Bryce Courtenay - Tommo & Hawk

TOMMO & HAWK

BRYCE COURTENAY

Bryce Courtenay1997

Version 1.0

For Alex and BrendaHamill

Acknowledgements

To Benita, my wife, who is first to read mywork and who endured, mostly with good humour, the painful process involved ina partner writing a work of fiction.

Owen Denmeade, who helped in a thousand wayswith small and large chores. Margaret Gee, who constantly combed my manuscriptfor errors of form and function and always improved upon it. Bruce Gee, whoundertook the task of major researcher and never failed to find both theimportant facts and wonderful tidbits that give a novel both veracity andcolour. Christine Gee, my indefatigable publicist.

Adrian Collette, Adam Courtenay, Tony Crosby,Alex Hamill, Alan Jacobs, Sylvia Manning, Lisa Mills, Essie Moses, PhyllisPike, Roger Rigby, Sardine, Dr John Tooth, and Dr Brent Waters. Professor TerrySturm at the University of Auckland, who readthose sections dealing with the Maori Wars. The Tasmanian Museum and ArtGallery, The State Library of Tasmania, The Sydney Maritime Museum, and theinestimable State Library of New South Wales and in particular the staff of theMitchell and Dixson Libraries for their unstinting and generous help. Myabiding gratitude to the hundreds of past writers of books, newspapers,magazines and historical pamphlets from whom I learned both narrative form andfact and whose prior work made mine possible.

To my publishers, Bob Sessions and Julie Gibbsat Penguin Books Australia, who never flagged in their efforts to help me meetmy deadline. Finally, my editor Clare Forster who, together with editor LaurieCritchley, worked long and hard to take my words and make them sing. What a joyit has been to work with you all.

I have a boy who cannot speakand a boy who will not speak.

Both I love with all my heart but do notknow how to keep.

Mary Abacus

Book One

Chapter One

TOMMO

HobartTown

July 1856

It ain't long now before Hawk comes to fetchme, to scrape his brother off the floor of Brodie's sly grog shop.

Funny that, when you're mostly scared in lifeyou feel things brave folk don't bother to feel. I know he's coming. I can hearhis big footsteps coming down the hill two mile away. When you've beenlistening to fear as long as me, you can't never be fooled. Fear is always thelittle brat in you, ears pricked, heart thumpin', listening to what can't beheard, knowing what's gunna happen by the way your arsehole is puckering like arabbit's nose. No matter what you learns in life, the fear in you never growsup.

That first fear, when you was seven and stolenfrom your family and took into the wilderness, that first big begetting of fearin your life becomes a part of every fear you has ever afterwards.

Fear builds up, like rust in a metal waterpipe. Its beginning, its first trickle, is always about being alone. Notloneliness, but being alone and helpless, with no one what cares, no one whatgives a fig, what will flick an eyelid if you lives or dies. You're a smallcreature alone what has no defences of its own and so is the natural prey to aworld full o' hungry mongrels.

It don't matter if you grows to be big andstrong, and cunning as a shithouse rat. It don't matter if you can defendyourself with fisticuffs or use an axe or knife like nobody's business. Feardon't take notice of them things, it just don't grow up and start being brave.It stays with you, so you can't put faith in nothin' and nobody. If you can'ttrust, then it stands to reason you can't love, 'cause if you does, you'llbecome some mongrel's prey.

There is always someone watching you in thetall timbers. You learn to feel him like an itch under your skin. Like a chillbreath on the back of your neck. You knows in your thumping heart it's a wildman comin' for you, a mongrel with harm in his heart. You can't see nothing,but he's lurking, creeping, minding his feet so his steps don't warn you. He'smoving closer, one foot raised like a kangaroo dog, but you don't know where orwhich way to run. The wind roars in the treetops like waves crashing againstthe shore, killing the small sounds, the snap of myrtle thicket, the suddenflutter of a bird, all the things you depends on to catch him out.

You pull the air through your nose, sniff deep,testing for the sour smell of a grown man, but the early morning sun's suckedthe perfume from the eucalypt, the sassafras and King Billy pine, filling thefrosty air so you can't smell nothing behind the sweetness at the end of yournostrils.

You begin to tremble. You know what's coming.If he gets you he'll bugger you. Put his thumb and finger to his nose and snorthis snot onto your back as he swives his cock into your arse. Then he'll holdyou pinned, and whistle over to his mates to come. If you struggle, he'll pullback your head, twist and snap your scrawny neck like you was a newborn pup.Other mongrels comes over, charging through the undergrowth, brushing aside thefern, boots cracking twigs, urgently pulling down their breeches, tripping astheir pants fall to their ankles, laughing. You stretched over a felled Huonlog what has its bark ripped off, its lemon-yellow naked, just like you, yourface kissing the damp, dark, musty earth.

'Eh you, dog shit!'

'Yes, boss?' Your teeth chattering.

'Ya ain't seen nothin' now, ya hear?'

'No, nothin', boss! I ain't seen nothin', noone!'

'Wha' are you then?'

'Dog shit, boss.'

'Louder! Say't loud, boy!'

'Dog shit!'

'Tha's better. You'll say naught t'no bugger,yer understand? Tell and we'll come agin, kill ya, cut yer froat ear t'ear!'

'Yes, boss.'

Then the crash of myrtle twigs as they meltinto the trees, ghosts in the morning mist. You alone again in the forest. Thebellbirds begin to call again, the sound of an axe striking deeper into thebush. You snivels a while, and try to wipe away the blood from your arse with abunch of green leaves, then you scrapes the muck from your back and what'srunning down your legs with a strip of bark, ashamed. Nobody you can tell whatcares. You shit bright red for a month after.

That's the all of it. It never changes, onefear begets another, but it's always the same fear. The same small brat in youfacing the same mongrels. Once fear gets a hold of you, you can't trust no oneno more, not even yourself, 'cause you know they be right - all you be is dogshit, and all they wants to do is bugger you so you never forgets what you is.

I got to drink down fast, get a few into me.Brother Hawk don't countenance me staying on no matter how much I plead at himto let me be. I'm not afraid of Hawk, just of Hawk coming. I'm afraid of Mary.Of Sunday dinner. Of meself.

'Mr Brodie, sir! Another snort o' acquadine!' Ihold up me last shilling, won yesterday at euchre. Got to find a game today,but it ain't so easy on the Sabbath. 'Ere!' I twist the silver coin to catchthe lamplight. 'I got the money, now quick, Mr Brodie, if you please!'

Brodie shuffles over, sniffing, stepping overbodies, spilling some of me precious tot. He grins toothless and puts thelittle glass down. 'There ya go, Tommo.' He grabs up me shilling in dirtywoollen mittens what's got no fingers. Then he holds up sixpence change he hasready in his other hand. 'Shall I fetch t'other half then?' He twinkles thesixpence.

'Why not? I got to go soon. Bring it right off,will ya?' I nods.

Brodie smiles, a smarmy smile on his ugly gob,like he don't believe me and he makes a fuss of fumbling at the front of hiswaistcoat, pushing the sixpence back into a greasy pocket, his dirty fingersdancing like spider's legs over his pot belly.

The acquadine don't hit as hard as it should.Barely tickles me throat. Bastard's watered it down, doused the fire in it tomake it last longer, though it's better than the Cape of Good Hope brandy heserves to most of his Sunday drunks. More like Cape of No Bloody Hope, all thegood hope in it watered down to make a gallon of misery out of half a pint oftrooper's joy.