The True Story of Spit MacPhee Read Online Free PDF Page A

lay the crayfish drums made of old bicycle wheels and chicken wire. He used a sheep’s head from the butcher’s for bait, and when he had caught two or three he would take them to one of the two hotels in town and demand five shillings each for them and get it. That became his own money, and he saved it in a tin which he hid in a curious little locker in the underside of the boiler where his grandfather couldn’t find it in one of his fits of unpredictable destruction.
    Inside the house or the boiler he had his duties, some given him by his grandfather, others taken on unplanned simply because they were necessary. Old Fyfe was calmest and quietest when he was bent over his bench, magnifying glass pushed into his fire-rimmed eye, and the fine tools of his craft gripped delicately in his short, square, quivering fingers. Almost from the first day that he had brought Spit with him from Bendigo he had allowed the boy to peer through the eye-piece at watches and clocks, whole or in pieces, and eventually he had given Spit an old clock and a set of clockmaker’s screwdrivers and a pair of fine pliers and let him do what he liked. Spit had little difficulty taking the old Westclox Big Ben apart, but in the more complicated business of putting it together again he and his grandfather had shouted at each other, and only by trial and error had Spit put it all back, aged eight, with deft fingers. He could now assemble simple escapements in pocket-watches, and often did so for his grandfather; but he was not allowed to touch wrist-watches or old time-pieces.
    When someone from the town brought a watch to old Fyfe for repair Spit would often receive it and write out the little tag in his heavy large left-handed writing. He would take money, and sometimes give an approximate date for completion, and would often have to shout at his grandfather to get it done in time. On occasions the old man would abandon his bench for days on end, and that was usually when he wandered into the town, talking to himself, shouting at anybody who took his fancy, gesticulating and making incomprehensible demands on unlucky neighbours in such braw Scots that they couldn’t understand him and sent him packing with a laugh or a joke. Though violent in speech, old Fyfe was never physically violent except when Jack Taylor and Peter Mayfair, both in their early teens, had tried to snatch off his hat. At first Fyfe had brushed them off like bothersome flies, but when he realised what they were after he had ripped a paling from Mrs Burns’ picket fence and lashed out at both boys and chased them down the street shouting, ‘Ye think I’m mad, ye naughty dogs, ye carnal little beasties. But I’ll show ye.’
    Next day Spit had confronted Jack Taylor, who was twice his size, and warned him to leave his grandfather alone. ‘And don’t touch his hat. You leave that alone, Jack.’
    ‘Okay, Spit,’ Jack said. ‘We didn’t mean your old man any harm.’
    ‘Well you’d better watch out,’ Spit warned. ‘He’ll make mincemeat of you if you go after his hat.’
    ‘Okay, okay …’ Jack said, taking it too as a warning from Spit himself.
    In fact only Spit knew the agony and pain his grandfather suffered after one of these bouts of madness. The worst of them was not those he suffered in the street, but inside the house when he would suddenly crouch on the floor with his head between his knees, groaning and hitting the top of his head with his fists, while Spit looked on, helpless, aware that he must not say or do anything until the agony had passed. If it happened at the wrong time Spit would have to prepare the lunch or the dinner, or water the garden with buckets from the river, or light the oil lamps which he kept filled with kerosene, or put people off if they came for their watches or their re-set tools.
    After one of these bouts Fyfe MacPhee would usually say in a drenched voice to Spit, ‘How long did me noise last this time?’
    ‘A couple of