The True Story of Spit MacPhee (8 page)

Spit, confused now, followed them up the slope, holding on to his grandfather’s wet shirt. And Sadie, walking beside him, whispered, ‘Maybe he was drowning and you saved him?’

‘No, he wasn’t. He just didn’t know what he was doing.’

‘How long was he in the water?’

‘Only a little while. His head didn’t even go under.’

‘Did he jump in?’ she asked softly. ‘Is that what he did?’

Spit didn’t deny it. ‘But he didn’t know what he was doing.’

Spit would never remember afterwards all the details of that night, but in its sequence he would remember the long wait in Mrs Tree’s kitchen for Dr Stevens to come, and Mrs Tree and Sadie sitting silently beside him.

When Dr Stevens finally came and looked at old Fyfe, he told Spit that they would have to take his grandfather away to the hospital. This time Spit didn’t protest because he knew that it was out of his hands now. What had changed his mind was the sight of his grandfather when they had laid him out on the floor of the Trees’ verandah, and he had seen his grandfather under the electric light. Spit was still holding his grandfather’s shirt in a tight grip, but he suddenly let it go when he saw his grandfather’s face. It wasn’t the grey, grizzled, fierce and combative Scot’s face he had lived with for so much of his life; instead it was a white, shattered old man, helpless, almost lifeless, with the fire gone out of him so that his twitching mouth and staring eyes and his clawlike hands had invented a substitute who looked nothing like his grandfather. Spit knew that they had to take this one away, and when they had carried him out to Dr Stevens’ car Spit didn’t go with them, he waited at the door until he heard them drive away.

‘You’ll have to stay here the rest of the night,’ Grace Tree told him. ‘You can sleep on the old cane bed on the verandah.’

‘I have to get back,’ Spit said, opening the wire door to go.

She held him back. ‘What for?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left, Spit. So wait until tomorrow.’

‘I want to see if my bike’s all right,’ he said.

‘Spit, you haven’t got a bike.’

‘He was building it himself,’ Sadie said, ‘from bits and pieces.’

‘Well you can’t do anything about it tonight,’ Grace told him. ‘There’s nothing more you can do. So wait here and I’ll get some covers for you. And Sadie – you go off to bed now.’

Sadie glanced quickly at Spit but didn’t say anything to him because he wasn’t looking at her or listening, and as he sat down at the kitchen table Grace went out to get the covers for him.

When she came back Spit had his head in his arms on the table. She thought he was crying, but when she touched him on the shoulder she realised he was asleep. ‘You’ll have to sleep in this,’ she said to him when he lifted his head. She gave him one of her husband’s old shirts. ‘Your clothes are still wet.’

‘I’m all right,’ Spit said, and when he lay down on the cane bed on the verandah, which she had padded with blankets for him, Grace didn’t argue with him but let him be, and in a few moments he was asleep – so heavily asleep that Grace sat on the couch near him for a while looking at his face which, in sleep, had lost its self-sufficiency and its rather serious and confident air, and was now the face of an eleven-year-old boy who was finally vulnerable and exhausted.

‘You’re going to need all the care and attention you can get this time,’ Grace said to the sleeping figure and, sighing as she left him, she added, ‘But it shouldn’t be from Betty Arbuckle.’

When Jack returned he found Grace asleep in a chair near the kitchen stove, and when he told her the kettle was boiling dry she said, ‘It’s the second time. What happened? What about old Fyfe? Is he all right?’

Jack washed his hands and sat at the table and watched her making tea. ‘When we got him to the hospital the old man sat up and began to fight and shout. He’s completely round the bend this time. They had to hold him down.’

‘What does Doctor Stevens say?’

‘He doesn’t think he’s got much chance of coming through this one.’

Grace thought carefully for a moment before saying what she had to say. ‘What about the boy?’ she said. ‘What will happen to him now?’

‘I’ll see Sergeant Joe Collins in the morning. The police will have to do something about him, or the council, or one of the churches.’

‘Or Betty Arbuckle,’ Grace said unhappily.

‘I suppose so. He’s a Protestant, so they’ll have to look after him.’

Again Grace hesitated and then she said, ‘Couldn’t he stay here for a while, Jack, until they sort it out?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jack Tree said. ‘It’s not our problem.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt for a day or two.’

‘Not here,’ Jack Tree said. ‘How’s the tea?’

‘It’s drawing,’ she said and poured it. ‘But he can’t go back to that boiler any more, and Betty Arbuckle lives on the other side of town, miles from the river.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘He’s used to it down here. It’s where he lives.’

‘Yes, but not in this house. Have some sense, Grace.’

‘I meant just for a few days, until they know what to do with him.’

‘Joe Collins will find something.’

‘But it’s a shame, Jack, to just turn the boy like that over to the authorities or to Betty Arbuckle. Betty’ll send him away to that Boys Home.’

‘It’ll have to be done sooner or later if the old man’s locked up. So there’s no use getting soft about it. He can’t stay here, and that’s all there is about it.’

Grace didn’t argue because she couldn’t argue. But she knew that her husband was right. If old Fyfe was finally and completely mad, then sooner or later Spit would have to be cared for by some sort of authority. A few days on the back verandah wouldn’t be of much use to him.

‘He really is a nice boy,’ she said. ‘That’s the pity of it.’

‘He’s a tough little bushie,’ Jack said, ‘and he’ll survive anything. So don’t worry.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ Grace said sadly. ‘He’s not as wild as you all seem to think he is.’

She washed the tea cups and listened to her husband cleaning himself in the bathroom. She took another look at the sleeping Spit, and it seemed to her that with the smell of smoke and fire and damp on him, Spit too had been burned to the ground. How, she wondered, would he emerge from the ashes this time?

When Spit woke up at dawn he knew instantly where he was, and without having to think about it he was out the back door and down to the river to see what was left of the house and the boiler. What he expected when he reached it was exactly what he saw – an ugly pile of charred wreckage, a chimney still standing, some smouldering timbers, sheets of twisted corrugated iron on the ground, and nothing left of the house or the extension except the boiler. Nonetheless, it was a shock to see it in broad daylight because when he stood and looked at it he knew that his home had gone.

He walked cautiously into the mess. The buckets which Jack Tree and the others had used to fight the fire with were lined up near the front gate, which still stood, although the fence and flower garden had been trampled down. The gate sign said OUT and Spit pushed it to IN as he passed through it, feeling the damp sharp ashes under his bare feet. He was afraid to continue because of the broken glass and the nails. Remnants of clothes and curtains, and his grandfather’s stuffed chair, were still smouldering.

It was the boiler he wanted to get to, and by raking his way through the mess with a piece of wood he reached its gaping side. The extension had been burned to the ground, and now there was only an open hole leading into the boiler. When he put his head inside it he realised for the first time that the fire had ruined the inside of this too. His bed was burned, so were his table and the boxes. The walls were black and charred. The wooden floor had gone. Instead, there was a pool of black water in the iron bottom. The little windows at both ends had been smashed, and he had to avoid the broken glass underfoot. What he saw now was the boiler almost back to its natural state.

His original intention had been to cook himself some breakfast and afterwards to clean out the boiler. But there was nothing to cook. Although the stove was still there and the chimney still stood, the Coolgardie food safe was a twisted, empty wreck. Eggs and butter and jam and porridge and tea had all gone to the flames, and the kettle had lost its handle. He found a pair of old shoes his grandfather usually kept for working in the vegetable garden and, flopping about in them, he set about rescuing what he could of his grandfather’s equipment, and whatever clocks or watches were left. He raked out his grandfather’s tools from the mess of damp ash – the vice and clamps and the lathe and grinding wheel, and he put them into a box which he had found intact in the garden. But none of the clocks and watches in the process of repair were worth bothering about, although he found Mr Temple’s razor. He then set about emptying the water from the boiler with a bucket, and he was still at it when Sadie walked down the slope.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ she said.

‘Cleaning it out,’ he told her. ‘I can fix it up a bit if I can get rid of all this water.’

‘Your breakfast is ready at our place,’ she told him.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said.

‘But you can’t fix the boiler now,’ she insisted, ‘so come on. My mother’s waiting for you.’

‘Is your father still there?’

‘Yes, but he won’t do anything to you.’

‘Well … I want to see my grandfather, and he’ll probably try to stop me,’ Spit said.

Sadie sighed. ‘No, he won’t, Spit. Anyway you have to have breakfast.’

It was sound logic, so Spit pulled his feet out of the old shoes and went up the path with Sadie. When he entered the kitchen, Jack Tree was at the table eating bacon and eggs. He looked up at Spit and said, ‘You’ll have to wash before you sit down at this table, Spit. You look like a blackfeller.’

‘Sadie,’ Grace said quietly. ‘Give Spit the towel I left on the couch, and then both of you come and get your breakfast.’

Spit had never before washed under a running tap in a basin, and when he saw the colour of the water as it left his hands and face he tried to clean the basin too until Sadie said, ‘Never mind that. Just wash your face and hands.’

Even so, the towel received a fair residue of the black and the grey from his face and hands. When he was seated at the kitchen table he looked boldly at Mr Tree and said, ‘What did you do with my grandfather?’

‘He’s still in the hospital. Where did you think he was?’ Jack said.

‘I don’t know. Are they going to let him out today?’

Mr Tree shook his head. ‘Not today,’ he said.

‘What are they keeping him for?’

‘He’s too sick,’ Jack Tree said.

‘He’ll get over it all right,’ Spit insisted. ‘He always gets over it.’

‘This time it’s not so good.’

‘Am I allowed to go and see him?’ Spit asked.

‘You’d better talk to Dr Stevens about that,’ Jack said. ‘But your grandfather won’t be able to do much for you now, Spit, so you might as well get used to the idea.’

‘I don’t want him to do anything for me,’ Spit argued. ‘I’m going to fix up the boiler myself, and we can live in that.’

Jack Tree – dressed for work in his collar and tie, and with his hair brushed and his face spruced – was in no mood for Spit’s nonsense. ‘You can’t do a damn thing to that boiler,’ he said to Spit, ‘so don’t even think of trying it.’

Spit’s instinct to attack as the best means of defence sustained him. ‘Anyway I’m going to fix it,’ he repeated grimly. ‘I don’t care what anybody says.’

‘You can’t live down there any more,’ Jack Tree told him, ‘so you’ll only be wasting your time. Joe Collins will fix up some place for you to live for the time being.’

Grace Tree knew she had to stop them, and she put a plate of bacon and eggs and a cup of tea in front of Spit and said, ‘We’ll see about that when you’ve had your breakfast.’

‘We are not going to see about anything,’ Jack told her. ‘I’ll take Spit around to Sergeant Collins, and Collins will fix him up with a place to sleep.’

‘But Jack …’

‘No, Grace. Have you got any other clothes?’ he asked Spit.

‘No. But I’m not going to Sergeant Collins.’

‘Somebody’ll have to look after you.’

‘I can look after myself,’ Spit shouted angrily.

Jack Tree stood up. ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ he told Spit. ‘I’m taking you to Sergeant Collins.’

‘Not me,’ Spit said and he was off the chair and out the back door before Jack Tree could catch him.

‘Oh Jack,’ Mrs Tree said. ‘Look what you’ve done.’

Jack Tree was so surprised to hear protest in his wife’s voice that he lost his temper. ‘Of all the crazy ideas you get sometimes. I’m only trying to do what’s best for the kid and now, by God, I’m going up to get Joe Collins.’

Mrs Tree said nothing and Sadie finished her breakfast in silence. But when her father had driven off in the Dodge she slipped out quietly and went down to the river to see if she could find Spit. She thought he would be hiding somewhere, but he was emptying the boiler again, and when she warned him that her father had gone to get Sergeant Collins, Spit said, ‘Don’t worry. He’s not going to catch me.’

‘But what are you going to do, Spit? Even if you can fix the boiler how are you going to cook your food? And where will you get your money from?’

‘I’ve got some money. I’ll be all right, as long as your father doesn’t try to catch me.’

‘But I think he’s really trying to help you, Spit.’

‘Well if he comes down here with Sergeant Collins, I’m off.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Sadie said. ‘Give me a pail and I’ll help you.’

‘I’ve cleaned up the glass, but if you come in here you’ll only get dirty.’

‘I don’t care,’ Sadie said, and taking off her sandals and tying her plaits across the top of her head she followed Spit’s method of scooping up the water with an old enamel jug and throwing it through the smashed window. She was hurling a half-full jug of water out of the boiler, almost the last of it, when she saw her father and Sergeant Collins coming down the path under the big trees.

‘It’s them,’ she called to Spit. ‘They’ve come.’