Tommo & Hawk Read Online Free

Tommo's afraid. 'That's where he's broken, something's broken inside him.'

    Mary looks strangely at me. She doesn't tolerate folks who feel sorry for themselves. When she speaks her voice is sharp again. 'Whatever it were what happened to Tommo, it were no worse than most of us gets in life. This poxy island be full of past suffering. Sadness be a part o' this place. Suffering beyond the wildest imaginings of them what's not like us. Tommo's still young, only just growed up, plenty o' time for him to settle down. Work will fix what ails him.'

    She says all this quickly as if she has thought it all out. Mary mostly keeps things to herself. Thinks them out, then keeps them, holds them tight to use only when needed. Now I sense she's worried about my brother too. When you've lost your speech and must talk in hand language you learn to watch people more carefully. Ikey always said, 'Listen with your eyes, Hawk, it be your eyes what's your best ears,' and he was right.

    I don't want to say it but I must. 'Mama, I don't think Tommo will want to work in the brewery.'

    Mary draws back sharply. 'What's you saying? What's you talkin' about?'

    It is late Sunday morning with a high blue sky over the mountain and the winter's sun polishes the river like mirror glass. Mary's kitchen is bathed in sunlight. The window panes reflect bright squares that burn out the colour where they make a pattern on the dark brick floor. Specks of dust, turned to gold, dance in the shafts of light.

    Tommo has gone down to Wapping to drink at Brodie's sly grog shop. Since he's been back he does a lot of walking on his own, learning Hobart Town that's grown and changed so much since we were kidnapped. He walks then stops off to play euchre or poker in a pub or grog shop, coming home late and drunk. Sad drunk. A fifteen-year-old who finds no cheer in the drinking he does.

    Mary and I are sitting at the kitchen table, which is covered with a white cloth. On Sunday, Mary always spreads a white cloth on the kitchen table. Damask, she calls it. It's like her Sunday altar. We don't go to church. Mary doesn't believe in it and Ikey, the closest thing we had to a father, was a Jew. So was our real mother, or so he said. He used to tell Tommo and me that we were too.

    Mary says she doesn't know anything about that. All she knows is our mother was Sperm Whale Sally, a whaleman's whore. She says Ikey made up a lot of things to suit, like the X he put in both our names. Ikey added it on the spur of the moment when the government man said it wasn't Christian to have only one name and demanded a second be given. So Ikey scratches his noggin and thinks a moment then says, 'Israel and Moses,' and the man says they aren't Christian either and he isn't going to write anything down until Ikey comes up with good Christian names for seconds.

    'Tell you what,' says Ikey, 'I'll put X and then they can both choose a second name to their own liking when they've grown a bit.'

    The government clerk thinks for a moment, scratching his head. 'Fair enough, all right then, X it be.' He can't immediately think of a reason why X is not Christian, it being a sort of cross and all, and he doesn't really care. So now it's Hawk X Solomon and Tommo X Solomon forever after.

    'Can't trust the silly old bugger to get nothing right!' Mary said when she first told us she wasn't our real mother, nor Ikey our father, even though he gave us his name with the X added.

    'Probably gave you his name then got nervous that maybe it weren't quite kosher, so he cancelled it by adding the X. Nothing would surprise me with him.' Mary snorts each time the story comes up but she's got a smile on her face too as she thinks of him. 'Ikey always did have a bet each way.'

    Mary also told us that Tommo and I are twins, the same but different, the same mother but different fathers. A fluke of nature, she said, that happens sometimes with whores. Tommo came out with white skin and blue eyes, small as a tadpole,