It was 1983, and I was riding along behind Knuckles. Dukes was in the pack too, plus a couple of others. I don’t know whether Knuckles just got into a daydream or something hit him in the face – because he didn’t have sunnies on – but all of a sudden he swerved and ran straight into the pointy end of a cement lane divider. He went up in the air, the bike went up in the air, and then he came down again, crashing onto the road with the bike landing on top of him.
We pulled the bike off him and got him to Westmead Hospital, where he was operated on straightaway. They put a shunt in his forehead to relieve the pressure inside his fractured skull, his brain had swelled that much. It looked to me like a little garden tap was coming out of his forehead. His body was all banged up, too. It was a pretty bad crash. There were times there when the quacks thought we were going to lose him.
One of our members, Porky, hired a room in intensive care, which they had for friends and relatives, so he could be close to Knuckles in case anything happened. Porky spent the first week more or less living there. As Knuckles clung on, other members started using the room to give Porky a break. Every night there’d be at least fifteen or twenty Comos up in the waiting room outside. We knew that most of us couldn’t get in to see him, but everyone felt that they had to be there anyway. The nurses got used to this big bunch of bikers hanging round. One nurse came up to me and said, ‘You blokes have changed my opinion of bikies. I’ve spent most of my career in intensive care and I’ve never seen a bunch of blokes care so much about another man in my whole life.’
Gradually Knuckles came out of the woods, but he wasn’t the same man. The accident left him with severe headaches, no sense of smell or taste. His memory was shot and he was often disoriented.
The whole club pitched in to get Knuckles back on his feet. He moved in with his brother Dukes while he was still recovering, and Dukes and I took turns to look after him; the accident had caused him to become violent with anyone other than me and Dukes. When he was right to move out on his own again, the club rented a house for him and his old lady, Wendy, filled it with furniture and put on the phone and electricity. Wendy had just had a baby boy, Harley, so her time was taken up with him and they had no money coming in. She would sneak the bills out the window to us – because Knuckles would never have asked for help – and the club would pay them. We looked after our own. Especially his brother Dukes, who couldn’t have loved a brother any more than what he did.
While Knuckles was still in hospital, Jock gave another member, Opey, and me the task of finding a new clubhouse. We’d outgrown the one at Granville, and it was time for something a bit more flash.
Opey rocked up to my place one day and said he’d found a place at Birchgrove. ‘D’ya wanna come down and have a look, see if you reckon it’s a go?’
So I got on my bike and followed him down through inner-western Balmain, into Birchgrove and to the bottom of Louisa Road, which ran down a narrow peninsula jutting into Sydney Harbour. Opey had a key and took me through the place. Soon as I got inside and saw the harbour views, the size of the place, I was rapt. The backyard ran right down to the water and looked straight onto the Harbour Bridge.
‘How much?’ I asked Opey.
‘Three hundred bucks,’ he said, ‘but we can get in and have a coupla weeks free if we sign the lease later in the month.’
‘Take it.’
At the next meeting we told everyone that we’d found the new clubhouse, so members started going down to have a look. Then we started moving the bar and fridges into the place. We had a couple of tables and coin-operated Space Invader machines that we set out on the verandah, which was all encased in glass, so that you could play games or just sit there and look out over the water.
We were still at Granville, just moving things in slowly, when Shadow and Chop rocked up to me before a meeting one night and announced that they were going to bring Jock up on a charge; they wanted his colours.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Whatever they had on him, they obviously reckoned it was enough for immediate expulsion – even for the president.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘He’s been screwing another member’s old lady.’
‘How d’ya know?’
‘We were over at Five Dock this morning and saw
Jock’s truck parked out the front of _____ ’s house,’
Chop said. (I won’t name the member out of respect for him and his family.) ‘We pulled up and as we were walkin’ up to the front door, I looked through the winda
and there was Jock screwing _____ ’s old lady.’ Chop
grabbed Shadow and pulled him over to check it out.
‘He was going to town on her,’ Shadow said. Chop
knocked and _____ ’s old lady came to the door with
Jock standing right beside her. Shadow asked him what he was doing there and Jock said he’d just dropped in
to see _____ . Chop and Shadow just turned round and
left.
‘You’ve got no doubt?’ I asked them.
‘No,’ Chop answered. ‘No doubt whatsoever.’
‘Well you know the rule,’ I told them. ‘If you’re gunna bring someone up and you want their colours, you’ve gotta talk to ’em before the meeting and give ’em a chance to explain.’
‘There’s no way he can explain his way out of this.’
‘Have you told _____ ?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did he have to say?’
‘He was shattered,’ Chop said. ‘He took off on his bike and we haven’t seen him since.’
‘Is he here?’ Shadow asked.
‘No, and the meeting’s about to start,’ I said. ‘Jock’s not here yet either so you’re probably gunna have to wait till the next meeting to bring him up.’
The meeting started and Jock only turned up halfway through – too late for Shadow and Chop to talk to him.
After the meeting, I called Jock out the back. Shadow and Chop came out and fronted him about what they’d seen. Jock denied it, but Shadow and Chop called him a straight-out liar. I told them to wait there for a minute and went and got Sheepskin, took him out the back. I figured we needed another member there who couldn’t be accused of bias.
‘Shadow,’ I said, ‘tell Sheepskin what you seen.’
Shadow told Sheepskin, and Chop confirmed it. Sheepskin slumped. He turned to Jock: ‘You’re a stupid fuckin’ old fool. You’re gone. You’ve done yer colours.’
I actually felt sort of sorry for Jock at that moment because he had started the club and now, for the sake of a fuck, he knew that come next meeting, he’d be out.
DURING THE following week we finished the move from Granville to Birchgrove, so we were well ensconced in our plush new clubhouse by the time of the next meeting. And it was shaping up to be a doozy.
We had all agreed we wouldn’t tell the other members about Jock screwing another member’s old lady. The member concerned had asked us not to, so out of respect to him we kept it just between Shadow, Chop, Jock, Sheepskin and myself.
Come meeting night, we were all sitting there in anticipation. Chop wanted to make the first issue on the agenda the taking of Jock’s colours, so when he wasn’t there on time we delayed the meeting for twenty minutes. But in the end he never turned up. Nor did he show up at the next meeting.
Half an hour into the fourth meeting since Shadow and Chop had sprung him, Jock rocked up at Louisa Road with his Strike Force. He strutted in and called everybody together like he had a big announcement. He waited for silence before beginning. ‘I’m splittin’ the club in two.’
We all just looked at him.
‘I’ve started a chapter out west,’ he continued. ‘It’s to be called the west chapter and I’m going to be president. The people in here are called the city chapter and, Caesar, I want you to be president. Whoever wants to come with me can leave now, but there’s one rule in the west chapter, and that is that I have the final vote on everything. Whoever doesn’t like that can stay here with the city chapter.’
‘Fuck off,’ Snoddy replied. ‘Get outta the clubhouse. Anyone who wants to go with Jock, go now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Davo, ‘fuck off, go join his Strike Force.’
I really think Jock expected three-quarters of the club to get up and follow him; he thought he was that special. But just one member, Bear, and one prospect, Bob, got up and went over to join Jock and his Strike Force. Jock looked shocked to see the rest of the thirty-odd blokes stay put.
Before they left, Lard, who was staying at Birchgrove, approached Jock. ‘We’ve got a national run coming up in October. What’s gunna happen there?’
‘Our chapter’s gunna be going to Molong,’ said Jock.
‘Well if the national run is to Molong then that’s where we’ll be, too,’ said Lard. ‘We’re still one club.’
‘Youse can do whatever you want,’ Jock said.
Oh, shit.