The Making of Martin Sparrow

by Peter Cochrane

  Sparrow dreamt he heard the howl of wild dogs. He looked out upon an unfamiliar heathland and saw the dogs, hot in pursuit of a boar; they set upon the boar and tore shreds of black hide from the animal, laying bare great patches of bleeding flesh and Sparrow watched this rending until he sensed his own mortal peril, for savages had gathered around him, their eyes glowing red like hot coals and these savages, they beat him with their waddies and left him bloodied and prone and they departed as swiftly as they’d come and he found himself yet alive, desperately thirsty but alive, and alone, for they had taken his Amicus. Amicus was gone.

  He woke with a start. His mouth was dry, the cracks in his lips scabbed over. He felt the stillness of the vast expanse around him. Sat up. Studied the covered form of Bea Faa, saw faint wisps of smoke rising up from the coals, ghost grey tendrils wasting to nothingness. He saw Amicus, splayed out in the sand, watching him.

  He felt the chill air on his skin.

  The dog stood, arched his back and stretched his long legs and let out a contented groan.

  Sparrow lay down again and tried to sleep. His thoughts were of water – where they might find water, come the morning.

  They woke hungry and parched. A scrub fowl of some description skittered away, disappeared into the prickly heath, and a flock of black cockatoos burst skyward as tiny birds flitted about the cover of the brush. Pea flowers there, bright yellow, like butterflies.

  ‘I wonder, are we near the other side,’ he said. He sensed they were closer to the known water behind them than they were to whatever water they might find to the west. But he did not want to turn back, not for anything, not even for water.

  A wattlebird flew at a honeyeater and the small bird tumbled in the air, twisted and turned and fled into a thicket. They packed up and departed. They stepped down the sand drift onto the heathland and set about crossing to the ridge in the distance, the going much slowed by the tangle of the heath.

  To the west the country was all sand and scrub save for the scattering of twisted trees on the horizon. They might squat and hide in this expanse but they would find no place shy of the sun.

  They had no course except with the sun square on their backs. In that way they went on through the long morning, forcing a path through the brush, searching the understory for any bright green leafage that might tell of a soak, labouring beneath the sun until it hovered above them, burning into the crowns of their hats.

  Sparrow was ruminating upon all the ways he might die in this country when he saw the savages. He had turned about and there they were, far off, three in a line among the ironstone contortions, watching, motionless, like stick figures planted in the ground, fixed in their world, abiding, steadfast, sovereign in their domain.

  Perhaps they had picked this time to be seen, as the heat took its toll. Or was it pure happenstance, their presence discovered by chance, exposed on the heath, nowhere to hide, a simple misfortune, like so much else in life?

  He knew the answer.

  There were native dogs with them, restless things, prowling about, sniffing out the fire place and its surrounds, sucking in the scent of the strangers.

  Sparrow squatted down. He primed the pistol, he hardly knew why. He thought the very notion of resistance quite futile.

  ‘Four,’ said Bea.

  There were four now, in a line, the fourth one squat and stout.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘They’re watching us watching them,’ said Bea.

  The squat one pointed across the heath. He pointed north-west and they heard not words but just the faint tendrils of alien sounds that failed to carry, save for the sharpness. An urging across the waste.

  ‘What to make o’ that,’ said Sparrow.

  ‘We must give them something,’ she said.

  ‘The axe?’

  ‘I hope that will do.’

  ‘Hope is the poor man’s bread.’

  ‘I know.’

  Sparrow weighed the possibilities. ‘I will not give them Amicus,’ he said. He gripped firm upon the weapon in his hand.

  Amicus was sprawled in the shade beneath the brush, his hairy pizzle sack in full view. Even thus he was way more handsome in Sparrow’s eyes than those scrawny native dogs, the way they loped about the campsite, like pack wolves.

  They stood together, he and Bea, stock-still, watching the hunters and their dogs, the sun beating upon them, the heat coming off the ash-ridden sand.

  ‘They might have water,’ she said.

  ‘We ought just walk on, see what happens.’ He could think of nothing else. There was nothing else.

  ‘Let’s walk then.’

  ‘Come what may, I don’t care,’ he said. That was a lie.

  He felt breathless. He felt cheated, bitterly so, but there was still hope in his heart. He hoped they might walk and the savages watch them walk and after a time tire of this and turn away and go back from whence they came, but from whence they came he did not know.

  They walked on, Amicus ahead of them, until they were on the rise, picking their way through a gathering of scrub wattle and tea-tree set sparse on the higher ground. They turned once more and shaded their eyes and searched the distance.

  They saw them coming. The savages dropped down into the drift, high stepping through the sand and thereafter ambling through the heath, following much the same line as their quarry. Here and there the dogs were seen to hurtle the low shrubbery like fish breaching.

  Hour upon hour the hunters tailed along. They kept pace with the trespassers, neither closing on them nor dropping off. When Sparrow and Bea paused, their pursuers paused, like it was some strange game.

  Sparrow thought one of these could be Moowut’tin, the savage who had once smiled at him, made jokes about cah-bro and marriage and reported on the lethal faculty of the funnel-web spider. Mr Catley’s man. They were too far off for Sparrow to confirm or confound his hope but he could see a likeness in the stature and the movement and the feathered braids. He wondered if his eyes might deceive him for, whether poor man’s bread or not, hope in extremis was a known deceiver.

  The savages dogged their steps all the day long. They were naked but for their loincloths and the ornamentation in their hair and they were unshod and untroubled by the elements. They seemed to move without effort, to shimmer and swim in the haze, to pause and survey and then continue upon their unhurried attendance, like languorous herdsmen upon the heels of livestock driven.

  Both Sparrow and Bea were parched, their lips blistered and cracked, their skin coated in a paste of sweat and dust. Their faces now were grimaced, fixed in a squint like a mask stuck to sinew and bone.

  ‘Can you feel your heart,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and I can hear it too.’

  The empty costrel bobbing on his hip did not succour anything in the way of good feeling in Sparrow’s heart, let alone his thirsty innards. It bobbed there, empty, deficient, a harsh reminder of ill-planning. His mouth was lined with grit and he had not the spittle to eject it. He chose to say nothing of these troubles for he knew they were suffering together and Bea was stoic and silent on the matter of her own distress. He did not wish to be the first to complain.

  They walked until the sun was sinking in the west, the heat coming at them head-on, their long shadows dragging behind. They topped a rise and saw before them more of the same: dense, battered heath, rifts, sparsely wooded hills far off, and one startling variation – a big, wide, spreading tree in a hollow, a pale grey trunk and a dense green canopy.

  They hurried on. Nearer now, they could see the hollow, set in a creek bed that ran north to south across the plateau.

  Amicus was cantering ahead.

  Sandflies began to swarm, hungry for blood. Sparrow and Bea made whisks from stems torn off the scrub wattle and fanned their upper parts as they walked on, drawn to the lone tree. They heard the shouts of the savages who stood far off. They hurried on. Sparrow was fingering the blisters on his lower lip. He knew they would have to stop, i
f only for relief from the sun. Beyond that he could not think.

  They trudged into the shade and saw the water, pooled there in the hollow. Amicus was lapping it up, his paws sunk in the mud. They dropped onto their knees beside the dog and they bent low and sucked up the slurry and spat the grit and wiped their lips on the back of their hands. After a bit Sparrow paused and paddled at the dead midges on the surface and cupped water in his hand and sucked it from his palm. Bea did much the same.

  For a moment they had forgotten about the blacks but they could hear them now, the jabber, closing. On the rim of the soak they saw footprints and handprints not their own, set like moulds in the drying mud.

  Naught to do but wait. They were captives in the sight of these hunters, these herdsmen, and there was no escaping them unless they chose to relent and turn away.

  Sparrow and Bea got out of the mud. They stepped around the soak and stood in the deep shade, their muddy hands wiped half-clean on their britches.

  Their breath came back to them. They stood, watching the hunters coming at a trot, saw the motion of their long hair, laid like rope, the native dogs ahead of them, the pack in full flight, small birds scattering like shot from the brush, parrots screeching as they took wing, the heathland fused in a pale-yellow light.

  Amicus stirred, his hackles spiked up. Sparrow seized hold of him and felt the dog tense beneath his hand, quivering fibre, like rigging in a storm. He tried to hold him but his grip failed as the first of the pack breached the fringing heath at a gallop and Amicus lunged and they locked together and tumbled into the mud in a welter of legs and teeth, Amicus down, the native dog at him, at his throat, his legs flailing as the pack swooped upon him.

  Sparrow stepped into the melee and fired the pistol into the heart of the dog at Amicus Amico’s throat. The dog dropped dead, his jaws slipping off the sodden brisket. The pack scattered from sight, into the heath, all but one. One that turned and locked eyes with Sparrow from the cover of the scrub, legs splayed, slaver drivelling off its gums.

  Amicus scrambled up, his punctured forepart running with blood. His flanks were bloody and a flap of torn skin hung off the damaged bone on his near hind leg.

  ‘They’re coming,’ said Bea.

  They stood together, watching them come, awaiting the custodians of the water.

  The savages stepped from the heath. They stood shaded in the dusty fringe, clear of the mud, the sweat upon their skin, glistening as if lately bathed. They were much scarred and their hair was gummed and feathered and dressed with tooth and claw. Sparrow’s heart sank, for Moowut’tin was not there.

  The squat one was older than his companions, older by many years. He picked up the shot dog by the hind legs and flung it clear of the soak. He gestured at the water and made some indecipherable comment. He pointed north-west and spoke again. He squatted down and spooned his hand through the water and drank from his palm, his gut pressed on his thighs, his steady gaze set upon the captives.

  He stepped clear of the mud and came to Sparrow and Bea in an arc about the soak. He stared at the pistol in Sparrow’s belt and poked at the costrel on his hip, cupped it in his hands.

  Next he squatted down beside Amicus. He took hold of the dog as Amicus shrunk away, not quickly enough. He poked about the dog’s flank, shifting the slavered hair off the bloody fang-holes. He spoke again, once again gesturing at the water.

  Sparrow and Bea made a show of studying the water. The midges were back, hovering, settling upon the surface, the faintest ripples, the canopy mirrored there, shimmering in the twilight.

  The native dogs were inching from the brush. Amicus bristled, held firm in the grip of the squat elder. His companions kicked at the dogs, warned them off. Amicus began to whine.

  ‘His leg’s broke, he’s no good to you,’ said Sparrow.

  The elder shifted on his haunches and moved his examination to the leg of the dog. He held the head clear, his fist jammed tight on the collar, and the dog suffered the handling of the wounded limb, snapping and squirming, whimpering at the pain.

  Sparrow wished the gun primed and ready and still in his hand. He leant forward. ‘You cannot have Amicus,’ he said, so softly that Bea hardly heard. He could not think of a time, not in his whole life, where the pain in his heart was as sharp as now, except perhaps when his head was in that bucket of eels.

  He knew his words were entirely unserviceable. Perhaps ‘no’ might be universally understood so he spoke the word. ‘No, no, no,’ he said. Bea put her hand on his shoulder. There was talk now, they were talking about Amicus. The native dogs crept closer, emboldened.

  Sparrow bent low, close to the squat elder. ‘You can have the axe,’ he said. He was fumbling for the axe, snared in his belt, felt Bea trying to pull him away. He took the axe in hand. The native dogs were stalking, bristling. Amicus was held firm, squirming about. One of the blacks shouted an angry word. He leapt the soak and smashed the bulbous head of a wooden club into the side of Sparrow’s face.

  Sparrow dropped the axe and sunk to his knees. He fell aslant into the mud, his bloodied skull in the shallow water. He felt himself leaching into the ooze, heard voices crackling as if from throats on fire, the growl of some primeval beast, the flap of wings, sounds, fading to black depths.

  66

  Dr Woody stepped onto the Hive porch. He was finished for the day, save for unforeseen eventualities, the curse of the apothecary, and the matter of Alister Mackie. The sun was gone and the warmth of the day had not lingered.

  He crossed the threshold, saw Sam half asleep at the counter, the trade minimal. Cuff came down the stairs, one arm on the banister, taking his weight. ‘I’m here,’ he said.

  ‘Walk with me, if you can,’ said Woody.

  ‘I can.’ Cuff rapped his walking stick on the floor.

  They walked to the doctor’s cottage at the top of the switchback path, sat on the porch in the gathering dark, a grey smudge on the mountains, the faint remains of the day.

  Cuff was anxious to give Woody the finality he craved. He rested his stick on the porch boards. ‘Sparrow had reason to want that little boat, but Thomas, he had no reason to hurt your boy. He told Catley about the bull shark, he told me, and Bea Faa, and I believe him.’

  ‘The bull shark.’

  ‘I think so Thomas, I really do.’

  They watched the last of the day’s light slip from the mountain rim into the world beyond and they sat in the dark, Cuff recounting the expedition up the Branch, the various episodes along the way, the fatalities, the last he saw of Bea and Sparrow, the hardihood of the girl Dot, and Sparrow’s benefaction, his penance, his patch signed over to the doctor.

  ‘Well, he got what he wanted, he’s out there now.’

  Woody lit an oil lamp, set it on the stump stool between the chairs. He took the paper from Cuff and read the words on the back, Sparrow’s signature scratched at the bottom. ‘I’ll put his brother on that patch, do him good.’

  ‘And Alister will forgive the debt, he’s in a forgiving space,’ said Cuff.

  ‘He is, yes.’

  ‘He’s wasting away, by the look of him.’

  ‘It’s a wasting disease, Thaddeus. I’ve seen lungs like his before. The lining riddled with ulcers, the sinks freighted with pus and blood, thick and fatty, suet-like. And that stench.’

  ‘The stench of death.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long has he got?’

  ‘His lamp keeps burning but it gutters to a flicker with increasing regularity.’

  ‘Not a good way to go.’

  ‘He’s ready to go. Have you seen his will? He’s left his acreage to the governor.’

  Cuff laughed. ‘By God, the man’ll be dead and he’ll still be craving favour from his betters.’

  ‘Faithful servant of the Crown. That’s how it works, the whole empire, like Rome, generous to the faithful servants of Caesar, pitiless to enemies.’

  The blackness far off to the west was not without variance, for
a crescent moon figured in the distant sky. Cuff could make out the black mountains, like the backbone of some vast creature in repose. He pointed west. ‘There’s enemies out there yet, your Caleb included.’

  ‘As yet they are sovereign in their retreats,’ said Woody.

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It might be the bolters have the ripest imaginations but sooner or later an official party will get across them mountains and find useful country, and the folk and the flag will follow, that’s the way of the world. It’s a creeping floodtide and there’s no ebb and there’s no stopping it. No amount of . . . goodwill.’

  ‘Goodwill just gets in the way, is that it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘A sovereignty yet intact but perilously close to extinction.’

  ‘An awful moment, if you think about it.’

  ‘Most don’t.’

  ‘And closer yet when the hunting party goes out, set upon vengeance for Peskett and Redenbach.’

  ‘Will you go?’

  ‘I’ll let the military avenge their own.’

  ‘And that floodtide will do the rest?’

  ‘It will, yes.’

  Woody took off his glasses, worked finger and thumb into the bridge of his nose. ‘Why does it have to be thus?’ he said.

  ‘Because all life turns on a pitiless wheel, that’s why. Because they know their place and we’ll never know ours. In that regard we’re no higher up the chain than a snake.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Some days I do, dark days.’

  ‘What I’ve seen of that floodtide, I wonder I resist the hard truth,’ said Woody.

  ‘That’s ’cause you’re a nice person. You wish with all your heart it was otherwise, and you try to make it otherwise, even though you know it.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What I said, the hard truth. We’re no better’n the snakes.’

  ‘What of the other days, the not so dark days?’

  ‘Them days I remember the likes of Joe Franks and I know we ain’t stuck in brutishness. We got a choice, every damn one of us.’