My great great grandfather had three legs. He started out with two human ones like everyone else and ended up with a spare. He also had a glass eye which he kept in a jar by the bed right next to the jar he kept his spare teeth in. The spare leg was wooden and he kept it propped up beside the bed head when he wasn’t shuffling about on it.
We kids used to play pirates with the wooden leg along with the eye patch. and cutlass that we made out of alfoil. We put the wooden leg on by tying one leg up behind our knee with rope and slipping it into the wooden leg’s opening and strapping it onto our braces. The lucky boy would hobble about shouting orders like the captain of the ship and we would all be blowing up the Spanish with our cannons and then cutting their throats with our cutlasses.
Great great grandfather would joke and say; “Pull the other one,” and at odd times mainly to my Mum to get sympathy; “That he was on his last legs.”
You had to be pretty careful with the leg. Once it got singed when great great grandfather sat too close to the fire and fell asleep. It nearly ended up as firewood only the dog started barking and he woke up and put it in the dog’s water bowl to douse the flames.
Speaking of dogs, that nasty one down the street could easily be kicked through the gate with the wooden leg. We all laughed because none of us would ever put our real leg through those bars but we could really piss off that dog with the wooden one.
‘Legless’ had a new meaning too, apart from the one everyone knew. Sometimes great great grandfather would hop about on one leg using the crutches. That was mostly when one of us had nicked off with his wooden one or when we forgot to put it back before he woke up and he found out that it was gone.
There were all these stories about how great great grandfather had lost his leg. He’d begin by winking at us, when we had friends over. I had told all my friends that if they gave me a shilling, they could look at it and touch it. Once I made 5 shillings in one day. To make ten shillings, I had to organise a sleepover and then sneak my friends into his room when he was comatose in order to see the glass eye and the hole where it went in my great great grandfather’s head.
Great great grandfather liked an audience and he would adapt the leg to any fairy story that was familiar to us. Little Red Riding Hood might have a one legged woodcutter, it might be Goldilocks and the Three Legged Bear, Sleeping Beauty and the 1 Legged Stepmother, or the Three Little pigs and the Three Legged Wolf. All my friends left fearfully frightened of 1 legged or 3 legged creatures after great great grandfather told his stories. Our 3 legged barking dog would wander out from underneath the house as they left and chase them down the street. I trained him to do that.
I was making money and I didn’t care if great great grandfather’s stories were real or made up. All my friend’s parents thought he had lost his leg in the war so they didn’t ask about it for fear of upsetting him. Everyone knew that talking about the war led one to get drunk and smoke a lot of dope and then fall down somewhere in despair and then end up in hospital expecting family to visit when their family was already living it up because they were finally free of the old bastard for a few days or if they got really lucky, a few weeks. But since nobody ever asked that never happened to us.
I carefully scrutinised great great grandmother’s face for the obvious truth about how she really felt about great great grandfather but so long as my friends came over and she could feed them scones and cake, she seemed quite content. Great great grandmother told real stories from when she had been in Russia and was a Tsarina.
Great great grandfather used to scream out in the middle of the night. The whole household would rush to his room. When we turned on the light, he would either be standing there in his underpants thrashing about with the wooden leg or he’d be on the floor. Gran and grandpa would get him back to bed and I would go to my room and lie there wide awake wondering if those same ghosts would come after me.
The doctor said it was PTSD. I guessed the first letter stood for, ‘Pissed’ but not what the other letters meant; ‘Drunk,’ I imagined was the last letter. Pissed and Drunk. I knew he kept a flask of whisky inside the wooden leg because one day I took a swig. It tasted hot and burnt my throat and I felt dizzy. I didn’t touch it after that but I made up a useful story that it was ‘dragon’s blood.’ For a couple of shillings, I would let my friends take a tiny sip.
Each one of my uncles and aunties had a different story about how great great grandfather had gotten his wooden leg. Since they were all so different, I imagined that none of them were true.
I was in hospital once, visiting him and I looked at the records which just happened to be left on the side of his bed.
Gangrene, septicaemia from diabetes, lower leg amputated due to circulatory disorder.
After that great great grandfather’s stories lost their romance. I now saw him as a liar. I didn’t tell my friends any of what I knew though because I was still making money out of them. I had nearly 83 pounds saved up.
Great great grandfather died 2 years ago. By that time I was already a millionaire. I now charged $5 to look at the wooden leg and $10 to try it on. I told them it was a real pirate’s leg. By now I made up my own stories and I would tell them to excited kids by the burning logs out in the paddock underneath a full moon. By torchlight I’d take them to his grave. Windy nights with haunting owl calls were the best as the shadows would wander about like great great grandfather’s ghost.
I’ve got my own kids now. On special nights, I tell them fairy stories about 1 and 3 legged creatures. I haven’t got a leg to stand on regarding the truth but legends come through all different kinds of doors and my great great grandfather is a legend and soon I will be following in his 3 legged footsteps.
