The Faller

by Daniel De Lorne

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  The Faller

  By Daniel de Lorne

  Being caught with another man sends Charlie Young fleeing his family to the forests of southwestern Australia to scrape together steamer-passage to the big smoke of London. But life as a timber faller isn’t easy and it’s made worse when the men he works with are brash, bigoted, and often brutal. All except Jack Tapper, who’s the kind of gentle giant that sets Charlie’s heart racing.

  While the other men head into town for Christmas, it’s just Charlie and Jack and acres of forest. But trees tell no tales and a few days alone is the perfect opportunity to indulge a bourgeoning passion. When the men return and find things not as they once were, Charlie and Jack have to make the hard decisions about whether to stay where they are or run for their lives.

  1912, Western Australia

  THE DISTANT rhythmic strike of steel against wood was nothing compared to Charlie’s intermittent and curse-laden chopping. Out in the jarrah forest, playing at being a sleeper cutter in a camp of four other men, he was about as out of place as a kangaroo bounding down the streets of a bustling capital city. His shirt dripped with sweat, even in the shade of trees over a hundred feet tall. His sleeves and trouser legs were rolled up as far as they would go. The other men chided him for bothering with a shirt at all, but considering the size of those bastards, he wasn’t prepared for yet another ribbing. Being the youngest, the shortest, and the skinniest hadn’t been a blessing back home, and here it was a downright mark of Cain.

  But he’d stayed. Three weeks had passed, doing work he’d never thought he’d do. That had to count for something. But for how much longer he’d be there, he wasn’t sure. It wouldn’t be forever, but he wanted to leave on his terms, not because he was penniless and starving to death.

  And to do that he had to improve, and become more like Jack.

  Jack Tapper easily cut eight railway sleepers a day, sometimes ten. At two shillings per sleeper, that made sixteen pounds a month, nearly two hundred pounds a year. The man was a machine. A wealthy machine. And Charlie could only hope to be anywhere near as productive.

  The last three sleepers he’d hewn had all come up short. Wasted wood. Wasted time. And his money was running out. He’d be lucky to last until the end of the month with what he had left—food, drink, money. Coming here to make enough for passage to London was beginning to look like the most ridiculous idea in the world.

  The blisters on his hands stung, making it hard to get a good hold on the axe, which he was starting to suspect was blunt. That’d mean another two-day trip into town to get it sharpened, another two days of lost work. Another two days of feeding a hungry mouth that really wasn’t earning its keep.

  Unless he didn’t feed it; that was always an option. He’d gone hungry more than once since arriving.

  He gripped the axe. Pain shot through his hands and up his arms. He clamped down on his lip and ignored the bite in his hands. The blisters would go soon enough. Calluses would form.

  But it wasn’t just the discomfort in his hands that was slowing him down. His shoulders ached. The jarring of each strike racked his body as the axe cut along the vein and carved the sleeper into shape. He wasn’t built for this, and he was sure he was getting weaker by the day, not stronger.

  Not like Jack.

  The man was broad across the shoulders, his arms thicker than some of the widowmakers that crashed from the canopy. No wonder he was considered the best in the West. But the experienced faller had barely given him the side-eye the few weeks he’d been here. Other cutters had only been slightly less hostile, but at least some had shared their knowledge. Charlie couldn’t blame them. Who wanted a skinny city kid slowing them down, getting in the way, reducing their earnings? He’d brought them grog, and that had helped ease things. And their questions hadn’t gone too far into his real reasons for being there.

  Stifling his grunts, he shaved the sleeper down, following the lines of chalk as best he could until it was the required size. He let it fall and eyed it off. He’d get paid for this one. He bent over, panting, and rested on the handle of his axe. His back was stiff and his shoulders screamed while the flies buzzed around his mouth and nose.

  “It’s not going to ask you to the dance, Charlie-boy. Get a move on,” Fred shouted. The gnarled redhead acted like he was in charge of the other fallers in camp. Always firing instructions, piping up with an opinion, generally sounding off. Right up until Jack sauntered in. Then everyone went quiet, and loudmouth Fred looked like any other faller in the place. It wasn’t that Jack was dangerous; he just had a presence that made people notice him.

  And Charlie noticed all of him.

  At least they weren’t working in the same cut of forest all the time. He was likely to lose a leg if that happened.

  He leaned his axe carefully against the half-cut trunk of the ninety-foot-long jarrah tree, rather than tossing it to the ground like when he’d first arrived. One of the two brief times Jack had bothered to talk to him was to have a crack about that, saying a proper faller takes care of his tools. He wasn’t in a hurry to suffer the lash of Jack’s tongue again.

  Not in that way, anyway.

  He crouched, scrabbled through the splinters and kindling, and hoisted the mighty sleeper on his shoulder before hefting its great weight a few meters to a waiting trolley on tramway tracks. At least he could carry it. He picked up his brand and hammer from the edge of the trolley where he’d left it and hammered his mark into the end, so they knew who to pay when the contractor from the timber company came around to collect.

  That was likely to be later than usual, what with bloody December 25 in the way. The only thing Christmas meant to him was one day further from getting his money. All the other men in the camp were getting ready to ship out, finishing a sleeper or two, and then they’d be off to town in time for mass and a few days’ revelry. He couldn’t afford that. Not that he wanted to be around a lot of happy, smiling families, celebrating the birth of a savior who wouldn’t have a bar of him.

  Christmas was a few extra days to catch up to the others; stay behind, cut as much as he could, and try not to kill himself—either by accident or design.

  He swung back to the mighty jarrah. There’d be at least another forty sleepers out of this trunk alone. The giants took a lot to fall, but when they did, they were full of treasure. And considering how slow he was, he’d be lucky if he’d looted half of it by the time the others returned to camp in three days’ time.

  But it sure wasn’t going to carve itself. And standing around wishing wouldn’t get the job done.

  He measured and chalked up another piece, got the wincing out of the way early, and set to work.

  “OOROO, CHARLIE-BOY,” Doug’s big voice had boomed out as everyone but him headed through the otherwise still forest while Charlie was midswing. “Try not to chop off yer arm while we’re gone, mate.”

  There went the last of his money.

  They’d left after lunch—not that he’d eaten, but they had—and he’d worked hard to drown out their distant laughter as they readied to go, buzzing on the prospect of a few days on the bottle. Or between some legs. Or in a proper bed. A few days in comparative civilization.

  If he went, he’d never come back.

  Charlie kept chopping long after their chatter faded, long enough that none of those bastards would hear him stop, and only then did he sag against the fallen tree and swipe at his dripping forehead. He hadn’t answered; they hadn’t cared. Pretty much how it went in the forest. If Doug didn’t want him to slice off a limb while the
y were gone, it wasn’t because he was filled with Christmas spirit and human kindness—it was because he didn’t want to miss the spectacle.

  The only chatter in the forest was the jackdaws, and Charlie returned to hewing the sleeper, ignoring the protests of his belly. He’d not eat until he was done with this bastard, and the damn thing was looking ugly with enough feathers along its edges to fly away. He’d shaved off a bit too much on one end and hoped he could sit it on the trolley so the contractor wouldn’t notice. But the sinking feeling beneath the rumbling in his stomach told him that it was going to be knocked back. Perhaps they’d give him a few pennies for a fence post.

  Better than nothing, worse than best.

  When he lugged the finished sleeper to the trolley and marked it as his own, he was suddenly aware of a void. The bush hummed with the noise of insects like the heat had turned them on—his sweat attracting a fair share—but apart from the bugs and the swish of leaves above, he was alone. Proper and actual, for a change, rather than being a loner in the crowded city.

  He refused to nourish the self-pity inside him, so he cut it off and decided to feed a different beast instead. His stomach growled in approval. Without the potential for a whole lot of stirring from the other blokes, he peeled his heavy linen shirt off his damp back and let himself enjoy the relief. Too early for a breeze, so he wiped himself down as he walked. Maybe later. And then in the evening, if the mosquitos weren’t bad, he could sleep naked beneath the stars and be—

  He stopped sharp at the edge of the camp. The flap of Jack’s tent was open to let the air in, and there the giant lay in his makeshift bed, his bulk almost too big for the canvas stretched between four posts. One of his legs dangled over the edge. His hat rested on his face and one arm stretched above his head. Charlie swallowed hard at the sight of all that man laid out before him like some sort of offering.

  What the hell was Jack still doing here? Though, when he thought about it, Jack had never actually said he was going into town.

  Then again, Jack never said much of anything.

  Charlie picked his way to the fold of canvas that was his tent as quietly as possible. When the other men were around, it was easy enough to let them fill the silence with their bawdy talk about girls while Jack sat there, eyes on the fire, or within enough light to read by. And there’d been enough shadows and distractions for Charlie to watch him too.

  But now, just the two of them….

  Charlie fumbled the billy and his tin cup and the two came together with a clang. If that wasn’t enough to wake a slumbering giant, then his instinctive cursing certainly was, and his eyes shot over to where Jack stirred.

  Bugger.

  Jack lifted his hat from his face without bothering to sit upright and looked him hard in the eyes before lowering it again and settling back to sleep.

  Charlie’s gut sank. He might as well have been a possum raiding Jack’s store. Actually, a possum would have got more of a reaction.

  What did it matter? He wasn’t there for anything other than money, and when he’d made enough, he’d be back to the city and booking that passage to England. He set his billy over the fire, filled it with enough brackish water for a cup or two, and threw in the leaves. He sat back against a log, far enough away from the fire that he wouldn’t boil along with his water, and tucked into a tin of corned beef.

  Now he’d finally lowered his axe, the exhaustion he’d been keeping at bay rushed him head-on, and he slumped lower in the dirt. Even that hurt. His fork rested inside the tin, forgotten, and he stared at nothing.

  “You’ll ruin the tea.”

  Charlie lost the last of the beef, lurching back upright. How the hell did a man Jack’s size rise out of his bed so silently in the never-ending silence of this forest? The big guy grabbed the billy’s handle and pulled it off the fire before Charlie had even mustered the strength to bend one knee. Jack windmilled the can, his strong arm sending it around and around in circles to separate the leaves from the bubbling water. The way his arm did that, the intersection of the muscles, their rippling strength stretched out seemingly for his view…. Charlie forced his eyes down to his lap and the upended food.

  Jack’s boots appeared in the dirt beside him and a hand thrust down. “Mug.”

  It could easily have been an insult, but something about the steadiness in Jack’s eyes told him it wasn’t.

  Charlie fumbled for his beaten tin mug, the upended corned beef tumbling out of his lap and spreading on the ground. He didn’t know what to grab first, so went for the upended food dish—first rule of living in the bush was not to leave anything that might draw a massive army of ants and their poisoned pincers into your camp—but of course it was the wrong thing, and Jack picked up the cup himself and walked away on an audible tsk.

  How many kinds of idiot must Jack think him to be? He knew what some of the men back home thought of him, because they’d been only too eager to tell him. In descriptive, colorful, unpleasant terms. It wasn’t too far a stretch to think that Jack knew those words, too, and probably thought them.

  Whether he said anything was another point entirely.

  And whether he acted was yet another.

  Jack poured out two mugs and came over with his. Charlie used the moment to salvage whatever beef he could and set it aside as he sat up on the log. Sitting in the dirt made him vulnerable in front of this man.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s your tea. I should thank you.” Jack handed him a brimming mug and sank down onto the log beside him. Charlie’s whole body stiffened.

  The water had heated the tin mug to the point he was forced to hold it by the rim or the handle or leave it on the log to cool. Jack didn’t even seem to notice, his big hands curled right around it. He’d seen Jack’s hands before, awed at their sheer size, shamed by their roughness. His whole head would have fit into one of Jack’s massive hands.

  How many trees had Jack Tapper felled?

  He thought about asking, but the big man didn’t speak. His eyes fixed on the forest ahead to the edges of the clearing they were making as trees came down. They’d stood silent for hundreds of years, but Jack brought one down in an hour or two. Despite that skill, he seemed to take no joy in it.

  Others hollered and whooped as trees crashed to the trembling earth, but not Jack. He made it his business to touch the tree he was bringing down, even when it was dead, like he was calming a horse that had sensed its end. There was something reverent about Jack for all his size.

  But the quiet niggled at Charlie. Weeks of wanting to be alone, and now that he could have that, he itched to fill the silence.

  He cleared the croak out of his throat and disguised it behind a sip of his tea. “Not heading to town for Christmas, Jack?” He wiped his sweaty palm along his leg and ignored the bite of burst blisters.

  “No.”

  And that was it. One syllable more than he usually got out of the silent giant, but it effectively slammed the door on any other attempt at conversation. So, they sat listening to the crackle of the fire and the hum of the busy bush.

  Inside, Charlie’s heart hammered.

  When Jack downed the last gulp of tea, he gouged a hole in the dirt with his heel, emptied the dregs into it, and covered it over again with a gentle pat of his boot. Then he stood, crossed to his tent, and tossed his cup in, before hefting his axe and lumbering away into the forest without a further word.

  Charlie let his breath out on a long, slow hiss. He stayed put and finished his tea. He stayed until he could hear the echoing thunk of Jack’s axe in some far-off corner of the forest.

  Only then did the tension in his body fade.

  THE DAWN chorus of honeyeaters and magpies broke through Charlie’s exhaustion. Once awake, he listened to Jack moving about in the camp outside his tent, preparing his breakfast and getting ready for another day on the axe. The man was a machine; he’d stayed out later than Charlie, cut more logs, and was up before him. Before the sun even.

 
Tipping out of his cot, he got dressed and looked through his dwindling stores for something to eat that would also mean he could stay in his tent until Jack was gone. He was heartily sick of tinned food, but there wasn’t much else, and none of the others bothered with much fresh food either. It rotted quick with the heat and the flies and the ants. Tins were safest, and more were on the way, courtesy of Fred who carried all that remained of Charlie’s money to buy him more supplies. Fred was the one he trusted most not to gamble it away in a drunken fugue. Trust that was probably misplaced. If he did, all Charlie had left in the world was a tent, an axe, and the clothes on his back. Payday couldn’t come soon enough.

  And hiding out in his tent wasn’t going to get sleepers cut.

  He could stay inside the tent until Jack was gone, at least, and then he wouldn’t be distracted, wouldn’t get caught with a lingering look as his eyes roved over Jack’s suntanned arms, from his curly brown hair, down that ridged nose and thick jaw, the bulging muscles, those thighs that could crush a man. Better to stay where his eyes couldn’t get him in trouble.

  But the tent was warming up and so was the billy.

  “Tea?”

  One short word but with enough power to spear him.

  Charlie swallowed his queasiness and went out, holding his mug. “Thank you.”

  Jack grunted in return. Perhaps he’d spent his single word for the day. Or perhaps he plain didn’t like him.

  Charlie knew little of Jack Tapper. At first, he hadn’t come across as a sullen man—just someone who wanted to get the job done. But Charlie was stopping Jack from doing that. And for an experienced faller—one who was worth his significant weight in gold for the timber companies—being alone with the most inexperienced sleeper cutter in the whole state was probably made all the more obvious. Tainted by association.

  Like his parents had believed when they’d found out about his… tastes.

  He’d chosen this camp based on the good word of people he’d spoken to, hoping to make enough money to leave Western Australia forever and go somewhere he wasn’t at risk of his family’s crushing disappointment.