Tommo & Hawk Read Free

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