Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  Seb Rawlings’ face is close to apoplectic and he struggles to speak. ‘Right! You will both be manacled and locked up below decks without rations until Captain O’Hara returns tomorrow morning!’

  We have been alone in the dark with the rats and the cockroaches since yesterday morning. We have lost track of the time. Tommo, whose instincts are better than mine in such things, thinks it must be near to morning again.

  We are in a dark hole amidships, a place where the harpoons and lances are kept under lock and key. No sound reaches us from outside and the only noises we hear other than our own voices are the creaking of ship’s timbers, the squeaking and scurrying of rats, and the tic-tic-tic of cockroaches. We spend much time flicking off these last vermin as they clamber about our arms, legs and necks. This is a most difficult task with shackles and manacles on, and there is a rattle of chains each time we make the attempt.

  The worst of it is the heat and our thirst, for we have had nothing past our lips but longlick, and that taken just before Seb Rawlings called us to see him yesterday morning. There is not sufficient room to lie down and we are forced to sit with our backs to the wall and our knees pulled up. My back is soon wet with blood and pus as I must lean against the wall, and my new-knit skin and the scabs covering my lashes break open again under the pressure. In all, it is a most uncomfortable situation, though we pass the hours at talk and I learn more of Tommo’s lost time in the wilderness.

  My twin has seen much in his seven years away. He never speaks as though he is sorry for himself, but is matter-of-fact and often humorous.

  When I complain about our dark, cramped conditions, Tommo laughs and says, ‘Ain’t nothing compared to the cramped quarters known by Sam Slit when the timber getters turns on him.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘So he finally got his come-uppance?’

  Tommo has told me how Sam Slit would often give a drunken timber getter a pint of whisky from his still for the use of the man’s half-caste Aboriginal woman or his little daughter. It was not so bad for the women, he said, who would get drunk anyway and not care what he did to them. But oh, how the little girls no more than ten or eleven years old would weep all the while and plead for mercy, to no avail. Sam Slit would have his way with them, then beat them unconscious, and rape them again and again. In the morning he would send them home to their huts in the forest, bruised and bleeding, with a flagon to soothe their daddies’ hangovers.

  ‘This time it were different,’ Tommo recalls. ‘This time he kidnapped a six-year-old half-caste called Gracie. Half-castes, particular if they be dark-skinned, be thought fair game at any age in the bloody wilderness. Ain’t nobody what’s going to make much of a fuss. But this time Slit picked the wrong sprat, for her daddy were a big fellow among the timber getters and not from a near settlement. He were most fond of his little black girlie. Slit took her without permission or in exchange, for he were drunk and liked the look o’ this little urchin, and thinks he will square it with her papa later.

  ‘But Slit, what’s been drinking raw spirit, beats her and fucks her and kills her in the process.’

  ‘Sam Slit was your master! Didn’t you run to tell someone?’ I ask, horrified by the story my twin is telling me. I cannot imagine he would stand by and let such a thing happen.

  ‘Run to where? Tell who? This is the wilderness, ain’t nobody to run to!’ I can feel the bitterness in his voice. ‘By wilderness laws what he done were normal enough. Besides, I weren’t there, I were out setting possum traps and come back to find four timber getters at Slit’s still.

  ‘They has him slung on a long pole like an animal, tied wrists and ankles, and they are moving him out. He is moaning and groaning, but they’ve tied his mouth and his face is raw meat where they’ve beaten him. The little girl is slung over her daddy’s shoulder like the two dead possums is slung over mine. I can see the dried blood around her mouth and nose where she’s bled from inside.’

  ‘Oh no, Tommo!’ I exclaim. ‘You need not say any more.’

  Tommo is silent for a while then sniffs in the dark and I wonder if he is crying. He sniffs a second time and now I am sure he is. But a moment later he speaks. ‘No, I’ll tell you. After all, it’s a story about cramped quarters.’ He tries to laugh, but it comes out sad. Then he says, ‘Besides, that little half-caste dying gave me the courage to come back to you and mama.’

  Tommo draws a breath, then continues. ‘I follows the men carrying Sam Slit most of the day, and that night they makes camp. I dunno how the little half-caste girl has come to be near Sam Slit’s still, for these seem to be timber getters what are after Huon pine, for we has moved high up the Spring River, into the mountains where the big trees grow. I can only think they was on their way somewhere and made camp near Slit’s, which in itself is deep enough into the wilderness for the law not to venture. But now these cutters takes Slit much further in than I’ve gone before.

  ‘We more or less follows the course o’ the river all the next day and that night, I camps sufficient far away and downwind so I can make a small fire and cook me two possums. One I eat and the other I put into my tucker bag with some berries I gather during the day.

  ‘On the second day, we follows the river again, climbing up past several waterfalls. We are much higher up in the mountains, and it’s late in the afternoon when we comes to a clearing. It’s here that the timber getters has their camp.

  ‘It’s about an acre cleared and to me surprise they has several bullocks, which I know is used for dragging timber, but I can’t think how they could be brought to such a spot. There is pigs and goats and a host of chickens, a proper village, like, with meat drying and a smoke house for fish, and three sawpits dug with platforms in working order, and in two of them a Huon log half sawn.

  ‘I’ve heard of the deep-pine people and seen some from time to time when they passed along the river on the way to Port Davey. But I has always thought them lone men— or two or three together at most— ticket-of-leavers, debunked convicts, mostly Irish, who cuts the Huon pine high up on the Spring or Davey, and floats it down the river.

  ‘Now I sees there is about thirty people what lives here, six men and four women. Two or three families sharing land is not unusual closer to settlement, but I didn’t know that it went on so deep into the high timber. The men’s white, but the women half-caste, all with babes to their breasts, ‘cept for one: an old, toothless hag, bent over with her paps exposed and hair to her waist, but with a baldness to one side of her head. The rest is brats of every size and shape, light and dark. Some wears a worn wool coat or a knitted jumper much holed, but most are in possum and kangaroo skin, barefoot and snot-nosed dirty.’

  Tommo laughs in the dark. ‘I has only come to cleanliness since returning to Hobart Town so I don’t know why I should remark on the state o’ the children. They was no more dirty than I were meself. Anyhow, I finds a sassafras tree what looks directly into the clearing and I climbs high into its branches, where I is well hid.

  ‘As soon as the men comes into the clearing, the brats and women run towards them, laughing and smiling. But their expressions change when they see Gracie’s body. The children fall silent, the women begin to keen. One what I takes to be her mama, a scrawny half-caste woman, falls to her knees, tearing at her hair. The women reach out, lifting her up and, taking the dead little girl from her papa’s arms, they all goes inside a hut. Sam Slit is still alive, Gawd knows how after such a journey. I’d have thought they’d make him walk and save themselves the trouble, but they has carried him, trussed, all the way and I thinks him dead.

  ‘But he’s alive all right, and with his gag removed, he is screamin’ and cussin’ and beggin’. He is tied hand and foot, and left to sit in a small enclosure surrounded by the bark huts of the timber getters.

  ‘The children gathers ‘round him, at first fearful and then bolder. They pokes him with sticks or throws dust at him ‘til it gets dark. The night is cold and I climbs down when the camp grows silent and makes a small
burrow to sleep in, eating some o’ the possum. I wakes at dawn and climbs back into the tree, where I am well tucked away by the time the sun comes into the glade.

  ‘Sam Slit is still lying in the enclosure. The pigs grunt about him and the chickens scratch and schwark and dash away, wings flapping, with each of Sam’s outbursts. He seems to have gained strength, and is back to his caterwauling, yet I ain’t seen him get food or water.

  ‘I thinks how small and pathetic he looks, though in truth, he were a big man with a huge belly and hands like soup plates— hands that more than once near killed me. But now he’s just a piece o’ dog shit in the dirt, like he called me, and I wonders how he could have held me afraid to run away so long.’

  I break into Tommo’s story. ‘I too have wondered this,’ I confess. ‘You were familiar with the wilderness and grown quite independent, and certainly big enough to leave. Yet you remained with this terrible creature? Why, Tommo?’

  I cannot see Tommo’s face in the dark, but I can hear him breathing. He sniffs, but remains silent for some time, so that I think I have upset him. Then he says simply, ‘Grog. I couldn’t leave the grog. I’d leave but be back in two days. The craving were too much for me to bear.’

  I am glad I cannot see Tommo’s face, for I can hear in his voice that he is ashamed of this weakness. I know that, but for the darkness around us, he could never have said this.

  ‘Tell me more of Sam Slit,’ I prompt.

  ‘Well, another full day passes, where the children taunts him and pokes him with sticks, and some of the older ones spits or kicks at him. As for the men and women— well, it be as though nobody knows he’s there. They pass him all day without looking, even when he screams and begs ’em for water.

  ‘I’ve eaten all of the two possums and think that I must scavenge about if I am to stay put. So next morning at first light I find a nearby stream with the mist rising upon the water. It’s a good hour for yabbies which be plentiful and I catches a freshwater crayfish as well. But I ain’t game to cook these and risk the smell o’ smoke. Piners wake early and is ever alert for the smell of a fire if it does not come from their own cooking fires.

  ‘It’s not long past dawn when I finds a new tree. Now I am hidden again, high up in a tall gum, where I has a better view into the clearing.

  ‘Then I realise something’s happening. It’s still early morning but other folk has come to the clearing, small groups o’ twos or threes with their children. They has the same rough look and most are men, though some be women, white and half-caste. By midday there’s fifty or sixty counting the children, and folks keep coming ‘til early afternoon.

  ‘I ain’t taken any water with me when I climbed me tree at dawn, and I have eaten the yabbies raw what’s made me thirsty. But at about ten o’clock, it rains for half an hour and I am able to get a drop. Sam Slit has his mouth open to the rain and is covered in mud as if he were an old sow. His eyes are now great blue bulges where the bruises have formed from his beating and he be altogether a sight for sore eyes, so to speak!

  ‘After the rain a large amount of timber is brought, great logs what will burn for many hours, as well as kindling and smaller wedges to sets them alight. A big fire is laid. Then two sets of poles, crossed at the centre about six feet from the ground, is planted on either side of the fire pit which be about twelve foot long and five foot wide.

  ‘About noon the fire is lit and soon after, I hears the bellow of a bullock and much shouting from the children. Though I can’t see what’s happening further out in the paddock, it ain’t too hard to guess. They is slaughtering the bullock and will have a feast tonight. The two cross-stays will support the pole on which the bullock carcass will be hung.

  ‘Now I sees that four men are took to working one of the sawpits. It be as if they is at some game, for each pair competes with the other at sawing and there is much laughter and close examination of the cut. Then, when the log is cut through, I see that they has sawn a perfect plank, not more than an inch thick, fifteen or so inches wide, and twelve or fifteen foot in length.’

  Tommo pauses. ‘I know something of sawing and the sawpit, and what they has done with a two-handed pit-saw be masterful. The beautiful pine, what looks the colour of churned butter, is perfect cut to an even thickness. It bounces springy on the shoulders of the two men what carries it, catching the afternoon light as though it was some bright blade itself.

  ‘About two o’clock of the afternoon, the bullock, fully dressed, is carried to the fire. It’s fixed on a pole what goes through its centre and extends through the neck and out its arse. It is carried by ten men, five on each end. The bullock is placed carefully between the cross-stays so that it’s suspended above the glowing embers now burning red and free of flame. To either end of the poles are attached two handles so that the beast may be turned to the needs of its roasting.

  ‘An hour later the air rising up to me is filled with the delicious smell of the roasting bullock and me stomach growls at the thought of the feast to come.

  ‘Night comes quickly in the wilderness and by four o’clock the shadows is long. The fire is spluttering and sends up puffs of smoke when the fat, rich juices of the bullock drips upon it. The beast is beginning to get nice and brown, having been turned from time to time by two men on either side of the spit-pole.

  ‘Sam Slit is still sitting in the dirt, no doubt made as hungry as me by the smell of roasting meat. His clothes is now caked with drying mud and his face is swollen with the bites of insects. The children has grown weary of taunting him and he is silent and alone. He’s too weak or weary to wail and has rolled on his side in the dirt, perhaps asleep. The pigs, goats and chooks has taken to snuffling and scratching about him as though he were part o’ the scenery.

  ‘With the parakeets quiet at last and the currawong took to calling the evening into coming, two men walks to a clearing directly under the tree where I’m hid. They carry long-handled spades and they beat away the bracken and the fern before they begin to dig a grave what I presumes to be the last resting place of the soon to be departed, Sam Slit.

  ‘But after they’s been digging a while, I see that the hole be much too small and I realise that it is for the little girl, who, I admits, I has quite forgot.

  ‘Then I sees the coffin brought, and the men and women and all the children gathered ‘round, now nearly a hundred in all. The coffin’s been made from the pine plank I seen being cut and it is now placed within the hole. The folks all gather close and the little girl’s papa speaks. He has the voice of a leader and it carries clear to where I sits high in the tree above the small grave. I remember what he says to this day.

  ‘ “We seem queer folk to others, though not to ourselves,” he begins. “A people driven deep into the wilderness, though not by persecution, though God knows we have all seen enough of that, but by a need to be left alone. A need to be away from the Protestant and his shackles and his two hundred years of dominion over us.

  ‘ “We have no priest to bless us and our Latin catechism is all but forgotten. In God’s eyes, we are His lost sheep, for we have not confessed our sins these many years. But we have ourselves and our freedom.” He looks upwards as though he is lookin’ for the Almighty and me heart nearly jumps out me mouth, for he is staring direct up at me in the tree and I’m sure I’ll be found! But then he looks down again and continues talking. “Here in the wilderness no man and no law shall tell us what we shall or may do!” he says to all about him. “Nor where we shall go or what we shall be! And most of all, no man shall use his hands to take or use what be ours, hard won with the sweat of our brows or given as the seed of our loins!”

  ‘He stops and looks about him, then turns his eyes to the small coffin. “We do not have much, but what we have is hard earned under a clean sky. It is honest bread. And most of what we have is our kin and our kith. If any of these be hurt or beaten or harmed, then we all be so hurt and beaten and harmed, and we must take into our own hands the means of justice requi
red of decent men who live in the sight of a righteous and almighty God. ‘Whomsoever harmeth one of my little children, harmeth me, thus sayeth the Lord.’ “

  ‘The little girl’s daddy stops and looks around him again as though straight into the hearts of each of those what stands about the small grave. All is hushed, though the little girl’s mama is heaving great, silent sobs.

  ‘ “Gracie were but six years old and she were harmed, she were broken, she were killed!” He points to the area near the fire and his voice thunders. “Damaged and broken and killed by yonder beast! He used her as meat for his fornication! He has the mark of the beast upon him and he must be returned to the beast. He will be sent to the devil, to Satan himself, to the very fires of hell where he will burn forever!” There is a long silence and then he says softly, “Amen.”

  ‘Throughout this sermon, the only other sound heard be the cry of a baby once and the night call of the mopoke. But now a fiddle plays the hymn “Abide with Me". The grave is quickly filled, with the soft, solid thud of earth clods hittin’ the timber. None sings to accompany the lone fiddler, and the small community breaks up soon after. But they returns to the fire, where four of the women tend to the roasting of the bullock.

  ‘What follows is a great feast, though not drunken as such affairs is known to be when wilderness folk comes together. There is now some hymn-singing and later songs of Ireland to which the fiddler plays a most melancholic strain. High up above, in the tree, I is starving hungry. I even envies the dogs what stand at the edge of the firelight, snarling and yapping over each bone tossed to them. Soon even the dogs has eaten their full. It is getting late and the smaller children has fallen asleep on their mothers’ laps. What remains of the bullock is taken away and I thinks that I may soon be able to climb down from my tree as all takes their contented bellies off to sleep.

  ‘But I am mistaken. As soon as it’s quiet, the men what have seen to the remains of the bullock return. They carries a fresh pole on which the head of the bullock, still attached to the bloody hide, has been arranged. It is trussed in the same way as Sam Slit were trussed when he was took away from the still, hanging downwards and tied to the pole by its hoofs and forelegs. They places the bullock hide besides the fire, though not so close that it catches alight. All the men now stand in a semi-circle around it. The night is very still and several men light beeswax candles, cupping the flame in their hands, so that with the moonlight and the blazing fire, I can see every detail.