Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Then, from the darkness beyond the perimeter of the fire and candlelight, I hears Sam Slit screaming. He’s brought into the lighted circle, carried by three men. His ankles and wrists is bound as before, and his legs has been tied about his knees with strips of green hide, so that they remain straight and he can’t kick. They places him besides the bullock skin, holding him to the ground.

  ‘Suddenly I sees the old hag with the half-balded head and bare titties to her waist. She breaks though the semicircle o’ men and steps to where Sam Slit is whimpering and gasping. She has a basket over her arm as though she be out shopping, and she places it besides Sam and removes a knife. She stoops over Slit, who is bug-eyed with bruising and, as he begs for mercy, she cuts away his clothing until he lies naked upon his own dirty swaddling. I am looking directly down on him and can see his great hairy belly heaving in terror, with his fat worm lying slack against the inside of his thigh. The old woman cuts a length of twine and ties it tight at the base of Sam Slit’s cock as he screams and pleads.

  ‘Then she takes up a clay pot from her basket and dips her hand into it. Her fingers is coated in white stuff what I takes to be animal fat. She greases Sam all over. When this is finally done, she begins to work the fat ‘tween his legs. To my astonishment, I sees Slit grow until his great purple knob stands hard against his belly-button while he howls like a dog against the pain of the cord, what cuts deep into the flesh of his erect prick. The only sound from the men what forms the circle is a clearing of a throat or someone turning to spit at his own feet.

  ‘Then, as though knowing the exact moment, the old hag grabs up her knife and slices off Slit’s stiff cock. She holds it up a moment for all to see, then throws it into the fire where it sizzles, the animal fat catching fire, turning the embers into sudden flames.

  ‘There is a small spurt o’ blood and a terrible screaming from Slit, but the cord acts as a tourniquet and the blood soon stops. The old woman now makes a loop of twine and slips it over Slit’s knackers. Again she pulls tight, to Sam’s yells o’ pain. She grabs his balls in her hand and pulls hard so that the skin stretches a full six or eight inches, and her blade slices again. This time, the twine has held so tight that there is very little blood at all.

  ‘Sam Slit is now jerking, screaming and sobbing, snot running from his nostrils. The old hag beckons with a bloody claw and four men takes Slit up, two by the legs and two by the arms. As they raises him from the bloody bundle of clothes I see that he has shit hisself.

  ‘Six men, three on each side of the bullock hide, pull open the bloody skin. Then Sam Slit is lifted over their heads and placed within the hide. The wet rawhide closes ‘round him as he jerks and struggles, but it is a snug enough fit— cramped quarters, you might say! With his arms and legs bound, he can’t do nothing but beg for mercy. The old hag takes a stick and lifts Sam’s dirty clothes and drops them into the fire, where they smoulders a while before being devoured.

  ‘With her bare paps hanging to the surface of the bullock’s skin and the ends of her stringy white hair tipped with Sam Slit’s blood, the old hag begins sewing up the belly of the beast with an awl and twine. She’s busy as a pox doctor, barely aware of the men standing ‘round her, as though it be a job not in the least unusual. When she finishes sewing, she takes up the knife again and cuts the rawhide around Slit’s face so that he can see and breathe but make no other movement. The old biddy now puts down the blade and takes up Sam’s knackers. Forcing open his mouth with the handle of the knife, she pushes them into his mouth so that both his cheeks is blown out with the two horrible gob-stoppers.

  ‘The bullock skin, filled with a different beast, is now lifted on its pole and placed across the roasting coals, each end fitted into the cross-stays.

  ‘I watches from my tree as the well-basted Sam Slit is steamed and then roasted inside the bullock. His full gob prevents him from crying out, so that he bakes in the silent flames o’ hell.

  ‘The moon is at the centre of the sky when I climbs down from my tree. All is asleep among the dogs at the fire or gone off to their bark huts. I am stiff from sitting up there for so many hours but now, as me feet touch the ground, I want to run and jump, whoop and do cartwheels through the moonlit bracken!

  ‘It’s as though a great burden’s been lifted from me soul. Seven years of fear and hatred are gone. When Sam Slit first took me I were no bigger than Gracie, and could not fight back but only scream and sob as he used me. Then, when I grew older, he got me on the grog, so I were too weak of character and spirit to run away. But now, with the beast devoured in the flames of its own belly, I was free at last. I be no longer too ashamed to come home to you and Mary. For the first time, I got some hope that the mongrels upon the earth can be defeated by decent men.’

  Tommo is silent for a spell. Then he says softly, ‘But always I’m reminded that the small and the innocent is the ones what gets sacrificed. Even me freedom from Slit comes at a price. A child named Gracie died for it. I vowed in her name that, as long as I live, I ain’t gunna let the mongrels win against the small and the weak, against those what cannot fight back.’

  I sit, stunned, in the dark. The pain of my back has been forgotten as Tommo talks, and now we are both silent. Then Tommo speaks again, quoting the words of Gracie’s papa.

  ‘"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 also hurt and beaten and harmed, and we must take into our own hands the means of justice required of decent men who live in the sight of a righteous and almighty God.” ’

  This is a different twin from the one I thought I knew. Tommo has led me to believe that he is uncaring and cynical, hardened in the ways of the world, too damaged to care about his fellow man, concerned only with where and when he may find his next drink.

  Now I perceive in him an anger, one which he will not always use judiciously, as witnessed by his answering back of Rawlings and our subsequent incarceration in this dark hole. But I tell myself it is a much better Tommo. There is much of my old twin come back, the smart-mouthed though always caring little boy, whom I knew and loved so well before we were parted. The years in the wilderness have not destroyed him completely, I am sure. His abstinence ashore last night has given me great heart, and I am filled with optimism for our future.

  Tommo reaches out in the dark and clasps my arm in both his manacled hands. ‘O’Hara and Jenkins hurt and beat you and the lads, my kith and kin!’ He adds quietly, ‘And so I’ve remembered the words of Gracie’s daddy and I have kept me vow.’

  Chapter Seven

  TOMMO

  Kororareka

  March 1857

  Staying sober that night were the most difficult task of me life. At every gin palace, grog shop, brothel and hotel, temptation stared me in the gob. Two minutes at a game o’ cards in a one-shilling hell and I would’ve had a brandy in me trembling hand.

  If Hawk had known that I stayed sober only to make sure of the whereabouts of Jenkins and O’Hara so that I might keep me vow of revenge, he would have been happy to see me gutter-rolling drunk. Being stranded on these God-forsaken shores, sitting in a gaol cell at Kororareka is a bloody high price to pay for what we done. But our revenge worked even better than I’d hoped, and we are well rid of the Nankin Maiden, though she still waits in the bay for her master to return from the surgeon’s hospital.

  Twice in two days we’ve been manacled and put in custody, first by Seb Rawlings and then by the local constabulary. We is to go before the district police magistrate when next he sits, though who knows when that might be. The other prisoners reckon that we’ll be taken to Auckland.

  Hawk is still furious that I acted against O’Hara without talking to him first. Now he sees how clearly I gulled him when we was ashore— he thought me show of temperance were from a new resolve to remain sober. I’ll never get another drink in me lifetime if Hawk’s got
anything to do with it! I’ve even lost my raisin wine, the result o’ nearly seven months of saving the raisins from me plum duff, and winning them from the rations of the crew when they lost to me at cards. I gave the cook five big mackerel for the yeast I needed to speed the fermentation.

  Me ship-brewed grog were about a week off being ready when we was arrested and thrown into this foul nest. Now I won’t never have the satisfaction of getting as full as a tick on board and thumbing me nose at Captain O’Hara and his pious Quaker owners with their bloody dry cask afloat. Never mind, I thinks to meself, our revenge on O’Hara and Jenkins be even sweeter than such a fine drop would’ve been.

  We are sitting in this bloody cell where the vermin is as plentiful as on board ship. We has seen few rats and cockroaches but the fleas and lice are back and at night, the bed bugs, so that we is always scratchin’.

  It is a good time to work with Hawk on his voice which comes along fine but is still very much on the rasp and low to the ear. I has to teach him to open his mouth and throw his voice wide. Honest, sometimes I dunno how me twin survived growin’ up without me. Hawk has ideas what would make him the laughing stock o’ men what know life for the misery it is. If those in authority ever knew his secret thoughts they’d arrest him for sedition. But, as I comes to think of this, perhaps they would not. He knows so little of the evil what lurks in men’s hearts that those in power may well take him to be a harmless fool.

  Since his voice is begun to recover, Hawk speaks much o’ man’s conscience and has the peculiar notion that men must form a brotherhood and act responsible, the each for the other.

  ‘We have a new country, Tommo, why should we accept that we must follow old ways, old laws? Why must the poor be accepted as beyond redemption and not worth the smallest charity?’ he asks.

  ‘Because for the most part the poor be idjits!’ I says.

  ‘Only because they have no opportunity,’ Hawk answers.

  ‘Rubbish! Poor ain’t an opportunity not given, it be how we looks at the world.’

  He stares at me amazed. ‘Bloody hell! You are right! How we look at the world. A way of looking at themselves and their own kind!’

  It be the first time I’ve heard Hawk cuss with his new voice and I laugh at the sound. ‘When I were took by Sam Slit, I were just a seven-year-old brat, cheeky though, and bright, with an answer for all and a bit of a joker, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You were all that and more, Tommo,’ Hawk chuckles softly.

  ‘But when Sam Slit beat me and abused me I become a different boy. Soon I were like a kicked dog. When me master called I’d come, me eyes filled with fear for the beating I expected. But I would still come. What else could I do? I were a child and in the wilderness with a wild man. So I gets accustomed to it, tries to please him and be a good boy. Soon I don’t remember that I were ever any other way!’

  ‘That’s what I mean!’ Hawk exclaims. ‘You were taught to expect naught but blows and curses. That is what you received and soon you thought the world no different.’

  ‘That’s right!’ says I. ‘That’s why your brotherhood of men won’t work. Men ain’t kind to them as they don’t have to be— not in this hard old world.’

  ‘No, no, that’s just it! We must change the conditions of the world. Men of conscience must stand together and change the conditions!’

  ‘Ha, what a load o’ codswallop!’ I says. ‘There be only two conditions what exists in this world, Hawk, strength and weakness. The strong shall destroy the weak, that’s how it’s always been, and I’ll vouch that won’t never change long as we live. Your fine ideas o’ conscience won’t change anything, neither.’

  ‘But you said yourself in the dark that you took a vow to defend the weak, to look after your kith and kin. That is the conscience in you, Tommo!’

  ‘Bull! That ain’t conscience! The mongrels kicks you, and you finds a way to kick back, like we done to O’Hara and Jenkins. That be revenge and well took too!’

  ‘Tommo, you went too far! You and the Maori, what you did that night was not right.’

  I look at Hawk and shakes me head. ‘What we did were no worse than what they did to Hammerhead Jack, and what O’Hara and Jenkins did to you and the other Maori!’

  ‘We could have gone to the law!’ Hawk says. ‘We could have had the vessel impounded and our complaint heard.’

  ‘The law! You heard what Hammerhead Jack said about British law, well he were damn right! Four Maori and a nigger against the Yankee captain of a whaling ship what’s known for his Quaker piety! The case heard by some drunken district magistrate! For God’s sake, Hawk!’

  I think about how surprised Hawk were when we was taken out of the dark hole and brought to a crew muster before the mainmast. First up Hawk thinks it must be the crew count before we sail. I ain’t sure the plan has worked so don’t know what to expect. We stumble out of the darkness into the brilliant morning sunshine and our eyes is blinded for a time so that we needs be led by the bosun what’s come to fetch us from the hold. The shouting of the crew alerts Hawk that there is something new afoot. As we pass, some of the men touch us on the sleeve and some grin and wish us well under their breaths.

  Our eyes begin to get used to the bright light and I sees the three mates, Stubbs, Hollowtree and Rawlings, standing beside the mainmast. O’Hara ain’t among ’em and Jenkins too is missing. Good! I thinks. The three mates are grim-faced and all has their arms clasped to their chests, watching Hawk and meself.

  I am glad Hawk don’t know what we’ve done, for he’s a hopeless liar and might give the game away. As for yours truly, well, the wilderness taught me all I needs to know about lying. I’m all innocence in appearance, though not too innocent, that be just the same as looking guilty. Instead, like Hawk, I has confusion writ upon my gob, as if I be silent-saying to meself, ‘What’s goin’ on then?’

  Several of the men are pointing to the mainmast, a foot above the heads of the ship’s officers. Hawk looks up and I follows his gaze. He gives a gasp and this is followed by me own, for what I see is not expected. Hawk’s horror be genuine as he grabs at me with both his manacled hands. ‘Look, the mast!’ he shouts in his rusted voice.

  There, nailed to the masthead, is the hand of Captain Mordechai O’Hara, chopped off at the wrist with his gold signet ring still on his third finger. This time it don’t wear the ruby of Billy Lanney’s flesh as it did the day of his beating. The captain’s hand has been nailed stoutly to the mast with a three-inch copper nail, the fingers pointing to the heavens as though giving praise to the Almighty. A thin line of dried blood runs all the way from the mangled wrist to the base of the mast and gives the evil appearance of a hand stuck on the end of a rod. Beside it, like two pale sausages nailed likewise with cooper’s barrel nails, are a forefinger and middle finger, what I knows belongs to Jenkins, for the ginger hair below the knuckles glints in the morning sun.

  I gasps and grabs back at Hawk’s arm, feigning shock and horror. But inside I be pleased as Punch, silently singing the praises of Hammerhead Jack’s lads, what has done so well! ‘Gawd bless the Maori! To hell with British justice, this one’s for Gracie!’ I says to meself.

  Well, o’ course, it’s presumed we be guilty and the bosun now pulls us roughly by the manacles to stand in front of the three mates.

  It is Stubbs what speaks first. ‘What say you?’ he shouts, looking at Hawk.

  What can Hawk say? He knows nothing. He is still shaking from the shock and I hopes that they do not think it is because he is afraid. But with Stubbs’ question he seems to realise what might be afoot. Hawk is ever the optimist, but he ain’t stupid.

  ‘Say?’ Hawk says, removing his cap. ‘I am deeply shocked at what I see!’ He gestures with his manacled hands to O’Hara’s hand and the two fingers nailed beside it. ‘Who has done this terrible thing?’

  The men have crowded forward, straining to hear Hawk’s voice.

  ‘You are in this!’ Rawlings shouts, pointing to Hawk and th
en to me. ‘You two are part of this!’

  ‘Part? How? You know well enough we be locked midships all of last night and aboard ship yesterday at your instructions.’ I cough lightly then add, ‘Sir,’ so as to show me disrespect, but not too much for I clumsily remove me cap from me head and hold it to me front. Hawk scowls at me. He’s put two and two together. He knows I am up to my neck in it somehow, though how he still ain’t sure. He knows Rawlings is a fair man at heart and does not wish to put him altogether on the captain’s side. But Rawlings has little choice, he’s got to take us to task as if he were O’Hara hisself. He is only the fourth mate, the most junior of the ship’s officers, but he were in charge of the ship when the Maori escaped. And I doubts the other two, Stubbs and Hollowtree, will take the slightest share of the blame. Seb Rawlings is in big trouble and he must get to the bottom of this affair or be disgraced forever. No doubt there will be an official inquiry. Perhaps, I thinks, Rawlings can be pushed into saying or doing something foolish which might later be in our favour. Where the mongrels is concerned, yours truly is all for playing the crowd, and Rawlings is now on the side of the mongrels.

  ‘You are in this, bastard!’ he yells, spitting the words at me.

  Now is the time to be humble. ‘Mr Rawlings, sir, I begs your indulgence. As you know, the Maori took leave of the ship well after we returned the night before last. You yourself did muster us the morning following to ask if we did know their whereabouts. But, o’ course, we did not,’ I say innocently, and Hawk nods his head. We is now too deep into this affair for him not to go along with me and I sense that he knows what I’m up to with Rawlings. I continue, ‘Then you locked me brother and me up ‘til we be fetched but a few moments ago.’ I turns towards the men. ‘It is easy enough to ask the men if they seen Hawk and meself all the night ashore and also, if ever they did see us together with the Maori.’