PAUL SKINNER

Spear

Thursday afternoons were free. They sat playing cards in Nick’s kitchen if the weather was bad, or played records, singing along with Adam Faith and Elvis Presley, or hunted in the fields and the wood at the back of the house.

On a hot June day, the Cheyennes were tracking Shoshone. They moved among the trees along the edge of the field, with sharpened bamboo spears at the ready. Philip, Nick’s best friend, small and vociferous; Trevor, large and ungainly, easily cowed; Pete, quiet and anxious but prone to stubborn- ness; Nick with his chief’s feather, dappled grey, a knife in its leather sheath strapped to his belt. There were frequent glimpses of the enemy, spears hurled into bushes or the long grass. Under the trees, the ground remained soft and the spearpoints sank into the earth, remained upright and quivering, as if lodged between the ribs of an intruder into Cheyenne territory.

Nick found the screwdriver at the base of the fence, the head of it, rather, handle snapped cleanly off, leaving a socket into which the shaft of a spear might be fixed. He hacked off the jagged point of his spear and jammed its blunted end into the socket. Flung a dozen yards, it stuck fast in the trunk of a tree.

‘Great. Did you see that?’ They gathered round him to admire it, took turns at hurling the modified

spear and wrenching it free from the bark, stood watching his repossession of it, fingers wrapped exultantly around the shaft.

‘We could take turns,’ Trevor said. ‘Swop for a while.’ ‘You had a turn,’ Nick said. ‘I found it.’ The easy balance of the group was gone. Bamboo points in soft ground

or splintering against harder surfaces were dwarfed by the deadly, steel- tipped spear that Nick held and hurled and watched shuddering along its whole gleaming length, the lustre of its point seeming to extend and engulf it all, even to touch the bark it penetrated, to hint at movement and colour there, of live flesh torn.

They became disconsolate, going through the motions or galvanised into abrupt excesses of energy, Phil and Trevor fell upon Shoshone in the bushes and dispatched them to their last hunting-ground with lavish brutality. Pete found a dead bird half-hidden beneath a fallen branch and savaged it, tossing it up on the point of his spear and thrashing it down again. They drifted apart, a few paces at first, then further, losing sight of one another, wandering even out of earshot. Nick climbed an old beech tree, sat in a low fork and stabbed at the smooth grey bark. He stared around from the changed perspective,

88 Critical Quruterly, vol. 31, no. 1

expecting to catch sight of one or another of his friends but the field of his vision was severely limited by the glossy leaves and month-old flowers. He did see a grey squirrel, quite close to him, moving rapidly up a steeply sloping branch. When it halted, apparently unaware of him, frozen into immobility, except that its jaws trembled constantly as though it were chewing something long held in the mouth, he rose to his feet with great care, bracing himself against the trunk, and edged to his right to allow his arm free movement. He drew it back and forth to be sure that nothing would impede or jar the throw, raising his arm very slowly yet still surprised that the squirrel made no move. Something stirred in the wood beneath him, and in that moment he flung the spear, closing his eyes involuntarily as he released it, carried off balance and forced to cling with both arms to the trunk of the tree. He heard other sounds, a crack which might have been a twig breaking, a light rushing which he thought must be the squirrel. He had surely missed it, even hoped he had, or wasn’t sure. He leapt down onto the scuffed earth and tried to get his bearings. A Cheyenne whooped away to his left and Trevor reared up quite close to him, spear raised to strike.

‘Thought you were Shoshone. ’ Nick pointed to where the spear must have fallen. ‘I nearly got a squirrel.

Or I might have hit it. Watch where you walk. Wounded animals can be dangerous. It might turn.’

They advanced together, peering into bushes and behind the broad trunks of trees. ‘It couldn’t have gone far,’ Nick said, ‘trees are too thick.’

‘Here.’ Trevor held up a bamboo spear, a blunt and dully naked thing. ‘This is yours - but the head’s come off.’

Nick stared at it blankly. ‘Find the point, then. It must be here.’ They ducked under the low branches, poked in the rough grass, kicked

‘Here’s Pete.’ Pete was standing in a pool of shadow, watching them stoop and stab.

‘What you looking for?’ ’That screwdriver head,’ Trevor said. ‘Nick threw it at a squirrel and the

point fell off.’ Phil appeared too, directed to the spot by their voices. The four of them

searched for half an hour, hardly believing it could have been lost yet, in the act of searching, the grass grew longer, the bushes more dense, the shadows more lightless and deceptive. When they stopped, disheartened and irritable, Phil, red in the face and breathing noisily, said roughly to Pete: ‘What did you pick up off the ground before Nick and Trevor came!’

Pete shook his head, thin mouth clamped shut. Then he thrust a hand

aside leaves and brambles.

Spear 89

in his pocket and drew out a large brass screw. ‘This. It was in among those roots.’

‘Clean and shiny,’ Phil said, gazing long and hard. ‘What d’you mean?’ Pete pushed the screw back into his pocket. ‘I wiped

it clean. It’s nearly new, anyway.’ They stood in uncomfortable, sweaty silence, Phil with his crooked

mouth watching Pete’s face pale under his freckles. ‘Give it up, then,’ Nick said. ‘Can’t waste all day on it. But it was a bloody

good spear with that point.’ The very word revitalised them. They agreed it had been bloody good,

walking back to Nick’s garden. ‘Bloody, bloody good,’ Trevor said. But Pete seemed unaffected by the magic of that word, scowling at the ground as he walked. He wouldn’t stay, he said, when they reached Nick’s house, his uncle was coming to tea, his mother had said to be early. He went off quickly, slowing a little when he went along the path at the side of the house and up the sloping drive.

‘He doesn’t know where it went,’ Phil said. ‘Not him.’ Trevor regarded him open-mouthed, troubled by such complexities, the

mysteries. ’Does he know, then?’ ‘Oh no,’ Phil said, with even heavier sarcasm. ‘He found a brass screw,

didn’t he? He wouldn’t know.’ He turned on Nick with sudden violence. ‘We should have searched him. Held him down and gone through his pockets. Then you’d know.’

His agitated face was ugly, distorted by that aggressive uprush of emotion. Nick shrugged and moved towards the house.

‘It was a bloody good spear with that point on it,’ he said.