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

know what she’s doing. My grandfather’ll make mincemeat of her. And anyway how does she think she’s going to get me off to an orphanage in Bendigo when I am not an orphan?’
    ‘That’s what she’s after though,’ Crispie said.
    But to Spit Mrs Betty Arbuckle wasn’t really a menace, she was simply a permanent troublemaker who made his grandfather angrier than usual. Once out of the way she was out of mind, except when he decided on the spur of the moment to pick on Joannie or Ben.
    There were two more categories to Spit’s life in St Helen which, when his real troubles began, were an established part of his special environment. One was his life at school, and the other was his friendship with Sadie Tree.
    School to Spit was a winter period when the river was swollen and he couldn’t fish effectively or lay his crayfish drums or swim across to Pental Island. He didn’t mind school, he could even like it, and he could always sit still long enough to tolerate lessons because he had always been used to sitting still with his grandfather on the step by the river, or in the house, or on the seat in the vegetable garden or even at the workbench. The only real trouble he gave Miss Masters, his teacher, was the boom of his voice and the size of his writing. Spit always writ everything large – big bold letters which too soon filled a line and a page. No discipline that Miss Masters put on him could reduce the size of his letters, and being left-handed he held his exercise book sideways to write towards him. Though Miss Masters never tried to make him write with his right hand, she had tried consistently to correct his letters by insisting that he keep the book straight.
    ‘That way,’ she told him, ‘you can see what you’re doing.’
    ‘Yes Miss,’ Spit said, ‘but then I can’t do what I’m seeing.’
    ‘You’re too stubborn,’ Miss Masters would say in despair.
    ‘Yes Miss …’ Spit would boom.
    Miss Masters had long ago given up trying to soften his voice although sometimes it was unbearable, but she did her best with Spit. She always knew when old Fyfe was going through a quiet period because Spit’s primitive homework was then reasonably disciplined. But during the bad patches Spit would ignore all homework and take his punishment without resentment or concern. Next year Spit would pass into the first grade of the secondary school, and Miss Masters, a grey-haired professional who always kept two pencils stuck into her thick grey hair like antennae, was concerned for him because he was the only boy in her class who still did not wear shoes or socks; and that would not do at the higher school. But she knew there was little that she could do about it because she couldn’t talk to old Fyfe. Nobody could. She could only hope that they would solve the problem between them in their own way.
    ‘You’re always a problem, Spit,’ she would sigh, but not without affection.
    ‘Yes Miss,’ Spit would boom back.
    Out of the classroom and out of school Spit was a come-and-go friend to most of the other boys, but when he played cricket or football with them he gave the game everything he had. This was often effective, though not always so, particularly at cricket when he wanted to hit every ball for six. If he connected it worked. If he missed the ball everybody nearby ducked in case the bat left his hand in its wild swing. If he was bowled out he always spat dispassionately at the wicket and handed the bat over to the next man.
    His closest friend, Crispie Cornforth, was a country boy who rode to school on a bike from a poor and salty farm five miles up the little Murray. Spit would get a dink home on Crispie’s bike but they would always part at the railway line, and if he met Crispie out of school on a Saturday it was usually on Pental Island, not at the farm. Their friendship depended on no surroundings, and they knew it.
    But Crispie was the only person in town who had ever questioned, indeed dared