The True Story of Spit MacPhee (12 page)

‘I’ve got six ready,’ he said, ‘so we can put them in here and see where they are by tonight.’

‘The river’s beginning to rise fast,’ Sadie told him.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘It won’t be long now before summer is really over,’ Sadie said.

Spit didn’t seem to be listening any more, and when he suddenly got up to go the last thing he said to Sadie before he set off into town to see his grandfather was, ‘You chuck the boats in. Sade.’ He pushed the pile of little boats into her hands and cut across the Walkers’ lucerne paddock to take the short cut into the town and to the hospital.

He had been so quick about it that Sadie was left alone with her jam sandwiches, which she decided to keep for him in case he needed them later. After putting the little boats in the water and watching them for a while, she soon gave up because it was not much fun without Spit there to follow them with her.

It was Dr Stevens, not Sister Campbell, who took Spit to the fever house and told him that he had to be a brave boy.

‘Why?’ Spit asked, trying to keep up with Dr Stevens’ long legs.

‘Well, Spit, you can take a look and that’s all.’

Spit didn’t understand, but when Dr Stevens opened the green door and stepped in ahead he said, ‘Now take a look, but don’t be upset. He’s gone and there’s no more pain now.’

Spit understood the words less than the sight of his grandfather, who was hardly recognisable: a tiny, shriven, hundred-year-old ghost, who nonetheless was so peaceful and relaxed that Spit was frightened and wanted only to get out. He knew it was the end of his grandfather, and that this was finally what it all meant as he ran away from the fever house.

By the time Dr Stevens had caught up with him Spit had already removed from his thoughts the image of that figure on the bed. Instead, he had fixed permanently in his mind the memory of a grandfather bent over his work bench, muttering or shouting, his skull cap tight over his head as he filled in their lives with noise and abrasion, and then got them through each day as if each day had to be fought for.

‘Are you all right, son?’ Dr Stevens said to him.

‘Yes, I’m all right,’ Spit said.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be looked after,’ Dr Stevens told him. ‘They’ll find you a home.’

Spit’s only clear intention was to get as far away from the place as quickly as possible, and as he started off around the hospital rather than through it, Dr Stevens said, ‘Come through this way. I want to talk to you.’

‘I’m going around here,’ Spit told him, and wriggling out of Dr Stevens’ friendly grip on his shoulder he was too quick for the doctor to stop him as he ran around the garden and out the main gate.

Spit would never know why he decided to go back to Betty Arbuckle’s. There seemed nowhere else for him to go, except back to the boiler, and he knew now that his life in the boiler was over forever. He thought of going to Sadie Tree’s place, but maybe Mr Tree would be there and anyway there was nothing they could do for him any more. Moreover he didn’t even know what he wanted of anybody. The powerful certitudes of Betty Arbuckle seemed to be the only certainties there were now, and as he stood on the back step of the house, reluctant to go in, he shouted: ‘Are you there, Ben?’

Ben wasn’t there but Mrs Arbuckle was, and she opened the wire screen door and said, ‘So there you are, dear. We were worried about you.’

‘I got Ben’s boots all dirty,’ he announced aggressively.

Betty Arbuckle pushed him gently inside. ‘You’ve been to the hospital, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know what’s happened, Spit,’ she told him. ‘Dr Stevens telephoned me. You’ll have to be a brave boy now and put all your trust in Jesus. He’s always there, and you’ll know how good the Lord can be. Sit down and I’ll give you a cup of tea.’

‘No thanks,’ Spit said, and he was surprised to see tears in Betty Arbuckle’s glittering and almost happy eyes.

‘Your grandfather has gone to join his one and only friend,’ she said to him. ‘Poor Spit. But it’s a happier, happier place he’ll find with Jesus, and I’m so glad for him, Spit, so you musn’t cry.’

‘I’m not crying,’ Spit said, fascinated by the way she was trying to get a grip on him with her joy and her sorrow, which trapped him for a moment in the way she wanted it to.

‘Now you’ll have a proper place to live,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘I have written to the Boys Home in Bendigo and I know there is a place for you there, so try and be a good boy until they let me know when they can take you. It shouldn’t be more than a week at the most, so I’ll look after you until then, and I’ll try to help you come to Jesus because you’ll never be alone as long as you come to Him. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ Spit said. ‘You’re going to send me to the Boys Home in Bendigo.’

‘That’s right, and there’ll be lots of other boys there like you, so you’ll be very happy there.’

Betty Arbuckle had such a tight grip on his arm that he wondered if she was going to lock him up until she could send him off to Bendigo in the train.

‘Go and clean off your boots,’ she told him in a hopeful, encouraging way. ‘The brushes are in the box under Ben’s bed.’

Spit knew then what he had to do. He went through the kitchen to the verandah and sat on the floor. He took off Ben’s boots, the socks, and the smock, and he put them neatly on the bed he had been sleeping in. Then, waiting until he heard Betty Arbuckle busy and singing in the kitchen, he walked quietly through the back door, closing it carefully after him. He crawled under the house to take from his grandfather’s things a frying pan, a billy, a plate, and a knife and fork. He bundled them into a sugar bag and, still being very cautious, he walked his quiet way out into the street. Once there he used his liberated bare feet to run all the way to the boiler.

He took some money out of the box under the boiler, flung his bag over his shoulder and went back up the slope to the shops. He bought two loaves of bread, potatoes, eggs, jam, tea, matches and sugar. He was so intent over his purchases that when Tim Evans in the grocer shop asked him where he was going with this stuff, he said, ‘It’s not for me, Tim,’ and got out quick. At the boiler he packed his fishing lines into the bag with the food, rolled the lot up into two half-burned and badly holed blankets, which were covered in ash but dry now, and tying them up he hid them under one of the gum trees and went along the river and up the slope again to Sadie Tree’s house.

‘Sadie …’ he called softly at the back door.

But softly to Spit was loud enough to be a shout. He could hear Sadie practising the piano, and he waited a moment and called again.

Mrs Tree came out the back and said, ‘Hello Spit. What’s up?’

‘I just wanted to talk to Sadie,’ he said. ‘I want to tell her something.’

‘She’s practising.’

‘All right,’ he said, turning to go.

‘How’s your grandfather?’ Mrs Tree asked him.

‘He’s dead,’ Spit said.

‘Oh Spit. That’s awful … Come in and sit down.’

Spit stayed where he was. ‘I just want to tell Sadie something,’ he said. ‘Can’t I see her?’

He had no other way of talking but boldly, and Sadie, hearing his voice, had abandoned the piano. She joined her mother at the back door.

‘Spit’s grandfather just died,’ her mother told her.

Sadie looked at Spit and didn’t say anything and she watched him shifting nervously from one bare foot to the other.

‘Can I tell you something?’ he said to her.

‘All right.’ Sadie didn’t ask her mother but simply followed him through the garden and down to the boiler.

‘I’m going across the little river to Pental Island,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going back to Betty Arbuckle’s because she wants to send me away to that Boys Home in Bendigo. So I’m getting out. They’re not going to get me.’

‘But how will you live over there? There’s nothing there, Spit.’

‘I’ll be all right. But if I need something will you get it for me with the money left in my box?’

‘Yes, but how will I know?’

‘I don’t know, but if I need something I’ll try to sneak across first thing in the morning. Or I’ll put a message on one of the boats so you can look out for it when it ends up near your place.’

‘But they’re sure to be looking for you, Spit.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m going across the river to the bush. They won’t get me over there. Only don’t tell your father.’

‘I won’t. But they’ll be looking everywhere for you and sooner or later they’ll guess you’re over there on the island somewhere.’

‘Even if they get me I’ll run away again,’ Spit said. ‘I’m not going to that Boys Home in Bendigo, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘I’m sorry about your grandfather, Spit.’

‘Well … he didn’t know he was going to die so it’s not his fault.’

‘I know it isn’t, and I’m going to ask my father if you can live with us.’

‘He’ll only be after me, like the others. Don’t tell him anything. Don’t tell anybody.’

‘I wish I could swim well enough,’ Sadie said, ‘then I could bring things across the river to you.’

‘Don’t even try, the way you swim. It’s too dangerous, and the river is really rising now. Anyway I’d better get going before they come down here looking for me.’

‘How will you get all these things across?’ Sadie asked as Spit picked up one of the two blanket rolls.

‘I’ll go across on my back holding one of them up. Then I’ll come back for the other one. It’s easy.’

But as Sadie watched Spit walk up river and then jump in with the roll he held over his head she knew it wasn’t easy at all, and as he kicked himself across on his back she saw the roll dip in the water when he couldn’t hold it high enough. She watched him struggle on the other side as he threw the roll on to the bank. He came back and landed twenty yards downstream. But he walked up river again and jumped in with the second bundle, and halfway across he shouted, ‘I’m all right now, Sadie.’

‘But it’ll be dark over there in the bush,’ she called to him.

‘That won’t hurt,’ he called back, and when he had landed the second bundle she watched him climb up on the bank, pick up the two rolls, and start walking to the big clump of trees across the island and along the big river.

It took the town a little while to realise that Spit MacPhee had disappeared. By the time everybody in St Helen knew about it there were rumours that he had drowned himself or hidden in one of the trains going to Melbourne. He had been seen from one end of town to the other, but nobody could offer any real facts to Sergeant Collins whose duty it was to find him. The river was a logical place to look for Spit, but where exactly?

The first news of his absence had come from Betty Arbuckle who had waited for him at six o’clock tea time, and after questioning Ben and ringing the hospital she realised by eight o’clock, when it was fully dark, that Spit was being wicked again. But it was ten o’clock before she told her husband Frank to go down to the boiler to see if he was there.

‘He won’t be there, Bet,’ Frank said. ‘He’d know that I’d come and get him by the scruff of the neck if he was there.’

‘He may be hiding there, just crying,’ Betty said.

‘He won’t cry,’ Ben told his mother.

‘You get back to bed,’ Betty told Ben, who had heard the fuss and was in the kitchen to see what it was about.

‘I’ll go down to the boiler,’ Ben volunteered.

‘No you won’t. You get back to bed,’ his father said sharply.

‘Well … I’ll bet he’s not there anyway,’ Ben said boldly.

‘You don’t bet in this house,’ Betty told him, and took him firmly on his way to the verandah.

‘I won’t sleep,’ Ben told his mother defiantly as he got into bed. ‘Not until Spit comes back.’

Betty Arbuckle was not in a mood to deal with her son’s new rebelliousness, so she tucked him up and returned to the kitchen to tell her husband to go on. ‘You’ll have to look somewhere,’ she said.

Frank Arbuckle put his boots on and walked through the dark streets to the railway line, then along the line to the path leading down to the river and the trees and the boiler. It was a dark night and he stumbled once or twice, but he found the boiler among its ashes, looked inside it, called, ‘Spit where are you?’ once or twice, and then went back home to tell Betty, ‘He’s not there. He’s up and gone, Bet.’

‘But he must be somewhere,’ Betty said unhappily. ‘He can’t just sleep in the street.’

‘Spit can sleep anywhere.’ It was Ben again.

This time he got a quick and surprising slap across the backside which brought tears to his eyes and quick obedience, but he was mumbling in protest as he went back to bed, ‘I told you so. I told you, didn’t I?’

It was almost eleven o’clock and by now Betty Arbuckle was sure that Spit was not coming back at all. ‘I’ll ring Sergeant Collins,’ she said. ‘He’ll have to do something.’

‘What can he do?’ Frank said. ‘If Spit has disappeared it’ll take more than Sergeant Collins to find him at this time of the night.’

‘He might have fallen in the river,’ Betty said.

‘In that case he’s well on his way to Adelaide by now, swimming like a fish.’

‘That’s enough, Frank,’ Betty said. ‘You ought not to be heartless about it. I’m going to ring Sergeant Collins.’

That was the first step in the town’s discovery that Spit had run away. And, as the first man to hear about it, Sergeant Collins’ attitude was predictable.

‘That damned little dingo,’ he said. ‘Why can’t he stay put somewhere. I don’t even know where to look for him at this hour of the night, Mrs Arbuckle. But you can bet that he’s safe and secure somewhere. He knows how to look after himself, so don’t worry. He’ll turn up all right.’

‘But I have to worry, and you ought to do something.’

‘Well you tell me where I can find him and I’ll go and get him. Leave it until morning and I’ll be after him first thing.’

‘You ought to be able to do better than that,’ Betty Arbuckle said angrily.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Sergeant Collins told her and hung up.

‘He’s right,’ Frank Arbuckle said, and in an unusual act of defiance took off his boots and told Betty, ‘I’m going to bed.’

Betty Arbuckle, determined in her conscience to do something, walked to the front gate, looked under the house hopefully, turned her eyes to the clear and starlit sky above and asked the Lord Jesus to protect the wandering boy. Then she went to bed.