Chopper Unchopped by Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read Page A

yesterday, and it doesn’t look as if I’ll be getting another one until tomorrow, and them bastards are going to spend a week’s pay on a feed’.
    I looked at Johnny, then I took him home and my Dad cooked him a slap-up dinner. After that Cowboy Johnny Harris would have killed any man who bad mouthed my old Dad. Dad gave him good, clean secondhand clothes and footwear — and bought him his first toothbrush. My father’s kindness to the Cowboy was remembered later.
    In December, 1972, my father, aged 47, and at five foot ten and 15 stone, could still put his punches together quite nicely, and he found himself in a fist fight with a larger man half his age in Williams Road, South Yarra. The other fellow also used a knuckle duster. I was in Pentridge at the time doing three months for assaulting three police. My father won the fight in nice style — but suffered some cutting about because of the knuckle duster. Johnny found out, and hunted the other chap down for about three weeks, cornered him in a hotel lounge bar in Prahran and with no howdy do’s stepped in and with six to ten punches shattered the other chap’s jaw, cheekbones and nose. Then he walked up to the bar, picked up a beer glass, broke it and delivered the ‘coup de grace’ — leaving the other chap with part of his chin and lip hanging off. He then left the pub without a word.
    My Dad was the father Cowboy never had, and the Cowboy loved him dearly.
    I don’t wish to go into the details of Cowboy’s death, as it is still upsetting. It happened when Johnny took on an army in a street battle in Richmond. I was being kicked to death — another good kick and I’d have been dead. Johnny charged in, army bayonet in hand, and gave his life to save mine.
    The truth about the Cowboy was that he had punched and kicked three men to death during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was no angel during the sharpie street battles of those days. There was a code in those days; not only with myself, you didn’t leave a fallen mate in the street to die like a dog, and no-one wanted any police involvement.
    A lot of things got handled privately and the details are hard to explain. Many people who are still about would be outraged if I told the whole story and if they thought I had given up all the details. The bloke died saving my life. I held him in my arms as he bled to death from a broken bottle in the neck.
    The Jew got there late. He sat with me, and we cried while Johnny died. I am not going any further about it; I will have to leave it at that.
    If Dave the Jew and I had not paid for the cremation service Johnny would have been buried a nameless unknown vagrant in a pauper’s grave. How we got him cremated is our business. His life was a tragedy. His happiest days were with the Surrey Road Gang. Johnny’s goodbye was our personal concern. He was our brother and our comrade. Sending him off was for us alone.
    Johnny always said he wanted to be burnt up when he died, and his ashes spread on the water — but not the sea, because he didn’t want the fishes to eat his remains. He once told us where he wanted his ashes put. And that’s what he got.
    On the day of his funeral Dave and I met at the Morning Star Hotel. Dave carried a bag with an urn containing the mortal remains. He also carried in the bag a cut-down .22 calibre rifle with a special 30-shot clip. I carried a battery-operated cassette player with the Cowboy’s favourite song on the tape — an old 1950s rock’n’roll song, ‘Sea of Heartbreak’. We drank at the Morning Star until closing time. Dave and I were quite tearful by then. We walked quietly along drinking from a bottle of good Irish whiskey until we got to the Prahran Swimming Pool and Baths on Malvern Road, across the road from the Prahran commission flats.
    We broke the lock and went in. The night lights were on. We stood at the side of the pool and put the cassette player on and turned it up loud, and ‘Sea of Heartbreak’ rang