward, to sandstone cliffs that rose sheer above a forest of ghostly white gums at the end of the reach.

  Sprodd dropped down and made a pillow of his haversack, readying for the night. ‘Sleep dry, the gilt on the gingerbread I reckon,’ he said. They checked themselves for leeches and ticks, searched the nooks and crannies. They scratched for a bit, their lower parts. They rested a while, hardly a word. They shared some dry rations. They talked briefly, and they slept.

  58

  Mort sat up straight, cleared his throat. He pressed his palms into the log and took his weight on his arms and shifted his arse about, searching for comfortable repose. ‘First point,’ he said. ‘The government back there, they know nothing of the woods; nor of what lies beyond. They tell us nothing but a bird would ever get across. They say the very notion of a village on the other side is absurd, but let me tell you: this vested counsel has no foundation in practical knowledge, or common sense.’

  Sparrow had heard this speech before, or something like it, but he daren’t interrupt. He thought best to listen quietly, sipping at his tea.

  ‘They would have us succumb to their wicked deception, have us despair of all hope, the better to conform with their need of us. But we got no need o’ them and we can be free if we wanna be free.’

  Mort’s reasoning took hold of Sparrow. He could see the good, straight, common sense of that reasoning with great clarity. ‘It’s like a dream come true,’ he said. He was feeling uncommonly poetic while Mort was feeling pleasurably fluent.

  ‘A dream indeed, Marty boy, for with the dream you seize control and once again the world is yours for the taking. You have to dream, y’foller me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  The trill of the cicadas was ringing in their ears, the insects all about them, like some cruel, midget orchestra hidden in the under shrubbery.

  ‘One thing more,’ said Mort.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Old Wolgan, he says I’m his long-dead uncle, says I’m a ghost returned from the other side. Supposedly I bear a striking resemblance to the man, a ghostly likeness, and I am in no way inclined to disabuse this tenacious remnant of their outlandish notions.’

  ‘I imagine a family connection might be quite helpful.’

  ‘It don’t hurt.’

  Sparrow thought hard on the connection. ‘That makes you a great uncle to Caleb.’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Mort. ‘In a spooky sort o’ way.’

  Sparrow wondered if Mort knew about the murdered blacks, strung up, mutilated and riddled with shot. He thought perhaps he should tell Mort, in case Mort didn’t know. ‘The soldiers chased down three of them, and killed them,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘We seen them on the way. Reuben Peskett was most pleased to revisit his work.’

  Mort stared straight ahead. Sparrow could see the bafflement upon his countenance. ‘Did Caleb not say?’

  ‘They keep a most cautious counsel. I hardly blame them for that.’ Mort was poking the fire somewhat vigorously with his long stick.

  ‘Don’t he trust you?’

  ‘Oh he trusts me alright, he seen me in
the pillory. He knows I ain’t no Roman.’

  ‘They hung them from a single bough, and shot them full of holes, and a woman they left dead on the ground, shot through.’

  Mort blew on his tea and sipped at it cautiously. ‘Got to let it draw a while, this bush brew.’ He put a hand to his chest, scratched at his breastbone. He continued with his reasoning, as if the subject of murder had never been raised. ‘Even a man of most modest comprehension, like myself, finds it impossible to conceive that a continent so large as this could be devoid of a river, a river of the first magnitude, like the Nile, where they found the baby Jesus in the bulrushes. A river that might upon discovery be navigated to its distant outfall on the far coast. Why, only a lunatic would deny such a likelihood.’

  Mort put down his mug and set his palms upon the log once again, his arms rigid like spars. He arched his back. He spoke softly. ‘My Caleb confirms precisely what Mr Flinders reported to the governor.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A copper-coloured people.’

  ‘I do recall you mentioned the copper-coloured people.’

  ‘I did, yes. Their beginning in some intrepid Malay vessel that may have been lost, or foundered there, and the crew, finding themselves on a well-watered and fertile savannah, they established themselves there, see, in some harmony with the native inhabitants, making use of the women and so forth, and their issue the foundation of a new race. Thus a village, a vigorous new people, is not only likely but, I have to say, Marty, most probable.’

  Sparrow had to ask. ‘Why don’t you go?’

  ‘Because the search for happiness can be like the search for your spectacles when they’re sittin’ on your nose.’

  Mort could see that Sparrow was slow to fathom his little homily. ‘Why might I not go?’ he said.

  ‘Bad knees, bone on bone?’

  ‘Well yes, but apart from that? Look about. I got fish, I got meat on the hoof, I got . . . edible greens, I got fruit, wild honey . . . I got medicine too, these woods full o’ natural potions. Might help you, that buttery look you got, tells me you need a tonic.’