The True Story of Spit MacPhee (14 page)

Grace left the ceremony before the others. Walking back to town, avoiding the fresh puddles along the muddy road, she was thinking about Spit. She had always known where he was hiding without having to think about it. The reason for his sudden flight seemed so obvious that she was surprised that the whole town didn’t somehow organise itself to save Spit from being sent away to a Boys Home that was miles away in Bendigo. Now she was worried about him fending for himself on Pental Island, particularly at night. Like everybody else in town she knew about the snakes, but she had enough confidence in him to decide that he was safe enough for a few days at least, barring accidents.

She had also guessed that Sadie was helping him, and she didn’t question her daughter or try to interfere. But when her husband had returned yesterday with Sergeant Collins from the first fruitless search of the bush along the river, she had said to him when he began to complain about the little devil wasting everybody’s time: ‘He shouldn’t go to an orphanage, Jack. That’s what is causing the trouble.’

‘Well what else is there for him?’ Jack Tree had said.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘But surely something can be done for him.’

‘Maybe Betty Arbuckle will take him over,’ Jack Tree said as they listened to a mosquito searching them out in the darkness as they lay in bed.

‘But it’s Betty Arbuckle he’s running away from.’

‘I don’t know why,’ Jack Tree said. ‘If she decided to take him over it would be a pretty good thing for him. She’s a kind woman underneath all that evangelical soap.’

‘I know she’s kind, but kindness is not enough. He deserves more than that, Jack. Even when he was with her for a few days Betty Arbuckle was trying to turn him into a copy of her own Ben, and that just won’t work with Spit. Anyway if you do catch him and take him back to her he’ll only run away again.’

‘That’s why he’s better off in a proper place in Bendigo where it is a damned sight more difficult to run away. No bush down there.’

‘It’s wrong,’ Grace insisted. ‘It’s terribly wrong.’

‘I don’t know why you’re so worked up about this boy,’ her husband said. ‘For heaven’s sake stop thinking about him. It’ll turn out all right, so stop it.’

‘I can’t,’ Grace Tree said in her firm, quiet way and her surprised husband wondered again at her stubborness, although he decided not to pursue it in case her defiance persisted.

That had been yesterday. Today, as she walked away from the funeral, she hoped that even ten men wouldn’t be able to catch Spit, even though she had listened to the storm last night and pictured Spit huddled somewhere on the island, wet and afraid, and feeling friendless and miserably alone. She was sure that in his heart her husband had been as worried in the night as she was, but his solution was not hers. She was determined not to accept the easy and obvious way out of the problem for Spit. ‘It’s wrong,’ she told herself once more as she saw Sadie running up the slope to meet her.

‘They caught Spit,’ Sadie said breathlessly, ‘but he got away and tried to swim across the big river to New South Wales. Dad and Mr Arbuckle are taking the boat down to the big river so they can get across to New South Wales and catch him if he does get across.’

‘Poor Spit,’ Mrs Tree said bitterly. ‘I wonder what on earth he thinks of us all, chasing him like an animal.’

Spit, at the time, was not thinking of the population of St Helen at all but of the big river that was in full steam ahead of him – too full and too fast and too wide.

He had come through the wet storm last night rather well. His little caved-in bank under the gum tree roots had been fairly dry, and the thunder and lightning had not bothered him too much. There was a strong local theory that in a bad storm snakes, seeking protection, would crawl into the blankets of anyone exposed enough like Spit to the elements, so he periodically had to shake his blankets out to make sure that no snake tried to get in with him. When the wind had broken off a small dead limb from the gum tree and dropped it on his blanket he had leapt up in a moment of terror, swinging the blankets across his feet in a panic until he had seen the broken limb. He could swear effectively and fluently for the fear in his heart, and after telling weather, sky and tree what he thought of them, he flung the broken limb into the river, rolled himself up in his blanket and again went to sleep.

He was in a fairly good position in the morning to make his fire, and though everything was damp and dripping, the sky was blue again and he found enough dry sticks and leaves to get the fire going. He boiled his billy and toasted the bread. He missed butter, but when he opened the sardines he said, ‘Good old Sade,’ and read her note. It said: ‘
Tomorrow I leave you eggs and butter. Do you want some chump chops?
’ He took a blackened stick and wrote ‘
Yes
’ on the same paper and put it in his trouser pocket to be delivered that night.

He stored his goods and chattels neatly under the roots and took his lines with him down river to a deep hole which he had not yet fished. He spent most of the morning failing to catch any fish, while keeping his eye on the little river crossing. But when he had run out of mussels he walked a hundred yards down river to a little sandy patch where there was also an edge of some noisy rapids, and he was digging in the mud with his toes, concentrating on his search for the big river mussels, when he saw Ted Jackson, the butcher and fireman, and Andy Frith who delivered the milk, standing on the shore. He realised that he had been careless. The stony crackle and bubble of the shallow rapids had drowned their noisy approach so that he had lost his first line of defence – his ears.

‘Come on out, Spit,’ Andy shouted at him. ‘It’s time to go home.’

Spit didn’t say anything. He looked for a way out. The rest of the big river was too wide and fast to get right across, but he knew that if he dived in he could catch the downstream flow and make some sort of an escape. He ran along the sand bank, over the rapids, and dived in. As he swam with the fast current downstream he could hear Ted Jackson calling out to someone that he was in the river, going hell-for-leather downstream.

Spit kept his eye on the banks as he was carried downstream, but he was surprised when he was swept around a bend to see Ron Jackson, one of the best swimmers in the town and one of the fastest runners as well, waiting on the bank and taking off his shoes and trousers and shirt ready to dive in.

Spit knew that he could not outswim Ron Jackson, but he headed across the river anyway, trying to escape him. He was barely halfway across in the current, already carried fast downstream, when he felt Ron Jackson’s arm around his neck.

‘Come on, kiddo,’ Ron said to him as he tightened his grip around Spit’s neck. ‘The game’s up.’ Ron was a film addict and his language had to fit the situation. But he was young and friendly to Spit and he was one of the adults whom Spit would call by his first name instead of Mister.

‘Let me go, Ron,’ Spit said to him as they struggled together in the water. ‘You’re choking me.’

But water and swimming and struggling were not good for an argument, and it was only when Ron had pulled him up on the bank two hundred yards downstream that he said to Spit as they both caught their breath, ‘You can’t run away in this town, Spit, so it’s no use trying.’

He kept a firm hold on Spit, and by now six of the other hunters had arrived, including Sergeant Collins, Jack Tree and Frank Arbuckle. Spit expected at least one of them to cuff him, but Sergeant Collins said, ‘You’re as slippery as Ned Kelly, Spit. But you got careless, like all bushrangers.’

‘I’m not a bushranger,’ Spit said. ‘I haven’t stolen a damned thing.’

The others laughed and Jack Tree said to him, ‘We don’t want to hunt you down, young feller, but we can’t have an eleven-year-old running around alone in the bush. It’s for your own good.’

Spit knew they were trying to do something for him and he knew all these men: Sam Allenby the greengrocer, Billy Andrews from the power house, Peter Macrae who was the shunter, and all the others. But he also knew at a glance that the only real swimmer among them was Ron Jackson, and Ron had gone back to get his trousers and shirt and shoes, two hundred yards upstream where he had left them.

Sitting on the bank getting his breath back Spit watched Ron Jackson through the trees, and at the moment when Ron was putting on his trousers Spit stood up slowly and before the others realised what he was doing he had jumped into the river again, and this time he was determined to get across to New South Wales where there was thicker timber and he could outrun Ron if he got enough start.

But unluckily this was one of the places where the river was widest and fastest, and it was another mile to the junction of the little river. So Spit knew that he was going to be carried downstream more than across. His real problem was to use the stream in his favour before the rivers joined; but above all to get as far ahead of Ron Jackson as he could.

He heard Sergeant Collins shout, ‘Ron, he’s back in the river. Get down here quick or we’ll lose him.’

It was then that Sergeant Collins told Jack Tree and Frank Arbuckle to hurry back to the little river, get the boat, and row across the big river to cut off Spit’s escape into New South Wales.

When Sadie saw her father and Frank Arbuckle launch the boat on the other side of the little river, she had been sitting on the steps waiting for someone to appear with news of Spit. When she called out to her father, he told her what had happened and as he began to pull the boat downstream to the junction of the big river, he called out to her, ‘You go off back home, Sadie. You’re not to hang around waiting for me to come back. Go on …’ he called out as he disappeared around the bend.

But Sadie was not hanging around waiting for her father to come back. She was telling herself unhappily that she was waiting to see if they caught Spit, and she was going to defy her father and sit on the mud steps to see what was going to happen now. She was running up the slope to the house to get her father’s field glasses when she saw her mother crossing the railway line on her way back from the funeral. Sadie continued on up the slope to tell her what had happened.

‘He could drown in the big river, couldn’t he?’ she said to her mother as they both hurried back to the boiler steps.

‘He could,’ Grace said, ‘but he’s a strong swimmer and if he doesn’t exhaust himself he’ll be all right.’

‘I hope they never catch him,’ Sadie said as they reached the steps to wait again for someone to reappear with news of Spit.

‘The only trouble is,’ her mother said, ‘he can’t stay out there forever, Sadie. Although I wish they could have done it some other way.’

‘What’ll happen to him when they bring him back?’ Sadie asked.

‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. But if they try to send him back to Betty Arbuckle he’ll only run away again. So I don’t know what is to become of him.’

‘Maybe Sergeant Collins will have to lock him up?’ Sadie said.

‘I wouldn’t put it past any of them,’ Mrs Tree said unhappily. ‘Even though they all think they’re doing their best for the boy.’

‘It’s unfair,’ Sadie said.

‘Yes, it is,’ her mother replied, and she sat down near her daughter to wait.

Half an hour later they saw the rowing boat coming heavily upstream, and in it were Jack Tree, Frank Arbuckle, Ron Jackson and Spit.

‘Oh, they got him,’ Sadie said bitterly, standing up.

As Sadie and her mother watched the boat approaching, the rest of the hunters and seekers emerged from the clump of gums on the island to wait to be picked up.

‘Where did you catch him?’ Sergeant Collins called out to the boat.

‘Ron caught up with him,’ Frank Arbuckle replied. ‘And just in time. He was almost done for.’

When the row boat reached the steps Ron Jackson jumped into the water and stayed there because he was in his underpants. Jack Tree manoeuvred the boat so that Frank Arbuckle could get Spit up the steps, and seeing his wife and Sadie he said angrily, ‘I told you to go home, Sadie. Now get. And quick. We had to take Spit’s pants off him so he wouldn’t run off again, so turn your back and run straight up to the house.’

Sadie had seen Spit huddled in embarrassment in the back of the boat without realising why. Bursting into tears she ran up the slope to the house. When Frank Arbuckle tried to get Spit out of the boat he resisted violently, and now Mrs Tree saw that he too was in tears, not, she knew, for his defeat but for his naked humiliation.

‘It’s all right Spit, I won’t look,’ she said to him, turning her back. Then she added angrily to her husband, ‘Jack. Give him back his trousers.’

‘Not on your life,’ Jack Tree said. ‘He’ll be off like a shot.’

‘No he won’t. Do as I say, Jack. I’m telling you,’ she said so firmly and angrily that Jack Tree hesitated only a moment before telling Frank Arbuckle, ‘Give him back his pants, Frank, but keep a good grip on him.’

Mrs Tree waited until they had landed Spit then she turned around to face her husband and Frank Arbuckle.

‘Spit, come here,’ she said to him.

Spit, weakened by his humiliation, did as he was told. Mrs Tree didn’t touch or comfort him or look at him in his humiliation, even with his pants on. She was looking straight at her husband.

‘Where do you think you are taking him now?’ she asked him.

Startled by her temper, her posture and her sudden defiance, Jack Tree said, ‘I don’t know, Grace. We’ll let Joe Collins decide that.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Grace said. ‘He’s not moving from here. I’m going to take him up to the house, and he’s going to stay there until we’ve sorted this all out.’

‘Don’t be such a fool,’ Jack Tree said to her. ‘He’ll run off again the first chance he gets.’

Grace Tree looked at Spit now and said, ‘Will you run off again Spit if I promise not to let them take you back to Mrs Arbuckle’s or send you away?’

Spit was also surprised by Mrs Tree’s anger and temper; and because he was beginning to recover himself he knew he had an ally, for the time being at least.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t run off. But just so long as it isn’t a trick.’