Authors: Bryce Courtenay
So there we'd sit, a small, strange family. In front of us, on a big white oval plate with a picture of blue willow trees and two Chinamen on a little bridge, were a huge leg of hot roasted mutton. The very best butcher's hogget, with Mary standing over it, big fork in one hand, knife in t'other, carving onto each tin plate, then pouring on a rich, steaming river of gravy. Little pearl onions glistening and swimming in the bright brown gravy what covered the thick slices o' tender meat. Mary always putting the same on my plate as Hawk, her full knowing I could never eat all of it, that Hawk would polish off what I left, then eat Ikey's left-overs and then what meat was still on the bone. It were her way of feeding Hawk while not showing me up to be a runt.
And that's where I always supposed God would be on a howling winter's Sunday. He'd be seated at our kitchen table sharing our leg of mutton, with Mary's best sharp knife and fork in His almighty hands, His holy elbows on the snowy white tablecloth of forgiveness, fork stabbing at great chunks of meat, champing away like nobody's business. He, Him, the nabob of heaven, there with us 'stead of presiding over all the God business going on down at St David's church, where the true merinos, free settlers and lags what should've known better be praying and hymn-singing and freezing their bollocks and titties off. Them in church thinking they be earning extra points in heaven for going out in all the flurry and howl of a winter's blustering morning, and meanwhile God be sitting at our kitchen table all cosy-like, getting a good feed of Mary's best mutton and enjoying Hisself.
'Touch more gravy, God?'
'Don't mind if I do, Tommo, m'dear.'
God polite as you like while I pours Him more gravy, little onions tumbling out of the jug. God ever so grateful to be out of the devil's breath weather what comes roaring and snorting down the mountain.
I'd lie there in the forest hut wrapped in me wet blanket, coughing and shivering, dreaming of Mary's Sunday kitchen. 'I'll come back, Mama,' I'd cry, teeth chattering fit to break. 'You just watch and see, little Tommo'll be back sure enough soon as I can find me way to Port Davey and stow away aboard a timber ketch.'
But now since I come back, me appetite's quite gone. Nothin' tastes good no more. Sundays were always me best days in them old days. Now they's bloody purgatory with me afraid to look into Mary's sad face. Me here drinking Brodie's sly grog, scared shitless because Hawk's gunna make me sit down to Sunday dinner with our own mama. How can I face Mary when I've forgot how to deal with kindness in me life? Hawk with his hands moving thirteen to the dozen, trying to make cheerful conversation, and me with me eyes on me plate, not wanting none of it 'cept to get up and run for me life.
Though Hawk can't talk no more with his voice, I can still hear him in my head. When he speaks with his hands I can hear him clear as a bell. All them years away and I never lost the sound of him. I promised meself when I were miserable that I were going back to my mama's Sunday dinner and to my brother's deep, sweet voice. Now it's gone. His voice what was always a comfort to me when I was away, always steady, unafraid, Hawk's beautiful blackie boomer voice is gone, rubbed away by the wild man's horse rope. Even then, in the wilderness, I had most strange feelings like something were trying to choke out Hawk's voice, but I tried to put it out of me head, for remembering was all I could hang onto.
Mary's told me what happened to Hawk when we was both kidnapped on the mountain and later became separated. A wild man took Hawk and starved him and led him behind his horse by a hide rope around his neck until his voice was rasped away. All he's got now is his necklace of scars. I've asked Hawk about this time, but he says with his hand language he can't remember anything except that we was took on the mountain by four men and afterwards nothing. I can't remember the early part either. I can remember how it were with Sam Slit, but I don't want to talk about it. Maybe one day we will.
I suppose I should count meself the luckiest cove in the world that I were spared the terrible thing done to make Hawk lose his voice. But I don't think meself lucky. Poor dumb Hawk, he's the lucky one. He didn't stay away long enough from Mary to learn to be afraid. Fear never took him and introduced him to the mongrels. He can still feel things. I've seen the tears brimming when he tries to ask what happened to me in the wilderness, his confusion when I shakes my head because I can't say for the bitterness inside of me.
I can see my brother's concern for me. But I don't feel it. Can't feel the love I know Hawk has for me. I could do before I was took. I could feel everything he were feeling, like we were two fingers on the same hand. Shit, now I don't feel nothing no more. Not for Hawk, not for Mary, not for meself. That's what the wilderness done to yours truly. It took all the feeling out of old Tommo and left only the fear of the mongrels what's always lurking in the tall timbers waiting to get you.
I calls for another shot. Brodie brings it, but before I can pretend to search for a sixpence I know I ain't got, a drunk on the floor begins to shout and jerk, taking a fit. Brodie curses and forgets to ask for me money. He goes over and kicks the poor sod in the head. Brodie knows his stuff - when a man's took to fitting, a kick in the head sometimes'll bring him to calm again. I suppose it be the shock. I can feel Hawk is close. Better drink up quick, Tommo.
Hawk says we got a purpose, him and me. Me, quick and nimble with a mouth full o' cheek. Him, strong and thoughtful and silent. It's a right rare combination what could work together, he says. Mary says we are her team to build up the brewery she started soon as she was freed. It's up to us now to gain folks' respect, be someone what our kind has never been before, what them merinos think the likes of us can never be.
'It's the world's best opportunity for the taking,' Hawk says. 'We'd soon be proper toffs, and your children, Tommo, they'd be true merinos!'
But old Tommo here knows that's crap. There's no purpose, no opportunity for the likes of me. You can't make nothing good out of nothing.
Take a look at me, will ya? Mary's little lamb is become a drunk, a useless scum what wakes up and needs a drink. Somebody what can't think of nothing but a bottle to leach the anger and the hate out of his rotting guts. What's I gunna do? Wear a clean collar and learn clerking? Sit in a high chair with a green eyeshade, sharpened quill and blacking, working at profit and loss? Mary's precious little bookkeeper, Tommo X Solomon, beer baron in the making? Load o' rubbish, if you ask me!
I ain't clever but me hands, now, they's a different story. Dog-baiting and fist-fighting and timber-getting and burns from Sam Slit's whisky still, that's what's made 'em look bad. Every finger and knuckle looks broke or dog-bitten, and what's skin for other folk is scars for me, scar-tissue what can take most kinds of pain. They don't look much chop but they be good hands, even if I do say so meself.
That's the difference, see, they ain't like Mary's hands what are black and twisted and broken and I think most painful of movement. That's me one big secret, hands what looks battered but are sly as a fox.
Other broadsmen see me holding cards at cribbage or the Yankee game of poker what's catching on among the troopers and gold miners, and they thinks: 'Here's a go, little bugger can't do nothin' nasty with the flats using them poor sodding little mitts.' Ha!
What they sees is timber getters' hands, bashed in the sawpit, calloused on the axe handle, cut, broken, burnt. Hands what ain't capable of handling a deck or palming a card in broad daylight so that the most suspicious sharper can't see what's going on right in front of his very own eyes. No danger in them pathetic, scarred and sorrowful little paws. No sir, not them!
But that's where they be wrong! That's their biggest mistake! What Ikey taught us at cards, me hands took to natural, like they had a mind of their own.
Ikey himself were most complimentary about this. 'Most elegant and nimble, full o' guilefulness and most diabolical of purpose, flippers tailor-made by the devil himself to belong to a broadsman o' most superior talent. Congratulations, my dear.'
Ikey were right, me hands has a pure and natural ability for winning at cards by means of cheating. They's good enough kept on the straight, mind - they hold their own and more in any honest game, if such an event be possible. But they is most amazing on the cross. Sometimes they do things with a deck o' flats what can even astonish me. Never's the day they don't earn me grog enough to dampen down what's ugly and frightening and burnin' inside me. There's always some mouth who fancies himself at cards and who's got a silver sixpence to lose in a hurry. Or a trooper with the Queen's florin he wants to double or treble and who grows most confident when he watches Tommo's clumsy little hands busy at spreading the cards around the table.
That be me only asset, hands what are up to no good, good only for cheating at cards, fist-fighting, dog-baiting and being most fast and nimble when they are clasped around the handle of a small lopping axe, like the one I always carries on me belt in case of mongrels.
Them's me total credentials, me hands. Hawk says he'll learn me reading again, the trick of which I've long since forgotten. But I'm not so sure I can pick it up again. 'Look,' he says, 'you learned Ikey's hand language soon enough again. Reading is the same, you'll soon be schooled back to it again.' But reading be a thing of the head, and Ikey and Hawk's hand language be a thing of the hands. That's the big difference, me head's fucked but me hands ain't.
Nastiness is the only thing what I'm well schooled in now. Mary's nicely brought up little lad, Tommo, what even at seven years old had some book learning and writing, is now everything what's deemed bad. But Mary and Hawk expects that with a bit of plumping up, kindness and affection, what I am become will go away again. That the niceness is still inside me, only for a moment drowned out by me wilderness life, that with a bit of gentleness and love and a few gravy-soaked Sunday dinners under my belt, it'll all bob back to the surface, like a cormorant what's been fishing. And there I'll be, good as new, floating merrily down the river of happiness and contentment.
How the hell, I begs to know, does I do that? For seven sodding years I had the living daylights kicked out o' me by mongrels the like o' Sam bloody Slit! Now I'm supposed to pretend all is forgiven and the world ain't no longer a bad place. Can't them two see that ain't possible? That what's inside me is all screwed up. for good?
A large hand come down on the back of me neck and squeezes. Not so it hurts but firm enough. Crikey, it be Hawk! I didn't see or feel him come in, so lost am I in me own stupid misery.
I grabs at the tot in front of me and tries to knock it back, but me head won't go back because Hawk's holding me neck and I spills most o' the precious liquid onto me blouse. 'Damn!' I twists away angry and looks up. Sure enough, Hawk's got his finger and thumb pinching at his nose, lamplight shining on his fingernails. I can't help but smile.
Hawk lifts me from the bench by me scrawny neck. He don't do it rough but he don't intend to have no protest from me neither. I could still twist and kick him in the bollocks, double him up, then head-butt him as he's coming down - I'll take on any cove what's up to a foot higher than me and bigger yet if I be drunk. Besides, I got me axe. But I don't, of course. I don't fight Hawk, who's like a band of iron around me neck. It ain't him what's making me angry, so I lets him steer me towards the door.
Brodie shouts I owe him sixpence.
Hawk lets go my neck, digs in his coat and flips him a shilling. Then he touches me lightly on the shoulder, directing me once more to the doorway. Brodie claps his mittened hands together but misses the spinning coin and curses as it clatters to the floor and two wretches, growling like a pair o' pit bitches, come alive and scramble for it at his feet, tits falling out. Brodie jumps aside dancing a jig, then kicks out wildly at the two soaks, screeching like a demented cocky-parrot.
Outside the sunlight be so bright I'm blinded and Hawk waits while I hold my hands up against my eyes and rubs. He can't say nothing to me 'til I can see proper, 'til me eyes adjust to the sunlight. So he stands and rests his big hand soft on my shoulder.
We stand outside with all the tiny lights flickering in front of my eyes, little stars and explosions floating in blackness. Hawk's hand on my shoulder feels safe. It feels good. Jesus! He's coming back to me, coming back into me heart! But then I thinks, maybe it's only Brodie's crook grog what's pumping through my veins giving me a drunk's false hope. So I rolls me shoulder and shrugs off his hand. No point him imagining what ain't true.
I can see clearly again and I note it's well past noon by the position of the sun. Hawk is standing waiting. Now he has his arms folded and clasped to his chest, looking down at his boots. His dark shadow cast in the dust is nearly twice the size of my own.
'Mary, is it?' I sneer. 'Commanding yours truly to Sunday bloody dinner?'
Hawk looks down sideways at me, his eyes narrowed, then he shakes his head slowly and spits to the side of his boots. 'Come,' he signals to me, 'our ship is leaving on the afternoon tide.'
Hawk
Hobart Town
July 1856
Tommo's come back to us bad. The wild men have made him bad, taken his niceness and smashed it. His blue eyes are hard, the laughter in them gone.
'Tommo's come back to us damaged, Mama,' I say to Mary with my hands, the language I now use between us. 'He's lost himself somewhere.'
'Hush, you hear!' Mary says. She doesn't like what I'm saying. She looks at me accusingly. 'You're still good despite what you've suffered, so why not him?'
I shrug. 'It's not the same. I'm a nigger, niggers aren't supposed to have feelings.'
She leans forward across the table. 'Nonsense. Now you listen to me, Hawk, he'll come good. All he needs is a lot of loving.' She purses her lips. 'I'm not much good at mothering no more, a bit old for all that malarky, but now he's back, he'll get lots of good food and proper care. Least I can do!'