Читать книгу Hard Cuddles - James Harding - Страница 13

THE DOG BITE

‘Don’t let the same dog bite you twice.’

— Chuck Berry

It was a reasonably overcast day. My sister and I were playing in the front garden when Jerusalem Joe, our next door neighbour popped over to our house and asked my parents if I could go for a bike ride with him. Jerusalem Joe was fond of me and made a real effort to include me in his activities. He managed three daughters and I guess he considered me the little boy he longed for. Jerusalem Joe was a unique looking specimen, very much from the David Helfgott mould, the real life piano player that inspired the Oscar for Geoffrey Rush in the movie Shine.

Jerusalem Joe was a trailblazer in the fashion stakes as well. You would often see him tearing around Bentleigh in a pair of tracksuit pants, Velcro runners and a leather man-bag. Not the sort of man-bag you see the men of today carrying with the leather shoulder strap. This was more of a man-purse with a little leather strap that you put around your wrist. I was always amazed by his trendsetting bag. Once I filled in at Jerusalem Joe’s company for a day and his employees all called him ‘the enigma’, due to his hyperactivity.

I was riding a hand-me-down BMX from one of my cousins. Dad had done it up with a new seat and hand grips to make it passable. In hindsight it was awful, but at the time I thought it was very special.

We were about a block away from our houses when we turned into Austin Street and I had a feeling as soon as I turned into the street, that something was not right. There were lots of people pottering around and then it happened.

Jerusalem Joe was about ten metres in front of me as we were halfway down the street and everything started to slow down. I heard a dog barking and a man yelling. I recall it was getting closer to me. I looked to see this grey blur coming towards me. Jerusalem Joe by this stage had stopped to look back at what was happening because this motherfucker was growling and making a godawful noise.

A grey weimaraner had charged out of its house and started attacking my calf. I felt my leg compress and I saw the dog shaking his head from side to side. It was as if time stood still, everyone was watching what was happening to me, but no one seemed to be able to do anything. It was all so quiet and serene. Very much like an out-of-body experience. I don’t recall any pain. After the dog had bitten me, he raced off. I thought it might be a good idea to jump off my bike and see if there was any damage to my leg. Upon first inspection, everything looked okay as there was no damage to my track pants, not even a hole. I continued wearing them for years after the attack.

When I jumped off the bike, the situation hit me like a fishmonger’s prices at Christmas. I sat down on the footpath and lifted up the track pant leg and saw that the dog had made an upside-down u shape incision on the whole of my calf. As I lifted my pant leg further, the bottom of the u-shaped skin flap had caught in the elastic and come off. So all I saw was bloody, pink flesh the size of the back of my calf. I knew then and there that this was one of those life changing moments.

People started screaming and running around not knowing what to do. One of my kinder friend’s father happened to be working in the street and chased the dog with a shovel. As I sat there on the nature strip holding my calf to my leg, the owner of the dog ran out to me with some tea towels and started to secure them around my wound. I guess I was in shock because I didn’t feel anything. But I remember being calm under pressure, a skill that would serve me well during my life. Blood started to seep through the first tea towel and drip onto the ground, so the owner wrapped another one around it.

I could see the fear in the dog owner’s eyes, he was terrified. The man couldn’t bring himself to say anything, he just stared at me. There was blood all over the footpath by this stage and poor old Jerusalem Joe had turned pale. He decided it would be best if he rode home to tell Dad. I recall people talking about an ambulance because of the blood loss. There was quite a crowd now and all of them where freaking out. I recall the sun setting at the bottom of the street as I watched for Dad’s car.

Then he turned the corner in his white Falcon station wagon that he was so damned proud of. Such an overwhelming feeling of safety and relief washed over me. Everything was going to be all right now, even though my leg was torn apart and my calf was hanging by a piece of skin. I felt safe because Dad was there. He took charge and got me into the back seat straight away. I can’t remember him saying much, he didn’t need to. I knew he had the situation under control. That’s a special feeling, an unwritten understanding between Dad and me; he was my protector and he would do everything in his power to make sure I was always safe. A special bond, more friends or mates, than father and son.

We arrived at our local GP, I am not entirely sure Dad had completely grasped of how severe this attack was. When the doctor removed the tea towels and revealed the bloody mess of what was once my calf, now a mangled mess of pink flesh and muscle sinew, he was repulsed and said ‘This dog needs to be shot.’ The doctor stitched the bottom of the wound to hold the calf to the leg, a temporary patch up, until I could get into surgery. A call was made to Doctor Graeme Southwick, a specialist plastic surgeon and I was raced to Cabrini Malvern, then transferred onto the Avenue in Windsor. Doctor Southwick walked into the room with an air of cool grace, ‘I am Doctor Southwick the best plastic surgeon in the country and I will be operating on your leg’ and just like that he took control of what turned out to be a disastrous afternoon for all concerned. Poor old Jerusalem Joe must have felt terrible.

Not long after that, we sued the pants off the owners of the dog and received a tidy little pay day for myself when I turned eighteen. For the record the dog was not put down, the law at the time was a dog had to bite three times and I was the dog’s second victim. Blood and guts no longer held any fears for me, once you have experienced something like that, you get a new perspective on life.