Chopper Unchopped (194 page)

I ran outside to see Ronnie fighting with Gloria Swanson. Rotten Ronnie had dug his way out of his pen. Ronnie had torn the arse out of Gloria Swanson but the big chook fought on, feet and feathers flying in a desperate effort to protect her chicks.

I broke the fight up and put Ronnie back in his pen, then I picked up the savagely wounded Gloria Swanson. She was torn nearly in half but alive. I put her back in her pen and she called her chicks to her.

All thirteen came out of hiding and ran to their dying mother. Gloria Swanson seemed to be counting her chicks and all of them gathered around then the big chook died. Mary-Ann was in tears and so was I.

Isn’t that weird? I have seen men die, seen bodies, poured lime on the cold corpses of drug dealers who deserved to die and then stopped for a mixed grill on the way home, yum.

But the sight of Big Gloria dying while she fought for her chicks was too much for old Chop.

The dogs had to go. Paul Manning came up and shot them for us. Ronnie for killing and Reggie because he would only fret to death without his brother. I buried them both under a pine tree and the tears in the house lasted a full week.

All the Sussex chicks survived and now are giant great hens and roosters. All of them led by a giant hen we have named Gloria Simpson, daughter of the late Gloria Swanson. If she had been skinny we would have called her Gloria Marshall.

It is a little spooky because we can still hear Ronnie and Reggie around the property. No, the claw hammer I got in the skull all those years back is not finally kicking in …  it is our pet magpie, Eddie, who imitates the sound of the dogs howling. Little Eddie’s cage hung above their pen and the magpie had grown up to mimic the sound of the dogs. Then one day Eddie died and there was no more barking.

Until, that is, Ronnie and Reggie were replaced with a Jack Russell puppy named Little Bill and Little Eddie was replaced with a cocky named Paul. As the farmers say, when you have livestock you have dead stock. That’s life, I guess.

WHEN I got out of jail I thought my days of conflict and angst were behind me but, as usual, I was wrong.

I was to be the catalyst of the greatest amount of local upset on the old farm for years. Every freeloader and scavenger for miles around has been playing on my father-in-law’s Christian goodwill and kind nature and cutting themselves tonnes of wood each winter — all free, gratis and for nothing. So, as you would, I bought the timber lease, chained the gate and put up a timber lease notice and Keep Out signs.

Instead of getting the hint that the days of free wood were over they expected my father-in-law and me to get the wood for them.

For Christ’s sake, we are running a farm not a public charity. People who expect others to look after ’em free of charge are called bludgers or politicians in Australia. The only trouble is that Aussie land is now so full of bludgers the bastards now outnumber us law-abiding, hard-working folk.

‘Twas just a hundred acres, or maybe two or three
Old Hodge’s’ Hill seemed to run for as far as the eye could see
And for years the locals came and cut their loads of winter wood
Ten ton a year for every man; my God, them times was good.

Then came along a city bloke with a bit of dash and cash
And thought that all this wood for free was being rather rash
These freeloaders and bludgers have had their load of fun
I’ll buy the lot and chain the gate and call it Ready’s Run
And now up on the Hill the chainsaw sings its song.
No more for you, you bludging scum,
you had it free far too long.

And as the trees come falling down old Ready’s getting richer
And the local boys are spitting chips
‘cause they couldn’t see the picture.
But what no-one understood and what few still understand
Was that they treated it like it was theirs,
though they never owned the land,
So now one man cuts the firewood and he cuts it just for fun,
While all the rest freeze to death cursing Ready’s Run.
Ha ha.

— Mark Brandon Read

AS a city boy with simple tastes, I find the bush great fun. I’ve always been an adaptable fellow and I’ve quite taken to country life. Chainsawing the guts out of everything is great fun. It’s nowhere near as good as turning up the heat on a drug dealer, but it’s still better than nude Twister.

Trees are in their own way far more dangerous than drug dealers. Put the chainsaw to a drug dealer and they will wriggle and scream and beg and moan. They’ll call to God and call their mates on the mobile phone and everything’s sweet. But when you give it to a tree at night it can pay you back big time.

One time under moonlight I was giving a big gum the big slash when it paid me back. I have always believed that all things are based on logic. To me it seems perfectly logical to cut a tree down with a chainsaw at night by the light of the moon without being sure which way they may fall. It’s sort of Russian Roulette with a giant hardwood.

I reckon some trees have their own personalities. Some give up once the chainsaw cuts into them, but others have knots in them that buck the cutter all the way through. And then when you are through the bastards, they still turn on you in death. They should fall one way but they can come back on you.

If you’re cutting it on a slope, then CRASH, the bloody thing lands on your esky and a dozen cans of cold beer are lost.

One missed me by a whisker. I was crashing through the bush as the tree started to come after me. They reckon you can outrun a tree — after all, it doesn’t even have runners, but they keep coming very fast. And in the dark it’s luck, either good or bad, on which way it falls. As I ran in the dark I knew that if I lived I would always remember the following three lessons:

Lesson one: never cut a tree down at night:

Lesson two: never cut a tree down at night when you are pissed;

Lesson three: if you do cut a tree down at night when you are pissed, make sure the esky is in a protected spot.

I was about to say if you haven’t done this you haven’t lived — and if you do it too many times you bloody well won’t live long either.

Imagine it, having avoided being killed by Nazis, Mafia nitwits, Romanian crazies, psychotic coppers, and sick puppies of all descriptions, the old Chopper could have cashed in his (wood) chips, care of a hundred-year-old blue gum.

THE two hundred ton of timber on my one hundred acre wood lease could be three to four hundred ton but I will need a tractor and a heap of chainsaw work to pull it out.

Why is honest work so hard?

In the old days you just wave a chainsaw near a drug dealer and he’d put a grand in my hand just out of good manners. Now as a man of the land I am expected to work like a slave around sheep shit and flies just to keep the wolf from the door.

It also seems I’ve got the only wood lease around these parts. Farmers don’t sell them no more. Naturally, the ‘Chopper the wood merchant jokes’ are flying thick and fast. I’ve had some close calls. Chainsaw in hand on a hill on a really windy day, pissed as a parrot, I cut down through a sixty foot dead tree at a forty five degree angle without cutting a scarfe into the tree on the other side.

I heard a crack and pulled the chainsaw out then ran, the wind twisted the tree and I heard another crack and as I ran the tree followed me. I was about forty feet away through the scrub as the tree fell all over me, smashing me to the ground.

I still had my chainsaw going and laying on my guts I cut my way out. Only a drunk or a madman would survive — luckily, on that occasion, I was both. I’ve decided never again to go near the bush pissed with a chainsaw. The old bushies reckon I cut them down on guts and sheer good luck and they marvel at how I’m still alive.

I approach a tree with an attitude of ‘you’ll drop or I will, you bastard.’ It’s total insanity — but I love it, ha ha.

I HAVE met and dealt with some two-faced treacherous maggots in my time and the bloke from the bush would hold his own in any company. If it’s not nailed down, it will get pinched; if it’s borrowed it will never be returned, and gossip and slander is the only topic of conversation.

Most of the country people I’ve met could get work as trick knife tossers in any circus because sticking knives in people’s backs is their favourite past time. I could give you example after example.

Kindness is always treated as weakness and a laugh at the expense of another is the only laugh to be had. Is it any wonder that Paterson was embraced by a nation while old Henry Lawson stood in his shadow. Paterson gave a nation a romantic myth and, given the choice between a myth and the truth, people will always take the myth. I won’t be thanked for pointing this out — then again, neither was Lawson. At least he had his own ears.

I’ve always maintained that there are exceptions and contradictions to every rule of law. I’ve noted that bushmen of the old school, farmers, men of the land, the landed gentry of the generation that lived through the Great Depression, World War Two, bush fires and floods and droughts are a different class to your modern day country folk.

Lawson was born in a tent and spent his life in and out of Darlinghurst Jail and viewed life through a bottle. I won’t hang my hat on every word he said but will say that I have met some true blue gentlemen, some real old time salt of the earth country folk whose word is their bond and whose handshake can be taken to the grave.

I hold my own father-in-law up as such a man — old E.V. Hodge. But, alas, men of his calibre are a fast-dying breed. He probably won’t thank me for mentioning his name but I’d like to say that he is among the few truly good men I’ve met. You wouldn’t meet a better man than Ernest Vincent in a day’s march and I thank him for his kindness to me.

I’m attempting to try to get my gun licence back. Well, that’s not strictly accurate as I’ve not ever had one. Like Rolf Harris, I’m a big picture man and can’t get caught up on little details. I’ve written to the Commissioner of Police for Tasmania, John Johnston, requesting that the section 130 of the Firearms Act 1996 prohibiting me from possessing or using a firearm be lifted. Assistant Commissioner of Police Barry Bennett often drinks at my local pub, the Richmond Arms Hotel, and he reckons I’ve got no chance at all. However, I will continue to put my case forward.

After all I’m a farmer now, a middle-aged man, the fat bloke in the white t-shirt. Who ever heard of a farmer without a shotgun? Has the whole world gone mad. Am I to wrestle tiger snakes and wild dogs?

ANYWAY, back to business. In the immortal words of Peter Sellers I will now whistle the soliloquy from
Hamlet.
I often dream of Mad Charlie and Alphonse and in my dreams they are alive and well, although badly wounded, and we sit at the bar drinking.

I awake from these dreams deeply disturbed. Just when I think that the past is the past except for my writing about it, I find myself drinking with them in my dreams.

It shows me that none of us can ever leave the past. It lies dormant in the back of our skulls and like a dirty big wombat, comes out at night for a sniff around and a scratch.

The wogs have spent the best part of the 1990s getting themselves murdered. Gentle Joe Quadara, Steve the Greek Caracasidis, Alphonso ‘Fat Al’ Muratore, Alphonse Gangitano, Vincenzo Mannella, his brother Gerry, Danny Boy Mendoza, Mad Charlie Hegyalji, Antonio ‘Little Tony’ Peluso and several more over the last nine years who never made the papers or police attention — as they simply went on the missing list. About twelve all up, I can think of. However, their names escape me as I write this and would continue to escape me if I was called before any nosy coroners who wanted my opinions under oath.

To any Judges who want to get a few ideas about where the truth might be — buy this book like everyone else.

I’ll say this. A vanished body is strictly business. A body left to be found is a warning. My goodness, it is such a puzzle to try to work out what is going on. ‘Mafia’ is a handy word to toss up when the police and media don’t have the faintest idea. If the body smells of garlic and lead then the cops and the hacks scream ‘Mafia’.

It makes good headlines, and takes the pressure off the detectives because no-one expects them to solve Mafia killings.

I’ve learnt from bitter experience never to give my opinion in writing or the spoken word without great caution on matters relating to unsolved police cases. Ten or twenty years down the track when it’s all old history a crew of old reporters and police will gather for drinks and say ‘You know old “no ears” told us all way back then and we thought it was a joke. If you strip it back he told the truth in his own roundabout, half-mad comic way years ago and none of us believed him.’

It’s like Flannery. I told everyone the bum got put through a tree shredder. Since then quite a few top men in the police, media and criminal world have claimed to know the real truth and some have even stated they knew where the dog was buried.

So where’s the body? Ha, ha. Tree mulch is still my tip.

Then, again, what would I know? I’m just a roaring drunk, a hopeless liar or a roaring liar and a hopeless drunk, or so some would have you believe.

But I didn’t get these scars in a fight over the sushi tray at a crime writers’ conference and the claw hammer hole in my head didn’t come from a dispute with the scone lady over the strawberry jam.

No-one believes a word I say, not while there are chaps about with a better yarn to spin. Hit men in Australia aren’t vast in number. It is quite a small fraternity and not an Olympic event. They may not march together on Anzac Day but they know each others’ names.

Either we know each other personally or by reputation. If two hit men don’t know each other they would both know of or have a mutual friend.

They may live thousands of kilometres apart and be loners but there is an invisible thread around the nation that links them all together.

They all have friends within the illegal arms industry, as small arms ordinance is vital to the professional killer’s line of work and, naturally, every man and his dog knows Mark Brandon Read understands about small arms ordinance.

Long before the coppers have a clue, a hitman will know who has done a killing. He will know the style and the type of murder — and will know whose trademark it is likely to be.

There are, so rumour goes, men who know so much about the illegal sale of small arms ordinance that they only have to find out the calibre and make of the weapon used to track down the individual who bought it within about three days.

Arms dealers sell weapons but only a limited amount of ammo and no extra clips for autos or general spare parts. All in all, both worlds are small and close knit. Why things are done is no-one’s business but who did what and for how much isn’t hard to find out. Of course, this is just rumour. But as they say, where there is gunsmoke there is usually gunfire.

Myself, as a gentleman farmer, woodchopper and father of a young boy, I steer clear of these matters of blood and guts. These days I am more interested in Hans Christian Andersen than Christopher Dale Flannery. Ha ha.

I can now leave all that to the heavy thinking boys, the police and media. They have read all the books and watched all the movies so they would have to know, wouldn’t they?

Some coppers live by the rule of the Mounties, ‘We always get our man,’ — or was that ‘Let’s club those baby seals’? I can’t remember.

I wonder what wise advice I could give all these smart young crime solvers. Texas Bix Bender said it best.

‘Don’t squat with your spurs on, boys.’

The cops and robbers of today are a pack of junior ‘G Spot’ men in pursuit of a bunch of bubble gum gangsters. As for the modern day homicide squad investigating the so-called Mafia murders of the 1990s, in my opinion they put the Haw in Hee Haw.